In their first press statement since sworn in, the new National Election Commission has announced that the constitutionally mandated presidential elections scheduled for November 13th will be delayed. The Commission stated that elections will be held in nine months starting on October 1st, and cited time, technical and financial constraints as the reason for the delaying.
Somaliland National Electrol Commission scheduled to conduct the Presidential Election in 9 months, starting 1st October 2022, as the current scheduled date of 13 Nov, 2022 is not viable due to time, technical and financial constrains.
— Somaliland National Electoral Commission (SLNEC) (@SLNECHQ) September 24, 2022
The selections, confirmation by parliament, and swearing-in of the new National Election Commissioners have dragged on for months and were completed on September 7th, 2022. The previous Election Commission, led by Mr. Abdirashid Riyoraac, dissolved following a dispute among the commissioners and an accusation of corruption that prompted an investigation by the Auditor General’s Office.
The opposition has accused President Bihi of orchestrating the disbandment of the election commission to ensure elections are not held on time. President Bihi has countered the opposition’s accusation that the delay was caused by opposition members of parliament who failed to confirm replacement commissioners.
The opposition parties of Waddani and UCID have welcomed the statement from the Election Commission, although they have in the past opposed presidential term extension and staged protests where at least six civilians were killed and scores injured. It is unclear if the argument of which election, presidential or national political parties, comes first is settled between the President and the leaders of the opposition parties.
President Bihi has argued that the new parties currently amid registration are the only ones eligible to take part in Presidential Elections, whereas the opposition parties have argued that the President is trying to eliminate the current opposition parties and that the presidential elections come first.
Earlier this week, Members of Parliament approved a motion to amend the election laws Number 91/2022 and Number 14. The amendment ratified the combination of presidential and political party elections where the presidential elections will be participated by Waddani, UCID, and the ruling party of Kulmiye and the other parallel election will decide which of the new or existing parties will qualify as a national political party. Somaliland law stipulates that only three political parties can exist for a term of ten years. It is unclear if the Senate and President will approve the proposed amendment to codify it into law.
The National Election Commission’s statement that it cannot hold the presidential elections on November 13th, 2022 paves the way for the Somaliland Senate, which has the constitutional power to extend the presidential term to start deliberation and approve term extension for President Muse Bihi Abdi. In the past, the Senate has ignored the extension period recommended by the Election Commission and has given past Presidents two-year term extensions. This will be the sixth time presidential elections are delayed in Somaliland.
Despite the normalization of election delays and pitched political disputes in election season, Somaliland has earned high praises for its ability to hold one-person, one-vote elections and peaceful transfers of power. It is unclear if the latest delays in presidential elections and continued political jostling will effect in its quest for international recognition.
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On December 28, 2018, Turkey named its former Ambassador to Somalia Dr. Olgan Bekar as a Special Envoy for Somalia and Somaliland Talks. Thought the former Ambassador to Somalia has had limited contact with the Government of Somaliland especially President Bihi’s current administration, he known to be very comfortable in navigating the political scene in Mogadishu.
In this report, we are examining Turkey’s history in Somaliland and Somalia and their role as mediators in the past talks.
Dr. Olgan Bekar, Turkey’s Special Envoy for Somaliland – Somalia with President Muse Bihi Abdi
Turkey is not the only country interested to have Somaliland and Somalia get back to the negotiating table and reach some sort of a settlement.
The topic has come up during President Muse Bihi Abdi’s meeting with the Ethiopian Prime Minister in Addis Ababa this week though it is unclear the extent to which they discussed the subject or if any concrete steps to get the two sides talking were agreed upon.
Somaliland and Ethiopian leaders meeting in Addis Ababa
It is important to understand that various stake holders have different expected outcomes of such talks and Somaliland might be the odd man out as it seeks to gain an amicable completion of its divorce from Somalia.
According to statement from Somaliland Presidency following President Bihi’s meeting with the new envoy Dr. Bekar on February 9, The President informed Dr. Bekar and the Turkish delegation that since past talks has not yielded any results all future dialogue between Somaliland and Somalia must include the international community.
Sources from Somaliland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation present in the meeting with the President and the Turkish delegation stated that President Bihi also informed the Turkish envoy that bringing a level of balance in how Turkey invests in Somalia and Somaliland is a good way to show Somaliland that Turkey is impartial and a friend to Somaliland.
To understand if Turkey can be an impartial and an honest broker on Somaliland and Somalia talks and its general standing in the world community, we have spoken to Mr. Michael Rubin who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he researches Arab politics, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iran, Iraq, the Kurds, terrorism, and Turkey.
President Bihi with Michael Rubin and Presidential Economic Advisor Dr. Osman Sh Ahmed
Somaliland Chronicle: Do you think it is wise for Somaliland to accept Turkey as a mediator in Somalia talks given the Turkish Gov support and massive investment in Somalia?
Mr. Rubin: Turkey does not have a track-record as an honest broker, and President Erdoğan has an ideological agenda which does not value Somaliland’s democracy and security. It is crucial to broaden any such mediation beyond a single country.
Somaliland Chronicle: In your latest article you wrote about Turkish support for terrorism and specifically for Al-Shabaab. What is Turkey’s reasoning for supporting Al-Shabaab?
Mr. Rubin: There is no single international definition of terrorism, and so Turkey often says it is combating terrorism, but denies groups like Al-Shabaab in Somalia or Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali are terrorists. Erdoğan’s goal is a more Islamist order. His fault, though, is confusing some Islamist movements with Islam itself.
Somaliland Chronicle: President Bihi recently met with a Turkish Envoy in charge of the Somaliland/Somalia talks, do you see any value in having Turkey to mediate or be part of those talks?
Mr. Rubin: Certainly, there is value in consultation with Turkey, as Turkey retains a diplomatic presence in both Somalia and Somaliland. President Bihi is correct, however, to seek a broader mediation rather than reliance on a single country.
As President Bihi informed the Turkish delegation, there is an imbalance in how Turkey provides and and invests in Somaliland and Somalia. Let’s break down what Turkey so far done in is to Somalia:
Turkey in Somalia
Security Influence
Turkey is Somalia’s true patron state, one of its most expensive efforts is to rebuild the Somali National Army from scratch and in its own image.
The largest military force in Somalia is of course AMISOM but Turkey’s military presence dwarfs that of any individual country in the AMISOM troops stationed in Somalia. In fact, Turkey’s largest military installation outside of Turkey is in Mogadishu.
Dr. Olgan Bekar with Somalia’s Prime Minister Hassan Khaire.
The 1.5 square mile Turkish military training installation is capable of churning out 1,500 fully trained and equipped soldiers at a time. This is according to Turkish and Somali sources familiar with the facility.
Below is a tweet from Turkish Embassy in Somalia showing images of Somali military personnel being trained in Turkey.
While Turkey rates as the 18th largest military in expenditure globally, it has a fledgling arms industry and rebuilding the Somali National Army represents a lucrative opportunity to supply it with the equipment it is manufacturing.
According to a recent VOA report, in what seems to be a clear violation of the United Nations Security Council’s weapons embargo on Somalia, Turkey has been supplying armament to units of the Somali National Army it has been training.
Public records show that Albayrak Group does not have a track record in managing world class ports, besides Mogadishu Port, it also manages and the Trabzon Port in the Black Sea on Turkey’s Northern border with Georgia.
Compared to Albayrak Group and the 2 ports it manages, DP World manages about 77 marine and inland terminals including Somaliland’s Berbera Port.
Other Turkish conglomerates such Enez-İnşaat and Kozuva Group are also active in Mogadishu.
Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle Airport has been managed by a Kozuva subsidiery, Favori Airports LLC,since September 2013.
Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle Airport
Here is the Somali Prime Minister Mr. Hassan Khaire thanking Qatar for funding road networks between Mogadishu, Afgoye and Jawhar and also thanking the Turkish Government, presumably Enez-İnşaat who according to him have “won” the contract to build said roads.
Turkey bills itself as Somalia’s rescuer and multiple visits by Erdoğan to Somalia especially in what is considered a relatively difficult time for the Somali people were designed to convey that exact message but economically, Turkey stands to gain more from Somalia and Mogadishu than it lets on.
Erdoğan and his wife in Mogadishu.
According to some estimates, the most profitable route in Turkish Airlines is the Mogadishu – Ankara route. And aside from the large visible projects, there are tens of thousands of Turkish citizens living and working in Mogadishu.
Getting involved in one of the least stable country in the world, Turkey is employing the concept of first mover advantage. This means less competition from the Chinese and other actors vying for influence in Africa.
Turkey heavy bet on Somalia and specifically Mogadishu is yielding economic results for Turkey beyond what Erdoğan has expected. In fact, Turkey’s largest embassy in the world is not where you would expect, like Washington DC, Brussels or Berlin, it is in Mogadishu, Somalia.
One of the most attractive features of Turkey’s patronage of Somalia is it is non-interference posture in Somalia’s domestic politics. It is worth nothing that Somalia ranked lowest in global corruption index and any country that is willing to look the other way is a welcome reprieve from the usual admonishment for President Farmajo’s weak administration.
Although this particular instance has been widely publicized by TIKA, Somaliland Chronicle has been unable to locate anything of note done in Somaliland either by Turkish Government or it is aid agency TIKA.
There are, however, multiple unfulfilled pledges by the Turkish Government in the past to help build roads in Somaliland according to multiple former and current Somaliland Government officials. None of these pledges have materialized.
One thing of note is that Turkey has been particularly adept in dangling a carrot of aid and development or simply inviting them to Istanbul on a whirlwind of meetings and tours to get them to buy into the importance of Somaliland and Somalia talks.
No other country has put so much effort to try to mediate Somaliland and Somalia as much as Turkey. In fact, this might be the only thing Turkey has done in Somaliland. There were many rounds of talks that hosted by the Turks in the past and personally supervised by President Erdoğan himself, unfortunately, these talks have been a disaster for Somaliland.
Turkey’s obsession with Somaliland is rooted in the simple fact that the rift between Gulf states of UAE and Saudi Arabia on one side and Qatar, Turkey and Iran on one side has been playing out in Somaliland and Somalia.
President of Somaliland HE Muse Bihi Abdi and DP World CEO Mr. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem
The United Arab Emirates base in Berbera and DP World managing the Port gives the UAE and its ally Saudi Arabia an advantage and a foothold in the strategic 850 kilometers of Red Sea coastline with a direct access to Bab Al-mandab.
Turkey and Qatar has been spending heavily in trying to unseat the Emirates from both the military base and the Berbera Port by mobilizing the Somali government to oppose these deals. Additionally, Turkey has been advancing particular talking points that have been seeping into public discourse in Somaliland such as the importance of Somaliland – Somalia talks, the ramifications of hosting a foreign army in Somaliland via the UAE base and the deterioration of service at the Berbera Port. These same exact talking points are parroted by many civil organizations and opposition parties in Somaliland.
Somaliland has repeatedly signaled it’s willingness to talk to Somalia but its demand for the international community including the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union to get involved and President Bihi’s impossible task for the Turks to raise their level of support for Somaliland to something comparable to Somalia’s almost guarantees that Turkey’s role will be a lot smaller in future dialogue between the two countries.
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Women’s Political Exclusion in Somaliland: A Call for Change
By Jawahir Yusuf H. Adam
Somaliland is often celebrated for its peace, stability and home-grown democratic institutions—a remarkable achievement in a turbulent region. Yet behind this progress lies a painful contradiction: women, who constitute roughly half of Somaliland’s population, remain almost invisible in its political institutions.
Somaliland women have not been absent from nation-building. They have educated families, built businesses, supported communities and carried enormous responsibilities through some of the country’s most difficult periods. Yet when political power is distributed, they remain largely excluded. This is not simply a question of numbers. It is a question of whether Somaliland’s democracy can truly claim to represent its people.
