The UAE Just Got Cut Off – And Their Response Was Outrageous

Somalia has cancelled UAE security deals, shut down port agreements, and cut off military access to its airspace and that's just for starters. Right, so Somalia has cancelled its security and defence deals with the UAE, torn up port agreements at Berbera, Bosaso and Kismayo, shut off military access to its airspace and territory, and the UAE has already started pulling people and kit out. So why have they done that then Damo? Well, what just disappeared is the assumption that you can always work around the Somali state if you don’t like what Mogadishu says, deal with the regions instead, keep the ports running, and wait for the noise to die down. Except this time the UAE overreached. That option just got removed at state level. And once that goes, even with much regional grumbling, a lot of very confident talk suddenly sounds fragile, because being present without permission isn’t influence, it’s liability and the UAE have packed their bags and scuttled off with all haste. But this doesn’t stop with Somalia, and it doesn’t stop with the UAE either, because the same shortcut has been treated as normal elsewhere for years. But here and now it’s being closed, in public, and it’s quickly become obvious who’s backing away and suddenly doesn’t want to test matters any further. Right, so President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government has moved to cancel security and defence cooperation with the United Arab Emirates and to annul UAE-linked agreements tied to the ports of Berbera, Bosaso, and Kismayo, and it has done it in the only way a federal government can try to do this without pretending it controls what it plainly doesn’t: by putting the whole relationship on the chopping block at Cabinet level and then drafting law to stop regional administrations and private actors freelancing foreign policy behind Mogadishu’s back.