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Gulf countries and Turkey clash in Africa
A dangerous rise in tensions · One of the victims of unknown rivalry between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey (not to mention Iran) is the African continent where these countries are confronting each other. dollars.
Sudanese soldiers on their arrival in Aden (2015).
On October 24, 2018, during the " Davos of the Desert " that the Khashoggi affair had largely torpedoed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia warmly shook the hand of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman at a time when such marks of sympathy were rare. Fifteen days earlier, it was his Emirati ally who inaugurated the reconstruction of the port of Berbera in Somaliland, a country without legal existence internationally recognized and therefore without a seat in the United Nations . To " cover up " diplomatically, Abu Dhabi had sent for the opening of the site only Sultan Ben Suleiman, CEO of DPWorld, the parastatal company of Dubai, which represented an investment, but not a form of recognition. What to conclude from these two actions ? That the quarrels of the Arab / Muslim world reverberate beyond the Arab world, all over Africa.
The crisis that opened on June 5, 2017 between Saudi Arabia and its allies on the one hand, Qatar and its friends on the other has always been seen as a crack of the Arab-Muslim world. For this huge but friable power that is Saudi Arabia, the " Arab Spring " had been a threatening warning. As in the past, Nasserist socialism, then the Khomeinist religious revolution, revolutionary Islam and liberal democracy, now in competition in the Muslim world since 2011, were threats to the conservative Sunni Arab theological power installed on a tribal base that had clanically annexed its own version of Sunni Salafist fundamentalism. Yet neither Qatar nor its de facto alliesTurkish and Iranian had the same reading of the events and their rivalry with Riyadh, partly ideological would evolve into a geopolitical rivalry in which increasing portions of Africa would become involved.
FIRST HIT, BOTH SUDAN
Khartoum militarily sided with the Saudis from the outset of Riyadh's intervention in Yemen in 2015, mainly for financial reasons. Khartoum had sent as an expeditionary force not its army, but the militia formed by some Arab tribes - especially Rizzeyqat sub-clans Mahariya - under the name Rapid Support Forces ( RSF ). The RSF do not depend on the Ministry of Defense, but on the National Intelligence and Security Services ( NISS ) which uses them as shock troops in Darfur ; they are held responsible for serious abuses against the civilian population. the RSFwere engaged only on the northern front where they had little success against the Houthists and where they suffered heavy losses. Khartoum is dissatisfied with his pledge because Riyad promised $ 5 billion (€ 4.43 billion) and the money paid was much lower.
To raise the stakes, President Mohamed Omar El-Bashir hosted the Turkish Head of State Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 24 and 25 December 2017. Erdoğan had flown to the rescue of Qatar in June 2017, after When diplomatic relations with the emirate broke down, Prince Mohamed Ben Salman seriously thought to overthrow Sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Al-Thani by force. Erdoğan had sent a small expeditionary force to Doha with the order to fire when needed. The effect on Riyadh was deterrent. Erdoğan has since strengthened its alliance with Khartoum by obtaining the quasi-retrocession of the port city of Souakin, former capital of colonial Sudan at the time of Turkish-Egyptian rule. The two presidents traveled together and it Erdoğan promised his Sudanese counterpart " rebuild the city " . For good measure, he had the Turkish banner hoisted, which neither the Americans - who face Erdoğan's army in Syrian Kurdistan - nor the Saudis appreciated.
1 was even transported to South Sudan where the Libyan general Khalifa Haftar provides logistical and financial support for the Sudan Liberation Army / Minni Minawi ( SLA / MM ), Darfurian guerrilla group led by Minni Arko Minnawi which calls for the overthrow of the Khartoum government by armed struggle. It is through the latter and his ally of the Movement for Justice and Equality ( JEM ) led by Jibril Ibrahim that Khartoum finds himself deeply involved in a spiral of fighting that extends to the Great Lakes . Indeed, the two Darfurian groups side with the government of Juba (Sudan People's Liberation Movement SPLM-G) led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
In a paradoxical diplomatic hunt, the two groups of Darfurian rebels support the SPLM -G ally of Khartoum. Why ? Because both survive only thanks to the help of the Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni who supports Salva Kiir and orchestrates the survival of Juba's power. That is why the recent " peace agreements on South Sudan " in September 2018 were held in Khartoum and aimed at a double " decoupling ": the Darfurians withdrew from the south and Museveni agreed to stop his aid to anti-Khartoum rebels of Kordofan.
