The US, EU, and Africa should recognize Somaliland to enhance regional stability and address concerns related to Chinese economic exploitation, undemocratic governance, and security issues around the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait
By Ali-Guban Mohamed
Founder and Editor, Gubanmedia.com,
On November 13, the 1.5 million registered voters of the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland in the volatile Horn of Africa region are going to the polls to elect a new leader.
For two decades, Somaliland has held over four direct local, legislative, and presidential elections routinely in which the losing candidate concedes graciously. Unlike Somalia, where presidential elections are completely sham and the candidate who bribes most of the 275 legislators wins elections consistently.
Since 1991, following the collapse of the authoritarian Somali government, the northwestern region of war-torn Somalia has been a de facto republic. Though Somaliland is imperfect, it has all the attributes of a functioning nation: a legitimate political order that has the consent of the people, a court system that enforces the rule of law, boasts a security force protecting its people, and denies a sanctuary for terrorists, and a political process where different clans live and work together.
Yet 33 years after declaring independence, Somaliland still struggles to become a member of the international community or even gain acknowledgment of its transformation into a fledgling democratic country in the Horn of Africa. At a time when democracy is under siege from authoritarian powers like China, Russia, and others, the US State Department’s archaic ‘one-Somalia Policy’ is undermining democracy and fostering corruption and bad governance in the volatile Horn of Africa.
But the 5 million Somaliland people are hoping this election will boost their efforts to get the diplomatic recognition that they have been craving and show the rest of the world that they are managing their own affairs.
The Somaliland constitution allows three political parties. The three nominees are competing to win the November election: the incumbent President Muse Bihi of the Kulmiye Party; Abdirahman Irro, the Waddani Party; and Faysal Ali of the Welfare and Justice Party.
President Bihi has put a lot of effort into getting the diplomatic recognition that Somaliland deserves and promoting its economic development. On foreign policy, he is forging close economic ties with Ethiopia, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and others and attracting foreign investment such as the DP World Logistics and Trafigura Energy to make Somaliland the logistic gateway to the Horn of Africa.
In fact, Somaliland offered a 19km strip to Ethiopia in exchange for recognition. That initiative is the reason the leader of the failed state of Somalia is now desperately seeking a military alliance with Turkey, Egypt, Eritrea, and Djibouti dictators. A move that could ignite a full-blown regional war if the US and EU fail to stop the legal fiction that Somaliland is part of the so-called Federal Republic of Somalia.
Moreover, the Somali government that the US, EU, and Türkiye protect is riddled with corruption and is struggling to govern, protect its people, and deliver basic services. In fact, Somalia’s governance resembles a racket or fraud like Congo.
The Somali leaders justify their actions by fighting Al-Shabaab, which is the only thing America is interested in nowadays, despite all the challenges Somalis are facing. The US, EU, and others treat Somalia as a sovereign country, yet democratic Somaliland, which manages its own affairs, is treated as a pariah state.
Somaliland faces many challenges, including its economy, poor infrastructure, rudimentary healthcare system, and recurring droughts due to climate change, which have devastated its livestock. It has been sustained by the export of mutton and sheep to the Middle East, and the remittance of the diaspora in North America and Europe.
The uncertainty of its legal status is also hampering investors willing to develop Somaliland’s untapped mining, oil and gas natural, and fishing resources.
In May 2001, the will of the people was supported in a referendum by more than 90 percent of the people, an event that I took part in.
By any metrics, for the last three decades, the US and EU strategy to prop-up the nominal Somali government in Mogadishu, dominated by one faction of Somalia’s civil war, is an abject failure.
Rather than imposing political outcomes on Somalia at the cost of both valuable American and African lives and resources. The United States and EU should leverage their diplomatic influence to facilitate a negotiated settlement between Somaliland and Somalia to end the legal fiction that the former is part of the latter.
The United States, EU, and Africa should take a bold step and recognize and support Somaliland—the former British territory that has established itself as a peaceful, democratic success story in the region.
Doing so would promote stability in a region rife with widespread conflict, Chinese economic exploitation, undemocratic governance, and security concerns around the Bab-El-Mandeb strait—a critical global shipping route.
