A widening campaign of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea is forcing Washington to pay renewed attention to the African side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where the Trump administration has quietly stepped up engagement with governments including Eritrea and Somalia. The narrow waterway between Yemen and Djibouti forms the western gateway to the route linking the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal. Against that backdrop, senior White House adviser for Arab and African affairs Massad Boulos met the foreign ministers of Somalia and Eritrea in Cairo this month, alongside Egyptian officials, to discuss security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Cameron Hudson, a White House official during the George W. Bush administration, said African countries must not become another source of instability. “The US seems to be saying, ‘You can’t be helpful to us in the Red Sea, so let’s at least make you a neutral actor,’” he said.