FILE PHOTO: A delegate walks next to African Union (AU) member states flags ahead of the 38th Ordinary Session of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union at the African Union Commission (AUC) headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, February 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/ Tiksa Negeri/File Photo

A feud between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates across the Horn of Africa is overshadowing this weekend’s African Union summit, though most of the continent’s leaders will try to avoid taking sides, nine diplomats and experts said.

What began as a rivalry in Yemen has spread across the Red Sea into a region riven with conflicts – from war in Somalia and Sudan to rivalry between Ethiopia and Eritrea and a divided Libya.

In recent years, the UAE has become an influential player in the Horn – encompassing primarily Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti – through multi-billion-dollar investments, robust diplomacy and discreet military support.

Saudi Arabia has been more low-profile but diplomats say Riyadh is building an alliance that includes Egypt, Turkey and Qatar.

“Saudi has woken up and realized that they might lose the Red Sea,” a senior African diplomat told Reuters. “They have been sleeping all along while UAE was doing its thing in the Horn.”

Initially focused on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden – both crucial shipping routes, the rivalry is now reaching further inland.

“Today it is in Somalia, but it is also playing out in Sudan, Sahel and elsewhere,” the diplomat said.

COMPELLED TO CHOOSE A SIDE

While these conflicts have strong local drivers, Gulf involvement is forcing countries, regions and even warlords to choose a side, diplomats said.

Michael Woldemariam, a Horn of Africa expert at the University of Maryland, said regional actors, including Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), have grown uneasy with the UAE’s “muscular” foreign policy.

“Saudis may seek to limit or curtail UAE in the Horn but, it remains to see how that will play out,” he said. “UAE has a lot of leverage across the region – it has this expeditionary military presence and dense financial linkages.”

Saudi officials say UAE activities in Yemen and the Horn threaten their national security.

Senior Emirati officials say their strategy strengthens states against extremists, while U.N. experts and Western officials argue it has sometimes fueled conflict and empowered authoritarian leaders, charges the UAE denies.

The officials and diplomats interviewed in this story declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

AVOIDING A BRAWL BETWEEN GULF POWERS

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland’s independence bid is the starkest example so far of tensions being stoked.

Somalia has cut all ties with Abu Dhabi, accusing it of influencing Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. Mogadishu has since signed a defense agreement with Qatar, while Turkey sent fighter jets to the capital in a show of force.

Tensions are also rising between African Union host Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea, which have been on the verge of war for months. Eritrea’s leader recently visited Saudi Arabia, a trip that analysts perceived as signaling Saudi backing.

UAE and Saudi Arabia back opposing sides in Sudan’s war, all the sources and experts interviewed said. The UAE is accused of providing logistical support to the RSF paramilitary, while states in line with Saudi Arabia largely back the SAF.

Egypt, a Saudi ally, has deployed Turkish-made drones along its border with SAF and used them to strike RSF in Sudan, security officials said.

Analysts said Ethiopia benefits from UAE support, and Reuters found this week that Ethiopia is hosting a base in western Ethiopia where RSF fighters are recruited and trained.

Ethiopia has not publicly commented on the story.

‘ACTING THROUGH ALLIES AND PROXIES’

Across the region, Saudi Arabia often acts through allies and proxies rather than directly, experts said.

Woldemariam said African countries were likely to tread carefully.

“Even those actors in the Horn who were alarmed by UAE influence may be cautious about how much they want to be caught up in a brawl between these two Gulf powers,” he said.

The Horn is not the only crisis on the AU summit’s agenda.

War continues in Democratic Republic of Congo, and al Qaeda- and Islamic State-linked insurgencies are spreading across the Sahel region.

But those conflicts are still likely to take a back seat to the Horn.

Alex Rondos, the EU’s former special representative for the region, said the Horn had become a subsidiary arena for Middle East rivalries.

“Do the Saudis and UAE … fully grasp the implications?” he said. “Will the Horn of Africa allow itself to be broken into pieces by these foreign rivalries and their African accomplices?”

