Somaliland: Israel alone?
Your Proximities deep dive
Hello everyone,
Back in the 2000s and 2010s, while working as a Reuters correspondent in East Africa, I was lucky to count Abdi Guled as a co-worker. Based in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, Abdi reported for us alongside other talented journalists. I thought at the time that Somali journalists were among the best I’d seen anywhere in the world, covering conflict in their own country at great personal risk to themselves, while very regularly losing colleagues to violence. Abdi embodied that spirit, producing excellent piece after excellent piece.
Today, he is both a journalist and analyst, and writes a newsletter called Horn Briefs, which publishes insights on the Horn of Africa, particularly on Somalia and Djibouti. You simply will not find better analysis of Somalia anywhere else.
So this week, I’m pleased to publish a guest post from Abdi. In it, he takes a close look at Israel’s recent recognition of the breakaway region of Somaliland as an independent nation and asks what that could mean for the Horn and beyond.
You can find his newsletter on LinkedIn here.
Until next week,
Barry.
Somaliland recognition: A lever few are ready to pull – Except Israel
By Abdi Guled
Mogadishu, Somalia — For more than three decades, Somaliland has occupied a peculiar space in the international order, a polity that behaves like a state, governs like a state, and yet remains, in formal terms, something less than one.
In Hargeisa, elections have been organized, security largely maintained, and institutions, however imperfect, have taken root in ways that contrast sharply with the volatility that has long defined southern Somalia.
This paradox has endured, largely undisturbed, for years. But it is no longer static.
When Israel moved in late 2025 to formally recognize Somaliland, it did more than break with diplomatic convention. It exposed, with unusual clarity, a quiet reality of international politics: that recognition, often framed as a legal or moral judgment, is in practice a strategic decision, one that many states have considered, and consciously deferred.
The Loneliness of Recognition
Israel’s decision stands out not simply because it happened, but because it happened alone.
For decades, Somaliland has presented one of the more compelling cases for recognition in the post-Cold War era. Its claim rests on the boundaries of a former British protectorate, a fact that places it, at least technically, within the African Union’s long-standing doctrine of preserving inherited colonial borders.
Unlike many secessionist movements, it has paired that legal argument with a sustained, if uneven, record of governance.
And yet, recognition never followed.
What mattered, and still matters, analysts argue, is whether recognition aligns with the African Union’s long-standing commitment to preserving inherited borders, whereas Israel appears to have acted primarily on the basis of its strategic interests.
Publicly, Israel’s decision has been read through the prism of the Abraham Accords and its evolving regional diplomacy.
But beneath that framing lies a more immediate calculation.
Somaliland sits along the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors, linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and, by extension, to global trade routes.
In a moment of heightened instability along the Red Sea, geography carries weight. Recognition, in this context, becomes less a symbolic endorsement than a positional move.
Still, no second state has followed.
The Logic of Restraint
If Israel’s recognition demonstrates what is possible, the reaction, or lack of it, from others reveals what is at stake.
For Western governments, Somaliland presents a familiar dilemma.
On one hand, it embodies many of the attributes long associated with state legitimacy. On the other, recognizing it risks undermining relations with Somalia’s federal government, a key partner in counterterrorism efforts against al-Shabab.
In a region where security cooperation is already precarious, policymakers tend to prioritize continuity over recalibration. Recognition, however justified in principle, introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty carries costs.
Across Africa, the hesitation runs deeper.
The African Union’s reluctance, regional diplomats say, is not rooted in Somaliland alone, but in what Somaliland represents.
Since its founding, the organization has treated colonial-era borders as inviolable, not because they are equitable, but because revisiting them risks triggering a cascade of competing claims. From the Sahel to Central Africa, dormant disputes could quickly become active ones.
Somaliland may be exceptional. But precedent rarely remains contained.
Ethiopia’s Calculated Pause
No country illustrates this tension more clearly than Ethiopia.
Since losing its coastline in the early 1990s, Ethiopia has sought reliable access to maritime routes, a strategic vulnerability that has only grown more acute as its economy has expanded.
Its 2024 memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, which outlined a potential exchange of coastal access for recognition, signaled a willingness to test long-standing diplomatic constraints.
Yet Addis Ababa has not taken the final step.
The hesitation reflects a layered calculus, regional sources say.
Recognition could deliver tangible strategic gains, but it would also risk diplomatic rupture with Somalia, friction within the African Union, and uncomfortable questions at home. Ethiopia, a federal state with its own internal fault lines, is acutely aware that endorsing secession abroad may carry unintended echoes domestically.
The lever is within reach. But pulling it could shift more than intended.
A Wider Strategic Theater
What has changed, and continues to evolve, is the context in which Somaliland’s status is being considered.
Its decision to establish ties with Taiwan has drawn the attention of China, which views such relationships through the lens of its own territorial sensitivities.
Meanwhile, countries such as India and other Western nations have shown growing interest in Red Sea security, maritime routes, and the stability of adjacent coastlines.
In this expanding frame, Somaliland is no longer simply a regional anomaly. It is becoming a node in a broader strategic network, one where geography, alignment, and access increasingly shape diplomatic behavior.
Recognition as Currency
In this context, recognition has taken on a strategic quality: it is no longer simply withheld, but actively conserved as a tool of leverage and influence.
For many states, Somaliland represents a form of latent diplomatic currency, a tool that can be deployed when advantageous, or retained when conditions remain uncertain.
To recognize it now would be to expend that currency without guaranteed return.
This helps explain the prevailing caution.
Even governments that privately acknowledge Somaliland’s case appear to prefer ambiguity over commitment, preserving flexibility in a region defined by shifting alignments.
The persistence of ambiguity illustrates this dynamic, resulting in a deliberately maintained equilibrium.
Somaliland’s case for statehood has arguably strengthened over time, reinforced by its durability and relative stability. Yet the political threshold for recognition remains high, shaped less by Somaliland’s internal trajectory than by the external calculations of others.
Israel’s decision has altered the landscape, but not in the way some anticipated. It has not triggered momentum. Instead, it has clarified the cost of movement.
The question, increasingly, is not whether Somaliland meets the criteria of statehood. It is whether recognizing it serves the interests of those positioned to decide.
Until that alignment shifts, diplomats say, recognition will remain what it has quietly become: not an inevitability delayed, but a choice deferred, visible, attainable, and, for now, deliberately left untouched.
Except, for the moment, by one.