GIGA Focus Nahost
Nummer 5 | 2018 | ISSN: 1862-3611
Das jüngste Engagement Irans, Saudi-Arabiens und der Türkei am Horn von Afrika hat Befürchtungen geweckt, dass sich der nahöstliche Hegemonialkonflikt auf eine weitere Region mit großer geostrategischer Bedeutung ausweiten könnte. Das Interesse dieser drei Staaten an Afrika ist jedoch weder neu, noch ist es auf das Horn beschränkt. Um mögliche Folgen des Ringens um Einfluss in Afrika richtig einschätzen zu können, ist es daher notwendig, die unterschiedlichen dahinter stehenden Gründe zu verstehen.
Der Aufbau von Beziehungen zwischen den nahöstlichen Regionalmächten und Afrika begann bereits vor mehreren Jahrzehnten. Der Iran intensivierte seine Beziehungen infolge der Sanktionen, die dem Regime nach der Islamischen Revolution 1979 auferlegt wurden. Die türkische Afrikapolitik nahm mit dem Regierungsantritt der Partei für Gerechtigkeit und Entwicklung (AKP) an Fahrt auf. Saudi-Arabien knüpfte erste diplomatische Kontakte mit Afrika im Kontext des arabisch-israelischen Krieges von 1967, entdeckte sein strategisches Interesse am Kontinent jedoch erst kürzlich wieder neu.
Ungeachtet der Tatsache, dass die jeweilige Afrikapolitik der drei Regionalmächte des Nahen Ostens stets auch von spezifischen Interessen geprägt war, bestand das Hauptinteresse Ankaras, Riads und Teherans an Afrika lange Zeit vor allem in wirtschaftlichen Gewinnen sowie im Rekrutieren afrikanischer Staaten als internationale Verbündete.
Im Gegensatz zum früher regelmäßig wiederkehrenden strategischen Desinteresses an der Region betrachten Iran, Saudi-Arabien und die Türkei Afrika heute als zentral zur Erreichung ihrer politischen Ziele im Nahen Osten. Ihr Ringen um Einfluss am Horn von Afrika sowie die zunehmende Militarisierung des Roten Meeres sind nur zwei der sichtbarsten Anzeichen dafür.
Die Politiken Irans, Saudi-Arabiens und der Türkei werden zukünftig einen wichtigen Einfluss auf politische Entwicklungen in Afrika haben. Insbesondere im Bereich Sicherheits- und Migrationspolitik stehen sie im Widerspruch zu den Zielen europäischer Außenpolitik. Die EU sollte sich bewusst darüber sein, dass sich Ankara, Riad und Teheran in Afrika als nützliche Alternative zur EU zu präsentieren wissen. Europäische Akteure müssen daher darauf bedacht sein, ihre belasteten Beziehungen zu afrikanischen Partnerstaaten zu verbessern.
During most of the post-World War II period, Africa and the Middle East have commonly been seen as two distinct regions separated less by geographic distance than by mutual neglect. To all appearances, this reciprocal ignorance has come to an end. This can be observed most clearly on the African coast of the Red Sea, where Middle Eastern states are currently taking over a series of strategic ports for commercial or military purposes. Likewise, it is here that Middle Eastern spats have already reverberated to such an extent that the African Union discussed the spilling over of Middle Eastern conflicts to its shores in January 2018.
The Red Sea has indeed experienced notable militarisation as of late. Besides the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which have already established military bases in the region or are planning to do so, the Middle Eastern states are now also emerging as regional military players. Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Qatar obviously have a stake in these developments, while Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) seem to be bent on becoming key actors in the Greater Horn of Africa and are constructing a series of military bases from Sudan to Somalia.
Yet the debates about the militarisation of the Red Sea obscure the fact that Africa as a whole has become a region of increasing interest to these and other Middle Eastern states. Each state has its own history of relations with Africa. While prospective economic benefits and international prestige have long dominated their agenda, present-day dynamics are heavily driven by the struggle for hegemony in the Middle East.
This paper focuses on the policies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which, as the dominant regional powers in the Middle East, are at the centre of the Middle Eastern hegemonic conflict and the Middle Eastern states’ activities in Africa. On the one hand, their turn to Africa exemplifies how their foreign policies have become more assertive on the international stage, especially regarding South–South relations. On the other hand, however, their current strategic approaches to the continent, and their politics of alliance-building there, closely follow the logics prescribed by the conflict dynamics in their home region.
