Trump invoked the Graham Act’s national-interest waiver to suspend new duties on Russian goods and major Russian energy buyers, along with other sanctions and restrictions.
The waiver came two days before the law’s implementation deadline and follows a separate temporary easing of sanctions on Russian diesel exports.
The moves have drawn praise from a Russian envoy and criticism from Democrats.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Friday waiving parts of a recently enacted package of sanctions aimed at curbing Russia’s ability to prosecute its war against Ukraine.
“I have submitted to the Congress a certification that the issuance of such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States,” Trump wrote in Friday’s order.
The House passed the Russia sanctions bill on Sept. 16, and Trump signed it into law two days later. The bill was introduced over a year ago, and its primary backer was the late Lindsey Graham, a veteran Republican senator who represented South Carolina.
The act required the president to increase duties on all Russian goods imported into the U.S. by up to 500% no later than 30 days after enactment. It also required Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries including China and India that are among the top five purchasers of Russian crude oil or gas.
Trump’s latest order waives these two parts of the Graham Act and comes two days before the law’s implementation deadline. However, the order preserves existing sanctions on Russia under earlier executive orders.
The law could also sanction Russian leaders, officials, and financial institutions, and expand sanctions on Iran.
The move also comes a week after the Trump administration temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel exports through April 2027 to ease a supply crunch caused by the war in Iran.
High fuel prices are a sensitive issue for voters ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 3. Trump’s Republican Party holds a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress.
A ‘historic moment’
“The suspension of some of the provisions of the Graham Act marks an important and truly historic moment,” Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economy envoy, said in a post on X.
“The U.S.-Russia economic dialogue and peacemaking efforts will continue,” Dmitriev added.
Houthi missiles strike Yemen presidential palace, killing five
Attack was the first on Aden’s Al-Maashiq palace in the latest fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saudi Arabia
Guardian staff and agencies
Fri 16 Oct 2026 01.27
Yemen’s Houthis fired missiles at the presidential palace complex in the southern city of Aden on Thursday, killing five people, the government said, as the Saudi-led coalition listed dozens of Houthi attacks on Saudi infrastructure in recent weeks.
The attack was the first on Aden’s Al-Maashiq palace in the current conflict between the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saudi Arabia. The palace is the seat of Yemen’s Saudi-backed and internationally recognised government.
Yemen’s prime minister, Shaya al-Zindani, and cabinet members were safe following the attack, Yemeni information minister Moammar al-Eryani said. Witnesses told Reuters they heard loud booms near the palace. Yemen’s cabinet said the attack involved missiles and drones.
Yemen’s health minister, Qasim Buhaibeh, said five people were killed and 16 wounded in the attack, with casualties including guards and civilian employees.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said its fighters had bombed what he described as the Saudi military operations headquarters in Aden, as part of the group’s declared policy of targeting “Saudi reinforcements wherever they were located”.
Agence France-Presse reported that a Yemeni government minister said on condition of anonymity that the palace attack had hit a command centre for the Saudi-led coalition. The official added that the command centre was hit by three missiles, and the headquarters of the coalition forces at the presidential complex with two missiles, adding that there were Yemeni and Saudi casualties, without providing a specific toll.
Fighting has escalated between the Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition as part of clashes linked to the US and Israeli war on Iran, and aid agencies have warned of rapidly worsening conditions in Yemen.
The clashes have complicated efforts to end the wider Iran war and further rattled global markets as Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s top oil exporters, faces repeated attacks. Regional aviation is affected, too, as the rebels have warned airlines about their use of Saudi airspace for attacks. Thousands of flights across the kingdom have been disrupted.
Saudi Arabia is being urged to reconcile with the United Arab Emirates over Yemen as the price Riyadh must pay to form a military alliance capable of driving the Houthis back.
Relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, where both had backed anti-Houthi forces, plummeted in January this year when a force with which the UAE had been aligned – the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) – was attacked and defeated by Saudi Arabia in a move intended to squash its attempt to recreate a separate southern state. The UAE subsequently in effect quit Yemen.
But the unexpected success in mid September of the Iran-aligned Houthis’ drive to the narrow Bab al-Mandab strait against pro-government forces has transformed the geopolitics of the region again. The push south defeated the previously UAE-backed National Resistance Forces led by Tareq Saleh, whose front rapidly collapsed.
The future role of the UAE in Yemen was discussed at a meeting in Abu Dhabi on Sunday attended by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the UAE president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and a group of other Arab states, including representatives of Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu reportedly offered to help Saudi Arabia defeat the Houthis, an offer that Riyadh would probably find near impossible to accept, even though Donald Trump has failed to answer the Saudi call for US help in Yemen.
A further meeting to discuss Yemen took place on Tuesday in Riyadh between Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, the Saudi defence minister, and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE vice-president.
It is part of a range of signs from the two sides suggesting they may want to find a path to reconciliation, even if only on energy.
Following the Houthis’ push to the Bab al-Mandab strait, a chokepoint on Saudi oil exports, their forces are now trying to consolidate their gains and take the south-western city of Taiz.
“The Houthi forces are mounting simultaneous waves of attacks on the city, trying to exhaust the Taiz Axis force defending the city,” said Baraa Shiban, a Gulf and Yemen specialist at the defence thinktank Rusi who has just spent a week in Taiz. “The Houthis are pushed back, but then the next day they come again on a different front.
“Efforts are being made to try to end the rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and there may be some confidence-building measures. But the UAE has left Yemen, and it is unlikely that Riyadh would let them back in since they are aligned with the STC, and that would spell trouble … the UAE and Saudi Arabia are fundamentally on opposite sides.”
In a detailed report published on November 25, the Financial Times revealed information about Russia’s recruitment of hundreds of Yemenis to fight in Ukraine, luring them with promises of high-paying jobs and even Russian citizenship.
According to the newspaper, the recruitment operations are led by a prominent Houthi political figure, using a company linked to the Houthis that deceived recruits with job offers in Russia.
Upon arrival, however, it became clear that they had been forcibly enlisted into the Russian military and sent to the front lines in Ukraine.
The Financial Times reviewed some of the recruitment contracts, finding that they were connected to a company founded by Houthi politician Abdulwali Abdo Hassan al-Jabri.
Registered in Salalah, Oman, the company is listed as a tourism and medical supply retailer.
