A (0:00)

Welcome to the Watchfuler. I'm Sarah Adams. This is where we break down global events, emerging threats and geopolitical shifts. We prioritize what you need to know, why it matters, and we leave all the noise out of it. Before we get started, here's what you need to know. Today, Somaliland is being treated like a sideshow when it isn't. Recognizing the state of Somaliland isn't about symbolism. It's about access, leverage and control. What happens in Somaliland is gonna affect international politics. It's gonna impact Chinese and Gulf state trade and commerce. It's going to potentially cause concerns with the terrorist safe havens operating in the Horn of Africa. So let's talk about what actually is happening, right? What's really going on in Somalia. What's Lets just first roll a clip. Mr. Netanyahu, president of Israel became the first country to recognize us. Thank you very much, Mr. Netao, thank you very much. I am waiting 35 years now that's this recognition. And I am thanking to our President, Mr. Abdurrahman Ira, to recognize our country. I am saying thank you, Mr. Netiyahu, thank you very much. This story doesn't begin with Israel. It doesn't begin with geopolitics, shipping lanes, or even this diplomatic recognition. That's all the buzz this last week. It actually begins with mass graves, flattened cities, and a population that learned through firsthand experience that waiting on the international community to intervene would be fatal. You know, for more than three decades, Somaliland has existed, existed in this really strange diplomatic limbo. It governs itself, it secures its own borders, it holds its own elections, it fights against terrorism, and it maintains internal stability in a region that's known for chaos. Yet it's being treated like it doesn't even exist, largely because it forces our policymakers to be confronted with a very interesting question. Right? Success doesn't seem to always come when there's international intervention. Somaliland didn't get it right. But the failure next door, Somalia got plenty of it, you know, and they have needed endless and constant support. And so this is something we really have to spend some time talking about. And we will today. You know, when Israel recognized Somaliland, they didn't create some new state.

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I want you to know that. I'm sorry. Signing now as we speak, Israel's official recognition of Somaliland and its right of self determination, our friendship is seminal and historic.

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It was a political reality since 1991. And it was really a decision that everybody's been kind of just pushing to the back Burner and not really dealing with. And it's so much more than symbolism. It's kind of the fact that for all these years, we've really ignored this rare success story in a region where we're, like I said, funding kind of this failure next door. And I really want to talk a little bit about Somaliland and Somalia. So it's a little clearer to you to understand why Somaliland exists. There's two key pieces I want you to understand. First off, the country of Somalia never legally completed the process to basically form a union with Somaliland, and we'll explain that to you. The second is the Somali state basically carried out massacres against its own citizens in the north. And I want to talk to you about that, because that is why Somaliland exists. It didn't have some ambitious goals to go do its own thing. It needed to protect its people. Right. They were being massacred. So let's just go back and briefly talk about 1960. So at that time, Somaliland got a small bit of independence for the 75 years prior. They're a British protectorate, and what that means is they kind of controlled their internal politics and dynamics. And then the British government did things like kind of like global security treaties, those type of things for Somaliland. So when that ended, there was kind of an interest to combine Somaliland, which I told you, kind of had like, British control in Somalia, which was really acting like an Italian protectorate. And it was like, let's put them together and form this Union. So from 1960 to 1999, it was never ratified to bring these two kind of protectorates together into a nation. It was discussed, but there was no constitutional amendment, there was no kind of vote on it, et cetera. So it's a really interesting thing people don't talk about. Back in maybe like, 2005, the African Union did a whole study and actually went back and looked at all the paperwork and said, yeah, this really was not, never ratified. It is not legal for Somalia to say they own or control or have some sort of rights over Somaliland. But even then, the African Union kind of wimped out, and they didn't really give him any kind of recognition. They still kind of view Somaliland through kind of the leadership of Somalia. Right. So even though they said that, they didn't really help to correct the situation in any way. So they were basically kind of operating this entire time as separate legal entities. And now what really happened then is there