Today, Somaliland’s 164-member Parliament consists of an 82-seat elected House of Representatives and an 82-member House of Elders, or Guurti. There are currently no women in either chamber. The figures from the 2021 parliamentary and local elections were particularly stark. Of the 246 candidates who contested the 82 seats in the House of Representatives, only 13 were women, and none was elected. In the local council elections, only three women were elected among 220 councilors.
The problem is not disappearing with time. The parliamentary and local elections scheduled for 31 May 2026 were postponed, and in April 2026 the House of Elders approved a 27-month extension of the terms of the House of Representatives and local councils. Unless meaningful reforms are made before the next elections, Somaliland risks extending this democratic deficit for several more years. This should concern every Somaliland citizen—not only women.
A Wider Muslim Legacy of Women’s Leadership
The exclusion of women from political leadership is sometimes defended in the name of culture, tradition or religion. But history tells a different story. Across the Muslim world, women have reached the highest levels of political leadership. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Indonesia, among others, have been led by women.
Somaliland itself has produced women of exceptional leadership. Madam Edna Adan Ismail, who served as Somaliland’s first woman Foreign Minister, demonstrated that Somaliland women can operate at the highest levels of public life. Nor is women’s leadership alien to Islamic history. Queen Arwa al-Sulayhi ruled Yemen for decades, while Shajar al-Durr briefly ruled Egypt in the thirteenth century. If Muslim women elsewhere have led governments, why should Somaliland women be told that they are capable of healing the nation, feeding the nation, educating the nation and building the nation—but not leading the nation?
Women’s Leadership in Africa
Across Africa, there are encouraging examples of women’s growing participation in political leadership. Rwanda stands out as a global leader in women’s parliamentary representation, with women holding approximately 63.8% of seats in its lower house, the highest proportion in the world. Senegal has also made significant progress, with women holding more than 40% of seats in its National Assembly. Tanzania has had a woman president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, since 2021. Ethiopia offers another important example. In 2018, Sahle-Work Zewde became the country’s first female president, while historic gender-parity reforms saw women appointed to 50% of ministerial positions. These African examples demonstrate that women’s political exclusion is neither inevitable nor irreversible. Somaliland, which takes pride in its democratic achievements, should draw lessons from these experiences and take concrete steps to ensure that women have a meaningful place in political decision-making.
The Roots of Exclusion in Somaliland
1. Clan Politics
Clan politics is one of the most difficult challenges Somaliland faces in building a modern, effective state. It is important to acknowledge that the clan system played a historic role in helping Somaliland achieve peace in the 1990s. The argument is not that clan structures can simply be abolished overnight. The question is whether a system that once helped resolve conflict should continue to determine political representation indefinitely.
Somaliland’s political system remains deeply influenced by clan calculations. Political parties navigate clan arithmetic, while traditional elders continue to play an important role in political selection and representation. This disproportionately disadvantages women, who can find themselves caught between their father’s clan and their husband’s clan, making it more difficult to secure the backing of traditional power structures.
When political representation is determined primarily by lineage rather than ability, meritocracy suffers. The consequences include political stagnation, entrenched patronage, reduced opportunities for merit-based leadership, continuing clan competition and a weakened national identity.
Somaliland cannot aspire to build a modern state while allowing clan identity to remain the principal gateway to political power. The objective should not be to erase clan identity from society, but to prevent it from determining who is entitled to lead.
2. Cultural and Social Constraints
Traditional gender expectations continue to confine many women primarily to domestic and family responsibilities, while public leadership is often regarded as a man’s domain. But Somaliland’s own history challenges this assumption.
During the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and the years of conflict and hardship that followed, women became indispensable to the survival of families and communities. They worked, traded, educated children, cared for households and helped rebuild social and economic life. Why, then, should political leadership remain the one area in which their capabilities are questioned?
Somaliland’s Constitution provides an important foundation for change. Article 8 states that all citizens shall enjoy equal rights and obligations before the law and shall not be accorded precedence on grounds including clan, birth, gender, property or status. Article 36 specifically addresses the rights of women and provides for equality of rights, freedoms and duties. The principle is therefore not foreign to Somaliland’s constitutional order. The challenge is to turn that principle into political reality.
What Must Change
The postponement of the elections should not simply become another delay. It should become an opportunity to correct a democratic imbalance that has persisted for decades.
First, Somaliland should introduce a meaningful gender quota or reserved seats for women in the electoral law. Civil society organizations have advocated a 30 percent quota for many years. In 2020, Somaliland’s three political parties—UCID, Kulmiye and Waddani—agreed to field six women candidates each in the 2021 parliamentary elections. UCID fulfilled its commitment by fielding six women, while Kulmiye fielded four and Waddani three. Yet none won a seat. If women’s representation is to be treated as a democratic and constitutional principle, it requires an enforceable mechanism.
Second, political parties must put women in genuinely winnable positions. Simply placing a handful of women on a candidate list can create the appearance of inclusion without producing representation. Women must be given realistic opportunities to win—not merely opportunities to participate.
Third, women must have a place in the House of Elders. The Guurti is an important institution in Somaliland’s political system, yet women are absent from it. If traditional structures are to remain part of Somaliland’s political architecture, women must not be excluded. At minimum, Somaliland should establish a mechanism for women’s representation in the Guurti through seats reserved for women nominated by their communities.
Fourth, the financial barriers facing women candidates must be addressed. Campaigning is expensive, and women frequently lack the financial networks and political patronage available to male candidates. The state, political parties and civil society should develop transparent mechanisms to help qualified women compete on a more equal footing. The 2021 election demonstrated that the barrier is not simply a shortage of capable women. There were women willing to run. The system failed to provide them with a level playing field.
Women’s Inclusion Is Not Charity—It Is Nation-Building
Somaliland has every right to be proud of what it has achieved. It has built peace after war, developed functioning institutions under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, held competitive elections and experienced peaceful transfers of power. These achievements deserve recognition.
But democracy is not only about holding elections. It is also about who gets the opportunity to participate, who gets heard and who gets to exercise political power. A democracy in which nearly half the population is virtually absent from Parliament is incomplete.
Women do not need to be given political power as charity. They need the barriers preventing them from competing for that power to be removed. Nor should women’s political participation be presented as a concession to foreign donors or international organizations. It is in Somaliland’s own national interest. Women’s participation can strengthen social cohesion, broaden the talent pool from which leaders are chosen and make political institutions more representative.
Somaliland has already demonstrated that it can challenge assumptions about what is possible. It built peace out of war and institutions under difficult circumstances. Now it must break another barrier: the assumption that political leadership belongs primarily to men and to clans.
Let us not abolish our history. Let us learn from it.
Let us prevent clan from becoming a ceiling on national ambition.
Let us choose merit over lineage, inclusion over exclusion, and national identity over narrow political arithmetic.
And above all, let us ensure that Somaliland’s daughters are empowered to lead.
About the Author
Jawahir Yusuf Adam, is a Graduate of the University of Oxford, UK. has a BA in Public Relations from George Mason University, Virginia, USA and a Diploma in Events Management from George Washington University, School of Business and Public Management, Washington DC, USA.
Jawahir is a former World Bank staff member for 16 years and has also worked as an International Consultant with various international organizations including UN Agencies in Geneva, Switzerland. Jawahir is the author of numerous published articles and is currently an activist for the recognition of Somaliland.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions or perspectives of Somaliland Chronicle and its staff.
Notice: This article by Somaliland Chronicle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License. Under this license, reprints and non-commercial distribution of this work are permitted, provided proper attribution is given.
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Every month on “Patch Tuesday,” Microsoft issues updates to fix critical vulnerabilities. The number of patches correlate to growing cyber threats to critical systems. In 2024, the patches addressed 1,011 vulnerabilities for the entire year. This increased to 1,128 in 2025. This year, however, the total is already over 5,000. In October 2026 alone, Microsoft had to issue 1,407 patches.
The reason why so Microsoft must now plug so many vulnerabilities is the rise of AI. External intelligence agencies and criminals can use AI to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. Nor are Microsoft systems alone in their growing vulnerability. Simply put, AI shifts the power balance to malign actors and away from those charged with securing critical systems.
Somalilanders should be worried. While the country is ahead of its time—and perhaps even leads the continent—on mobile money, it lags on financial regulation. While 97 percent of Somalilanders have access to a financial institution and 78 percent of Somalilanders use mobile money on a regular if not daily basis, the security of that money relies on Somaliland’s largest companies—TeleSom and Dahabshil. Telesom launched Zaad in 2009; 96.5 percent of Somaliland mobile money users have a Zaad account while 18 percent have e-Dahab.
While Mohamed Said Duale founded Dahabshiil in 1970 as a general trading company, its remittance network dates only to 1988. Telesom dates to 2002. Their growth largely predates the development of relevant Somaliland law and regulation. Herein lies the problem: It is unfair to any company to retroactively apply regulation that did not exist when they built their company. Frankly, Somaliland’s development from the trauma of genocide owes as much if not more to the entrepreneurship both companies represent than to the government itself.
This is one reason why both Telesom and Dahabshiil have lobbied behind-the-scenes to prevent any regulation that threatens their duopoly. This is understandable: No company wants additional hurdles or constraints, especially when commercial professionalism outpaces at times the understanding and capacity of government officials still too often appointed based on patronage rather than ability.
While Telesom is likely worth more than a billion dollars and Dahabshiil’s value is at last $500 million, the true figure is a mystery as both companies are privately held. This opacity is increasingly dangerous given the role both companies play in Somaliland’s economy and commerce.
The People’s Republic of China has made no secret of its animosity toward Somaliland. It has tried subterfuge and bribery, and it has even worked with the Federal Government to sponsor insurgency around Laascaanood. To their credit, both Muuse Biixi Cabdi and Irro understood that Somaliland had no alternative with Beijing. Not only is Taiwan as a democracy a better cultural fit to Somaliland, but Somalilanders also know that if they ever switched allegiance to China, they would cease any importance for Chinese diplomats. In any dispute—with Djibouti, Somalia, or Ethiopia—Beijing would side against Somaliland.
Herein lies the danger: Hargeisa neither should nor can pivot to Beijing and so China will likely seek to undermine if not cause chaos in Somaliland. It is only a matter of time; Beijing will use any tool at its disposal, all the more so if they can strike at Somaliland’s stability while maintaining their own plausible deniability. With the growth of AI, the Zaad and e-Dahab systems are natural targets. If Chinese intelligence manages to penetrate either Telesom or Dahabshiil’s systems, perhaps taking them offline or even wiping them clean, the chaos would be immense. Indeed, if any record of the wealth of 80 percent of Somalilanders disappeared, it is not clear that Somaliland could survive.
It is for this reason, that it is essential that the Somaliland government regulate the big two financial firms now, no matter how furiously they lobby to avoid it. It is in the existential interest of Somaliland authorities to ensure both the financial health of both firms and understand how they keep their records to ensure redundancy and to enable the restoration of records should an AI-enabled worm take their systems or destroy records.
Secrecy matters, and both companies may be wary of ordinary political appointees who may lack the professionalism, expertise, and discretion they expect. But this is where the intelligence service can assist. While here, too, there have been leaks in the past, Irro should decree that all intelligence specialists must subject themselves to a regular polygraph to ensure their trustworthy custodianship of a very narrow financial security portfolio. Somaliland has enough patronage appointments; the intelligence service should be based on merit and professionalism alone.
At the same time, Parliament must pass in conjunction with the Central Bank a regulatory regime to define the standards by which any bank or mobile money operator functions on Somaliland soil and the collateral in gold or foreign currency each must maintain to defend against runs; after all, if there is a collapse of either or both companies, it will be the government left holding the bag.
