The 13th Century Empire of Nicaea: An Empire in Exile and the Restoration of Imperial Byzantine

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Medieval history,, Military history, Regional History

After crusaders from the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204—instead of attacking and subduing Egypt as the original plan was meant to be—the vast Byzantine Empire splintered into four main, distinct entities, comprising a Latin successor state in the Balkans and Constantinople itself, and three Byzantine Greek rump states. One of these in north-eastern Anatolia became the small Empire of Trebizond, which I looked at in a recent blog (08-May-2024), ‘Byzantine-Lite: The Empire of Trebizond under the Komnenos Dynasty’.

The Byzantine neighbourhood, post-1204

The largest and most powerful of the Greek successor states to emerge was Nicaea (then the name of a city-state in north-western Anatolia). Styling itself under the cognomen Empire of Nicaea, the dominant Laskaris family of nobles, proclaimed Theodore (I) Lakaris emperor (basileus) in 1205. The Laskarii staked a claim on the Byzantine throne as well but had plenty of competition, the other two Greek Byzantine successor states, Trebizond and (the Despotate of) Epirus, both advanced claims to be the rightful heirs to the Byzantine crown.

Emperor Theodore I Lakaris

Proceeding by conquest, alliance and intermarriage: While Theodore I and his successors within the Lakaris dynasty were eyeing off Byzantium, the Nicene Empire had plenty of more immediate challenges to face. The territorial boundaries of the empire was surrounded by hostile states, so it had to deal constantly with multiple conflicts and crisis points. Ongoing wars were waged against the Latin Empire𝕬 (Henry of Flanders, Robert of Courtenay) to the north; against the Seljuk Turks of Iconium (Asia Minor); and against its rival successor states, Trebizond and Epirus𝕭. Aside from waging war Theodore deflected some of the threats to Nicaea by the stratagem of alliances and arranged royal marriages.

Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (source: Etsy.com)

Less Roman, more Hellenistic: Theodore’s successor as emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (his son-in-law) continued the strategy, allying with Bulgaria against the Latins and to help neutralise any threats from Epirus𝕮. John failed in a combined Nicaean-Bulgarian siege of Constantinople in 1235 but his reign did achieve military victories and diplomacy which resulted in an enlargement of Nicaea’s imperial territories…eg, Battle of Poemanenum, 1224, John decisively defeated the Latin army, giving Nicaea a foothold on the Balkans littoral; military campaigning against Epirus led to new Nicene gains in Macedonia and Thrace (Thessalonica fell to John in 1246). John’s successful rule also benefitted from his domestic policy, the economy was reformed, agriculture boomed, taxes were reduced and prosperity in Nicaea thrived. Emperor Theodore II, a man of letters, succeeeded John III, marking a cultural renaissance for the empire – Hellenistic learning flourished with Nicaea forging a more distinctly overt Greek identity, throwing off the shadow of its Roman past. At the same time Theodore undertook a military restructuring, the creation of a formidable army of native Greek troops, ending the state’s reliance on foreign mercenaries [‘The Rise of the Empire of Nicaea: How the Byzantines Reclaimed the Throne’, Timeless Treasure, (video, You Tube) Nov. 2023].

Battle of Pelagonia, 1259 (source: Attarisiya/X.com)

Palaiologos’ palace coup: Theodore II’s reign unfortunately was too brief, he died in 1258 after only four years at the helm, with the throne falling to his eight-year-old son, John IV, creating a situation ripe for instability and opportunism. The power vacuum was quickly filled by the grand constable (megas konostaulos) Michael Palaiologos who launched a coup, making himself co-emperor with John IV. Within a short period Michael had deposed the infant John (and had him blinded). Taking the throne as sole emperor (basileus), Michael VIII Palaiologos’ dynastic line continued to rule the empire right up to the Ottoman takeover of Constantinople in 1453. Meantime, Michael consolidated his position and that of Nicaea by defeating the alliance of William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea and Michael II Komnenos Doukas of Epirus at the Battle of Pelagonia in 1259.

