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- 8 Hotly Disputed Borders of the World
Somaliland
Where is Somaliland located?
Is Somalia the same as Somaliland?
Who recognizes Somaliland?
Somaliland, historically, the area now comprising Somalia and Djibouti. The name is also used to refer to the Republic of Somaliland, a self-declared independent country in the Horn of Africa that has its capital at Hargeisa.
Historical region
The region probably formed part of the “Land of Punt” known to the ancient Egyptians. Between the 7th and the 12th centuries ce, cities such as Seylac and Berbera on the Gulf of Aden and Marka, Baraawe, and Mogadishu along the Indian Ocean served as trading ports in a region that the Arab Islamic world called bilad al-Barbar (“country of the Barbar”), Barbar (also Berber, Barbaroi) being a name for the Somali people of the region based on the descriptions of the inhabitants of the area found in the Greek document Periplus Maris Erythraei (1st century ce; “Navigation of the Erythrean [i.e., Red] Sea”). Those medieval cities exported gums and resins, ostrich feathers, and enslaved people and waged war against the Christian Ethiopians of the interior. The Somali, who occupied those areas alongside other groups, had begun adopting Islam in the 7th century, and the religion became firmly entrenched in the centuries that followed. The occupants of the cities organized themselves into sultanates such as Adal, centered at Seylac, and Ajuran, centered at Mogadishu.
The division of Somali territories among Great Britain, France, and Italy formed part of the wider Scramble for Africa, a period in the late 19th century when European powers competed for colonial territory across the continent.
When the European nations began to partition Africa among themselves during the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, France already possessed (from 1862) a coaling station at Obock near the mouth of the Red Sea, other areas of the north coast were occupied by Egypt, and southern Somaliland recognized the overlordship of the sultan of Zanzibar. By the end of the 1880s France had expanded its holdings to the area of present Djibouti, Britain had established a protectorate over the north coast opposite its base at Aden, and Italy controlled the remainder of the country.
In the north the Muslim leader Sayyid Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan began a war against the British in 1899 and maintained his hold over the interior until his death in 1920. The Italians acquired Jubaland in the extreme south after World War I (1914–18), and in 1936 they united their Somali possessions with Ethiopia to form Italian East Africa. The British won control of the Italian zone during World War II (1939–45).
In 1960 British and Italian Somaliland were united to form the independent Republic of Somalia. (French Somaliland (renamed the French Territory of the Afars and Issas in 1967) became independent as the Republic of Djibouti in 1977.) Independence for the British and Italian holdings in Somaliland in 1960 occurred within a broader wave of African decolonization following World War II, when European empires dissolved and dozens of new countries emerged across the continent.
Republic of Somaliland
Following the civil war that began in Somalia in the 1980s and the subsequent overthrow of that country’s government in 1991, a government opposition group, the Somali National Movement, secured the region comprising the former British Somaliland. In May 1991 they announced that the 1960 federation was no longer valid and declared their region to be an independent state, henceforth to be known as the Republic of Somaliland. Though it was not internationally recognized, Somaliland experienced relative stability early on—a sharp contrast to the civil war that continued to engulf Somalia. Taking advantage of that stability, in the following years the Somaliland government was able to rebuild much of the region’s infrastructure, which had been damaged by years of warfare, and established its own currency and flag.
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Conflict with Puntland and internal disputes
Since the late 1990s there has been tension between Somaliland and Puntland (an area in the northeastern part of Somalia, which declared itself an autonomous region in 1998). Each disputed the other’s claim to territory in the Sanaag and Sool regions and the southern part of the Togdheer region, called Ayn or Cayn, and armed confrontations have periodically ensued. Armed clashes have also occurred between Somaliland troops and forces representing local areas attempting to separate from the self-declared independent republic, particularly after 2009, when the predominant clan in the contested areas of Sanaag, Sool, and Cayn formed a regional government under the name SSC. The SSC leaders viewed their administration as falling under Somalia’s then transitional federal government and not a part of either Somaliland or Puntland.
Battles with Somaliland forces and internal dissent contributed to SSC’s collapse within two years. It was reformed in 2012 as the Khaatumo State of Somalia, though this new version also faced similar challenges. A 2017 agreement between a weakened Khaatumo leadership and Somaliland saw the latter able to reassert control in much of the area in the following years. In early 2023 the region once again asserted itself as separate from Somaliland, under the name SSC-Khaatumo, with the goal of being part of Somalia. The federal government recognized SSC-Khaatumo on an interim basis later that year and, in 2025, as a federal member state under the name North East State. Somaliland, as well as Puntland, rejected the creation of the new state, maintaining their claims on the territory, which added to existing tensions with the federal government. In January 2026 Somalia’s Pres. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud officially recognized the North East State as a full federal member state in the Federal Republic of Somalia.
Relationship with the federal government and the quest for international recognition
In 2001, 10 years after breaking away from Somalia, Somaliland still was not internationally recognized as an independent country. Undeterred, the government held a referendum that year, the results of which clearly showed that Somaliland’s inhabitants supported the region’s claim of independence. International resistance to recognizing Somaliland as an independent country has been rooted, in part, in the preference of the African Union (and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity) to maintain the colonial borders at the time of independence and wider concerns that recognizing Somaliland’s independence would set an unwelcome precedent that might see other separatist groups attempt to secede from their home countries, which could trigger unrest and instability.
International mediation attempts to reunify Somalia were made over the years, but the Somaliland government rejected invitations to participate in such talks, maintaining that its independent status precluded it from being a party to such discussions. Fresh efforts to encourage dialogue between Somaliland and Somalia began in 2012 and continued on and off for more than a decade but bore little fruit. An agreement was reached in late December 2023 that signaled a commitment by both sides to continue discussions, which sparked cautious optimism.
The sensitive question of Somaliland’s political status came to the fore in early January 2024, when it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Ethiopia, under which the latter country would lease coastal land from Somaliland and build a naval base. The MOU also reportedly included a provision for Ethiopia to recognize Somaliland’s independence at some point. News of the MOU infuriated Somalia, dousing any goodwill stemming from the December 2023 agreement and exacerbating tensions between the two sides. It also led to a diplomatic dispute between Somalia and Ethiopia that was not resolved until a year later.
Somaliland’s political status was the center of a new controversy when, in December 2025, Israel became the first country to recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent country and established diplomatic relations with it. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel’s agreement with Somaliland was “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” which are a series of agreements to normalize relations between Israel and several states with Muslim-majority populations, and Somaliland affirmed its intention to accede to the accords. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland was met with strong condemnation from Somalia’s government, which called it an attack on its sovereignty; other countries and international organizations, such as the African Union and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, also criticized the development and affirmed their support for Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.