The Biden State Department has just named career diplomat Jeffrey Feltman to be Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa. Given the geopolitical powder keg in the region and given the dark history of Feltman, especially in Lebanon and during the infamous CIA Arab Spring interventions after 2009, the relevant question is whether Washington has decided to explode the entire region from Ethiopia down to Egypt into a repeat of the Syria chaos only far more dangerous. And it's not only the US which is active in the region.

The group of African countries stretching from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia, astride the geopolitically strategic Gulf of Aden and Red Sea comprise the formal Horn of Africa. It is extended politically and economically often to include Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda. This region is strategic among other reasons as the source of the Nile, Africa's most important river, that flows some 4100 miles north to the Mediterranean in Egypt. The Horn of Africa is also a gateway to major world shipping flows via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. The recent bizarre blockage of a huge container ship that blocked the canal for days, backing up a significant portion of world trade, is indicative of the region's importance.