was multiple things. First off, I want to talk to you again about those massacres. So from about 1987 to 1989, there was kind of this military dictator running Somalia. His name is Saeed Barre, okay? He started systematic campaigns of violence against the northern populations in Somalia. And he targeted like the two major population centers there. And at the time, the majority of people were the Ishak clan. Okay? So that clan now is basically the population of Somalia. So he starts bombing them, he hits the two major cities, he pretty much wipes out Hargasse at the time. And the numbers are pretty staggering. So conservative estimates say he killed about 50, 50 to 100,000. But when you talk to kind of locals and investigators who've really put time into this, they said, no, the number is about 200,000. In addition to that, 400 to 500,000 people had to completely flee Somalia, right? Because it was now no longer safe to live where they were from, where they grew up, you know, where their parents raised them. And so a lot of them ended up going into Ethiopia. So this was also one of the largest kind of mass, forced, mass migrations in North African history ever. And it's very ironic that we now have this situation where Israel goes and declares recognition, Somalia pushes the United nations to kind of hold this event, to say, hey, is this allowed? Is this legal? The UN came back and really said, it is legal. You aren't technically or legally unit of Somalia. And then it was interesting, Tammy Bruce from the United States kind of came out and said, yeah, it's okay if Israel chooses who to negotiate with, do business with, recognize Israel has the same right to conduct diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state. Earlier this year, several countries, including members of this council, made the unilateral decision to recognize a non existent Palestinian state. And yet no emergency meeting was called. She didn't go as far as to say the United States would recognize Somaliland. But you know, we've had close relationships with the nation. They have done a lot of the things we've asked of them and we'll talk about some of their successes today. And then they've done a really great job of doing counterterrorism operations with us, you know, as terrorists have really taken hold in Somalia. And I've spent some time talking about this, right? We have over 50% of the country of Somalia is controlled by Al Shabaab, which is Al Qaeda's affiliate. And then about 5 to 8% is controlled by ISIS. So the state of Somalia doesn't even control the majority of its own country, Right? It doesn't even have a 50% ownership in its country. There's so many other crazy things. When you look at some of the numbers like Al Shabaab brings in more money than the entire country of Somalia. They have a higher gdp. They pay like their mid level commanders what would be equivalent to $60,000 a year in US dollars. Right. That's in a third world country. So it's also not just the fact that this terrorist group has so much control, like they're thriving. They're a billion dollar enterprise and they really run the country in very large pieces of the country, like the mafia would do. Right. They collect taxes, they have courts, they set up a lot of like tolls and stuff that you have to pay. That's on top of the Somali government already being involved in so much corruption. I mean, even when I go back and talk about the un so the Somali representative to the UN, amazingly, is now going to be the head of the United Nations Security Council, which is crazy. So Somalia is going to lead the United Nations Security Council when there's a very high percentage chance Al Qaeda will take their country in the year 2026. But they have a seat to tell the rest of us, this is what's best for your national security. That's really ironic. The other thing is the rep to the un, he's a dual US citizen. Now a lot of people don't understand how this works. So this corruption doesn't matter if it's Somalia in all these locations. When we give these billions of dollars to these countries, it gets pilfered out in so many ways. So one that's very, very famous in Somalia is we send money. And African Union pays a lot, the United nations pays a lot to fund and arm and train their military kind of to do this terrorism fight that they're really failing at. So what they'll do is they'll say, hey, we need funds to pay. Let's say it's this detachment of troops, there's 20,000 of them. Please fund it. And so they'll get the funding from the international community. And that unit didn't have 20,000 troops. They had 4,5000. So what happens with all the money to pay the 15,000 troops? It gets stolen by these corrupt politicians and a lot of it leaves the country and it goes places like the Emirates. Right? There's a lot of money laundering, unfortunately, as counterterrorism, humanitarian dollars go in, such large percentages come out. So there's a lot of schemes like this. Another one is the elites took in a lot of this money and benefited themselves. And then what they did with it is they basically took control of the institutions. So, like, if it was the