Episode 74: Why the global outrage at Israel's Somaliland recognition?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ask Haviv Anything – Episode 74

Title: Why the global outrage at Israel's Somaliland recognition?
Host: Haviv Rettig Gur
Date: December 31, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Haviv Rettig Gur examines Israel's decision to recognize Somaliland as an independent state and the intense international backlash that followed. Haviv delves into the political realities of Somaliland’s statehood, the historical context of its separation from Somalia, and the reasons for global resistance—especially from Western countries and African organizations. He uses Somaliland's story to challenge prevailing dogmas about statehood, legitimacy, and the international community’s selective engagement in Africa.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Israel’s Strategic Recognition of Somaliland

• Opening Context

  • [00:05] Four days prior to recording, Israel officially recognizes Somaliland.
  • [00:13] The move is described as “strategic,” largely due to Somaliland’s position near the Bab El Mandeb straits—vital for countering threats from the Houthis in Yemen.

• Metacommentary on Response

  • Haviv expresses surprise at the “mass across the board rejection” by the UK, African Union, and others.
  • He suggests that this reaction lays bare the international community’s “hypocrisy” and reveals its failure to understand regional complexities.
  • Quote:

    "The core is the hypocrisy. The west is very bad at looking at the Third World. It's very bad at looking at Africa. And the entire response to Somaliland really drives that point home." – Haviv [00:44]

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2. Understanding Somaliland: De Facto Statehood

• [01:36] Somaliland is described as a “de facto independent state” in the Horn of Africa, functioning separately from Somalia since 1991.

• Differentiation from ‘Failed States’

  • Somaliland has:
    • Its own government, parliament, courts, army, and currency (the Somaliland shilling)
    • Held repeated, open elections with real campaigns and opposition parties
    • A monopoly on legitimate violence, stable currency, and meaningful elite coordination

• Contrast with Somalia

  • Despite sharing ethnicity, religion (Sunni Muslim), and socioeconomic realities (pastoralism, poverty, clan structure) with Somalia, Somaliland remains far more stable.

  • Quote:

    "Why is Somalia a failed state if Somaliland can be successful without even international recognition or access to global financial exchanges?" – Haviv [03:14]

  • Somaliland's stability is presented as evidence against cultural or civilizational determinism.

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3. Historical Roots: British and Italian Somaliland

• [04:53] Somaliland and Somalia were distinct colonial territories—British and Italian, respectively.
  • They voluntarily united in 1960, but this union soon became detrimental for northern Somaliland.
  • The centralization of power in Mogadishu led to the north’s systematic marginalization, violence, and brutality—culminating in tens of thousands killed during the 1980s.
• Collapse of the Union
  • [05:52] As Somalia’s state collapsed in 1991, Somaliland’s only real option was to go its own way.

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4. Somaliland’s Unique Path to Stability

• Process of State-Building

  • Stability emerged from clan conferences and power-sharing arrangements, integrating customary law (“old customary law [...] was integrated into the formal institutions” [06:44]).
  • The process was slow, messy, not Western-led, but resulted in relatively free and stable governance, including “peaceful transfers of power and real opposition parties.”

• No Dependence on International Aid or Peacekeepers

  • Somaliland achieved stability and monetary management largely without external assistance.
  • Quote:

    “It did it all… without international recognition, without ever becoming dependent on aid, because it didn’t have access largely to aid, without peacekeepers. This should make us uncomfortable because it breaks a lot of the dogmas of the development industry.” – Haviv [07:19]

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5. International Hypocrisy & Underlying Motivations of Non-Recognition

• Geostrategic Interests & Western Inconsistency

  • [08:15] With the Bab El Mandeb Strait in chaos due to Houthi actions, stable Somaliland is in the direct interests of European and global trade.
  • Haviv questions why European countries will not recognize Somaliland despite the obvious benefits.
  • Quote:

    “Why would you turn that down? Why isn’t it being recognized by every European country that doesn’t want shipping from China to be hindered at the drop of a hat whenever the Houthis decide?” – Haviv [08:15]