FROM LIBYA TO ETHIOPIA, PARADOXICAL ALLIANCES
The deployment of the anti-Houthi and anti-Qatari alliance forces is a fact in Eritrea where they have a base in the port of Assab and now the possibility of extending their field of action to Berbera in Somaliland. However, the Houthists have already announced that they would consider any installation of the Emirati forces as placing Berbera in the field of military operations. The threat is for the moment theoretical, but the deliveries of Iranian missiles to the government of Sanaa - already used against Saudi Arabia - set a precedent. In addition, the Emiratis continue their advance along the African coast as they have also signed another agreement with the de facto authority of Puntland on the port of Bossaso, on the Indian Ocean 2. To the south, in Mogadishu, the Turks built a large base with quarters for several thousand men 3 and port facilities.
The internationally recognized Somali government led by Mohamed Abdullahi " Farmajo " zigzagged between a Qatari alliance (initially) before " following the movement " of the other states of the Horn and getting closer to Riyadh following the approach Ethio-Eritrean. But the turnaround is far from total and Qatari and Emirati agents continue to clash in the secret services - and the small army - Somalis with adventures worthy of an adventure novel.
Other interference between the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, the way in which the Egyptian fear of the impoundment of the Renaissance Dam (Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, GERD ) on the Nile seriously affect its hydraulic resources has thrown Cairo in the arms of Eritrea, through the Emiratis. In response to Erdoğan's visit to Souakin and his " taking possession Egyptian military forces arrived quietly in Eritrea in January 2018 and took up positions at the Sudan (North) border, where the three countries - Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea - meet. Not many, but well trained, these small units have taken under their protection both militants of the anti-Ethiopian alliance created by Eritrea and militants of the Eastern Front anti-Sudanese recruited among the Beja clans.
All of this precipitated when peace was concluded on July 9, 2018 between Asmara and Addis Ababa and that the two countries officially decided to stop their support to the neighbor's rebel groups. At the July 2018 summit of the African Union ( AU ), Sudan and Egypt tried to minimize their differences, which in fact boils down to the flow of Nile waters, which can not hide the victory of the Ethiopia, which continues to build the GERD . Yet the Eritrean west is far from being the only ground of confrontation between Cairo and Khartoum since they support the two opposing sides in the Libyan civil war. Khartoum supports the " official " government "Prime Minister Fayez Serraj in Tripoli while Cairo is supporting - unofficial - at Benghazi power led by General Khalifa Haftar 4 .
BEYOND THE HORN
But if the Horn of Africa represents an almost traditional hinterlandfor the Arabian Peninsula, the importance of the current fitna has continued - and continues - to extend the scope of what French would translate as " radical quarrel ". ". Already in June 2017, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Senegal had broken off diplomatic relations with Doha, following Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain 5 . And at the same time, other African countries - such as Sierra Leone or Ghana - were opening up their embassies in Qatar. Diplomacy with financial aims ? Yes, but not only, and we realize this by analyzing the positions of the military mini-coalition sponsored by France and baptized [" G5 Sahel " 6> 2126] since its first meeting in November 2017. If Mali and Burkina refuses for the moment to break with Doha 6 , the most virulent rupture came from Chad's President Idriss Déby for directly political reasons: his most dangerous enemy, Timam Erdimi, resides in Doha under Qatari protection.
The great fitna is no longer only between powers in place and rebels Islamists. It has spread through the " camp of princes " (those of the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) around what will be or will not be the modernization of the Muslim world. And well beyond, to those who will be its allies. The extension of fitna has become globalized, including by ways that are, to say the least, paradoxical, a political struggle that leads to the Great Lakes. As a result, what began in June 2017 as a divergence of strategies between members of the Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC) has taken in a block, and almost hostage, a huge segment of the African continent. Some of its external actors, like France alongside the G5, seem to be hardly aware of it.
