Apparently, African wild dogs enjoy knocking around balls of elephant dung like a football. It’s this playfulness that has endeared them to researchers—but, as Helen Sullivan points out, they have their work cut out for them trying to protect this persecuted big predator. Sullivan follows conservationists in southern Africa who are carefully managing tiny, isolated populations and attempting to introduce genetic diversity. The story of the three sisters who are flown over from Mozambique to be introduced to Waterberg—a South African municipality three hours from Johannesburg—is heart-wrenching. Yet in such a harsh environment, individual tragedies have to be endured while staying focused on the bigger picture: the fragile recovery of the species as a whole.
As we help Greyling and Hlako lift a crate off the pickup, a dusty paw flops out of one corner, and I think of something my uncle says: “You can smell the world in a dog’s paw.” Mooney and I back away, watching from inside a container as Hlako moves the car so that the overheating dog is in the shade. Though it is late afternoon, the temperature is still around 90 degrees.
Hlako and Greyling release the dogs one at a time, opening the crate and waiting until a dog walks, then trots, out. The first is less sure on her feet, the second seems almost normal, until Mooney points out that she would have run much faster from the crate and people had she not still been a bit dozy. The sisters stand together in a grassy area, point their noses in the air, move their satellite-dish ears and lie down under a thorn tree; it has been a long day.
This week, Mark Leonard is joined by Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow at ECFR, to unpack a turbulent summer in Israel and the Palestinian territories. While Palestinian factions in Gaza have agreed in principle to decommission their weapons , the proposal faces significant obstacles, not least opposition from the Israeli government. Meanwhile settler violence is surging and settlement construction is spreading, redrawing the map faster than any negotiation could.
Hugh explains why a sustainable ceasefire cannot rely on disarmament alone but requires a broader political process that addresses the future governance of Gaza and creates a pathway towards a two-state solution. He also explores why developments in the West Bank could prove just as decisive as those in Gaza, and what role Europe can play in responding to settlement expansion and growing instability.
Against this backdrop, Israelis are preparing to head to the polls on October 27th . Mark and Hugh examine the state of the race, the challenge facing Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and whether a new government would bring meaningful policy change, or simply a different style of leadership. How much do Gaza and the West Bank matter to Israeli voters? Could an opposition victory create space for greater pragmatism? And what would that mean for Europe’s approach to the conflict?
This podcast episode was recorded on August 24th 2026.
Previously operating as NetGuardians, Vyntra has spent a decade helping East African banks fighting financial crime, screening more than two billion transactions annually across the region and expanding its capabilities into broader transaction intelligence.
Vyntra’s presence in East Africa began with its Nairobi operations as NetGuardians in 2016 and has since grown into a Service Excellence Center, supporting banks across the region. The company marked the milestone with a private reception at its Nairobi office, bringing together senior executives from banks across the region and members of the local team. The event also highlighted how the offering has evolved following the 2025 merger, bringing fraud detection, payments compliance, AML transaction monitoring and end-to-end transaction visibility together within one transaction intelligence platform.
East Africa’s payments market has changed significantly over the past decade, driven by the early adoption of mobile-first payments such as M-Pesa. Vyntra’s work in the region has evolved with it, from IT log monitoring and behavioural fraud analytics to broader financial crime and payments capabilities.
Fraud patterns have also changed. Earlier cases often involved internal fraud, while the Covid-19 time period saw a sharp rise in social media scams targeting bank customers. Today, banks across the region face threats including SMS impersonation, fraudulent investment schemes, SIM swaps and organised money mule networks. As fraud has become more organised and regulatory scrutiny has increased, real-time monitoring and stronger financial crime controls have become a greater priority for banks across the region. Kenya’s inclusion on the Financial Action Task Force grey list accelerated that shift, bringing financial crime further into board-level discussions.
In response to these shifts, Vyntra is expanding its capabilities across fraud prevention, AML monitoring and payment operations, including a new case manager, executive dashboard, fraud detection algorithms and frontline case view designed to give teams more context during investigations.
Wycliffe Muma, Director Service Delivery and Country Manager at Vyntra, said: “Ten years in East Africa is an important milestone for us because the business we have built here has grown alongside our customers and the market. The fraud landscape is very different from when we first arrived, and banks are now dealing with faster, more organised threats across more complex payment environments.”
“The merger with Intix was an important part of that evolution. It gave us a much broader view of the transaction journey, which matters when fraud moves across channels, systems and institutions. The anniversary was a chance to recognise the customers and colleagues who have been part of that journey, but also to show how we are continuing to develop the platform around the challenges banks are facing now.”
Joël Winteregg, CEO of Vyntra, added: “Transaction Intelligence in Africa is moving beyond financial crime detection and transaction visibility toward something more fundamental: understanding a bank’s customer identity. That will shape how banks detect risk and respond to increasingly complex financial crime.”
Vyntra, created from the union of Intix and NetGuardians, is the new global force in AI-powered Transaction Intelligence, combining deep expertise in Financial Crime Prevention and end-to-end visibility, Vyntra equips over 130 financial institutions in 60+ countries with tools to detect fraud, ensure AML compliance, and gain real-time visibility into every transaction risk and respond accordingly.
A ride from Tangier, the largest city in northern Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta takes less than two hours. The border crossing has its own, sleepier rhythm, quite different from the tourist-driven bustle of Tangier. In Ceuta, traders run their errands, Morocco-based expats make visa runs and Spanish people catch ferries to the mainland. On most days, the border crossing seems almost ordinary. The fences, though menacing and topped with razor wire, are less imposing up close and officers make small talk with the expats waiting to get their visas stamped.
Then there are those days when the routine collapses and Ceuta becomes the center of Europe’s migration debate.
The territory is a geographic and political paradox. Despite falling under Spain’s — and the European Union’s — jurisdiction, it sits on the northern edge of Africa, surrounded by Morocco and separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an entry point to Europe, yet not fully part of the Schengen zone, requiring additional immigration checks for travelers crossing to the mainland.
When more than 60,000 people — mostly Moroccan men and teenagers — rushed into Ceuta (almost doubling the coastal city’s population), the images reverberated across Europe. There seemed to be no dramatic buildup to the incident, nor any obvious explanation why thousands of people chose that day to make their way to Spain.
Europe’s far-right politicians seized the narrative, portraying the influx as an imminent invasion, warning that the men were on their way to “Calais” and “Germany.” Italy temporarily suspended the Schengen free movement regime with Spain, meaning travellers arriving by sea and air would now be subject to border checks. Spain threatened to take “proportional measures” in response and did so at midnight on August 8, when it imposed similar checks for visitors from Italy.
The standoff between European governments — led by socialist Pedro Sánchez in Spain and conservative Giorgia Meloni in Italy — is not simply a test for European border security. Instead, what transpired in Ceuta poses bigger questions about the shifting nature of state sovereignty itself: How are we to understand borders, if they’re shaped by forces beyond the state’s reach?
Borders are not just lines separating geographic entities. They are systems built on surveillance, diplomatic bargains and digital networks. Ceuta is the place where all three converge. Its borders, already protected by the sea, have been fortified with steel, outsourced through diplomacy and tested by coordinated rumors.
Steel
The crossings into the enclave are blocked by a multi-layered barrier of fences and wire. Morocco administers a fence separating it from the neutral area between the two countries. Two fences on the Spanish-controlled territory follow, creating an enclosure monitored by the Spanish Civil Guard. The physical infrastructure is reinforced with motion sensors, thermal and CCTV cameras, maritime communication systems and facial recognition technology.
Even the sea has now been incorporated into the border system. Just three days after the Ceuta border chaos, Spanish authorities installed a 500-metre floating barrier and anchored naval buoys to create another monitored enclosure.
The EU has funded most of the fortifications. The Border Violence Monitoring Network’s report says that since the construction of Ceuta’s border barrier in the 1990s, the EU has spent tens of millions of dollars to make the Spanish-Moroccan frontier more secure, technologically up-to-date and heavily surveilled. With the recent mass crossing, Spain will now receive additional emergency financial aid.
Yet, the architecture of physical surveillance, built and re-built with European money for decades, cannot prevent the human cost of attempting to cross a border. In Ceuta alone, at least 100 people died according to local authorities. “The rationale behind increasing surveillance is that you'll be able to save lives and smash the [people trafficking] gangs, right?” asked Nathan Akehurst, who has written about Ceuta’s border for Jacobin. “Where was that in this case?”
Diplomacy
Akehurst’s question touches upon the human-centered rationale for heavy border surveillance. But there is also a political one. It is not only Spain, as a EU member, that receives funds to manage migration. Morocco has received €427 million since 2015, for migration-related expenses, including technology and training. That’s part of Europe’s wider strategy of border externalization, a practice where Europe moves border control beyond its own territory.
