THE WRONG HANDSHAKE

Why Maritime Security Cannot Be Built on Diplomatic Assumptions

Araweelo News Network | Associated Online Agencies

Author: Abdillahi Jama Ali – Qurus

Reading Time
6–7 minutes

There is a dangerous habit in international politics: mistaking diplomatic recognition for effective authority.
Nowhere is that distinction more consequential than in the Horn of Africa.
The waters surrounding the Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea are among the world’s most strategically important maritime corridors. Millions of tonnes of goods pass through this region, connecting Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Yet when regional and global powers consider maritime security in the Horn, they often begin and end their political calculations in Mogadishu.
That may be diplomatically convenient. But strategic convenience is not the same thing as strategic reality.
The question is simple: who can actually deliver?
Mogadishu is internationally recognized as the capital of Somalia. But recognition does not automatically translate into effective authority across the entire territory claimed by the Somali state.
For more than three decades, Somalia has struggled to establish durable, nationwide state authority. Its federal structure remains contested, and Mogadishu does not exercise effective control over all the territories and political entities that outsiders sometimes assume it represents.
Somaliland has its own government, security institutions and coastline. Puntland likewise possesses its own political and security structures.
This is not a question of rhetoric. It is a question of operational reality.
And maritime security is ultimately operational.
A government sitting in a capital cannot secure a coastline it does not effectively control simply because international diplomacy treats that coastline as belonging to it.
This is where the gamble begins
Regional and global powers have legitimate interests in the Gulf of Aden and the approaches to Bab el-Mandeb.
They need secure shipping.
They need reliable ports.
They need intelligence and surveillance.
They need partners capable of maintaining stability on the ground and along the coast.
They need to know who actually controls what.
If they build their strategy around the assumption that Mogadishu alone can deliver all of this, they are taking a strategic gamble.
The problem is not that they talk to Mogadishu.
The problem is believing that talking to Mogadishu is equivalent to having access to, influence over, or control of the entire strategic geography.
That is a very different proposition.

The wrong handshake
There is an old political lesson that powerful states sometimes learn only after a crisis:
Choosing the wrong partner does not merely produce a diplomatic inconvenience. It can produce strategic failure.
The Horn of Africa is too important for such mistakes. The coastline overlooking the Gulf of Aden is not a theoretical map. It is physical geography. The ports, roads, communities, security institutions and political authorities along that geography matter.
A ship passing through the region does not care which government has the strongest diplomatic credentials.
It cares whether the coast is stable.
It cares whether threats can be detected.
It cares whether authorities can respond.
It cares whether agreements made in one capital can actually be implemented where the strategic assets are located.

Somaliland cannot simply be wished away
Whatever one’s political position on the status of Somaliland, its existence as a functioning political and security reality cannot responsibly be ignored. It has developed institutions, maintained security and administered a substantial stretch of the northern Somali coastline.
That reality has strategic consequences.
The same principle applies to Puntland.
Therefore, any serious maritime strategy for the Horn must look beyond the diplomatic map and examine the real map of political and security authority.
This is not an argument against Somalia.
It is an argument against strategic self-deception.

The world must not gamble
The Red Sea crisis has demonstrated how quickly instability in one part of this region can affect international shipping far beyond the Horn of Africa.
The Gulf of Aden is not merely a Somali issue.
Bab el-Mandeb is not merely a regional waterway.
These are international strategic arteries.
That is precisely why the major powers should be careful about whom they rely upon and where they place their strategic bets.
Diplomacy should follow reality, not replace it.
If Somaliland controls a coastline, engage Somaliland.
If Puntland possesses security capacity in its area, understand Puntland.
If Mogadishu has legitimate interests and capabilities, engage Mogadishu.
There is nothing contradictory about doing all three.
Indeed, that may be the only realistic approach.

The Horn requires realism
The Horn of Africa does not need another round of assumptions built around conference rooms and diplomatic communiqués. It needs realism.
The international community should ask three basic questions:
Who controls the territory?
Who can provide security?
Who can actually deliver what has been promised?
Those questions may produce uncomfortable answers. But uncomfortable answers are preferable to comfortable illusions.
The strategic importance of Somaliland, Puntland and Somalia cannot be measured simply by the diplomatic formulas used in international meetings.
Geography has its own politics.
And the Gulf of Aden does not recognize diplomatic fiction.
A final warning
Regional and global powers have every right to pursue their interests in the Horn of Africa.
But they should not gamble those interests on the assumption that international recognition automatically creates effective authority.
It does not.
Nor should they confuse a handshake in Mogadishu with a partnership covering the entire Somali coastline.
The Horn is too strategically important for that kind of gamble.

AThe wrong handshake can produce the wrong strategy.
And in a region where the world’s shipping lanes, competing powers and security threats converge, a wrong strategy can become an international crisis.

By Abdillahi Jama Ali – Qurus .A former teacher, trainer, radio journalist, manager, Member of Parliament and Minister, He is now a writer, contributor  and political analyst, drawing on more than 50 years of professional, public-service and political experience. Abdullahi Jama Ali is also a contributor to Araweelo News Network / Associated Online Agencies, where he has published numerous articles and political analyses. His work focuses particularly on current affairs, governance, policy developments, and geopolitical dynamics in the Horn of Africa, offering readers well-crafted perspectives shaped by decades of professional, public-service, and political experience