There is a stretch of water between the Horn of Africa and the southern tip of Arabian Peninsula that is approximately 26 kilometres wide at its narrowest point. It has a name: Bab-el-Mandeb, Arabic for "Gate of Grief", and for most of recorded history, that name was merely poetic. Today it reads like a forecast.

This strait is the passage of twelve per cent of world trade. Geography made it important. History made it contested. And now, in the development which has had a thousandth part of the attention it merits, the great powers of the world are marking out the shores of it, not by war or treaty, but by the more enduring weapons of bases, ports and well-calculated diplomatic recognition.

In December 2025, Israel formally recognised Somaliland – the self-declared republic that has governed itself since 1991 without a single seat at the United Nations. The move was presented as an act of principle on behalf of a democracy........

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