• Civilizational Excuses Challenged

  • The refusal to recognize Somaliland perpetuates lazy narratives that blame African dysfunction on immutable factors, rather than failed political institutions or elite choices.
  • Somaliland disproves the notion that “Somalis are incapable of stable governance for some cultural, religious, spiritual, ethnic reason.”
  • Quote:

    “The variable isn’t culture in the broad sense. The variable is culture in the political sense. Institutions, incentives, elite behavior, expectations of polities and populations. That’s replicable, that’s learnable.” – Haviv [10:32]

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6. Recognition and the Message It Sends

• Reality Versus Fiction

  • Recognizing Somaliland would signal that “reality matters more than diplomatic ritual, that governance matters more than slogans, and that civilizational determinism ... is lazy thinking.”
  • Not recognizing Somaliland is portrayed as taking a stand against the will and experience of the vast majority of its population.
  • Quote:

    “If you don’t recognize Somaliland, you’re standing against the desires and will and history and experience of the vast majority of Somalilanders. You really want to do that?” – Haviv [11:45]

• Israel’s Position

  • Haviv expresses pride in Israel’s pragmatic approach to international realities by recognizing Somaliland.
  • Closing personal note:

    “Somalilanders, we are nothing alike. You are Somali and Muslim and African and all kinds of other words that I don’t share in my own civilizational history, but I feel like we’re a little bit alike. You made it work. I’m proud that at least my country recognizes that.” – Haviv [12:20]

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• [00:44]: “The core is the hypocrisy. The west is very bad at looking at the Third World.”
• [03:14]: “Why is Somalia a failed state if Somaliland can be successful without even international recognition or access to global financial exchanges?”
• [07:19]: “It did it all… without international recognition, without ever becoming dependent on aid…”
• [08:15]: “Why would you turn that down?... whenever the Houthis decide?”
• [10:32]: “The variable isn’t culture in the broad sense. The variable is culture in the political sense. Institutions, incentives, elite behavior, expectations of polities and populations.”
• [11:45]: “If you don’t recognize Somaliland, you’re standing against the desires and will and history and experience of the vast majority of Somalilanders. You really want to do that?”
• [12:20]: Closing: “Somalilanders, we are nothing alike... You made it work. I’m proud that at least my country recognizes that.”

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Timestamps for Core Segments

• [00:05] – Introduction: Israel’s recognition of Somaliland
• [01:36] – Somaliland’s status and political development
• [04:53] – Historical roots and collapse of the Somali union
• [06:17] – Somaliland’s functional statehood and distinct achievements
• [07:19] – Aid, development, and the breaking of dogmas
• [08:15] – Strategic value and Western hypocrisy
• [10:32] – The myth of civilizational determinism
• [11:45] – Legitimacy, recognition, and concluding reflections

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Tone & Style

Haviv’s tone throughout is direct, thoughtful, and critical—especially of Western diplomatic habits and developmental orthodoxies. He balances analytical depth with a conversational style, making complex historical and political realities accessible without oversimplifying them.

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Summary

This episode is an incisive look at a rarely discussed success story in the Horn of Africa and a searing critique of the international community’s approach to legitimacy and statehood. Haviv Rettig Gur challenges listeners to question the prevailing narratives about Africa and the geopolitics of recognition, arguing that Somaliland’s example should force a reckoning with both historical realities and present-day responsibilities.

Transcript

[A]

I'm recording. On December 30, four days ago, Israel officially recognized Somaliland as a separate country.

[B]

And it was a strategic move.

[A]

It has to do with their location near the Bab El Mandab Straits. It gives Israel some options when it comes to future fighting against the Houthis of Yemen. It's not complicated, it's not dramatic, but the response has really surprised me and got me to think that there's a lot happening in this region that really isn't well understood in the international community. And it's time to get into it. It's time for the international community to get a lot more serious. The response of the United Kingdom, the response of some members of the African Union and other African states, the response of the Palestinian Authority, this mass across the board rejection of Somaliland's existence as a state or the ability to recognize it as a state. It's fascinating and it matters. And it matters not because of Somaliland itself or because of the know, Israeli maneuvers in a strategic area that Israel has military and national security interests in. None of that is the core. The core is the hypocrisy. The west is very bad at looking at the Third World. It's very bad at looking at Africa. And the entire response to Somaliland really drives that point home. And I want to explain why I'm.