Although Ankara, Riyadh, and Tehran frequently stress the historic and cultural depth of their centuries-old relationships with Africa, the forging of diplomatic ties with post-colonial African nation states is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Iran first reached out to the continent’s decolonising states in the 1950s. Still under Pahlavi rule, it sought to use its Africa policy mainly to contain communism by supporting the economies of “moderate” states such as Ethiopia, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, and Zaire. By 1976, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution, Iran had established bilateral relations with 31 African states (Nouhou 2014: 142). The emergence of the Islamic Republic altered the country’s approach to these states, increasing their importance to Tehran in many ways.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran was diplomatically isolated across large parts of the globe, including the Middle East. Africa provided an opportunity to break the isolation politically and economically. With international sanctions imposed on Tehran, the continent gained in importance as a market for exports, particularly crude oil, and provided access to raw materials. Poverty across large parts of the continent, in turn, opened the door to Iranian influence in many states, especially in the Sahel, despite Tehran’s limited monetary means. Besides direct military and financial aid, development assistance distributed via Construction Jihad (Jahad-e Sazandegi), an organisation that was created in the wake of the revolution and later merged with the Ministry of Agriculture, was a major tool for gaining a foothold. Missionary activities were another. These were often conducted via Iranian-financed cultural centres or schools, both in countries with significant Shiite minorities such as Ghana or Nigeria and in those with Sunni majorities such as Mali or Senegal.
Altogether, the Islamic Republic’s involvement in Africa has fluctuated in scope and intensity over time, depending on the international pressure on Tehran as well as the foreign policy orientations of its leadership (Lob 2016). It was strongest during President Ahmadinejad’s tenure, when, due to the conflict over its nuclear programme, Tehran was in need of international partners, which it sought in the Côte d‘Ivoire, Lesotho, Mauretania, Namibia, and South Africa, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council from 2007 to 2008. States with notable uranium deposits, such as Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Uganda, became another focal point under Ahmadinejad – as did African “rogue states” such as Sudan or Eritrea, mostly because of their geostrategic location.
During President Rouhani’s first term (2013–2017), Iran’s engagement in Africa abated. With the international nuclear deal in the offing, the continent’s political and economic importance to Iran decreased considerably. Iranian trade figures provide a clear indication of this. Paradoxically, it was at approximately the same time that Saudi Arabia began to rediscover its strategic interest in Africa, after a prolonged period of outright strategic neglect.
The beginnings of Saudi Arabia’s Africa policy date back to King Faysal (1964–1975), who is credited with having established the bulk of diplomatic relations with African states in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War in an effort to isolate Israel. Faysal is thus deemed responsible for the first coherent policy toward the continent, which was, however, abandoned soon after his death. This is not to say that Riyadh was ever completely absent from the continent. The kingdom has always sought to secure its vital interests in its immediate neighbourhood – that is, the (Greater) Horn of Africa, and especially Somalia, where it backed the US in containing the USSR during the Cold War and, later, attempted to bring about agreements among warring factions in the first decade of this century.
Apart from being export markets for crude oil and hydrocarbon products, African states’ role in food security was another reason why some of them remained on the Saudi agenda. When prices for staple foods doubled on the world market in 2007, the kingdom, via the Agricultural Development Fund, launched the King Abdullah Initiative for Saudi Agricultural Investments Abroad, providing subsidies to Saudi companies prepared to invest in foreign farmland. At that time, Saudi agricultural investments had already been initiated in Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, and Niger.
Africa was also affected by Wahhabi proselytisation. Yet compared to other world regions, African states have not been at the centre of Saudi attention in this respect for a long time. Although Riyadh has invested large sums in the building of educational infrastructure in, for instance, West Africa, as well as in the training of African scholars in the kingdom, the Saudi factor is just one among many responsible for the surge of local jihadism (Sounaye 2017). Given that proselytisation, as well as the direct support of Islamist groups abroad, is often seen as a major Saudi foreign policy tool, such comparatively limited efforts suggest that Africa was far from a top priority for Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia rediscovered its strategic interest in Africa in the wake of the Arab uprisings in 2011, chiefly out of fear of Iranian encroachment on the continent. Saudi embassies in Africa had already warned Riyadh of the increasing proselytisation of local Iranian cultural centres, demanding Saudi political responses (Raymond and Watling 2015). Yet it took some years before Riyadh also funnelled commensurate resources to back its new strategic interest. Still, in 2013 a report by the General Department for African States in the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs lamented that Saudi embassies in Africa were ill-equipped and unable to counter Iranian moves, let alone China’s advances to Africa (Wikileaks n.d.). In fact, the country’s new focus on Africa only became visible in 2015. It thus coincided with the coming to power of Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto leader of the kingdom, and the beginning of the war in Yemen.
