Djibouti is a country of fewer than a million people with no significant natural resources.

It also hosts the densest cluster of foreign military bases in the world, with bases from the United States, China, France, Japan and Italy operating within miles of each other along its coastline.

These countries, seeking bases for both commercial and security purposes, have been warmly welcomed by President Ismail Omar Guelleh, who has ruled for at least two decades and leveraged the country’s strategic location to advance his own aims.

As Djiboutians go to the polls on Friday with Guelleh safely expected to win his sixth term, it is a strategy that has never looked more consequential.

The reason is the maritime chokepoint just beyond Djibouti’s shore.

Bab-el-Mandeb — the Gate of Tears — is a narrow corridor barely 30 kilometres wide at its tightest point, through which roughly 12 percent of global maritime trade passes every day, while at least 90 percent of Europe-Asia internet capacity runs through cables laid along the same route.

“This region sits at the centre of many things from global trade, shipping, to fibre optic connectivity, energy, and is related to the Suez Canal, the Indo-Pacific,” Federico Donelli, author of the book, Power Competition in the Red Sea, told Al Jazeera.

With the US and Israel at war with Iran since February 28, and the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, Djibouti and its position at the entrance to the Red Sea have come into sharp focus.

‘Geography is our main national resource’

When the September 11, 2001, attacks pushed the US to seek forward bases in East Africa, Djibouti was the obvious answer.

Camp Lemonnier, a former French Foreign Legion base on the edge of Djibouti City, became the headquarters of US Africa Command’s Horn of Africa task force. It remains the only permanent US military base on the continent, home to more than 4,000 personnel.

France, which had colonised and then stayed on in Djibouti after independence in 1977, was already there. French President Emmanuel Macron recently described it as sitting at the “heart” of Paris’s Indo-Pacific strategy, and has a mutual defence pact which was renewed in 2024.

Piracy off the Somali coast in the late 2000s brought Japan, Italy, and eventually China.

“Many countries with military bases in Djibouti emphasise protecting their commercial and investment interests,” said Djibouti’s president, in a 2024 interview with Saudi Arabian-owned news outlet Asharq Al-Awsat.

As a major trading power, Japan was especially exposed to insecurity in the Red Sea, through which a significant share of its traded goods transited.

One fifth of Japan’s vehicle exports and roughly 1,800 Japan-linked commercial vessels traverse the Bab-el-Mandeb annually, according to a government report published in March.

In 2017, Djibouti Finance Minister Ilyas Dawaleh outlined how much the country was charging for the privilege of hosting: the US was paying $65m a year, France $30m, China $20m, Italy and Japan just over $3m each.

“Our geography is our main national resource,” a Djiboutian official told Al Jazeera. “Like oil for Gulf states,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Djibouti’s base-for-cash model is not solely extractive, though, and sits at the heart of a broader development strategy.

Larry Andre, a former US ambassador to Djibouti, told Al Jazeera that the opening of China’s base was part of a “package deal” that included a new railway linking landlocked Ethiopia to the coast through Djibouti, enabling about 90 percent of Addis Ababa’s external trade. “Eighty-five percent of Djibouti GDP is derived from servicing Ethiopian trade,” he added.

This was accompanied by significant infrastructure investment from Chinese firms, including in Djibouti’s ports, along with a major loan, which was renegotiated.

That marked the start of an economic and political pivot towards China, initially triggered when Djibouti’s government nationalised a port owned by the Emirati state firm DP World after a dispute over its operations.

In September 2024, Xi Jinping and Guelleh elevated their relationship to Beijing’s highest diplomatic tier, “comprehensive strategic partnership”.

“They thought hard about how to monetise that chokepoint,” said Samira Gaid, a regional security analyst at think tank, Balqiis Insights, “and how to go about that whilst not becoming dependent on one state.”

A year later, Marco Rubio — who as a senator in 2018 had publicly warned that China’s base risked destabilising the region — called Guelleh as US secretary of state to reaffirm what he described as a “long-standing strategic partnership”.