The Gate of the Spring – entrance in the Constantinople walls breached by Strategopolous and his soldiers

Capturing Constantinople by accident: Pelagonia elevated Michael’s prestige at home, however with the stigma of the “emperor-usurper” still figuring prominently in many Nicaean minds, for genuine legitimacy Michael needed to secure the ultimate goal, the prize of Constantinople [‘Michael VIII Palaiologos’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. First attempts at conquest in 1260 saw Michael personally leading a failed siege attempted on the city. While Michael was doing a deal with the Republic of Genoa to secure naval support for a new assault on the Latin capital, the unexpected happened. Nicaean general, Alexios Strategopolous and a small force were on a reconnaissance mission which took them close to the city of Constantinople, when it stumbled on a virtually unguarded city/citadel (most of the Latin garrison and the naval fleet were away conducting a raid on the Nicene island of Daphnousia). Alexios seized the opportunity and his force surreptitiously found its way inside the fortified walls where it easily overcame feeble resistance. Baldwin II the Latin emperor, panicked and fled the city, leaving the Nicaeans in complete control of Constantinople.

Emperor Michael VII Palaiologos

A hollow prize: Michael VIII by a stroke of good fortune had regained Byzantium for Nicaea, but the city and the empire was a shell of its former glory. Constantinople was in a very impoverished and diminished state, ravaged by war, most of its treasure either destroyed or shipped off to Western Europe (much of it ended up in Venice). Michael did what he could to fortify and strengthen the restored empire including a massive building project, but Constantinople as a trading port declined and Byzantium would never again hold the military and economic sway it commanded before the 1204 sacking by the Crusaders. After Charles I of Anjou triumphed over Manfred, king of Sicily (Battle of Benevento, 1266), Michael’s foreign policy became preoccupied with the rivalry with Charles. This proved a catastrophic blunder, long-term, as Michael withdrew troops from their posts in Asia Minor to bolster his army in confronting the Latins in the Aegean littoral, thus weakening his Anatolian defences against the burgeoning threat posed by the Seljuks to his east.

Hagia Sophia (former church) in Iznik (modern name of Nicaea) (photo: Greekcitytimes.com)

Byzantine post-Michael VIII, the inevitable decline and fall: After Emperor Michael’s death in 1282, his dynastic successors managed merely to squander the restored empire’s “remaining resources in several bloody civil wars” [‘The Accidental Reconquest of Constantinople’, Krystian Gajdzis, Medium, 28–Aug-2022, www.medium.com]. The cost of looking inward was ill-fated neglect of the growing menace of the tribe of Osman and their descendants’ piecemeal capture of Byzantine cities across northern Anatolia, taking them inexorably closer and closer to Constantinople, something succeeding Byzantine emperors were increasingly powerless to prevent [Roger Crowley, 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West, (2005)].

City of Nicaea: fell to the Ottomans in 1331 (Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, source: Byzantium.gr)

𝕬 the Latins were regularly bankrolled by the affluent Republic of Venice

𝕭 Nicaea got some respite from Seljuk border raids with the appearance of the all-conquering Mongol horde in Anatolia, forcing the Sultanate of Rum to focus its energies on repelling the Mongol advance

𝕮 John continued the practice, marrying off his son (Theodore) to a Bulgarian princess

Byzantine-Lite: The Empire of Trebizond under the Komnenos Dynasty

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Economics and society,, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Medieval history,, Regional History

We all know of the great empires of history, the names roll off the tongue easily—Roman, Byzantine, British, Spanish, Chinese, Mongol, Persian, Alexander the Great, Ottoman, etc—we’ve read the history texts at school and seen countless historically bastardised film interpretations, but what of the myriad of little and little known and often ephemeral (small “e”) empires of the distant past? Not so familiar. I’ve always marvelled at the idea of these lesser, obscure imperial entities and been intrigued by how they managed to exist (and persist) at all side by side with the aforementioned “big boys”, the powerful and by definition expansive empires🄰.