The Saudi-led military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, whom the kingdom considers to be Iranian proxies, drastically altered the geostrategic importance of the Horn of Africa in the eyes of Riyadh – and of Abu Dhabi, Riyadh’s main Gulf ally and crucial partner in this war. Although the UAE has become one of the most active external actors on the continent in its own right, with major economic stakes in Africa, it appears that Abu Dhabi has so far been closely coordinating its policies with Riyadh. Because Saudi Arabia and the UAE are ultimately pursuing their own interests in Africa, it is fair to assume that conflict dynamics in the Middle East, and the war in Yemen in particular, have facilitated the building of common ground, especially on the African shore of the Red Sea.
In the past four years, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have made great efforts to upend Iran’s relations with Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia. These efforts were largely successful at first, as the bulk of the above-mentioned states lessened their ties with Tehran, making it more difficult, for instance, for Iranian vessels to navigate the Red Sea. Also, the UAE now runs military bases in Eritrea (Assab) and Somaliland (Berbera), and Saudi Arabia is about to open its first military base in Djibouti. Yet the conflict constellations in the Red Sea are complex and rapidly shifting, and the recent diplomatic tensions between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on the one hand and Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia on the other have opened up space for regional competitors, including Turkey, to regain influence in the Horn.
Turkey has been struggling to extend its clout in the regions adjacent to the Middle East for the past two decades. While Turkey’s initial interest in Africa dates back to the coalition government under Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit (1999–2002), Turkish relations with African states intensified with the coming to power of Recep Tayyib Erdoğan, who in 2005 launched Turkey’s official “Opening to Africa” policy. Despite being a relative newcomer, Ankara rapidly gained on Riyadh and Tehran, and today self-confidently presents the fruits of its efforts in government fact sheets (Demirci and Mehmet 2018).
The figures are certainly telling. For instance, the number of Turkish embassies in Africa has risen from 12 in 2009 to 40 in 2018. Turkey’s bilateral trade with African countries reached a volume of USD 18.8 billion in 2017, marking a three-fold increase since 2003, whereas Turkish investments are estimated to have surpassed USD 6 billion by early 2018. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government also dwells on its increased official development assistance to African countries or on Erdoğan, who has visited 23 African states 39 times, as “the leader who visited Africa the most in the world” (_Daily Sabah_2018).
Notwithstanding the Turkish media’s proclivity to depict Erdoğan as Africa’s best friend, however, Turkey’s policy toward the continent is not altruistic. Ankara’s Africa policy in the first decade of this century was mainly motivated by the prospect of economic gains and political visibility in international affairs (Korkut and Civelekoglu 2013). Such strategic concerns seem to have become even more pressing over the past few years. Africa’s economic potential surely remains a driving force behind its “Opening to Africa,” but it is not the sole explanation for Ankara’s recent advances. In fact, Turkish exports to sub-Saharan states have stagnated in the past few years, whereas Turkish investments have concentrated chiefly on North Africa. While Erdoğan’s latest visits to Africa may thus have aimed to push the Turkish economy, they have also served to strengthen political relations with new allies following Turkey’s falling-out with the EU and the escalation of Middle Eastern power struggles.
We thus have a mixed bag of reasons accounting for past periods of Iranian, Saudi, and Turkish engagement, or disengagement, in Africa. Besides being targets for proselytisation, which has chiefly been conducted by Tehran and Riyadh and which seems to have been a means rather than an end, African states have often been seen as a source of international allies. Moreover, economic motivations have dominated the Iranian and Turkish agendas, as well as Saudi Arabia’s. The latter’s exports to sub-Saharan states by far eclipse those of Iran and Turkey. Yet if we look at these countries’ trade figures for sub-Saharan states as a percentage of their total trade, it is hard to see how economic motivations alone can explain their recently stepped-up efforts. This holds especially true for Saudi Arabia as its oil-based economy is hardly complementary to those of many African states, which are also generally based on natural resources, and often hydrocarbons.