Category World News

When Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited Somaliland on Tuesday, he became the first Israeli official to visit the breakaway republic since his country established full diplomatic relations with it in the closing days of last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the diplomatic recognition of Somaliland – a breakaway part of Somalia – on December 26. He said that the recognition was in keeping with “the spirit of the Abraham Accords”, referring to the United States-led initiative encouraging a number of Arab countries to normalise relations with Israel in return for diplomatic and financial concessions from the US.

But Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has prompted protests within Somalia and complaints from dozens of countries and organisations, including Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and the African Union.

Meeting with Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi in the Somaliland capital of Hargeisa on Tuesday, Saar told reporters that Israel had not been discouraged by criticism of its decision.

“We hear the attacks, the criticism, the condemnations,” he said. “Nobody will determine for Israel who we recognise and who we maintain diplomatic relations with.”

Hegemon

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland comes after more than two years of its genocidal war on Gaza, and attacks on regional countries, including Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Qatar.

Attacks on Lebanon continue, and there are new indications that Israel may be seeking to launch renewed attacks on Iran, its main regional nemesis.

Israel’s wars appear to be an attempt to portray itself – with US backing – as the regional hegemon, uninterested in compromising with its enemies.

Recognition of Somaliland, despite regional opposition, marks the latest part of that strategy.

And Israel has found a new ally in the Horn of Africa on the back of its decision.

Despite being self-governing for more than 30 years, Somaliland has failed to gain international recognition, despite maintaining its own currency, passport and army.

Recognition has been elusive, meaning that even if there are qualms from some over ties with Israel, many are willing to overlook them in the hope that this decision will pave the path for other countries to follow.

“Clans, militias and corruption have ruined Somalia,” Somali journalist and human rights activist Abdalle Mumin, who was previously imprisoned by his country’s authorities, told Al Jazeera, “At least in Somaliland they have achieved some kind of peace and stability.”

“Many hope that other countries will follow Israel,” Mumin continued.

Why has Israel recognised Somaliland?

Nevertheless, speculation over why Israel chose to recognise Somaliland has mounted since Netanyahu’s announcement, with analysts pointing to its strategic location at the crossroads between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Somaliland’s port of Berbera lies close to some of the world’s busiest maritime routes, which have come under attack over the past two years from Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement, a sworn enemy of Israel.

These were all factors in Israel’s recognition, former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said, acknowledging that the Netanyahu government also benefitted from preserving the suggestion that Somaliland may take in Palestinians forced out of Gaza.

However, Levy suspects Israel’s ambitions may be grander still, including increasing the country’s value to its chief sponsor, the US.

By securing an ally in a strategically important region,

The key dynamic, according to Levy, is momentum.

“If you set out to do something like this, you can’t just stop [at recognition],” he told Al Jazeera. “You have to keep taking steps: more aircraft, more presence, more moves. Once you’ve committed to this kind of game, you need to stay at the table.”

The timing of the move, shortly before Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Donald Trump on December 29, also held significance, Levy said.

Israel was trying to place itself more firmly on what it imagines Washington’s agenda to be, and how it imagines great power competition in the Horn of Africa, particularly with China, which maintains a base in neighbouring Djibouti, might play out.

“We’ve seen before that Israel can put something on the table and the Americans follow later,” he said.

Israel may be implicitly telling the US, “We’re active, and we’re positioned in a way that helps you. Having us there helps you.”

Momentum

According to many observers, the past two years of war have already fundamentally changed the nature of Israel, with the strain of its genocidal war on Gaza, plus news assaults upon its regional neighbours, leaving the country fractured, isolated and with the hard right firmly in the ascendancy.

How enthusiastic the country might be for additional adventures in the Horn of Africa, a region, according to many observers, that remains largely unknown to much of the Israeli public, is unclear.

“Israelis have no idea what or where Somaliland is. It’s a non-issue in Israel,” Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and consul general in New York, told Al Jazeera.

“The first time the news came out, it was published alongside maps showing the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and its position across the Gulf of Aden. They had to show people where it was,” he said, dismissing the suggestion that Israel may ever station troops there.

A ceasefire has come into to force after heavy fighting in Aleppo, Syria. Clashes began after talks on integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into the national army stalled. Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar is there.