Al-Jabri, a member of the Yemeni parliament and a brigadier general in the Houthi-aligned army, was among 174 Houthi leaders sentenced to death in absentia by a military court representing Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
On November 27, investigative researcher Lou Osborne from the Swiss Organization Impact stated that the contracts between Houthi mercenaries and the Russian army pass through the company of Houthi politician al-Jabri, who is “involved in the arms trade between Russia and the Houthis”
According to Osborne, some fighters are recruited in Jordan’s capital, Amman, while working in restaurants, with little to no actual military experience.
According to information from the British newspaper, recruitment operations began in July 2024.
While some of the fighters were experienced in combat, the majority had not received any formal training.
The report claims that many were deceived into traveling to Russia, where they unknowingly signed recruitment contracts they were unable to read.
The newspaper reported that it spoke to several Yemenis from a group of 200 individuals, who confirmed they were promised a $10,000 bonus and a monthly salary of $2,000 when they were asked to travel to Ukraine, along with the prospect of Russian citizenship in the end.
Sokolov has been working as an investor for more than 20 years, including in multinational infrastructure and telecommunications projects. His personal biography also notes his background offering strategic counsel to governments and major companies.
A second former USAID administrator said plenty of wealthy political donors used to run the boards of US enterprise funds – including private equity founder Michael Granoff, a major Democratic donor appointed by President Clinton to serve as chairman of the Albanian-American enterprise fund in the 1990s.
Asked about Sokolov, they said: “The question is, does he have the ability to personally benefit from investment decisions? The answer should be no.”
The Trump administration has already taken unprecedented steps to deepen its ties with Armenia since the White House helped broker a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan last August, committing $9bn to boost its nuclear energy sector and selling $11m of US-made reconnaissance drones to its government, marking America’s first-ever military technology sale there.
The Development Finance Corporation, a government investment arm led by the private equity scion Ben Black, has also announced plans to incorporate the “Tripp Development Company” to build railways and other infrastructure on the proposed route linking Azerbaijan to its contested exclave, Nakhchivan, and to Armenia and Turkey.
Sokolov’s appointment to lead the Tripp+ enterprise fund is only the latest indication of America’s commitment to bolstering development in the strategic corridor linking west Asia to Europe.
The US has operated 13 enterprise funds since 1989, when Congress sent $300m to fund investments in Hungary and Poland after the fall of the Soviet Union. Three years later, Congress authorized the executive branch to create new enterprise funds in any eastern European state. The Tripp+ enterprise fund was set up under the auspices of this post-Soviet legislation.
The Trump administration has asked Congress to expand its authority to create enterprise funds anywhere in the world, according to its 2027 budget request.
There are some indications that Sokolov’s funding pool will grow. Jeremy Lewin, a senior foreign aid official at the state department, told the Council of Foreign Relations in April that the agency had secured $400m to put towards the Tripp+ fund.
“I think that’s, like, one test case of many about how we’re trying to reorient foreign assistance, especially in the sort of economic investment space,” Lewin said.
Both guests added a sixth name. Lautman has published an investigation into Konstantin Sokolov, the Trump ballroom donor the State Department put in charge of a $201 million Caucasus fund; Reuters reported Thursday that he holds major Armenia assets and a history of Russian business. Parnas said he worked with the Reuters reporters on it.
Reported on Zev Shalev’s Substack Oct 16 2026
See Reuters Report:
Reuters: Investigation into Trump Donor Konstantin Sokolov
Back in March of this year this was reported, but I missed it. Seems it has been under reported:
Inside the Supply Chain Funneling Irish Alumina to Russian Rockets
Investigation
Leaked transaction data reveals how a major refinery in Ireland feeds into the aluminum supply chain of Russian weapons manufacturers arming Putin’s forces as they attack Ukraine.
Key Findings
Europe’s largest refinery of alumina — the main raw material used to make aluminum — has been sending the majority of its exports to Russian smelters that feed into the supply chain of EU-sanctioned arms manufacturers.
The Ireland-based plant, Aughinish Alumina, has increased its exports to Russian smelters since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Once in Russia, the alumina is processed into aluminum and sold to clients that include a Moscow-based trader which has supplied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of aluminum to Russian arms manufacturers, leaked transaction data shows.
These arms manufacturers include more than 40 firms that have been sanctioned by the EU, and whose weapons have killed thousands of civilians and caused widespread damage in Ukraine.
Despite the EU’s calls for member states to stockpile alumina due to its importance in industry and defense, the bloc has not placed restrictions on the raw material’s export to Russia.
Along a rugged, wind-swept shore in western Ireland stands Aughinish Alumina, the hulking industrial complex that is Europe’s largest alumina refinery.
Inside the sprawling plant, heat and pressure are harnessed to transform bauxite — a reddish rock mined oceans away — into alumina, the main raw material needed to produce aluminum.
Strong and resistant to corrosion, aluminum is vital for manufacturing military hardware like missiles, drones, and aircraft. That’s one reason why the European Commission has called on member states to stockpile alumina as a defense against hostile powers.
Yet rather than remaining in the European Union, the majority of the Aughinish factory’s exports are shipped to Russia’s largest aluminum smelters. Those smelters, in turn, feed into a supply chain of sanctioned defense contractors whose weapons have killed thousands of civilians in Ukraine, a new investigation by OCCRP and partners has found.
Reporters could not track the final destination of a specific batch of Aughinish’s alumina, as the powdery substance is typically mixed together with alumina from other sources in the smelting process.
However, customs and trade data show that since 2023, more than half the Ireland-based refinery’s alumina exports have gone to smelters in Russia owned by the plant’s Russian parent company, United Company Rusal.
After processing the alumina into aluminum, the smelters have sold more than $650 million worth of the metal to a Moscow-based trader, Aluminium Sales Company (ASK), which supplies aluminum to clients that include dozens of EU-sanctioned Russian weapons manufacturers, according to leaked transaction data. (The data does not detail the volume of aluminum sold.)
Weapons made by these firms have leveled entire city blocks in Mariupol, struck a children’s hospital in Kyiv, and blown open an apartment building in western Ukraine, according to EU sanctions listings, Ukraine’s military intelligence, and the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
When reached for comment, Aughinish told OCCRP that it operates “in strict compliance with all applicable European Union laws, including sanctions, export control measures and trade regulations.” The company said it had implemented “robust sanctions compliance and due diligence framework covering its entire supply chain,” though it did not respond to specific questions about whether its products might be used to build Russian weapons.
