Inside Somaliland: How Berbera Port is central to the Red Sea's power struggle - Middle East Eye

"Berbera is the heart of Somaliland," Jama Mohamed Ahmed, the commercial director of DP World in the Horn of Africa, tells me by way of introduction.

We meet outside the glistening, reflective glass office building that is the UAE logistics giant's headquarters in the Horn of Africa, in a country only recognised by Israel and closely aligned with the Emirates.

The building could be any sterile corporate office in middle America or the Gulf; besides that, there is the large sign at the entrance with a wad of green leaves crossed out in red, titled: "No Kat" - the stimulant leaf chewed across the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia.

Of course, Berbera's importance ripples far beyond Somaliland.

For centuries, the port has been an entry point to Africa and entrepôt between the near and far East. Its importance was documented as early as the 1st century by an unknown Greek-speaking traveller in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a historic account of the region's ancient trading ports. 

Malao, as Berbera was then called, was a "peaceable market-town" where copper, cloth, gold coins and glass were imported from India, and frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon were exported to Arabia, along with some slaves.

Today, Berbera sits at the centre of a raging geopolitical and economic battle to dominate the wider Red Sea. Pick a war, and Berbera could well be one of its flashpoints.

Across the Gulf of Aden, Yemen's Houthis are warily watching Israel and the UAE entrench themselves at a military base here. Meanwhile, to the south, Somalia, flush with new arms from Turkey, sees Berbera typifying the independent ambitions of Somalilanders which need to be stamped out.

But for Ahmed, Berbera is all about jobs. DP World is owned by the Dubai government. Its $450m investment here in 2016 transformed the decaying port, which now employs 1,350 people, he tells me.

Arriving from the West on a desert highway, Berbera announces itself beyond the sandy haze and acacia trees with a bevvy of ship-to-shore gantries rising like phalanxes over dozens of white fuel storage tanks. This is a one-business town.

Ahmed is tall and lean. I see a little of Yemen in his sharp features. They remind me of the mixing and mingling between East Africa and Southern Arabia. He wears pressed grey slacks and a striped button-down, which I find common among Somaliland's growing professional class.

Walking me into his air-conditioned office, Ahmed tells me that Somalis trained by DP World in Berbera are going to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to work at the berths that DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports Group took a stake in three years ago.

"We are now exporting knowledge," he says proudly. "Before DP World came, everything at the port was done manually; we even used to carry wheelbarrows of cash in on payday. From software to physical infrastructure, there have been huge improvements."

The port embodies how the UAE is expanding its influence across East Africa - filling the void left by the US, Russia and even China. More than other corners of the Red Sea region, however, Somaliland was ripe for the UAE.

My journey to Berbera started in Jijiga, the growing capital of Ethiopia’s Somali region. From the Ethiopian border to the coast, the drive was smooth as stone along a 250-kilometre highway built by the UAE and guarded casually, but professionally, by Somaliland’s UAE-trained military.

Signs emblazoned with the UAE's flag dotted the highway unobtrusively, but appeared just enough to remind travellers who made this infrastructure possible. Just outside Berbera is a boarding school donated by the Gulf state.

To ensure the quickest journey to the Gulf of Aden possible, the UAE even built a bypass around Hargeisa, Somaliland’s traffic-ridden capital, to accommodate lorries.

Somaliland is a former British protectorate. The empire's colonial legacy here was lighter than in places like Egypt or India. Somaliland was home to the famed Camel Corps, in which a handful of British officers administered tribal law, called Xeer, and ensured the provisioning of Aden - a critical refuelling station across the Gulf-with livestock.

In 1960, Somaliland won its independence, five days before neighbouring Somalia - which had been colonised by Italy.

The two united to form the Somali Republic, but millions of Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti - a former French colony - were left out of the union.

From the start, the two territories suffered from an uneasy coexistence that culminated in Somali ruler Mohamed Siad Barre overseeing a military onslaught against Somaliland in the late 1980s.