Djibouti was the only African country mentioned in Project 2025, a 900-page conservative blueprint by the Trump-linked Heritage Foundation, which warns of a US “deteriorating position” in Djibouti and urges recognition of Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland.

“The US is happy to remain in Djibouti for now despite China’s presence because they don’t have a better option at present,” Donelli said, adding that while Berbera, further east in Somaliland, has been speculated as an alternative base, nothing has yet materialised.

Djibouti’s former foreign minister Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, now chair of the African Union Commission, pushed back against rising criticisms in Washington in 2017. “China does not represent an obstacle to those common goals and Djibouti will preserve balanced relationships with these two great nations,” Youssouf added.

A route in crisis

The Red Sea, transformed from a geographic cul-de-sac into a vital trade corridor after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1969, is no longer the reliable passage it once was.

Between late 2023 and the ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza in late 2025, Yemen’s Houthi movement waged a sustained campaign against shipping in the strait. The group launched more than 520 attacks targeting at least 176 ships, according to conflict monitor ACLED.

According to UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport 2025, tonnage through the Suez Canal was still 70 percent below 2023 levels as of May 2025.

“In some ways, Djibouti is even more indispensable in this moment than it was when shipping and trade and geopolitics was going as normal,” Jatin Dua, who specialises in East African security and logistics at the University of Michigan, told Al Jazeera.

“There is a recognition that they are a safe haven in what is something of an unstable neighbourhood,” he added.

The disruption has, however, paradoxically also begun shaking Djibouti’s regional monopoly on military bases.

The Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies, a French think tank, has warned that the Red Sea is at a “strategic inflection point,” shifting from “episodic rivalries” to “structured competition,” a trend it links to developments such as Israel’s recognition of Somaliland.

Somaliland’s leaders have pitched Berbera to the US in exchange for further recognition, while it has also refused to rule out the possibility of an Israeli base, despite threats from the Houthis, who control northwestern Yemen.

Somalia, which claims Somaliland, has warned its territory cannot become “a launching pad for military operations.” Djibouti’s Guelleh, whose country borders Somaliland to the east, has voiced alarm at the development, warning that Somaliland’s new president appears willing to accept any support “even if it’s the devil’s”.

Further up the coast, Russia has been attempting to revive a long-stalled agreement with Sudan to establish its first naval base in Africa on the Red Sea.

What the rents don’t buy

The gap between the country’s strategic importance and its citizens’ daily reality is not subtle. Official unemployment stands at nearly 40 percent and more than one in five people live in extreme poverty.

“The rents they are accruing don’t seem to trickle down,” Gaid said. “Everything to do with these military bases is basically imported, they’re just renting space. They aren’t really utilising your people.”

The opposition leader Daher Ahmed Farah has previously told Al Jazeera that the “country is in a strategic position and hosts many bases, but these interests lie with the Djiboutian people, not with a single man”.

Guelleh has been in power since 1999.

He removed term limits in 2010, won a fifth term in 2021 with 98 percent of the vote, and earlier this year removed the presidency’s age restrictions. When asked last May whether he intended to relinquish power, he told Jeune Afrique magazine: “I love my country too much to embark on an irresponsible adventure and be the cause of divisions.”

Gaid argues that the foreign powers based in Djibouti have “enabled” and “empowered” Guelleh “to dominate politics in that country”. The bases that were meant to guarantee stability, in other words, have also helped guarantee him.

Finance Minister Dawaleh has recently warned, however, that the Iran war risks pushing smaller states like Djibouti into “deeper economic uncertainty,” while the US embassy has repeatedly warned Americans to avoid areas near Camp Lemonnier, citing threats against US interests.

These two related developments risk both Djibouti’s internal stability and its effort to remain equidistant from the countries it hosts.

Dua, the Michigan academic, says that Djibouti’s model has traditionally worked through its careful branding of itself as a “space of stability” in an unpredictable region. “If that disappears, then the kind of power Djibouti has in the region in terms of attracting trade and geopolitical interest, which also means resources, can slowly disappear,” he said.

“It is a bit of a gamble to host as many countries militarily as they do,” Donelli said. “But for Guelleh, it appears to be working.”