Somalilanders demand recognition. But Irro must now make hard political choices that will upset key supporters in the business community to ensure that instability and Chinese dirty tricks do not derail Somaliland’s success.
About the Author
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum in Washington, DC, and a distinguished fellow at the Usanas Foundation in Udaipur, India.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions or perspectives of Somaliland Chronicle and its staff.
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Is the idea of giving ordinary Somalilanders and the diaspora a simple, Sharia-compliant way to buy, store and sell physical gold from a phone a viable and much-needed product? The answer is a resounding Yes. Gold carries deep cultural weight across the Horn of Africa and the Gulf: savings, dowry, a hedge against inflation, wealth you can carry. An app that lets people buy it in small amounts, hold it securely and sell it when they need to would fill a real gap.
But should you put your money into this app? Is it a legitimate platform, or another venture that borrows community trust while leaving the hardest questions unanswered? Is your money safe? And can you trust them?
Somaliland Chronicle spent several months examining Simodi Gold’s corporate trail, its licences, its app, its Dubai launch, and what its chief executive told Somali-speaking audiences on camera. On August 28, five days after the launch, we put detailed questions to the company. It has not answered them. Instead, over the two months that followed, its website and terms were quietly rewritten. The gold that was “allocated in your name” is now “pooled.” The “daily independent audits” are gone. The promise that you could sell “immediately, no waiting, no delays” has become a contract that guarantees nothing. And if any of it goes wrong, a saver who paid from a phone in Hargeisa must go to a court in Dubai to ask for it back.
This week Simodi brought the product home, with a second launch in Hargeisa, amid talk that the company may soon offer shares to the public.
When we peeled away the family name, the glitzy Dubai unveiling and the wall-to-wall social media coverage, here is what we found.
The Family Brand and the New Product
Siimoodi Group is real, longstanding and well known in Somaliland. By the company’s own account, it began in 1988, when Mohamed Osman Bulale supported his wife, Amina Jama Ahmed, in setting up a market table in Borama, selling jewellery and buying scrap gold with one of the only scales among the town’s traders. The business grew into Siimoodi Jewellery Trading in Dubai’s Deira Gold Souk, and later into mineral exploration and emerald mining in Awdal. This according to a website called simodiemeralds.com.
In the company’s telling, Simodi Gold is the digital extension of that legacy: an app that lets ordinary savers buy 24-karat gold from half a gram, watch its value in real time, and sell it back. It was unveiled in Dubai on August 23, 2026.
The man behind it is Abdallah Mohamed Osman, an astute businessman with a showman’s flair, and a habit of opening companies in Dubai that do not last. The records list him as the manager of the company that holds Simodi’s license. They also list him as manager of two earlier companies, both now closed, one of them shut down by the authority itself.
The underlying idea is sound. The family is real. The question is whether this particular product matches what was promised when it was sold to the public.
Who Was in the Room
The Dubai launch was built to impress, and it did. Somaliland Chronicle reviewed video of the event. In the room were former President Dahir Riyale Kahin; the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Abdirahman Dahir Adan (Bakaal); the president’s economic adviser, Dr. Abdirahman Duale Beyle; Telesom chief executive Abdikarim Mohamed Eid; and executives of Dahabshiil.
No company could buy a better backdrop. A saver in Hargeisa or Minneapolis who sees a former president, a sitting minister, a presidential adviser and senior figures from Telesom and Dahabshiil gathered around a gold app will draw the obvious conclusion: the people who would know have looked this over, and it is safe.
Nothing supports that conclusion. None of these figures is a regulator. None, as far as we can establish, has inspected Simodi’s vault or seen its accounts. None has publicly vouched for the product, and we are not suggesting that any of them did, or that any holds a stake in it. We found no official statement about the event from any of their offices. Somaliland Chronicle did not contact them before publication; our questions are for the company that invited them.
Prominent people attend launches as a courtesy. But a guest list like this turns courtesy into trust, and trust into deposits. That is the danger when public officials lend their presence to a private sales event. To an inexperienced investor, a foreign minister in the room looks like the government’s stamp of approval, and the chief executive of Telesom looks like the industry’s. At best, it is a conflict of interest waiting to happen: these are the officials who may one day have to regulate this company, or answer for it. At worst, if the venture does not pan out, the damage will not stop at Simodi. It will land on the government whose officials sat in the room.
This publication has made the point before. In 2018 we reported that Boodhari Mills put “a parade of government officials” in front of investors, among them the then president’s economic adviser, and warned that any trouble with the business would be linked to his government. Eight years on, a presidential economic adviser was once again in the room. Officials are free to attend what they like. They should know what their attendance is being used to sell.
The presence of Telesom and Dahabshiil has a simpler explanation, and raises a question of its own. The app accepts ZAAD and eDahab, the mobile-money services those companies run. Accepting a payment method is not a partnership. Whether anything more exists between Simodi and either company, we do not know. We asked Osman.
What Osman Told the Cameras
Around the launch, Osman gave two long Somali-language interviews to MM Somali TV, one of about 18 minutes and one of about 25. The interviewer was Mohamed Abdi Mohamed, known as Ilig, the channel’s chairman and owner, who attended the Dubai event in person. One is titled, in translation, “Simodi Gold is an app you can invest with.” The other, “The gold business opportunities of Simodi Gold.” They are the clearest record of what Somali-speaking savers were told. The quotations below are our translations.
It was sold as an investment, and sold to Somalis. Osman opens by calling it “a Somali application in which a person can invest in gold.” Asked about people abroad, he speaks of buyers in “Africa, Borama,” and of customers in “Somaliland, Ethiopia.”
Your gold is a trust. Asked whether the product follows Sharia, he says the customer’s gold is amana, held in trust. “The gold is not sold to anyone else. The company does not use customers’ gold.”
It is audited. “A big international company does the audit,” he says, “every three to six months.” He does not name it.
Selling is instant. “The process is fast. It becomes instant.” Elsewhere: “under three seconds,” with the money “coming back to you quickly.”
You can pay with mobile money. “Even mobile money can be used: ZAAD, eDahab.”
You cannot lose the way you lose in forex. Ilig raises the comparison himself, more than once: how is this different from forex and crypto? Osman’s answer is always the same. Forex is digital, and “you can lose in it.” This is physical gold. “If the price goes up, you profit. If it goes down, you still have your gold.” When Ilig says many people are afraid of losing their money, Osman replies that the app is “trending.”
In fairness, Osman does say in the longer interview that “profit and loss are possible.” He also says plainly that physical delivery is available only inside the UAE, and that for customers elsewhere the gold stays in a vault in Dubai.
But notice what the forex answer leaves out. The risk a saver runs here is not the gold price. It is whether the company holding the gold actually has it, and can hand it over when asked. That is the risk that has ruined people in scheme after scheme. It is never raised, and Ilig, a guest at the event he was covering, does not press.
There are additionally videos by various bloggers that have promoted the venture, most notably one with the title: A Somali Millionaire: How He Made Millions.
A Quiet Rewrite
Now compare what was said with what is written.
Until at least October 10, 2026, when the Internet Archive captured it, Simodi’s website made the same kind of promises Mr. Osman made on camera. Then the site was rebuilt. Its own records show the homepage last modified on October 27, the fee and policy pages on October 30, and new Terms and Conditions taking effect on November 5.
The two versions read like two different products.
Old website (to October)
Terms and website now
Whose gold?
“Securely allocated in your name”; each bar “individually assayed, uniquely identifiable”
“Customer holdings are maintained on a pooled basis”
Audits
“Daily independent audits”
Audits “may” be carried out. No auditor named
Insurance
“Completely insured against theft, damage, or loss, for as long as you hold them”
Cover “may not cover all losses”
Selling
“Liquidate… immediately… no waiting, no delays”
No guarantee of “liquidity” or “redemption timelines”; Simodi “may reject or delay” a sale
Who can use it
“UAE residents and international users”
“Accessible across” the seven emirates
Returns
A sample app screen showing “+15.4% Returns This year,” with no disclaimer
Figure removed; the sample is now marked “Illustrative example only – not actual or guaranteed performance”
The first row matters most. Allocated gold belongs to a named customer. Pooled gold is a share of a common stock. If the company fails, that difference decides what a saver actually owns, and Simodi’s answer has reversed. Osman said amana. The website said “allocated in your name.” The contract now says “pooled,” and contains no trust or segregation language at all. It says customer metal is “not intended” to be lent or pledged, “except where… separately agreed with the user.”
Count the audit stories, too. On camera: every three to six months, by a big international company. On the old website: daily. In the terms: maybe. No auditor has been named in any of the three.
Every one of these changes runs in the same direction: less owed to the customer, more protection for the company. Not one of them gives the saver something the launch did not already promise.
A company is entitled to tighten its legal language. But two points follow. First, every customer who signed up between August and November did so on the earlier promises, and the new terms do not say which version governs their gold. Second, the timing. Our questions went to Osman on August 28. They asked who audits the gold, who insures it, whether customers’ gold is allocated or pooled, and how instant selling works. The old website was still live on October 10. By November 5 the rewrite was complete, and it touches each of those points. We cannot say our questions caused it. But the sequence is a matter of record: the questions were asked, the public answers changed, and the company has not explained why, to us or, as far as we can find, to its customers.
So What, Exactly, Is Simodi Gold?
Ask the simplest question there is: what kind of business is this? Simodi has given at least five answers.
To Apple, it is a jewellery shop. The company legally responsible for the app is Siimoodi Jewellery Trading LLC, the family’s store in the Gold Souk. To Dubai’s free-zone authority, it is a bullion trader: Simodi Gold FZCO, licensed to buy and sell metal. To its customers, it is a vault. It keeps their gold, free of charge, and its chief executive calls that gold a trust. To Somali viewers, it is an investment, “an app you can invest with,” and its own website still signs off as “a trusted platform for digital gold and silver investments.” And inside the app, it is something closer to a trading and payments service: a “Simodi Gold Wallet” you can fund with mobile money, prices that move by the second, and gold you can “transfer or gift” to another user.
It has not settled on a name, either. The licence says Simodi Gold FZCO. Until recently its own terms said “Simodi Bullion FZCO,” a company that does not appear on the register. Apple’s copyright line says “Simodi Gold Trading LLC.”
These are not five descriptions of one thing. They are five different businesses, and each answers to a different rulebook. A shop that sells you a gold bar owes you a gold bar, and the deal is done. A company that keeps your gold, pools it with everyone else’s, holds your cash in a wallet and carries it across a border owes you a great deal more, and in most countries would need a great deal more than a trading licence to do it.
Simodi knows exactly where those lines are, because its own documents walk around every one of them. Its Google Play listing says it is “not a bank, investment fund, e-money provider, or digital currency issuer.” Its new terms go further. The balances in a customer’s account, they say, are not “bank deposits, e-money, stored-value balances, securities, fund units.”
Read that list again. It names every category a financial regulator supervises, and declares Simodi to be none of them. What the terms never say is what the money in a Simodi Gold Wallet is, where it is kept, or in whose name.
They do not even say who is on the other side of the trade. When you buy a gram, the contract does not say who sold it to you. When you sell, it does not say who is buying. Simodi describes itself only as providing “execution, storage, tracking, redemption, and operational services.” The one fact every customer of every gold dealer on earth is entitled to know, who am I dealing with, is missing from the contract.
Simodi cannot be an investment when it is selling and a gold shop when it is regulated. It has taken a trader’s licence and made an investment house’s promises. Until it says plainly which business it is in, no customer can know which rules, if any, stand between them and their gold.
