Inside Somaliland, the state eager to become the world’s next country

By Liam Taylor

National day in Somaliland means joy, pomp and machines of war. On May 18th the president and assembled dignitaries watched, from the grandstand, the annual parade in the capital, Hargeisa, as police held back jubilant crowds. Acrobats, fire-eaters, cyclists and footballers flowed past, while a bemused lion paced in its cage, the red, white and green national flag draped over its back. Then came the coastguard and soldiers, fire engines and police cars, and finally armoured trucks, each one mounted with more terrifying weapons than the last. All in all, an impressive inventory of a state.

Except that Somaliland is a state visible only from within. It has governed itself since 1991, when it separated from Somalia after a bloody civil war. If not perfectly democratic, nor uniformly secure, it has done far better by those measures than the splintered country it left. Much of the time, for many of its 6m people, it has provided a taste of nabad iyo caano (“peace and milk” in Somali). It has a government, elections, army, courts, currency and passports. But when its borders are shown on maps, if at all, it’s with a tentative broken line.

In London and Washington a smattering of lawmakers advocate for Somaliland’s sovereignty. But Western governments, who have poured money into the faltering project of state-building in Somalia, say they do not want to recognise Somaliland before African countries do; and African governments, many of whom face their own secessionist movements, are loth to change the status quo.

Somaliland is a state visible only from within. It has governed itself since 1991, when it separated from Somalia after a bloody civil war

That is until now. In January the president of Somaliland, Muse Bihi Abdi, and the prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, signed a memorandum of understanding, the first step towards what would be a historic deal. “Ethiopia needs sea access; Somaliland, recognition,” Bihi told me when I met him at his presidential palace. “And we bargained.”

The president sat in a white chair beside a Somaliland flag, his slightly stiff demeanour betraying his training as an air-force pilot. Under the proposal, he said, Ethiopia would lease a 20km by 20km swathe of coastal land on which to build a naval base, and recognise Somaliland in return. “We want to be masters of our country,” he told me.

Most Somalilanders support Bihi’s ambition and hope that recognition would bring investment, aid and national pride. But many worry about the details of the deal, which have not been released. Some fear that Ethiopia has not forsaken its old expansionist habits. There have been protests against the agreement in the Awdal region, where the naval base would be built. The defence minister resigned, calling Ethiopia an “enemy”.

The deal is not guaranteed to happen. Turkey is mediating between Ethiopia and Somalia, which considers the plan to be a violation of its sovereignty. But Bihi, who faces a tough battle for re-election in November, seemed keen to put pen to paper. Recognition would boost his reputation, which was damaged last year when a rebel force in the eastern borderlands ousted Somaliland’s army from Las Anod, the largest town in the Sool region, and declared allegiance to Somalia instead. It was a humiliating defeat for politicians in Hargeisa – and a challenge to the idea of Somaliland itself.

The flags of Somalia and Somaliland share a common symbol, the five-pointed star. It represents the five territories into which the Somali people were divided when colonial powers carved up the Horn of Africa in the late 19th century: the coastal regions of Italian Somaliland, British Somaliland and French Somaliland (now Djibouti), British East Africa (now part of Kenya), and Ethiopia.

Somalis shared a language, a pastoral tradition and a religion – Islam – but had never been ruled by a single government. Social and political life was structured partly through genealogy: there were several major clans, which branched into sub-clans and again into smaller units, like a national family tree. But in the struggle against colonial rule Somali nationalists started to dream of a unitary state, bringing together all Somalis – a greater Somalia, or Somaliweyn.

In the struggle against colonial rule Somali nationalists started to dream of a unitary state, bringing together all Somalis – a greater Somalia, or Somaliweyn

It was in that spirit that, after five short days of independence in 1960, the former British protectorate in the north united with the former Italian colony to the south to form Somalia. They hoped the other three points of the Somali star would one day join them, but Somaliweyn never came to be. An armed attempt to prise away the Somali parts of Ethiopia in 1977 ended in catastrophic defeat.

