Abacus | Why borrowers on China’s belt and road will go from euphoria to depression
China is investing heavily in international infrastructure projects to advance its own interests, but when the bills come due the deals may wreak havoc on poorer nations with nowhere to turn
Until very recently, the dusty African territory of Djibouti was best known to the wider world for its inhabitants’ habit of chewing khat. Each day, as the heat of the afternoon mounts, the men of Djibouti gather in sociable groups, wad a few leaves of the East African shrub Catha edulis into their cheeks, and chew until they descend – or ascend – into a mild euphoria. Either way, no more work is done for the day. As a result, very little work ever gets done at all, except for the import, trade, distribution and retail of khat itself.
In Djibouti, time has always moved slowly.
Until recently that is. Djibouti is blessed – or cursed – with a strategic location, immediately to the west of the Bab al Mandab, the narrow marine strait between Africa and Arabia, gateway to the southern Red Sea, and to the Suez Canal beyond. Traditionally the key shipping route through the Bab has always been dominated by the great natural harbour, set in a collapsed volcanic crater, of Aden to the East. But in 2000 a boat-borne suicide attack in Aden’s harbour nearly sunk the US naval destroyer USS Cole. With the best port in the vicinity denied to them, piracy a growing menace to marine traffic, and the region increasingly unstable, the great powers turned their attention to Djibouti on the west side of the Bab.
As a former imperial possession of France, Djibouti had long hosted a contingent of the Foreign Legion. Then, in 2001 the Americans also arrived, signing a lease for a military facility of their own to be the main base for the Pentagon’s African command. They were followed in 2011 by Japan’s Self Defence Forces, which in a move ostensibly aimed at anti-piracy operations, established Japan’s first foreign military base in almost 70 years.