A Licence to Trade, Not to Hold Your Savings
So which of the five does its licence cover? One.
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre licence DMCC-996420 belongs to Simodi Gold FZCO, with Osman as manager. When we checked the register in late August it was active. Its listed expiry date was October 27, 2026. We were unable to confirm before publication whether it has been renewed.
Read what the licence is for: “Non-Manufactured Precious Metal Trading.” It is the licence any gold trader in the zone holds. DMCC is a free-zone authority, not a financial regulator. It sets no capital requirements, runs no compensation scheme and does not supervise investment products. Simodi does not appear on the UAE Central Bank’s register of licensed financial institutions, and we found no listing with the UAE’s securities regulator.
None of that stopped the old website from answering the question “Is Simodi licensed and regulated?” with a flat “Yes.”
One more entry in the register deserves an answer. Osman previously managed two DMCC companies named Sincere Siimoodi Minerals. One was dissolved in the ordinary way. The other, licence DMCC-857845, is marked “Terminated by Authority.” We do not know why, and we are not speculating. We asked.
A Somali Product on UAE Paper
There is one more mismatch. On camera, this is a Somali product, payable by ZAAD and eDahab, for people in Borama and beyond. The app’s own update history records mobile money being added in July. Apple’s App Store groups it with Dahabshiil, Hormuud and Salaam Bank apps.
On paper, it is something else. The website describes a service “accessible across” the seven emirates, opened with an Emirates ID or passport, paying out to a bank account in the customer’s name. The words ZAAD, eDahab and mobile money do not appear anywhere on the website or in the terms. Money moving from a mobile wallet in Hargeisa to a gold account in Dubai, and back, is a cross-border payment. Nothing Simodi has published explains who carries it, or under what licence.
Nor is the app available everywhere the diaspora lives. Our reporter in the United States could not download it.
Now Hargeisa, and Talk of an IPO
This week, Simodi launched the app a second time, in Hargeisa, under a banner reading “Simodi App Launch: Somaliland Chapter.”
Set that beside the contract. The terms that took effect on November 5 describe a service for the seven emirates, with payouts to a bank account and no mention of mobile money. Days later, the same company stood in Hargeisa selling the same app to Somalilanders. Whatever the paperwork says, Simodi knows exactly who its customers are.
The Hargeisa launch brought something new: talk, circulating on social media, that Simodi Gold is expected to pursue an initial public offering, which would make it the first Somaliland company to be listed and traded on a stock exchange. The claim comes with no detail on who expects this, on which exchange, or when. Somaliland Chronicle has not been able to confirm it, and we have found no announcement from Simodi itself.
If it is true, it raises more questions than it settles. An IPO is the most heavily scrutinised step a company can take. It requires a prospectus, audited accounts and a securities regulator’s approval. Those are precisely the things Simodi has not produced for the gold it already holds: no named auditor, no published accounts, no financial regulator. And which company would be listed? The year-old free-zone trader that holds the licence, or the family jewellery business that Apple lists as responsible for the app?
Nor is it clear where such a listing could happen. Somaliland has no stock exchange and no securities regulator. This publication has been here before. In 2021, when Somtel sold shares to the public at $100 each, we reported that buyers were given no valuation, no financial statements and no count of the shares on offer, under investment laws that had not yet been passed.
If it is not true, the talk still does its work. A saver who believes a company is about to go public will trust it with more money today. Either way, Somalilanders may soon be asked to hand Simodi their savings twice: once for gold they cannot see, and again for shares in the company that says it is holding it.
Fees, Terms, and What Happens If It Fails
Simodi’s fee schedule lists storage as free and physical redemption as free. The one number that matters, the spread between the price at which it sells you gold and the price at which it buys it back, is given only as “as displayed.” No percentage is published. Vaults, insurance and auditors cost money. Either an undisclosed spread pays for them, or they are not being provided as described.
No deposit insurance applies. No investor compensation scheme applies. Insurance against theft or fire does not cover the risk that matters most: a company that does not hold enough gold for what it owes.
Pay From Hargeisa in Minutes. Sue in Dubai, If You Can.
Here is the part of the contract no one mentioned on stage.
Simodi has made it remarkably easy for a Somalilander to hand over money. Download the app, upload a passport, pay with ZAAD or eDahab. Its chief executive says the whole thing takes minutes. He gave his interviews in Somali, to a Somali channel, for a Somali audience.
Getting that money back if something goes wrong is another matter. The terms, written in English, send every dispute to “the competent courts of Dubai,” under UAE law. Not Hargeisa. Not Borama, where the family business began and where its name carries the trust this product is trading on.
Consider what that means for a teacher in Borama with 20 grams in the app, or a taxi driver in Minneapolis with 50. To bring a claim, each would need a lawyer licensed in the UAE, in a court system that conducts its business in Arabic, in a country they may not be able to travel to, at a cost that would swallow the savings in dispute many times over. And if they somehow got there, they would meet the clause that caps Simodi’s liability at the lowest of three figures, one of which is the fees the customer paid in the previous six months. For a product advertised as free, that figure could be close to zero.
The same terms let Simodi suspend, freeze or close any account.
So the arrangement is this. The marketing comes to you, in your language, on your phone, through your mobile wallet. The accountability stays in Dubai, in a foreign court, in a foreign language, behind a liability cap. A company confident in its product does not need to put its customers’ only remedy beyond their reach. We asked Osman whether Simodi chose Dubai’s courts knowing that almost none of its Somaliland customers could ever use them. That question, like the others, [went unanswered].
Are There Laws to Protect These Investors?
As with Boodhari Mills in 2018, the answer remains largely no.
Boodhari Mills offered the diaspora a compelling story, a flour mill Somaliland genuinely needed, wrapped in high projected returns, glossy fundraising events and appeals to patriotism. Our reporting at the time found thin financial disclosure and a Canadian registration that gave investors almost no protection. A plant was eventually built. Years later the Canadian entity had been dissolved, the business was under financial pressure, and it was again seeking fresh money.
The lesson carries over. A DMCC licence protects a trade name and an address. It does not protect a saver’s money. Somaliland’s own consumer and investor protections lag far behind the pace at which products like this are launched at its people. Other countries have noticed the gap: in November 2025 India’s securities regulator warned the public that digital gold sold through apps falls outside its rules and carries no investor protection. Until a regulator, in the UAE or anywhere else, actually supervises how Simodi holds its customers’ gold, the burden of checking falls entirely on the customer.
The Questions Simodi Must Answer
Which business is Simodi in: a shop, a trader, a vault, an investment platform or a payments service? And which regulator has approved it to do that?
When a customer buys or sells, who is on the other side of the trade?
Where is the cash in the Simodi Gold Wallet held, and in whose name?
Who audits the gold, and where is the latest report?
Who operates the vault, and who insures it?
Is customers’ gold legally theirs if the company fails, now that it is “pooled”?
What is the spread, as a percentage?
Why were the website and terms rewritten, were customers told, and which terms govern gold bought before November 5?
Who carries money between ZAAD or eDahab and Dubai, and under what licence?
Why must a customer in Hargeisa sue in Dubai? Will Simodi answer to Somaliland’s courts for the money it takes from Somaliland’s people?
Has licence DMCC-996420 been renewed?
Why did DMCC terminate licence DMCC-857845?
What, beyond payments, is the relationship with Telesom and Dahabshiil?
Is Simodi planning to sell shares to the public? Which company, on which exchange, under which regulator, and with whose audited accounts?
Is Simodi Gold a scam? We cannot tell you that it is. Simodi has made sure that no one outside the company can tell you that it is not. The gold may be in the vault, every gram of it. But there is no named auditor to say so, no named vault to check, no named insurer to call, and no regulator watching. There is a family name, a gala, a guest list, and a contract rewritten to promise less.
Legitimate businesses answer questions. This one changed its website.
Before you send a dollar from your ZAAD or eDahab wallet, ask Simodi for the answers above, in writing. If you do not get them, you have your answer.
Somaliland Chronicle sent detailed written questions to Simodi Gold and Mr. Osman in August 2026, shortly after the Dubai launch. They covered the company’s legal structure, its regulators, its audits and vaults, and its licensing history. Three months later, as this article went to publication, neither the company nor Mr. Osman had replied. Our offer stands: we will publish their answers in full if they respond.
Yesterday, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for Devin Kennington, President Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Somalia, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas put Somaliland’s distinct status on the formal record. Cruz established, under questioning, that Somaliland has governed itself since 1991, has held multiple democratic elections with peaceful transfers of power (including after the November 2024 presidential election), maintains close ties with Taiwan, faces public opposition to its independence from the government of China, was formally recognized by Israel in December 2025, and has offered the United States favorable diplomatic, economic, and security partnerships. He then quoted President Trump’s own characterization of Somaliland as “a totally different country” and stated: “I think President Trump is exactly right. Somaliland is not Somalia. The President has made his position clear and I believe it is time for the United States to formally recognize Somaliland.”
Thank you @SenTedCruz for your simple but powerful statement: “Somaliland is not Somalia.”
✅ Self-governed since 1991 ✅ Multiple democratic elections ✅ Peaceful transfer of power ✅ Close ties with Taiwan ✅ China opposes Somaliland's independence ✅ Recognizes Israel… pic.twitter.com/klI8p3qOwZ
Cruz went further. He asked, in effect, why the State Department (Foggy Bottom) has not aligned its official position with the President’s clear guidance, as it is supposed to do. “Despite the President’s clear position,” Cruz said, “somehow at Foggy Bottom the State Department has not moved forward with recognition. What specifically is preventing the State Department from doing so?” He pressed the nominee on remaining obstacles and stated that the State Department should follow the President’s guidance, adding that his confirmation itself depends on it doing so. The exchange keeps Somaliland distinct from Somalia in the Senate record and continues Cruz’s consistent advocacy.
The hearing is significant precisely because it occurred after the midterms. Democrats are projected to control both the House and the Senate when the new Congress convenes in January. The Republic of Somaliland Independence Act (H.R. 3992), sponsored by Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, has lost its principal champion and any realistic path to a floor vote. Other Republican cosponsors have been defeated or returned in weaker positions. Surviving supporters can still write letters and speak inside the Republican caucus. They cannot compel a legislative outcome. Congressional outreach may continue at a modest level. It can no longer be the center of the recognition effort.
Recognition of foreign states is an exclusive presidential power. In Zivotofsky v. Kerry (2015), the Supreme Court held that Congress may encourage, study, or fund engagement, but it cannot substitute its own recognition decision for the President’s. The United States is not the United Kingdom, where recognition falls under the Royal Prerogative and is exercised on the advice of ministers after cabinet and parliamentary consideration. In the American system, only the President decides. No committee hearing, no cosponsor list, and no All-Party Parliamentary Group equivalent can replace that authority. Cruz’s pointed questions about Foggy Bottom’s lag simply underscore that reality: the State Department is expected to follow the President’s direction, not set its own recognition policy. The current official posture still reflects the approach set under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Obama administration, a policy that has remained essentially unchanged more than thirteen years after Clinton left the State Department and nearly a decade after the Obama presidency ended.
President Trump has already described Somaliland as “a totally different country.” The remarks were not a recognition announcement and included a suggestion that Somaliland change its name, yet they demonstrate presidential attention to Somaliland as distinct from the Somalian administration he has long criticized. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have publicly linked the war with Iran to Republican midterm losses. Vance specifically cited the United States relationship with Israel among the factors that cost support. Israel remains the only UN member state to have recognized Somaliland. On 26 December 2025, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar signed the mutual recognition declaration with Somaliland’s President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. The relationship has since moved beyond symbolism: Sa’ar visited Hargeisa in January 2026, Somaliland opened an embassy in Jerusalem during the President’s June visit, and in early November 2026 Israel’s first ambassador, Michael Lotem, presented credentials in Hargeisa while the cornerstone was laid for an Israeli embassy.