The new Somalia had internal problems too. Nine years after its inception, the government was overthrown by Mohamed Siad Barre, the head of the army. He spoke of building the nation, but his brutal rule divided it. He banned political parties and imprisoned opponents, such as a group of young professionals in Hargeisa who had started a self-help scheme to fund social services. The Isaaq, the largest clan in the north, were particularly targeted. By the 1980s they were in open rebellion, behind the banner of the Somali National Movement (snm).

In 1988 the north slid into full-blown civil war. Under the command of Barre’s son-in-law, the Somali army killed tens of thousands of Isaaq people: bombed in their homes, shot in the streets, or executed and buried in mass graves. Journalists called Hargeisa the “Dresden of Africa”. One pilot was so horrified by the destruction that he refused his orders and kept flying until he ran out of fuel, landing on a beach in Djibouti.

Saado Abdi Amarre was in her 20s when the war began. She cooked meals for the fighters and sometimes carried a gun herself. But her weapon of choice was poetry. In Somali culture poetry can be a language of politics: a way to warn and inspire, admonish and exhort. When I met her at an arts venue in Hargeisa recently, she recited the first poem she had ever written.

“When our land turns to dust, when our land burns with fire,” she said. “Oh, my people, I feel your pain deep inside.” She pointed to her heart and then to her imaginary audience, as if she saw them still: the gaunt fighters who rebelled against a dictatorship. She recited the words like an incantation, each line falling onto a long vowel, never quite becoming song. In the final verse she addressed Barre himself: “May hurricanes and destruction touch you.”

In 1991 Barre’s administration fell and the snm took control in the north. But Hargeisa lay in ruins. “Everybody was either repairing his house or another,” remembered Bobe Yusuf Duale, who was one of the snm’s leaders. “The hammer and the nail was the biggest noise that you could hear.”

Duale is a historian by instinct, an inveterate collector. At his home in Hargeisa he keeps an archive of oral poetry on cassette tapes, verses dense with allusion and resistance. On one wall hangs a groundsheet, which was his bed while fighting in the bush; on another, his old belt.

Many Somalilanders juxtapose the relative stability of their self-built state with a dystopian caricature of Somalia – its roads stalked by jihadists, its seas swimming with pirates – from which anyone would want to escape

The snm had fought to liberate Somalia, he said, not to leave it. But by 1991 the people had suffered enough. The rebels and the northern clans met to discuss the future, as a crowd outside chanted “no more Mogadishu”, referring to the capital of Somalia. They decided to dissolve the union with the south, re-establishing the independent state that had briefly existed before. Duale showed me his copy of the declaration, typewritten on a single sheet of paper.

This new, self-described state – called Somaliland – was bound together by homegrown traditions of democracy and xeer, the unwritten rules and obligations that kept the peace between clans. In the early years, competition for control of national assets, such as the port, sometimes spilled over into open fighting. Each time, the elders met and talked until their differences were resolved. Somalilanders would make their own nation, without outside help.

Today Hargeisa is a city of low-rise compounds and sleepy afternoons. Its bloody past is commemorated with a Soviet-made mig-17 aircraft, responsible for the deaths of so many of its residents, which now stands on a plinth in a central square. The city is perhaps better known these days for its international book fair, which draws thousands of people each year. The hotels and cafés downtown thrum with diaspora money. On the outskirts, shepherds steer their goats past half-built houses, funded by remittances slowly sent back from London or Toronto or Dubai.

Some of the diaspora are coming home. Mohamed Isaaq, a returnee from Canada, told me he felt healthier in Hargeisa, his spirit a little freer; over there the government had “milked” you, he said, but here he was milking his camels and thriving. His friend Ali Hussein, born in Cardiff to a Somali seaman, was hoping to start a bank – no easy task in an unrecognised state (some banks have to fly cash abroad because they cannot wire it internationally).

