 |
|  |
|
Red Sea rift: US allies split into armed camps Battlelines drawn all along the Red Sea The previously mentioned STC had been a proxy of the United Arab Emirates in Yemen. And in Yemen, they had been formally allied with the Saudi proxy in fighting the Iranian-backed Houthis, although there had been clashes between them over the years. At the end of 2025, however, the STC expanded the territory it controlled right up to the Saudi border using Emirati guns. The Saudis were not about to tolerate this. They directly bombed Emirati hardware, forcing the latter to surrender and withdraw, and then invited the defenceless leaders of the STC to the aforementioned ‘negotiations’. Since then, Saudi-Emirati relations have been in freefall. The leaders of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been bosom buddies for years. Known in the media as MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) and MBZ (Mohammed bin Zayed), they were the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the Arabian Gulf. Now they are at each other’s throats. The Saudis are refusing to recognise Emirati visas. Both sent emissaries to Washington to garner support. While there, the Emiratis took the time to lobby Jewish American groups to denounce the Saudis as antisemites. But since then, a deeper process has begun unfolding. The whole region is criss-crossed by a series of barbaric proxy conflicts, civil wars and cross-border disputes – gaping wounds that the imperialists have inflicted on the region and have allowed to fester for years. Now these conflicts are lining up and coalescing. Two hostile camps are forming over an enormous area of North and East Africa, through the Middle East and onward into Asia. On one side: Israel, the UAE, Ethiopia, India and their allies. On the other: the Saudis, Turkey, Pakistan and their allies. Somalia vs. Somaliland The Red Sea is at the heart of the polarisation now taking place. A key artery connecting Europe to the Indian Ocean and therefore to Asia, it has an enormous strategic significance for world trade, and especially for the world energy market. Facing Yemen, on the other side of the Gulf of Aden at the southern end of the Red Sea, lies the Somali breakaway region of Somaliland. In December, Israel took the initiative of becoming the first country to recognise the breakaway region, and expressed an interest in building a military base there. In line with Israel’s step, the UAE ceased to recognise Somali passports and announced it would only recognise Somaliland passports from now on. The UAE in particular has important investments in the region. The Emirati company DP World has a 51 percent stake in Somaliland’s port of Berbera. The other 49 percent is controlled by landlocked Ethiopia – a country that lost its Red Sea access when Eritrea broke away in the 1990s. Its investments in that port are based on a prior agreement that it too would recognise the breakaway region. Soon after Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, Turkey and Saudi Arabia denounced the move. Turkish ally Qatar then signed a military pact with Somalia in January, and Saudi Arabia signed a pact in February. The Egyptians, meanwhile, invited the Somali president to observe a high-profile review of its troops which it intends to deploy to Somalia in what one outlet called a “deterrent message” aimed at Israel and the UAE. Most recently, in the past few days, Somalia – one of the poorest countries in the world – announced it would buy 24 JF-17 fighter jets from Pakistan for a cool $1 billion. We ask the reader to bear with us. This is just the start of the crack that has opened up. Battlelines across East Africa Simultaneously, there are developments next door in Ethiopia. Firstly, there has been a flurry of diplomacy. A week ago, Turkish President Erdogan was in Addis Ababa to pressure Ethiopia not to recognise Somaliland. Next week, Israeli President Herzog is going there precisely to apply the pressure in the other direction. Ethiopia is being dragged into this. As we mentioned, Red Sea access is a key part of a long-running dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Now, Ethiopia is accusing Eritrea of invading its territory in the past few weeks in alliance with Tigrayan fighters. The Eritreans deny the accusation. Things are heating up. In this conflict too, battlelines are being drawn, and the same parties are on either side. In the last month, Israel and the UAE have begun firming up ties with Ethiopia. Egypt has its own conflict with Ethiopia over water supplies. Ethiopia is presently constructing the biggest dam in Africa at the source of the Blue Nile. Now Egypt is taking measures to broker military ties between Saudi Arabia and Eritrea. Then there is Sudan, another Red Sea nation and one rich in gold and other resources. Since the defeat of the 2019 revolution, Sudan has been plunged into the most horrific civil war between rival factions of the state. Now, the previously mentioned regional gangs of predators are pouring petrol onto the flames of this horrific conflict – a conflict in which the masses have no stake. The UAE has long been an open backer of the cutthroat mercenaries of the RSF forces. But just this month, Reuters revealed satellite evidence that proves for the first time that Ethiopia is decisively joining this war on the side of the RSF, by building training camps on its own territory. On the other side, Saudi Arabia has been backing the official Sudanese Army for a while. Now, Pakistan, which signed a mutual defence pact with the Saudis in September, has dived into the fray, having signed a $1.5 billion deal with the Sudanese Army to supply jets and drones. Again, another conflict, the same lines: on one side, Israel, the UAE, Ethiopia – on the other, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. Libya The lines of the existing proxy conflicts that form an uninterrupted string across the region do not exactly line up along this