Israel’s own political future is unsettled. The 27 October 2026 election produced no clear majority. Netanyahu’s right-wing, far-right, and ultra-Orthodox bloc secured roughly 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset; the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot took about 48; Arab parties won a record approximately 19. Neither Jewish bloc reaches the 61 seats required to form a government. Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister while President Isaac Herzog conducts consultations. His personal fate (whether he forms a new coalition, enters a unity arrangement, or faces another election in 2027) is unresolved. The recognition decision itself, however, has already been executed and is being institutionalized through the exchange of ambassadors and concrete cooperation. That fact stands independently of the current coalition arithmetic in Jerusalem.
Cruz’s hearing intervention shows that the argument continues to be made in Washington even after the midterms, and that he is directly challenging the gap between the President’s stated position and Foggy Bottom’s continued reluctance. His role is now almost entirely informal: an advocate and a bridge to the administration rather than a source of institutional leverage inside a Democratic Senate. That is still useful. It is not a substitute for a presidential decision.
The instruction for the government in Hargeisa is therefore unambiguous. Hope is not lost, but neither is the outcome automatic. The decisive path runs through direct, sustained, high-level engagement with the Trump White House. This cannot be a continuation of previous lobbying under a different address. It must be narrower, more concrete, and organized around a decision the President can make. President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro should not delegate the next step. He should follow up personally with Eric Trump after their meeting in Davos, treating it as a working channel rather than a ceremonial exchange. Premature publicity around that brief encounter, without first advancing substance, backfired and forced a clarifying public statement from Eric Trump’s team. The same discipline must apply now.
Democratic legitimacy and historical justice establish Somaliland’s case. A concrete American-interest proposition must make it actionable for this White House. The government should seek a direct discussion around a limited package of security and commercial cooperation, with recognition as the explicit objective. The proposal should identify what Somaliland is prepared to offer, what it seeks in return, and what each side would need to do next. Those terms should be developed privately before any public announcement. Prospective support is not a secured commitment. Publicity that exposes an unfinished negotiation can create opposition before it produces leverage. Announce results. Do not advertise every conversation intended to achieve them.
Practical measures (financial access, differentiated travel guidance, continued quiet work with Cruz and other remaining allies) remain worth pursuing on their own merits. They support the recognition campaign. They do not replace it. The midterms clarified where the authority lies. Cruz’s hearing yesterday confirmed that the case is still being advanced in Washington, and that the State Department’s lag behind the President’s position is now a matter of public Senate record. Israel’s recognition and the ongoing institutionalization of that relationship demonstrate that progress is possible. Netanyahu’s uncertain political future is a variable, not a reason to pause. The only institution that can decide for the United States is the White House. The government in Hargeisa cannot fall asleep at the wheel. It must organize accordingly: build a concrete proposition and place it before the person who can act on it. The task now is to turn presidential attention into a decision.
About the Author
Mr. Aar Kaiser is an Associate Editor at Somaliland Chronicle.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, or viewpoints of Somaliland Chronicle, and its staff.
Perhaps “the long-awaited war” is the most fitting name for what is now unfolding in northern Ethiopia. This war is the practical culmination of a media, psychological and diplomatic campaign waged among Ethiopia’s rival factions, and between the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments, ever since the Pretoria Agreement was signed in November 2022. Although many anticipated it throughout the years that followed, its shape, its intensity, its participants and its intended outcomes remained matters of speculation. Little wonder: the map of alliances and rapprochements among the rivals has changed dramatically since the last war erupted in Tigray in the autumn of 2020.
FILE PHOTO: A tank damaged during the fighting between Ethiopia’s National Defense Force (ENDF) and Tigray Special Forces stands on the outskirts of Humera town in Ethiopia July 1, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo/File Photo
What few expected is the dissolving of the conceptual boundaries between West Asia, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Political files, diplomatic crises and the reach of regional players were once confined to each region separately. Now events and actors move seamlessly between them. We are witnessing a new “unity of arenas”, but in a negative sense.
The first Tigray war ended in 2022 without a decisive outcome and with an agreement whose contours were vague, leaving Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa with one likely prospect: renewed war in the north of the country.
This article examines the causes and factors behind the outbreak of war in Tigray, its objectives and likely outcomes, and the possible ways to end it.
Why has war returned to Tigray, and what drove it?
If we set aside the explanations offered by the parties to the conflict, and by those with a direct interest in seeing the north of Ethiopia burn, most of which reduce the causes to a single one, we find that many internal and regional factors worsened the situation and pushed the rivals to settle matters by force once again. The real question has become where and how this war would start, not whether it would.
The Pretoria Agreement
Inside Ethiopia, the most important factor in the deepening rift between the two sides was the Pretoria Agreement itself. It was ambiguous in many of its details and unclear in charting a path to peace. This allowed both belligerents, the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), to turn it from a peace agreement into a temporary truce through actions taken in bad faith.
Consider first the circumstances surrounding its timing. The parties reached the deal in South Africa only after the Ethiopian federal army had turned the tide of the war and halted the TPLF’s advance toward the capital, Addis Ababa. The last chapters of the war had not run long enough in a stalemate for the agreement to reflect a deep conviction on both sides.
As for the terms and spirit of the agreement, the federal government, deliberately or not, diluted it and let it dissolve into bureaucratic labyrinths and slow administrative procedure, in three systematic ways:
The siege on Tigray was not fully lifted. Those affected in the region did not receive humanitarian aid commensurate with the scale of the destruction of the 2020–2022 war, leading to widespread hunger among the population. This contravened Articles 7(d) and 5 of the Pretoria Agreement.
The federal army did not halt its military operations against the TPLF’s fighters, particularly its drone strikes, which had given it the ability to turn the tide in the final phases of the previous war. This contradicted Article 7(a).
No tangible step was taken toward transitional justice or the punishment of those responsible for atrocities committed during the war. On the contrary, some figures who played a clear role in escalating social tension continue to work within the federal government, in contradiction of Article 10(3).
The other side was no different. The TPLF spared no effort in undermining the Pretoria Agreement:
It cooperated with domestic actors to create a new situation on the ground that would help it topple the current federal government, contrary to Article 7(b).
It cooperated with external actors, contributing to the destabilisation of Ethiopia and violating Article 7(e).
It did not disarm its fighters, as required by Article 6.
Beyond the violations, the agreement overlooked a fundamental point: it did not include the other forces that had fought alongside government troops in the Tigray war, such as the Amhara Fano militias. They regarded the agreement as a betrayal, and moved into the ranks of the armed opposition against Addis Ababa.
A final reason the agreement lost its effectiveness is that the African Union panel that sponsored and guaranteed it did not follow up on its duties or hold the two parties accountable for violations committed in plain view.
The Pretoria Agreement thus became a truce, a prelude to the war to come.
Berbera and Assab: the shifting strategic weight of the Horn
The Horn of Africa lost its strategic importance when the joint US–British base at Diego Garcia was established in the early 1970s. It became a marginal, grey zone between three geographic spheres: the Middle East, the Nile Valley and the African Great Lakes. In recent years that has reversed. The region has become one in which, and for the sake of which, many strategic calculations are made, and regional and global political alignments are drawn along its fault lines.
The main driver of this unexpected change began with the memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, signed on 1 January 2025. It set off a storm of diplomatic activity in the Horn and the Middle East, and ended with the memorandum being quietly suspended without ever becoming a formal agreement. That forced the Ethiopian government to widen its search for sea access to the rest of the region. Hence the question of the Eritrean port of Assab emerged, once Ethiopia’s most important port before Eritrea’s independence in 1993. It moved Eritrean–Ethiopian relations from coolness to mutual political escalation, and Ethiopia’s demand became the catalyst for a chain of events and measures taken by Ethiopia, Eritrea and, later, Somalia.
Inside Ethiopia, the Tigray file shifted from the sphere of implementing the Pretoria Agreement to that of securing the country’s northern border, since Tigray adjoins Eritrea. On the other side, Eritrea and Somalia began forging alliances with states in the neighbouring Middle East. That pushed Ethiopia to strengthen its own partnerships with Middle Eastern states, and turned the Horn into an arena of contest between rival Middle Eastern powers.
The Middle East: a scramble among middle powers
The Horn of Africa has recently seen an influx of Middle Eastern players competing for influence, a situation reminiscent of the arrival of the European colonial powers in the nineteenth century, known in the political literature as the “Scramble for Africa”. This time the players come from the Middle East. Anyone following Middle Eastern affairs knows there are fractures in the positions, visions and ambitions of its states, and likewise in the alliances they have built with the parties in the Horn.
Egypt has not moved past the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam file and has turned to bolder, more strategic options against Ethiopia, such as forming alliances with the countries around it in order to encircle it. In August 2024 it concluded a military cooperation protocol and a defence agreement with Somalia and sent a shipment of weapons the same month, its first reaction to the memorandum between Ethiopia and Somaliland. Eritrea then joined through the Asmara agreement, which produced what was called the tripartite alliance of Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia in October 2024. It was meant for cooperation and coordination but soon developed into a joint defence alliance, and it was put into practice on the ground when an Egyptian military delegation was sent to Somalia under the banner of a peacekeeping mission, after Egypt had been absent from the Somali scene, militarily and politically, for more than three decades. Egypt also held joint naval exercises with Eritrea off the coast of Assab in May 2026.
Sudan borders the Horn and, like Egypt, has a long history of involvement in its political crises. This created fertile ground for a network of relationships with the region’s rivals, especially with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, which has ruled Eritrea since independence, and with the TPLF, which left power in 2018.
The government of General Burhan in Sudan has succeeded in carrying Sudan’s internal conflict onto the regional stage by accusing both the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia of supporting the Rapid Support Forces militia. The first aim was to settle scores with the UAE; their dispute is one of the most prominent battles now being fought in the region between the UAE and the factions of political Islam. The second was to create a legal and moral basis for interfering in Ethiopian affairs. Sudan translated this into action by hosting coordination and rapprochement meetings between Ethiopian rivals, above all between the TPLF and the leaders of the Amhara Fano militias, in Port Sudan between October 2025 and May 2026. These led to the formation, in September 2026, of the Alliance of Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces for Survival, known as “Tsmido”, or the Seven-Faction Alliance.
The Emirati–Saudi rift has also played a prominent part in widening the divisions among rivals across the region. The UAE was first to reach the Horn of Africa and the Nile Valley, cooperating with Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea on military and development files, while Saudi Arabia was entirely absent. But after the events in southern Yemen in December 2025, Saudi diplomacy made moves on several fronts. It signed a military cooperation memorandum with Somalia in February 2026 and stepped-up official visits between Asmara and Riyadh, in February and September 2026, amid Egyptian mediation efforts to push the two countries toward a joint defence alliance. In July 2026 it also rejected any military presence in the Red Sea for states that do not border it, an allusion to Ethiopia’s demand for sea access and the Ethiopian naval base that would follow. Anyone tracking Saudi moves in the Horn will find that the common thread running through all of them is curbing and countering the Emirati role in the region.
The international community: fluidity and an uncertain present
The current state of the international order, the erosion of the American presence on the world stage, and the declining ability, and perhaps willingness, of the United States to resolve conflicts and stop widespread abuses have contributed to the absence of any deterrent for the parties to the conflict. This helps explain:
The bloodiness of the first Tigray war, ranked as the deadliest war the world has seen in the twenty-first century.
The entry of competing Middle Eastern middle powers into the Horn of Africa and their alliances with local players, which narrowed the chances of understanding among the rivals.
