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By Shay Gal
From afar, it is easy to lecture Somaliland about patience and realism. Distance makes such advice costless. What is harder is to accept that Somaliland cannot be undone on paper, because it was built in reality. It exists not by permission, but by effort.
Somaliland did not emerge from ideology or rebellion. It emerged from collapse. When the Somali state disintegrated in the early 1990s, Somaliland faced the same ingredients that produced chaos elsewhere: armed factions, clan divisions, destroyed institutions, mass displacement. What followed was not international intervention or donor-driven state building, but an internal political settlement forged through negotiation, restraint and local authority. Elders, community leaders and former combatants negotiated ceasefires, disarmament and power-sharing not in hotels abroad, but on their own soil, with their own legitimacy at stake. That process was imperfect and slow. It worked.
This explains why Somaliland succeeded where others, with more aid, recognition and favourable geography, failed. Somaliland’s institutions were not imported. They were negotiated into being. Authority was earned locally before it was ever codified nationally. The result was a political order that prioritised consent over coercion and compromise over force. When Somaliland later adopted a constitution and submitted it to a public referendum, it did so from a position of social agreement rather than external pressure. Sovereignty followed stability, not the other way around.
The world has struggled to categorise this achievement because it disrupts familiar narratives. Somaliland is not a fragile state in need of rescue, nor a proxy battlefield for larger powers, nor a romantic separatist cause. It is a polity that learned, early on, the cost of violence and the value of restraint. Its democratic record reflects that realism. Elections have been delayed, contested and imperfect, but they have also been meaningful. Governments have lost. Power has changed hands. Defeat has not triggered collapse. In a region where political loss often equals existential threat, that alone sets Somaliland apart.
The message is clear: behaviour matters less than inherited status
Yet Somaliland is still treated as if it were provisional, conditional, negotiable. Recognition is framed as a dangerous precedent rather than an overdue acknowledgment. The contrast is unmistakable. The international system continues to extend automatic legitimacy to states that cannot control their territory, protect their citizens or resolve internal contradictions, while withholding recognition from a polity that has demonstrated all three. The message is clear: behaviour matters less than inherited status.
This is where the case against Somaliland becomes intellectually thin. Somalia’s sovereignty is invoked as an article of faith, even as Somalia itself remains structurally divided, its federal arrangement unresolved, its internal cohesion contested by its own regions. Insisting that Somaliland return to Mogadishu does not solve Somalia’s problems. It merely asks Somaliland to absorb them. Unity imposed from outside, without consent, has already failed once. Repeating that experiment while expecting a different outcome is not principle. It is avoidance.
The picture sharpens when external actors are considered. Turkey presents itself as a stabilising force in Somalia, yet it is also a strategic actor with clear interests: military presence, energy ambitions, maritime positioning and regional influence. Its rhetoric of territorial integrity aligns neatly with its expanding footprint. Iran, through its regional proxies, has demonstrated how quickly instability around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden can be weaponised. In this environment, Somaliland’s insistence on internal order, predictable governance and secure coastlines is not parochial. It is strategically relevant.
Israel understood this reality when it chose to recognise Somaliland. Geography alone does not explain the decision, nor does access or transactional convenience. Israel recognised in Somaliland something it understands intimately: a small political community that was forced to build order without permission, to defend legitimacy without applause, and to govern under constant external doubt. Like Israel, Somaliland developed institutions before they were universally accepted, relied on internal consensus rather than imposed guarantees, and learned early that sovereignty is sustained through responsibility, not conferred through approval.
This recognition was not blind to Somaliland’s challenges. Israel knows from experience that living political systems are never seamless: institutions must evolve, elites must resist complacency, younger generations demand reform and inclusion, and internal tensions cannot be wished away. These are not signs of failure; they are the burdens of self-rule. They are the same challenges that recognised states confront openly without having their existence questioned. In this sense, Israel did not see in Somaliland a flawless model, but a familiar one.
That recognition exposed the fragility of the global consensus. Condemnations followed swiftly, not because facts were disputed, but because habits were threatened. The African Union reiterated its reflexive attachment to inherited borders. Western capitals reaffirmed their preference for managed ambiguity. Somalia protested loudly, yet without offering a credible political pathway that addresses Somaliland’s lived reality. None of these responses engaged the substance of Somaliland’s record. They defended a position, not an argument.
What many refuse to admit is that Somaliland overturns a basic assumption: that legitimacy flows from recognition, rather than from consent. Somaliland reversed that order. It built legitimacy first and waited for recognition that never came. The result is a political system that functions without permission, and that reality unsettles an international order built on leverage and delay.
The real question is not whether Somaliland deserves recognition, but what others fear learning from it. Somaliland shows that stability is built, not imported; that legitimacy cannot be outsourced; and that political maturity is earned through responsibility, not dependency.
Ignoring Somaliland has been convenient. But convenience is not strategy. And it is not wisdom.
Somaliland is not asking to be seen. It has already proven that it exists. What remains unresolved is whether the world is ready to admit that legitimacy, once built, does not vanish simply because it is inconvenient to acknowledge.
About the Author
Shay Gal is an Israeli strategic analyst on international security and foreign policy. He advises senior government and defence leadership worldwide on strategy, public diplomacy, and crisis decision-making.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, or viewpoints of Somaliland Chronicle, and its staff.
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