Somaliland is the largest unrecognised country, it’s a former British protectorate that merged with Somalia immediately after independence, and declared independence in 1991. It seems to have been doing a lot better than Somalia for the last 33 years, in that it’s semi-democratic and not having a civil war, but currently isn’t recognised by any UN member state.
Is this good or bad? Will it help Somaliland, and are other countries likely to follow in recognising them? Seems like a victory for self-determination, a principle that countries only support when it benefits them.
I’m not that clear on internal Somali politics. But have a vague idea about why he cares about Somalia.
Guess who is the is the Minnesota 5th District Representative is in the House of Representatives. Guess what Minnesota District has a significant Somali-American population.
So if this a contentious issue in the Somali diaspora, and I don’t know if it is, my theory is this all about Rep. Ilhan Omar.
Answering the OP rather than turning this into another anti-Trump thread like the previous posters.
I think it is important that the United States support a democratic state in the region. One it doesn’t hurt to have an ally that is a warlord and two maybe the concept of democracy will spread.
I admit that I also don’t know much about it, but the fact that the only country that supported its recognition is Ethiopia which was bribed with port access suggests that the conventional wisdom is that its probably not a good idea.
Somaliland has been a de facto independent state for decades. From the little I’ve read, it srrms to be a reasonably stable place, and they just had a free and fair election
The US and other countries are hesitant to recognize break away countries, to discourage other independence movements, but this might be a time to make an exception
Countries are usually reluctant to recognise breakaway regions of other nation states for fear of emboldening their own separatist elements. This is especially the case in Africa where borders were arbitrarily set by colonising countries rather than following ethnic divisions.
Ironically this actually isn’t the case in Somaliland. It unified with the former Italian Somalia because they are both Somali, but AIUI, after independence there was a power struggle between various clans that led to a civil war and then to Somaliland declaring independence.
Somalia is a mess. There are three main geographic regions: Somalia (former Italian colony), Puntland (also Italy) and Somaliland (former British colony). Neither Puntland, nor Somaliland recognize the government in Mogadishu; they both consider themselves independent states.
There’s also large clans that wield major influence, as well as Islamic terrorist Al-Shabaab that controls part of the territory. And that is the extent of my understanding of Somalia.
As for Puntland, this quote from Wiki indicates that Somaliland is less of a hell hole, as compared to the situation in Somalia proper:
Freedom House ranks the Somaliland government as partly free. Seth Kaplan (2011) argues that in contrast to southern Somalia and adjacent territories, Somaliland, the secessionist northwestern portion of Somalia, has built a more democratic mode of governance from the bottom up, with virtually no foreign assistance Specifically, Kaplan suggests that Somaliland has the most democratic political system in the Horn of Africa because it has been largely insulated from the extremist elements in the rest of Somalia and has viable electoral and legislative systems as well as a robust private sector-dominated economy, unlike neighbouring authoritarian governments.