[B]

Going to try to do this without any romance utopianism. I'm not going to pretend Somaliland is Switzerland.

[A]

I'm also not going to pretend it's just another Somali warlord zone that declared independence for some tribal reason, because it isn't.

[B]

And the fact that it isn't tells us something really important.

[A]

Let's start with the basics.

[B]

Somaliland is a de facto independent state.

[A]

In the Horn of Africa.

[B]

It is basically northern Somalia up until 1991. It declared independence in 1991.

[A]

And since 1991, it has functioned to.

[B]

An astonishing extent, more than you could possibly demand or ask for as a separate polity. It has its own government, it has its own parliament, it has its own.

[A]

Courts, it has its own army, it.

[B]

Has its own currency, the Somaliland shilling.

[A]

It has elections.

[B]

Not perfect elections, sometimes delayed elections, but repeated, fair, open elections with real campaigns by opposition parties. And maybe most significant to being a state, it controls its territory. That already puts it in a different category from a whole lot of internationally recognized states. And I'm not just talking about the Palestinians. Here's what makes Somaliland really interesting, however. Not how it's different from its neighbors, but how it's the same Somaliland is ethnically Somali. It is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. It is clan based, whether you belong to one clan or another. And there's half a dozen matters more than a great many other categories in Somaliland. Just like, by the way, Somalia. It's mostly pastoral. It has a postcolonial economy. It's poor, in other words. There's nothing, I don't know what to call it, civilizationally different about Somaliland from Somalia. So why is it stable? Why is it more or less free? Why is it not radicalizing? There's no Al Shabaab in Somaliland. There are no jihadi mini emirates in Somaliland. There's no permanent civil war in Somaliland. Its currency is more stable even though it isn't traded in the international currency markets because it's not a recognized state. Are you getting this? The scale of the competence and the seriousness of the ruling elite of Somaliland and the fact that they have real elections, that fact alone should make us suspicious of a lot of lazy explanations, not about Somaliland, but about Somalia. Why is Somalia a failed state if Somaliland can be successful without even international recognition or access to global financial exchanges? Let's not romanticize it, okay? It's not a liberal democracy. It's not Scandinavia. It is a hybrid democratic system with a lot of tribal elements and a lot of other elements, but it has competitive elections, it has peaceful transfers of power, it has real opposition parties, and it has a functioning parliament.

[A]

This is a poor, unrecognized state with no international monetary fund safety net. And it managed to achieve monetary stability. Monetary stability is not a vibe. It's a signal of elite coordination, of institutional restraint. States that can't manage money, they can't manage anything. And states that can seriously manage their currency can manage everything else. Now let's get into why Somaliland declared independence in 1991. How did Somalia ever divide into the two countries?

[B]

It wasn't random.

[A]

It wasn't a secessionist whim. Somaliland was British ruled Somaliland and Somalia was Italian ruled Somaliland. They were separate colonial entities. They united voluntarily in 1960 to form the Somali Republic. It was a union of two distinct polities. But that union did very bad things for the northern part of that union, meaning Somaliland. It centralized power in Mogadishu in the south. It marginalized the northern clans. And in the 1980s, it became brutal, violent and authoritarian. There were bombings of northern cities, including Hargeisa. Clans were targeted that were associated with the north of the country. And tens of thousands of civilians were killed. So when The Somali state very quickly collapsed in 1991 because it was led by the leadership of the south into that state failure.

[B]

There was no functioning union left.

[A]

To remain in the union was domination by the south over the north in brutal authoritarian ways. And they were a distinct polity.

[B]

The border between Somaliland and Somalia is the pre1960 border. And the most important point, it worked. Somaliland spent the next 30 odd years.

[A]

Free, happy and far more stable and prosperous than Somalia.

[B]

And how does it function? Somaliland did not impose order in the north through a strong man, through foreign troops, through intervention, or even through international aid. The clans got together in conferences that produced power sharing arrangements. Old customary law, which is very much in power there, like in many other.

