Recognition in the Shadow of Erasure

In Recognition in the Shadow of Gaza, published by Geeska, Sulekha Mahmoud Egal frames Israel’s recognition of Somaliland primarily as a strategic recalibration designed to divert attention from atrocities in Gaza. However, this interpretation overstates Israel’s motivations and incorrectly situates Somaliland as merely an instrumental pawn in a broader media or diplomatic maneuver, flattening a political reality that long predates the current regional crisis. Even if Israel’s decision is partly shaped by regional security calculations, including its posture toward Iran and the Houthis in Yemen, that does not invalidate nor fully explain the accumulated historical, legal, and political basis of Somaliland’s claim to sovereignty. To cast Israel’s recognition of Somaliland solely as a diversion not only strips Somaliland of political agency but also obscures its longstanding struggle for statehood and sovereignty, as well as the domestic institutions, elections, diplomatic engagements, and constitutional processes that have shaped Somaliland’s statehood over the past three decades. Treating recognition exclusively as a geopolitical diversion risks erasing Somaliland’s political agency and reducing its existence to a function of external ideological struggles.

The framing issue emerges at the level of both title and presentation. By situating Somaliland’s recognition “in the shadow of Gaza,” the title establishes Gaza as the primary interpretive frame through which Somaliland’s political development is to be understood. This implicitly positions Somaliland’s claim to sovereignty as derivative or morally contingent upon an external conflict, rather than as the outcome of its own historical trajectory. Titles function as analytical cues, it orients the reader toward particular hierarchies of relevance. In this case, the title predisposes the reader to assess Somaliland’s recognition less on its legal and political merits than on its perceived proximity to an unrelated humanitarian catastrophe.

This interpretive hierarchy is further reinforced by the cover image. Although the image depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President of Somaliland Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi formalizing recognition, the visual composition prominently places a Palestinian flag and the word “genocide” in the background, framing the act of recognition within the moral symbolism of Gaza rather than highlighting Somaliland’s own political and historical achievements.The effect is not merely illustrative but analytical, inviting the reader to associate Somaliland’s political moment with Israel’s conduct elsewhere before engaging with the substance of the argument. Notably absent from the visual frame are references to Somaliland’s own historical experiences of state violence, mass civilian harm, or post-conflict political reconstruction. As a result, the image reproduces the same asymmetry embedded in the title: Somaliland appears not as an autonomous political subject, but as a secondary site whose legitimacy is mediated through another people’s suffering.

The central problem with this framing is not its scrutiny of Israel’s motives, but its implication that Somaliland’s recognition acquires meaning only in relation to Gaza. In this construction, Somaliland appears less as a political society forged through decades of governance, reconciliation, and democratic practice, and more as a marginal and morally compromised space whose sovereignty must be suspended until broader regional injustices are resolved. Public celebrations in cities such as Hargeisa, Erigavo, and Burco are dismissed as spectacle rather than understood as expressions of long-deferred political aspiration after more than thirty years of diplomatic exclusion. By this standard, many existing states would struggle to justify their sovereignty at the moment of recognition, since the international system has long been shaped not by the resolution of all regional injustices but by the convergence of realpolitik, legal precedent, and political reality often in the shadow of moral inconsistencies. To demand that Somaliland meet a higher ethical threshold than that historically required of other states imposes an impossible metric that obscures the ordinary, if imperfect, logic through which sovereign entities have come into being.

What is also largely absent from this analysis is the historical record that makes Somaliland’s claim not opportunistic, but structurally grounded. There is no sustained engagement with the collapse of the Somali Republic as to why it collapsed nor with the systematic state violence that precipitated Somaliland’s withdrawal from the union and its reassertion of sovereignty within its 1960 borders. From the late 1980s through 1991, the Somalia military regime carried out mass aerial bombardments of Hargeisa and Burco, destroyed civilian infrastructure, displaced hundreds of thousands, and killed an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 civilians according to international sources, while local estimates place the death toll at over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. These crimes were extensively documented by Africa Watch and Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch, Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People (1990).