The firm emphasized that alumina and aluminum are basic commodities serving “broad general purpose societal needs…vital for countless civilian industries.”
Alex Prezanti, a U.K. barrister and sanctions specialist, said the lack of restrictions on the alumina trade reflects the tightrope the EU must walk as it tries to stem the flow of money and materials to Russia without compromising the bloc’s own economic interests.
“EU policymakers have to draw a balance between potential impact of sanctions on Russia and potential impact of sanctions on their domestic economies,” said Prezanti, a co-founder of the State Capture Accountability Project non-profit.
No further action was taken on alumina “either because the EU didn’t think that it would have sufficient impact, or because one or more member states decided that this ban was not in their national interests.”
The European Commission did not respond to requests to comment.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade stressed that alumina is “not a sanctioned good” and “therefore its export to other countries, including Russia, is not restricted.”
A lack of data makes it “difficult to ascertain where Russia is sourcing its tools and weapons from,” a spokesperson said, adding that “Ireland remains unequivocal in its continuing support for Ukraine in light of Russia’s unjustified invasion.”
Yet Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, a former Ukraine defense official who is now a fellow at the think-tank RUSI, sees a concerning contradiction. In his view, supplying Russia with EU-made alumina “could undermine NATO’s stated goals of supporting Ukraine and deterring Russia.”
Pavlo Shkurenko, a Sanctions Research Fellow at Kyiv School of Economics Institute, also warns that Europe’s “entanglement” with Russia’s metallurgical sector carries serious risks for the continent.
It enables “not only direct daily attacks on Ukrainian civilians, but also potential confrontation with Europe itself, as the development of Russian military industry suggests.”
Attack by Black Sea Vessel Halt Ukrainian Corridor and Raise Trade Risks
Published: July, 29 2026
Between July 20 and 27, 2026, increasing attacks on merchant vessels in the Black Sea caused shipping to be suspended on Ukraine’s maritime corridor and disrupted tanker operations around Russia’s Novorossiysk port. Ukrainian and international officials reported rising risks to crews and cargoes that led to calls for UN Security Council action and scrutiny of regional maritime security and trade flows.
Shipping Suspended on Ukraine’s Black Sea Maritime Corridor
Ukrainian officials recently reported that shipping on Ukraine’s dedicated maritime corridor in the Black Sea has been suspended, with no vessel traffic recorded for the first time since 2023. This came about following recent attacks against commercial vessels and seafarers in the area; ship operators therefore decided to assess voyage risk more thoroughly and temporarily cease transits along this corridor. Ukrainian authorities stated that all ports remained operational while this decision by individual companies or operators reflect an heightened threat environment.
This incident coincides with Ukraine’s peak agricultural harvest season when outbound grain shipments usually increase dramatically. Ukrainian officials stated that on affected days no ships passed through the Black Sea corridor, underscoring how security incidents directly impacted export flows. Charterers and commodity traders who depend on predictable access to Ukrainian ports for grain cargoes, as well as route planners and insurers operating voyages in the northwestern Black Sea region, expressed serious concern over this disruption to operations and made additional assessments more complex for journeys in that part of the sea.
Market participants now face increased uncertainty regarding near term scheduling and utilization of the corridor. Its suspension comes amid evolving risk guidance in the region, such as existing advisories on military activity, mines and drone operations. Shipowners and charterers are monitoring official updates, security advisories and insurance conditions closely as they assess whether to resume voyages to Ukrainian Black Sea ports.
Tanker catches fire off Romania after reported drone strike, 8 crew missing
Romanian authorities launch search and rescue operation after reported explosions aboard San Marino-flagged vessel; Romania, Bulgaria to discuss possible NATO consultations
Aysu Bicer
15 October 2026•Update: 15 October 2026
ArchiveLONDON
Eight of the 12 crew members aboard a San Marino-flagged tanker are missing after the vessel caught fire following reported explosions off Romania’s Black Sea coast, Romanian naval authorities said Thursday.
The Wine Trader reported several explosions and a fire at around 7 am local time (0500GMT) while sailing from Tunisia to Romania, according to information provided by the authorities.
The tanker was located 13 nautical miles (24 kilometers) east of the mouth of the River Danube near Sulina when the incident occurred.
A search and rescue operation is underway for the missing crew members, with two Black Hawk helicopters and two rescue boats deployed, Romanian authorities said.
The immediate priority is to reach the four crew members confirmed to be alive, while ensuring the safety of rescue teams amid reports of very high waves in the area.
The Romanian Interior Ministry released video footage showing a helicopter hovering above the vessel.
The incident came amid a series of reported drone attacks on vessels in the western Black Sea region.
On Tuesday, two merchant ships were struck by drones farther south along the coast of Bulgaria, Romania’s neighbor.
One of the vessels sank, leaving 11 crew members missing. Bulgaria said it suspected Russia was behind the attack and summoned the Russian envoy.
Russia said two cargo ships carrying military cargo bound for Ukraine’s Odesa port had been hit during a sea crossing but did not identify the vessels.
Meanwhile, the presidents of Romania and Bulgaria are due to discuss Thursday whether to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty.
Mercenary group helping quell Haiti gangs, Erik Prince says
A pedestrian walks near the Bank of the Republic of Haiti, right, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 21, 2019.Associated Press / Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery, file
Prince, a Hillsdale College graduate and the founder of mercenary security business Vectus Global, said Tuesday that some of his employees were successfully fighting gangs in Haiti. They were supporting a task force of Haitian national police, he said. The former U.S. Navy SEAL shared a video clip from CNN depicting a gang leader asking Prince’s mercenaries to cease operations. In addition to boots-on-the-ground support, Prince’s Vectus Air Defense Systems is known to carry out drone strikes.
Haiti has been mostly controlled by gangs since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. The police task force and its partners, including Prince’s group, have focused on fighting gangs in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Violence has continued across the country—for instance, a farming community’s church was burned in August, and dozens were reported dead. A United Nations-backed, multinational gang suppression force has deployed to Haiti and reported some success. But after months of operations, the UN said Sept. 29 that the force hadn’t yet reached its target size of 5,500 troops.