United States, it would be like, okay, now they're in control of the State Department and you can't like vote them out or they're, you know, in control of the Department of War and you can't vote them out. Right. Cause all this money that came to them made them powerful and corrupt. And then the irony is because everybody's of course thinking Somali fraud. We all know it now. It's happening here. Well, their representative of the un, the ones who's a dual citizen, literally has a child care center in Ohio. So he's not only a part of fraud and corruption in his own country. Right. He's likely committing the same acts here. So it's just this very, very frustrating thing to watch kind of Somalia continue to misuse U.S. taxpayer dollars. But then next door, Somaliland has really done a great job of building their own nation and we haven't recognized them yet. I wanna talk a little bit about those things that went right, okay. First off, when this military dictator, Barre was killing all these people, I know people have the question in their mind, well, the US didn't intervene, it didn't get involved, it was a genocide. Unfortunately, our government was still in that like Cold War mentality then. And unfortunately with Barre, there was this belief then, hey, it's the devil we know, right? Let's stick with him. We know him, we have access to him. He's. It'll be reliable how he deals with things. And yes, these Ishak people were killed, but that's an acceptable loss. I mean, I know that's a horrible way to say it, but that's how they reviewing it. You know, it's in the early 90s, right after all of this went down. Another thing is, even present day, the US is almost like an absolutionist when it comes to a country's borders. So our government says those are solid borders unless an institution like the United nations or whomever redraws these borders. We are viewing countries borders as they are. That's just our policy. And then so they view the country of Somalia all as one and all in control. And they don't technically view Somaliland as separate, even though of course there are a lot of people within the US government pushing for this recognition. But I just want you to understand, like a little bit of the thinking now. In 1991, after all this occurred, these massacres and everything, Somalia collapsed. Okay? So that was really the point. Then Somaliland said, hey, we never joined As a union, you can't get your stuff together, right? We are going to govern ourselves. And remember, they didn't secede from Somalia. They had never legally joined. So that's the time Somaliland declared independence. And they really started kind of withdrawing from the chaos that was happening in Somalia. And they said, hey, we have to find a path forward. How is it going to be? And the path forward they chose was kind of like self determination, self reliance, while Somalia chose the path forward of like, relying on the international community to come and bail it out. So I want to explain how these two things work. Okay? So if you're relying on the international community to bail you out, that means you're getting IMF loans, World bank loans, you get UN peacekeeping troops, et cetera, obviously US counterterrorism dollars and funding. All these pockets of money come in to help sustain your government. And then that comes, as you can imagine, with a lot of strings tied. Lots of times, for example, these Western governments and authorities have a very strong control over, like, how you form your government, how you write a constitution, how you put your parliament together. We saw a lot of this happen after 9, 11 when we went into Afghanistan. You know, the international community pushed really hard to have some of this control. Of course, you know, when Libya kicked off, they really didn't get the control they wanted, but they wanted to kind of repeat the same type of thing. So that's what it looks like when there's international intervention that come in, save the day. And then, of course, there's downsides to that, right? You have now donors. All these countries are giving you money. You have to appease the donors in some way. And there's so much corruption in that. You know, you really are almost giving up some of your sovereignty. I mean, think about it. In Somalia, when they choose a leader, it's kind of through clans, but when they're making the agreements and the deals, it's like foreign soldiers standing around them. It's this very interesting situation. Now, when we talk about Somaliland, they never asked for kind of international support or recognition. So that's a little more complicated. Right? They didn't have a bunch of money flowing in to throw out these problems. They had to do things the hard way, but they did it very smartly in a number of ways. One I want to talk about, because I think it's super important. So. So they decided to kind of have this ruling body which, like, was these council of elders. Okay? This is extremely important. So Somaliland is a Muslim majority country. Well, the one Thing you worry about when you're kind of a fragile state is of course Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood, terrorist