Somaliland declared its independence in 1991 after a decade of war, escaping the civil war and instability that later engulfed Somalia. But until Israel's January 2026 diplomatic deal, the breakaway republic went unrecognised. The UAE's readiness to invest in Somaliland gave it an outsized role here, and with commercial ties have come a military footprint. 

In 2017, the UAE established a military base at Berbera.

Recent satellite imagery shared by open-source analysts suggests the UAE has expanded its presence at the city's airport with new surface-to-air-missile sites, radar facilities and hangars. The UAE is also building a naval facility a few kilometres away from the commercial port. The construction has coincided with rising tensions not just between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but also between Israel and the Houthis.

The US-Israeli war on Iran hangs heavy over Berbera. Ahmed has felt its impact.

"Our transshipment business with Jebel Ali, Salalah and Colombo suffered," he said, listing the big ports of the UAE, Oman and Sri Lanka. "The last port we had going was Jeddah, but that stopped with the Houthi attacks," he said.

But many in East Africa see the war creating new opportunities for Berbera because of the need for alternative trade corridors.

"The Persian Gulf is vulnerable. Ships there are trapped. The logistics aren't dependable. Business will come to the Red Sea," one well-informed businessman in Addis Ababa with port interests told me before I left for Somaliland.

Ahmed agreed. "All the cargo coming from East Asia was transshipped to Gulf ports," he said, using the industry term for when cargo is unloaded at one port before being sent to its final destination. "Now, they can come to Berbera. We are just 18 days sailing from China."

This kind of thinking offers one case for why Dubai diversified its port empire beyond the Gulf. But DP World’s commercial involvement in Berbera emerged alongside shifting security priorities.

The year before the UAE and Somaliland inked their port deal, neighbouring Djibouti evicted DP World and Emirati troops stationed in the country. At the time, the UAE was allied with Saudi Arabia, and used Djibouti as a base to wage war against Yemen’s Houthis.

Somaliland and Djibouti are decades-old rivals. The former French colony has been controlled since 1999 by Ismail Omar Guelleh, a wily Somali politician who has used Djibouti's strategic position to rake in rents in return for port access. China and the US both have military bases there. Landlocked Ethiopia pays Djibouti roughly $2bn a year to access the sea.

Somaliland saw a window of opportunity. 

"Security and investment would go hand-in-hand," Bashe Omar, Somaliland's former ambassador to the UAE, who negotiated the 2016 port deal, said.

I met Bashe in Hergaisa to better understand Somaliland's motivations. He has a sonorous British accent, a trimmed goatee and a shaved head. He came to our meeting in an elegant ultramarine colored jellabiyad.

"We weren't looking for a one-sided agreement with the UAE. We wanted a partner," he said.

I asked Omar why Somaliland gravitated to the UAE. After all, its closer Gulf neighbour is Saudi Arabia, which purchases most of its livestock - a critical export and source of revenue for the government in Hargeisa. 

"Until Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia was very inward. The UAE filled the vacuum," he said, referring to the Saudi Arabian crown prince. 

Saudi Arabia joined Egypt, Turkey and other Muslim states condemning Israel's January 2026 recognition of Somaliland. Bashe told me that Somaliland wants good ties to Riyadh. 

"Saudi Arabia is discussing their Red Sea security. I don't think their interests are served betting on Mogadishu. The Saudis' historic ties have always been with Berbera," he said.

Saudi Arabia's Hijaz region has centuries-old links to Berbera, but Riyadh reacted quickly to condemn Israel's December 2026 recognition of Somaliland, unlike the UAE.

Riyadh criticised the move for entrenching "unilateral separatist measures". Since the US-Israeli war on Iran, Saudi Arabia has signed a mutual defence pact with Turkey, Somalia's main foreign backer. 

Berbera has certainly come in handy for the UAE in its increasingly hot rivalry with Saudi Arabia. 

Abu Dhabi has used the airport as a stopover for flights carrying military equipment to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Reuters reported in December 2024. The RSF is battling Sudan’s military, which is backed by Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.  Earlier this year, the UAE evacuated its ally and leader of Yemen's Southern separatist movement, Aidarus al-Zubaidi, to Berbera, after Saudi Arabia attacked the group.