Regional map, 1265: Byzantine, Eurasia, Black Sea (image: University of Texas Libraries (U Texas at Austin))

Byzantine’s successor states: Take for instance the Trapezuntine Empire, more commonly called the Empire of Trebizond…who outside of the learned medievalist has ever heard of it, let alone be confident of pinpointing its location on any world atlas? Time to fill in a few gaps in the general knowledge caper. Imperial Trebizond consisted mainly of several small portions of land in the region known as the Pontus on the southern shores of the Black Sea🄱. The “empire” had its origins in the sack of Constantinople and dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Byzantine’s eclipse provided the opportunity for the creation of five new rump states from its existing territory – what became the empires of Trebizond, Nicaea and Thessalonica and the despotates of Morea and Epirus.

Trebizond imperial flag: Double-headed eagle (associated with ports and harbours)

This didn’t happen by osmosis, in the case of Trebizond the empire came about when the Komnenos brothers (Alexios and David), descended royally from Komnenian Byzantine emperors, seized Trebizond and the surrounding province of Chaldia with the military support of their formidible relative, Queen Tamar of Georgia. The elder brother had himself crowned emperor of Trebizond (Alexios I)🄲. Emperor Alexios, styling himself Megas Komnenos🄳, also laid claim to the Byzantine throne however the Trebizond rulers lost out to the more militarily accomplished Nicene Empire in that contest. Michael VIII Palaiologos of Nicaea became emperor of the restored Byzantine Empire (aka Latin Empire) in 1261 and the Palaiologan Dynasty ran the empire right up to Constantinople’ fall to the Ottomans in 1453.

Extent of the Trebizond Empire (Wikipedia: Original image by Ichthyovenator)

A nominal “empire”: Trebizond was something of an outlier when it comes to classic empire material…for a start, aside from acquiring Erzurum to its south in the early 14th century and the coastal enclave of Sinope in eastern Anatolia🄴, there was no expansive growth as we saw with ancient Rome and Great Britain, the Pontus-based “empire” failed abjectly to expand its borders in any lasting way. Nor was it an empire with a conglomerate structure (or if you like, the necessary political configuration), ie, a situation where a dominant central power controls peripheral (outer) client states or colonies, Trebizond acquired no vassal states to speak of subordinate to its power [“A Glossary of Political Economy Terms: Empire”, (Auburn University), www.auburn.edu/]. It lacked the military force to realise these goals by conquest. In short the Trapezuntine Empire was an empire in name only🄵.

Alexios I of Trebizond and his army (depicted by an unknown artist)

Last Greek empire standing: The only really stand-out achievement of the Trebizond Empire was its staying power. Despite its disadvantages —positioned within the sphere of influence of more powerful states such as the Seljuk Turks; the destabilising roles of Genoa and Venice; the decimation of the Black Death; the instability of civil war (which allowed the Genoese and Turks to further encroach territorially on a weakened Trebizond)—the empire survived for so long, from its founding in 1204 to its ultimate conquest by the Ottomans under Sultan Mehmet II in 1461—257 years, 22 emperors (including two empresses)—even outlasting the supposedly impregnable Constantinople which fell in 1453, as well as outliving the other Byzantine successor states in the region🄶. For this reason imperial Trebizond is sometimes called the last “Greek empire”.

Scholars point to a number of factors contributing to the empire’s surprising longevity. One is a favourable geographical location, the Pontiac Mountains behind Trebizond provide an advantageous natural barrier to invaders with designs on the mini-state. The capital city of Trebizond, built to resemble a kind of “mini-Constantinople” complete with imitation Hagia Sophia church, was further protected by the erection of impressively strong walls and fortifications [‘Trebizond’, The Byzantine Legacy, www.thebyzantinelegacy.com].

