This article, “Beyond Recognition: Israel, US, Somaliland, and the New Strategic Environment,” examines the strategic implications of Israel’s recognition of Somaliland amid a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape in the Middle East and Horn of Africa.
Dr. Jacob Stoil argues that Somaliland’s location opposite Yemen and alongside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait gives it significance far beyond its immediate geography, particularly for Israeli, U.S. and wider Western security interests.
The article traces Somaliland’s history, its post-1991 political development and relative stability, and the factors that have contributed to its prolonged international isolation. It contends that Israel’s recognition could create new opportunities for maritime security, defense cooperation, trade and regional connectivity, but warns that those benefits will depend on whether engagement delivers tangible advantages to Somaliland’s population rather than being viewed as another episode of foreign powers exploiting its strategic position.
The article proposes deeper Israeli involvement in water security, agricultural technology, maritime protection and counter-illegal fishing efforts as a foundation for a more sustainable partnership. It further argues that a more stable and prosperous Somaliland could strengthen Red Sea security, limit adversarial influence and contribute to broader U.S. strategic objectives without necessarily requiring Washington to extend formal recognition.
Ultimately, the article presents Somaliland as a potentially important strategic partner whose future could influence the emerging security architecture of the Horn of Africa and greater Middle East.
The complete piece is as follows:
Beyond Recognition: Israel, US, Somaliland, and the New Strategic Environment
By Dr. Jacob Stoil
With the end of the 2026 US-Iran conflict, the strategic alignments of the greater Middle East will begin to reshape themselves to adjust to the new post-conflict reality. Already, there are indications of the potential formation of a Saudi-Egypt-Pakistan-Turkey entente and potentially a United Arab Emirates (UAE)-Israel alignment.
While these may not be the final shape of the post-conflict one thing is clear: for both the US and Israel, there will be new geopolitical challenges emerging in the region. At the same time, the last year has demonstrated the potential for new opportunities, including those stemming from Israel’s recognition and increasing diplomatic relationships with Somaliland.
A potential gateway to central Africa and located across the critical Bab el-Mandeb Strait from Yemen, Somaliland is stable, unrecognized, and full of strategic potential. That potential has been largely unrealized, at least by the US, since Somaliland won its war for independence against the Government in Mogadishu 35 years ago.
In December 2025, Israel recognized Somaliland as an independent state for the second time in sixty-five years. Israeli recognition may have caused a firestorm of international concern and condemnation, but it provides an opportunity to end the strategic stagnation of the region and deliver significant advantages to US global strategy, even it the US does not follow suit by recognizing the breakaway republic.
The US and Israel will only be able to enjoy the full range of these benefits if they look beyond a narrow vision of the immediate military benefits Somaliland’s geographic position provides. To do this, they will have to work quickly through Israel to cement a new future for Somaliland, and perhaps the region.
Background and a Brief History:
In 2013, I went to Somaliland to interview its Second World War veterans. During World War II, Somaliland was a British colony in the Horn of Africa that was overlooked by the British, who thought about defending it and its important strategic position too late in the day. Only as it was falling did Britain truly understand the importance of its position, sitting across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, and by then it was too late.
Racial stereotypes made this worse as they assumed Somalis would perform poorly in the defense. Instead, the Somalilanders fought a stubborn rear guard action that gave the British time to retreat from the territory to Yemen. After liberation from the Italians, Somalilanders would go on to fight elsewhere in the war, including in Burma, and I was there to find out more about this forgotten history. However, what most of the people I interviewed wanted to discuss were far more recent events: the Somali Civil War, Somaliland’s struggle to maintain its independence and relative stability, and its largely successful war against piracy.
In 1960, Somaliland gained independence from the British Empire, and Israel and the United States were among the first countries to recognize it. Five days later, Somaliland joined the Somali Republic, and relations came to a screeching halt. The strategic position of Somalia meant that it was able to switch sides in the Cold War to such an extent that I was able to interview naval officers who had trained in the UK, the US, and Leningrad.
Its relative strategic importance was not enough to save it from instability caused in no small part by the oppressive policies and human rights violations of its dictator, Siad Barre. As a result, the Isaaq clan and its allies, who make up the majority population of Somaliland, began to fight back. By the late 1980s, the Somalilander Forces of the Somali National Movement had begun to make battlefield gains, taking control of parts of what is now Somaliland.