Berbera sits at such a strategic intersection that it lends itself as a bargaining chip.

The explorer Richard Francis Burton once came here in 1854 scouting for the East India Company. In his classic travelogue, First Footsteps in East Africa, Burton extolled the virtues of Berbera, which he christened “the emporium of East Africa” over Aden. Burton noted its “salubrious climate, abundance of sweet water…[and] excellent port”, although he would later take a javelin to the face in Berbera during a fight with Somali warriors.

Berbera's Somali rulers saw its appeal, too. As early as 1979, Said Barre offered the US access to the Soviet Union’s former naval and air base at Berbera after Moscow cast him aside as a proxy in favour of Ethiopia. The US came to Berbera in the mid-1980s, revamping its 15,000-foot airport runway - the largest in Africa.

While Berbera’s military value has grown, it’s questionable how much the port is earning its keep in DP World's portfolio. 

For DP World, Berbera is a gateway to the increasingly arable and industrialising southern region of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-largest country. 

“Berbera is designed to be the port for southern Ethiopia,” the businessman in Addis Ababa told me.

In January 2024, Somaliland and Ethiopia signed a sweeping deal granting landlocked Ethiopia a 50-year lease on a swath of Somaliland’s coast.

In exchange for a naval base and access to Berbera, Addis Ababa agreed to recognise Somaliland.

The agreement would have been a boon for DP World. Thanks to the UAE’s investments, the port's container capacity is 500,000 TEUs, logistics terminology for half a million twenty-foot containers. Its capacity to handle bulk cargo is two million tonnes.

But the deal was never implemented, and the port is operating at roughly 30 percent capacity, Ahmed told me.

Addis Ababa's move to recognise Somaliland sparked ferocious pushback from Mogadishu, which threatened to expel Ethiopian troops based in Somalia fighting al- Shabab. Egypt also mobilised against a deal that would give its longtime rival access to the Red Sea.

Turkey, which has extensive military and economic ties with Somalia, intervened and negotiated a climbdown for Ethiopia, which it has sold drones to. 

Ahmed took me on a tour of the port.

We drove past men in safety vests, muscle shirts, and Macawis, colourful fabrics wrapped around their waists. Despite the sweltering late-summer heat and humidity, the men worked diligently. In 2023, the World Bank ranked Berbera as the most efficient port in sub-Saharan Africa.

Grain from Russia was being bagged from one vessel for a final truck shipment to Ethiopia and South Sudan. Containers from China destined for Egypt were being unloaded before a new vessel arrived to take them onwards. Workers unloaded Indian sugar cane and Malaysian wood for Somaliland's domestic market.

Ethiopia's quest for port access remains unfulfilled. Ahmed is confident the port will live up to its potential.

"All the infrastructure is here. It's only a matter of time," he said.

Meanwhile, the UAE has a new ally in Israel to deepen military cooperation in Berbera.

"That's the base over there," my driver said, after we passed the columned British colonial villas and Ottoman mosque on the city's outskirts - reminders of Berbera's old rulers. 

Back in Hergaisa, when I told one Somaliland elder that I visited Berbera, he ruminated wistfully. "Our traders once went all the way to Nairobi from Berbera. Now everything is compartmentalised."

Leaving Berbera, I could feel its untapped potential. Ethiopia is close to the UAE and Israel. It has no qualms about Somaliland's diplomatic deal with the former. But I wondered whether Somaliland's decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel only made it more isolated in the wider region. 

The path is wide open to an Israeli base here. The Somalilanders make no secret of their wish to deepen defence ties. 

"I would support a base for both the US and Israel in Berbera because it would make Somalia think twice," Bashe said. 

Berbera has seen so many foreign powers come and go. I asked Bashe about the risks of the US or Israel entrenching themselves at the port. 

"If America came to Berbera and attacked the Houthis, for example, the Houthis would retaliate. So if they use Berbera for that, it should be in exchange for recognition," he said. 

For the foreseeable future, Berbera's commercial prospects will remain subservient to geopolitics.