Somalia has been a byword for failed statehood and violence for so long that the calm of Somaliland, its neighbour to the north-east, feels almost miraculous. In contrast to Mogadishu, the bustling streets of Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, aren’t patrolled by grim-faced soldiers. Government offices aren’t huddled behind blast walls and protected by foreign troops. You can wander into a restaurant and enjoy camel steaks (a national speciality) without worrying about al-Shabaab terrorists.

It is a former British colony which, for 30 years after independence, was joined to what had been Italian Somaliland. It seceded after the collapse of the Somali state in the late 1980s but no foreign country formally accepted it as a sovereign state until December, when Israel broke ranks with the international community. The UAE and Ethiopia may soon follow. The former already has a major military base in Somaliland and the latter wants to build a naval port on its coast.

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Importantly, the Somaliland Republic overlooks one of the world’s most strategically vital maritime choke points – the 14-mile-wide Bab el-Mandeb (‘Gate of Grief’) between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. Bab el-Mandeb, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula from the Strait of Hormuz, is again being threatened with closure by the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen.

Even before Donald Trump and Israel’s war with Iran, the Red Sea littoral and the Gulf of Aden had become the focus of a new Great Game, involving Saudi Arabia, China, France, the United States, Houthi-controlled Yemen and Turkey among others.

At the end of February, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan........

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