DP World Drops Anchor in Somalia
Following heated disputes between DP World and the government of Djibouti over accusations of bribery dating back to 2012, the latter ultimately nationalized and seized the Dolareh Container Terminal. In the wake of these struggles, Somalia became the focal point for DP World in the Horn of Africa. Most recently, the company has struck a number of deals with Somalia’s federal states for infrastructural development and port development and management. In April 2017, DP World’s subsidiary, P&O Ports, won a thirty-year concession to develop and manage the multipurpose port in Bosaso, the largest city in the autonomous northeastern Somali state of Puntland.39 The total investments are expected to be $338 million—no small figure in Puntland, which has a GDP of roughly $3 billion and an annual government expenditure of only $75 million.40
Similarly, in 2016, DP World won a thirty-year concession with an automatic ten-year extension for the management and development of a multipurpose port project at Berbera, in the Republic of Somaliland, an autonomous northern state that has declared independence from the rest of Somalia. Total investments are measured at $442 million, with DP World holding a 51 percent stake in the port, alongside 30 percent for Somaliland, and 19 percent for Ethiopia.41 The concession has also opened the door for other Gulf companies, such as Emirates-based construction company Shafa Al Nahda, which is responsible for expanding port capacity and establishing a free zone.42 Alongside these two concessions, DP World has also been in direct negotiations with other federal states in Somalia, such as South West state and Jubaland, for the development of ports and other investments.43
The development of these commercial ports has entailed significant military and strategic ramifications. Quickly following DP World’s deal to manage Berbera Port, the Emirates signed a twenty-five-year military agreement with the government of Somaliland to lease and refurbish the civilian airport and old military base in Berbera.44 Located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, the port of Berbera was first modernized by the Soviet Union in the 1960s, where it constructed a deepwater port and carried out significant dredging.45 However, after Somalia severed ties with the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, the port underwent a commercial expansion and was used by the United States military until the collapse of the Siyad Barre regime in 1991. The Emirates is now extending these imperial “lineages”—DP World is now in the process of expanding the container terminal, and the Emirati military awarded a $90 million contract to Emirates-based Divers Marine Contracting in 2017 to build a naval base in Berbera.
Most importantly, the new military base is located close to the shores of Yemen and was originally intended to assist in the war effort. Even though the Emirates announced in July 2019 its intention to withdraw from the war in Yemen, its occupation of the strategically positioned Yemeni archipelago of Socotra, the cementing of control over southern Yemen by Emirates-backed forces, and its military bases in Assab (in Eritrea) and Berbera ensure unprecedented control and strategic depth in the Red Sea. Given that military operations are complex logistical undertakings, commercial entities such as DP World will be further embedded in these military webs.
These relationships are symbiotic for the Emirati state and Gulf companies. Not only will deeper Emirati control over the Red Sea guarantee the smoother circulation of civilian and military resources in coastal areas; it will also allow companies such as DP World to benefit from an expanded network of existing and emerging trade routes.46 For example, Berbera Port has already signed agreements for regular service with two of the biggest container shipping lines, Maersk and PIL, thereby integrating the port into international trade routes and allowing DP World to generate further revenue.47
According to DP World, the transportation companies CMA CGM and Simatech are running biweekly lines from Jebel Ali to Berbera.48 Last year, Berbera Port served vessels coming from Dubai, China, Oman, India, and Yemen, as well as consignments of humanitarian aid from the World Food Programme and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—ironically, humanitarian aid made necessary by the war in Yemen that the Emirates has helped wage. Moreover, with DP World now operating six ports in South Asia, cementing control over this corner of the Indian Ocean would further enable DP World to connect Indian, African, and Middle Eastern ports.49
In Puntland, where DP World’s subsidiary, P&O Ports, operates the Port of Bosaso, Emirati commercial interests have arrived on a field that is already militarized. Unlike Berbera, the Emirates has been spearheading military efforts and security trainings in Puntland for almost a decade, most notably (as mentioned above) training and paying the salaries of the Puntland Marine Police Force (PMPF). The force was formed in 2010 to counter-terrorism and piracy off the coast of Somalia. But according to a UN investigation in 2012, it had “yet to be deployed as part of a comprehensive strategy to fight piracy in Puntland.”
The report also found that the force had “no basis in Puntland’s constitution or domestic legislation,” and functioned instead as “an elite force outside any legal framework . . . answerable only to the Puntland presidency.”50 As explained above, the establishment of groups such as the PMPF did not occur in a vacuum. The proliferation of anti-piracy and counterterrorism initiatives by a range of international and regional powers in the Horn of Africa provided both the real and rhetorical justifications for such paramilitary organizations.
Scholar Deborah Cowen notes that, in this militarized context, “poor states neighboring Somalia are being transformed into mercenary, legal and carceral spaces for imperial powers.”51 As nearby states such as Djibouti, Sudan, and Eritrea sought to tap into counterterrorism funds, the federal states of Somalia, such as Puntland, also joined in with the help of external sponsors and private mercenary groups. In fact, while the Emirates paid the salaries of the PMPF, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, along with a former apartheid-era South African special forces officer, Lafras Luitingh, helped to actually create the PMPF. Yet these developments are not simply top-down processes. As the scholar, Alex de Waal notes, “just as an earlier generation of leaders had used geostrategic rents to pursue domestic political agendas, so too counterterrorism rent was manipulated for diverse other purposes, all of them to do with consolidating power, and often unconnected with defeating terrorist groups.”52
According to a report by The Intercept, it’s unclear that the millions of dollars that Emirati intelligence officers poured into the program had perceptible results.53 Some $50 million are unaccounted for; aircrafts, helicopters, and cargo planes either went missing or were never returned, and the United Nations reported “credible” allegations of human rights violations stemming from corporal punishment. Prince’s program was shut down in 2012 following the murder of a South African mercenary by a local soldier. In fact, the local soldier—originally hired to fight piracy—was actually a relative of a pirate who had been targeted by the program.54 Regardless of the program’s effectiveness in terms of battling piracy and terrorism, the Emirates’ unequivocal and handsome support of Puntland’s security forces served to strengthen its (proto-)state capacities and regional autonomy.
The agreement with DP World’s subsidiary also undoubtedly reinforces Puntland’s pretensions to statehood and its state capabilities (the region declared its independence in 1998, but has not been recognized as independent by the international community). Like Berbera, “Puntland will benefit from an internationally recognized port operator contributing to its economic growth and trade potential,” bin Sulayem noted.55
Puntland will further integrate into world markets, and the agreement is set to assist vital state functions such as employment generation, clean drinking water provisions, mobile medical services, investments into agricultural industries, and the development of secondary and tertiary sectors through the establishment of a free zone. Yet, as it operates in an arena of established Emirati involvement, the company has become embroiled within the surrounding political landscape, sometimes in deeply destabilizing ways. Most recently, in February 2019, gunmen posing as fishermen murdered one of Bosaso Port’s executives, Paul Anthony Formsa.56
Although al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, in a leaked audio recording obtained by The New York Times, an unnamed businessman close to the emir of Qatar said that the assassination was intended to “advance Qatar’s interests by driving out its rival, the United Arab Emirates.”57 While the intentions of the attack still remain unclear and shrouded in gossip, the fact that DP World has been caught in the crossfire is indicative of the unintended consequences of Emirati imperial strategy. As many analysts have warned, the lack of a regional security strategy and the escalating maritime rivalries in the region have the potential to lead to an explosive and destabilizing situation.58
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