A dangerous rise in tensions · One of the victims of unknown rivalry between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey (not to mention Iran) is the African continent where these countries are confronting each other. dollars.
Sudanese soldiers on their arrival in Aden (2015).
On October 24, 2018, during the " Davos of the Desert " that the Khashoggi affair had largely torpedoed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia warmly shook the hand of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Ben Salman at a time when such marks of sympathy were rare. Fifteen days earlier, it was his Emirati ally who inaugurated the reconstruction of the port of Berbera in Somaliland, a country without legal existence internationally recognized and therefore without a seat in the United Nations . To " cover up " diplomatically, Abu Dhabi had sent for the opening of the site only Sultan Ben Suleiman, CEO of DPWorld, the parastatal company of Dubai, which represented an investment, but not a form of recognition. What to conclude from these two actions ? That the quarrels of the Arab / Muslim world reverberate beyond the Arab world, all over Africa.
The crisis that opened on June 5, 2017 between Saudi Arabia and its allies on the one hand, Qatar and its friends on the other has always been seen as a crack of the Arab-Muslim world. For this huge but friable power that is Saudi Arabia, the " Arab Spring " had been a threatening warning. As in the past, Nasserist socialism, then the Khomeinist religious revolution, revolutionary Islam and liberal democracy, now in competition in the Muslim world since 2011, were threats to the conservative Sunni Arab theological power installed on a tribal base that had clanically annexed its own version of Sunni Salafist fundamentalism. Yet neither Qatar nor its de facto alliesTurkish and Iranian had the same reading of the events and their rivalry with Riyadh, partly ideological would evolve into a geopolitical rivalry in which increasing portions of Africa would become involved.
FIRST HIT, BOTH SUDAN
Khartoum militarily sided with the Saudis from the outset of Riyadh's intervention in Yemen in 2015, mainly for financial reasons. Khartoum had sent as an expeditionary force not its army, but the militia formed by some Arab tribes - especially Rizzeyqat sub-clans Mahariya - under the name Rapid Support Forces ( RSF ). The RSF do not depend on the Ministry of Defense, but on the National Intelligence and Security Services ( NISS ) which uses them as shock troops in Darfur ; they are held responsible for serious abuses against the civilian population. the RSFwere engaged only on the northern front where they had little success against the Houthists and where they suffered heavy losses. Khartoum is dissatisfied with his pledge because Riyad promised $ 5 billion (€ 4.43 billion) and the money paid was much lower.
To raise the stakes, President Mohamed Omar El-Bashir hosted the Turkish Head of State Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on 24 and 25 December 2017. Erdoğan had flown to the rescue of Qatar in June 2017, after When diplomatic relations with the emirate broke down, Prince Mohamed Ben Salman seriously thought to overthrow Sheikh Tamim Ben Hamad Al-Thani by force. Erdoğan had sent a small expeditionary force to Doha with the order to fire when needed. The effect on Riyadh was deterrent. Erdoğan has since strengthened its alliance with Khartoum by obtaining the quasi-retrocession of the port city of Souakin, former capital of colonial Sudan at the time of Turkish-Egyptian rule. The two presidents traveled together and it Erdoğan promised his Sudanese counterpart " rebuild the city " . For good measure, he had the Turkish banner hoisted, which neither the Americans - who face Erdoğan's army in Syrian Kurdistan - nor the Saudis appreciated.
1 was even transported to South Sudan where the Libyan general Khalifa Haftar provides logistical and financial support for the Sudan Liberation Army / Minni Minawi ( SLA / MM ), Darfurian guerrilla group led by Minni Arko Minnawi which calls for the overthrow of the Khartoum government by armed struggle. It is through the latter and his ally of the Movement for Justice and Equality ( JEM ) led by Jibril Ibrahim that Khartoum finds himself deeply involved in a spiral of fighting that extends to the Great Lakes . Indeed, the two Darfurian groups side with the government of Juba (Sudan People's Liberation Movement SPLM-G) led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit.
