The military part of the Gulf Crisis might be finally coming to an end, but the world will never be the same again. It’s time to redefine Kenya’s place in it, writes Morris Kiruga, Editor-in-Chief of The Kenyan Wall Street.
Societies the world over are holding all hope that the military part of the Gulf Crisis, which has seen death and destruction spread from Gaza to much of the Middle East, disrupted global shipping routes and flight paths, and decimated any facade that the post-World War II global order in which Kenya became independent, still holds.
New negotiations between the US and Iran, and between Israel and Lebanon -and, in the middle of it all, also between Washington and The Vatican- mark the first steps in ending the exchanges of missiles, drones and threats. But even if these crises were resolved immediately, or a week ago, the world has already changed.
This has been clear, and this January it was articulated by Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who called it "a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality,” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
His speech was directed to “middle powers” such as Canada, and the assumption that even when the successors of the belligerents of the Cold War broke all the rules, there’d still be a structure similar to then one that has existed. Where industrialised societies, big or middle or small, would get to decide how the world would look like a century, or even just a decade, from now.
Kenya's first and only true responsibility is to its citizens, at home and abroad.
This is unlikely. And that's a good thing.
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Kenya is reeling from the current crisis on multiple fronts, with the effects of previous, related and unrelated, ones also showing up across society and the economy its built around.
A good example is Sasini’s decision to sell its avocado processing plant, after Yemen’s civil war disrupted the Red Sea shipping route in 2025 and made transportation too expensive, and unpredictable, for the listed agriprocessor to ‘wait and see.’
Long before this latest bout of conflict, Kenya’s tea had been banned from Sudan, and Iran, for different reasons.
In Khartoum, the decision was because Nairobi (and Uganda and many others) had decided to throw their weight behind the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in that country’s civil conflict. They’d done this in many ways and for different reasons, hosting RSF leaders and delegations and allowing their logistics infrastructure to be used to send supplies and safe havens to the RSF.
With the Sudanese Army back in the capital and RSF struggling to hold ground, Nairobi’s decision to break its long-term overt pragmatism in the conflicts of its neighbours - although Kenya no longer shares a border with that Sudan - has had rather easily predictable consequences. Khartoum responded by recalling its ambassador to Nairobi in February 2025, when Nairobi was set to host an RSF conference, and then imposing a sweeping suspension of all Kenyan imports.
The primary reason for Kenya’s break from its own history as (mostly) neutral ground for neighbouring conflicts was Abu Dhabi’s regional power ambitions. The United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries, flush with cash and Washington’s undying interest due to their role in sustaining the petrodollar, have been in an economic, political, and military competition from Yemen to Khartoum and Mogadishu. This cash has shown across economies, politics, and militaries. It has defined, for the last few years, many of the decisions made by East African countries about each other.
The cash has, of course, not helped the current situation in the Gulf. After Washington joined in, yet again but now with an ambitious, motivated, and confusing Trump at the helm, on Israel’s attacks on Iran, Tehran responded by striking US interests across the region. It explained its reasons repeatedly in the ongoing propaganda wars being fought across all social media platforms and other forums. Once, after the Ayatollah’s assassination by explosion, it also threatened to hit the palaces of the Gulf’s monarchs. It didn’t, but it has followed through on its threat to close down the Strait of Hormuz, raising maritime insurance, and hitting targets in more than 10 of its neighbours.
Nairobi denounced attacks on the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, describing the regionalisation of the conflict as a “grave threat” at a perilous moment in global history. What stood out was the countries missing on the list, both Iran and Israel, despite the fact that most terror attacks on Kenya's soil since 1977 have been related to events in the Middle East. That, and the fact that there are many Kenyans still trapped in all the conflict zones.
Yet that 'deft' oversight isn't even why Kenya's tea is not in Iranian cups.
The tea dispute between Nairobi and Tehran centres on a single exporter called Cup of Joe Ltd. which exported sub-standard tea to Iran and had its license revoked. Iranian authorities suspended tea imports from Kenya after the incident, citing quality concerns tied to the company’s conduct.
Iran is among Kenya’s top ten tea export markets. In 2024, Kenya exported about 13 million kilograms of tea to Iran valued at KSh 4.26 billion, according to official trade data. Kenya has responded to these by exploring new markets for its most valuable cash crop, but disrupted shipping lanes mean even that will likely not change the economic damage that’s already happened.
But it has done little to help its own citizens stuck in war zones, despite the fact that remittances now account for the country's largest source of foreign exchange.
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It was already clear that Kenya had abandoned its role as a pragmatic peacemaker when it allowed Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye to be kidnapped in Nairobi and transported across the border. It wasn’t the first such incident in Kenya’s modern history, but it was perhaps the latest example at the time of short term national interests overwhelming long-term ones, with no clear benefits to Kenya as a whole.
In mid-February 1999, Turkish intelligence kidnapped Kurdistan leader Abdullah Ocalan in Nairobi. That triggered widespread protests in locations across the world where Kurds live, placing Kenyan diplomats, embassies, and citizens in danger in the Middle East and Europe. Luckily, most of the angst was directed at Greece, whose embassy in Nairobi was where Ocalan was being sheltered.
Öcalan remains imprisoned on an island where he was, for more than a decade, the only prisoner. He’s guarded by over a thousand soldiers, and has sometimes gone years without seeing anyone else but them. Similarly, Besigye is still imprisoned, and sick, despite the fact that he hasn’t been a presidential candidate in the last two cycles.
In an interview with The East African in February, Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’oei denied Kenya’s involvement in Besigye’s kidnapping and rendition, and said Nairobi is “pro-peace, not pro-any side.”
But that was untrue, as several, nationally damaging, whether economically or socially, decisions in the last two decades have shown Kenya has friends and is willing to help them, even to its own detriment. Nairobi, funnily enough, has navigated the US-China global competition deftly, but not relationships with other, especially African states without similar heft or might.
This was the not always the case even when global powers during the Cold War competed for Nairobi's strategic heft. Kenya became neutral ground for its neighbours, a friend of all nations, host of the only UN headquarters in the Global South, and a ready and willing contributor to almost as many peacekeeping missions as have existed. On regional issues it ceded decision making to the African Union, navigating such complex issues as the Western Sahrawi/Morocco dispute to the continental body.
A lot has changed, of course, and everything is in flux. But some of these realities remain in place and do not serve Kenya's own interests to change its overt diplomatic stance. Those that do need to change need careful and delicate handling, and the constant reminder that Kenya's first and only true responsibility is to its citizens, at home and abroad
