Somaliland: A country not recognized globally, but reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Horn of Africa, Bab-el-Mandeb and Red Sea the strategic world maritime route.

By Israa Sayed, Arab writer 

Somaliland: A country not recognized globally, but reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Horn of Africa, Bab-el-Mandeb maritime route witt its economic and political independence.

There are many small or microstates in the world, as well as territories or provinces that have declared self-rule over their territories or are independent sovereign states. Among these states, there is one major exception: a state that does not officially exist, has an inconvertible currency, no officially recognized borders or passports, and is located in one of the most volatile regions in Africa. However, it has become a peaceful, free and democratic society without the help of foreign intervention or aid. It is Somaliland.

Somaliland: A Difficult Birth

Somaliland is a semi-desert region on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, specifically in northern Somalia, bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, and the Gulf of Aden to the north. Its coast is a strategic gateway to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, making it important for economic and political ambitions on the continent, and a focus of international and regional interest.

Except that Somaliland is a country that can only be seen from within, this geographical spot, extending over an area of ​​177 square kilometers, broke away from Somalia decades ago, and not only declared itself an independent state unilaterally and acted as such ever since, but also suddenly became a close ally of Ethiopia, which seeks to gain access to the sea.

Going back a little in history, Somaliland was a former British protectorate in the north that merged with Somalia, a former Italian colony in the south, just five days after independence in 1960, and had just gained independence as well.

Somaliland and its location among the historical regions of Somalia

Thus, Somalia and Somaliland together formed the Somali Republic, but the honeymoon between them did not last long, as they entered into a bitter conflict that led to the north sliding into a bloody civil war in 1988, during which the Somali army, under the leadership of the son-in-law of Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, killed tens of thousands of members of the Isaaq tribe, which constitutes the majority of the population in the north, until the capital, Hargeisa, which was reduced to ruins, was nicknamed “the Dresden of Africa,” in reference to the German city of Dresden, which was turned into ruins and flames by the incendiary bombs of the Allied powers during World War II.

By 1991, Somaliland had declared its independence “unilaterally” after the overthrow of the Somali president, and the Somali National Movement, which emerged in the 1980s, took control of the north, but it was unable to obtain international recognition that would allow it to receive funding from the World Bank or aid, remaining merely a local administration similar to other geographical regions stuck in the world such as the Moroccan Sahara, Tibet, or even Taiwan, which enjoys greater international recognition.

Over the years after seceding from Somalia, the Somaliland national movement created a new constitution, which was approved in a referendum in 2001, a year during which it was in conflict with Somalia, and by 2003, Somaliland had rejected calls to participate in peace talks to reunify Somalia.

Although Somaliland has enjoyed relative stability at a time when Somalia has been mired in decades of civil war and rebellion, the Somaliland government has not benefited much from this stability. The region remains poor and isolated, with a population of about 6 million people, most of whom are Muslims and speak three languages: Arabic, English, and what they call their mother tongue, Somali.

Since re-declaration, the people of Somaliland have been able to build their own state without outside help. The stable but also poor country still relies on limited economic sectors such as agriculture, livestock, services, mining, transportation, storage and trade. But none of these can be taken for granted. Water-dependent sectors face unprecedented challenges, as rainfall is no longer what it once was.

Drought forces Somaliland farmers to flee

Remittances, slowly trickling in from London, Toronto or Dubai, are another lifeline for the economy, but officials fear that a younger generation of Somalilanders, born and raised abroad, will feel less connected to their homeland.

Not all foreign investors are hesitant to invest in Somaliland because of the country’s legal non-recognition. The coastal city of Berbera is being promoted by the government as an important trade corridor, making it a key player in the economic competition on the Red Sea after being a forgotten city overlooking the Gulf of Aden, and hoping to attract some of the maritime traffic that currently passes through Djibouti.

The UAE supports this ambition, expanding its influence in the Red Sea region as part of its competition with other Arab powers, especially since the signing of a tripartite agreement between Somaliland, DP World and Ethiopia in March 2018. 

But the Mogadishu government says Abu Dhabi has “intruded on their land in the name of investment,” and sees the agreement as giving Somaliland, which is seeking international recognition, leverage to help it achieve formal independence.