groups like Al Qaeda back then, and other historic groups, you know, in the 90s coming in, influencing your population and taking their own control of the situation. Right. Because terrorists get the best benefits from weak states. Even after Israel declared Somaliland's like recognition, Al Shabaab of course immediately started making threats against Somaliland and Israel because they need a weak state. That's why they thrive and survive in Somalia. Right. They understand this principle. So anyway, what they did is so they have this council of elders. Now what a lot of people do when they make the mistake is they start building a government more based kind of on religious authority. And that's when these outside actors, especially Muslim Brotherhood, swoop in, they provide religious scholars. You know, it could be from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is very forward leaning in this. Right. That's why we see all these like madrasas in South Asia. Saudi Arabia saw the opportunity came in. The governments didn't have a lot of money at the time to fund education. Like we'll give you money to pay for schools. They just have to be these Islamist madrasas and da da da, da da. So it's a very interesting way kind of the Islamists move in. Well, it's also then how you bring the ideology in. Right? It's a lot different in societies that have kind of a religious undertone to listen to and believe the person who's interpreting their holy book. Right. Of course, in this case, this is the Quran and they can really manipulate it the way they want, you know, if they're given enough power and influence. I mean, the Grand Mufti in Libya right now is a member of Al Qaeda. And he's not just some religious authority in the country. He makes decisions on the oil industry, on trade, on commerce. You know, on real political issues. It's actually a scary thing to think about. So anyway, Somaliland nipped this in the butt right away. And it's like, no, we have these councils of elders. They love and respect their nation. We believe they'll do right by the people. So then over time they were able to put their own constitution together to create their own currency, to create their own police and security forces. And so over time they really made their own legitimacy. And as you can imagine, they're really only answering to the people in the community because there's none of this outside money and outside donors coming in. So if you don't deliver for your people, you're not going to stay in charge. So they've done a really good job of keeping a stable government. They also have done a good job of kind of peaceful transitions of power. Now, not everything in Somaliland's been perfect. Some processes have gone slow. There have been a lot of complaints that they had maybe too much control of the media, those type of things. So I'm not calling this a perfect situation, but what I'm telling you is there's been a lot of success, right? They run their own government, secure their borders. I told you, they pushed back on extremism. They kept the Muslim Brotherhood out, which is a huge success, especially when you're really just billing your governments, and they offer you so many different type of things. It's super important. They also made sure they dealt with tribal and clan rivalries, and they brought them to the table. They negotiated through problems instead of using force and violence and coercion. Right? And they made the society that was able to govern itself. It had courts, tax system, you know, and all the enforcement mechanisms you would expect. So now we're kind of at this point, and a lot of people are kind of questioning Somaliland's existence. But I really think the question needs to be, hey, if for almost 35 years this country could take care of themselves just on their own, they were able to govern. They kept terrorists out. We have a good relationship with them. What do you actually have to do for the international community to give you recognition or to reward you in some way? Because we spend so much time rewarding failed states. And Somaliland isn't the only country who really needed recognition. We had Eritrea, South Sudan, et cetera, in those cases. Really interesting, they massively failed. And then the international community had to come in and be the saviors. Well, with Somaliland, they never asked for any saviors. So they also don't owe a bunch of people a bunch of things, which is a really interesting thing. So I thought I was explaining it to you today so you understood it and you understood kind of like, this is a long time coming, this recognition. I really think we're going to see a lot more assuming, like the United Arab Emirates are probably going to be the next to recognize. They think of things very pragmatically. You know, Somaliland is in a key hub, right, for international shipping and trade. And then, of course, you know, leaders from Somaliland were just meeting with the US Government, and I think there's still getting to at least be discussions of maybe more formalized agreements with them as a government. Now, as you can imagine Somalia isn't happy at all.