🇮🇱 📸 Just in time for Israeli recognition: satellite photos show expansion of strategic Somaliland base

OSINT investigators comparing commercially available satellite imagery have uncovered a major expansion of military infrastructure in and around the air base in Berbera, Somaliland over the past three months.

📑 Photos show excavation works, new structures (possibly ammo depots), and other construction around the airport, including what looks like at least 12 underground bunkers.

Images also reveal an expansion to the airport’s main apron, and to the large hardened aircraft and drone hangars built there in 2021-2022, and a large berth dug near the airport, extending into the Gulf of Aden.

Berbera base’s backers? It’s a secret

🔴 The UAE has been active in Somaliland since 2017, ignoring protests from the Somali government in Mogadishu, and using the area as a logistics hub in support of armed factions in Yemen and Sudan

🔴 United States Africa Command is also involved, with its commander, Gen. Dagvin Anderson, paying a visit to Somaliland in November, ostensibly to bolster ‘security and counterterrorism cooperation’. AFRICOM officials have been visiting Berbera regularly since 2021

🔴 Israeli media have been playing up Somaliland’s “strategic significance” since 2024, hinting potential clandestine cooperation long before this week’s official recognition

Strategic location

♦️ Berbera overlooks the western Gulf of Aden, and is situated less than 300 km from the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and ~240 km from Djibouti. It’s also roughly ~530-550 km from major Yemeni cities controlled by Ansar Allah (Houthis) – adversaries of Israel, the US and the Gulf sheikhdoms.

♦️ The USSR helped build Berbera’s civilian port, naval and military airbase facilities in the 1960s, but broke off cooperation with Somalia in the 1970s after it launched a war against Ethiopia. Somalia’s subsequent disintegration and Somaliland’s 1991 declaration of independence left the area in state of strategic limbo, a vacuum the US and regional actors proved eager to step into.

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