“Abu Dhabi has built an Axis of Secessionists” Andreas Krieg

Israel’s recent announcement recognizing Somaliland sent shockwaves across Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and much of the Arab world. The decision was largely unforeseen and, according to several Somali experts I spoke with, ranks among the most consequential developments in Somalia’s post-colonial history. What followed was equally striking. Regional rivals converged to support Somalia’s federal government. Mogadishu received backing from the African Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, and dozens of states. Egypt, whose interests in the region are driven by the GERD dispute with Ethiopia, was among the first to declare support, followed by Turkey, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and much of the Arab world, with the notable exception of the UAE. That alignment, rare in both scope and speed, reflected the seriousness with which the move was received.

Initial commentary has focused almost exclusively on Israel’s motivations. Most analysis frames the recognition as neither a principled diplomatic judgment nor a moral stance, but as an infinite algebra of Israel’s security interests in the region. The Red Sea theater, the Houthi presence, and Israel’s long-standing pursuit of secure maritime routes dominate this reading. In a region defined by instability, such vigor is not misplaced. It explains much of the timing and much of the logic. Yet this framing remains incomplete. By centering Israel’s strategic calculus alone, it risks obscuring the broader regional consequences, and the structural rupture such recognition introduces into an already volatile region.

Another line of argument centers on apprehension over an expanded Israeli footprint in the region, concerns that Israel could emerge as yet another destabilizing force, driven by its singular focus on countering the Houthis and leveraging regional presence for intelligence purposes. Yet this fixation has come at a cost. It has eclipsed the role of another actor whose influence has expanded gradually over the past decade, largely beyond public scrutiny.

Israel’s entry into an already unpredictable and volatile region undoubtedly complicates matters. But it is not the only external force reshaping political outcomes. A growing body of analysis now identifies the United Arab Emirates as a central actor whose interventions have altered trajectories across the Horn of Africa. In Sudan -- now the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis due to an ongoing “genocidal conflict” -- Abu Dhabi’s role is well documented. The same patterns -- proxy engagement, political interference, and narrative engineering -- are increasingly visible in Somali peninsula.

In Somalia, Emirati involvement has been less overt but no less disruptive. While segments of the political elite have engaged Abu Dhabi through formal and informal channels, the effect has been a reconfiguration of the political order through patronage and parallel authority. This is most evident in the UAE’s deepening ties with Puntland, an autonomous federal member state, and with Somaliland, the self-declared republic that has operated outside Mogadishu’s authority for more than three decades.

In Somaliland, relations with Abu Dhabi have solidified over the past decade, most notably through the DP World agreement over Berbera Port. The origins of that deal, and the diplomatic crisis it triggered, lie in Somaliland’s decision to pursue large-scale foreign investment without seeking Mogadishu approval. In 2016, Somaliland concluded a 30-year concession with DP World to develop and manage Berbera Port under an investment package valued at roughly $440 million. Two years later, the project was expanded through a tripartite arrangement involving Somaliland, DP World, and Ethiopia. Announced in Dubai in 2018, the agreement granted Ethiopia a minority stake, with DP World retaining majority control and Somaliland holding the remainder.

Mogadishu rejected the agreement in full. The federal government argued that Somaliland lacked legal authority to negotiate international commercial agreements. Parliament reinforced this position by passing legislation invalidating all DP World contracts linked to Somaliland and barring the company from operating elsewhere in Somalia. Somali officials appealed to international bodies, including the United Nations and the Arab League, warning that the deal “undermined Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Somaliland’s leadership dismissed these objections. Anchored in its claim to statehood, it asserted the right to engage directly with foreign governments and multinational corporations. The result was an entrenched stalemate over sovereignty, one that created ideal conditions for external actors to operate. Fragmentation between Mogadishu and Hargeisa provided Abu Dhabi with a permissive environment in which “sub-state” governance structures could be leveraged as strategic assets.

What makes the UAE’s role particularly concerning is its apparent reliance on internal fragmentation as a mode of influence. Through opaque agreements with Somalia’s autonomous regions, Abu Dhabi has repeatedly bypassed federal institutions.

Recent regional precedents illustrate the UAE’s modus operandi. During the Tigray war in late 2021 -- a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and is widely recognized as one of the most brutal civil wars in the continent’s modern history -- UAE-supplied, Chinese-made combat drones played a decisive role in halting the advance of the Tigray Defense Forces toward Addis Ababa. TDF commanders later acknowledged that these last-minute deliveries helped tilt the battlefield in favor of Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister.

By 2023, Abiy had adopted an increasingly confrontational posture abroad, particularly toward Eritrea, openly threatening conflict over Ethiopia’s lack of direct access to the Red Sea. Throughout this period, the UAE was widely suspected of backing Ethiopia through covert arms transfers and sustained political support, aligning closely with Mohammed bin Zayed’s ambition to expand Emirati influence along the Red Sea littoral. Under Abiy, Ethiopia increasingly appeared to function as a central pillar in a growing, UAE-led network of influence stretching across the Horn of Africa and into the Gulf.