The response by the Somali government was brutal. It included mass executions of civilians and other atrocities – something to which Yohanan Bein, the Israeli representative to the UN at the time, tried to call the UN Security Council’s attention. Despite the massacres and hardship, Somaliland gained and maintained effective (de facto) independence.
For the next decades, there it remained – independent, fairly stable, and unrecognized. Its government underwent a transition from clan-affiliated to political party representation and has a history of relatively free and fair elections. It defeated Al-Shabaab’s attempts to establish a foothold in the territory and, unlike the rest of Somalia, never became a haven for piracy.
While unrecognized, it did have some foreign relations. It exported to Saudi Arabia, and its police received some training and equipment from the UK (Somaliland also has a Commonwealth War Graves Commission-overseen British military cemetery). It received limited support from the US through USAID. In 2017, its strategic position allowed it to begin developing closer relations with the UAE, which began construction of an airbase and naval facility there.
The UAE also began redeveloping the deep-water port at Berbera and a freight train line to Ethiopia. This potentially would allow shipping to Ethiopia and parts of central Africa to take a more direct route than that available from Djibouti while avoiding the high port fees its partially Chinese-controlled port charges. Yet despite all this, Somaliland remained relatively isolated due to the lack of recognition.
Non-Recognition and Risks
The lack of recognition stems from several key factors. The first is that the African Union has as one of its key principles a guarantee of the territorial integrity of its member states. This is something that, on the whole, is taken seriously. African states, like most of those in the Middle East, exist along the colonial boundaries created for the convenience of the European colonial empires.
These borders frequently ignored ethnic, linguistic, or cultural concentrations, meaning that they denied some ethnic groups and clans self-determination, splitting them across multiple states, while empowering others. There is a fear in some quarters that opening these borders to renegotiation or recognizing the right to self-determination might threaten the integrity of many African states. While this did not occur with the 2011 independence of South Sudan, the logic of the arguments against recognizing Somaliland follows that a ripple in Somaliland might create waves across Africa.
There are also less legalistic reasons that some have refused recognition. Many countries rely on military and port facilities in Djibouti. Opening Somaliland to commerce and basing threatens Djibouti’s position as the sole stable port of entry into the Horn of Africa and risks provoking its ire. There are other countries, such as China, that benefit from the poverty of Somaliland and exploit it in a myriad of ways, including through illegally fishing its waters. It is worth noting that China is also a major investor in Djibouti.
Moreover, many countries have invested heavily in restoring Somalia and its government, which is still completely opposed to an independent Somaliland. Finally, Turkey has become a significant backer of the Somali government and looks to use this to expand its influence and power in the region. Turkey, therefore, opposes not only a recognized, independent Somaliland because Somalia opposes it, but also because opening Somaliland to other actors would challenge Turkey’s growing power in the region. This includes its access to a potentially lucrative offshore hydrocarbon deal it recently signed with Somalia.
While Somaliland is more stable than its neighbor to the south, it is not without its challenges. The eastern provinces of Somaliland recently fought a war and broke away to become a semi-autonomous state within Somalia. The breakaway SSC-Khaatumo state managed to drive out Somalilander forces before rejoining Somalia.
Somaliland’s relative fragility adds a layer of risk to any plan to base military forces in Somaliland. Somaliland’s proximity to Yemen means that the Houthis could easily strike it in any future conflict, and without the necessary resilience, the effect could be catastrophic for Somaliland.
In addition to that, Israel’s recognition and increased entanglement in Somaliland could further the development of a rift between power blocks in the Middle East. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have developed increasingly close ties with Somalia, while Ethiopia and the UAE have developed ties with Somaliland. Each country that improved ties with Somaliland triggered a crisis in the Horn of Africa, which some claim has increased the threat of militancy in the region.
Moreover, the alignment of Israel, the UAE, and Ethiopia behind Somaliland in opposition to the Saudi, Turkish, and Egyptian support of Somalia reflects a growing friction between the two blocs throughout the greater Middle East. Tensions among these countries have manifested in the Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and, reportedly, through the violence of the civil war in Sudan. A deepening of Israeli involvement in Somaliland could threaten to bring these blocs into a proxy war in the Horn of Africa.
Opportunities
There are economic opportunities too in Somaliland – its isolation and lack of convertible currency mean that its economic potential is underdeveloped, which creates opportunities for both industry and commerce. With continued infrastructure improvements, it could also help open up markets in Africa to Israeli goods and, should the US follow suit, US exporters as well.