FILE PHOTO: An Iranian woman holding a poster depicting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei walks under a large flag during the 47th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, Iran February 11, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS/File Photo

The US military is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if President Donald Trump orders an attack, two US officials told Reuters, in what could become a far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries.

The disclosure by the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the planning, raises the stakes for the diplomacy underway between the United States and Iran.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will hold negotiations with Iran on Tuesday in Geneva, with representatives from Oman acting as mediators. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cautioned on Saturday that while Trump’s preference was to reach a deal with Tehran, “that’s very hard to do.”

Meanwhile, Trump has amassed military forces in the region, raising fears of new military action. US officials said on Friday the Pentagon was sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding thousands more troops along with fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower capable of waging attacks and defending against them.

Trump, speaking to US troops on Friday at a base in North Carolina, openly floated the possibility of regime change in Iran, saying it “seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.” He declined to share who he wanted to take over Iran, but said “there are people.”

“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking,” Trump said.

Trump has long voiced skepticism about sending ground troops into Iran, saying last year “the last thing you want to do is ground forces,” and the kinds of US firepower arrayed in the Middle East so far suggest options for strikes primarily by air and naval forces. In Venezuela, Trump demonstrated a willingness to rely also on special operations forces to seize that country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, in a raid last month.

Asked for comment on the preparations for a potentially sustained US military operation, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “President Trump has all options on the table with regard to Iran.”

“He listens to a variety of perspectives on any given issue, but makes the final decision based on what is best for our country and national security,” Kelly said.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

The United States sent two aircraft carriers to the region last year, when it carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.

However, June’s “Midnight Hammer” operation was essentially a one-off US attack, with stealth bombers flying from the United States to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran staged a very limited retaliatory strike on a US base in Qatar.

RISKS INCREASING

The planning underway this time is more complex, the officials said.

In a sustained campaign, the US military could hit Iranian state and security facilities, not just nuclear infrastructure, one of the officials said. The official declined to provide specific detail.

Experts say the risks to US forces would be far greater in such an operation against Iran, which boasts a formidable arsenal of missiles. Retaliatory Iranian strikes also increase the risk of a regional conflict.

The same official said the United States fully expected Iran to retaliate, leading to back-and-forth strikes and reprisals over a period of time.

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to questions about the risks of retaliation or regional conflict.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and crushing of internal dissent. On Thursday, he warned the alternative to a diplomatic solution would “be very traumatic, very traumatic.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned that in case of strikes on Iranian territory, they could retaliate against any US military base.

The US maintains bases throughout the Middle East, including in Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Trump for talks in Washington on Wednesday, saying that if an agreement with Iran were reached, “it must include the elements that are vital to Israel.”

Iran has said it is prepared to discuss curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, but has ruled out linking the issue to missiles.

When Issam Hijazi launched the social media app UpScrolled last June, he positioned it as the antidote to Big Tech censorship — a haven where pro-Palestinian voices could finally speak freely. The platform really took off in January, expanding to some 2.5 million users. It looked like the Promised Land for internet denizens concerned that TikTok, Facebook and X suppressed speech or monitored users.

So, a few days ago, I created an UpScrolled account and listed my interests as “Politics.” Then the platform delivered exactly what its algorithm thought I wanted, based on that limited information: accusations that Israel runs a bioweapons lab out of a Las Vegas AirBnB; endless conspiratorial exposes about supposed connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad; Holocaust denial posts hashtagged #holohoax; and a Der Stürmer-worthy caricature of a hook-nosed Jew hunched over gold coins.

In other words: The app showcases the bankruptcy of the part of the American pro-Palestinian advocacy movement that can only imagine liberation through Jewish annihilation.

The freedom to glorify murder

Existing social media platforms have their share of antisemitism, misinformation and hate. But what stood out about UpScrolled was the absolute imbalance. There’s widespread glorification of Hamas, and a total lack of any thoughtful content about Jews and Israel.

No substantive critiques of settlement expansion. No debate about two-state versus binational solutions. No Israeli or Palestinian voices for coexistence. Just lots of posts celebrating Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose “strategy” built to the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, resulting in the destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza.