Trebizond’s Hagia Sophia

The inestimable value of Mongol patronage and strategic alliances: But above all else what permitted Trezibond to continue to survive in such a turbulent world was its commercial importance, and what permitted its commerce to thrive was the expansion west and southwards of the all-conquering Mongol Empire. The Mongols’ capture of Baghdad and the eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 resulted in the terminus of the lucrative Silk Road being diverted to Trebizond, making the city-state a funnel between east and west trade and enriching the small empire [Michael Goodyear, ‘Empire of Trebizond’, 21-May-2019, World History Encyclopedia, www.worldhistory.org]. The other critical practice to preserve Trebizond’s independence was marriage diplomacy, of which the Komnenian rulers were very adept. Trebizond rulers formed alliances with rivals, defusing potential threats to the empire by arranging the marriage of many of its (beautiful) princesses to the Byzantine royalty and to Black Sheep and White Sheep Turkomen (nomadic Turkish confederations) (Goodyear).

Trebizond continued to pay tribute to the Mongols as a vassal state which guaranteed its continued protection under the all-powerful Turco-Mongol warlord Tamerlane (or Timur), but once he departed the scene (beginning of the 15th century) and Mongol power waned, the Ottoman Turks re-emerged as the greatest danger to the tiny empire’s survival.

Map of city citadel, Trebizond (source: armenica.org)

Endgame for Megas Komnenos: The tipping point for the Ottomans to decisively move on Trebizond seems to be Emperor David Komnenos’ intrigues with European powers with the purpose of launching a new crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Mehmet II laid seize to Trebizond in 1461 and after a concerted sea and land blockage, it compelled David, bereft of any sign of relief from his Christian allies, to surrender the citadel-city almost without a single sword needing to be drawn in anger. The fall of Trebizond, the final Greek outpost, as one historian noted, also extinguished the last vestiges of the Roman Empire, nearly 1,500 years after its beginnings [Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, (1993, 2nd edition].

‘Conquest of Trebizond’ (Cassone work 1461, by Apollonio di Giovanni di Tommaso)

Postscript: Trebizond under the Ottomans became the modern city of Trabzon, which during WWI was captured by the Russians. Interestingly, following the war a proposition was made at the Paris Peace Conference for an independent Pontiac Greek state (the would-be “Republic of Pontus”) including Trabzon and most of the post-Trebizond space. While the key figure at the talks US President Wilson supported its creation, the Greek prime minster didn’t, fearing the mini-state would be too vulnerable to withstand any Turkish attempt to absorb it, and the proposition was lost.

🄰 of course the reality was that most of them didn’t persist for long

🄱 plus several even smaller enclaves on the Crimean Peninsula

🄲 his brother, David, became commander of the state’s imperial army

🄳 Megas means “great” or “grand”. After 1282 Komnenian emperors added basileus and autokrator to their list of royal titles

🄴 the Komnenos emperors managed to lose Sinope twice, the first time to the Nicene Empire and the second time for keeps, to the Sultanate of Rum

🄵 although it did meet some of the criteria for an empire, it had a flourishing commerce and wealth (mainly from its silver mines) and it possessed an entrenched ruling class

🄶 the fate of Theodoro (it’s Crimean enclaves) managed to be postponed even longer than that of Trebizond, they were not absorbed into the Ottoman Empire until 1475

“D” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

Posted on by demonymonic
Creative Writing, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Society & Culture

<word definition and root formation>

Dactylonomy: counting on the fingers [Gk. dactylo- (“finger”) +‎ -nomy (“law”; “custom”)]

Dactylonomy (source: csaimages.com)

Dasypyal: having hairy buttocks [Gk. dasús, (“hairy”; “dense”) + –pugḗ, (“buttocks”)]

Dasypyal (source: istockphotos.com)

Delendum: (Pl. -da) thing to be deleted [from dēlinō, (“destroyed”; “annihilated”; “razed”)]

Desipient: silly, trifling or foolish [L. de- (“of”; “from”) + –sapere (“to be wise”)]

Desuetude: state of disuse [L. de +- suescere (“to become accustomed”)]

Deuteropathy: (Medic.) secondary illness [Gk. deúteros, “second” + -pathy -páthos, (“suffering”) +‎ –y]

Diasyrm: rhetorical device of damning by faint praise, a method of ridiculing or disparaging someone [Gk. (?)]

