On Somalilandโs historical political economy, and how best outsiders can help Somalilanders take charge of their destiny in the quest for continued economic and political development.
I: Why ruin a plucky would-be stateโs economic and political development with immediate full recognition?
The U.S. government under Donald Trump will most likely recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state in a move that will likely be followed by other governments in Africa and around the world.ย A bill has already been introduced in the U.S. legislature to this end. This post discusses the pros and cons of international recognition for Somaliaโs most successful breakaway region.
The main argument below is that while the people of Somaliland deserve and have a strong case for international recognition, such a developmentย at this timeย would very likely take away the very incentives that have set them apart from the rest of Somalia over the last 33 years.
To be blunt, achieving full sovereignty withย de jureย international recognition at this time would do little beyond incentivizing elite-level pursuit ofย sovereign rentsย at the expense of continued political and economic development. What has made Somaliland work is that its elites principally derive their legitimacy from their people, and not the international system. Stated differently, full sovereignty runs the risk of separating both the Somaliland state and ruling elites from the productive forces of society; which in turn would free politicians (and policymakers) from having to think of their people as the ultimate drivers of their overall economic wellbeing. Just like in the rest of the Continent, the resulting separation of โsuspended elitesโ from the socio-economic foundations of Somaliland society and inevitable policy extraversion would be catastrophic for Somalilanders.
The last thing the Horn needs is another Djibouti โ a country whose low-ambition ruling elites are content with hawking their geostrategic location at throwaway prices while doing precious little to advance their citizensโ material well-being (Djiboutiโsย poverty rate is a staggering 70%).
With this in mind, it would be ideal if Somaliland achieved full legal sovereignty after making strides in improving its human capital base (the education budget remains atrociously low), figuring out how to be a productive logistics and business services hub, and broadly diversifying its economy beyond relying on remittances, animal exports, financial services, and gold mining.
In addition, it would be preferable to prioritize further political institutionalization before recognition. Somalilandโs โpastoral democracyโ characterized by the institutionalization of elections and presidential turnovers is certainly commendable. However, international praise of its democratic traditions ignores quite a few red flags. The fact of the matter is that Somaliland has what can at best be described as โmanaged democracyโ with restrictions on party formation (only three are allowed per time), a moribund upper legislative chamber in desperate need of reform, and an enduring vulnerability to fractious and exclusionary (and at times violent) clan politics. External praise of Somalilandโs democracy often comes with standard issueย fetishization of ritual electoralism and turnover, instead of a clear-eyed understanding of the real features of its current stage of political development.
Presidential turnover is great, but whatโs even more important is having a political system that is broadly inclusive and responsive, and that delivers on basics such as personal safety, education, health, and essential infrastructure. This isnโt intended to downplay the demonstrated elite commitment to power-sharing over time. I fully appreciate the fact Somalilandโs elite political stability stretches back to even before their declaration of independence. Throughout the resistance against Siad Barreโs autocracy the SNM admirably avoided personalism and maintained a strong civilian presence in its leadership (unlike most rebel groups on the Continent). But elite pacts anchored on age-based hegemony over society are not enough. Somaliland must aspire to modernize both its politics and economy.
It is not obvious to me how full recognition would resolve the many challenges currently faced by Somalilanders. To the contrary, itโs very likely that it would lock in these suboptimal elements of Somalilandโs political economy, or make them worse. Which is why friends of Somaliland ought to consider conditioning future recognition on concrete political and economic development milestones. Despite the noises from Mogadishu and elsewhere on the Continent, nothing currently stops Somaliland and its international partners from making progress on the points highlighted above. Recognition will mean nothing if it doesnโt come with serious attention to expanding economic opportunities and material improvements in human welfare. That should be the focus of elites in Hargeisa, not a rush to recognition in search ofย sovereign rents.
Finally, while accepting that itโs ultimately Somalilandersโ decision to make, Iโm personally partial to the idea of a strong Federal Republic within current borders or even the emirates model from the Gulf as the best mechanisms for managing Somaliaโs complicated tapestry of historical facts on the ground. That, in my view, would avoid the sociopolitical stagnation/decay and wanton external predation that will most certainly follow a breakup of Somalia into weak statelets. After Somaliland, Jubaland and Puntland would likely want out, too.
II: On paper, Somalilandโs case for independence is strong; and there are good reasons to suspect that it would succeed as a full member of the international state system.
Somalilandโs strongest case for independence is that it is a viable polity. The territoryโs political history over much of the last century sets it apart from the rest of Somalia. The current boundaries along the โRodd lineโ took shape back in 1897 when British colonial occupation stalled Ethiopiaโs post-Adwa imperial expansion under Menelik II. In subsequent decades, โBritish Somalilandโ was governed separately from โItalian Somaliaโ to the South. Before that coastal Somalilandโs orientation was towards the Egyptian world, while Somaliaโs coastal urban centers were under Zanzibari/Omani control and influence. And even before that sections of Somalilandโs current territory were for centuries part of the Adal Sultanate and later the Isaaq Sultanate. Before Zanzibaris showed up to dominate its coast, Central Somalia was dominated by the Ajuran empire.
