Why African Oil Cannot Solve the Global Fuel Crisis

The National Interest | Yagiz Sullu

Nigeria, Angola, Libya and Algeria have long supplied crude to world markets and offer shipping routes that avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Amid ongoing Middle East conflict, buyers seek these alternatives to reduce exposure. Yet established producers cannot rapidly raise output to ease the global fuel crisis.

Most lack spare capacity. Production in Nigeria, Angola and Algeria has declined for years as fields mature and exploration lags. Nigeria’s Bonga Complex and Agbami face natural depletion, compounded by pipeline vandalism and theft. Fifteen of Angola’s twenty largest fields have reached at least 70 percent maturity. Algeria’s Hassi Messaoud requires fresh investment under heavy state control. Africa’s refining base remains thin; many producers still import products. Nigeria’s Dangote refinery has reached 700,000 barrels per day, but new capacity will take years. Domestic gasoline and diesel demand is projected to rise to 2050, pressuring governments to favour local markets. Diversifying suppliers can cut route risk but cannot offset shortages or price spikes when oil trades globally. Spare production capacity remains the decisive missing element.

How non-state alliances are reshaping the global order

Asia Times | John P Ruehl

Yemen's Houthi rebels have expanded cross-border strike operations against Saudi infrastructure while formalizing maritime smuggling networks across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Despite ideological divides, Ansar Allah supplies technical training and advanced weaponry to Somalia's Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State in Somalia in exchange for maritime access along critical East African shipping lanes.

Maritime piracy and illicit trafficking now generate approximately $6 trillion globally in black-market trade, sustaining decentralized insurgencies without direct state oversight. These transactional pacts allow non-state actors to bypass naval blockades and project power across vital maritime chokepoints. Similar dynamics drive conflict in Sudan, where over 150 armed groups exploit illicit gold corridors, and in Mali, where Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin leverages trafficking revenues to resist state control. Non-state entities are increasingly self-sustaining. Consequently, inter-militant cooperation complicates international counter-terrorism efforts across Africa and the Middle East.

The New Red Sea Wars

Foreign Affairs | Alan Boswell

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed the United States Congress on June 3 that the three-year conflict in Sudan had evolved into a proxy war, explicitly blaming Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for frustrating American mediation efforts. This regionalization of Sudan's internal power struggle reflects a broader, highly volatile geopolitical transformation unfolding across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

The convergence of these once-disparate regional theaters has effectively blurred traditional boundaries, binding the security architecture of the Red Sea littoral into a single, deeply intertwined crisis zone. Outside interventions and overlapping rivalries threaten to prolong regional instability and complicate international diplomatic responses. Strategic competition among Gulf states and external powers increasingly dictates local alignments, exacerbating protracted conflicts and obstructing pathways toward durable political settlements.

Why Fifth-Generation Terrorism (5GT) Poses a Major Security Challenge: What We Must Do

HORN Institute | Mustafa Y. Ali

Fifth-generation terrorist organizations are fundamentally transforming global security by blending religious dogma with political pragmatism to build self-perpetuating, quasi-state administrative structures. Regional affiliates like Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, and Boko Haram have transitioned from relying on external state sponsors to monopolizing local economies for financial autarky.

This institutional symbiosis allows fifth-wave non-state actors to co-opt hyper-local socio-economic grievances, achieving deep political legitimacy and operational resilience across ungoverned territories. Conventional military operations alone cannot contain these bureaucratized entities. Over a decade of empirical pilot programming in Kenya and the broader Horn of Africa demonstrates that countering this decentralized threat requires integrating faith leaders, civil society organizations, and local communities into a comprehensive, whole-of-society strategy. Without adapting preventative frameworks to address the religio-political convergence of modern militancy, regional security architectures will remain vulnerable to deeply entrenched extremist networks that effectively exercise territorial sovereignty and advance protracted campaigns of violence.

