In December, as it often has during the ongoing war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the British government urged accountability, expressing concerns about the mass-scale death and devastation that civilians have suffered.
But reporting has shown that, behind the scenes, the United Kingdom rejected more ambitious plans to prevent atrocities as violence escalated.
Further east, the UK has officially backed the territorial integrity of Somalia – while holding a stake in a strategic port in the breakaway region of Somaliland that it does not recognise.
These decisions and moves by the UK, say analysts, raise doubts about whether its words are in keeping with its actions in the Horn of Africa.
Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, a Sudanese policy analyst, said the UK’s credibility is increasingly judged by the risks it is willing, or unwilling, to take.
“When people believe your words and your actions diverge, they stop treating you as a broker and start treating you as an interest manager,” he told Al Jazeera.
‘Enabler of aggression’ in Sudan
That judgement, analysts argue, now colours how the UK’s actions elsewhere in the region are being read.
In Sudan, earlier reports show how the UK government opted for what internal documents describe as the “least ambitious” approach to end the bloodshed, even as mass killings by the RSF mounted in Darfur, including around el-Fasher.
Eltayeb argues that this has led the UK to be viewed not as a marginal or distracted actor, but as a central one whose diplomatic posture has helped shape how the war is framed internationally.
He referred to reports that the United Arab Emirates has armed or supported RSF – allegations documented by UN experts and international media and denied by Abu Dhabi – and said the UK had emerged as “an enabler of the Emirati aggression in Sudan”. The aim: To “whitewash RSF atrocities in the diplomatic framing of the war”.
Asked about its approach to Sudan, the UK Foreign Office told Al Jazeera: “The crisis in Sudan is the worst we have seen in decades – the UK government is working with allies and partners to end the violence and prevent further atrocities from occurring.
“We need both the parties to support a ceasefire; this means unrestricted humanitarian access and a peace process with transition to a civilian government.”
Recognise Somalia, do business with Somaliland
The Foreign Office did not respond to questions about the UK’s role in Somalia or its commercial engagement in Somaliland, where scrutiny has increasingly centred on the port of Berbera.
The British government co-owns the port through its development finance arm, British International Investment (BII). The port is jointly owned by the UAE-based logistics firm DP World and the government of Somaliland – even though the UK does not officially recognise that government. The UAE, too, formally does not recognise Somaliland.
Berbera sits near one of the world’s most important maritime corridors linking the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. An impact assessment commissioned by the UK Foreign Office described it as “a strategic gateway” to Somaliland and a potential alternative trade corridor for Ethiopia, language that places it firmly within the region’s geopolitical architecture.
The port’s strategic value is not new. Matthew Sterling Benson, a social and economic historian of Africa at the London School of Economics (LSE), noted that Berbera has repeatedly been treated by external powers as strategic infrastructure first, and a political community second. It has served at different points as a British coaling station, a Soviet naval base during the Cold War, and now a commercial logistics hub shaped by Gulf and Western interests.
The Sudan-Somaliland link
That wider architecture has become more politically charged as Sudan’s war has spilled across borders.
Observers have suggested that Berbera is part of a broader Emirati logistics network that United Nations experts and international media have linked to alleged supply routes used to arm the RSF. The UAE has cons