The African Union’s neglect of the follow-up to the Pretoria Agreement, and the resulting accumulation of mutual violations by the signatories. It is well known that the United States and the West wield diplomatic, financial and security influence over the organisation, which draws most of its budget from them.
What are the aims of the latest war in Tigray?
When the forces of the seven-faction alliance, led by the TPLF, launched their latest offensive in late September, the declared aim of the operation was to topple the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. This is a credible goal, especially given the positions the opposition forces have held toward Abiy’s government since the Tigray war. But the economic and military reality of those forces clearly indicates that other players are directing their moves, and that there are aims beyond the fall of the Ethiopian government.
The TPLF, the most important faction in the alliance, has lost a large part of the popular base that stood behind it from the 1970s, when it fought to overthrow the former president Mengistu Haile Mariam, through to its major role in sustaining support during the first Tigray war. This is the result of the severe exhaustion suffered by the people of Tigray from the 2020–2022 war and its aftermath, and of the political fragmentation among the Front’s members, the splintering of Tigray’s political elite and their differing visions of post-war Tigray.
The TPLF has also lost the financial means to run its affairs. It no longer receives the federal government support it enjoyed throughout the decades it ruled the country, particularly after the suspension of the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) and the federal government’s halt to budget transfers to the region. This drove the TPLF to seek aid and support from Eritrea.
The Amhara Fano militias are a collection of scattered factions that, until recently, had no single organisational umbrella. Their political position on the Pretoria Agreement matches Eritrea’s, which made it easier for the Eritrean government to recruit Fano leaders and back them in continuing the armed insurgency in the Amhara region, where large-scale guerrilla warfare has raged since the guns fell silent in Tigray.
The other five factions are in reality little more than splinters of political forces that chose political over military action at an earlier stage. They have no real field strength of any significance, but they hold longstanding ties with the Eritrean government, most of them forged before Eritrea’s independence in 1993.
The real player behind the seven factions is therefore the Eritrean regime. In light of recent developments and regional alliances, Asmara sees the Ethiopian state as a source of threat for two reasons. The first is the fear of the export of the Ethiopian model, the ethno-federal system adopted with the 1994 constitution; President Isaias Afwerki has made no secret of his opposition to that model from then until now. The second is anxiety over Ethiopia’s demand for sea access. On the other hand, despite supporting and recruiting Ethiopian opposition factions, Eritrea is not seeking to topple the Ethiopian government and replace it with anarchy as in Somalia, which would directly rebound on Eritrea itself.
Eritrea’s aims in fuelling this crisis therefore centre on:
Creating a buffer zone in northern Ethiopia that acts as a field barrier against any Ethiopian plan to advance militarily and seize sea access.
Encircling Ethiopia in a measured way that does not bring the Ethiopian state down outright but counters Ethiopia’s role in the Horn of Africa, which is also the aim of the Egyptian–Eritrean–Somali tripartite alliance.
Ending the Emirati–Ethiopian rapprochement, an aim Eritrea shares with several Arab states and with Somalia, all of which oppose the Emirati role in the region.
Draining the Ethiopian state, scattering its resources across wars on its periphery and stalling its development drive, which is widely admired among large sections of the peoples of the Horn, in contrast to Eritrea’s poor economic and development record. Ethiopia’s economy had already suffered a major setback during the first Tigray war, with total losses estimated at $44 billion and growth falling from 6% to 2%.
What are the likely outcomes of the war?
On the ground, the Ethiopian government holds the upper hand over the armed factions combined. That force is enough to impose federal authority in Tigray, but not enough to eradicate the factions for good. The modern Ethiopian state has failed to eliminate armed groups over the last six decades, for many reasons. The likeliest scenario is therefore a continuing guerrilla war in Tigray, Amhara and Oromia, to varying degrees and with the support of neighbouring states, remaining a constant source of threat and attrition for the Ethiopian army. This means the chances that the Ethiopian army’s operations against the armed factions will turn into a direct war on neighbouring Eritrea will shrink, if the Ethiopian state heeds logic and the realities on the ground.
Addis Ababa also lacks the option of direct war, despite the Ethiopian army’s superiority over its Eritrean counterpart, for several other reasons, chief among them:
The lifting of US sanctions on Eritrean leaders and the Eritrean army in September 2026, which means the Eritrean army can narrow Ethiopia’s advantage.
Eritrea’s membership of the tripartite defence alliance, and the alignment of Egyptian and Sudanese positions on the Horn crisis, mean a high probability that other states would enter the war and that hostile fronts would open against the Ethiopian army along its northern, western and south-eastern borders. That would be military suicide.
The fragile state of the Ethiopian economy, and the disruption to development caused by the first Tigray war, leave it unable to widen the war. Its economy suffered a major setback, with total losses estimated at $44 billion and growth falling from 6% to 2%, in a country whose gross domestic product does not exceed $130 billion.
On the other side, the prospects for the seven-faction alliance of armed opposition groups surviving in its present form are weak. The factions are deeply divided, and some of them fought direct military clashes against one another until recently. The chance of political and ideological reconciliation among them is slim, unless they carry out comprehensive internal reviews and move from ethnic discourse to a national one.
What solutions are available?
As we have seen, many immediate factors and chronic causes led to the crisis in northern Ethiopia, which may develop into a direct confrontation between the neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea. Given the region’s current circumstances and the fluidity of the international community, solutions to the chronic causes lying beneath the surface may not be found. But a breakthrough is possible if efforts focus on dismantling the immediate factors that aggravated the present crisis.
The international community, led by the United States and Western countries, did little to stop the bloody war in Tigray in 2020–2022, which killed an estimated 600,000 people in northern Ethiopia and displaced millions more. The Pretoria Agreement therefore turned out feeble and unsustainable, and encouraged the signatories to break it and hollow it out from within. Perhaps the best and most suitable mediator to resolve the crisis in northern Ethiopia is the People’s Republic of China, which has old, well-established ties with Ethiopia, Eritrea and the TPLF, built over the last six decades. China is also the largest trading partner of both countries, and so has the means to act as guarantor of any future agreement.
The Ethiopian government was not well served in raising the question of sea access, either in timing or in manner. The timing was very poor, as the issue was raised at the height of the dispute among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Renaissance Dam. Egyptian and Sudanese conduct toward Horn of Africa files may be a classic pattern, but both states gained a strategic justification to re-enter the region and to engage with its contradictions. The manner was also unfortunate. The Somaliland question remains unresolved, and Somalia still considers it an integral part of its national territory. Ethiopia, though it enjoys good relations with Somaliland, was never decisive and never moved to recognise it, so signing a memorandum with Hargeisa was a political mistake. It handed Somalia a diplomatic victory and forced the Ethiopian government to retreat and informally cancel the memorandum to save face. Raising the Assab question was equally ill-judged: it coincided with the Ethiopian–Eritrean dispute over the Pretoria Agreement and revealed a shallow reading of the ruling regime in Eritrea, the very regime that, ironically, Addis Ababa had called on to intervene militarily and help end the TPLF threat in 2020.
It would have been better to raise sea access in a calmer, friendlier atmosphere, in which the ruling elites of the Horn could come to accept Ethiopia’s right to an outlet and see it as a factor for the region’s stability rather than a cause of catastrophic wars.
For their part, the ruling elites in Somalia and Eritrea were ill-advised in summoning outside powers through their alliances, even though they know well, and understand historically, what happened in the Horn of Africa over recent decades. Those interventions eroded their sovereignty and turned them into tools for settling scores with the upstream state, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and the creation in 1993 of a fragile state with no strategic depth, Eritrea.
The TPLF’s attempt to turn back the clock by reproducing an armed struggle against Addis Ababa with foreign backing, its failure to read the Ethiopian landscape that it was itself the most important player in shaping since 1991, and its decision to make a narrow ethnic outlook the starting point for change or for the birth of a new Ethiopia, together amount to a strategic error. The people of Tigray have paid its price, and citizens in the other regions will pay it too if these factions continue as they are.
Conclusion
Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africa live in a chronic state of civil and inter-state wars. They are the product, first of all, of local factors, and then of external factors that stimulate and energise existing internal contradictions. The Horn has long been held hostage to the duality of coast and interior, and the wars fought between them across history are still etched in the memory of the region’s people. External interference has also played a role in fuelling this ruinous conflict, as the Portuguese, the Ottoman Empire, Muhammad Ali’s Egypt and the Middle Eastern states of the modern era demonstrate.
Ethiopia’s sea access crisis will continue to loom. The country suffers the consequences of agreements struck between rival local leaders and arriving European powers, which produced a landlocked state. A population explosion, rapid population growth, high unemployment and inflation have driven the government to pursue sea access doggedly as a way out of its economic crises.
The Ethiopian army’s extension of control over all of Tigray is a matter of time. But a new phase will then begin, in which Ethiopian and Eritrean forces stand in direct contact, and the risk of a military miscalculation is very real. The Ethiopian–Eritrean war itself broke out because of a small error in military judgment and calculation, made on 6 May 2000.
About the Author
Dr. Ahmed Hirad is a journalist, writer and researcher on Horn of Africa affairs.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions or perspectives of Somaliland Chronicle and its staff.
Notice: This article by Somaliland Chronicle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License. Under this license, reprints and non-commercial distribution of this work are permitted, provided proper attribution is given.
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Officials credit President Irro’s U.S. outreach; others warn a new name could weaken Somaliland’s legal case
HARGEISA — U.S. President Donald Trump has called Somaliland “a totally different country” from Somalia and said it should “change the name immediately,” setting off a debate in Hargeisa. Senior officials are presenting the remarks as a result of President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi “Irro”‘s recent visit to the United States. Others warn that abandoning the country’s historic name could damage the legal case for recognition that a new name is supposed to help.
Trump made the comments at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday, 12 October, while attacking Minnesota’s Somali community over immigration and fraud. “Some people like Somaliland. It has nothing to do,” he said. “I think they should change the name immediately.”
It was not a policy statement, and Washington still affirms Somalia’s territorial integrity. But in Hargeisa the remarks were widely read as a rare public acknowledgment from a sitting U.S. president that Somaliland stands apart from Somalia.
Somalia’s federal government condemned Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December as a “deliberate attack” on its sovereignty. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had not publicly responded to Trump’s remarks. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
Officials Link Remarks to Irro’s Visit
Minister of the Presidency Khadar Hussein Abdi tied the comments directly to President Irro’s September trip. In a post on X on 13 October, he wrote:
“For those who doubted the achievements of our President’s recent visit to the United States, here is the response. For the first time in history, a sitting U.S. President has publicly acknowledged Somaliland as a country separate from Somalia. … We remain hopeful that formal U.S. recognition of the Republic of Somaliland is on the horizon.”
The Presidency’s official account was more restrained. It said the remarks “underscore Somaliland’s distinct identity and its separate political reality.” It pledged to pursue recognition “through principled diplomacy and constructive international engagement.”
President Irro spent nearly two weeks in the United States. He met members of Congress, spoke at the Hudson Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations, and held talks with U.S. government departments. At home, the trip was criticised for the size of the delegation and its cost. Minister Khadar’s post was a direct reply to those critics.
Not all the criticism came from the usual quarters. Prof. Ahmed Ismail Samatar, a prominent Somaliland scholar and politician, called the trip a failure. “All things considered, I believe that trip resulted in a loss,” he said in an interview from the United States in early October. In his view, the delegation came home without gains to match the expectations it had raised. Samatar also criticised the government’s decision to open its first embassy abroad in Jerusalem in June, calling it a political blunder and “a great embarrassment.”