Port investments and financial clientele represent only one layer of this strategy. Equally significant is the informational infrastructure that accompanies it. Somalia has increasingly been drawn into a broader geopolitical vision in which secessionist movements are treated not as anomalies but as instruments. The rise of Emirati influencers and army of bots illustrates this shift. Many have built their platforms on historically inaccurate portrayals of Somaliland’s status, presenting separation as “inevitable” and internationally endorsed.

The use of information warfare to advance Emirati regional interests is now difficult to dispute. Following the late-October 2025 El Fasher massacre in Sudan, a coordinated social media campaign emerged across X promoting a uniform narrative. As documented by Marc Owen Jones, Associate Professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, the campaign blamed Sudanese Armed Forces leadership for famine and aid obstruction, portrayed the Rapid Support Forces as disciplined and peace-oriented, and reframed El Fasher as stable under RSF control, obscuring reports of mass killing.

The analysis of roughly 80,000 tweets from 21,000 accounts posted between 5 and 19 November found that between 89 and 93 percent displayed signs of automation and coordinated behavior. The campaign generated more than 91 million impressions through tightly timed posting, multilingual duplication, and centrally produced media. Across the analyzed dataset, RSF abuses were largely absent, while the UAE appeared as a “humanitarian actor” despite documented links to the RSF.

Comparable tactics have been identified in Somalia. Recent BBC investigations uncovered networks of UAE-linked bot accounts impersonating Somali women and inserting themselves into domestic political debates. In under two years, these accounts amassed more than 300,000 likes and generated over 200 million views on X alone, underlining both scale and persistence.

Information warfare in the Horn of Africa and the wider Middle East ended up more intense thanks to a new generation of Emirati influencers. Their messaging converges around a narrow set of themes, most notably opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and coordinated narratives on Sudan and Somaliland. Whatever one’s assessment of the Brotherhood itself, its persistent centrality in this discourse is revealing.

Geeska spoke with Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London and MENA specialist, whose book Subversion traces the rise of weaponized narrative as a tool of undermining the social and political order of perceived adversaries. Krieg also discussed the UAE’s expanding information operations and its denials of involvement in Sudan’s war and reflected on the growing scope of its information campaign and the opaque reach of its influence in Somalia.

Mahbub M Abdillahi: You have written extensively about the UAE’s sophisticated approach to media and information warfare. How have Emirati operatives reframed perceived “Islamist threats” into narratives that appear organic, yet ultimately advance Emirati strategic objectives?

Andreas Krieg: I would say the Emirati approach to “Islamist threats” is less about theology and more about narrative engineering. Operatives start from real fears -- jihadist violence, the legacy of the Muslim Brotherhood, political chaos -- and then stretch that frame to cover almost any actor who complicates Abu Dhabi’s preferred order. Through think tanks, lobbyists and friendly media, they seed stories in which local opponents are recast as Islamists or fellow-travellers, and Emirati-aligned clients become guardians of “counter-terrorism” and “stability”. Crucially, this is pushed through local voices: retired officers, clerics, tribal notables, “independent” analysts. The talking points originate in Abu Dhabi, but they surface in Khartoum, Aden or Hargeisa as if they were home-grown. That is network-centric statecraft applied to information: the same core message, routed through different nodes, reinforcing the idea that Emirati proxies are simply responding to organic security concerns rather than fronting for an external agenda.

MA: And how should the recent rise of coordinated, Emirati-aligned social media influencers -- many promoting identical narratives on Sudan and Somalia -- be understood as part of a centralized narrative-engineering campaign rather than spontaneous digital activism?

AK: The recent burst of Emirati-aligned influencers on Sudan and Somalia is best understood as the social-media layer of the same system. These are not spontaneous digital uprisings; they are loosely coordinated content farms. You see identical infographics, identical framing of the RSF as a bulwark against “terrorists” or of Somaliland/Puntland as islands of order under Emirati-linked port operators. The creators may be a mix of true believers, paid contractors and affiliate marketing operations, but the narrative spine is centrally generated. In practical terms, Abu Dhabi has built an online wing of the Axis of Secessionists: a distributed chorus that normalises secessionist or paramilitary projects as pragmatic solutions, drowns out criticism, and gives Western policymakers the impression that local populations are begging for the very outcomes the UAE is engineering.

MA: Despite well-documented evidence of its involvement in the Sudan war, the UAE has repeatedly denied any role. Viewed through the lens of its established pattern of cultivating well-funded, well-equipped local proxy ecosystems, how should these denials be interpreted?

