Situated in the larger Horn of Africa with hundreds of miles of coastline along the Gulf of Aden, bordering Ethiopia to the south and west and Djibouti to the northwest – Somaliland is a self-governing region of Somalia that declared independence from Mogadishu in 1991 but remains unrecognized internationally.
A tectonic shift is taking place recently as the US ambassador to Somalia Richard Riley attended Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi’s inauguration as the new Somaliland President and said that it was “one of the best examples of democracy in action in Africa,” in a signal to build relations with Somalia’s breakaway region.
The same day Abdullahi was sworn in, a Republican Congressman Scott Perry introduced bill in the House to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state. Republicans had attempted to pass pro-Somaliland legislation in the Congress but these bills were ultimately rejected by the House and Senate.
This time, the bill could pass given former aides of the US President-elect Donald Trump say that he could recognize Somaliland and the de facto state has shown its willingness to provide the US a military base in the port city of Berbera, which was modernized with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and whose proximity to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait – a critical shipping route that connects the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean through the Gulf of Aden – drastically enhances its strategic value for commercial and military activities and counter China's influence.
In 2020, Somaliland opened a representative office in Taiwan, drawing China’s wrath. Recently, Taipei's Deputy Foreign Minister François Chihchung Wu led a delegation to attend Abdullahi’s swearing-in ceremony. This as well as Beijing’s close ties with Mogadishu and its support of Somalia’s territorial integrity could push the US to consider this proposal.
Somaliland has been offering this facility to other countries in exchange for recognition. In January, its President Muse Bihi Abdi signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad to provide the landlocked country access to the sea on the condition that Addis Ababa at a future date would recognize Somaliland. The deal infuriated Somalia, which labeled it an “aggression” and called his ambassador back from Addis Ababa.
But after Somalia and Ethiopia in a Turkey-brokered agreement agreed to mend ties, ending fears of a wider conflict, Somaliland has now turned to the US for a deal that would earn it the status of a separate country and allow America to establish an intelligence facility in the Horn to monitor arms trafficking, Houthi movements in Yemen and Chinese activities in the neighboring Djibouti.
As the Project 2025, a controversial agenda created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that is widely seen as a blueprint for the coming Trump administration, has called for "the recognition of Somaliland statehood as a hedge against the US's deteriorating position in Djibouti,” Somaliland has a better chance to get itself recognized by the US with the right-leaning administration taking over the White House in a few weeks.
The Biden administration has been favoring Somalia over Somaliland yet the policy appears to have changed as it sent a high-level delegation led by Riley and the commander of the US Africa Command Maj Gen Brian Cashman to the region who met both outgoing and incoming Somaliland presidents and discussed peace, stability and prosperity across the Horn, indicating a bipartisan support could grow on Somaliland.
However, there are choppy waters ahead. Egypt, a key US ally in the region – that has closely aligned itself with Somalia, holds deep-seated rifts with Ethiopia over its construction of a dam on the River Nile and is an important mediator between Hamas and Israel – could take the US recognition of Somaliland as betrayal.
Turkey, America’s Nato ally and the other major regional player, would be upset too for it has inked a defense and economic agreement as well as an oil and gas deal with Somalia. Such a move would also elicit from a scathing diatribe from the African Union that has long opposed secessionist movements, believing they would encourage separatists across the continent.
Somaliland’s recognition by Trump would further have far-reaching implications given it would prompt strong reservations from Somalia, a vital America’s ally in the fight against al-Shabaab and the rising threat of Islamic State in Puntland, Djibouti and Eritrea as well as America’s key partners, in addition to Egypt and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that are bolstering their engagement with the regional nations and could see tensions in the region as a hazard to their economic and security interests.
The UAE is by far the biggest Gulf player in Africa. While Abu Dhabi has invested $59.4 billion in the continent over the last decade, it is operating a network of logistics platforms and ports in the Horn including Somaliland and Puntland, the two Somali-federated states. The UAE had earlier developed military installations in Eritrea and Somaliland during its military campaign in Yemen, urging Somalia to perceive Emiratis a threat to its unity.
During the cold war, the Horn couldn’t witness sustainable peace and prosperity as the region became a proxy battleground for the US and the Soviet Union with the former seeing the territory as a means of solving its problems such as preventing the advances of the Soviet communism and the latter viewing it as a key to victory over its Western rivals.
Once violent extremism and interstate conflicts shoved the region into a perpetual instability, an intra-regional propensity to choose confrontation over dialogue on access to the Red Sea and inclination to surrender its sovereignty to foreign nations to extract economic benefits have allowed the great and middle powers to jostle for influence across the Horn with some patting distant countries to exploit the opportunity.
As Somaliland trades recognition for sovereignty by tempting America to strengthen its military footprint in the region, this approach would kick off a race in the region where other countries could consider offering their territory to international powers. This would have horrifying consequences for the people and peace in the Horn, which unarguably is one of the poorest regions in the world.
*My article (unedited) that first appeared in the "Express Tribune"