Venezuela has released a “large number” of high-profile political prisoners, including several foreigners, in an apparent concession to the United States less than a week after its forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The releases on Thursday were the first since Maduro’s former deputy Delcy Rodriguez took office as interim leader, with the backing of US President Donald Trump, who says he is content to let her govern as long as she gives Washington access to the country’s oil.

Former Venezuelan opposition candidate Enrique Marquez – who opposed Maduro in the contested 2024 presidential election – was among those released on Thursday.

“It’s all over now,” Marquez said in a video filmed by a local journalist of him and his wife, accompanied by another released opposition member, Biagio Pilieri.

Delcy Rodriguez’s brother, parliament speaker Jorge Rodriguez, said “a large number of Venezuelan and foreign nationals” were being immediately freed for the sake of “peaceful coexistence”.

He did not say which prisoners would be released, nor how many or from where.

Venezuelan rights NGO Foro Penal estimates more than 800 political prisoners are in the country’s jails.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado hailed the releases, saying in an audio message on social media: “Injustice will not last forever and … truth, although it be wounded, ends up finding its way.”

Renowned Spanish-Venezuelan activist Rocio San Miguel was among five Spanish citizens freed, according to Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

San Miguel has been imprisoned since February 2024 over a purported plot to assassinate Maduro, which she denied.

The White House credited Trump with securing the prisoners’ freedom.

“This is one example of how the president is using maximum leverage to do right by the American and Venezuelan people,” Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement.

Maduro was seized in a special forces raid in early January, with air strikes and operations that killed 100 people, according to Caracas. US forces took Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to New York to face trial on drug charges.

Trump has said the US would “run” the Caribbean country for a transitional period and tap into its oil reserves for years.

Trump announced a plan earlier this week for the US to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, with Caracas then using the money to buy US-made products. Trump is scheduled to meet oil executives on Friday.

Trump broadened his threat to drug traffickers in a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday night, saying he would target cartels in land strikes.

The US military has already destroyed at least 31 vessels in maritime attacks in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, killing at least 107 people, in attacks that legal experts have said flout international law and could amount to war crimes.

Trump also said he would meet Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Machado in Washington next week.

“I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Trump said last week that Machado does not have the respect or support within Venezuela to lead the country, and he told Fox News on Thursday that the South American country was not in a position to hold new elections.

“We have to rebuild the country. They couldn’t have an election,” he said.

“They wouldn’t even know how to have an election right now.”

Machado has offered to share her Nobel Prize with Trump, who has said he deserved the award.

US President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 has emboldened him to proceed with the annexation of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory, spelling the effective end of NATO and furthering Russia’s war aims in Ukraine, experts tell Al Jazeera.

The day after Maduro’s kidnap by US forces, Trump made Europe fretful – a sport of which he never seems to tire – when he told The Atlantic, “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defence.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “It has been the formal position of the US government since the beginning of this administration …  that Greenland should be part of the United States.”

“The move on Venezuela illustrates the Trump administration’s determination to dominate the Western Hemisphere – of which Greenland geographically is a part,” said Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, a think tank.

“Since the successful intervention in Venezuela immediately was followed with threats of using force against Greenland, among others in the hemisphere, it has in the short run, made it more likely,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Denmark’s public broadcaster on January 4.

But she predicted it would spell death for the NATO alliance.

“If the United States decides to attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO and therefore post-World War II security,” Frederiksen said.

Wieslander agreed.

“Should the darkest hour come and the United States uses military force to annex Greenland, the essence of Article 5 and collective defence within NATO would lose its meaning,” she said.

Article 5 is NATO’s mutual defence clause, committing allies to come to each other’s aid.

‘NATO would be a shadow of itself’

“You could argue that if you marry what’s happening in Ukraine to a possible invasion of Greenland, one could make the argument that it could be a deadly one-two combination that would basically ruin the alliance,” said Chicago University history professor John Mearsheimer. “NATO would be a shadow of itself. It would effectively be wrecked.”

Yet when Europe’s leaders met White House officials in Paris to design security guarantees for Ukraine, they said nothing in public about Venezuela or Greenland.

“The priority is Ukraine, European defence and European security, and keeping the Americans in,” international affairs professor Konstantinos Filis at the American College of Greece told Al Jazeera.

