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| 1 |
ID:
090141
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In 2008, the number of active armed conflicts was 36, up by one from 2007. Over the past few years, the number of active conflicts has not seen any drastic changes from one year to the next. However, the number of armed conflicts has increased by nearly one-quarter since 2003, which was the year with the lowest number of active armed conflicts since the 1970s. While the number of conflicts continued to increase, the number of wars (i.e. conflicts with over 1,000 battle-related deaths) remained at a very low level, with only five recorded for 2008. Four conflicts listed in 2007 were no longer active in 2008, but during the year, two conflicts were restarted by previously recorded actors (in Burundi and in Georgia). Furthermore, three new conflicts erupted, one of which was fought between states (Djibouti-Eritrea). Thus, the record-long four-year interlude 2004-07 with no interstate conflict was broken.
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| 2 |
ID:
171036
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This article sheds light on the factors shaping China’s Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) in small states through a study of Djibouti and the MSRI. It also analyses the establishment of China’s first overseas military base and thus evaluates the military-security implications of Chinese MSRI ports. Among other things, it shows that we need to conceive the locational value of MSRI participants more richly, that the existence of an authoritarian partner has advantages for China, but does not necessarily drive MSRI activities, and that small MSRI states have agency vis-à-vis China. It suggests, too, there is a template of Chinese port development and that it should not be assumed that China is intentionally wielding the ‘debt trap’ to gain equity.
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| 3 |
ID:
173261
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This article analyzes China’ and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s rationale in opening what it calls a ‘logistical support facility’ in Djibouti as well as the missions that it is supposed to fulfil. The author also presents this base’s activities since its opening on 1 August 2017 and explores the potential role that the Chinese military stationed in Djibouti could play to secure Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative and protect Chinese interests and nationals in Africa or the Middle East. Finally, it assesses the PLA base’s relations with other militaries present in Djibouti, particularly the US, the French and the Japanese, concluding that Djibouti operates as a microcosm of a multipolar world heading towards a bipolar, though asymmetrical, world order.
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| 4 |
ID:
108446
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article investigates the dynamics and politics of citizenship in Djibouti, where the issue of who qualifies as a citizen has long been controversial. While debates about citizenship and exclusion in Africa frequently centre on the legacies of colonialism and the incompleteness of the African state, this article attributes the problems of citizenship to the logic of sovereignty and the nature of the modern state. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the article shows how Djiboutian citizenship in both the colonial and post-colonial era can be seen as graduated, assigning some groups more rights and protection than others. For those near the bottom of this ladder, the rights of citizenship do not emanate solely from legal frameworks, but from incorporation into patron-client relationships. There is also a large population who are systematically denied citizenship, and who through various practices of exclusion are reduced to 'bare life' and statelessness. No official statistics exist to document their numbers, and the article draws on interviews to illustrate the problems faced by Djibouti's stateless population.
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| 5 |
ID:
165392
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| 6 |
ID:
188802
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It is unsurprising that the Red Sea region has come into sharper strategic focus for great powers as well as regional powers, given that 12% of global seaborne trade, 40% of Europe’s trade with Asia and the Middle East, and 8% of seaborne hydrocarbons pass through the Red Sea. Yet the region is chronically underdeveloped and conflict-ridden. Overlapping rivalries involving Iran, Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries pose risks of intensifying regional discord. The United States has prioritised empowering its regional partners and strengthening emerging Israel–Gulf security synergies to counteract Iran’s activities and check China, which has become a key economic actor in the region and opened its first overseas military base, in Djibouti, in 2017. Given the potential divergence between American and regional concerns, however, neither US nor regional involvement appears likely to stabilise the region.
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| 7 |
ID:
161510
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Having passed successive legislation in the past two decades to expand its use of the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF), Japan has emerged from its post-war ‘pacifist’ shackles to assume a range of security roles that are typically associated with so-called ‘normal nations’. This article addresses how these have been crystallized in the form of an indefinitely-termed overseas base on the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti. Careful examination of pertaining Diet minutes, media discourse and government ministry papers suggests that the risks identified with this facility’s realization and status have been fundamentally recalibrated, allowing its presence and operational diversification to go largely unnoticed and unopposed – both domestically and overseas – despite representing a seemingly radical departure from common sense interpretations of Japan’s antimilitarist constitution.
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| 8 |
ID:
167964
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Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Djibouti's Markazi camp for refugees from Yemen between 2016 and 2018, this article examines the complex motivating factors that drove a subset of Yemenis to seek refuge in the Horn of Africa. Although the primary reason for their flight to the Horn of Africa was the ongoing war, a secondary but not inconsequential driver of many of these Yemeni refugees’ current displacement was their family histories of transnational migrations and interethnic marriages. This article argues that, for this group, it was their “mixed” (muwallad) Arab and African parentage and resulting alienation in Yemen that made their flight imaginable—and, in their view, imperative. Although “mixed motive migration” is not unusual, this example underscores how spatial and social (im)mobilities in Yemen and the Horn of Africa region have been co-constituted across generations. More importantly, it has critical implications for the recently adopted Global Compact on Refugees, which promotes (among other solutions) the “local integration” of refugees in their proximate host societies.
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| 9 |
ID:
121100
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Whether France has an integrated and consistent Indian Ocean strategy or not is open to debate. What is clear though, is that France has some strategic interests in different parts of the Indian Ocean and, on that basis, it has a set of policy priorities. These priorities are threefold: first, to exercise sovereignty over French territories in the south-west Indian Ocean and to maintain an influence in that sub-region; secondly, to deploy a permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Aden, with a capacity to project force in the greater Indian Ocean; and finally, to build a strategic partnership with India, with a view to coordinating maritime security operations in the Indian Ocean Region. The objective of this paper is to look into the kind of challenges that these policy priorities raise for France as well as the policy choices they imply. In so doing, it will suggest that the French ambition to be a power in the Indian Ocean is faced with growing constraints and contradictions.
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| 10 |
ID:
122098
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| 11 |
ID:
160495
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China’s port facility construction projects in the Indian Ocean (IO) region, particularly those in Gwadar and Djibouti, have led to a heated debate among strategists over whether the country has been carrying out a ‘string of pearls’ strategy, an alleged Chinese scheme to challenge America’s military predominance in South Asia. Although Beijing has denied the existence of such a strategy, it has enhanced its strategic ties with littoral countries in the IO region over the past few years. This article discusses the evolution of Beijing’s IO strategy and examines the nature of these Chinese port projects. It argues that rather than simply copying the American model of developing military bases overseas, China has been deliberating a more sophisticated plan for its physical presence there—creating a new set of ‘overseas strategic pivots’. These ‘pivots’ are designed to help Beijing sustain its anti-piracy campaign and serve as forward stations for the transportation of China’s imported energy and merchandise while, with a relatively low-key stance, reducing any unnecessary opposing actions by rival powers. In addition, their political and economic functions are to a certain extent greater than their military functions despite the fact that they appear to be military bases. More importantly, these ‘pivots’ can help China create closer partnerships with littoral governments in the IO region, which suggests that the country is trying to create a friendly international environment favouring its plan to step into the global maritime domain.
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