The practice has been around for decades, but went into overdrive after 2015, when approximately 1.3 million people, mostly from Syria, came to the continent seeking asylum. Many of them reached Europe through Turkey, prompting the EU to strike a deal with Ankara: €6 billion in funds, visa liberalization and EU-ascension negotiations in exchange for stricter border controls and curbing irregular arrivals to Greece. The EU also agreed to resettle within Europe one Syrian from Turkey for every Syrian returned to Turkey from Greece. But by 2020, when the EU failed to resettle Syrians, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared he would no longer prevent migrants from crossing Turkey en route to the EU.
“Border externalization is basically paying other countries, but also subjecting them, through a carrot and stick approach, to performing functions that are usually performed by a state itself at their borders,” explained Josephine Solanki from the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think tank. It leaves space for leaders like Erdoğan, Solanki added, to bargain for influence by turning migrants “into political leverage.”
The cost of outsourcing borders is not just material. It is measured in control that Europe cedes to the foreign governments it relies on for migration policy enforcement.
Relatives and friends waited by a fence topped with barbed-wire for the return of people who had previously crossed into Ceuta. Spanish authorities claim to have sent almost everyone back to Morocco. Abdel Majid BZIOUAT / AFP
In Ceuta, migrants claimed local authorities did not stop them from crossing the border. A young Moroccan man told the New York Times a day after the event: “They opened the border and let everyone go by.”
Border outsourcing agreements were made, among others, with authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where EU funds were used to detain migrants and quell domestic protests, rights organizations say. Alliances with “deeply unreliable and authoritarian actors” in the name of stability, said Nathan Akehurst, “is short-termist, insane and loses Europe any credibility it has left.” These alliances also allow Europe to “shift the blame to the Moroccans, the Eastern Libyans, the Turkish or whoever decides to take advantage of that moment.”
Rumors
It is yet to be revealed who, if anyone, has taken advantage of the mass crossing into Ceuta. Local and international media have uncovered now-deleted posts that shared tips on routes and equipment for the journey. One of the main networks was called Hrig Sebta network — “Sebta” being the Arabic name of Ceuta and “hrig” being the Maghrebi term for undocumented migrants, literally referencing the burning of identity papers.
In the wake of Ceuta, European ministers pledged to tackle online misinformation to avoid migration crises, but remained cautious when asked about thousands of posts reportedly linked to Russia. Other theories attributed the crossing to Morocco’s tensions with Spain over its closer ties with Algeria, or to Spain’s position on Palestine.
But those rumors, and what appears to be a weeks-long coordinated online campaign behind them, reveal something deeply human that fences can’t deter: movement that is spurred by hopes for a better life.
“[The crossing] would have happened anyway at some point,“ Akehurst argues. “There would have been a crossing because all of the circumstances that generate that are already there before someone with a twitter account throws a match on the fire.”
Yet, let’s pause at the match. It’s not about someone with a social media profile creating chain messages. It is about the ecosystem that can jeopardize borders by creating information flows, turning rumors into perceived opportunities.
Moroccan newspaper TeleQuel already published a report about social media posts amplifying the next hrig — another attempted crossing into Ceuta — on August 15.
When packaged to a hungry audience, rumors carry the currency of truth. They’ve driven migration long before social media was even conceptualized. Now those rumors speed through digital space owned and operated by private companies not prone to accountability and sitting well outside the reach of any single state.
And the EU has understood that for years. “It is necessary to structure the information space, as we have organized in the past the territorial space, the maritime space and the air space,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU said back in 2018. He warned about Big Tech companies treating digital space as a no-man’s-land that they would write rules for.
The no man’s land between Morocco and Spain appears calmer now. But the turmoil of the crossing revealed a new, digital dimension to border governance. Information has always found a way to spread; digital platforms have given it new channels: ones which allow those behind the information to remain faceless, while the information itself passes from screen to screen. It reaches a boiling point, spills over from the digital space and then can be disappeared, even before anyone has had a moment to scroll back.
Cover image: picture alliance / NTB | Fredrik Varfjell
Recycling is no longer just an environmental obligation. It has become a geoeconomic imperative directly linked to Europe’s energy security and industrial competitiveness. The European Commission’s Critical Raw Materials Act reflects this change—it has set an ambitious target to source at least 25% of the EU’s annual consumption of strategic raw materials from recycling by 2030.
Europe, however, is making little progress. A recent European Court of Auditors’ report suggests that seven of 26 energy-transition-related minerals have recycling rates between 1% and 5% in the EU. This means, for example, that Europe is recovering just three tonnes from every 100 tonnes of natural graphite contained in batteries. According to the report, there are another ten minerals that Europe does not recycle at all, including lithium, gallium and silicon metal.
As such, recycling battery materials warrants far more attention. This valuable source of critical minerals could lower the continent’s dependence on Chinese mineral value chains; recycling battery materials is also much quicker than relying on the development of mines elsewhere that produce the same materials. However, fragmentation, red tape and unfavourable economics are hampering Europe’s recycling efforts, in part due to a regulatory framework that still treats battery materials as hazardous waste rather than a source of strategically important minerals.
Europeans need to focus on battery materials regulation with an industrial policy lens and pursue strategic partnerships with African countries to make gains in material recovery.
Using black mass and EVs
Recovered minerals from Europe’s waste—including end-of-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries, wind turbines, industrial parts and electrical wiring—are insufficient to meet all of Europe’s mineral needs. However, they can substitute for a share of primary minerals from mining, which would help Europeans derisk from Chinese mineral supply chains far quicker than new mines can come into production.
Europe will have relatively significant EV battery feedstock for recycling in coming years. Europeans were early adopters of EVs and European countries are global leaders in terms of EV sales as a share of total car sales: in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, for example, EVs account for 58%, 56% and 48% of passenger-vehicle sales respectively, while fully electric vehicles comprise 22.6% of cars registered in the EU. High EV adoption means Europe should have a solid supply of EV battery feedstock for recycling facilities, provided it keeps this within the EU for recycling.
In March 2025, the EU re-classified “black mass” (the shredded EV battery waste processed to recover critical minerals) and end-of-life lithium-based, nickel-based and zinc-based batteries as “hazardous waste”. Black mass is important because it contains valuable critical minerals; if Europeans can process this within its borders, it can feed recovered minerals into European industry. This new classification prohibits export of black mass to non-OECD countries, while requiring that shipments within the EU and the OECD have prior notification and consent from the import, export and transit countries involved.
Europe currently exports around 80% of its black mass for refining elsewhere, mostly in Asia; South Korea’s OECD status and cheap recycling capacities make it a key destination, for example. The reclassification of black mass raises bureaucratic barriers to exporting out of the EU, contributing to efforts to prevent recycling feedstock leaking out. However, black mass is now more difficult to move within Europe, too, which makes aggregating feedstock for recycling within the EU a challenge. While Europe has some battery shredding (or pre-treatment) capacity to produce black mass, its refining capacity to recover minerals from black mass has lagged significantly.
Although forecasts suggest that Europe will slightly raise its material-recovery capacity in the coming years, it remains a minor player. China’s dominant share in global battery recycling capacity for the shredding and material recovery stages, which exceeded 80% in 2025, is set to continue.
Recent analysis estimates that the costs of hydrometallurgical recycling for nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are respectively 70% and 67% higher in France than in China due to higher labour, energy, environmental compliance, dismantling and transport costs in Europe. China’s scale of feedstock—domestic supply of end-of-life batteries, scrap metal from the local automobile industry, and imported batteries and black mass—has further lowered their recycling costs.
Making battery recycling happen in Europe
The EU can take three clear steps to increase recycling black mass in Europe.
First, Europeans should implement stricter export restrictions on black mass and batteries to fully close off exports and retain the products for material recovery domestically.[1] The US took this position in July 2026, with President Donald Trump empowering federal officials to block exports of end-of-life batteries and electronic waste to contain these products for recycling within the US.
Second, Europeans need to urgently build more recycling capacity to refine black mass: Europe’s hydrometallurgical recycling capacity is less than 3,000 tonnes, which is around one-sixtieth of China’s. Estimates suggest that Europe needs the capacity to recycle 120,000–135,000 tonnes of black mass per year by 2030.
Third—and perhaps most challenging—Europeans need to ensure recycling in Europe becomes more economically viable. Failing this, tough export restrictions will lead to battery waste being stockpiled rather than recycled.