Countering China: The Cruz Argument
Among the lawmakers President Irro met was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, on 18 September. Afterwards Cruz wrote on X that he was “committed to securing American recognition of Somaliland’s sovereignty.” In the meantime, he said, he was urging the State Department “to stop treating Somaliland as the same as Somalia.” No one in Washington has made the strategic case for recognition more forcefully, or tied it more directly to China.
In a letter to President Trump dated 14 August 2025, Cruz urged recognition of Somaliland “as an independent state, with sovereignty within its 1960 borders.” He wrote as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, and called Somaliland a “critical security and diplomatic partner.”
Cruz pointed to Somaliland’s position on the Gulf of Aden, beside one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, and to its armed forces’ work against terrorism and piracy. He also highlighted its foreign-policy choices. Somaliland, he wrote, had “enabled the opening of a Taiwanese Representative Office in the capital of Hargeisa, sought to strengthen ties with Israel, and voiced support for the Abraham Accords.” The Taiwanese office opened in 2020.
He argued that Somaliland has paid for those choices. “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using economic and diplomatic coercion to punish Somaliland for its support for Taiwan, as well as to undermine that support,” he wrote. He said Mogadishu had played “an unfortunate role.” He cited an April 2025 decision to bar Taiwanese passport holders from transiting into Somaliland, which he said Beijing arranged. He added that Chinese support to Somalia was benefiting anti-Somaliland groups working to erode its sovereignty.
Despite the pressure, Cruz wrote, Somaliland “remains committed to forging closer ties with the U.S.” His conclusion was blunt: “I urge you to grant it that recognition.”
Beijing hit back. The Chinese Embassy in Mogadishu called the letter “serious interference in the internal affairs of Somalia.” It accused certain U.S. politicians of a “hegemonic and bullying attitude.” Cruz replied that China’s anger only strengthened the case.
The strategic argument comes down to Berbera. In neighbouring Djibouti, America’s main base in Africa, Camp Lemonnier, sits a few kilometres from China’s first overseas military base. Berbera is a deep-water port developed by the UAE’s DP World and served by a long runway. It would give Washington an alternative on the same strategic waterway. President Irro has signalled openness to U.S. military access and critical-minerals cooperation, according to regional reporting.
Cruz speaks for himself, not for U.S. policy. No recognition has been announced.
The Name Question
Waddani Party Chairman Hersi Ali Haji Hassan, who leads the ruling party, welcomed Trump’s suggestion. “We welcome President Trump’s innovative idea that Somaliland should adopt a name that clearly differentiates it from Somalia,” he wrote on X. “The Red Sea Republic could be a strong option.”
That is Hersi’s proposal, not the government’s. He argued that Somalilanders and Somalis share an ethnicity but are “politically… two distinct countries.” He pointed to Somaliland’s independence from Britain on 26 June 1960, five days before it entered the ill-fated union with the former Italian-administered south.
The argument predates Trump. Some Somalilanders have long said the name invites confusion and ties the country, in foreign eyes, to the south’s insecurity and dysfunction. Alternatives floated over the years include “Red Sea Republic,” “Adal Republic,” and “Horn of Africa Republic.”
Opponents see the name as evidence in Somaliland’s case. “Somaliland” was the name of the British protectorate and of the independent state that existed for five days in 1960. The recognition case rests on the claim that in 1991 Somaliland restored a sovereignty it already had, rather than seceding from Somalia. A new name, critics warn, would let opponents argue that 1991 created something new.
“The name Somaliland is documented in the history books since 1884,” said one figure close to the ruling party, while still thanking Trump for drawing the distinction.
A Presidential Decision
Under U.S. law, recognising foreign states is for the president alone to decide. In Zivotofsky v. Kerry (2015), the Supreme Court held that the power belongs exclusively to the executive.
It can move fast. Truman recognised Israel eleven minutes after its declaration on 14 May 1948. George W. Bush recognised Kosovo the day after it declared independence in 2008, and Washington recognised South Sudan on its independence day in 2011. In his first term, Trump himself recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.
Trump could recognise Somaliland by proclamation, with no vote in Congress. An embassy would still need congressional funding.
What the Remarks May Mean
Trump’s public comments on Somaliland have shifted over the past year. In August 2025 he said his administration was “looking into” recognition. When Israel became the first UN member state to recognise Somaliland on 26 December 2025, he declined to follow, saying the matter was “under study.”
Calling Somaliland “a totally different country” goes further than either. Some in Hargeisa see the remark as consistent with the case Cruz and President Irro have been making. Others point out that it came in passing, in a speech about Minnesota, and that the State Department has not moved.
For the government, the remarks are a validation it will use. For critics of the U.S. trip, they settle nothing until they become a signed recognition. And the name debate, which many Somalilanders considered closed, is open again.
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Federal agents searched the Washington home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar before dawn on Monday under a court-approved warrant. Multiple U.S. outlets report the search forms part of a criminal investigation into immigration paperwork her late father filed when she was a child.
Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived around 6 a.m. The Justice Department confirmed it had secured the warrant and described the action as “part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” NBC News, citing a person familiar with the case, said the probe has lasted years and involves whistleblowers. The New York Post, citing two sources, reported that it centers on alleged false statements her father may have made in the family’s immigration papers.
The father’s record
Nur Omar Mohamed died in 2020. He was a colonel in the Somali National Army under Siad Barre and served in the Ogaden War. A 2020 obituary in Sahan Journal described him as a colonel who led a regiment. Omar has described him as an educator who trained teachers.
Barre’s forces conducted a systematic campaign against the Isaaq in the late 1980s in what is now Somaliland. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed and large parts of Hargeisa were destroyed.
That history is relevant under U.S. law. Refugee status is barred for anyone who ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in persecution, and applicants are required to disclose military service. If Mohamed concealed or misrepresented his service, or any role in abuses, the family’s refugee grant could be open to challenge. Because Omar derived her citizenship through his naturalization in 2000, when she was 17, her status could be affected as well.
Investigators have not publicly identified the specific statements under review. It is not known what Mohamed disclosed on the original refugee application. No evidence has been released showing he personally took part in atrocities, and Snopes has reported finding no evidence he committed war crimes.
Questions also persist about his name. Omar has referred to him publicly as Nur Omar Mohamed. A 2013 Father’s Day post, later deleted, called him “Nur Said.” In 2016, Alpha News reported his legal name as Nur Said Elmi Mohamed. The Daily Caller later reported that the marriage certificate of a relative living in the United Kingdom lists her father as Nur Said Elmi.
Critics claim the family entered the United States under a different identity, and that the name “Elmi” connects Omar to her former husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. Omar’s office has said “Nur Said” was a nickname. Somali naming practice builds names from a father’s and grandfather’s given names, so multiple versions of the same man’s name are common. No released record has established that a different identity was used in the refugee filings, and no outlet has reported that the warrant targets this issue.
The warrant and process
A search warrant is not a criminal charge. A judge must find probable cause that evidence of a crime exists at the location, and the supporting affidavit remains sealed. A source told CNN that senior Justice Department leadership approved the search even though the midterm elections are three weeks away.
Criminal charges for naturalization fraud carry a ten-year statute of limitations. Civil denaturalization has none. Because the relevant filings date to the 1990s, a civil case is the more realistic path. In such a proceeding, the government must prove its case by clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence.
Why HSI, not the FBI
Investigations of sitting members of Congress usually fall to the FBI, which handles most public-corruption cases. HSI’s lead role signals that this is being treated as an immigration case rather than one about Omar’s conduct in office.
HSI is the criminal investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It holds jurisdiction over immigration document, identity and benefit fraud, and unlike ICE’s deportation units, its agents conduct criminal investigations and execute search warrants. The records at the center of the case are the Department of Homeland Security’s own files. Border czar Tom Homan has said an HSI fraud investigator reviewed Omar’s immigration file. The Justice Department secured the warrant and would handle any prosecution.
The choice is not without controversy. HSI answers to DHS leadership. Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly asserted that Omar committed fraud before any charge was filed, and Homan has said an HSI investigator concluded fraud was involved.
Other long-running claims
For years, critics have alleged that Omar’s 2009 marriage to British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a sham and that he is her brother. Omar has called the allegation “absurd and offensive.” No evidence supporting it has been made public.
Minnesota Republicans have also pressed her over the 2020 MEALS Act, which they say weakened safeguards later exploited in the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud. This year, she did not appear before a state House committee or respond to its requests, and a subpoena attempt failed after Democrats on the panel voted against it. She has not been charged in that case.
Her original 2024 financial disclosure listed household assets of up to $30 million, largely in her husband’s businesses. She later amended that filing to under $100,000, citing an accounting error.
Reaction
Omar said the search was an attempt to “weaponize federal law enforcement” and the latest escalation in a decade of attacks by President Trump. House Democratic leaders called it “deeply disturbing.”
Omar’s response contrasts with her own words in March 2023, when Donald Trump was indicted in New York. “Our democracy rests on the rule of law,” she said then, adding that when anyone is suspected of a crime, the justice system investigates, charges and convicts them with due process. She also wrote that “no one is above the law,” and warned that political interference in a criminal investigation was a hallmark of democratic decline. Republicans have turned her phrase back on her. Rep. Nancy Mace responded to Monday’s search by writing “NO ONE is above the law,” and Tom Homan used the same words in September. Trump, for his part, called his own prosecutions political persecution.
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WASHINGTON — Rep. John Rose pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on his Republic of Somaliland financial-access legislation during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on September 15, hours after hosting President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi in his Capitol Hill office.
During today’s House Financial Services Committee hearing, @RepJohnRose highlighted Somaliland’s strategic importance to U.S. security and economic interests and called for greater access to the U.S. financial system.@SecScottBessent committed to reviewing Rep. Rose’s… pic.twitter.com/7xDXjmbwce
The bill’s scope is deliberately narrow. It directs the Treasury secretary to submit, within 180 days of enactment, a report identifying the legal, regulatory, and policy barriers that limit Somaliland’s access to the U.S. financial system. The report must assess compliance with Know Your Customer, anti-money-laundering, and counter-terrorism-financing standards, then set out two complementary sets of recommendations: steps Somaliland authorities could take to align with IMF, World Bank, and FATF norms, and steps the United States could take, including the use of Treasury’s voice and vote at those institutions. The full text is available via GovInfo.
The legislation authorizes Treasury to engage directly with Somaliland’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and private banks. It does not, however, name the Bank of Somaliland — the central bank that licenses and supervises the sector and houses the Financial Intelligence Unit established under the 2019 AML/CFT Act. Any substantive review would necessarily include that institution.
In a March interview with The Algemeiner, Rose framed the bill’s purpose plainly: “What is Somaliland’s current compliance with international banking norms, things like customer and anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing standards, other regulatory expectations of where are they and where do they need to get to be?” He also posed the SWIFT question himself: “What steps would it take to incorporate Somaliland into the SWIFT financial messaging and payment system which would really up their game in terms of what they could hope to accomplish?”
SWIFT access is not the gap
Despite some of the rhetoric surrounding the bill, it would not place Somaliland banks on SWIFT. Institutions such as Dahabshiil Bank International and Salaam Somali Bank already hold SWIFT Bank Identifier Codes, registered under Somalia’s “SO” country code because Somaliland lacks an ISO code of its own. SWIFT is a Belgian private cooperative beyond the reach of Congress; the United States has no authority to grant, withhold, or reassign a BIC.
The genuine constraint is correspondent banking — the network of nostro and vostro accounts through which banks clear and settle dollar transactions via partners in New York or elsewhere. A BIC permits the transmission of payment messages; it moves no funds without a correspondent relationship behind it. That relationship is a private commercial decision driven by each bank’s compliance-risk assessment. It is this barrier, not SWIFT membership, that H.R. 7993 would require Treasury to examine.
