United Kingdom reaffirms “full support” for Somalia’s unity, declares it “does not recognize” Somaliland independence

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Considering Kiers statement today it does feel like this will change the second the US’s unsinkable aircraft carrier decides it wants its own little staging point.

A few points I wish more of us Brits understood about this almost entirely ignored country so that this thread and others like it are better informed about the history, because we’re actually quite involved in the history of Somaliland:

1. What’s now Somaliland was known as [British Somaliland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Somaliland). Between 1884-1960 it was a British Protectorate and later Crown Colony, entirely separate from the region/country then called Somalia, which was [governed by the Italians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Somaliland).
2. British Somaliland gained independence in June 1960, and in July it decided it would attempt to merge with what was at the time called the (Italian) [Trust Territory of Somaliland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Territory_of_Somaliland) into a single country called Somalia.
3. Today, when we talk about Somalia territory vs Somaliland territory, that’s more or less where the line rests.
4. In 1969, [General Siad Barre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siad_Barre) effectively became the Military Dictator of Somalia, and began to pursue a [large-scale genocide of the Isaaq ethnic people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide), who had formed the majority of what had been British Somaliland.
5. The ‘reasons’ are complicated (insofar as any genocide can have a ‘reason’), but the fairest simplification I can make is that Barre and the Somali tribes who backed him felt the Isaaq were too influential and powerful in Somalian politics, and that his own clan and other clans from the formerly-Italian side of Somalia had not given enough power.
6. During the genocide, up to 200,000 Isaaq Somalilanders were murdered by Barre’s forces.
7. Somaliland ‘broke away’ in 1991 to try and again become independent and self-governing again. Frankly, pretty understandable – who wants to remain part of a country who tried to genocide your people? Maybe I’m mental but that sounds very reasonable to me, especially given that the two countries hadn’t started off as the same country in the first place.
8. Since then, Somaliland has become more or less the only country in sub-Saharan Africa which holds regular, free, open, and democratic elections with peaceful changes of power; where terrorism is a rare occurence; where crime is low (from what I can tell, the murder rate in South Africa is about 45 per 100,000 and in Somaliland it’s about 5 per 100,000); where the rule of law prevails; where property rights are respected.
9. Its GDP-per-capita is still very low in global terms, but it’s now three times that of Somalia itself, which is riven by corruption, violence, crime, ethnic-tribal political factions, and much of Somalia is being effectively controlled or attacked by the ISIL-aligned [Islamist terrorist militia Al-Shabaab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)), which doesn’t really exist in Somaliland.
10. Like pretty much all the other subsaharan African countries, it’s also not a perfect country. FGM is widespread and normal (though in 2024 it passed a tough anti-FGM national law), and access to clean water and good education still isn’t where it should be.
11. Because it’s not recognised as a state by any country except now Israel, it’s never been eligible for access to funds or investment from the World Bank, IMF, etc., so it’s had to achieve that triple-per-capita-GDP victory solely on its own good governance, hard work, merit, etc. It’s not highly developed – its main export remains animal products – but it’s basically peaceful, democratic, safe and economically free.

Any fellow Brits should know at least that, and arguably a bit more (which isn’t hard to find if you just do a bit of Googling) to get a sense of why Somaliland might actually be a state, or state-to-be, which we in Britain and in the West should care about.

As a side-note, if you’re wondering why Israel was the first country to recongise Somaliland, the first is obviously that it would give Israel a greater ability to counter the Houthis in Yemen just across the gulf. So there’s a clear strategic win there.

But the second reasn is actually quite a lot deeper than that, and it’s serious and emotional and cuts across particular short-term interests.

In 1990, Israel became the only country on the planet to register their concern and objections to the massacres going on in Somaliland (as part of the genocide), writing a letter to the United Nations Security Council registering these concerns and demanding action on it.

The UNSC did not act upon this request, but Isaaq Somalilanders to this day remember that the only country on the planet who tried to stand up for them was Israel. Hence they’re very willing and happy to accept their recognition today, despite the inevitable trouble this might cause them given they’re surrounded by al-Shabaab countries etc.