To achieve the above, Europeans need to develop new financing mechanisms—such as building recycling costs into the purchase price of products and using public finance to help offset recyclers’ higher costs in Europe—to make recycling more economically viable. This would be particularly timely as battery technology shifts from NMC to LFP batteries: since the latter are comprised of less valuable minerals, recyclers earn less from the sale of recovered minerals, necessitating support for project viability.
The provision of public finance, preferably at both the EU and member-state level, would help in the development of new technologies and processes that lower recycling costs by reducing energy requirements and improving recovery rates. Patent filings in battery recycling are growing significantly, with 2026 figures showing a 103% growth in filings (adjusted for lag). China leads in patent applications, although US and European companies—notably Belgium’s Umicore—are also active. To make Europe more globally competitive in recycling, Europe must increase its investments in innovation using public finance support.
Europeans also need to establish a strong domestic value chain. European battery recyclers, such as Germany’s Cylib and Tozero and Norway’s Hydrovolt, should identify and establish commercial agreements with EU-based offtakers for the minerals they recover—after all, if Europe has to export recovered minerals outside its borders for want of domestic offtakers, gains in recycling will be for nothing. Specifically, this requires European industry that uses recovered minerals (alongside primary source minerals from mining) to refine precursor cathode active material (pCAM) and cathode active material (CAM) stages for EV batteries.
Pursuing EU-Africa partnerships
Europeans should also look internationally to ensure recycling can feasibly reduce existing mineral supply chain dependencies. The EU needs to tap into other recycling feedstock markets and diversify its mineral supply chains by establishing recycling partnerships with OECD and non-OECD countries.
Indeed, the EU has explicitly included recycling within the remit of some strategic partnerships on critical minerals that it has signed with partner countries, including several African countries such as Namibia. By locating recycling and mineral-processing facilities in African countries, they can tackle the cost disadvantages Europeans face with regard to energy, land and labour costs on home soil. Namibia and Kenya are ideal partners: both have transport corridors and port infrastructure that make them well positioned to aggregate regional battery and electronic waste (e-waste); they can harness their abundant renewable energy resources can power material recovery facilities.
EU-Africa cooperation on recycling would also be advantageous to African countries. Joint operations create jobs, expand African mineral processing capabilities and link African mineral supply chains with European industry. Africa-based recycling facilities could also manage the growing quantity of end-of-life batteries and e-waste generated by African countries, notably from solar panels, energy-storage batteries and EV batteries from smaller two- and three-wheeler vehicles.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s projected growth in stationary storage capacity alone is significant: following current market trends, it will expand dramatically by 2030, with a storage capacity increase from 11 GWh to 83 GWh. If the region achieves universal access to electricity (SDG7), demand could more than double that, reaching a storage capacity of 190 GWh.
Europe’s road ahead
More recycling facilities are required to handle Africa’s growing volume of end-of-life battery feedstock. This presents an opportunity for growth both in Africa-based recycling, and in Africa-Europe recycling cooperation. However, this is not straightforward. Africa-Europe recycling partnerships need to invest in formalising supply chains for collection and storage; they need to build facilities for shredding batteries and e-waste; and they need to ensure that they can refine black mass to recover valuable materials. They would also need to develop the workforce skills and local-firm capabilities needed for efficient, environmentally-sound operations throughout the supply chain.
For African countries like Namibia and Kenya, such cooperation creates jobs and builds recycling capacity and expertise while integrating African mineral industrialisation into EU mineral supply chains. Recycling operations could also serve as anchor customers for increasing electricity generation and transmission investments in African countries, while local populations also benefit from improved electricity availability. Additionally, recycling in African countries helps address the continent’s growing e-waste management challenges.
For Europe, the increased recovery of critical minerals both domestically and through recycling partnerships with African countries offers greater supply chain diversification, access to minerals from non-OECD black mass and de-risking from Chinese mineral supply chains. All of this will happen faster than if Europeans continue to rely on global mine development. Europeans need to extend their strategic thinking beyond their borders, advancing recycling cooperation through critical minerals partnerships.
[1] Interview with a representative of a mineral analytics company, February 19th, 2026.
At the end of July, Hamas agreed to a Board of Peace (BoP) roadmap to implement Phase 2 of the three-stage ceasefire agreement. At its core is Hamas’s willingness to decommission its weapons. This would have been unthinkable only a few years ago and offers a realistic pathway for ending the Islamist group’s governance and security control over the devastated Strip.
This process will only begin once Israel has fully complied with its Phase 1 obligations, which it has yet to do. More fundamentally, it will require Israel to accept a process to end its military presence in Gaza and ultimately engage in negotiations towards Palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu and his hardline government have rejected the roadmap out of hand and are now the main threat to the ceasefire deal.
Having been largely sidelined, Europe now has a role to play in ensuring the deal succeeds.
The unfinished phase 1
Announced in September 2025, Trump’s 20-point plan aims to end the war in Gaza in three phases. The first phase conditioned the full cessation of hostilities and emergency relief on the release of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian groups. The second phase aims to remove Hamas from power and begin reconstruction—the roadmap Hamas agreed to in July outlines how this stage will work. The final phase would end with Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the launch of a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
At the same time, Israel has continued to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the 70% of Gaza that remains under its control. Israel may now be seeking to create a new de facto border with Gaza and effectively annex a large chunk of the territory, potentially preparing for the return of Israeli settlements there in the future.
The roadmap
Once Phase 1 is complete, Palestinian factions will begin handing over their heavy weapons to the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a transitional body created as part of the 20-point plan to replace Hamas governance and security control in the Strip. This will include the full alphabet soup of Palestinian armed groups—many of which are more hardline than Hamas—as well as Israeli-backed militias.
Heavy weapons will effectively be placed under lock and key, monitored by the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which will deploy as a buffer between Israeli forces and NCAG-controlled areas. BoP officials have said Palestinian weapons could ultimately be dismantled and melted down. This would replicate how Northern Ireland’s decommissioning process dealt with weapons held by paramilitary groups. Tunnels and weapons production facilities would also be put out of action.
Small arms like AK-47s will instead be regulated by NCAG through a system of permits. NCAG will also establish a new police force made up of newly trained recruits and members of the Hamas-run civil police vetted and approved by the BoP.
Critically, the roadmap links the decommissioning process “to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza”. According to previous understandings, Israel would withdraw to a new “Red Line” by the end of Phase 2, and from there to a “Black Line” along Gaza’s perimeter, where it would retain a narrow buffer zone until “Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.”
While the contours of Phase 2 are now clear, the final operational details still need to be hammered out between the sides during follow-up talks. Questions also remain over the lack of funding for the NCAG and the status of the ISF, which to date has only around 200 pledged troops from Morocco, though smaller numbers may also come from countries including Kosovo and Uganda. Meanwhile, the new Palestinian police force has yet to begin training in Egypt.
Europe is right to avoid directly funding the BoP. But it has considerable expertise in disarmament and security-sector reform, including through the EU’s EUPOL COPPS mission, which was established to assist the PA police in the West Bank. Europeans should offer critical personnel and technical expertise to support both the decommissioning process and the training of the new Palestinian police force.
The spoiler
The biggest obstacle remains Israel’s opposition to any transitional political process that would eventually force it out of the Strip and into talks on Palestinian self-determination
The biggest obstacle remains Israel’s opposition to any transitional political process that would eventually force it out of the Strip and into talks on Palestinian self-determination. The Israeli government has instead vowed to remain in Gaza and continue its military attacks. It has also opposed NCAG taking over until Hamas fully disarms, and demanded the right to veto troop contributions to the ISF from “hostile” countries such as Turkey and Qatar.
BoP officials now appear to be altering parts of the laboriously negotiated deal (and its own press release) to accommodate Israel’s hardline stance. They now state that Israeli withdrawal beyond the Yellow Line would begin only once the decommissioning process is complete. This appears to contradict the original text and Nikolay Mladenov, the BoP’s high representative, who initially said the two would move forward “in lockstep”. The accompanying Explanatory Note also reinforces this interpretation, outlining “a step-by-step process linking withdrawal phases to verified decommissioning steps.”
Such manoeuvring risks undermining Hamas support for the agreement. Moreover, by conditioning all further Israeli withdrawals on Gaza’s full demilitarisation, the BoP is in effect giving Israel a veto over the process itself, allowing it to deepen its control over the eastern half of Gaza. Given the near impossibility of removing every single Palestinian weapon, as many are held by families, clans, criminal networks and jihadi groups, Israel could argue indefinitely that the conditions for its withdrawal have not been met.
