Djibouti

Camp Lemonier, the United States' only military base in Africa, is used as a temporary holding facility for terror suspects, before they are unlawfully rendered to indefinite detention in Afghanistan and beyond.

Djibouti  is a tiny country at the tip of the Horn of Africa. As the most stable state in the troubled Gulf of Aden, it occupies a key strategic position in the region. This fact has not been lost on global powers, and Djibouti has successively hosted French, US, and now soon Chinese and Japanese military bases.

The major foreign power currently operating in Djibouti is the US, and Camp Lemonier is the United States Navy “forward operating site” in the country. It is the primary regional base for the US’s Operation Enduring Freedom - Horn of Africa and Combined Joint Task Force -Horn of Africa.  Lemonier is the current “temporary” base of the US Military’s Africa Command.  The US’s use of Lemonier has been mired in controversy since at least 2004, when it began to use the base as a temporary holding facility for rendition of terror suspects from the region to indefinite detention in Afghanistan and beyond. Documented rendition cases involving the use of Djibouti include Mohammed Al-Assad, Mohammed Ali Issa, and Abdulmalik Mohammed. 

The use of the base for rendition operations is just one example of the US practice of exceptionalism when it comes to observing the law of Djibouti. According to Djiboutians, the US practises a “form of slave labour” on the base, where it brings in foreign workers and pays them so little that they are effectively bound to stay until they can afford to pay the US government back for their travel costs. The workers are given no rights, and when some workers attempted to bring the US government before an employment tribunal in a Djiboutian court, the US Military simply refused to attend the hearing. On other occasions, US Military Personnel have reportedly shot camel herders who stray too near to the base's perimeter fence, paying off the family and again refusing to attend court.

The US claims that its programme in Djibouti revolves around building partner capacity, and “winning hearts and minds”. But such obvious disregard for Djibouti’s own legal system reveals a cynicism at the heart of the US mission. In a region where the spectre of complete collapse of state structures is ever-present, destroying what is left of the rule of law is a dark strategy.

The real-politik at the heart of the US military presence is a concrete given for Djiboutians, especially lawyers. As the Attorney-General of Djibouti put it, in the context of possible US accountability for the use of Lemonier as a secret prison, “The limit of the law is fact. Here there is one fact – we are in East Africa.”