30 October 2017

China stretches its long arm to Djibouti

Nizar Manek

The People’s Liberation Army’s overseas garrison conducted its first live-fire drills from China’s base inDjibouti last month. The base on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean, was inaugurated in July, and is embedded in Djibouti’s new Doraleh Multi-Purpose Port. At the port’s opening ceremony two months earlier, two vessels, one owned by Ethiopian Logistics & Shipping Enterprise (ESLSE) and the other by China’s state-owned COSCO Shipping Lines, berthed at the port, and fêted Djibouti’s President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh with a long whistle.

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