two-way axis. We see this in Libya. Whereas the Turks back the forces based in Tripoli, the Saudis, Egyptians and the Emiratis back the eastern, Tobruk-based forces. This, however, is now becoming untenable. The general trend towards the formation of two hostile camps is rushing ahead and causing realignments. A realignment may be overdue in Libya, as the eastern government attempts to serve two masters at once. In fact, in January, Saddam Haftar, the son of the dictator in the east, was – in the words of an Egyptian military source – “literally summoned to Egypt, not invited for a courtesy visit”. While there, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was to relay a message to his father, the dictator. The Saudis and Egyptians are aware that the Tobruk-based government had assisted the Emiratis in transporting fuel and weapons south through Libya to RSF fighters in Sudan. “The message was clear,” explained the Egyptian military source: “continued support for the RSF would force Egypt to reconsider its entire relationship with eastern Libya.” Everyone is being forced to choose sides. Much broader fault lines While events have rapidly been developing in the Red Sea region, these cracks are aligning with cracks that extend much further afield. We have analysed elsewhere how Turkey and Israel are now facing each other as hostile powers across the body of Syria. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia back the new Jolani regime in Damascus. Against them, both Israel and the UAE are attempting to manipulate oppressed minority groups to undermine the central government. Further afield, at the western end of the Mediterranean, tensions are hotting up between Morocco and Algeria. The two have been at loggerheads for years over the status of Western Sahara. Israel and the UAE back the Moroccan claim over the region. The Saudis, meanwhile, back Algeria's stance, supporting Sahrawi independence. In the wake of the Saudi-Emirati break in relations, Algeria has cancelled its air agreements with the UAE. All over the region, the fate of small nations and oppressed peoples are entering into the mix as bargaining chips that are being cynically used in a bloody and reactionary game. Yemen is the second poorest country in the world; Eritrea the 9th poorest; Somalia the 10th and Ethiopia the 18th. Why are the Saudis and Turkey – two reactionary, regional predatory gangs which compete with each other to exploit and rob the peoples of the region – suddenly joining into a single axis? There is no honour among thieves, and there is certainly no mutual loyalty. Yet everywhere it is a fact. Simply put, it comes down to this: all of the regional powers sense the weakening of US imperialism. The Saudis and Turks have seen how the US backed Israel to the hilt in its campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere. Israel has clear ambitions of dominating the whole region. And right now, Trump has built an armada that threatens to destroy whatever equilibrium there was in the region. He is banging the war drums, threatening to take down Iran. This has driven the ruling cliques in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan into a panic. The collapse of Iran, the destabilisation of the regional order, the potential spread of instability from Iran to its neighbours, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan – who would gain? Israel! But there is another force which is driving this polarisation – a more powerful tide in world affairs. As the US has weakened, the Saudis and Turkey have hedged their bets by leaning towards China and Russia. So too has Pakistan. The Red Sea is a key artery for China’s New Silk Road. The danger that China might control Red Sea traffic is, in turn, a source of anxiety for India, which is eager to establish its own trade route that would give it independence from China’s New Silk Road. India is also drawing closer to Israel and the UAE as its regional rival, Pakistan, draws closer to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. And so, while both sides of this fault formally comprise US allies, overshadowing this crystallising polarisation there is the question of the global conflict that defines our era: the struggle between the US and China. “A place of partnership, friendship, and investment” We repeat: imperialism, and above all US imperialism, is responsible for all this. It has left a series of bloody, festering wounds all over this tormented region from its many interventions. Now these bloody conflicts, in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Western Sahara, threaten to coalesce. Why? Because the US is no longer the world-dominating hegemon that it once was and it cannot control the situation. It cannot dominate the whole world all at once – a fact that was explicitly recognised in the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy document, which it published in November. The document notes, quite correctly, that the Middle East no longer has the strategic importance it once had for the US. The US is energy independent these days and doesn’t need to import oil. ‘Forever wars’ have, at great expense, tied the US down in the region, and have prevented it from focusing elsewhere. There are splits in the Trump Administration. One wing – which represents the traditional position of the US ruling class – wishes to ignore reality and continue to dominate the Middle East. But another wing argues, with a certain logic, that the US is overstretched and must instead focus elsewhere, on regions of utmost strategic importance. Namely: the western hemisphere and the Pacific region. However, if the Middle East descends into chaos, that would be catastrophic for the world economy, for energy prices, and ultimately for the interests of US imperialism itself. This is the view expressed in Trump’s National Security Strategy document. And that document arrives at the most glowing and optimistic assessment of the situation in the