Of course shared historical unitary stateness isnโt the only metric for evaluating claims to autonomy. Quests for state/nation building are deliberate sociopolitical projects that live or die with the choices people make and effort they put into them. History is not destiny as all borders are arbitrary reflections of human agency and limits. Therefore, Somali nationalists who have a strong desire to see socio-cultural and political unity across โGreater Somaliaโ shouldnโt be dismissed offhand. The point of looking at historical Somali stateness is to show that besides ethnicity/religion/commonย xeerย (which are powerful unifying forces in their own right) there isnโt a deepย politicalย basis for uniting all the Somali lands into โGreater Somaliaโ across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
The union of โBritish Somalilandโ and โItalian Somaliaโ in 1960 was a conscious choice, albeit one that a majority of Somalilanders came to regret barely two years later. Pan-Somali nationalism (somalinimo) in the lead up to independence and the quest to eventually unite all Somali lands dovetailed nicely with Somalilandersโ desire to regain access to the grazing lands on the Hawd plateau that found themselves on the wrong side of the โRodd Line.โ However, the union would be short-lived. In a cruel twist of historical irony, the quest for Somali unity eventually broke post-independence Somalia. The sponsoring of irredentist claims against Kenya and Ethiopia fermented wariness against a strong Mogadishu in Nairobi and Addis Ababa which persists to this day (itโs no coincidence that both countries are friends of Somaliland, while Kenya is a strong booster of Jubaland). Most significantly, Siad Barreโs failed invasion of Ethiopia to conquer the Ogaden in 1977 sparked a civil war from which Somalia is yet to recover. Itโs in the midst of this civil war that Somaliland withdrew from Somalia in 1991.
In total, Somalilandโs peacetime existence as an integral part of modern Somalia barely lasted 20 years.
Human geography and political economy also set Somaliland apart from the core heartland of Somalia. Somaliaโs densest population centers are in the central Shebelle river valley and central Somaliland (which places Somalia in the โbad geographyโ column on the Herbst scale). It doesnโt help that successive governments after 1960 did little to connect central Somaliland to Mogadishu, whether through infrastructure, effective elite cooptation (beyond adopting English as the national language), or even mass-based nation-building. This despite the fact that, according to a Somaliland government report, in 1960 Somalia accounted for less than one percent of Somalilandโs trade, and barely any Somalilanders having ever been to Mogadishu.
Somaliland partially avoided the worst of Somaliaโs negative clan politics by chance. Its clan structure is considerably less fractious than Somaliaโs as a whole. The Isaaq demographically dominate its central core as well as its politics and economics. Furthermore, Somalilandโs experience during the brief union and later civil war โ especially Siad Barreโs harsh prosecution of the war in the north โ helped forge a strong Somaliland identity beyond the Isaaq that was the foundation of the declaration of independence on May 18, 1991.
The war also exiled significant numbers of Somalilanders whose remittances, trade connections, and interest to mobilize for peace help the country avoid self-destructive negative clan politics (itโs an indictment of Somali nationalists who carry the torch of Sayyid Mohammed Abdalla Hassan that theyโve never overcome the bastardization of clan identities for narrow political ends โ by far the biggest obstacle to Somali state-building and economic development over the last two centuries).
While not particularly conducive to rapid economic growth and development, Somalilandโs political economy fosters peace and stability. Cross-border trade, financial services, and remittances are the mainstays of the economy, and have over the years proved valuable for coordinating elite-level convergence on peace among different factions as well as durable political settlements. Key to this success has been the concentration of ownership, which in turn reduces transaction costs among economic elites. Pastoralismโs mass-level ethos of egalitarianism (reinforced by respect for elders and intra-communal self-policing) further reinforces elite-level commitments to the prevailing โmanaged democracyโ (unfortunately, socio-political egalitarianism under low state capacity also entrenches tolerance of economic inequality and under-development). The relatively small number of politically relevant clans (further reinforced by the constitutional limit of political organization to just three parties) also helps reduce transaction costs associated with enforcing intra-elite pacts. Constitutional restriction on the proliferation of parties โ public votes for the three parties every decade โ helps strengthen intra-coalition, stability, monitoring, and sanctioning.
III: There are good reasons to recognize Somaliland. But doing so right now will likely rob Somalilanders of the core drivers of their successes so far.
Somalilandโs strong case for independence aside, gaining full international recognition would rob the breakaway region of an important driver of its success so far:ย the fact that itโs elites are inward-focused and derive their legitimacy from the people.
The underlying drivers of the current momentum for recognition are ominous. Somaliland elites definitely deserve credit for getting their house in order and then persistently lobbying major global powers for recognition. In particular, the long game of mostly focusing their efforts on American conservatives finally paid off withย the second coming of a highly transactional Donald Trump. It also helps that all this is happening at a time when the United Arab Emirates has emerged asย a major geopolitical/geoeconomic player in the Horn, with its sights on the ports in Berbera and Bosaso, a potentialย military base,ย aย logistical corridor into Ethiopia, and likely investments in energy and mining. Finally, the United States and its Abraham Accords allies in the Middle East are salivating at the prospect of military installations in Somaliland in the hopes of being able to more effectively prosecute the war on Yemen and beef up overall presence in the wider Red Sea region. The U.S. also views Somaliland as an extension of its Taiwan policy โ and a chance to stick it to China which opposes recognition (Somaliland recognizes Taiwan, not China).