In practice, the absence of reliable correspondent channels explains why most remittances still reach Somaliland through hawala networks and money-transfer operators rather than conventional bank wires. Those operators settle through internal account structures and cash logistics, and they charge accordingly. World Bank data on the Somalia corridor have historically shown costs between roughly 6 and 9 percent of the amount sent — well above both the Bank’s own 5 percent target and the United Nations’ 3 percent Sustainable Development Goal benchmark.
The hearing
Rose raised the bill during Bessent’s annual testimony on “The Annual Testimony of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the International Financial System.” Recognized for five minutes, Rose laid out the bill’s scope — including Somaliland’s international status, sanctions exposure, compliance with Know Your Customer and anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing standards, remittance flows, and the steps needed to bring Somaliland into the SWIFT financial messaging and payment system. He noted he had met with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi “a few moments ago,” during the president’s visit to Washington, and asked Bessent whether stronger financial ties with Somaliland could advance U.S. security and economic interests and help counter China’s growing influence in the Horn of Africa.
Bessent’s response addressed the general value of economic engagement without taking a position on the bill itself, noting that recognition questions are a State Department matter. Pressed by Rose on whether he’d support the legislation specifically, Bessent said: “I will support looking at your bill. I will have my international affairs department give me a briefing next week and then we will engage with your staff.” Asked whether Treasury had the capacity to complete the required 180-day assessment, he answered, “Yes, sir.”
Central Bank response
The Bank of Somaliland, the territory’s central bank, issued a press statement on September 16 welcoming the hearing discussion. It said Rose had drawn attention to the financial and regulatory barriers affecting Somaliland’s access to the U.S. and international financial systems, and that Secretary Bessent had indicated Treasury’s International Affairs team would brief him and engage with Rose’s staff.
The statement said the discussion builds on the bank’s ongoing engagement with U.S. institutions, noting that its governor formally wrote to the U.S. Department of the Treasury in January 2026 seeking support in addressing barriers to international payment systems, correspondent banking, and SWIFT connectivity, while outlining the bank’s continued efforts to strengthen financial integrity and AML/CFT safeguards. Greater international connectivity, the bank said, is a practical priority that could reduce the cost and friction of remittances, let businesses make international payments and access global markets, facilitate payments for students abroad, and support investment and employment.
The bank said any expansion of financial access must come with strong regulation, transparency, effective supervision, and robust safeguards against illicit finance, and that it remains committed to strengthening financial-sector supervision, AML/CFT controls, payment-system oversight, and compliance with applicable U.S. and international standards. It said it stands ready to provide the U.S. Treasury and other relevant institutions with “objective and verifiable information” on Somaliland’s financial system and to participate in any technical engagement arising from the process.
Despite recent modernization efforts, the Bank of Somaliland remains significantly underpowered relative to the private banking and mobile-money industry it is charged with supervising. Its legal authority is clear on paper, yet its practical tools — capital strength, supervisory staffing, IT systems, and enforcement capacity — lag well behind the scale and sophistication of the major operators. Critically, the bank’s own website acknowledges that it currently has no regulatory framework for mobile money services or remittance service providers, leaving the dominant digital currencies controlled by Dahabshiil (e-Dahab) and Telesom (ZAAD) — which together handle the bulk of daily transactions in Somaliland — outside its effective oversight. There is also no functional firewall between the financial systems of Somaliland and Somalia: no reliable mechanism exists to ensure that Somaliland customer data and funds remain ring-fenced and do not straddle the two jurisdictions. Compounding these structural weaknesses, the current senior leadership, including Governor Abdinasir Ahmed Hersi, consists largely of political appointees whose prior careers were in government administration and diplomacy rather than commercial or central banking. The resulting gap in both technical depth and real supervisory reach limits the institution’s ability to impose the risk-management and compliance standards that international correspondent banks routinely require.
President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi in Washington
President Abdullahi departed Hargeisa on September 3, transited the United Arab Emirates, and arrived in Washington on September 5 — his first visit to the United States since assuming office in November 2024 — accompanied by cabinet members and advisers. The presidency has framed the trip around security cooperation, investment, and the long-standing campaign for international recognition.
On September 14 he delivered a keynote at the Hudson Institute, followed by a fireside conversation with senior fellow Joshua Meservey, arguing for Somaliland’s value as a security partner along the Red Sea corridor and highlighting the Berbera port, where DP World has invested $442 million.
The following day he met a bipartisan group of lawmakers that included Rose and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), according to the Somaliland presidency, before holding a separate office meeting with Rose. Rose posted photographs of the encounter and wrote that he was “proud to lead legislation that supports removing barriers to U.S. financial markets, which is great for both of our nations.”
Abdullahi is expected to remain in the United States for an extended period, with a diaspora engagement scheduled for September 19. He is also expected in New York during the high-level week of the UN General Assembly, though no bilateral meetings have been confirmed.
The Washington visit follows his June state visit to Israel, six months after Israel became the first UN member state to recognize the Republic of Somaliland in December 2025. Somaliland authorities have publicly welcomed H.R. 7993 since its introduction. The Trump administration has given no indication that it intends to follow Israel’s lead.
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President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Cirro’s arrival in Washington this month is being described by his office as a strategic conversation rather than a recognition plea. That framing is accurate. It should not obscure what the visit will actually be judged on: whether two bills already sitting in Congress move.
Start with the legal ground Cirro is standing on, because it is stronger than most of Washington realizes. Somaliland’s parliament passed its own union law on June 27, 1960. The southern assembly in Mogadishu never enacted the matching text, approving a different version “in principle” only. A presidential decree tried to paper over the gap but lapsed under the constitution’s own terms. When a proper Act of Union came before Somaliland’s electorate in 1961, more than 60 percent of northern voters rejected it. In 1991, Somaliland walked back out of a union whose legal foundation had already collapsed thirty years earlier. That history matters in any serious conversation with State Department lawyers, since the African Union’s border-preservation doctrine, the usual objection to recognition, was written for cases of secession, not for the unwinding of a merger that was never properly completed.
The security case has caught up with the legal one. Berbera sits on the Gulf of Aden side of the Bab el-Mandeb, the chokepoint the Houthis have spent two years demonstrating they can threaten at will. A shadow fleet moving sanctioned oil has been documented using Berbera’s waters. China’s base in Djibouti is a short flight away. Washington doesn’t need to sympathize with Somaliland’s cause to see the practical upside: an administration willing to sign a security framework, the kind AFRICOM once had under the lapsed Somaliland Partnership Act, gets a functioning port and a government that answers its calls, at a moment when both are in short supply along that coast.
That leaves Congress, where the argument stops being rhetorical. H.R. 7993, the Somaliland Economic Access and Opportunity Act, has sat in House Financial Services since March, and H.R. 3992, the Republic of Somaliland Independence Act, has been stuck in Foreign Affairs since June 2025, both without a committee vote. Both bills exist because members of both parties concluded, independently of this visit, that current policy toward Somaliland doesn’t match current American interests. In June, the State Department issued a report reaffirming Somalia’s territorial sovereignty over Somaliland in terms that sit uneasily next to two bills its own colleagues in the executive branch are supposed to help implement.
That contradiction, more than any photograph with a senator, is what this visit should resolve. Somaliland has spent three decades making the case that it deserves recognition on the merits: a functioning democracy, five peaceful transfers of power, a currency, a port, a track record no government in Mogadishu has matched. What Cirro needs from this trip isn’t a fresh version of that argument. It’s Washington’s own government resolving its internal disagreement about what to do with it. A White House that quietly instructs Financial Services and Foreign Affairs to schedule markups would do more for Somaliland in a week than another year of position papers would.
Cirro could come home with an itinerary of respectful meetings, or he could come home with a markup date. Getting from one to the other isn’t a matter of rhetoric. It’s a matter of procedure, and Congress has the rest of this fall to settle it.
About the Author
Siyad Madey is a Nairobi-based legal practitioner and policy analyst with over 25 years of legal, regulatory, compliance, and governance experience across East Africa and the Horn of Africa, including 15 years in senior management at the National Bank of Kenya. He is a contributing analyst to the Middle East Forum covering Horn of Africa security and Red Sea geopolitics, and his work has appeared in The Hill and The Spectator. Follow him on X at @MadeySiyad.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions or perspectives of Somaliland Chronicle and its staff.
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Somaliland is independent. There is no taking that back. Seventy-five percent of Somalis were born after 1991 and have no direct memory of unity. Over those 35 years, Somaliland developed national institutions and a democratic culture; Somalis, however, remain mired in corruption, violence, and extremism. As Somaliland fiercely defends its sovereignty, Somali Presidents Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud have, for personal profit, made Somalia a de facto colony whose resources and waters Turkey can exploit. Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau may try to reverse and reject Somaliland sovereignty, but he lives in a fantasy world: Somalilanders will no more rejoin Somalia than Ukrainians will rejoin Russia.
While President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Irro and his delegation visits the United States to advance Somaliland’s cause in Washington and among international delegations at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Somaliland’s parliament must do more to prepare Somaliland’s legal code to conform with major international treaties and conventions. Somaliland cannot accede to treaties prior to its recognition by the United Nations as a member state if other member-states object—and Somalia, Turkey, and China certainly will. Still, Hargeisa can both signal to the world its seriousness and commitment to rule-of-law and also distinguish itself from Mogadishu if Somaliland’s parliament endorses conventions and treaties that Somalia has joined.
For example, Somalia has not joined the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the so-called Palermo Convention, which criminalizes human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Somaliland already fights such smuggling, but declaring its conformity with the Convention would give it the international credit it deserves at no cost to Somaliland’s sovereignty nor would it run afoul of the conservative elements in Somali society.
Somalia is also not a member of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Again, joining many of these Hague Conventions would be common-sense, as they represent responsibilities of almost every mainstream state. For example, the Somaliland parliament could endorse the Hague Service Convention which enables the serving of legal documents from abroad into Somaliland. The Hague Evidence Convention allows investigators to take evidence abroad. The Hague Apostille Convention regularizes the authenticating of public documents. The Hague Child Abduction Convention requires the signatories’ cooperation returning children kidnapped by a parent who did not have full custody. While some religious conservatives might object to this, their religious arguments are undercut by the fact that many other majority Muslim states—from Bosnia to Burkina Faso—have joined.
Somalia likewise has not joined the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that allows the Court to try genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. With war criminals from the Isaaq genocide still sheltered in Somalia, the notion that Somalia will join is fantasy, and so Somaliland can distinguish itself. Somali pundits can argue that the United States has also not joined the Rome Statute, Washington’s objections have more to deal with sovereignty concerns against the backdrop of cynical anti-Americanism. Somaliland has more to gain than lose by declaring its intention to join the International Criminal Court on day one of its United Nations accession.
Somaliland’s parliament can also affirm its intention to join separately those treaties like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to which Somalia is a member. This is important because Somali treaty memberships would not migrate with recognition of Somaliland’s ‘secession’ from Somalia. The Clinton administration set out this stance when, against the backdrop of Quebec’s 1995 referendum to become independent, he issued talking points to U.S. diplomats countering Quebecois separatist leaders like Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard who had argued that an independent Quebec would also be a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The same standard has held true for potential Scottish secession and the status of tripartite Turkey-Syria-Iraq water sharing deals should Kurdistan become independent.
Somaliland should be proud of its parliament. While its elections must be more regular, parliamentarians must think about more than minor tweaks of the existing legal code and more about which treaties Somaliland will join, and ensuring the domestic law makes this possible on day one. Indeed, by doing so, Somaliland can show even its critics that it is more serious and has greater capacity than any other aspirant states, from the Palestinians to the Kurds to New Caledonia’s Kanaks.
About the Author
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units.
