by Durga Velayudham
Reports of Israel’s recognition of Somaliland—whether already consummated or deliberately left in strategic ambiguity—should not be understood as a sudden diplomatic improvisation. Rather, they represent the possible public surfacing of a relationship that has existed quietly, intermittently, and deliberately below the radar for decades. If confirmed, such a move would not merely redraw a diplomatic map in the Horn of Africa; it would expose the mechanics of Israel’s long-standing security doctrine and Somaliland’s relentless, pragmatic search for survival in a hostile international system.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long argued that Israel’s security is shaped not only by its immediate borders but by distant chokepoints that determine the flow of trade, weapons, and influence. In past speeches on maritime security and regional deterrence, Netanyahu has repeatedly emphasized that Israel “cannot afford strategic blindness beyond its horizon.” Whether or not his words have now been explicitly attached to Somaliland, the logic behind them unmistakably points southward, toward the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This narrow maritime corridor is not peripheral to Israel’s security; it is existentially linked to it. Any disruption there threatens Israel’s access to Asia, its southern port of Eilat, and its integration into global trade routes.
Somaliland occupies a coastline overlooking this very artery. Unlike Somalia, from which it declared independence in 1991, Somaliland has built a functioning political order, maintained internal security, held elections, and kept Islamist insurgencies largely at bay. For Israel, a state whose foreign policy has historically favored stable, non-ideological partners over formally recognized but dysfunctional ones, this distinction matters more than international legal formalities. Israel has never been a strict prisoner of consensus diplomacy. From its early outreach to non-Arab states on the periphery of the Middle East to its early recognition of South Sudan, Israel has consistently prioritized de facto realities over de jure objections.
The roots of Israeli–Somaliland interaction stretch further back than commonly acknowledged. In June 1960, Israel formally recognized the State of Somaliland during its brief independence from Britain, before it voluntarily united with Italian Somalia days later. That recognition was not ideological; it was pragmatic. Even then, Israel understood the Horn of Africa as a strategic extension of the Red Sea basin. When Somaliland later reasserted its independence in 1991, it inherited that same geography—unchanged, unforgiving, and newly relevant.
Throughout the 1990s, Somaliland’s leaders quietly sought Israeli engagement. President Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, facing international indifference and regional hostility, reached out to Israel as part of a broader strategy to break diplomatic isolation. These overtures were never publicly embraced, but neither were they rejected with hostility. Silence, in this context, was itself a form of engagement. For Israel, maintaining plausible deniability while gathering information and preserving optionality has often been preferable to symbolic gestures that carry diplomatic costs.
What makes Somaliland particularly valuable to Israel is not ideology or shared identity, but predictability. Somaliland’s political elite is driven by survival, recognition, and economic development—not by transnational religious agendas. This sharply contrasts with Somalia proper, where Turkish, Qatari, and Islamist influences complicate any quiet security cooperation. In a region crowded by rival powers—Turkey with its military base in Mogadishu, Iran via Yemen and proxy networks, China in Djibouti—Israel’s margin for maneuver depends on finding partners outside dominant spheres of influence. Somaliland, diplomatically unencumbered and strategically exposed, fits this role almost too well.
From Somaliland’s perspective, Israel represents something even more fundamental: a breach in the wall of non-recognition. For over three decades, Somaliland has fulfilled many criteria of statehood while being denied its political rewards. Engagement with Israel—especially if elevated beyond quiet contacts—signals that recognition does not have to begin with the African Union or the United Nations. It can begin with a state that values control, intelligence, and strategic alignment over formal endorsements. Israel’s own history as a once-isolated state lends symbolic weight to this calculus, even if sentimentality plays little role in actual policy.
Critics argue that Israeli involvement in Somaliland would destabilize the region, antagonize Somalia, and violate African norms on territorial integrity. Yet these norms have long coexisted with selective exceptions driven by power politics. Eritrea, South Sudan, and Kosovo all emerged through similar contradictions. What distinguishes Somaliland is not the weakness of its claim, but the reluctance of established powers to upset existing alliances. Israel, less constrained by African diplomatic orthodoxy and already accustomed to operating under criticism, is uniquely positioned to absorb that cost.
The controversy, then, is not whether Israeli–Somaliland cooperation exists, but why its quietness has persisted for so long. The answer lies in mutual caution. Israel has little interest in provoking unnecessary backlash before securing tangible strategic benefits. Somaliland, meanwhile, cannot afford symbolic recognition that fails to cascade into broader legitimacy. Each side has waited for the other to move first, even as cooperation—intelligence sharing, maritime awareness, and informal security dialogue—has likely deepened incrementally and discreetly.
If recognition has indeed occurred, or is imminent, it would mark not a rupture but a revelation: the acknowledgment of a relationship shaped by geography more than ideology, by survival more than sentiment. It would confirm that in the modern international system, states at the margins often see each other more clearly than those at the center. Israel, navigating an increasingly contested Red Sea arena, and Somaliland, navigating a world that refuses to name it, have converged not out of romance, but out of necessity.
The real scandal is not the possibility of Israeli–Somaliland alignment. It is the fiction that such alignments do not already govern global politics. This relationship, secretive or emerging into daylight, underscores a blunt truth: recognition follows power, stability, and usefulness—not virtue, legality, or moral consensus. In that sense, Somaliland and Israel are not anomalies. They are mirrors, reflecting a world where survival is the first diplomacy, and visibility comes only after it is secured.