Middle East! It describes the region in the following terms: “[It] is no longer the constant irritant, and potential source of imminent catastrophe, that it once was. It is rather emerging as a place of partnership, friendship, and investment—a trend that should be welcomed and encouraged.” It is tempting to think that this passage owes something to a sick sense of humour on the part of the author! However, I would suggest that this wasn’t meant to be a sick joke, or any joke at all. Rather, what we have here is a case of very wishful, even magical thinking. A long time ago, before animal rights laws, it was possible to go to the circus and watch bears, lions and tigers sit, stand, jump through hoops and cooperate in all sorts of acrobatics as if they were the best of friends. Of course, there was nothing natural about the ‘friendships’ that the circus fostered between natural-born killers. The spectacle was only possible because these predators all had a wary eye on their ringmaster, who would reward them with red meat for acrobatics well executed, and held a whip for if they stepped out of line. Now imagine the ringmaster convinced himself that he’d really fostered true friendship between the bears, the lions and the tigers marching obediently under his whip, that the circus was no longer a ‘potential source of imminent catastrophe’. He then comes up with the ingenious idea of leaving the joint management of the circus to his trained killers. He then attempts to withdraw from the circus to focus on more important business. What would happen? A mauling or two at the very least. What we have just described, in other words, is a strategy of one wing of the Trump Administration. The document notes that Iran is weakened. Meanwhile, all the other dominant powers in the Middle East are US allies: Israel, Turkey, the Saudis, the UAE. Formally speaking, all true. If just these powers could be brought together in friendship, then between them they could sew up the region and jointly enforce a new, peaceful order. That principally means normalising relations with Israel – and that has precisely been the thrust of Trump’s Middle East policy since his first term as president, when he came out with the Abraham Accords. Those Accords normalised relations between the UAE, Morocco and Sudan in 2020. Trump clearly hoped that the Saudis and eventually the Turks would come on board and his vision would be fulfilled: lions, tigers and bears patrolling the circus in a civil manner: ‘a place of partnership, friendship, and investment’. Then the US could safely withdraw without risking an explosion. The fly in the ointment Leaving aside the question of whether bears, lions and tigers can become friends, there were just two little flies in the ointment when it comes to the Trump Administration’s plans. The first is this: the Trump Administration has fatally overestimated the degree to which Iran has been weakened. If Trump thought a simple clean-up operation was in order, that a big enough armada in the Persian Gulf would cause the Iranian regime to tumble, then he woefully miscalculated. The Administration is now faced with a choice: military action that could end in catastrophe and potential defeat, or withdrawal, retreat and an unprecedented loss of prestige for US imperialism. The second fly in the ointment of this plan was this: the Abraham Accords meant the Arab states openly betraying the Palestinian cause. The rotten ruling classes of the reactionary Arab states were undoubtedly all prepared to make this step had events not intervened. But events did intervene. Stopping the Abraham Accords in their tracks was no small part of Hamas’ calculation in launching Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023. Subsequently, the reactionary Arab regimes looked on with alarm as Israel’s reckless actions inflamed revolutionary anger against Zionism, imperialism and complicit Arab regimes. It made further rapprochement politically impossible, and it divided the Arab countries into two blocs. On the one hand, there are countries like the UAE which went ahead with normalisation. Today, a massive bilateral trade has developed between Israel and the UAE. On the other hand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and its allies remain outside the Abraham Accords. We don’t wish to exaggerate the role of the Abraham Accords, which are not the cause of the present hostilities. There are deeper processes driving this: the decline of US imperialism, the rise of China, and the scramble by smaller regional predators to fill the vacuum. However, it is a historical irony that precisely the alliance which was meant to sew up the region, and guarantee peace in the interests of US imperialism, has become the fault line along which all US imperialism’s allies are dividing into two hostile camps, and are preparing for the potential of a violent, region-wide redivision. It is an ironic comment on the utopianism of all wings of US imperialism. That wing which wants to dominate the whole world simultaneously, finds that it cannot even keep its existing allies in order, as they violently pull apart. As for the idea of withdrawing from the Middle East and retrenching, the US is trapped in the web of contradictions it has itself woven over decades. The minute it attempts to withdraw, or even shows weakness, the regional predators begin sharpening their claws for a vicious scramble in the vacuum left behind. The US will inevitably find itself pulled back into the fray, with everything that means in terms of draining the political credit and economic resources of the ruling class and its parties in the US. What we see here are the outlines of barbarism on a terrible scale. Western imperialism and above all US imperialism are responsible! The workers and youth of the world must put an end to imperialism and must bury world capitalism before it buries us! https://marxist.com/middle-east-divide-fault-lines.htm Back |
|
||||||
|
|||||||