But even BoP efforts to placate Israel have failed to satisfy prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He continues to demand that the deal be re-negotiated, insisting that no Israeli redeployment will take place, even to the original Yellow Line, until Hamas has fully disarmed.
The path forward
Having secured Hamas’s unprecedented agreement to decommission its weapons, the BoP now needs to show the political will to implement its own deal. US officials have already warned Israel that US president Donald Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Netanyahu derailed it. Although the prime minister’s far-right coalition limits his room for manoeuvre, Netanyahu has invested heavily in portraying his close relationship with Trump as a political asset—which means he cannot easily afford a public rupture with him.
Mladenov has won wide international praise for brokering the deal. Rather than modifying the terms he himself negotiated and risk the diplomatic gains already achieved, he should use his current political capital and Trump’s momentary re-engagement to insist that Israel implements rather than rewrites the agreement. If necessary, he should be prepared to call out Israeli obstruction, just as he previously cast Hamas as the main obstacle. Europe can further strengthen his hand by also highlighting Israel’s non-compliance with its obligations, as the Arab and Turkish mediators have done. The EU should also resume discussions on suspending the Association Agreement with Israel unless it complies.
Sustained diplomatic engagement before Israel’s October elections should aim to shift the terms of the domestic debate. The Israeli opposition has also been critical of the deal, accusing Netanyahu of weakness by allowing Hamas to survive, and is unlikely to chart a radical new course on Gaza if it wins. Nevertheless, opposition figures have also acknowledged that Israel’s battlefield gains need to be converted into lasting diplomatic achievements. Europe should use the political framework established by the Gaza roadmap to reinforce this logic and demonstrate how military gains can be converted into a sustainable political settlement.
Ultimately, success will depend on whether both sides conclude that diplomacy offers greater rewards than renewed war. Hamas is unlikely to complete decommissioning unless it believes that concessions today will lead to genuine political gains tomorrow towards Palestinian liberation. Equally, Israel will only embrace a durable ceasefire if it sees political transformation within Hamas that locks it into credible peace negotiations as a means of strengthening its long-term security. This makes Phase 3 every bit as important as Phase 2.
Without a credible pathway towards Palestinian self-determination, decommissioning risks becoming an end in itself rather than the foundation of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Equally, a future Israeli government will need to view full implementation of the Gaza agreement not as a concession to Hamas, but as the indispensable stepping stone towards normalisation with Saudi Arabia and deeper integration with the Arab and Islamic world. Europe should therefore work with its Arab partners to ensure that the Gaza deal is tied to a regional package. That would allow a future Israeli government to present withdrawal from Gaza and acceptance of a political process leading to a two-state solution not as unilateral compromises, but as part of a US-brokered grand bargain that underpins Israeli integration and security in the region.
A migrant runs from Spanish police officers as they cordon off access to the beach for people crossing from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Sempere) | picture alliance / AP Photo/Antonio Sempere
Problem
Around 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in 24 hours between July 30th and 31st, overwhelming the territory and exposing divisions within the EU.
The immediate cause is unclear. Morocco’s authorities have yet to issue an official explanation. Spanish officials have pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling ending the automatic return of migrants intercepted while attempting to swim to Ceuta and Melilla. But the sheer scale of the crossings suggests Morocco might have deliberately relaxed border controls. The timing is also suspicious. The crisis came just ten days after Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez visited Algeria— Morocco’s arch-rival—and announced a “new phase” in Spain-Algeria relations.
The reaction within Europe has been striking. Rather than display solidarity with a member state facing pressure at the EU’s external border, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni not only blamed Sánchez’s migration policies but also called for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen area. Madrid responded by summoning the Italian ambassador and rebuking Rome’s “partisan demagoguery”.
Responses from other leaders have been similarly unsympathetic. Finnish interior minister Mari Rantanen supported Italy’s proposal to suspend Spain’s Schengen status. Manfred Weber, president of the centre-right European People’s Party, urged the European Commission to hold Sánchez accountable for failing to protect the EU’s external border. Meanwhile, France has reinforced controls along its frontier with Spain. Remarkably, little criticism was directed at Morocco itself.
Solution
In the immediate term, the EU should demonstrate solidarity with Spain. European leaders need to treat migration pressure against a member state as a collective problem and a challenge to the integrity of the EU’s external border. Publicly blaming the targeted member state lowers the political cost of weaponising migration.
Brussels should make clear that any use of migration as blackmail will carry European rather than merely Spanish consequences. Around two thirds of Moroccan exports go to the EU, which is also its largest source of foreign investment. Brussels should also be prepared to suspend negotiations on a comprehensive partnership upgrade with Rabat.
Europe also needs to revise its migration policy, which largely shapes its relations with North Africa. In the absence of a common European approach, relations default to bilateral bargains, leaving North African leaders holding the lever. And until Europe changes the incentives, Rabat will keep pulling it.
Context
Spain has managed the migration relationship with Morocco bilaterally for decades, leaving Madrid increasingly hostage to Rabat. The latter has repeatedly used migration as political leverage, most notably in 2021, when it allowed some 6,000 migrants into Ceuta in a single day amid a diplomatic rift over Western Sahara.
The following year, Spain abandoned its longstanding neutrality on Western Sahara by endorsing Morrocco’s autonomy proposal, a policy shift many attribute to the 2021 crisis. Government sources unofficially said at that time that the new bilateral understanding included Moroccan commitments to avoid a repeat of the episode.
Rabat also appears particularly emboldened at present. It enjoys strong backing both from the US and Israel, and both have become increasingly hostile towards Sánchez government. The White House responded to the latest crossings by celebrating it as evidence of the “destructive philosophy” of “extreme left and globalist policies, including those that facilitate massive migration”.
UPDATE – Dozens killed after 50,000 migrants cross into Spanish territory from Morocco
«Spain is scrambling to contain a sudden border crisis after tens of thousands of people rushed into its North African territory, with dozens killed and political shock waves spreading across Europe» .
Spain’s Interior Ministry told NBC News that some 50,000 people had entered Ceuta on Thursday from Morocco. Around half of that number had returned Friday, the Interior Ministry said.
At least 34 migrants had died, said Juan Jesus Vivas, the president of the autonomous Spanish enclave.
Huge crowds of migrants breached the border to the North African Spanish enclave of Ceuta
At least nine people have died after huge crowds of migrants breached the border to the North African Spanish enclave of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco, authorities said.
The deaths came after the government of Ceuta said on Thursday that between 1,500 and 2,000 people had entered in the last 10 days.
Hundreds more were estimated to have arrived on Thursday, prompting regional President Jesus Vivas to declare an “absolute humanitarian and social emergency” and call on Madrid to send troops to reassert control of the border.
Spain’s Interior Ministry rejected calls to declare a national emergency, saying such a measure does not cover migration crises, but promised additional resources.
Later, the Interior Ministry announced that the armed forces will send 60 troops to reinforce the border.
Footage showed some of the migrants shouting “Viva Espana!” as they entered the territory, many of them having travelled by water from the Moroccan side on inflatable devices.
Crowds were shown walking around the breakwaters onto local roads, reported The Associated Press news agency. State news agency EFE said others had crossed by the border by land, scaling fences.
Migrant rights activist Zakaria Zarroqui told the Reuters news agency that the surge in migrant numbers was similar to one that occurred in May 2021, when some 10,000 Moroccan and sub-Saharan youths entered the enclave within days.
“The situation remains out of control as we speak,” Zarroqui said, adding that people were still flocking to the Moroccan city of Fnideq in an attempt to cross the border.
Cover image: picture alliance / Anadolu | Lucas Mukasa
When the G20 met on African soil for the first time in November 2025, it signalled that the continent is becoming more important to the world as an economic partner. China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have already spent the past decade gaining ground as trade partners to African countries, narrowing the EU’s long-held lead.
France and Italy have recast their economic strategies accordingly, hunting for markets and suppliers of their own in Africa as global alliances shift and supply chains fracture. In 2026 alone, Italy convened its second Africa Summit in Addis Ababa and France held its Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, the first France-Africa summit co-organised with an African country outside France or Francophone Africa. The rest of Europe is also adapting its approach. Since 2020, at least nine European countries have revised or substantially repositioned their Africa policies, recognising that Africa can be more than a supplier of natural resources.[1]
Africa’s own governments are pressing for this shift, positioning themselves as equal partners rather than aid recipients. European language is adjusting to match, with Brussels, Paris and Rome talking more about investment and partnership than about aid. European leaders must now make those national strategies pull in the same direction, keeping pace with rivals and delivering for both sides of the Mediterranean.
Under pressure
The EU is Africa’s largest trading partner, but individually its largest member states are just middle-sized players in today’s Africa.