FIFTH-GENERATION TERRORISM: WHY TODAY’S MILITANT GROUPS OUTLAST THE ARMIES SENT TO DEFEAT THEM

HORN Institute

Fifth-generation terrorism has emerged over the past quarter-century as an integrated threat where religious dogma, political ideology, local grievances, self-funding mechanisms, territorial control, and digital influence mutually reinforce one another. This multi-dimensional evolution directly challenges David Rapoport’s four-wave terrorism model, which framed religiously motivated transnational extremism as the definitive final phase of modern insurgency.

By integrating self-sustaining commercial enterprises with localized governance structures and global communications media, contemporary militant organizations achieve unprecedented structural resilience against traditional military campaigns. Analysts at the HORN Institute emphasize that kinetic counterterrorism interventions fail when confronting these self-funding hybrid entities. Conventional force cannot dismantle decentralized networks. Consequently, state security apparatuses must pivot beyond unilateral military strikes toward broad-spectrum operational strategies that simultaneously target financial supply chains, ideological narratives, and institutional governance deficits. Long-term stabilization depends on aligning military pressure with political reforms and economic interventions to dismantle persistent insurgencies.

The Illusion Of Hard Power: Reflection On How Democratized Technology And Strategic Geography Broke The Superpower Monopoly On War

Eurasia Review | Dawit W. Giorgis

The 2026 military escalation involving Iran and the war in Ukraine have exposed a critical vulnerability in Western conventional military doctrine. Cheap, mass-produced asymmetric technologies like kamikaze drones are successfully bankrupting expensive defensive systems through supply-chain attrition, allowing weaker states to neutralize multi-billion-dollar naval assets and hold global energy markets hostage.

Historically, superpowers assumed that overwhelming firepower could force compliance, a fallacy previously demonstrated by the strategic failures in Vietnam and Iraq. Firepower does not buy compliance. In Africa, external interventions have yielded long-term instability. Today, the democratization of precision weaponry enables actors to exploit strategic maritime bottlenecks like the Strait of Hormuz, shifting the center of conflict into global shipping and insurance networks. Consequently, China exhibits caution regarding Taiwan, recognizing that a nationalist population armed with sea drones could inflict a two-and-a-half-trillion-dollar global shock. Future stability therefore depends on defensive sustainability and diplomatic compromise rather than the illusion of absolute military coercion.

Entangled Conflicts in the Horn of Africa

Council on Foreign Relations | Michelle Gavin

Ethiopian federal forces and Tigrayan combatants resumed high-intensity hostilities in September 2026, shattering the fragile stability maintained since the 2022 Pretoria Agreement that halted a war claiming 600,000 lives. The renewed clashes spread across Amhara and Afar regions as seven armed groups formed the Alliance for Survival to overthrow Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

External rivalries compound internal instability. Eritrea aligned with Tigrayan forces against Addis Ababa over Red Sea port ambitions, while Egypt and the Sudanese Armed Forces back insurgents against Ethiopian forces and their allies. Washington simultaneously declined to renew targeted sanctions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials, championed closer U.S.-Eritrean ties under Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and withdrew funding from the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Deterrence collapsed across the Red Sea. These contradictory policy posture shifts leave local actors unconstrained, accelerating regional fragmentation while al-Shabaab expands security cooperation with Houthi militants along vital maritime corridors.

Al-Qaeda Twenty-Five Years After 9/11: A Changing Network, a Changing Security Challenge

Small Wars Journal | Uma Miskinyar

Al-Qaeda has transformed twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks into a decentralized network where regional affiliates maintain operational autonomy despite a weakened central leadership. In Somalia, al-Shabaab generates over $100 million annually through coercive taxation and business networks, actively transferring surplus funds to external terrorist entities. Sustained Western counterterrorism campaigns accelerated this structural shift toward localized political economies, porous borders, and dispersed command nodes across Africa and Asia.

UN monitors confirmed in 2026 that Sahel-based Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin secured $50 million in ransom payments to fund regional insurgent operations. Meanwhile, de facto chief Sayf al-Adel provides broad strategic oversight from Iran while Afghan sanctuaries expand, including a training facility established at Barg-e Matal in Nuristan. Financial self-sufficiency has replaced central funding. Consequently, this extreme localization dilutes central ideological cohesion, redirecting affiliate focus toward regional civil conflicts and tribal warfare rather than direct transnational strikes against Western targets.