My biggest fear is that Somaliland is unlikely to maintain enough of its present institutional character and agency to survive this frenzied attention from outsiders.
First to suffer will likely be Somalilandโs storied elite political stability and well-managed system of electoral accountability. Somalilandโs success is founded on businesses being able to discipline politics and influence public opinion (see all the peace and governance conferences since 1981); as well as its citizensโ egalitarianism and communal self-governance. Full sovereignty will blow up this balance by significantly strengthening the state vis-a-vis businesses, clan elders, and the general public. Flush with cash, focused on their narrow interests, as well as a strong preference for stability, foreign players will undoubtedly seek to attenuate democratic influences on the Somaliland state. You can already see this in the fetishization of electoralism, which deliberately ignores all the work that still needs to be done to strengthen democracy in Somaliland.
Second will be Somalilandโs economic prospects. With foreign geopolitical attention will come an even deeper NGO-ization of Somalilandโs economic life and a severe case of policy extraversion. Uncoordinated and failing โdevelopment projectsโ will bloom. Hargeisa will crawl with โtechnical expertsโ out to dabble in the latest faddist trend. The cost of doing anything in the public sector will balloon beyond belief. Eventually, these new players will crowd out the influence on the state from Somalilandโs businesses, diaspora remittances, clan elders, and voters. There will be a lot of externally-facing โreforms,โ but with little tangible benefit to Somalilandโs businesses or general public.
These are important factors to consider because lost in all the worm glow of electoral turnovers and relative stability is the fact that Somaliland is still a very poor country that must do all it can to avoid becoming an aid-dependent basket case that plays host to foreign geopolitical contests.
There is no way to sugarcoat the dire material conditions faced by most of Somalilandโs over 6.2m people. Per capita income of stands at $1,361. Life expectancy is a mere 56 years. Barely more than a fifth of children are born in hospitals. The maternal mortality rate stands at a dizzying 732 women per 100,000 live births. Only about 34% of primary school age children attend school. Close to 40% of children are malnourished. Meanwhile, more than a third of the government budget of about US$ 4.4b goes to security.
These are not stats describing a flourishing would-be country โ hence the need for Somaliland elites to consider how full recognition would impact their ability to meaningfully address these challenges.
The third negative consequence of recognizing Somaliland will be rising instability in the Horn. From a geopolitical standpoint, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Kenya will be the clear beneficiaries of such a change to the status quo. However, Somalia (and Puntland), Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia will likely not take this shift without a fight. Conflicts along the disputed boundary with Puntland and intra-clan skirmishes within Somaliland will escalate (and gobble up more scarce resources). The rump Somalia will also be destabilized by nationalist furor over its dismemberment (with Al-Shabaab being a clear beneficiary). The apparent rapprochement between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa will most certainly collapse. In the face of these likely upheavals, Somalilandโs international partners wonโt have much to offer. When the rubber meets the road, theyโll do just enough to protect their interests and ignore the rest of the chaos. And when that fails theyโll cut and run.
Faced with the real risks outlined above, it would be beneficial if instead of recognition Somaliland would proceed as a de facto state as it consolidates its economy and politics. Such a path forward would still allow for it to engage foreign powers interested in its geostrategic offerings, but with the caveat that itโs ruling elites would not be entirely freed from relying on local businesses and communities as the main sources of legitimacy. Military bases and international logistical corridors could still be built. Investments in mining, telecoms, business services, and light manufacturing can still take place. Donor funds for education, healthcare, irrigation, water and sanitation, veterinary services for Somalilandโs vast herds, and governs reforms would still flow.
The only difference is that all these interventions would be channeled via the current formal and informal institutions (with their checks and legitimation norms intact), and not a small group of state elites newly freed from their people and totally dependent on foreigners. Indeed, true friends of Somaliland would condition future recognition on concrete economic and political achievements accompanied by observable improvements in human welfare and freedoms.
IV: Conclusion
To reiterate, Somalilanders have a strong case for independence. However, the international conversation around this issue shouldnโt start and end with praise for Somalilandโs nascent democracy and its strategic usefulness to outsiders. Above all else, Somalilandโs independence must be founded on a concrete promise of material prosperity for its people.
To this end, the ideal way forward would be for friends of Somaliland to use commitments to future recognition to incentivize elite behavior in service to further political and economic development. In addition, it would be important to invest in a legitimation process through the African Union โ which, in acknowledging that Somaliland is a unique case, all but asked Mogadishu to accept the breakaway regionโs eventual independence. To the extent possible, recognition shouldnโt be done in a manner that increases conflict and general instability in the Horn.