Investment tells a similar story. European firms hold the largest stock of foreign investment in Africa, over €250bn, but only 10% of all new investment to African companies in 2024 came from Europe.[2]China and Gulf Arab states have spent the past decade increasing state-backed private investment to build market share across the continent. On present trends, the EU will fall further behind.
The right sort of investment
The kind of investment matters as much as its scale in making Africa a stronger industrial partner for Europe: greenfield manufacturing projects, regional infrastructure and industrial ecosystems do more than capital alone to build that capacity. However, European commercial ties with Africa are more extractive than transformative. In 2025, 70% of EU imports from Africa were primary products and just 28% were manufactured goods. Both French and Italian imports from Africa follow the same trend, which also shows up in where the money goes. In 2024, Italy and France were among the top investors in Africa’s extractives. Most capital-exporting economies share this extractive bias, since it reflects where Africa’s industrial development currently stands. Manufacturing gets only a modest share of investment, even though it matters most for the continent’s shift away from raw material exports.
The reason lies in how investors price risk. Capital is expensive in Africa: investors see the continent as disproportionately risky, which pushes money towards safe, asset-backed extractive projects rather than the long-term capital needed for more uncertain sectors, such as manufacturing. Even Africa’s own $4trn in domestic capital sits idle: weak banks and cautious institutions channel it into short-term holdings and government debt instead of long-term manufacturing investment.
Winds of change
France, Europe’s traditional leader on African matters because of its colonial and post-colonial history, and Italy, now seeking to emerge as its rival in European policy towards Africa, are already trying to address these issues. Both have overhauled their Africa policies and both used their G7 presidencies (in 2024 and 2026 respectively) to position Africa and development cooperation within a broader agenda of economic security built on private capital rather than aid. Yet this shift has not been matched by greater strategic coordination across Europe.
France, Italy and the EU broadly agree on what matters—energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, skills and industrialisation—but not on how to pursue it. A growing number of other member states, such as Germany and Spain, now see the continent as a partner for secure supply chains and political influence. The EU’s Global Gateway, its flagship strategy to mobilise up to €300bn in global infrastructure investment by 2027, was meant to give these efforts a common framework. Yet these strategies largely continue to operate in parallel, reflecting national priorities, commercial interests and historical ties. That leaves Europe without the scale, coherence or investor confidence needed to support industrial ecosystems and compete with partners able to combine finance, diplomacy and commercial clout.
Italy’s flagship Africa strategy, the 2024 Mattei Plan, and France’s 2026 Africa Forward investment strategy illustrate this dynamic: though the two emerged from different starting points, they increasingly pursue the same objectives, target overlapping countries and lean on comparable financial instruments. This reflects both Europe’s converging strategic interests and the reality that Africa’s infrastructure deficit concentrates investment in a narrow set of sectors. But it also shows that these strategies are additive rather than complementary.
Doing more with less
A core part of France’s and Italy’s new strategies is how to finance their ambitions in Africa. China, the UAE and even America use their private sectors as tools of state strategy. Italy and France are responding by using public money to pull in private investment and international lenders.
The Mattei Plan itself is a modest €5.5bn public fund spread over four years (2024–2027), but it uses guarantees, development finance and partnerships to unlock far more money than that. Italy’s export credit agency, SACE, has already put up €4bn in guarantees since the Mattei Plan was launched, pulling in an estimated €18.5bn of private funds. Partners such as the African Development Bank (AfDB), the World Bank and the UAE add even more to the pot.
France’s plan, set out in the Africa Forward Summit, is part of a wider €23bn package, split between a €14bn pledge from Paris and €9bn from African partners. Of that, just €1.94bn is public funds; the rest is private. The strategy targets African strategic autonomy, especially in food and digital technology, and leans more on small businesses, private investors, and risk-mitigation tools such as the African Trade and Investment Development Insurance, a pan-African credit insurer. As with Italy, the aim is to make limited public money go further.
Rome and Paris find it easier to build coalitions with international lenders and non-European partners than with each other
Both countries have internationalised their financing—leaning on institutions such as the AfDB, the World Bank, Gulf sovereign investors and export-credit cover. Yet joint European ventures remain rare: aside from a handful of joint initiatives—such as the collaboration between the Italian, French and German state development banks on a water infrastructure project in Morocco under the Mattei Plan, or Denmark’s support for the Italy-AfDB Mattei Plan financing facility—both strategies have attracted relatively little structured participation from other European governments. Rome and Paris find it easier to build coalitions with international lenders and non-European partners than with each other. This limits opportunities to pool resources and build larger industrial investment platforms.
What Europe should do
France and Italy are changing course. The EU should now turn their separate initiatives into systems that reshape investment and drive African industrialisation. Three recommendations show how.
Share the risks
Since European countries individually cannot outspend China or the Gulf states, they must change the terms on which their capital competes. Member states and European institutions should increasingly pool guarantees, coordinate development finance institutions and build common project pipelines. Joint risk-sharing mechanisms involving institutions such as Italy’s development bank (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), France’s development agency (Agence Française de Développement), the European Investment Bank and African financial institutions would reassure private investors more than multiple national commitments operating independently. The objective should be to change the risk calculus for investors.
Think in corridors
European countries deal with Africa country by country, or sector by sector. Industrialisation, however, crosses borders and sectors. Value chains need regional energy systems, transport corridors, customs integration, digital connectivity and labour mobility. Europe’s comparative advantage lies precisely in its experience building integrated markets. Even its most ambitious African venture, the Lobito Corridor—a planned rail line linking Congolese and Zambian mines to Angola’s Atlantic coast, backed by America, the EU and Italy—has yet to knit infrastructure, investment and regional integration into a single plan. Rather than approaching Zambia, Angola or Namibia as separate investment destinations, Europeans should use their collective weight to back it, and corridors like it, as platforms that align infrastructure, regulation, energy and manufacturing across several countries.
Help shape the rules
Some barriers sit above any single project: high sovereign risk premiums, the cost of capital and weaknesses in the global financial system continue to discourage productive investment in Africa. Europe should use platforms such as the G7 and the upcoming UK and South Korean G20 presidencies to ensure greater African participation in these discussions. It should also work to reform the global investment environment itself: support the African Credit Rating Agency, use multilateral guarantees more, and make financing cheaper for African economies. Shaping these rules is how Europe can help Africa become an industrial partner.
***
Europe is adapting, and France and Italy are showing the way. The challenge now is to weave these separate national efforts into one system capable of making Africa a genuine economic partner with a stronger geopolitical voice.
[1] Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.
[2] EU outward investment to Africa: €9bn in 2024, per Eurostat (approximately $9.7bn converted at the yearly average exchange rate of 1 EUR = 1.0822 USD). Total FDI inflows into Africa: $97bn in 2024, per UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2025. $9.7bn ÷ $97bn ≈ 10%.
Cover image: picture alliance / Anadolu | Mohammed Hamoud
The next phase of the war between the US and Iran may be decided not in the Gulf but in Yemen. The Houthis’ decision to blockade Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea—including by attacking two Saudi ships as well as Aramco’s oil infrastructure—could become a turning point in the wider conflict. Such escalation could force Riyadh to reconsider the diplomacy-first strategy that has defined both its response to the Iran war and its handling of Yemen after a costly military intervention failed to uproot the Houthis.
Staying out of the war
Since the Iran war began in February, Riyadh has maintained channels with Tehran and urged Washington to pursue de-escalation, diplomacy and an end to the war. This strategy stems from Saudi Arabia’s exposure to prolonged turmoil and its determination to avoid being dragged into a war.
There is also a more immediate Saudi calculation. By keeping lines open with Tehran, Riyadh sought, with partial success, to persuade Iran to spare the kingdom the kind of retaliation it directed at the UAE, whose support for the US-led war has been overt. Restraint has also strengthened Saudi diplomacy with the Houthis and helped preserve an uneasy truce.
This diplomatic approach has also allowed Riyadh to keep exporting oil even as Hormuz remained closed. Crude continued to flow through the East-West Pipeline from the Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea, preserving access to Asian markets, which account for up to 70% of Saudi crude exports. While the route still handles only a fraction of export volumes during peacetime, it provided Saudi Arabia with an economic lifeline while easing pressure on global markets.
That arrangement is now under strain. After Saudi-backed forces in Yemen struck the runway at Sana’a airport to prevent Iranian aircraft from landing (arguing they were enforcing a no-fly embargo on military supplies), the Houthis launched ballistic missiles and drones at southern Saudi Arabia, ending a four-year truce.
