Everybody Wants a Piece: The New Great Game in the Horn of Africa

The Cold War in the Horn of Africa was brutal and relatively simple. The United States backed one side. The Soviet Union backed the other. Proxy wars consumed countries. Millions died. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Americans lost interest and the region descended into a chaos that took a generation to begin emerging from.

What has replaced the Cold War is more complicated, more crowded, and in some ways more dangerous.

China has invested billions in infrastructure across the region — ports, railways, roads, and the financing arrangements that come with them. Beijing’s military base in Djibouti is its first overseas installation, a statement of strategic intent that Washington has watched with undisguised unease.

Turkey has built its largest overseas military base in Mogadishu, trains the Somali national army, and has cultivated relationships with Somali political figures across the factional spectrum. Turkish Airlines flies daily to the Somali capital. The soft power is deliberate and effective.

The Gulf states operate in a different register entirely. Saudi Arabia and the UAE competed for influence during the Qatar blockade, pulling Horn governments into alignments that had little to do with the region’s actual interests. Gulf money flows into mosques, political campaigns, and business ventures in ways that are difficult to trace and impossible to ignore.

And underneath all of it, the people of the Horn are watching these competing powers make their calculations, and some are learning — slowly, carefully — to play the game themselves.

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