The UAE And The Horn Of Africa’s Perfect Storm

Eurasia Review | Dawit W. Giorgis

The United Arab Emirates is leveraging logistics infrastructure, commercial port concessions through DP World, and clandestine air bridges to project militarized influence across the Horn of Africa. Abu Dhabi's strategic rivalry with Saudi Arabia is fueling parallel conflicts in Sudan and northern Ethiopia, where UAE-supplied S8 series and Chinese-built FH-95 uncrewed aerial vehicles launched from Bahir Dar airport have targeted Sudanese infrastructure.

This external intervention network props up Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration against the Ethiopian People’s Forces Alliance for Survival. Middle Eastern geopolitical rivalries now dictate East African security. A potential state collapse in a nation of 135 million people threatens a massive refugee wave toward the Mediterranean. European nations are pressured to deploy financial leverage, trade restrictions, and conditional IMF bailouts against Abu Dhabi and Addis Ababa. Weaponized maritime choke points near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait ultimately threaten global trade routes and broader international stability.

The Impacts of the Houthis’ Advance Could Extend Well Beyond Saudi Arabia

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Andrew Leber, Lesley Anne Warner

Yemen’s Houthis captured the Port of Mokha and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, shattering a UN-brokered ceasefire and threatening critical global energy trade routes amid broader conflict with Saudi Arabia. This territorial expansion brings Houthi forces within 80 miles of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti while intensifying security risks for Saudi energy infrastructure already strained by pipeline attacks.

Furthermore, the strategic shift enables closer operational collaboration between the Houthis and al-Shabaab through weapons exchanges and technical training. Meanwhile, the impending termination of U.S. funding for UN logistical support in Somalia threatens to provide militant groups with greater freedom of movement across the Horn of Africa. These compounding maritime and regional security developments complicate multilateral efforts to stabilize Red Sea shipping corridors and force regional actors to confront an expanded battlespace extending far beyond the immediate Yemeni theater.

Technological Leapfrogging in the AI Age

Project Syndicate | Mark-Alexandre Doumba

African economies have increasingly relied on past success stories to assume that developing nations can bypass expensive infrastructure stages by adopting foreign technologies. This assumption requires rigorous scrutiny when applied directly to imported artificial intelligence systems. Policymakers face distinct structural hurdles in transforming countries from passive technology consumers into active producers.

The mobile-money revolution offers critical historical lessons for assessing whether similar shortcuts work in the current technological era. Developing nations confront deep infrastructural and capital deficits that complicate straightforward adoption models. Sustainable digital transformation demands domestic capacity building rather than mere reliance on external innovations. Regional leaders must evaluate these limitations carefully before committing national resources to imported foundational systems.

Ukraine’s Military Expertise Is Going Abroad, Along With Questions About Accountability

Eurasia Review | Alan Callow

Ukrainian military specialists with battlefield experience in drone warfare, electronic countermeasures, and assault tactics face mounting allegations of institutional abuse and torture during overseas training deployments in Libya and Myanmar. Investigations by Ukrainian media outlets Texty and Babel revealed severe misconduct within the 225th Separate Assault Regiment and the 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skelya", prompting official inquiries.

This rapid proliferation of unvetted tactical know-how threatens to destabilize ongoing regional conflicts. In March 2026, Indian authorities arrested six Ukrainian nationals and one American in Mizoram for illegally entering Myanmar to train ethnic armed groups in drone operations, jamming, and targeting. Non-state actors rapidly expand their combat capabilities. Advanced aerial strike techniques directly alter local power balances. As Ukraine transitions from a recipient of defense assistance into an exporter of tactical expertise, the absence of centralized vetting risks undermining international security oversight, diplomatic standing, and human rights compliance.