[A]

Places in East Africa and in the.

[B]

Middle east, were integrated into the formal institutions. It was a slow, messy process. It was not a Western process. It didn't produce a Western style constitution. But it created something stable, something almost free at an almost, almost Western democratic sense. Certainly trending in that direction. It achieved what Somalia never did. There's a monopoly on legitimate violence. There are predictable free and open politics. There's conflict resolution that isn't conducted through endless escalation into permanent states of civil war.

[A]

And it did it all. And this is really the message to Westerners of Somaliland without international recognition, without ever becoming dependent on aid, because it didn't have access largely to aid without peacekeepers. This should make us uncomfortable because it breaks a lot of the dogmas of the development industry. Why does Israeli recognition therefore make sense now? Obviously the geopolitics. The Bab El Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most strategic shipping lanes, where the lack of maritime security, the lack of stability in the Red Sea, actually massively hurt the European markets and shipping between China and Europe because of the Houthis. Being able to counter that from a separate state that is stable and free and open to international assistance in that regard is not a small thing.

[B]

Why would you turn that down? Why isn't it being recognized by every European country that doesn't want shipping from.

[A]

China to be hindered at the drop.

[B]

Of a hat whenever the Houthis decide what's going on here?

[A]

With Britain rejecting out of hand the idea that Somaliland might be an independent state. The second point that is in Israel's interest, counter radicalization. Somaliland is a Muslim society identical in the broader ethnic, linguistic and religious sense to Somalia, that actively rejects jihadist governance, that cooperates on security, that has internally suppressed extremist groups, and finally that's how the world should be run. Israel has always dealt with the de facto realities of the world because the formal fictions are luxuries of elites, luxuries of safe and powerful countries, luxuries of people who don't have to live in the real world, where the gap between the reality and the formal diplomatic fiction could produce genocides, could produce brutality, could produce tyranny, but the diplomatic fiction is intact. So everybody has to pretend like nothing is happening in Libya, like nothing is happening in Syria, like everything's fine in Yemen. Somaliland deserves to exist. Somalia lost its right to pretend that the union was sacred and sacrosanct, the union that existed barely 30 years and was brutal and deadly to the residents of the north. Pretending that Somaliland doesn't exist or somehow doesn't deserve to exist doesn't make anything better for Somalia, and it doesn't help regional stability in any way. Somaliland's borders are clear, they're grounded in history, they're non expansionist. Recognition won't fragment Somalia further because Somalia was never united in this sense. It would formalize what has always been the real divide within Somalia. And finally, recognition of Somaliland challenges the excuse, the civilizational excuse, that racist idea that Westerners often use to write off responsibility and accountability for the elites of the global south for failing to build and failing to stabilize and create functional polities. Somaliland is the example that blows up the idea that Somalis are incapable of stable governance for some cultural, religious, spiritual, ethnic reason. They're the same people, they're the same religion. So why do they have such radically different political outcomes? The variable isn't culture in the broad sense. The variable is culture in the political sense. Institutions, incentives, elite behavior, expectations of polities and populations. That's replicable, that's learnable. Somaliland proves that Somalia is a choice to be in the condition Somalia is in. The world needs to grasp that. Somalia needs to be told that. Maybe that's why there's so much anger and so much resistance to the idea that Somaliland should be recognized for the success story and also the rescue story that it is.

[B]

If you don't recognize Somaliland, you're standing against the desires and will of and history and experience of the vast majority of Somalilanders. You really want to do that. That's really the argument of international legitimacy and the international community.

[A]

If the world recognizes Somaliland, it'll be a statement that reality matters more than diplomatic ritual, that governance matters more than slogans, and that civilizational determinism that lets the elites of the Global south off the hook for their corruption and incompetence and deep failure is lazy thinking. I'm glad Israel recognized Somaliland Somalilanders. We are nothing alike. You are Somali and Muslim and African and all kinds of other words that I don't share in my own civilizational history, but I feel like we're a little bit alike. You made it work. I'm proud that at least my country recognizes that. Thanks for listening.