To receive the benefit of non-economic strategic opportunities, the US does not necessarily need to recognize Somaliland – it just needs to support Israel in its recognition of the republic. For the US (and Israel), the most immediately obvious opportunities created by Israel’s improved relationship with Somaliland are in the military strategic realm. One of Israel’s challenges in its campaign against the Houthis and its ability to protect its own shipping in the Red Sea is that of distance and access. The distance reduces the frequency of sorties the Israeli Air Force can generate and its responsiveness to exploitable intelligence.
The lack of a deep-water port south of Yemen hampers the Israeli Navy’s ability to operate to protect commerce transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The possibility of basing, or at the very least resupplying, in Somaliland provides a mitigation to these challenges.
Furthermore, for the Israeli Navy in particular, being able to have a base outside the strait would better allow it to extend its operational reach into the Indian Ocean to contest adversaries such as Iran. This would be in keeping with the US’s strategic emphasis on having Allies in the Middle East take a greater role in securing the broader region and confronting its security threats while reducing the need to rely on direct US support. The more the Israelis can operate independently against the Houthis in Yemen, the more the US can rely on the Red Sea as an open sea line of communication for all its strategic movement.
However, these strategic opportunities could be short-lived or not come to pass at all if the relationship between Israel and Somaliland does not grow to benefit Somaliland and its overall population. After all, from the UK to the USSR and the US, Somaliland has experience with foreign partners who are only interested in exploiting its strategic position. This has never ended well for Somaliland and its people, and they are unlikely to want to repeat the experience.
Somaliland’s history has left it with significant challenges, such as the fact that its under-resourced military cannot extend its sovereignty either by land or sea across the whole of the territory. It also suffers from some corruption and a significant problem with narcotics (especially khat).
At the base of many of these challenges lies an economic challenge made worse by both isolation and severe drought. Yet it is precisely by mitigating these underlying stability challenges that Israel can ensure its access, and both Israel and the US can reap the largest long-term military and strategic benefits.
Somaliland has the possibility not only to be an island of stability in the region but also to export that stability and bring benefits to Israel, the Horn of Africa, and even US global strategy. Doing so begins with water. Like much of the Horn of Africa, Somaliland has experienced repeated catastrophic droughts over the last decade.
The lack of water resources has spread instability and hampered Somaliland’s ability to support its own security. Israel, as a world leader in desalination, high-efficiency low-water-use agriculture, and innovative agricultural technology, is ideally positioned to help, which would have knock-on effects for US interests in the region as well as stemming the potential flow of migration out of Somaliland.
The technology, techniques, and practices pioneered in Israel have the potential to revolutionize the situation in Somaliland to the point where it can become a true partner in security and stability and help cement the relationship between the two countries. Without such developments and the benefits they will convey in jump-starting the economy for the broader Somalilander population, it is possible that the military strategic potential will fail to manifest or that Israel’s pursuit of it may come to be viewed as a form of colonial exploitation.
On the other hand, a more stable and prosperous Somaliland would mitigate and be able to help tackle regional challenges like human and drug trafficking as well as illegal migration, which are also of interest to the US and EU.
Another area where Israel, especially with a naval presence, could help is with illegal fishing. Chinese illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing has devastated the waters off Somaliland, which does not have a sufficient Coast Guard or Naval capability to stop it.
One way to make any basing agreement of mutual benefit would be for Israel to help patrol Somalilander waters and help Somaliland reclaim its maritime sovereignty. Doing so would create a tangible benefit to Somaliland inasmuch as it would help safeguard its fisheries and recover jobs for its coastal communities, as well as interdict maritime smuggling. This would augment and help the EU Operation ATALANTA, which tries to do the same in the region.
This activity would also provide a mechanism by which the Israeli navy could act in the area and limit the freedom of action of adversaries in the region and disrupt some of the routes for bringing weapons and equipment to its more local enemies. For US global strategy, it would have the added benefit of degrading China’s ability to exploit the area for its own economic and strategic ends.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has been a long time coming, but for it to be more than a simple piece of diplomatic publicity, Israel needs to move quickly to take advantage of the opportunities Somaliland offers.
This is also the pathway that would provide the most benefits for the US. It might be easy to see recognition as an opportunity for Israel and the US to solve some of their immediate tactical challenges against the Houthis, but taking a broader view of Somaliland and its development will also allow all three countries to maximize their strategic gains in both the short and long term.
Dr. Jacob Stoil is the US Army’s Research Professor of Middle East Security at the US Army Strategic Research & Assessment Department. In this capacity he advises US Army and others on Middle East policy, strategy, and lessons. 
