Building a Resilient Berbera
Berbera does not need to intercept every threat to remain operational. Its strongest defence may be redundancy, dispersal and rapid recovery.
Berbera cannot assume that expensive air-defence systems will intercept every missile or drone. Its more immediate requirement is passive protection: measures that allow the port, airport, fuel supply, communications and public services to survive disruption and resume operating quickly.
There is no independently verified public evidence of an imminent attack on Berbera. Planning should therefore be threat-informed without presenting speculation as fact.
Protect functions, not only buildings
Berbera’s strategic assets are increasingly interconnected. The port has an annual container capacity of approximately 500,000 TEUs, while the nearby economic zone and Berbera Corridor connect maritime operations with warehouses, industry and Ethiopian markets.
This concentration creates economic efficiency but also systemic risk. A strike, fire, cyber incident or extended power failure affecting one shared service could interrupt several facilities simultaneously.
Somaliland should begin with a confidential national critical-assets register. It should identify which services must remain available during the first 24 hours, first week and first month of a crisis. The register—not detailed site vulnerabilities—should guide investment priorities.
Disperse essential capabilities
Critical functions should not depend on one control room, fuel depot, communications provider or power connection. Essential operating data should be replicated at a secure secondary location, while port and airport authorities need alternate command facilities with independent communications and electricity.
Fuel, emergency equipment and essential spare parts should be distributed across properly regulated locations rather than concentrated at one site. Berbera also requires the ability to maintain limited cargo handling, firefighting, medical evacuation and public communications if its principal facilities become temporarily unusable.
UN disaster-resilience principles emphasize redundancy and warn that tightly connected infrastructure can produce cascading failures. FEMA similarly recommends alternate facilities with resilient communications and backup power. February 2018 (2024 Update)
Harden selectively
Attempting to fortify every structure would be unaffordable. Somaliland should prioritize personnel shelters, emergency command functions, communications nodes, backup power, firefighting systems and equipment needed to restore operations.
Physical changes could include protected utility connections, fire separation, blast-resistant treatment for selected occupied spaces and safeguarded emergency generators. Exact designs must follow professional engineering assessments and remain confidential.
Protection must also include cyber resilience. Port operating systems should retain offline backups, segmented networks and tested manual alternatives. Updated IMO guidance calls for maritime organizations to practise recovery plans and restore systems essential to ship–port operations after cyber incidents.
Establish one resilience command
Responsibility is currently likely to cross multiple institutions: the Somaliland government, port authority, DP World, airport authorities, security services, utilities, telecommunications companies and Berbera municipality.
A Berbera Critical Infrastructure Resilience Committee should coordinate these actors without placing commercial operations under military control. It should commission an updated Port Facility Security Assessment, maintain an incident-command protocol and conduct regular exercises covering drone alerts, major fires, cyber failures, mass casualties and temporary port closure.
The ISPS framework requires port-facility security assessments and reviewed security plans. IMO has already supported security training in Berbera focused on emerging threats and updating the port’s security plan.
WARYATV Assessment
Berbera’s first defence is not necessarily another weapons purchase. It is ensuring that no single impact can disable the port, fuel supply, communications and government response together.
Passive protection will not make Berbera invulnerable. It can, however, deny an attacker the strategic outcome sought: prolonged economic paralysis. Somaliland should invest first in redundancy, distributed reserves, protected personnel, recoverable data and rehearsed continuity plans. A port that can continue limited operations under pressure is substantially harder to coerce than one dependent on a few exposed systems.