Remittances and livestock are the lifeblood of the economy, but neither can be taken for granted. Officials worry that younger generations of Somalilanders, born and raised abroad, will feel less connection to their ancestral homeland. As for livestock, just ask Halimo Fadal Jama, who was herding her sheep in the dry scrubland near the Ethiopian border when I met her. The rains are not like they used to be, she said.

Many foreign investors are deterred by the legal uncertainty that comes with Somaliland’s unrecognised status, but not all. I visited Berbera, a port city that was known to ancient Greek merchants for its myrrh, frankincense and cinnamon. The Somaliland government is pitching it as a trade corridor to Ethiopia, hoping to attract some of the sea traffic that currently passes through Djibouti. That ambition is backed by the United Arab Emirates, which has expanded its influence in the Red Sea region as part of its rivalry with other Arab powers. dp World, an Emirati logistics company, says it is investing “up to $442m” on upgrading Berbera’s port and creating a special economic zone, where investors can take advantage of tax exemptions. Its warehouses, situated on a deserted plain, stand in austere contrast to the city’s whitewashed mosques and Ottoman colonnades.

Somalilanders’ legal claim to recognition has always rested on the idea that they are returning to old borders, not drawing new ones

Many Somalilanders juxtapose the relative stability of their self-built state with a dystopian caricature of Somalia – its roads stalked by jihadists, its seas swimming with pirates – from which anyone would want to escape. With each retelling of Somaliland’s story, the weft and warp of nationhood become a little tighter. But history has left a lot of loose ends.

The official narrative of liberation means less to people in the west and east of the country, outside the Isaaq heartlands. Some of them had fought against the snmduring the war (one businessman from Awdal region told me that he considered the snm to be “criminals”). Last year, in the eastern city of Las Anod, an unravelling began. Some people, it turned out, would rather be part of Somalia after all.

Somalilanders’ legal claim to recognition has always rested on the idea that they are returning to old borders, not drawing new ones. The eastern region was once part of British Somaliland and so, they say, it is part of modern Somaliland too. That argument has never convinced the eastern clans, even though some of their leaders were involved in meetings that led to the revival of Somaliland. The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli, who live close to the colonial border, are part of the larger Darod clan. So are most of the people in Puntland, the autonomous region of Somalia on the other side, which controlled Las Anod until 2007. Locals see no reason to respect a line that colonisers drew.

But perhaps they could have been won over, if only Somaliland had provided security and investment. Instead a string of assassinations saw politicians, journalists, clerics, elders, businessmen killed for unknown reasons by gunmen who were never caught. Most people I met in Las Anod blamed the Somaliland government for the killings, an allegation which it rejects. They also complained that wealth is concentrated in Hargeisa – a grievance shared by many outside the capital, irrespective of clan. Several times they had tried to form an administration of their own, loyal to Mogadishu.

The last straw came in 2022, when a young politician was shot dead as he left the mosque. Somaliland forces killed protesters who were angry at his death, then withdrew from Las Anod. In February 2023 local leaders declared that they “will never accept or participate in [Somaliland’s] separatist programme” and declared their allegiance to Somalia. A war had begun.

For months the Somaliland army shelled Las Anod. More than 150,000 people fled their homes. “It was a ghost town when I came here,” said Fardus Ibrahim Ali, who had been working as a nurse in London when she saw pictures of the war on social media. She flew over to help in the hospital, tending to the wounded who lay on the floor outside the wards.

It would be a mistake, many people told me, to think that politics is only a manifestation of clan identity – but also a mistake to ignore its influence

The hospital itself was not safe. When I visited, some of the damage was still visible, nearly a year after the shelling stopped. The outer wall of the maternity ward was pockmarked by shrapnel. An ambulance was punctured by bullets; one had killed a nurse who had been rescuing injured fighters from the front line. At the doorway of the university, a poster displayed pictures of students who had been slain in the conflict. The paint was barely dry in the mayor’s office, which has been rebuilt after taking a direct hit.