Prince said he recently saw evidence of better security conditions on a trip to Port-au-Prince. Combined security forces halted gangs’ advance in the capital and made progress in pushing them back, he added. Some markets reopened, children were once again walking to school in uniform, and police were patrolling the streets, he claimed.
However, the latest UN report on violence in Haiti noted that security forces sometimes killed bystanders while targeting gangs, especially during operations using explosive drones. At least 95 people not associated with gangs were killed from April to June, and the drones killed or hurt six children, according to the UN report. The report also said that while security forces curbed gang activity in some areas of the capital, violence worsened in other neighborhoods as rival gangs clashed.
Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read a feature profile of Erik Prince and his evangelical Christian roots in the Midwest.
After multiple sources previously told the Guardian that Erik Prince – Maga ally and founder of the now defunct mercenary company Blackwater – was looking to work with Ukraine’s invaluable drone sector, recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents confirm he now is.
Swarmer, which bills itself as a battle-tested Ukrainian startup specializing in autonomous drone software, filed for an initial public offering and has recruited Prince to help sell the company as non-executive chair.
“Swarmer is a software-first defense technology company focused on collaborative autonomy and intelligent swarming, originating from the cauldron of modern combat in Ukraine,” said Prince in a letter to prospective stockholders in the filing, released earlier this month.
“Since April 2024, Swarmer’s platform has been deployed in Ukraine with more than 100,000 real-world missions in active combat environments, informing the software and machine-learning models that feed into it.”
Defense industry hawks have eyed the battlefield intelligence the Ukrainian military has accrued in over four years of combat with Russia. The war has caused close to 2m casualties, but global military elites, like Prince, are also seeing glimpses of what a future war between world powers might look like and what products the US or its geopolitical rival China will need to buy.
On its website, Swarmer lauds endorsements from the newly installed Ukrainian defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who is aggressively lobbying the US and other Nato allies to buy into his country’s weapons industry. Swarmer products, powered by artificial intelligence, are on the cutting edge of the future of war, with software enabling pilots to control drone swarms.
Swarmer mentions the potential profits in drone warfare in the same filing, noting to investors that “defense forces, including the US Department of Defense [and] Nato allies”, see “autonomous drone operations” as “requiring immediate investment”.
In a July announcement on the grounds of the Pentagon, the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, declared that the US was “Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance” in a memorandum calling for the mass production, purchase and adoption of all unmanned vehicle platforms.
“Drones are the biggest battlefield innovation in a generation, accounting for most of this year’s casualties in Ukraine,” he said.
“Erik is trying to network with companies here, for Congo,” said an executive at a multinational defense contractor with business in Ukraine. “He poached some operators who served here too.”
Through a spokesperson, Prince declined to comment on his work in Ukraine and about recruiting drone operators from there to serve in the DRC. Swarmer did not respond to a request for comment regarding its relationship with Prince.
In the fall, Swarmer, which advertises several “mission templates” for drones ranging from surveillance to something it calls a “Killbox”, secured millions in investment.
Prince and a legion of Silicon Valley executives, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have descended on Kyiv in recent years looking to score government contracts and access to both the software powering combat drones and the Ukrainian operators pioneering their flight.
But even as a frontman, Prince comes to Swarmer as a highly controversial figure who is also a known associate of Donald Trump’s longtime adviser Steve Bannon. Blackwater – Prince’s former company that made millions in contracts with the Pentagon and the CIA – has become synonymous with the corruption and failures of the war in Iraq. A 2007 massacre in Baghdad at the hands of some of Prince’s mercenaries led to prison sentences, congressional inquiries and the company changing its name.
Prince eventually resigned as the CEO in 2009, but hung around the defense contracting world and pursued ventures in China, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, South Sudan and Ukraine, where in 2020 he pitched Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a multibillion-dollar private army to help settle what was a frozen war in the eastern Donbas region.
In September, multiple sources described to the Guardian how Prince was making several trips to Kyiv, courting Ukrainian drone makers who might be eager to sell him into their business – Swarmer fitting the profile of the type of company with which he was looking to do business.
“I guess he finally found the company to invest in, in Ukraine,” said a former American special forces soldier with experience in Ukraine and knowledge of the defense companies operating there.
Swarmer has featured in western media since its founding in 2023, along with several other Ukrainian tech companies emerging from the flurry of Pentagon and Nato weapons transfers to Ukraine and the rush to continue resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion by any means necessary.
Mostly outgunned against the Kremlin’s vast arsenal and coffers, Ukraine has turned to drones and homegrown solutions as asymmetric equalizers. Recent remarks by Zelenskyy puts Swarmer among hundreds of other Ukrainian drone companies that are now active in the country.
“As of today, we have 450 companies producing drones, 40 to 50 of which are top-tier,” said Zelenskyy in a recent speech. “Everyone wants to invest, so 2026 will be a year of investment in our technologies, primarily in drones.”
Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning
Since 2011, the UAE has regularly resorted to using mercenaries to wage its wars in Libya and Yemen. Its small population of 2.7 million leaves it unable to recruit enough troops. It is also risk averse in deploying them abroad where casualties for an unsupported cause are unacceptable to the population. Hence, the oil-rich state started hiring contract soldiers from abroad to fight for it in Yemen against the Houthi rebels.
This leads to a rather strange situation. Colombians hired by an Abu Dhabi based company employed by the UAE are fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The involvement of Erik Prince, the controversial ex-founder of Blackwater, should hardly come as a surprise at this point. Especially given his role as a mercenary captain for the UAE. These mercenaries have manifested in multiple different organisations and groups with their own operating procedures/character. (Source)
The most notable are as follows:
Reflex Response Security Consultants (Headed by Erik Prince and filled with ex-Colombian special forces)
Spear Operations Group (Delaware-based company led by a Hungarian-Israeli Abraham Golon, specialised in targeted assassinations)
Black Shield Security (Involved in a forced conscription scandal tricking Sudanese migrants with misleading jobs)
Erik Prince is an American businessman best recognized as the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, which became a symbol of US abuses during the war in Iraq. Prince, who now heads up a private equity firm, quietly advised the Trump transition team on intelligence and security issues.