AK: When the UAE denies involvement in Sudan, despite the weight of evidence, I read those denials as a tactic, not a factual claim. Abu Dhabi has a well-established pattern: invest heavily in a proxy ecosystem, move weapons and money through intermediaries, monetise gold or other commodities, and then insist it is merely a humanitarian donor or a neutral mediator. That is how the Axis of Secessionists functions. The denials are addressed to Washington, London and big investors who need a thin layer of ambiguity to justify continued partnership. On the ground, no-one in Hemedti’s world believes the UAE is absent; the very structure of RSF finances and logistics assumes Emirati backing. So, the dissonance tells you something important about the model: the UAE wants all the leverage of a patron, while preserving just enough doubt to dodge the kind of formal opprobrium that Iran has attracted for doing something structurally similar with its own militias.

MA: To what extent does the UAE’s control over strategic ports and facilities in Puntland and Somaliland, particularly in light of reports that Bosaso has functioned as a logistics, weapons, and personnel transit hub, reflect a deliberate strategy of embedding long-term influence while keeping its operational footprint intentionally opaque?

AK: In Puntland, Jubbaland and Somaliland, the UAE is playing a long game. By securing port and free-zone concessions in places like Bosaso and Berbera, it embeds itself in the critical infrastructure of breakaway or semi-autonomous regions that already tell secessionist stories about themselves. These facilities are dual-use: containers and livestock one-week, discreet transfers of people, equipment or fuel the next. Bosaso’s reported role as a logistics and transit hub fits that pattern. Abu Dhabi’s operational footprint is deliberately thin and opaque. The visible logos are DP World, security contractors and local authorities; the real influence sits in long-term contracts, debt, training programmes and dependence on Emirati shipping lanes. In network-centric terms, the port is a node in a wider lattice of corridors and clients. It allows the UAE to shape trajectories in Somalia and the Gulf of Aden without owning territory or formally challenging Mogadishu, while quietly empowering actors whose claims to separate statehood mirror those it backs elsewhere.

MA: You describe an “axis of secessionists” mirroring Iran’s “axis of resistance.” If Iran is sanctioned for delegating violence to non-state actors, why has the UAE largely avoided similar scrutiny for cultivating proxy and militia networks?

AK: The key difference between Iran and the UAE is not method so much as status. Both have built webs of non-state partners -- an axis of resistance in one case, an axis of secessionists in the other -- but the UAE is a close security and economic partner of Western states. It hosts bases, buys high-end weapons, invests in infrastructure and clean energy projects, and speaks the language of counter-terrorism and modernisation. Its proxies are branded as counter-insurgents, coastguard forces or anti-Islamist auxiliaries, not revolutionary vanguards. That gives Western capitals a strong incentive to look away from the similarities. Moreover, Abu Dhabi is careful to route much of its activity through corporate shells, sovereign funds and “private” security outfits, which makes legal attribution harder. Iran, by contrast, often leans into the symbolism of resistance. So you have two broadly comparable architectures of outsourced coercion, but only one is wrapped in a narrative of stability and partnership that makes sanctions politically costly for its patrons.

MA: Following the UAE’s military drawdown from Yemen, should this be interpreted as a strategic failure, the beginning of an unraveling of Emirati proxy networks, or merely a temporary setback after longer-term successes in Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and now Somalia?

AK: I would not read the UAE’s troop drawdown from Yemen as a simple failure. In many ways it is the classic Emirati pattern: surge early, build a proxy or surrogate architecture, secure the geography that matters, then step back and let local clients carry the flag. In the south, the STC and associated forces still hold key ports, islands and hinterland routes. Abu Dhabi has effectively carved out a southern sphere of influence, anchored in an explicitly secessionist narrative, while reducing its own visible exposure. At the same time, there are clear setbacks. The reputational cost has risen sharply; Saudi has grown wary; and the Yemeni theatre has proved more fluid and resistant than Abu Dhabi anticipated. The same is true in Sudan and Libya. So I would frame Yemen less as the unraveling of Emirati networks and more as the stress-testing of them. Some elements have stuck – territorial facts on the ground, enduring partnerships – but the cost of sustaining the Axis of Secessionists is higher than the architects probably expected.

MA: As Emirati influence deepens across the Horn of Africa, particularly through opaque security and commercial partnerships and indirect interventions, what risks does this pose for Somalia? Should we anticipate an escalation of covert and clandestine operations that could further destabilize an already volatile political and security environment?

AK: For Somalia, deepening Emirati influence is a double-edged sword. On one hand, ports, roads and investment can support trade and offer alternatives to other external patrons. On the other, the way Abu Dhabi operates -- through fragmented deals with federal states, opaque security assistance and quiet backing for actors in Somaliland and Puntland -- risks hard-wiring fragmentation into the political system. If the UAE continues to treat Somalia as another arena for network-centric statecraft, I would expect more covert and clandestine operations: discreet arms shipments to favoured units, intelligence sharing that privileges some factions over others, information campaigns that delegitimise Mogadishu when it resists, and possible use of Somali soil as a corridor in the wider Sudan and Red Sea contests. That raises the risk of further destabilisation, not because the UAE wants chaos, but because it is comfortable carving out functional spheres of influence in breakaway or semi-autonomous regions even if that leaves the nominal state weaker and more brittle over time.