The attacks appear to reflect a shift in Iran’s strategy towards the kingdom. As the US expanded its attacks on Iranian infrastructure, Tehran has reportedly asked the Houthis to prepare to close Bab al-Mandab and threatened the East-West Pipeline directly, declaring a “port against port” doctrine under which Gulf infrastructure hosting American operations would become targets. By threatening both Hormuz and the Red Sea, Tehran appears to seek to raise the global cost of the American campaign—while again overestimating Riyadh’s ability to press Washington for de-escalation.
Riyadh’s choice
Saudi Arabia must now decide how to respond. If the Houthis fail to cause meaningful disruption at Yanbu and the East-West Pipeline, it may seek a new exclusion agreement with the group and Iran. Under such an arrangement, Saudi tankers, ports and infrastructure would be removed from their target list in exchange for restrictions on refuelling American aircraft and on intelligence support for American operations, as well as tighter controls on the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces. Tehran would also expect Riyadh to keep pressing the White House for de-escalation. The Houthis would likely demand concessions of their own too, such as resumed flights to Sana’a, access to the port city of Hodeidah, salary payments and a more formal recognition of their authority in northern Yemen.
If, however, the Houthis continue to block Saudi exports while attacking Yanbu, the East-West Pipeline or other critical infrastructure such as Aramco facilities, Riyadh may conclude that diplomacy has become a mechanism for managing its own strangulation. At that point, accommodation could be more dangerous than escalation. Saudi Arabia could then move closer to the American campaign against Iran while also reviving its own war against the Houthis. That would draw the Arab world’s most influential state directly into the conflict, making it far harder to contain.
After their public split around Yemen, the two Gulf powers now have a shared incentive to confront a common enemy
Riyadh would first try to deal with the Houthis. Saudi Arabia has already struck Houthi sites at the port of Hodeida and on Kamaran island. The next steps would likely involve coordination with the UAE. Abu Dhabi has long argued that Riyadh’s accommodation with the group was doomed to fail. After their public split around Yemen, the two Gulf powers now have a shared incentive to confront a common enemy. The UAE-backed forces in the south have already mobilised alongside the Saudi-backed internationally recognised Yemeni government, attacking Houthi missile and drone launch sites as well as weapons depots in Marib and Al-Jawf.
Avoiding a wider war
Such an escalation would be an enormous gamble for all sides. Iran would end up facing a broader coalition. Saudi Arabia would be joining an American military campaign that is yet to deliver a decisive blow against Iran, while reopening a conflict in Yemen that it previously failed to settle. Iran has already demonstrated that it can keep Hormuz closed despite US strikes, showing it retains highly dispersed missile and drone systems able to sustain a prolonged war at a very low cost. The Houthis can do much the same in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, a renewed ground war in Yemen could reignite the country’s longstanding civil war.
Europe has every interest in preventing that outcome. A prolonged closure of Bab al-Mandab would disrupt the Suez route, increase energy and shipping costs and heap further pressure on the European economy. If Saudi Arabia abandons restraint against Iran and the Houthis, the chances of a diplomatic settlement that addresses both Hormuz and the region’s wider security architecture would diminish significantly. The EU is now considering expanding the mandate of Operation Aspides to include minesweeping, amid concerns that Iran or the Houthis could use naval mines to keep Bab al-Mandab closed even after de-escalation. But naval and economic plans should support, not replace, diplomatic efforts. Europeans should use their channels with mediators, including Pakistan, Qatar and especially Oman to dissuade Iran from opening new fronts in Bab al-Mandab and against Saudi Arabia, while also pressing Trump to hold back from widening American attacks to core Iranian infrastructure.
Yemeni soldiers patrol the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Yemen, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik) | picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS | Abdulnasser Alseddik
Houthi attacks on Saudi oil tankers and facilities have reignited tensions around Bab el-Mandeb. But the Iran-backed group is no longer the only threat to security in the Red Sea. Across the water, conflicts in the Horn of Africa are merging, fuelled by competing middle powers and increasingly threatening one of the world’s most important maritime corridors.
The timing could hardly be worse. The war between the US and Iran exposed the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, renewing interest in alternative export routes. In April and May, Saudi Arabia exported between three and four million barrels of oil per day through the Red Sea, nearly double the volume shipped via the Bab el-Mandeb strait in 2024. Energy projects designed to bypass Hormuz, such as the expansion of the East-West pipeline across Saudi Arabia or Iraq’s proposed connection with Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, could increase the corridor’s importance even further.
The Houthis have shown how easily Bab el-Mandeb can be disrupted, but the danger no longer comes from Yemen alone. Sudan’s civil war is increasingly converging with the Ethiopia-Eritrea crisis. In northern Somalia, local disputes are becoming entangled with the Saudi-Emirati and Israeli-Turkish rivalries, potentially creating a new flashpoint in the Gulf of Aden. At the same time, piracy is resurging, increasingly aided by al-Shabab. Between April and May, Somali pirates hijacked three ships in the Gulf of Aden, including two oil tankers—more hijackings than in the previous five years combined.
The spread of low-cost drones means that both state and non-state actors can target this narrow maritime corridor cheaply. Although no group has yet fully replicated the Houthis’ tactics, the Islamic State in Somalia has carried out its first recorded drone strike in January, in Puntland, while reports suggest that al-Shabab has used drones for reconnaissance and propaganda.
Any major disruption to commercial and energy flows through Bab el-Mandeb would reverberate far beyond the region, with European energy importers and export-oriented economies particularly exposed. As the Red Sea becomes more important, the Horn of Africa matters more too.
When the Horn’s conflicts merge
The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan is not an isolated conflict. As it drives mass displacement and destabilises neighbours, it is also merging with the Ethiopia-Eritrea rivalry, raising the risk of a broader confrontation along the Red Sea.
Addis Ababa continues to seek sea access through Eritrea’s Red Sea port of Assab. Asmara, for its part, has strengthened ties with Tigrayan leaders and other anti-government groups inside Ethiopia. And their rivalry is increasingly spilling into Sudan. Reports indicate growing coordination between Tigrayan forces, the SAF and Eritrea in the east, while the RSF has allegedly received Ethiopian assistance in Sudan’s Blue Nile state. This new RSF front borders the areas of South Sudan where the government is trying to suppress a mounting insurgency among the Nuer, the country’s second largest ethnic group, potentially turning the vast tri-border area into a major conflict zone.
Any escalation between Ethiopia and Eritrea would likely draw in Sudanese factions and external powers, notably Egypt, which aligns closely with the SAF and Eritrea, and regards the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (located just across the border with Sudan) as a major security threat.
These tensions are amplified by competing Middle Eastern alignments: Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia support the SAF and Eritrea, while the UAE, and to a lesser extent Israel, have ties with Ethiopia and the RSF, though officially denied. Such backing risks encouraging local actors to overestimate their capabilities and could trigger a wider regional confrontation threatening Red Sea security and navigation.
Somalia’s turbulent waters
Somalia could become the second major front in the Red Sea crisis. As in the Ethiopia-Eritrea-Sudan triangle, domestic feuds are becoming entangled with broader Middle Eastern rivalries.
In December 2025, Israel recognised the breakaway, UAE-backed republic of Somaliland. The two sides signed security agreements covering training and intelligence cooperation, and Israel could soon deploy asu limited military presence in the Emirati base in Berbera, which is reportedly under expansion. A visit to Israel in late June by Somaliland’s president Abdirahman Irro showed how quickly the relationship is deepening.
Mogadishu responded to the recognition by severing diplomatic and security ties with the UAE. It has since moved closer to Saudi Arabia and Qatar through defence agreements, while strengthening its longstanding partnership with Turkey. In January, Turkey deployed F-16 fighter jets to the Somali capital.
Amid its dispute with Mogadishu, Abu Dhabi has continued to support for Puntland and Jubaland,[1] two federal states that broke relations with the Somali government in 2024 in pursuit of greater autonomy. That support has become more consequential as Somalia enters another struggle over federal leadership.
In March 2026, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud extended the mandates of both the presidency and parliament by one year beyond their May 15 expiration date. Opposition figures, including the leaders of Puntland and Jubaland, rejected the changes and demanded elections. After mediation failed, government forces and opposition-aligned groups clashed in Mogadishu on June 3rd and 4th, echoing the violence surrounding the 2020–2021 electoral process.
Although the federal government’s substantial deployment in the capital makes the forcible removal of the president unlikely, violence may intensify elsewhere.[2] The most concerning area lies in northern Somalia, where a local territorial dispute is increasingly drawing in external actors.