On April 3, 2017, The Washington Post reported Prince had traveled to the Seychelles islands around January 11th to attend a secret meeting with a Russian close to Vladimir Putin set up by the United Arab Emirates. The alleged purpose of the meeting was to establish unofficial backchannel communications between Moscow and the incoming Trump administration. While Prince had no formal role on the Trump transition team, he was a high-dollar campaign donor whose sister, Betsy DeVos, now serves as Trump’s Secretary of Education. Both former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and a spokesman for Prince refuted the allegations by saying Prince had “no role” on the Trump transition team.
Oct. 16 (UPI) — China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, warned Israeli President Isaac Herzog that his country must stop its expansion of settlements in the West Bank by force, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday.
The state-run Xinhua news agency said Wang made the comments Thursday during a meeting with Herzog on the sidelines of a conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, telling Herzog that Israel must “halt and reverse the forced establishment” of settlements in the West Bank and that the “Palestinian question” was the most egregious wrong of the 21st century.
Wang said promoting peace and reconciliation in the region was the “cornerstone of China’s Middle East policy” and that “China has consistently maintained that the Palestinian question is the greatest historical injustice of this century and that the two-state solution is the right way to resolve the question.”
However, Wang said that preventing an unfolding “catastrophe” from spreading by reopening full humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip was the immediate priority, stressing that Beijing was ready and willing to work with the international community to push all sides to resume negotiations and consultation.
UNICEF in the State of Palestine Humanitarian Situation Update – The West Bank
Reporting Period 30 April 2026
Report
Highlights
Strain on essential services for children: Across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, more than 800,000 people require health and WASH assistance – roughly one in four residents – particularly in Area C and the Jordan Valley, where displacement, movement restrictions and settler violence continue to severely constrain access to safe water and sanitation. Over 150,000 children face barriers to safe and continuous education due to insecurity, movement restrictions and damage to infrastructure. Access constraints and economic impediments are weakening already fragile systems which children rely on for survival and development.
Deepening psychosocial and child protection needs: Continuous exposure to militarised operations, other conflict-related violence including settler violence, displacement and intimidation is driving high levels of psychological distress among children, with partners reporting extreme fear, sleep disturbances, behaviour changes and other symptoms associated with anxiety and forms of traumatic stress. Needs for child protection and mental health and psychosocial support significantly exceed available services, especially in high-risk areas of the West Bank.
Displacement, movement restrictions, and demolition-driven instability: So far in 2026, two-thirds of displacement incidents linked to settler attacks and access restrictions occurred in the Jordan Valley, disproportionately affecting herding and rural communities. Approximately 12,000 children from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm governorates remain displaced for more than a year with no concrete prospect for return, while hundreds of homes in the camps have been demolished. Children across the West Bank face daily movement restrictions and coercive measures that disrupt their access to services, particularly Education. More than 220 households are at risk of displacement from pending eviction and demolition orders in Silwan neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Demolitions, evictions and repeated settler attacks continue to uproot children from their homes, schools and services, deepening instability and distress.
Grave violations, detention, and other conflict-related violence impacting children, primarily boys: Between 1 January and 30 April 2026, 13 Palestinian children (13 boys) were killed and over 139 injured (126 boys, 13 girls) in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, with over one-third of injuries due to live ammunition during militarised operations and settler-related violence. Nearly 350 children from the West Bank are held in military detention, subject to violence, ill-treatment and harsh detention conditions; only 7 per cent have been convicted of any crime and half (49 per cent) are held under administrative detention orders, without charges or any trial. Since October 2023, violence against children has reached levels unseen in decades, marked by unprecedented killings, injuries, and arbitrary detention.
Fifty-eight stories of black glass on Fifth Avenue – though Trump told everyone it was 68. He skipped floor numbers to make the building seem taller than it actually was.[2] Right from the start, shell companies based in places like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands bought 43 condos there – all cash.[3] And nobody had to say whose money it was.
Here’s how it worked: Trump Tower was one of the only buildings in the city that would let you buy a condo through a shell company and pay entirely in cash.[3][6] No name on the deed. No proof of income. No questions about where the money came from. He’d built the perfect machine for making money disappear – and the people who needed that service found him fast.
On August 22, 1983 – months after the building opened – a shell company called “Lasa Trade and Finance” bought apartment 54-K in Trump Tower.[4] Public records show different prices depending on the source – one filing lists $446,875, another lists $1.65 million – but the buyer behind the shell company was the same: Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the dictator of Haiti.[4] Not former dictator. Current dictator. A man who was, at that very moment, looting his country’s treasury while his people starved.
Now, the Snopes fact-check on this sale adds an important qualifier: there’s no evidence Trump or his company took part in any money laundering scheme in this sale.[4] That’s how shell companies work – they hide the real buyer. But that’s also the point. Trump built a system where he didn’t have to know. He sold luxury condos to anonymous shell companies paying cash, and he never had to ask who was really writing the check. Whether he knew it was a dictator or not, he’d built the machine that made it possible.
Three years later, in February 1986, a popular uprising drove Duvalier out of Haiti.[5] When he fled, American officials said he held $200 million to $500 million in foreign bank accounts.[4] Haiti’s new government said some of it was already parked in Trump Tower. The Haitian people’s money, sitting in a Manhattan penthouse under a shell company name.
Then came the transaction that would set the pattern for the next four decades.
In 1984, a man named David Bogatin walked into Trump Tower and bought five luxury condos for somewhere between $4.9 million and $6 million, depending on who’s counting.[3][6] All cash, according to his partner Michael Franzese.[7] No mortgage. According to reporter Craig Unger, he “appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money.”[6] Trump reportedly attended the closing personally.[6]
And Franzese later said he was a silent partner in the deal – that Bogatin was “the front guy” buying them.[7] The partner – invisible. The source of the money – invisible. Millions of dollars in cash from a man with no visible way to earn it, and nothing in the record shows anyone in Trump’s organization asked a single question.
Here’s what Trump would have known if he’d bothered to look: Bogatin was a Russian emigre with deep ties to organized crime. He was partnered with Michael Franzese of the Colombo crime family in a massive gasoline tax scam – fuel run on paper through dummy companies that never paid the tax.[7] By Franzese’s own later testimony, it brought in as much as $9 million in cash a week – money that needed to be laundered.
Trump Tower condos were perfect for that. Buy with cash through a shell company, and dirty money becomes Manhattan real estate. Clean. Legitimate. Untraceable.