In August 2023 local forces drove the Somaliland army into retreat, taking hundreds of prisoners-of-war. They called themselves ssc-Khaatumo – the initials stand for the regions they claim, and “khaatumo” means a positive or final decision – and have been recognised as an interim administration by the federal government in Mogadishu.

I arrived in Las Anod during the windy season, as dry gusts stiffened ssc-Khaatumo’s flags: pale blue with a white Somali star and a horseman, who represents the Dervishes, a Sufi movement that fought against British rule here in the early 20th century. The new branding was everywhere: on wristbands and football shirts, painted on wooden stalls selling khat leaves and on the walls of hotel lobbies. The Somaliland flag was nowhere to be seen.

One morning I drove out to the Somaliland army’s abandoned barracks, a cluster of stone buildings beyond a crinkle of hills. Guarding it were a handful of ssc-Khaatumo fighters. The leader of the group, Mohamoud Jama Warsame, used to be a camel herder. His sarong flapped in the wind. When I asked why he had fought, he described his horror at the shelling of the city. And anyway, he continued, “We are defending our lands.”

That phrase – “our lands” – was a clue to something that I, an outsider, could only dimly understand. Clan is only one of many kinds of identity among Somalis, its meaning evolving, its divisions never as fixed as in the family trees that anthropologists draw. And yet it remains an important part of the way that people navigate the world. My interpreter illustrated this point by showing me the WhatsApp group for members of his sub-clan, who are scattered across the globe. He knew his lineage stretching back 20 generations, and considered this perfectly normal.

It would be a mistake, many people told me, to think that politics is only a manifestation of clan identity – but also a mistake to ignore its influence. On my last evening in Las Anod I met Garad Jama Garad Ali, the highest of the Dhulbahante garads, or traditional leaders. “When there is no government our responsibility broadens,” he told me in careful English. “When there is a good system, the government will take care of [problems], and it shrinks.”

We were speaking at his house, in a room the size of a tennis court, with gold trim on the curtains and chairs. He had returned to Las Anod in January last year, after more than a decade in exile. Locals told me he was more powerful than the ssc-Khaatumo president, who had been chosen by representatives that the garads had helped to appoint.

“Recognition is not something that exists outside of us, it exists within us”

“The only thing that we can build [a nation-state upon] are clans and the xeer they have,” he said, fingering his prayer beads. But somewhere along the line, trust between clans had been lost. “All the advantage of Somaliland belonged to Isaaqs,” he said. “Their advantage is my disadvantage.”

The front line now lies 100km away, where a stalemate holds. The people have chosen “unity” with Somalia over “secession” with Somaliland, said Mohamed Abdi Ismail, ssc-Khaatumo’s vice-president. Right now it is hard to imagine the region returning to Somaliland, except by force.

When I met Bihi, the president of Somaliland, he told me that the rebels in the east were a “chaotic movement” which included elements linked to al-Shabab, a jihadist force that is strongest in the southern and central regions of Somalia. That was denied by everyone I met in Las Anod, although some analysts think it plausible that al-Shabab is trying to take advantage of the tense situation.

But Bihi, bristling at my questions, also wanted to make a larger point about nations and how they are made. Violent strife, he said, is “a stage all countries go through”, pointing to the American civil war and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. “That is why governments are built,” he said. “That’s what they solve.”

The real question is how governments are built – how to harness the traditions of compromise and consensus that exist within any society, in order to build institutions. In this corner of Africa, the murmur of dialogue is always there, even though it is occasionally interrupted by the crack of bullets. After all, nation-building begins at home. “Recognition is not something that exists outside of us, it exists within us,” Duale, the historian, told me. “We have to grow it.” 

Liam Taylor is a journalist based in east Africa

Photographs: Petterik Wiggers Panos Pictures