How is lionizing the architects of Palestinian suffering — a goal that Hamas transparently sees as serving its interest — remotely “pro-Palestinian”?

“We support initiatives that can make an impact in some way in the liberation of Palestine,” Paul Biggar, founder of the incubator Tech for Palestine, which helped launch UpScrolled, told me.

Biggar, an Irish computer scientist, said UpScrolled, as opposed to other social media platforms, is “human-centric.”

I asked Biggar if the content on UpScrolled was what Tech for Palestine expected, or wanted, when it helped launch the site. Among the examples I saw: a post that claimed to include a “recording of a JEWISH rabbi” — capitalization theirs — “explaining how they drink the blood of children and have their bodies minced and made into food!!”

He said he had not kept up with UpScrolled’s content.

“No one is interested in having their name on a platform that includes that kind of antisemitic imagery that you described,” he said.

Biggar blamed the platform’s “runaway growth” for the proliferation of hate. With all the attention has come “a lot of people f—ing with us,” he said, including rampant bots.

This week, Hijazi, UpScrolled’s founder, also addressed the problem. “No form of racism belongs here,” he said, in a video posted to the app. He promised to expand content moderation teams and upgrade technology to “catch and remove harmful content more effectively.”

Join ‘to upset the Jews’

Hijazi’s message is reassuring. But the problems with UpScrolled speak to a deeper issue with the American pro-Palestinian movement: that factions within it can prioritize demonizing Jews and Israel over helping actual Palestinians.

When Larry Ellison — a longtime Israel supporter — took control of the American spin off of TikTok in late January, angry users fled en masse. Within weeks, UpScrolled became the second most-downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store.

“People who are knowingly and very publicly and unashamedly antisemitic have weaponized UpScrolled to get back at Jews,” an ADL analyst tracking the platform told me. (The analyst asked that her name be withheld, out of concern over potential doxxing and other online threats.) Messages across antisemitic influencer networks explicitly called on users to join UpScrolled “to upset the Jews,” she said.

Those messages suggest that advocating for Palestinian rights and spreading Jew hatred are somehow connected projects. That you can’t oppose Israeli settlements without also questioning whether Jews were actually murdered at Treblinka.

We’ve seen this trajectory before, and it doesn’t end well. The Tree of Life shooter spent hours on the far-right social media platform Gab sharing antisemitic content before murdering 11 worshippers in 2018. Yes, Gab and UpScrolled are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but the same truth holds for both: The path from online hate to real-world violence isn’t theoretical.

This is poison for Jews — but also for Palestinians. It mires their cause in the oldest hatred rather than in universal human rights. It replaces serious discussions about actual solutions with slogans and memes.

And it sends a very clear message to Jews around the world — heard especially loud and clear in Israel — that Palestinian liberation means Jewish extermination. If anything, this sets the Palestinian cause backward. Any future Palestinian state will need to coexist with an Israeli one. No one is going anywhere. Reinforcing the belief, prevalent in some quarters, that its establishment would mean disaster for Jews will only make that establishment less likely.

The yawning enforcement gap

UpScrolled’s actual Rules and Policies prohibit speech condoning violence, promoting hate or supporting terror groups. But so far the site has not enforced them.

The ADL analyst said she tested the site’s content policy by reporting nine accounts that clearly violated platform terms. None of her reports were acted upon.

“If this platform wants to have an anti-hate speech policy, which they do, it needs to be enforced,” the ADL analyst said.

Biggar said Tech for Palestine will continue supporting the platform “because we keep hearing the right things” about preventing harm.

But he added a caveat: “If ever we felt that UpScrolled did not live up to the human rights-based focus that we have, we would be the first people to say so.”

That moment has arrived. The test isn’t just whether UpScrolled can moderate content at scale — it’s whether its founders and users can imagine Palestinian freedom without devolving into vicious antisemitism. Until they can, they’re not building a platform for liberation. They’re perpetuating the politics that keep Palestinians stateless and Jews under threat.

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