However, the port’s location at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait opened the door to many dreams for the Gulf state, which invested up to $442 million in developing the port and creating a special economic zone where investors could benefit from tax breaks. It began setting up a military base in the city, which is less than 300 kilometers south of Yemen, and was allowed to stay there for 30 years, before the Somaliland government unilaterally cancelled the agreement two years later.

Paths of seeking recognition:

The demand for of independence from Somalia is the dominant reality in Somaliland, as this secession guarantees self-administration that enjoys international or regional recognition. The political class that is enthusiastic and committed to secession believes that the political and security stability achieved by the region’s administration over more than 30 years deserves international and regional recognition, but achieving this dream is still far from being achieved.

Unlike the secession of South Sudan in 2011, Somaliland’s claim to statehood is not based on redrawing colonial borders, but on trying to reestablish them by returning to old borders, not drawing new ones, and unlike Taiwan, it is not tied to a richer, more powerful state, but to a poorer, weaker one.

The Somaliland Independence Monument in Hargeisa depicts a hand holding a map of the Republic.

In view of the political reality, Somaliland has an independent political system, and elects its government and president in a vote in which it demonstrates its ability to organize a democratic and peaceful entitlement in a troubled region. The politician and former military officer, Muse Bihi Abdi, has been serving as the fifth president of Somaliland since December 2017.

Somaliland has its own currency, manages its own internal and external affairs, signs international investment deals, issues passports, has government institutions, a security apparatus, courts, and an elected 82-member House of Representatives, while the 82-member Senate is a second chamber of parliament. But when its borders are shown on maps – if they exist – they appear to be temporary lines drawn by the colonialists.

Somaliland was neither democratic nor completely secure, but it was better off than Somalia, and many of its residents contrast the relative stability of their self-made state with the turbulent state they left behind, with rebels lining the roads, pirates swimming the seas, and anyone eager to escape.

But all this did not change the reality of the situation, as Somaliland still faces many challenges to its recognition, the first of which begins with the Mogadishu government’s rejection of the demand for secession and considering Somaliland an integral part of its territory, and it says that it cannot independently negotiate international agreements, and these challenges may not end with the absence of an international trend to recognize it as an independent entity in the Horn of Africa.

In the United States and Britain, for example, a few lawmakers defend Somaliland’s sovereignty, but Western governments, which have poured money into state-building in Somalia, say they do not want to recognize Somaliland until African countries do, while African governments, many of which face their own secessionist movements, are reluctant to change the status quo.

Challenges also include opposition from many neighbouring countries to such full independence, especially among African Union countries which believe that formal recognition would encourage other separatist movements on the African continent such as Biafra in Nigeria or Western Sahara in Morocco to also seek independence and create new hotbeds of tension on the continent.

In order to overcome some of the many obstacles to independence, Somaliland maintains relations with dozens of countries, and more than 20 countries deal with it as a reality, and establish informal economic and diplomatic relations with it, and has representative offices in the United States, Britain, the Emirates and Taiwan, and hosts missions from Turkey, Taiwan, Britain, Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Emirates.

Somaliland's relations with Taiwan are the most controversial. Since September 2020, Somaliland has opened a representation there to strengthen its relations with another self-governing state without broad international recognition, a move that has naturally angered China, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be re-incorporated into the Chinese mainland.

Today, Somaliland is also irritating Somalia, Egypt, Djibouti and other Arabs, to the point that Somalia goes crazy over any official visit by Somaliland authorities abroad. Despite this, relations between them still exist, even if the political cord between them is severed, reaching the point of imprisonment or deportation in Hargeisa. As for the Somali capital, Mogadishu, it is trying to dissuade the north from secession, and the negotiation efforts between them are still ongoing.

New flashpoint

At the height of the Red Sea unrest caused by Houthi attacks on commercial ships, and with Egypt and Sudan’s negotiations with Ethiopia over the Renaissance Dam reaching a dead end, the last thing on Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed’s mind was to head to Somaliland to create a new crisis there.

Because Abiy Ahmed will spare no effort to break out of the curse of geography and politics that has imprisoned his country, he had no choice but to sign, at the beginning of this year, a surprise agreement with Somaliland, destroying with the stroke of a pen what Somalia and Somaliland had agreed upon to resume negotiations between them after mediation efforts led by Djibouti to settle outstanding issues after years of political tension and obstruction.