Since declaring independence in 1991, Somaliland has controlled most of this area, but its authority has long been contested in the eastern regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn by local clans and by neighbouring Puntland. These tensions erupted into conflict in 2023, when the pro-government Dhulbahante sub-clan defeated Somaliland forces. In the aftermath, Mogadishu then backed the creation of a new state, the North East State, covering territory claimed by both Somaliland and Puntland.
The main prize is Sanaag, located along the strategically important Gulf of Aden coast. Its sub-clans are divided in their loyalties among Somaliland, Puntland and Mogadishu, and a worsening drought is fuelling clashes over resources.[3] Such fractures offer tempting openings for outsiders.
Turkey reportedly plans to establish a presence in Lasqoray, Sanaag’s main coastal town, where both Turkish vessels and aircraft linked to the UAE have been spotted.[4] Meanwhile, Mogadishu is courting Puntland sub-clans and business elites dissatisfied with the state’s president, and has suggested that the army stands ready to deploy in Somaliland.[5]
Northern Somalia is therefore becoming a battleground where local and national rifts collide with rivalries between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and between Israel and Turkey.
Northern Somalia is therefore becoming a battleground where local and national rifts collide with rivalries between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and between Israel and Turkey. Any serious escalation would pose a direct threat to the Gulf of Aden. It would also create opportunities for other groups: piracy networks, the Islamic State in Somalia and al-Shabab also operate in the area, with the two jihadist groups receiving smuggled weapons from the Houthis across the sea last year.
Message for Europe
Instability in the Horn of Africa creates new threats to Red Sea navigation, with direct consequences for European security and economic stability. Strained European economies cannot afford another disruption after Hormuz.
Europe must therefore abandon the widespread perception that it is primarily a provider of aid. Prevention must combine soft and hard power.
The EU already deploys two naval missions in the Horn of Africa’s seas: Aspides and Atalanta. But both were designed for a different threat environment. Atalanta was created to combat Somali piracy, while Aspides was established to protect shipping from Houthi attacks with a deliberately defensive mandate.
As maritime threats intensify, the EU should increase deployments and expand the mandates of both missions to include offensive operations, particularly against al-Shabab and the Islamic State in Somalia. This would strengthen anti-piracy efforts, increase pressure on destabilising actors and signal a more credible European security posture in the Red Sea. To ease fears of retaliation, Europeans should reassure regional states such as Saudi Arabia and Djibouti that the expanded mandate will not include offensive operations against the Houthis. Europeans should also seek a greater naval presence from Asian players with major stakes in Red Sea security, such as South Korea and Japan.
At the same time, the EU and its member states should engage more directly with northern Somali actors, including Somaliland and Puntland. A stronger European presence through security and development instruments would increase influence in this highly contested area, feeding into its de-escalation efforts. An expanded mandate for EU naval missions, for instance, could support Puntland’s and Somalia’s federal government operations against the Islamic State in Somalia and al-Shabab.
Greater engagement would also give Europe more leverage to encourage dialogue between the federal government, Somaliland and Puntland over disputed territories, and help push Somali political actors toward a resolution of the electoral standoff. In this regard, the EU must act transactionally to ensure that its 2026 funding packages, including €75m for the African Union peace mission and €63m for humanitarian aid, contribute to these stabilisation goals.
The EU should also coordinate closely with America and Britain, which in the past have led credible mediation efforts around the electoral standoff and security initiatives in the north, such as anti-IS operations. Similar coordination could support de-escalation efforts between Ethiopia and Eritrea, where Washington has recently engaged both sides.
Finally, engagement with Middle Eastern actors is unavoidable. The Horn of Africa’s instability is increasingly shaped by the competition between the two emerging blocs around Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey on one side and the UAE and Israel on the other. The recent war with Iran has increased the value these states place on reliable international partners and regional stability. Europe should use this moment to press for restraint. The EU, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in coordination with the UK and, where possible, the US, should make clear to Middle Eastern powers that any support to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the context of an all-out escalation would cross a red line and trigger immediate consequences on relations with them across the board. A similar approach should be adopted for northern Somalia.
Europeans can do far more to prevent the Horn of Africa’s conflicts from converging into a wider crisis. They cannot afford to wait until they become another maritime emergency.
[1] Author’s interview with Somalia security expert on May 21.
[2] Author’s interview with European diplomat on May 10.
[3] Author’s interview with Somalia security expert on May 21.
[4] Author’s interview with European diplomat on May 10.
[5] Author’s interview with Puntland-based civil society representative on May 12.
Cover image: picture alliance / REUTERS | Nathan Howard
In the latest episode of ECFR’s WOMENP podcast, Ellie Geranmayeh is joined by three leading Lebanese voices— Alia Moubayed, senior economist; Randa Slim, Middle East Programme director at the Stimson Center; and Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut—to unpack the consequences of the trilateral framework deal signed by Israel, the US and Lebanon.
Lebanon is among the countries most impacted by the US and Israel’s war against Iran. Following the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Hezbollah resumed direct attacks against Israel in March, plunging the country back into conflict. Around 4,000 people in Lebanon have since been killed and over a million displaced, with Israeli ground forces now occupying parts of south Lebanon.
In June, Israel, the US and Lebanon signed a historic—and controversial—trilateral framework deal, with the parties meeting again in July to discuss the implementation phase, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied parts of Lebanon. But with a ceasefire between the US and Iran unravelling, the durability of the Lebanon deal is unclear. Together, Ellie, Alia, Maha and Randa discuss whether the deal can bring lasting peace to Lebanon and how international players can support efforts to stabilise the country.
Listen to all past episodes of ECFR’s WOMENP series.
This podcast was recorded on July 16th, 2026.
Bookshelf:
The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America’s Undoing in the Middle East by Kim Ghattas
To nobody’s surprise, the US and Iran are back at war. After Washington launched a new series of strikes on Iran on July 8th, the two are exchanging fire on assets across the Gulf. Once again, movement through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s major thoroughfare of oil exports, is minimal and global fuel prices are creeping back up.
North Africa, still reeling from the consequences of the fighting earlier this year, is nervously watching on. Egypt’s and Tunisia’s finances are suffering and the balance of power between Morocco and Algeria looks shaky, as does Libya’s delicately poised political status quo. The war’s corrosiveness is pushing the region closer to instability. This was true after the ceasefire, and even moreso now it has been broken.
For Europe, north Africa’s travails are a security and economic threat. But they are also an opportunity for Europeans to finally redevelop their relations with their southern neighbours by helping buttress them against this tumultuous new world and in turn, protect themselves against future unrest.
Taking blows
As import-oriented economies, North African countries are largely dependent on streams of global currencies, and they are increasingly energy hungry. This makes them hyper vulnerable to the Iran war’s geopolitical and geoeconomic fallout, as the first wave of fighting made all too clear.
When Iran closed the strait of Hormuz in February and struck energy terminals across Arab gulf states, it hit energy markets and upended budgets across the region. The Tunisian government, for example, already locked in a Sisyphean struggle to find enough foreign currency for key monthly imports and loan repayments, designed their budget with an assumed price of oil at $63 per barrel, only to see it soar to over $100. They almost depleted their emergency reserve within the first few weeks of the war and relied on quiet energy loans from neighbours. Egypt, similarly, was forced to go to Libya and costly spot markets after Israel declared force majeure on key gas exports following the gulf shutdown. The government even forced 24-hr metropolises into darkness after 9pm. The region now faces this new round of fighting with the energy stores depleted and the coffers dry.
North Africa’s oil economies were also affected. Algerian and Libyan hopes to leverage high oil prices have been stymied by loans to neighbours, production limits and domestic energy demands. Libya—which depends on fuel imports and suffers from massive fuel smuggling operations—had their first unified budget in years gravely unbalanced before even being signed.
North Africa’s longer-term struggle will be maintaining the foreign currency streams that fund imports and, by extension, social programmes. In other words, the war has triggered consequences that will become new structural realities
After the shock of these initial blows, North Africa’s longer-term struggle will be maintaining the foreign currency streams that fund imports and, by extension, social programmes. In other words, the war has triggered consequences that will become new structural realities.
As calm returned following the initial ceasefire, energy, fertiliser, food, tourism and shipping markets began returning to normal. This gave regional governments some clarity over cashflows. And, with the diplomatic structures from the ceasefire in place, markets are proving slightly more resilient following the recent outbreak of violence. However, the renewed war is still young and the future ominous. For North Africa’s two largest foreign currency streams—remittances and Arab gulf investments—the omens are even worse, leaving the region in crippling suspense over what comes next.
The Gulf is north Africa’s main labour market, especially for Egypt which has 3.3 million nationals in the region. Remittances from this labour are a vital stabiliser for the region’s poorer economies, with increasing importance during tough times as a forex supply and economic ballast that governments do not have to pay for.
