Somaliland is independent after it has declared itself an independent country in 1991 — so why don’t other countries see it as such?
Well, because you people won’t stop asking us to make videos about them. But the fact of the matter is that there usually just isn’t much to say about most micro-nations—90% of the time, it’s someone saying something that’s not true and making a whole flag about it. But there’s one major exception—a not-quite country that, by all accounts, should actually be considered a real country, and it’s called Somaliland.
So let’s talk about what Somaliland is and why, exactly, it isn’t, technically, a country.
Somaliland is here: the horniest part of the horn of Africa.
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Video Transcript
There are lots of micro-nations in the world—territories or groups of people that claim to be countries but just… aren’t. There’s this place: The Free Republic of Liberland, which claims a disputed bit of riverbank between Croatia and Serbia. Down South you’ve got Westarctica, the micro-nation that claims a very large chunk of otherwise unclaimed land in Antarctica. And then of course, you have about a dozen of these places in Australia because Australia’s hardly a country to begin with.
How do we know about all of these places?
Well, because you people won’t stop asking us to make videos about them. But the fact of the matter is that there usually just isn’t much to say about most micro-nations—90% of the time, it’s someone saying something that’s not true and making a whole flag about it. But there’s one major exception—a not-quite-country that, by all accounts, should actually be considered a real country, and it’s called Somaliland.
So let’s talk about what Somaliland is and why, exactly, it isn’t, technically, a country.
Somaliland is here: the horniest part of the horn of Africa.
Now, you might look at this map and say, wait, that’s in Somalia—and you’d be right, except you’d also be kind of wrong.
You see, this part of Somalia and this part of Somalia have surprisingly little to do with one another, besides the fact that both have a lot of sand and not a lot of money.
Way, way back in colonial times—which, in the case of Africa, means the 1950s—the UK and Italy were in a contest to see who could do the most irreparable damage to a part of the world that they weren’t supposed to be in.
While the British were certainly the reigning champs, Italy was taking an impressive lead, at least when it came to this region of Africa. Italy and the UK each controlled part of Somalia; the Brits took a much more hands-off approach to their half, leaving leadership in the hands of local elders, whereas the Italians were willing to actually put in the hard work of oppressing people.
As a result, the two halves of Somalia actually gained independence a few days apart from one another; Somaliland was its own fully-independent country for four days in 1960 until the rest of Somalia told Italy to shove a meatball in it and joined up with Somaliland to form a single country.
Now, if history has taught us anything, it’s that jamming two completely culturally disconnected regions together and calling it a country is awesome and always works. But this time, for some reason, it didn’t. Basically, all you need to know is that Somalia is broken up into six or seven major clans, but most of those clans are down here and don’t like each other very much, whereas Somaliland is pretty much composed of just one clan—the Isaaq family—which has made it generally more stable, wealthy, and possible to form a secessionist militia, so they said, “hey, let’s form a secessionist militia,” and then formed a secessionist militia.
They fought a civil war with the rest of Somalia in the 1980s, and in 1991, Somaliland declared itself an independent country. The rest of Somalia—being poor, unstable, and having their own problems to deal with—didn’t say “yes,” but they also didn’t have the bullets to say “no.”
So, since 1991, Somaliland has operated as its own country. We have a whole separate video on what makes a country a country, which you can watch after this if you don’t have anything better to do with six minutes of your precious and fleeting life, but here’s the gist: the world generally agrees on three basic qualities to define a country: an independent government, a defined territory, and a permanent population.
And Somaliland very handily ticks all three of these boxes: they have very well-defined borders with Somalia—although most countries refer to these as “Administrative Boundary Lines”—they have a permanent population of 5.7 million people, and they have a stable government with democratic elections.
They also issue their own passports, they have their own flag, they mint their own currency, they have their own national anthem, and they even maintain some degree of political contact with Ethiopia, Djibouti, South Africa, Taiwan, Sweden, the UK, and, yes, Liberland.
Remember Liberland from all of those minutes ago? They might have a population of zero and an economy entirely composed of a cryptocurrency that can only be traded on a website that doesn’t exist anymore, but hey, at least they’re recognized by a country that isn’t actually a country.
But that gets us back to the question we’ve been meaning to answer: if Somaliland truly has everything that a real country needs to have, why isn’t it a country?
Well, the short answer is that they’re not a country because other countries say so; the only true definition of a country is one that’s internationally recognized as such.
Like, sure, we all know that France is basically just a glorified province of Belgium, but as long as most major nations call it a country, it’s a country.
So, I guess a better question would be, “why don’t other countries want to recognize Somaliland?” And the answer to that is a little more complicated.
The main reason has to do with international organizations in the region like the African Union and the Arab League, both of whom have tried very hard for many years to get everyone to pretend like Somaliland doesn’t exist—after all, fighting a decades-long civil war to split a country in two isn’t exactly something that these groups want to reward with national recognition and a pat on the head, and their general position is that Africa’s colonial borders should stay as-is for the sake of stability.
The EU has also generally turned a blind eye to Somaliland because, well, Italy still has some sentimental feelings for their old colony, as long as you replace the word “sentimental” with “economic” and “feelings” with the word “feelings” in quotation marks.
And generally, there just aren’t any countries out there that have any particular reason to stir the pot in the region… that is, until Somaliland finds that oil that they’ve been talking about.
Now, if this video made you realize that you don’t know a whole lot about what’s going on in Africa, I would recommend checking out Africa Is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin—it was published just earlier this fall, and it’s an amazing exploration of the geopolitical realities of modern Africa and deconstructs some misconceptions you might have about the continent.