How the Houthis Turned Saudi Arabia’s Flanks into a Regional Battlefield

The Washington Outsider | Irina Tsukerman

Renewed Houthi attacks against Saudi energy infrastructure and southern cities unfold alongside an expanding network linking Yemen, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and the Red Sea. Houthi forces have advanced toward Bab el-Mandeb, securing Perim and the Hanish islands while coordinating weapons smuggling, training, and personnel movement with al-Shabaab across the Gulf of Aden.

This operational convergence utilizes smuggling infrastructure in Hadramout and maritime routes connecting Somalia to Yemen. Iran deliberately leverages this expansive regional ecosystem to apply indirect pressure on Saudi Arabia, disrupting key export routes like the East-West pipeline through drone attacks originating in Iraq and threatening Bab el-Mandeb shipping. Such multi-front coercion increases Riyadh's defense-interceptor expenditure, complicates Mohammed bin Salman's economic diversification goals, and exerts pressure on Saudi-U.S. security cooperation, all while capitalizing on longstanding Houthi grievances against the Saudi monarchy.

Extended Range: China Upgrades Its Military Base in Djibouti

CSIS | Matthew Funaiole, Brian Hart, Aidan Powers-Riggs, Douglas Comstock

China has upgraded its military support base in Djibouti with new signals intelligence and communication equipment, expanding its ability to monitor regional military operations and maintain secure, over-the-horizon links with its forces. These enhancements allow the People's Liberation Army to track signals from foreign militaries operating nearby. Recent conflicts across the Middle East, including Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping and escalating tensions involving Iran, have significantly elevated the intelligence value of these capabilities.

The base opened in 2017. By July 2026, more than 20 U.S. Navy warships, including two carrier strike groups and hundreds of aircraft, were supporting regional operations. These upgrades also complement China's growing security ties and ground-based space infrastructure across Africa, closing critical coverage gaps in its global space-tracking and data-relay networks. Ultimately, these developments establish a persistent forward C4ISR node, allowing Beijing to project power and feed critical information back to its national intelligence community.

How Al-Shabab Beat the Peacekeepers

Foreign Policy | Mohamed Gabobe

Al-Shabaab militants have successfully exploited the phased drawdown of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia to reoccupy critical territories and intensify asymmetric attacks across the Horn of Africa. This security vacuum exposes the systemic vulnerabilities of the Somali National Army, which remains plagued by severe logistical deficits and unresolved clan rivalries.

Over nearly two decades, international partners poured billions of dollars into AMISOM and its successor, ATMIS, yet failed to build a self-sustaining local security apparatus. The insurgents maintained operational resilience by establishing a highly effective shadow administration that out-taxes the federal government. Somalia's security forces cannot hold ground alone. This vulnerability invites disaster. With the transition to a new African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia threatened by regional disputes between Ethiopia and Egypt, the militant group is poised to expand its influence and destabilise East Africa.

The Red Sea Conflict And Its Implications For The Horn

Eurasia Review | Dr. Suleiman Walhad

Houthi strikes originating from Yemen against commercial maritime shipping near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have transformed the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden into an integrated operational theatre of geopolitical confrontation. This escalation allows Iran to project asymmetric power across critical trade choke points while placing Saudi Arabia’s southern frontier and Emirati port logistics networks under acute strain.

This expanding conflict exposes deep structural vulnerabilities across Horn of Africa states that absorb Middle Eastern rivalries without exercising control over them. Djibouti faces heightened vulnerability as host to multiple foreign military installations, while Somalia confronts elevated risks of illicit arms trafficking and militant expansion. Meanwhile, strategic port competition between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi weaponises maritime infrastructure across Ethiopia and Eritrea. Geography defines the current crisis. Unchecked escalation risks permanently embedding external military rivalries into African littoral governance, disrupting vital international energy and commercial shipping flows.

Xi’s Egypt visit hints at China’s larger African vision

Asia Times | Goktug Calıskan

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Egypt on September 2, 2026, marking his first state visit in a decade to deepen strategic and economic ties across Africa. Ahead of the summit, Chinese J-16 fighters and early-warning aircraft deployed over 6,000 kilometers to participate in the second Eagles of Civilization exercise alongside Egyptian forces.

