Superpowers fight a silent war in Africa’s Berlin
Djibouti, the gateway to the continent, has become a nest of spies as the East and West vie for supremacy
‘Everyone knows what you’re doing. You have to get used to nothing being private. Everyone here conspires. It’s the national pastime’
In the early 20th century it was Oslo, in the Forties it was Casablanca and in the Fifties it was Berlin. Today one could argue that the world’s spy capital is the small African nation of Djibouti.
Two American Osprey military planes roar overhead from Camp Lemonnier, sending special forces on missions in the deserts of war-torn Yemen and Somalia.
A few miles down the road, China’s only overseas military base is perched on the edge of the water.
This rugged, sunbaked country in the Horn of Africa is now home to one of the largest concentrations of foreign military bases on earth.
Over the last decade, the nation of less than a million people has become a microcosm of the new world order.
It has become a nest of spies, a place where the old Western powers vie for influence against the might of China.
A regular cheese and wine night at the Kempinski Hotel overlooking the azure waters of the port sucks in all manner of diplomats, military contractors and soldiers, except, it seems, the Chinese.
Relations are peaceful but surveillance is everywhere.
“Everyone knows what you’re doing. You have to get used to nothing being private,” says a foreign diplomat.
“Everyone here conspires. It’s the national pastime.”
Thousands of troops from the US, China, France, Japan, Spain, and Italy are here guaranteeing the security of a local aristocracy of corrupt politicians in exchange for some of the most strategically valuable real estate on earth.
Western officials estimate there could be 10,000 troops behind the concrete blast walls of China’s top secret installation. But to outsiders, the mesh of barbed wire and gun towers seems mysteriously uninhabited. No one ever seems to come out.
“I go past the base every day, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone. Who knows what they’re up to in there,” one United Nations worker says.
The country lies on the Bab-elMandeb strait, a 16-mile-wide chokepoint between the Arab Peninsula and the Horn of Africa leading to the Suez Canal.
About a third of all global shipping passes through the strait every year, along with all manner of traffickers ferrying guns, drugs and people to and from the Middle East.
“We do not have oil. Our oil is our strategic location,” says Ahmed Arita Ali, a wiry veteran of Djibouti’s diplomatic corps, who dreams of his nation becoming the Dubai or Singapore of Africa.
A foothold on the Red Sea coast is seen as an marker for any great or middling power. Russia has been trying to obtain a base up the coast at Port Sudan for years but Washington has been lobbying hard to prevent it.
For Beijing, Djibouti offers a perfect port to protect its $250billion (£209million) annual trade with Africa and project its power across the Gulf. It opened the base in 2017 and has adapted it to house an aircraft carrier.
The proximity of the US and Chinese bases has caused diplomatic upsets. When American planes got too close in 2018, the Chinese used military-grade lasers to blind the US pilots.
The confluence of armies gives the city a sense of unreality. An air of wartime Casablanca or Lisbon hangs around the dilapidated French colonial mansions. Elite and expatriate life revolves around two hotels and a handful of French restaurants.
Rumours have swirled around the Chinese base for the past five years. “I don’t know how they get people in there. By sea or by air? Who knows. They’re not like the Americans or the French. They don’t mix with outsiders at all,” says one Djiboutian official.
Three British soldiers are serving alongside the Americans in Camp Lemonnier and Downing Street recently appointed an ambassador to Djibouti when it realised it was the only permanent member of the UN Security Council not to be playing the game. But Britain is still barely even a minnow in the small pond.
In many ways, Djibouti is more of a port city serving its giant neighbour Ethiopia than a functioning state. There are 33 ministers but no coherent agriculture policy or sewage system.
Yet somehow, it is an isle of stability in a troubled region. To the north lies totalitarian Eritrea, to the West is Ethiopia’s civil war, to the East is the failed state of Somalia and across the water lies the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen.
The peace is partly due to immense foreign backing. Since Djibouti won independence in 1977, France has protected its old colony with foreign legionnaires and its largest military base abroad. Today a French warship is moored at one of Djibouti’s docks, a reminder that the Elysée Palace still holds sway in Francophone Africa.
The Japanese Self-Defence Forces have several hundred troops stationed next to the Americans as part of their only permanent foreign mission since the Second World War. Purportedly, they’re there to keep a watchful eye on marauding Somali pirates next door but the real reason is painfully obvious.
“It’s pretty clear why the Japanese are here,” says one foreign diplomat, “To keep an eye on China.”