We the Somaliland prodemocracy and human rights movements remind the US government when British Somaliland became an independent state on June 26, 1960, it was recognized by thirty-five states, including the United States and Israel.[1]
Somaliland
deserves recognition if the Obama administration is truly sincere about
promoting democracy in the wider Middle East. In sharp contrast to
southern Somalia where instability and crisis have reigned and in fact
intensified in the last twenty-one years, Somaliland has established a
democratic polity that, if recognized, would make it the envy of democracy
activists in the Muslim world. The essence of Somaliland’s successful
democratization was captured by U.S.-based International Republican Institute
and the National Endowment for Democracy in convening a September 2006 panel
discussion on Somaliland. They wrote that “Somaliland’s embrace of
democracy, its persistence in holding round after round of elections, both
winners and losers abiding by the rules, the involvement of the grassroots, the
positive role of traditional authorities, the culture of negotiation and
conflict resolution, the temperance of ethnicity or clan affiliation and its
deployment for constructive purposes, the adaptation of modern technology, the
conservative use of limited resources, and the support of the diaspora and the
professional and intellectual classes are some of the more outstanding features
of Somaliland’s political culture that are often sorely lacking
elsewhere.”
Somaliland
also deserves recognition from a purely U.S.-centric national security
perspective. The Somaliland government and population embody a moderate
voice in the Muslim world that rejects radical interpretations of Islam.
It would serve as a bulwark against the further expansion of radical ideologies
in the Horn of Africa by offering a shining example (along with Mali and
Senegal and other predominantly Muslim Sub-Saharan African democracies) of how
Islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually
reinforcing. Somaliland leaders are also eager to cooperate with the US
administration in a variety of counter-terrorism measures, including working
with AFRICOM and its arm called the Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa
(CJTF-HOA) based in Djibouti. They are currently prohibited from doing so
due to U.S. legislation that prevents cooperation with unrecognized Somaliland
authorities.
Recognizing Somaliland would contribute to international security and stability by preserving the Republic of Somaliland’s bulwark against piracy and terrorism without encouraging either ethnic separatism or legitimization of al-Qaeda affiliates. On the other hand, non-recognition threatens the modicum of international security that Somaliland provides in the Horn of Africa. It does the international community no good to allow rump Somalia’s lawlessness to spread.
Somaliland
is a state that merely lacks recognition. Recognition, however, is a political
act and its validity turns on whether the creation of the state to be recognized
satisfied norms of international law. Somaliland’s creation conforms to those
norms: it satisfies the four Montevideo Convention criteria of statehood; it
gained its independence through dissolution, a species of secession; and its
secession conforms to the limiting principle of uti possidetis, requiring
territorial adherence to colonial boundaries.
[1] Int’l Crisis Group, Somaliland: Democratization
and its Discontents, ICG Afr. Report, No. 66, at 4 n.9
(2003)
[hereinafter Democratization and its Discontents] (citing former U.S.
Ambassador David Shinn).
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