This tactical cooperation highlights Beijing’s expanding presence along critical maritime trade lanes connecting Asia to European markets. Central to this strategy is the China-Egypt TEDA zone at Ain Sokhna, hosting nearly 200 companies with over $3.8 billion in investment as of late 2025. However, severe bilateral trade imbalances persist. In 2025, Chinese exports to Egypt reached $19.9 billion against merely $819 million in Egyptian exports. Furthermore, Huawei has proposed building AI data centers using 2,008 Ascend chips, competing directly with American consortia involving Nvidia, AMD, and Microsoft. Cairo maintains geopolitical flexibility by balancing these superpower technological and military ties without abandoning traditional Western security partners.

The Hybrid Battlefield: M23’s Fusion of Cyber Tactics and Territorial Control

Small Wars Journal | Paige McLachlan

The March 23 Movement (M23) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has evolved into a cyber-enabled insurgency, disrupting GPS signals, manipulating mineral supply-chain data, and deploying social media disinformation to secure strategic territory. By seizing coltan-rich mines in Rubaya and taking Goma, the group funnels roughly 120 tons of coltan monthly through Rwanda, corrupting blockchain-based traceability systems.

This integration of physical territorial control with digital data manipulation exposes serious vulnerabilities in global technology supply chains and degrades military air operations. Chinese firms currently dominate Congolese telecommunications infrastructure. Beijing’s expanding digital footprint reduces American visibility into illicit financial flows and heightens data manipulation risks across critical mineral markets. Although Washington brokered the Washington Accords and historical sanctions targeted conflict minerals, legacy policy tools fail to counter digitally mediated security threats. Sustained regional stability requires U.S. strategy to prioritize cyber capacity building, digital traceability resilience, and direct diplomatic accountability for regional enablers.

How Great Power Rivalry Is Reshaping UN Peacekeeping

Small Wars Journal | Ausiuddin Aftab Abir

United Nations peacekeeping personnel numbers plummeted by mid-2026 to their lowest level in 25 years, driven by escalating great power rivalry, Security Council deadlocks, and severe budget cuts among permanent members. In August 2025, President Donald Trump cancelled roughly $800 million in peacekeeping funds, forcing a 25% personnel cut across nine of eleven active missions.

Deep ideological divides among the P5 permanent members have degraded mission mandates, while host nations like Mali leverage Russian support to terminate deployments like MINUSMA. Consequently, troop-contributing countries like Bangladesh, which fields 4,084 peacekeepers and has lost 175 personnel, bear operational costs and reduced reimbursements following drawdowns that repatriated 1,300 Bangladeshi troops. Escalating asymmetric threats from armed groups using drones and improvised explosive devices further endanger force protection in hostile theaters like South Sudan. As P5 powers treat peace operations as arenas for strategic competition, peacekeeping faces persistent structural decay and diminished international legitimacy.

The U.S. accepts killing more than 140 civilians in just two strikes

Airwars

The United States Department of Defense conceded in its annual Section 1057 report that American airstrikes killed over 140 civilians in two separate 2025 incidents in Yemen. The admitted strikes targeted Ras Isa Port and a Houthi-controlled detention facility, killing 80 and 68 civilians respectively during intensive military operations against Houthi targets.

This marked a dramatic escalation in officially acknowledged non-combatant casualties, contrasting sharply with recent budget cuts across internal Pentagon civilian protection units. The seven-week 2025 campaign in Yemen involved over 1,000 U.S. strikes using air-delivered precision munitions like GBU-39 small diameter bombs, resulting in at least 224 civilian deaths documented by independent monitors. While the report acknowledged selected historical casualties in Iraq and Somalia, it completely omitted contentious counter-narcotics maritime strikes in Latin America and recent air operations in Nigeria, signaling persistent legal and structural exclusions in official Department of Defense civilian harm reporting mechanisms.