Last year, the value of remittances to Morocco was around €11.4bn, roughly 8% of GDP; it is already 10% higher so far this year. In Tunisia it was €2.6bn, 5.6% of GDP but making up around 30% of Tunis’s foreign currency reserves. In Egypt the statistics are even more concerning as remittances grew a startling 40.5% year-on-year to €36.2bn, roughly 12% of GDP.
The Gulf is also the largest source of foreign investment. It has repeatedly bailed out Egypt, provided a rare source of foreign projects in Tunisia’s otherwise seized economy, and in Morocco, the UAE alone accounts for 19% of foreign direct investment.
Given the scale of dependence, even small constrictions in Gulf labour markets and investments could destabilise these economies through hitting remittances and GDP respectively. Among North African capitals, there is a deep-seated fear that Gulf economies are much harder hit than let on, with anecdotal expectations of mass layoffs and cuts to foreign spending.
Instability ahead
This is a grim forecast for already suffering economies with simmering unrest. Poor finances have fuelled a long-running battle between Tunisia’s government and protestors while 2025 saw Morocco’s worst protesting since 2011’s Arab Spring. In the shadow of the Iran war, cost-of-living and inequality issues will only worsen. Similar anxieties drove Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to send air-defence systems to the Gulf and visit Abu Dhabi, to shore up the relationship after the UAE expelled thousands of Pakistani labourers seemingly as punishment for Islamabad’s diplomatic efforts.
Amid it all, the rivalry between Algeria and Morocco has intensified. Thanks to the energy crisis, Algiers leveraged high oil prices to: accelerate energy-sector development; consolidate its trilateral Maghreb union (that pointedly excludes Morocco); court Europe with energy; and advance the trans-sahara pipeline linking Nigerian and Nigerien oil to Algeria’s export terminals.
This has toppled the regional balance of power in Algiers’s favour, just as Rabat’s closest allies—the US, the UAE and Israel—are otherwise occupied. As their pantomime rivalry is the pivot on which regional stability and politics rests—especially given their spiralling arms race—this misbalancing could lead to heightened tensions and other flashpoints throughout the region most notably over the Western Sahara.
In Libya, high oil prices enticed Turkey and the US to try and use the lure of energy sector developments and the potential for profiting off them as bait for a new political agreement. Unsurprisingly, this has only stoked mass protests from a population long-promised elections and struggling with the worst cost-of-living crisis since the 1950s because of the kleptocracies this deal is trying to unite.
Fertile ground for Europe
As the region’s political economy teeters on the edge, it might seem that there is little Europe can do to stop a cascade of instability it was never really involved in. But at the precipice of crisis is also a platform for Europe to advance its strategy to transform relationships with North Africa, most recently articulated in the EU’s pact for the Mediterranean. Given the pact’s purpose is to redevelop Europe’s southern relations and build closer working partnerships, there is no better moment to see it through. After all, a friend in need is a friend indeed.
Both the EU and its member states can help stabilise the situation and in turn, improve relations. Interested countries, like Spain, France and Italy could donate or cheaply loan their Special Drawing Rights—an asset provided by the IMF designed to supplement a state’s foreign exchange reserves—to ensure struggling regional economies ride out the storm. Alongside this they should encourage the European Commission to extend the food and resilience facility for the southern neighbourhood to help struggling states deal with the fallout of the fertiliser crisis.
Such steps would help Europeans develop credibility and good will, stabilise the neighbourhood and lay the groundwork for expanded EU engagement in north Africa. The commission could then build on this in the long-term by going to regional capitals with plans to develop green power generation, facilitate European private-sector investment, and develop infrastructure through Global Gateway. This would satisfy the region’s energy and economic imperatives while developing the green energy imports and nearshoring environment that Europe needs.
After a year of unrest, North Africa may very well stabilise itself, but there is a decent chance it could deteriorate into polycrisis. Regardless of the outcome, if Europe refuses to respond it will once again be assuming the position of the passive bystander, the worst geopolitical role possible at a time of either great opportunity or dire crisis.
A coup is underway in Mali, though it has not brought down the governing junta just yet. The country’s military leader, General Assimi Goïta has, after days in hiding, appeared in public to claim, unconvincingly, that the “situation is under control.” But rebel forces — an alliance of Al-Qaeda affiliates and Tuareg separatists — have taken over provincial cities and are calling for a blockade of the capital Bamako. Mali’s military junta hangs on by a thread, in a familiar regional story of violence, civilian suffering and international intrigue.
On April 25, coordinated attacks across Mali exposed the junta’s fragile hold over the country. Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda affiliate that has driven insurgency across the region for over a decade, joined forces for the first time with Tuareg separatist groups — who have been fighting the central government for even longer — to simultaneously strike cities hundreds of miles apart, including the capital Bamako, Gao, Kidal, Sévaré, and the garrison town of Kati. A suicide car bomber drove into the residence of defence minister General Sadio Camara, killing him along with his wife, two grandchildren, and several civilians. Camara was one of the most influential figures in Mali's ruling junta and had been widely seen as a possible future leader of the country. He was also the key architect of Mali's military alliance with Russia. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which together form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), have all in recent years realigned away from France, the former colonial power in the region, and towards Russia.
Russian mercenaries, in the form of the Wagner Group and more recently the Africa Corps, have backed military juntas in the Sahel, after coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger led to the withdrawal of French troops from France’s former colonies. But during these latest rebel strikes, it was Russian fighters that were chased out of the northern city of Kidal to the sound of jeers. Africa Corps, the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary group, described the insurgent attacks as a "coup attempt" backed by "Western intelligence services." RT amplified these claims, accusing France and the West of orchestrating the violence, even as it claimed Russian fighters successfully repelled rebels. In 2024, Ukraine’s military agency said it had provided information to help Tuareg rebels ambush and rout a Wagner convoy, killing dozens of Russian mercenaries. Both Mali and Niger have cut diplomatic ties with Kyiv. Burkina Faso has described Kyiv as a destabilizing force in the region, making the Sahel effectively a front in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s combination of misinformation and mercenaries helped exploit growing anti-Western sentiments in the Sahel to give Russia a propaganda win in the region. Former colonial powers such as France didn’t help themselves, as can be seen even now in Madagascar, the latest nation to expel a French diplomat and accuse Paris of fomenting unrest. But the success of Russian propaganda hasn’t been matched on the ground. As Mali struggles to contain a rebel alliance that has fresh impetus and energy, Moscow’s control is weakening and the effectiveness of its military support is under question. Already, with Russian weapons in short supply because of war with Ukraine, it is China that the Malian junta turns to for arms. China’s strategic efforts in the Sahel have been similar to its efforts in the rest of the African continent – a focus on securing infrastructure contracts as part of the Belt and Road Initiative and securing access to mineral resources. But rebel attacks in the Sahel are bad for Chinese business. In February, the Chinese embassy in Niamey, the capital of Niger, warned Chinese companies to take their workers out of the firing line as rebels increasingly targeted Chinese infrastructure projects, including a $4.5 billion oil pipeline from Niger to Benin.
In 2024, the United States was forced to leave neighboring Niger after a coup, to withdraw from a $100 million base. It seemed the U.S. was losing ground to both Russia and China in the Sahel. Earlier this year, though, as security concerns in the Sahel escalated sharply, the U.S. adjusted its approach, choosing to deal pragmatically with military juntas. By late February, the U.S. lifted sanctions on top Malian officials, including General Camara, the recently slain defence minister. It may see closer cooperation with Sahel countries as essential to its security interests and a way to undercut Chinese access to Sahelian resources.
The three Sahel states, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, have turned away from France and Europe and towards Russia, while increasingly flirting with the U.S. and reliant on Chinese weapons. The result has been disaster. All three Sahel states are ranked in the top 5 for countries impacted by terrorism. And the humanitarian toll has been severe. Millions of people face internal displacement across the region and cuts in aid programmes mean many millions, especially children, also face acute hunger. But, as the great powers circle the region, jockeying for geopolitical gain, the talk remains about the logistics of propping up failing juntas, providing military solutions to human crises, and maintaining power rather than confronting problems.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – all led by military authorities that came to power in a coup – have also isolated themselves from the rest of their neighbors by withdrawing from the West African regional bloc, Ecowas. Meanwhile, they sell their model as an alternative to Western-style democracy, a narrative that Russian propaganda networks have been all too eager to promote. But the strength of the insurgency against Mali’s government, and Russia’s apparent inability to protect it, sends a different message to the rest of the African continent.
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