i want to go on record in favor of somaliland independence. aside from the international recognition part, they really already have it. and anyone who case set up a stable democracy right next to a wreck like somalia that lasts for 15 years should be rewarded for the effort.
the only reason not to recognize somaliland as a separate nation is the "pandora's box" problem. most of the borders in africa don't make a lot of sense. they were drawn by europeans with little regard for the pre-colonial political or pre-existing ethnic boundaries. many african countries have separatist movements and the international community fears that if you let one separatist separate, it would give hope to all the others, pandora's box would open and the continent would descend into civil war and chaos. and so instead, the international community is committed to defending the existing african borders at all cost, locking people into disfunctional states even as they allow borders to change on other continents.
look at how differently the world reacted to rwanda and yugoslavia in the 1990s. the crises in those countries hit their tragic peak at roughly the same time. but the resolution was completely different. the international community endorsed the breakup of yugoslavia. the rwandans, on the other hand, were told to find a way to live together. partition of the country was never seriously on the table. and the hesitance to suggest such an outcome wasn't only because of the hardships it would cause on the rwandans, it was because leaders across africa were worried about what a breakup would inspire in their own countries.
it's not clear to me why people are not afraid that boundary changes outside of africa will inspire separatists movements inside africa, whereas the mere consideration of a breakup within africa is considered to be a dangerous provocation. in other words, not only does the pandora's box theory strike me as immoral (for it keeps people in a country they may not believe in), but it also contains a double-standard that implies that africa, somehow, is not part of the larger world.
the double-standard is especially clear when it comes to somaliland. as it happens, the somaliland/somalia situation is a little different from border problem facing the rest of the continent. arguably the pandora's box fears should not apply to it at all. and yet they do, simply because somalia and somaliland sit in africa and not somewhere else like eastern europe.
most other african countries lump together different ethnic groups within borders that were originally colonial administration districts. somaliland/somalia, on the other hand, is fairly homogeneous in population; the entire area is mostly ethnic somali. and the border the people in somaliland are trying to draw with somalia itself is a colonial-era border, not some newer creation.
in the colonial period the area where somalis live was divided into three protectorates, each ruled by a different european power: there was french somaliland, british somaliland, and italian somaliland. at independence, french somaliland stayed separate and became djibouti. british and italian somaliland, on the other hand, confederated and became somalia, thus erasing the colonial border between them. some people in the former british somaliland weren't happy with the confederation and tried to regain their independence.
when somalia descended into chaos in the early 1990s, they saw their chance and declared independence 15 years ago. in essence, all they did was redraw the colonial border that had been erased when british and italian somaliland combined to form somalia. even though they have made somaliland a very different place than the rest of somalia, a place that could serve as a model for the other somalia if given a chance to exist, no one will recognize the existence of that border. which is why somaliland is so paradoxical. the west, in this case are actually refusing to recognize a colonial border even as they hold other such borders in the rest of the continent as sacrosanct.
there's even a precedent for what somaliland is trying to do. in the early 1990s, as somaliland was declaring itself independent, the international community recognized the independence of eritrea from ethiopia. that split was justified as a non-pandora's box situation because a colonial border once ran between the two countries. eritrea's independence was seen as a unique exception to the policy of fixed african borders, unique because there was a european-draw line on a map at some point in its past to give the border some outside legitimacy.
except somaliland qualifies for exactly the same exception. i don't know why the world powers won't extend the exception to somaliland. maybe the problem is that somaliland declared independence at the wrong time, just as the international community was letting eritrea go and telling itself it was a unique situation that wouldn't open any pandora's box. if they recognized a second country at the same time, maybe they felt that would fatally undermine their fiction that eritrea was unique.
but it's been a decade and a half-since eritrea went free. while eritrea hasn't exactly been a success story (there was that bloody war with ethiopia all over an ambiguity in the colonial map that they used to draw the border), it didn't cause all of africa to explode with separatist movements either. besides, considering what a basket case somalia is, you really can't do any worse than recognizing an island of stability and democracy in a very troubled region.