In a paradoxical diplomatic hunt, the two groups of Darfurian rebels support the SPLM -G ally of Khartoum. Why ? Because both survive only thanks to the help of the Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni who supports Salva Kiir and orchestrates the survival of Juba's power. That is why the recent " peace agreements on South Sudan " in September 2018 were held in Khartoum and aimed at a double " decoupling ": the Darfurians withdrew from the south and Museveni agreed to stop his aid to anti-Khartoum rebels of Kordofan.
FROM LIBYA TO ETHIOPIA, PARADOXICAL ALLIANCES
The deployment of the anti-Houthi and anti-Qatari alliance forces is a fact in Eritrea where they have a base in the port of Assab and now the possibility of extending their field of action to Berbera in Somaliland. However, the Houthists have already announced that they would consider any installation of the Emirati forces as placing Berbera in the field of military operations. The threat is for the moment theoretical, but the deliveries of Iranian missiles to the government of Sanaa - already used against Saudi Arabia - set a precedent. In addition, the Emiratis continue their advance along the African coast as they have also signed another agreement with the de facto authority of Puntland on the port of Bossaso, on the Indian Ocean 2. To the south, in Mogadishu, the Turks built a large base with quarters for several thousand men 3 and port facilities.
The internationally recognized Somali government led by Mohamed Abdullahi " Farmajo " zigzagged between a Qatari alliance (initially) before " following the movement " of the other states of the Horn and getting closer to Riyadh following the approach Ethio-Eritrean. But the turnaround is far from total and Qatari and Emirati agents continue to clash in the secret services - and the small army - Somalis with adventures worthy of an adventure novel.
Other interference between the Gulf and the Horn of Africa, the way in which the Egyptian fear of the impoundment of the Renaissance Dam (Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, GERD ) on the Nile seriously affect its hydraulic resources has thrown Cairo in the arms of Eritrea, through the Emiratis. In response to Erdoğan's visit to Souakin and his " taking possession Egyptian military forces arrived quietly in Eritrea in January 2018 and took up positions at the Sudan (North) border, where the three countries - Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea - meet. Not many, but well trained, these small units have taken under their protection both militants of the anti-Ethiopian alliance created by Eritrea and militants of the Eastern Front anti-Sudanese recruited among the Beja clans.
All of this precipitated when peace was concluded on July 9, 2018 between Asmara and Addis Ababa and that the two countries officially decided to stop their support to the neighbor's rebel groups. At the July 2018 summit of the African Union ( AU ), Sudan and Egypt tried to minimize their differences, which in fact boils down to the flow of Nile waters, which can not hide the victory of the Ethiopia, which continues to build the GERD . Yet the Eritrean west is far from being the only ground of confrontation between Cairo and Khartoum since they support the two opposing sides in the Libyan civil war. Khartoum supports the " official " government "Prime Minister Fayez Serraj in Tripoli while Cairo is supporting - unofficial - at Benghazi power led by General Khalifa Haftar 4 .
BEYOND THE HORN
But if the Horn of Africa represents an almost traditional hinterlandfor the Arabian Peninsula, the importance of the current fitna has continued - and continues - to extend the scope of what French would translate as " radical quarrel ". ". Already in June 2017, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Senegal had broken off diplomatic relations with Doha, following Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain 5 . And at the same time, other African countries - such as Sierra Leone or Ghana - were opening up their embassies in Qatar. Diplomacy with financial aims ? Yes, but not only, and we realize this by analyzing the positions of the military mini-coalition sponsored by France and baptized [" G5 Sahel " 6> 2126] since its first meeting in November 2017. If Mali and Burkina refuses for the moment to break with Doha 6 , the most virulent rupture came from Chad's President Idriss Déby for directly political reasons: his most dangerous enemy, Timam Erdimi, resides in Doha under Qatari protection.
The great fitna is no longer only between powers in place and rebels Islamists. It has spread through the " camp of princes " (those of the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) around what will be or will not be the modernization of the Muslim world. And well beyond, to those who will be its allies. The extension of fitna has become globalized, including by ways that are, to say the least, paradoxical, a political struggle that leads to the Great Lakes. As a result, what began in June 2017 as a divergence of strategies between members of the Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC) has taken in a block, and almost hostage, a huge segment of the African continent. Some of its external actors, like France alongside the G5, seem to be hardly aware of it.