Dicacity: oral playfulness; talkativeness [From L. dicacitas, from dĭcāx (“sarcastic”; “witty”) + -ity]

Didapper: one who disappears and then bobs up again [from a merging of “dive” and “dapper”]

Didapper: disappearance and reappearance, the magician’s trick of the trade (source: clker.com)

Dilogy: ambiguous or equivocal speech or discourse; repetition of a word or phrase [Gk. dilogía (“repetition”), from dís, (“twice”) + -logia]

Dippoldism: (Psych.) the paraphilia of deriving pleasure from the implementation of any form of corporal punishment whether it be in the form of beating, whipping, or spanking of another; sexuoerotic arousal derived fron spanking or whipping school children [From Andreas Dippold, German schoolteacher convicted of inflicting abuse on children including manslaughter]

Dismissory: sending away; permit to depart [from L. dimittere (“send away”) (dismiss) + -ory]

Discalceate: barefooted [dis + from L. calceus (“a shoe”)] 👣

Diversivolent: desiring different things [L. diversi (“diverse”) + –volent-, volens, velle (“to will”; “wish”)]

Dolorifuge: that which drives away sadness, mitigates or removes grief [from L. dolere (“to grieve”) + –fugere (“flee”). Coinage modelled on centrifuge, febrifuge, vermifuge, etc.]

Drapetomaniac: a person with an impulse or intense desire to run away from home [Gk. drapetēs, “a runaway [slave]”) + -mania, “madness”; “frenzy”). Coinage: Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright invented the term “Drapetomania” in 1851 to describe what he believed was the “psychological disorder”(sic) that caused a phenomenon of enslaved Blacks to run away from bondage before the American Civil War (masshist.org)

Drapetomania: an 1837 engraving of an escaped slave in the US

Dyslogy: censure; dispraise; uncomplimentary remarks [modelled on eulogy, Gk. dys (“badly”) + -logy]

Djibouti, the West’s Geostrategic Base in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf: Whither goes?

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, National politics, Political geography, Regional History

Djibouti is a moderately populated mini-state in the turbulent Horn of Africa region§, it’s contiguous neighbours, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia (including Somaliland), are all countries which tend to experience ongoing conflict and instability, as is Yemen, less than 30km away by sea across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Tiny Djibouti, comparatively, is open for business, and an oasis of stability, or so it seems to many interested foreign onlookers.

République de Djibouti 🇩🇯 Size 23,200 sq km. Pop (est. 2023) 976,000 (image: Pinterest)

Position A, geopolitically speaking: Djibouti’s attraction to the US and other Western powers and more recently, to China, is location. The tiny African republic’s prized geo-strategic location intersects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, plumb in the middle of the vital shipping lane between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, which caters for the transit of 20,000 ships annually and accounts for 30% of world trade [Bereketeab, Redie. “Djibouti: Strategic Location, an Asset or a Curse?” Journal of African Foreign Affairs 3, no. 1/2 (2016): 5–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26661713.]🇦

Bab el-Mandeb, oil containers (source: Morocco World News)

Watching the “bad guys”, protecting the West’s interests: Since the 1991 Gulf War and especially since the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist attack, Djibouti’s importance to the military and security objectives of the US and other world powers has grown exponentially. The imperatives of the “War on Terror” and the upsurge in Somalia-based piracy turned Western eyes to Djibouti, situated ideally at the choke-point on the Suez to Indian waterway as the optimal spot to monitor activity in the Middle East and “the Horn” [‘Port in the Desert: Djibouti as International Lessor’, Jessica Borowicz, Aether: Journal of Strategic Airpower and Spacepower, Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 2022, www.airuniversity.af.edu]. Today, foreign navies utilise Djibouti’s ports as part of the EU’s anti-piracy operations in the region, the US has a semipermanent base at Camp Lemonnier, with around 4,000 military personnel. France, Germany, Italian, Spain and Japan also maintain bases on Djibouti soil under Djibouti’s “rent-a-space program”. China opened its first base in the country in 2017.

Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti (photo: Facebook)

The rentier state – the Guelleh regime as “big bickies” landlord: Acting as lessor of foreign bases has proved a particularly lucrative earner for the Djibouti government, dominated by authoritarian president Ismaïl Omar Guelleh and his PRP🇧regime. Rents of the bases yield Djibouti an estimated US$119–128m per annum. As noted, “for a country that produces nothing, the income from the military bases has been a lifeline” (Bereketeab), turning round the dire economic prognosis facing the country in the early 1990s.

Ethiopian trade, mutual interest and port leases: An added windfall for the government is the revenues it collects from port leases (Djibouti has seven major ports and terminals). Landlocked Ethiopia is one of its customers, having lost its coastal territory after Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Ethiopia then became further dependent on Djibouti cooperation following the Eritrea-Ethiopia War (1998-2000). Ethiopia since this time has been required to lease port facilities from Djibouti, with 90% of total Ethiopian trade channelled through this route. With a shared major railroad and a shared water pipeline Djibouti’s relations with Ethiopia have generally been good (cf. those with Eritrea which have been less harmonious).

Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port (photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

Djibouti’s prized non-tangible resources: A third source of revenue for Djibouti is the development aid it receives from donor countries, especially the US, France, other European countries and China. All of this cash inflow (rents + aid + loans) amounts to Djibouti having the largest per capita income in the Horn of Africa region (according to the IMF’s reckonings)🇨and a healthy 6.5% annual economic growth rate (Bereketeab).

French foreign legionnaires in Djibouti (photo: Julien Hubert/Armee de Terre)

Djibouti, a stamping ground for the US, France…and the PRC: US military analysts by and large see Djibouti as the best current option in the region for staging military bases, an “anchor of stability in a volatile region” (Borowicz), with some observers even viewing Djibouti as a “front-line state” of America (Bereketeab), so its clearly happy to pay the high tenancy fees. France, with its “small but mighty force” on-site [‘Inside France’s Small But Mighty Force in Djibouti’, Frédéric Lert, Key.Aero, 01-Aug-2022, www.key.aero] and an involvement with the East African microstate that stretches back over 130 years, no doubt agrees.🇩 And the Guelleh regime is certainly happy with its cut of the deal…with China entering the scene, suggesting a potential new theatre for US v PRC rivalry, Guelleh can play one patron off against another for increasingly higher stakes, he has “agency” in the game, which J-P Cabestan defines simply as “the ability of any country to make independent decisions and strengthen its bargaining power” [CABESTAN, JEAN-PIERRE. “African Agency and Chinese Power: The Case of Djibouti.” South African Institute of International Affairs, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep29586.]

China’s Djibouti military base (source: adr1682305408 Thanh, Flickr)

Djibouti a haven of stability?: But is Djibouti really as stable a state as many in the Pentagon seems to believe? President Guelleh for now keeps a tight rein on things internally in Djibouti, effective opposition to the PRP has been neutralised,🇪but what of the future? Below the surface there are a raft of variables that might threaten the status quo. The great mass of Djiboutians have gained virtually nothing from the massive injection of money into Djibouti’s treasury which remains firmly in the hands of Guelleh and his fellow Somali subclan cronies in the political elite. Ordinary citizens wallow in various stages of poverty with unemployment conservatively estimated at 60% but really higher. Disenfranchised, predominantly illiterate, facing the ever-likely possibility of food shortages and drought, for the young Djiboutians a future with little prospects, the further erosion of basic rights and freedom of expression by an authoritarian regime, a combination of these factors might propel the unprivileged masses to demand a real improvement in their lot and failing that, ultimately regime change [EELCO KESSELS, TRACEY DURNER, and MATTHEW SCHWARTZ. “Front Matter.” Violent Extremism and Instability in the Greater Horn of Africa: An Examination of Drivers and Responses. Global Center on Cooperative Security, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep20264.1.]

