A File, Not a Country
In the capitals of the Arab world, Somaliland exists not as a country, but as a bureaucratic file - a small, self-governing state systematically ignored. For more than thirty years, it has maintained stable governance, peaceful elections, functional institutions, internal security, and growing economic infrastructure, including the strategic Berbera port. Yet regional actors treat it as a problem to be managed rather than a legitimate polity to be recognized.
This dismissal is deliberate. Somaliland challenges entrenched notions of sovereignty, governance, and legitimacy. Two overlapping paradigms dominate regional perspectives:
- Subordination to Somalia: Somaliland is framed as an internal administrative issue of the internationally recognized Somali state. Opposition is justified in the name of “territorial integrity,” despite Somaliland’s effective governance, democratic practices, and popular support.
- Instrumentalization in geopolitics: Somaliland is treated as a pawn in broader regional and global power calculations. Its strategic position along the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait elevates its importance. Any independent diplomatic or economic engagement is seen as a redistribution of influence, threatening Egypt, Turkey, Djibouti, and others. In this paradigm, Somaliland’s agency is invisible, and its successes challenge entrenched hierarchies.
Why Success Terrifies the Region
Opposition is fueled not by Somaliland itself, but by what its recognition would symbolize. Accepting Somaliland as a functioning, autonomous state would set a precedent for marginalized or peripheral regions across Africa and the Middle East: Southern Syria, southern Yemen, Iraqi Kurdistan, and other ethnically distinct areas could cite Somaliland as a model for autonomy. For regimes that routinely suppress such claims, this represents a threat to legitimacy.
Three interlinked factors amplify this fear:
- Internal political contagion: Recognition could embolden other regions to assert autonomy, potentially destabilizing states with unresolved internal divisions.
- Sanctity of colonial-era borders: Somaliland shows that functional governance can emerge outside inherited boundaries, challenging the myth that these borders are natural or sacrosanct.
- Symbolic authority of centralized states: Recognition undermines the belief that centralized authority is inherently more stable or legitimate than decentralized governance.
This opposition is defensive rather than normative. Legal, moral, and religious arguments are performative, applied selectively to mask narrow strategic interests. Recognition threatens entrenched ideas of unity and authority far more than it threatens stability on the ground.
Strategic Calculations
Egypt: Officially, Cairo cites Somali unity and solidarity with Palestinians. In reality, Egypt’s opposition is deeply strategic: it worries that a stronger Somaliland-Ethiopia partnership, especially with potential Israeli facilitation, would reduce Cairo’s leverage over Addis Ababa, threatening its influence over the Nile, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam negotiations, and Red Sea maritime routes, including the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The Palestinian cause is invoked rhetorically rather than as an ethical guide.
Turkey: Ankara views Somalia as a key arena for regional influence through infrastructure projects, military cooperation, and humanitarian programs. Recognizing Somaliland or allowing its internationalization would create alternative trade and security routes outside Turkish-dominated networks. Turkish opposition is calculated to preserve strategic leverage, not based on principle or concern for Somali unity.
Djibouti: Berbera port threatens Djibouti’s monopoly as Ethiopia’s maritime gateway. By framing Somaliland’s development as a security risk, Djibouti obscures economic motives. Somaliland’s functional governance also contrasts sharply with Djibouti’s centralized, authoritarian system, creating implicit pressure to maintain the status quo.
Federal Somalia (FGS): Mogadishu resists recognition to protect the legitimacy of federal institutions. Symbolic unity is prioritized over effective governance. The FGS applies principles selectively, resisting Somaliland-Israel engagement rhetorically while exploring similar relations with Israel when convenient. This reveals that authority, not principle, drives policy.
Other Arab states - including Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, and the Maldives - follow the same pattern. Despite normalizing relations with Israel themselves, they publicly denounce Somaliland, amplifying narratives of Somali unity or regional stability through state-aligned media. Israel and the Palestinian cause are invoked selectively as tools of political management, exposing a double standard that marginalizes smaller states.
Geography Rules
Somaliland’s location along the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait makes it geopolitically vital. Its ports, maritime access, and external partnerships, including with Ethiopia and Taiwan, are perceived as threats to the regional status quo. Geography consistently outweighs law or ethics in shaping responses.
Even the Houthi conflict in Yemen has been weaponized rhetorically to justify Somaliland’s isolation. Claims that Somaliland-Israel relations could provoke attacks or disrupt shipping lanes are unfounded yet persist as pretexts to contain the state. These narratives demonstrate how legal, ethical, and security rhetoric is mobilized to preserve hierarchies rather than reflect principle.
Somaliland as a Mirror
At its core, Somaliland tests principle, governance, and regional honesty. Its thirty-year record challenges assumptions that stability requires centralization or that legitimacy flows automatically from inherited boundaries. Decentralized governance, popular consent, and effective institutions create functional political order.
Recognition of Somaliland would acknowledge a living example of self-determination. Opposition, by contrast, reveals the willingness of regional powers to sacrifice principles - democracy, sovereignty, and popular will - for political convenience and geostrategic dominance. Somaliland succeeds where others fail, yet it is ignored not due to weakness, but because its model is too disruptive to entrenched systems.
In refusing to see Somaliland as a state, the Arab world exposes a wider pattern: success outside centralized hierarchies is threatening. Somaliland is more than a regional anomaly; it is a mirror reflecting the contradictions, insecurities, and hypocrisies of contemporary Middle Eastern and African geopolitics.
Gulaid Yusuf Idaan
Senior Lecturer | Researcher
