By Azhar Azam
Somaliland’s bid for recognition gains momentum as it offers military base to US, reshaping Horn of Africa dynamics.
Situated in 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 unrecognised internationally.
A tectonic shift is taking place recently as 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”.
The day Abdullahi was sworn in, a Republican Congressman Scott Perry introduced bill to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state. Republicans had attempted to pass pro-Somaliland legislation in Congress but these bills were ultimately rejected.
This time the bill could pass given former aides of Donald Trump say that he could recognise Somaliland and because the de facto state has shown its willingness to provide America a military base in Berbera whose proximity to Bab-el-Mandeb Strait – a critical shipping route that connects Red Sea and Indian Ocean through Gulf of Aden – drastically enhances its strategic value for commercial and military activities.
In 2020, Somaliland opened an 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 Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad to provide the landlocked country access to sea on condition that Addis Ababa at a future date would recognise 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 neighbouring Djibouti.
As the Project 2025 – a controversial agenda created by right-wing Heritage Foundation which is being seen as a blueprint for the coming Trump administration – has called for “the recognition of Somaliland statehood as a hedge against the deteriorating US position in Djibouti”, Somaliland has a better chance to get itself recognised by Trump.
The Biden administration has been favouring Somalia over Somaliland yet the policy appears to have changed as it sent a high-level delegation, which 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. It could take US recognition of Somaliland as betrayal.
Turkey, America’s Nato ally and other major regional player, would be upset too for it has inked a defence and economic agreement as well as an oil and gas deal with Somalia. Such a move would also elicit from a scathing diatribe from African Union that has long opposed secessionist movements, believing they would encourage separatists across Africa.
Somaliland’s recognition by Trump would further have far-reaching implications, as it would prompt strong reservations from Somalia, a vital US 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, 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 GCC 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, 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 now-defunct Soviet Union with the former seeing the territory as a means of solving its problems such as preventing the advances of 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 Red Sea and inclination to surrender its sovereignty to foreign nations to extract economic benefits have allowed great and middle powers to jostle for influence across the Horn with some patting India to exploit opportunity to counter China and alleged Pakistan’s attempts to spread Islamic extremism.
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.