Horn of Africa (map source: Nystrom Herff Jones Education Division)

Potential external destabilisers, a war-prone region and radical Islam: External factors could equally impact Djibouti’s stability, prompting a rethink by the lessees of the bases as a long-term option. Conflicts and civil wars emerging in Somalia, Eritrea or Ethiopia could spillover into Djibouti, eg, emanating from a sudden surge in refugee numbers.🇫 The affinity of Djibouti’s Issa Somalis and the Afars with their ethnic brothers and sisters respectively in Somalia and Eritrea could worsen this occurrence (Kessels et al).🇫It should also be remembered that Djibouti’s track record in avoiding conflict and violence is not a clean slate…in its relatively short existence the country has experienced civil war (1991-94) and a brief border conflict with Eritrea (2008), and the cause of the 1990s civil war—uneven power sharing by the Issa powerbrokers with the Afars—is an unresolved issue that continues to fester. A further threat of instability to Djibouti lies in the terrorist agenda of Al-Shabaab,🇬a jihadist fundamentalist organisation based in southern Somalia, which perpetrated a suicide bomber attack in Djibouti City in 2014 and has called on jihadists to target French and U.S. interests in Djibouti [Ahram Online (Egypt), 27-March-2021].

Djibouti women and children (source: aho.org)

A “Trojan Horse” for both sides? Maintaining full sovereignty amongst the mega-powers?: With both the US and China now heavily invested in Djibouti and each using it as a conduit to spread its geo-strategic influence, will an escalation of neo-Cold War rivalry played out here upset the balance in Djibouti? While foreign military forces being based indefinitely on Djibouti territory might provide reassurance to the country, there is a downside to Djibouti being completely dependent on big power external support and large foreign forces within its borders for it’s security and survival: Djibouti’s sovereign status as a free and independent nation is questionable…with a host of foreign patrons holding a significant share of the firmament the regime risks becoming compromised and losing support (Bereketeab). Most worrying (in US eyes) is the danger of Djibouti falling prey to “debt-trap diplomacy” due to it becoming over-dependent on China. Beijing is bankrolling many of Djibouti’s major infrastructure projects (water and gas pipelines, railroads, port upgrades, etc) big time! As a result, China has rapidly become the tiny African country’s major creditor (holding 91% of its external debt)(Borowicz; Cabestan). The upshot in the longer term is that the Guelleh PRP regime may end up being viewed by its own citizens as lacking legitimacy, a further pathway to internal turbulence and instability and enforced change.

Xi Zinping hosting Pres. Guelleh (“let’s do business!”) (photo: chinadaily.com.cn)

§ “Djibouti” in the native Afar language means “boiling pot”, an apt name for the country’s hot and arid, sub-tropical desert climate

🇦 around 6.2 million barrels of crude oil per day passed thru the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in 2018 (Borowicz)

🇧People’s Rally for Progress, which has provided both presidents of Djibouti since independence from France in 1977 – Guelleh, preceded by his elderly uncle, Hassan Gouled Aptidon

🇨in an impoverished “Horn” that is of itself not saying a lot

🇩to the tune of a hefty US$720m injection annually

🇪although opposition parties are now legal, all the political cards are stacked in PRP’s favour, opponents has been ruthlessly suppressed, driven into exile or co-opted into the ruling camp

🇪unfortunately it’s always on the cards that Yemen given its perpetual state of civil war could see upsurges in refugee numbers fleeing across the strait

🇫a revival of the earlier Somali “ethno-nationalism”—an attempt to unite all ethnic Somalis from the different East African countries into one Pan-Somali state—could also have a destabilising outcome

🇬Arabic: “The Youth”