What do Ted Cruz, Chinese drones, and Israeli military proxies all have in common? Somaliland. The small breakaway state in northern Somalia has recently been the catalyst for a superpower competition, as Israel became the first country to officially recognize the territory as an independent state. In the United States, government officials such as Ted Cruz are actively asking us to follow suit. Meanwhile, China views Somaliland’s independence as an ideological parallel to Taiwan so much so that they are willing to provide military assistance to rebel groups in the region to curtail progress.
Somaliland launched itself into global relevance on December 27, 2025, when Israel accepted trading recognition for a military base along their coast. For nearly three decades, Somaliland has strived toward independence and has not been shy to send similar trade offers to countries like the United States. While the West considers capitalizing on new military proxies, many political consequences hang in the balance.
First, Somalia has always viewed the Somaliland territory as sovereign to the state, and military confrontation will push them into civil war. When asked in an interview about the possibility of Israeli forces coming to Somaliland, the president of Somalia said, “We will fight in our best capacity… We will defend ourselves.” Additionally, Somalia is critical to the international fight against Al-Shabaab and piracy. Destabilizing their situation risks success in these other campaigns. Finally, with U.S. and Chinese foreign policy butting heads, the Horn could become a playground for hegemonic rivalry.
So, if Somaliland recognition is fraught with consequences, how will countries such as the United States be able to justify recognition? The answer moves beyond strategic military positioning along the Gulf of Aden and slips into an argument common in political discourse: Somaliland deserves recognition. This view stems from their maintenance of stable political systems since inception, building an image as a true gem of democratic politics within a neighborhood of questionably authoritarian states. Because of Somaliland’s seeming commitment to Western political ideals, many powerful countries are willing to support a “democratic” ally. However, the story of a flourishing Somaliland has been misconstrued, and the reality for the aspiring nation is one of a subtle autocratic turn.
Somaliland was created in 1991 by the Isaaq clan to escape political repression at the hands of an authoritarian dictator from an opposing family, the Darod. When the Somaliland territory was established, it became an Isaaq majority, and although the disenfranchisement of the 1980s was over, bad blood remained. Today, all power flowing to the Isaaq is weaponized in the repression of a Darod sub-clan, the Dhulbahante.
To understand how power was consolidated in the hands of the Isaaq, we need an analysis of their political economy. As early as the mid-1990s, Somaliland relied on rentierism (an economic system reliant on exploiting state-owned assets instead of building productive labor) established by a group of ten Isaaq-Djibouti oligarchs. These Somaliland business partners were the first to exchange public resources for investment, establishing economic governance not accountable to the citizenry.
Unfortunately, poor economic practices like rentierism were almost inevitable. Unlike most developing nations, Somaliland has not been able to access many economically imperative resources such as foreign direct investment, multilateral trade institutions, or loans provided by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The only large outlying example is a trade deal with the UAE to build the Berbera Port. However, the West was always willing to justify small installments of aid (which would flow through Somalia) as concessions for democratic progress. When Somaliland rejects the spoils of political violence, the global north rewards them.
This system of investment, which had powerful countries leveraging their aid to support Somaliland’s democratization, had two major flaws: the type of aid and our ability to recognize a good democracy. First, the type of investment was skewed heavily towards securitized aid, which flows directly into Somaliland’s policing force, a cycle that has a history of corruption in Africa. For example, countries such as the United States would voluntarily train troops when they wanted to counter Al-Shabaab, meaning Somaliland could access high-level military resources for being a proxy to the War on Terror. This allowed the economic influence of the Isaaq to become a sufficient military power. Secondly, since true democratic mechanisms are hardly distinguishable from their expected outcomes, the conditional democratization set Somaliland up with a perverse incentive to build a coalition of economic elites, hidden behind a peaceocracy instead of a truly free state.
While the Isaaq control of the economy may be somewhat hidden, the veneer of democracy has been noticeably slipping as each election is questionably fair or blatantly skewed. Frequently, elections get postponed, sometimes for up to years after their first proposed date, leaving presidential terms extended long past their natural course. Worse yet, in 2023, a Dhulbahante clan candidate for the presidency, Abdifatah Abdullahi Abdi, was assassinated, leaving the clan with a serious feeling of political disenfranchisement.
The assassination allowed deep-seated tension between the Isaaq and the Dhulbahante to bubble to the surface. For years, the Isaaq deliberately annexed economic revenue to Western Somaliland outside of cities predominantly populated by the Dhulbahante. This underdeveloped region between Somaliland and Puntland was increasingly contested by local militias and the Somaliland Armed Forces. So, when the candidate was assassinated in 2023, a suspicion grew amongst the Dhulbahante that this was a direct attack by the Isaaq. This sentiment allowed conflict to erupt, and Isaaq dominance meant that the Dhulbahante suffered. One hundred eighty-five thousand were displaced, many fleeing to Ethiopia.
This institutionalized violence against the Dhulbahante is ingrained in uneven economic development, political disenfranchisement, and the securitization of aid from the international community. Yet, political discourse is bogged down in the probability of future consequences (piracy, terrorism, civil war, regional instability, etc.). Until we acknowledge that suffering has been mechanized by the institutions of a corrupt democracy, political probabilities will be traded in for moral obligations toward our allies defending “liberty and freedom.” To stop a chain of problematic recognitions, we must recognize what lies at the heart of Somaliland politics.
Featured Image Source: UNHCR/Diana Diaz