In 1987, New York prosecutors caught up with Bogatin. He pleaded guilty to charges related to the gasoline bootlegging scheme.[6] Then, instead of showing up for sentencing, he jumped bail and fled the country.[6] When the government seized his Trump Tower apartments, New York state prosecutors said he’d bought them “to launder money, to shelter and hide assets.”[6]
This was the mid-1980s, and something was shifting in New York’s criminal underworld. The Italian families that had dominated organized crime for decades were getting hit hard by federal RICO prosecutions. The Russians were moving in – not replacing the Italians, but filling the gaps they left. Real estate was the first place the money went. And Trump Tower, with its anonymous shell company purchases and no-questions-asked closings, was the front door.
But by then, the money had already done its work. Criminal cash had been transformed into Trump Tower equity. And Trump had facilitated every step of it.
The question the Bogatin deal answered was simple: would Trump ask where the money came from? Would he care? Would he demand to know?
No. He wouldn’t. He didn’t.
And that opened a door that would never close.
That same year – 1984 – a mob-connected gambling kingpin named Robert Hopkins showed up at a Trump Tower closing with a suitcase holding between $150,000 and $200,000 in cash.[8] Hopkins ran New York’s largest illegal gambling ring. The tax returns he gave the bank said he was a jeweler making more than $500,000 a year – but the state prosecutors who later convicted him found no evidence he had any job or reportable income. He counted the cash out on the table. A Trump limousine ferried the cash to a New Jersey bank that did business with his casino.[8] Deal closed.
This has every hallmark of money laundering. You take money that came from crime, feed it through a legitimate-looking real estate transaction, and it comes out looking clean. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has literally published advisories warning that all-cash purchases by shell companies are “an attractive avenue for criminals to launder illegal proceeds while masking their identities.”[3]
Trump didn’t just ignore these red flags. He built a business model around them.
A BuzzFeed News investigation later found that between 1980 and 2017, more than 1,300 Trump condos across his branded properties were purchased in all-cash transactions by shell companies.[3] That’s one-fifth of all Trump-branded condos ever sold. The total value: roughly $1.5 billion in transactions that hit Treasury Department red flags for money laundering.[3]Data from the BuzzFeed News investigation into shell company purchases across Trump properties
One thousand three hundred condos. $1.5 billion. One-fifth of every Trump-branded condo sold in the US.
These weren’t a few bad apples slipping through the cracks. This was the business. From the moment Trump Tower opened, anonymous buyers with unexplained cash were Trump’s bread and butter. Dictators. Mob bosses. Russian organized crime. Anyone with money they couldn’t explain and a need to make it disappear – Trump was open for business.
And nothing in the record shows he ever asked where it came from. The law didn’t make him.
The test was whether Donald Trump could be useful. Whether he would look the other way when dirty money showed up at his door. Whether he could be relied upon to take the cash, close the deal, and never ask questions.
He passed. Every time.
By the mid-1980s, everyone who mattered knew it. Russian organized crime knew it. The American mafia knew it. Foreign kleptocrats knew it. And the Soviet bloc’s spies – Czechoslovakia’s StB had been interested in Trump since 1977, as I showed in Essay 1 – knew it too.
Trump Tower wasn’t just a building anymore. It was a laundromat. You brought your dirty money, you left with a deed and property records that showed nothing but a shell company name. Trump got his cut. And nobody ever had to explain anything to anyone.
Which is exactly why, in January 1987, a Soviet ambassador named Yuri Dubinin would send Donald Trump a letter with an offer – one that, if former KGB officer Yuri Shvets is right, he’d been groomed to accept.
That’s the next essay.
Correction, September 27th, 2026: This essay first said David Bogatin bought his five condos in the names of shell companies – nothing shows that. It also said a Snopes fact-check found no evidence Trump knew Duvalier was the buyer – Snopes said there’s no evidence Trump or his company took part in any money laundering scheme in that sale. It said Bogatin fled two months after pleading guilty and that federal agents seized his condos and said he’d bought them to launder money – nothing shows the two-month timing, and it was New York state prosecutors who said that. It said Duvalier fled hours before a revolution with $500 million to $800 million – a popular uprising drove him out, and American officials said he held $200 million to $500 million in foreign bank accounts. It said the gas scheme moved fuel across state lines for millions a transaction – it ran fuel through dummy companies that never paid the tax. It said Robert Hopkins brought a briefcase with $200,000 in cash – it was a suitcase with $150,000 to $200,000. And it said the Soviet ambassador picked up the phone to make Trump an offer in 1987 – he sent a letter, in January 1987.
Update, September 27th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so – Craig Unger, Michael Franzese, Wayne Barrett, Haiti’s new government and former KGB officer Yuri Shvets – and they now give the range of prices reported for Bogatin’s condos, what the Treasury actually warned, that it was Czechoslovakia’s spies who took an interest in Trump in 1977, that the one-in-five figure counts Trump-branded condos in the US, and that nothing in the record shows anyone asked where the money came from, while the footnotes now point to the pages that back each line.
Musk-led war commission triggers alarms in Pentagon
Two of the Defense Department’s biggest contractors will help lead a project that could directly benefit them.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, from left, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attend the welcome ceremony for President Donald Trump by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026. | Maxim Shemetov/AP
Pentagon officials warn that Pete Hegseth’s plan for a pair of billionaire defense contractors to help steer the military’s future will produce conflicts of interest that threaten the long-term integrity of the department.
The Defense secretary’s effort, dubbed Project Meridian, asks SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey — along with former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to “map the trajectory of future warfare.” They are supposed to report back in four months.
The Pentagon revealed few details about the commission or the scope of its jurisdiction beyond the four-paragraph memo that authorizes it and an insistence the U.S. needs to “dominate” the next generation of warfare. It’s unclear whether the initiative would give the executives the vast sway Musk enjoyed last year as leader of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. But both Musk and Luckey head companies that have contracts with the Pentagon worth billions of dollars — and nine current and former officials said any preferential access could allow them to funnel even more business their way.
“This is entirely indicative of the decay and oligarchy that has taken over our government and, in many cases, directly through purchasing influence and power and authority, blatantly right in front of us,” said Wes Bryant, a retired Air Force master sergeant who until last year led the Pentagon’s civilian harm assessments. “They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.”Related Tags
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has handed Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey a direct seat at the table shaping how America fights its future wars, and the congressman representing the heart of Silicon Valley wants answers. Project Meridian, formally commissioned on September 30, gives the two tech executives — alongside former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — 120 days to study everything from subterranean warfare to cislunar space, with a public report and classified annex due by January 28, 2027.
