Killing of manager in Somalia shows business is still risky
• Al-Qaeda affiliates and their acts of violence are disrupting the potential
An al-Qaeda affiliate’s killing of a manager working for a major Dubai-based port operator in Somalia highlights the risks of doing business in the war-ravaged nation.
DP World is one of the few international companies to invest in the country, whose coastline sits on the narrow passage that links the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal. The canal is the fastest and most popular maritime trade route between Europe and Asia, carrying about 10% of the world’s seaborne trade each year.
The killing in February of 52year-old Maltese national Paul Anthony Formosa, who worked for a subsidiary of United Arab Emirates (UAE) owned DP World, came weeks after the group killed more than 20 people, many employees of multinational firms.
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the killing, as well as a bomb blast in the capital Mogadishu that claimed the lives of 10 Somali soldiers, in a statement using its communications channels, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks terrorist activity.
DP World is the world’s third-largest ports operator and has been building up its presence on the African Red Sea coast, just as competitors from elsewhere in the Middle East and China scramble for perches in the strategically important region. The port operator is one of the few international companies to invest in Somalia and owns and runs the port of Berbera in the breakaway republic of Somaliland.
Bosaso is a small port in northern Somalia, which P&O Ports, a subsidiary of DP World, has been building up in recent months. It is located in the semiautonomous Somali state of Puntland, which is also home to a small Islamic State cell and was once the base of infamous piracy gangs.
DP World and others are rolling out ambitious plans to develop the coast of Somalia, while al-Shabaab refocuses on international targets.
The group is responsible for thousands of deaths of Somalis, but it occasionally hits highpublicity targets like the upmarket hotel complex it raided in January in Nairobi.
In 2015, it killed 147 students and staff at the northern Kenyan university of Garissa, while 60 people were killed in 2013 during an attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
The Horn of Africa coastline has drawn more than $2bn in investment from Middle Eastern and Chinese entities in the past three years. Much of this interest has focused on the Somali coast. The investments are driven by business and politics.
Berbera and Bosaso are close to Yemen, where the UAE and Saudi Arabia are fighting Iranbacked Houthis.
Apart from developing ports, the UAE has been training the Puntland Maritime Police Force even as its relations with the central Somali government in Mogadishu — seen as siding with Qatar and Turkey against the UAE— have been strained.