But Europeans see the writing on the wall, and are merely buying time, believed Keir Giles, Eurasia expert for Chatham House, a think tank.

“The pandering to Trump has been an element of our strategy over the last year, leaving observers hoping, but not entirely trusting, that another element of the strategy is preparing urgently for the final rupture with the United States,” Giles said.

The moral hazard for Europe

Giles told Al Jazeera that Europe’s best option was to place a military deterrent on Greenland now, believing that putting allied troops in the Baltic States and Poland after 2017 deterred a Russian attack there.

“The principle for deterring the United States from military miscalculation should be precisely the same as the one, which was available, but not applied for deterring Putin from invading Ukraine in February 2022,” he said.

A US armed invasion of Greenland would be doubly bad for Europe by playing into Putin’s hands in Ukraine, Giles said.

“The idea that larger powers can have a free hand in what they regard as their own back yard is very much to Russia’s taste,” he said. Invading Greenland, he believed, would amount to “potentially handing Moscow the greatest gift to the Trump administration has yet offered”.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a symposium this week that the loss of common NATO values weakened the world order.

“It’s about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers,” Steinmeier said.

Seeing these possibilities, European officials have been discussing military options.

When Trump mentioned his Greenlandic aspirations last year, France sent a nuclear submarine off Canada’s shores to put him on notice that the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland are French sovereign territories.

This week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, “We want ​to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,” and was due to discuss plans with Germany and Poland.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told journalists, ”Since Denmark belongs to NATO, Greenland will in principle also be defended by NATO.”

Will there be a military intervention?

Experts were divided on what method Trump would use to acquire Greenland.

Marco Rubio told journalists on Wednesday that he would meet the Danish government next week in the coming days, but refused to take military options against Greenland off the table.

“If the president identifies a threat to the national security of the United States, every president retains the option to address it through military means … we always preferred to settle it in different ways, that included in Venezuela,” he said.

Mearsheimer believed Trump’s track record of attacking Iran last June, Nigeria in December and Venezuela now elevated the chances.

“If you look at Trump’s pattern of behaviour, how willing he is to use military force when you can do it on the cheap and get away with it … the fact that … it could be portrayed as another pinprick operation, tells you there’s a really good chance that he could take Greenland,” he told political scientist Glenn Diesen.

Others disagreed. “Trump may want to strengthen the autonomy movement within Greenland and get them to ask for US help,” said Filis.

The leader of Greenland’s main opposition party on Thursday said Copenhagen should get out of the way and allow Greenland to come to an arrangement directly with the US.

“We encourage our current [Greenlandic] government actually to have a dialogue with the US government without Denmark,” said Pele Broberg, the leader of Naleraq. “Because Denmark is antagonising both Greenland and the US with their mediation.” Naleraq won 25 percent of the national vote last year, doubling its previous showing.

Giles agreed that “coercion, pressure, blackmail, direct or indirect subversive activities or extortion,” would be Trump’s opening moves.

Trump is considering bribing Greenlanders with a per capita sum between $10,000 and $100,000 to join the US, Reuters reported on Friday.

Why does Trump want it?

At the end of the day, though, Trump’s policy still amounts to pushing Europe out of what he sees as his hemisphere. Why?

Trump, Rubio and Stephens all cited security, but Denmark gave the US full permission to establish military bases, bring in equipment and personnel, fly aircraft and sail ships in and out of Greenland in a 1953 treaty. The US operates a radar station in Pituffik, providing early warning of ballistic missiles flying over the North Pole from Russia.

A year ago, Trump told reporters that the US should absorb Greenland and resume control of Panama, because “we need them for economic security”.

“It’s to do with new sea routes as the Arctic opens up, and of course, security,” said Filis. “The Arctic Circle is going to be an area of competition among the great powers.”

Arctic sea ice has been melting, allowing the volume of commercial shipping across the North Pole to increase ninefold over the past decade, according to Putin. That leaves open the possibility that military shipping could also increase, especially with Russia and China holding more joint exercises at sea.

Panama, too, is a vital sea passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Protests across Iran are growing as thousands of people voice anger at the dire state of the country’s economy. Ahead of more planned protests, monitors say there is a near total internet blackout. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi filed this update from Tehran.