Clearly, Somalia’s many challenges cannot all be pinned on Gulf powers, particularly given that their aid and investment for years has been a lifeline for many Somalis. Nor are Somali elites, long adept at navigating foreign clientelism, helpless victims. Moreover, many foreign powers – in the region and beyond – have long played favourites and aggravated factionalism in Somalia. That said, almost a year after the Gulf crisis, the enmities that have riven the GCC have brought fresh complexity to Somali instability. They illustrate, too, the increasing jockeying for influence among Arab and other powers around the Red Sea and in the Horn of Africa. The extension of the Middle East’s fault lines into the region have unsettled already fraught relations among Horn states and led their leaders to recalibrate their policies toward neighbours and outside powers alike. Of all those states, it is Somalia – already arguably the weakest – whose internal politics have been most fiercely buffeted, with rivalries among Gulf states and Turkey and the unravelling of relations between the Farmajo government and Abu Dhabi intensifying disputes among factions in Mogadishu, between the Somali government and federal states, and between it and Somaliland. Even without Gulf meddling, efforts to reconcile clans and overcome centre-periphery tensions – a prerequisite for peace in Somalia – face an uphill battle. But if the country becomes a battle-ground for richer, more powerful states, and they and Somali factions pursue a form of zero-sum competition ill-suited to the country’s factious and multipolar politics, the bloodshed and discord that have long blighted Somalia risk taking an even darker turn. All involved need to reverse course before that happens. Ideally, the Gulf powers would end the spat within the GCC that serves all their interests ill. But absent that, they should not let their rivalries destabilise weaker states.