The study’s stated mission is to examine how artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics, and biotechnology should be woven into future U.S. military operations, according to the U.S. Department of War. Hegseth discussed the project in an address focused on developing and fielding future weapons. As Sam Liccardo noted in a social media post pointing to coverage of the announcement, Musk and Luckey are now positioned to help decide the military’s technology priorities — a role that has drawn scrutiny given both men’s deep financial stakes in defense contracting.
Musk’s SpaceX holds more than $6.4 billion in active Pentagon contracts, including a $4.16 billion satellite deal and a $2.29 billion communications contract, while Luckey’s Anduril Industries holds a Marine Corps counter-drone contract worth up to $642 million along with missile and autonomous aircraft awards, per the TechCrunch reporting cited in connection with the announcement. Critics argue that Project Meridian may align the two men’s business interests with their new official advisory roles, according to that same reporting on the initiative.
MITRE Brought In to Police Conflicts of Interest
To address those concerns, the Department of Defense assigned the MITRE Corporation — a federally funded research nonprofit that manages research and development centers for the federal government — to administer Project Meridian and conduct conflict-of-interest evaluations for outside advisers, according to WVIK. The arrangement includes conflict-of-interest reviews for outside advisers.
But scrutiny has also landed on Pentagon official Emil Michael, whom Hegseth directed to commission the study through MITRE. Michael, the Defense Department’s chief technology officer, earned up to $24 million in profit on January 9, 2026, from selling private stock in Musk’s xAI — after the Pentagon signed a December 22 agreement paving the way for xAI’s Grok chatbot to be deployed on GenAI.mil, according to The Guardian. Michael had originally disclosed holding between $500,000 and $1 million in xAI stock when he joined the administration in 2025, the outlet reported.
Michael also disclosed selling between $5 million and $25 million in Perplexity AI stock in June 2026, a firm from which he had previously accepted a personal loan of up to $500,000 before entering federal service, according to Decrypt. Michael served on Perplexity’s advisory board before stepping down upon joining the Department of Defense in May 2025, the same report notes.
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included ‘FORTRESS America,’ a plan for military base power grid independence, an expansion of officer commissioning pipelines at five universities, and a new Office of Religious Affairs, according to Army.mil’s account of the speech. The address was delivered to junior officers and enlisted personnel, underscoring how the Pentagon is framing the technology overhaul as part of a broader restructuring of the department.
Hoodline has previously reported on local fallout from Hegseth’s announcement, including an Atlanta council member’s push to ban police robot weapons following the Autonomous Warfare Command reveal, and on Liccardo’s separate legislative work defending a foreign graduate work program. Whether Project Meridian’s eventual recommendations reshape how the Pentagon buys technology remains to be seen
U.S. Army Sgt. Brandyn Brooks, a 15P aviation operations specialist with the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, Task Force CARDINAL, monitors mission systems at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, June 8, 2025. Brooks supports operational integration of Project MAVEN tools, enhancing real-time situational awareness for Army aviation assets. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brianna Badder. Source: DVIDS.
The Department of Defense is expanding its use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by formalizing Palantir Technologies’ Maven system as a long-term program, signaling a shift from experimental tools to operational infrastructure.
Project Maven began in 2017 as a Pentagon effort to use AI to help analysts process massive volumes of surveillance imagery and video, but it has since evolved into a broader military intelligence and targeting platform that fuses data from multiple sensors to identify objects, assess threats, and support operational decisions.
Now, the Pentagon is moving to integrate those capabilities more broadly across the force. While the geospatial intelligence portion of Maven was designated a program of record under the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in 2023, the Pentagon is now moving to expand that designation into a broader, department-wide program with wider adoption across the services.
Elevating Maven to a “program of record” places it within the military’s formal budgeting and acquisition system, ensuring continued funding and long-term deployment.
The company’s footprint inside the Pentagon has grown through a series of expanding contracts rather than a single award. In addition to Maven-related deals, the Army awarded Palantir an enterprise agreement in 2025 that could be worth up to $10 billion over a decade, aimed at consolidating data and software systems across the service.
Palantir’s work on Maven itself has also expanded through multiple awards, including a five-year, $480 million Army contract in 2024, a roughly $100 million follow-on expansion later that year, and a 2025 contract modification valued at up to $795 million for continued system support and software licensing.
The latest move does not replace those contracts. Instead, it builds on earlier efforts by expanding Maven from a narrower intelligence program into a broader, Pentagon-backed capability intended for long-term, department-wide use.
What the System Does and Why It Matters
Maven uses artificial intelligence to process imagery and sensor data collected from drones, satellites and other surveillance systems. The goal is to reduce the workload on human analysts and speed up decision-making.
In practice, that means the software can help analysts find objects faster, flag notable activity, and feed those detections into systems used for operational awareness.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency says Maven’s AI tools are integrated into military workflows to detect and identify objects in imagery and video, while helping analysts locate objects faster and spot abnormal or significant activity in near real time.
Palantir’s role is to provide the underlying data architecture that connects these systems. Its platforms allow different military units to share and analyze information across networks and use it to support planning and operations
Rethinking defense ties with US, Israel eyes shift from patronage to partnership
Story by Nava Freiberg
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Once thought irreversible, Israel’s rock-solid bond with the United States has become a matter of debate, with the future shape of ties between the allies hanging in the balance. At the center of those deliberations is Jerusalem’s defense partnership with its most powerful and beneficent friend, which faces the possibility of being pared back significantly.
So many people caught up in conflict around the world, Yemeni people do not get a chance to stay safe…..
Houthi strikes mark the end of Saudi Arabia’s Yemen ‘containment strategy’
The Houthis are better equipped for war than they were a decade ago, while Saudi Arabia now has more to lose from escalation
This handout image released by the Iran-backed Houthi forces on 7 September 2026 purportedly shows a ballistic missile strike on trucks carrying military equipment from Saudi Arabia to the al-Wadiah military camp in Yemen’s Hadhramaut province (Ansarullah Media Centre/AFP)
Published date: 14 October 2026 22:19 BST|Last update:1 day 11 hours ago
Saudi Arabia’s bid to “contain” the Houthis in Yemen while doubling down on economic growth at home is collapsing, posing one of the most serious tests for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since he rose to power, according to analysts and diplomats.