Of course, this agreement, which is the first step towards what will be a “historic deal,” angered Somalia, which immediately rushed to pass a law annulling the agreement with a country it does not recognize at all, after it recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia for consultations and confirmed its intention to defend its territory by all possible legal means. However, according to the British newspaper “ The Guardian ,” Mogadishu is seeking to resolve the situation diplomatically.

This agreement was enough to mobilize Egypt, which rushed to Somalia to tell it that Cairo was ready to provide all the support it wanted in order to thwart Ethiopia’s plan in the Red Sea. Djibouti did the same, leading the mediation to resolve the outstanding issues between the two parties, and was so enraged that its president, Ismail Omar Guelleh, rebuked the Ethiopian ambassador to his country for concealing the details of the ongoing negotiations with Somaliland.

The Arab League also issued a statement supporting Somalia’s right to sovereignty over its territory, and criminalizing the actions of Somaliland and landlocked Ethiopia, which the agreement will enable to exploit a 20-kilometre coastal strip around the port of Berbera on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden at the entrance to the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal for the purpose of using it as a military base or for commercial purposes for 50 years, not only in exchange for giving Somaliland a stake in the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines, but the real reason is that Somaliland has not received widespread international recognition.

Today, however, things look radically different because if Somaliland – whose president seemed keen to sign the agreement – ​​succeeds in obtaining Ethiopian recognition, it will exercise a kind of sovereignty by concluding agreements, which will qualify it to be a party to the United Nations, and perhaps also qualify it to allow the establishment of foreign bases for countries that wish to be present in this region.

Most Somalilanders support Bihi’s ambitions, who faces a tough re-election battle in November. Recognition would boost his reputation, which was damaged last year when a rebel force in the eastern borderlands drove the Somaliland army out of Las Anod, the largest city in the Sool region and its administrative capital, and declared allegiance to Somalia instead. It was a humiliating defeat for politicians in Hargeisa and a challenge to the very idea of ​​Somaliland.

Somalis hope that Ethiopian recognition will bring investment, aid and national pride, but many are concerned about the details of the deal, which have not been disclosed. Some fear that Ethiopia has not yet abandoned its old expansionist habits. As a result, protests against the deal erupted in the Adil region, where the naval base is planned, and Defense Minister Abdiqani Mohamud Ateye resigned , calling Ethiopia an “enemy.”

With the deal allowing landlocked Ethiopia to take a share of the port and access the Red Sea as Abiy Ahmed has pledged despite opposition from Egypt, Somalia, Djibouti and other neighbours who see Somaliland as a dagger in their side, a new flashpoint appears to be brewing in the already volatile Horn of Africa and Bab el-Mandeb region.

In a move that is the first of its kind in more than four decades, Egypt sent troops and military aid to Somalia. This was the result of a military agreement between the two countries that was signed on August 14 with the aim of strengthening relations between the two countries. This agreement is the latest in a series of similar agreements that Cairo has concluded with countries in the Nile Basin and the Horn of Africa.

Here, the agreement can be viewed from a perspective that carries great political importance, as it opens the door to the possibility of Ethiopia recognizing Somaliland as an independent state at a later stage, and thus strongly pushes Somaliland’s efforts toward international recognition, which Somalia fears, along with many Arab countries such as Egypt and Djibouti.

This is what Abiy Ahmed realized after the violent reactions from Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia. The Ethiopian Prime Minister tried to soften his tone when he said that he would not invade any country for his dream of reaching the Red Sea, but Somaliland’s approval seems sufficient to achieve his dream without any invasion or military force, to compensate for what Ethiopia lost when it lost the “Assab” seaport after Eritrea’s secession in the 1990s.

If this happens, Ethiopia will be at the heart of the Council of States bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, which will enhance its ability to intervene in major conflicts and crises, and compete with Egypt in many files, especially naval power, while blocking any attempt to stop the country’s supplies via land, which is what the Tigray Liberation Front tried to do, in addition to dispensing with Djibouti as Ethiopia’s only maritime artery, and all of this will be achieved for Addis Ababa and Abiy Ahmed thanks to Somaliland.

Without attaining the international recognition for #Somaliland to become the 55th African state and achieve prosperity for the local community, Somaliland remains stuck between no return to unity with Somalia, which is no longer stable in the eyes of the political leadership in Hargeisa, and geopolitical variables that impose regional balances that reject disintegration and support unity.