The Bab el Mandeb strait is vital for global navigation, it commands the Suez route, and therefore sees a high traffic, including for crucial ressources like oil. Nonetheless, its neighbors are mostly poor and shunned by the International community or in chaos, like Eritrea, Somalia and Yemen, while even the more successful ones, like Djibouti, or mot much more than a glorified military base for European powers, and soon Emiratis. This is especially strange considering that neighbors of other straits, like Gibraltar or Hormuz, are much more powerful and often benefit from those locations.





The first issue with this region is the legacy of the cold war, where it was more pro-USSR than in most other places. Not only were there the only Arab communist country in the form of South Yemen, but there were also several other communistic regimes like Somalia and Ethiopia, which, at the time, encompassed Eritrea. This created tensions, first between north and south Yemen, with their opposite alliances, then, surprisingly, after their victory against non communist forces, between Somalia and Ethiopia. This, while partly due to more ancestral disputes, was exacerbated by the USSR and American backing of the different actors, and led to the Ogaden war, which disorganized, by its end, the Somalian state, while increasing the dictatorial aspect of the Ethiopian regime.

The end of the USSR, not long after the aforementioned war, was an additional trigger, and led to three things, one is the defeat of communists in Ethiopia by a coalition of other forces and the subsequent independence of Eritrea, another is the collapse of the Somalian state, while the final one is the unification of Yemen, although not as successful as first hoped and forced to remain after the north-south war.





Somalia's ailments, along with many of the problems in that region can be dated back to that cold war period. Indeed, Somalia slowly descended into chaos, after the final overthrow of the communist regime. While it has some relatively stable regions like Puntland and Somaliland, who broke away from the state, the main territories still haven't experienced a unified authority, with the closest being the union of islamic courts successor the supreme islamic courts council which was defeated as the transitional federal government received several international backings. This defeat led to the creation of Al Shabaab, and, more largely, the absence of any real national authority led to over-fishing by international companies, in addition to waste dumping in Somali waters. This depletion of Somalian ressources, already strained inland with increasing droughts, led, first, to famines, and, therefore, to a refugee flux, but also, due to the absence of other employment, to the growing Somalian piracy problem. The western intervention there, both to stem Al-Shabaab, and the jihadist threat in the region, and to stop piracy, doesn't address the root of the problem, and contributes to a needless escalation, militarizing an increasing number of Somali groups.





The refugees are not only from Somalia, an important portion of them are actually from Eritrea, despite the country still being stable and with far less food insecurity. The hardlining of Ethiopia in the 80s against its enemies, foreign and domestic, while it seemed to abate after the fall of the Derg regime, still left scars and conflictuality, and as the independence of Eritrea left Ethiopia landlocked, while several border issues were not addressed, it quickly degenerated back to open war. This war, from a much more powerful nation, with extremely severe casualties and a downturn, including the wiping of the once successful tourism industry, left the regime there paranoid. They implemented and kept a twenty year long military service (by some accounts longer), with very little exception. As the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea was only fully resolved recently, there still was a legitimate fear from the Eritrean regime for a long time. Moreover, that dispute also led, by some accounts, to a sort of proxy war in Somalia, which ended with Eritrea being internationally sanctioned for helping Al Shabaab. In an already poor country, with the majority of the workforce under the military service, the latter was quickly used not only to staff the army, but, in a state run economy, to staff most jobs, for a measly pay. This was worsened and expanded after the sanctions, and, despite the risks, there was a huge increase in refugees fleeing so not to have to do this service, that has been said by some observers to be akin to slavery. This drain of the young population, coupled with an authoritarian regime, an economy still impacted by the war against Ethiopia and, up until recently, international sanctions, kept Eritrea in a precarious economic position. However, with the recent warming of relations with Ethiopia, the end of the sanctions and some port deals with the EAU, there might be hope there for renewed growth.





A place, where there is no short term hope for any kind of growth, and which while having much less refugees fleeing, as the same problem as Somalia for islam extremism, is Yemen. There is currently a civil war occurring, the conflagration of a decade long marginalization of the peripheries by the central government in Sana'a and the destabilization of having such a strong neighbor in its border (like in the article https://thenewrealityinforeignpolicy.blogspot.com/2017/09/how-us-unknowingly-destabilizes-mexico.html). There are little refugees from Yemen, even with this war, because the escape routes would be extremely complex, passing by other, more lawless countries, in particular Somalia. Instead, there is a flood of internally displaced populations, in a country that, up until recently, welcomed several thousands Somali refugees every year. At the same time, the conflict shows no sign of abating, exploding into conflicts, some motivated by cold war inherited dynamics like the southern independentists acting against loyalists, while others are created by the weakening of centralized institutions, like the resurgence of Al Qaeda and its fight with IS other the control of the jihadist guerrilla and territories. The conflicts stem from an authoritarian divide to conquer style of governance, financed by foreign powers, which see Yemen as strategic. Therefore, it is not illogical to think that its strategic position next to the Bab el Mandeb strait is at least partly to blame for the current civil war, and, by extension, given that the cold war tensions and alliances exacerbated and triggered conflicts in the other neighbors of the strait, that it is a curse as much as a blessing as Realpolitik leads foreign power to back the most politically expedient faction, regardless of long term consequences.





Despite those problems, Djibouti, which embraced that western interventionism, managed to thrive. Similarly, both Puntland and Eritrea have now agreements with the UAE on ports, and Yemen itself, while there are annexation attempts by the UAE in Socotra, is having discussions with several powerful countries on port accords. There is an argument to be made that the strait is, in the end, a double edged sword. It is a powerful economic opportunity, and the chance to treat with powerful countries in an almost equal footing, but it is also the possibility that those powerful countries will meddle in internal matters to benefit themselves.

The real problem is the power imbalance that allows such bullying onto weaker nations, to the point of collapse, something that cannot be resolved by more interventionism. Especially here, as opposed to other strategic places, the states were weak to begin with, with internal dissension, and the transition from colonialism itself, another form of foreign interventionism, took place quite late. It can be remarked that in both Somalia and Yemen, for example, there were still a very powerful tribal organization of some of the territories, which often see this affiliation as most important, allowing them to be manipulated to fulfill foreign goals. This created conditions where what seems to be logical steps from other powers to ensure either their logistical routes or their influence turned to local destabilization that either threatened national unity or increased tensions to the point of open warfare, and durably forbade development. Instead a regional body, such as one encompassing the horn of Africa, or all the countries neighboring the strait, should be in place to treat directly with foreign actors, to ensure that there is a deterrence against foreign meddling and that any agreement would be most favorable, by using collective bargaining. To accomplish this, the various countries would have to put apart their differences, but also to have legitimate representatives of their nation to begin with. This is why the best way to implement this would be to:





1. use other international bodies like the UN or the African Union to get the necessary funding and skills needed

2. start the organization with a couple of stable countries with reassurances of peaces between the different members of the organization

3. use this organization to mediate conflicts in the Bab El Mandeb region

4. incorporate the newly stabilized countries to the organization

5. decide a common strategy for negotiations