A decade ago, the crown prince led the kingdom into a war aimed at ousting the Houthis from power. The conflict turned into a quagmire for Saudi Arabia, sapping its resources and sparking widespread backlash due to its devastating bombing campaign. In the end, Saudi Arabia cut its losses and maintained an uneasy truce with the Houthis since 2022.
“This is the collapse of Saudi Arabia’s containment strategy,” Rob Geist Pinfold, an international security expert at King’s College London, told Middle East Eye.
“The way Saudi Arabia approached the Houthis in the last few years was not dissimilar to how Israel treated Hamas in Gaza before 7 October [2023]. The Saudis felt they had the Houthis where they needed them. They weren’t at the stage to reach a political solution, but they felt they had disincentivised them from escalating again.”
The conflict erupted again after Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa airport in July to prevent a plane carrying Houthi officials from landing. MEE reported that Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah military advisors were on board along with weapons systems.
‘The dogs were eating their bodies’: Thousands of Yemenis flee war across the sea
Refugees arriving in Djibouti say while they can reason with forces on the ground, there is no protection against fighter jets and bombs.
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After her break for safety, Ms Mohammad has spent recent days sharing a tent with three other families at a refugee camp outside Obock.
Their tents pitched on a baking plain outside the town are like ovens during the day and the refugees complain of a lack of water and amenities.
She told the Telegraph: “The Houthis came into the village and the air attacks started almost immediately.
“The Houthis were shooting at the plane from nearby our house and the planes were bombing them.”
Her husband, Arafat Ali Mohammad, said he had seen the aftermath of one air strike that hit a house in the village, killing several inhabitants.
“The dogs were eating their bodies,” he said.
Saudi Arabia entered Yemen’s civil war in 2015 at the head of an Arab coalition in support of the internationally-recognised government.
The Royal Saudi Air Force, which is equipped with F-15, Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoons jets, has played a major part in the war supporting Yemeni government ground forces.
The Houthis have accused the Saudis of conducting hundreds of air strikes in recent weeks, including 94 against areas under their control on Friday alone.
Refugees told the Telegraph the main reason for their flight was a fear of being hit by air strikes, but they also complained of abuses by the Houthis.
Sheikh Saeed Abdeelah, aged 69, arrived 21 days ago with his wife and four daughters.
“We haven’t got a home, we haven’t got good water, we haven’t got anything here,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
“After the Houthis came, the war planes came. The Houthis told us to leave. One said to me: ‘This land is mine now.’ If you speak up, they shoot you.”
“Djibouti is a very, very good country, they are generous, but we have nothing in this camp. No school, no hospital, nothing.”
Barahona said, describing scenes of migrants who arrive “with just a bottle of water and very little else.”
For those who are able to attempt a sea crossing, it remains a potentially deadly journey; 139 bodies were recovered and 84 people were still missing after an overloaded boat carrying more than 300 people sank in the Red Sea last week, Barahona said. Others die of dehydration attempting to cross the desert on foot.
Meanwhile, the failure of the short rainy season this year has left 25 percent of Obock’s host communities at crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, he added, and UN agencies were working “as one” under the coordination of local officials to address the crisis.
The UN Refugee Agency is helping authorities register new arrivals, the International Organization for Migration is serving 1,500 hot meals twice a day and running a migrant center that arranges voluntary returns to Ethiopia, UNICEF is helping to shore up water systems, and the World Food Programme is distributing food.
Barahona praised Djibouti for its refugee laws, which he described as being among the most generous in the world, granting freedom of movement, the right to work formally, and access to healthcare and education. But he warned that the stability of the country, in a region surrounded by conflict, should not be taken for granted.
“I think it’s expecting too much of Djibouti, which is really doing its homework in the Horn of Africa, that Djibouti alone can handle all this movement of people without an impact on its own budget and its own development path,” he said.
“The Horn of Africa continues to need at least one country, one spot, that can remain peaceful and stable, as Djibouti has been so far.”
This stability, he said, “is not by miracle; it is the result of a lot of work and very wise decisions across the years,” including the enduring authority of traditional leaders who continue to settle disputes over land and cattle by consensus.
The country also hosts US and Chinese military bases just 12 kilometers apart, while maintaining good relations with each nation.
“Djibouti doesn’t have oil, doesn’t have gas, but it has a lot of wise decisions and a very strategic position,” Barahona said.
Climate change and climate-induced migration in the Horn of Africa could seriously exacerbate security risks in the region. The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterates the grim facts of climate change in Africa. The continent has contributed little (less than 4 percent) to total greenhouse gas emissions but has already suffered serious consequences, from biodiversity loss to reduced food production. In East Africa particularly, drought frequency has doubled. Yet, between 2010 and 2018, most Horn countries received less than the average amount of climate adaptation funding per capita for lower-income countries, despite ranking at the top of climate vulnerability indices. Not only is financing for adaptation measures insufficient, but climate research in the region is also under-resourced.
The Horn of Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate change, as it encompasses vast drylands, numerous pastoralist communities, multiple border disputes, unresolved trans-boundary water-rights issues, and porous land borders. The region also has a traumatic and politically contentious history with natural disaster, famine, and conflict, including the 1983–85 Ethiopian famine and the controversial 1992–93 humanitarian intervention in Somalia. In fact, the impetus for forming the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in 1986 was to address drought and desertification from a regional perspective, with peace and security issues added to the organization’s mandate in 1996 due to the obvious interconnection of those issues. The Horn’s history informs and sometimes politically distorts perceptions of current climate-related threats.
Ongoing conflicts in the region add complexity to any effort to envision future scenarios. The Horn is not just at risk for conflict and instability—conflict and instability are its current reality. In Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, multiple ongoing conflicts involve violent clashes between military and militia forces. The region already hosts nearly 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers and over 12 million internally displaced persons. The Horn is currently the site of one of the world’s worst food insecurity crises; in August of 2022 the number of highly food-insecure people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia reached twenty-two million, and some already face famine conditions. Although conflict and crisis prevention is at the heart of efforts to identify interconnected climate and migration risks, for many in the region, the present is already characterized by insecurity, and the future by uncertainty.
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