In this piece, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham argues that Berbera could become a critical security, trade and defense anchor for the United States, Israel and regional allies in the Red Sea. The article calls for Washington to move beyond diplomatic hesitation and develop a phased partnership with Somaliland, citing Berbera’s strategic location, port and airfield infrastructure, maritime-security potential and Somaliland’s democratic institutions. It also challenges Somalia’s objections and argues that functional governance and strategic realities should play a greater role in U.S. policy toward Somaliland
By Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham
For decades, foreign policy orthodoxy in Washington has operated under a crippling, manufactured reflex: the fear of engagement.
The prevailing Beltway anxiety insists that if the United States extends its hand to Somaliland, and if American defense forces establish an operational foothold along the deep waters and expansive runways of Berbera, it will somehow ignite the region, fuel anti-Western sentiment, and hand Al-Shabaab an ideological victory.
This premise is fundamentally flawed. It misreads the nature of asymmetric warfare and accepts the psychological veto of extremist actors.
We have witnessed this exact narrative playbook across the Middle East. For years, the Iranian regime and its regional proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, pushed the calculated narrative that any sovereign alliance, any partnership with regional states or Israel, or any projection of Western strength would provoke catastrophic regional rupture.
The ongoing multi-front conflicts have laid that fiction bare. The aggression of these groups was never reactive; it is foundational. Their hostility is not rooted in grievance against a specific transaction, but in an ideological opposition to the presence of free nations, sovereign self-determination, and the security of global commerce.
To govern superpower policy based on the fear of an extremist narrative is not caution. It is self-deterrence.
While Western diplomats debate protocol in air-conditioned suites, our adversaries do not suffer from institutional hesitation. The operational axis between Al-Shabaab and the Iranian-backed Houthis across the Gulf of Aden is an active logistical conduit exchanging weaponry, drone capabilities, and maritime disruption tactics. Al-Shabaab does not require an American presence in Berbera to wage war against human civilization. But America and its allies urgently require Berbera to secure the vital maritime arteries of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Answering Mogadishu: Fictions Versus Functional Reality
This dynamic brings us directly to the objections voiced by the Federal Government of Somalia. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has repeatedly denounced direct international partnerships with Somaliland, warning that foreign defense facilities in Berbera violate Somalia’s territorial integrity and threaten regional order.
We must engage President Mohamud’s argument with respect, but with absolute strategic clarity.
The true threat to regional stability is not an operational democratic port partnering with the free world. The true threat is the governance vacuum across contested waters where piracy, weapons smuggling, and drone strikes proliferate unchecked.
For thirty-five years, Somaliland and Somalia have operated on two distinct historical and administrative trajectories. While Mogadishu has struggled against violent insurgencies within its own borders, Somaliland has built functioning democratic institutions, held peaceful transfers of power, and secured its coast without international nation-building budgets.
Mogadishu’s appeal to abstract legal unity cannot overwrite the physical reality of northern maritime defense. An international order that values paper declarations over functioning, democratic security on the water is an order that guarantees instability.
The Regional Multiplier: Securing the Allied Flank
When Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi “Irro” extended a strategic security invitation to the West, his statement was an act of sovereign clarity. He offered a partnership anchored in shared security: an eight-hundred-and-fifty-kilometer coastline, a modern deep-water port, and a thirteen-thousand-five-hundred-foot runway capable of supporting vital logistical missions.
Establishing presence-driven security across this maritime theater is the indispensable requirement for regional trade. An American anchor in Berbera is the missing linchpin for that entire allied defense architecture.
For Saudi Arabia, the transformation of its western coast under Vision 2030 depends entirely on uninterrupted, secure maritime transit through the Bab el-Mandeb. An operational vacuum on the northern Somali coast leaves Riyadh’s southern maritime flank directly exposed to Houthi missile proliferation and drone-boat swarms. Berbera provides the indispensable southern surveillance anchor to lock down the littoral corridor and secure the Arabian Peninsula.
For the United Arab Emirates, which has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the Berbera trade corridor through DP World, and for regional maritime partners whose lifelines depend on open sea lanes, a stabilized Berbera transforms an embattled choke point into an integrated maritime domain awareness network.
Furthermore, allied forces in the Horn of Africa are currently bottlenecked in Djibouti, operating within visual and electronic eavesdropping range of Beijing’s naval outpost. Berbera provides regional allies with genuine operational depth, redundant staging, and electronic warfare buffer zones uncompromised by rival surveillance.
The Legal Reality: Customary Law Versus Bureaucratic Inertia
The legal foundation for this engagement is grounded in established international law:
Under the Montevideo Convention of 1933, the standard of customary international law. statehood is established by functional reality: a permanent population, defined borders, an effective governance structure, and the sovereign capacity to protect its people. Somaliland possesses all four. Mogadishu cannot lease, protect, or administer territory it has not governed for thirty-five years.
Somaliland’s legal standing is not a secessionist rupture; it is the dissolution of a failed voluntary union. Having received its full international independence from Great Britain on June 26, 1960, and having been recognized by dozens of sovereign nations before entering a brief act of union with the south, Hargeisa’s modern borders mirror its original colonial demarcation. Partnering with Berbera fully honors the African Union’s principle of historical administrative boundaries.
Strategic Realism: The Infrastructure and Statutory Solution
Bypassing bureaucratic inertia does not require an immediate, combative diplomatic rupture. Superpower statecraft operates through statutory mechanisms, commercial infrastructure, and phased strategic realities.
First, American foreign policy has repeatedly constructed ironclad security relationships with non-recognized sovereigns. The model established by the Taiwan Relations Act proves that defense staging, maritime domain awareness, and intelligence integration do not require a formal exchange of ambassadors to be legally binding and operationally effective.
Second, through successive National Defense Authorization Acts, the United States Congress has already directed defense assessments of Berbera’s port and airfield. Formalizing Berbera as a designated logistics and maritime security partner allows defense and naval leadership to operate under existing legal authorities.
Third, America does not need to build a sovereign fort from scratch. Berbera’s deep-water port and airfield infrastructure allow defense forces to secure dual-use logistical concessions. Staging fuel, maintenance, surveillance, and counter-smuggling assets through commercial channels establishes facts on the ground immediately while diplomatic protocol catches up.
The Moral Imperative
Retreating from Somaliland out of fear of what extremists or bureaucratic purists might say is an abdication of leadership.
True statecraft does not manage decline through diplomatic fictions. It builds real anchors where sovereign nations demonstrate the will, stability, and courage to defend civilization.
President Irro has opened the door with statesmanship and vision. It is time for Washington and its allies to walk through it.