By omitting this history, Somaliland’s assertion of sovereignty is rendered politically suspect, while Somalia’s claim to territorial legitimacy is implicitly normalized. This omission is particularly striking given Somalia’s contemporary conduct in international forums. During recent United Nations deliberations following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, Somalia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Abukar Dahir Osman, publicly rejected the characterization of the late-1980s atrocities as genocide, insisting they constituted a “civil war.” He further condemned references to the Isaaq genocide as “outrageous” and an “insult,” even as Somalia presents itself as a moral authority on genocide and international law. Thus, while Somalia officials denounce Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as unethical and immoral on the grounds that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the Somalia state simultaneously refuses to acknowledge and in some cases actively denies — the genocide committed by the Somalia military against the Isaaq population in the late 1980s. The resulting moral inconsistency is difficult to ignore, claims to ethical legitimacy are mobilized to delegitimize Somaliland externally while disavowing historical violence internally.

Somalia’s opposition to Somaliland’s recognition is therefore not grounded in ethical consistency. The Somali government hosts the largest Turkish military base outside Turkey, aligns diplomatically with China, and has participated in efforts that obscure China’s repression of Uyghur Muslims. Somalia delegations, including state-affiliated media officials, have taken part in tightly managed tours of Xinjiang designed to project the narrative that no persecution exists, despite overwhelming evidence of mass surveillance, forced indoctrination, and cultural destruction. More broadly, Somalia maintains cooperative political and military relationships with states that are themselves implicated in genocide whether historically, as in the case of Turkey’s genocide of Armenians (internationally recognized and condemned by UN bodies), or contemporarily, as in the case of China’s treatment of Uyghurs yet invokes the ethics of genocide to oppose Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. The result is an ethical standard in which engagement with states responsible for genocide is acceptable so long as such engagement does not facilitate Somaliland’s international recognition. These actions reveal a foreign policy driven by strategic expediency rather than principled opposition to injustice.

Historical context further exposes the selective nature of today’s outrage. During the 1980s, while the Somalia military regime carried out mass violence and genocide against Somaliland’s civilian population, multiple Arab states including Libya supplied the regime with weapons that enabled the destruction. On 13 October 1988, the Somali National Movement’s UK office sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar alleging that Libya under Muammar Gaddafi had supplied lethal nerve agents to the Siad Barre regime for use against civilians in Somaliland following aerial bombardments reported by the international press and the BBC.

At the same time, much of the international community stood by as Somaliland’s cities were bombed to rubble and its civilian population targeted by a state-sponsored campaign of extermination. Notably, Israel was among the very few states that raised these crimes directly at the United Nations. In correspondence to the UN Security Council, Israel’s Permanent Representative, Ambassador Yohanan Bein, explicitly drew attention to atrocities committed against the Isaaq population, including the Jasiira (Jazeera) Massacre. In his letter, Bein underlined reports stating:

“Reports indicate that the targets of this execution were members of the Isak clan, randomly selected and identified by their accents.”

This intervention stands in stark contrast to the silence or material complicity of many Arab states that today invoke moral authority to oppose Somaliland’s recognition. For decades thereafter, Somaliland petitioned Arab and Muslim states for recognition or engagement and was met largely with indifference. The sudden invocation of moral alarm when Israel extends recognition thus reflects not ethical consistency, but a long-standing double standard rooted in selective memory.

Parallel to this has been the spread of propaganda claiming that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland entails the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza or the establishment of Israeli military bases. These claims have been repeatedly and unambiguously denied by all relevant parties. Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Sa’ar, stated publicly in an interview with Channel 14 that Palestinian relocation to Somaliland is not under discussion, emphasizing that “there is no agreement, no plan, and no talks regarding the transfer of Gazans to Somaliland.” He clarified unequivocally that such emigration “is not part of any arrangement.”

The Government of the Republic of Somaliland has issued equally categorical denials. Responding to allegations made by Somalia’s president, Somaliland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated: “The Government of the Republic of Somaliland firmly rejects false claims alleging the resettlement of Palestinians or the establishment of foreign military bases on Somaliland’s territory. These baseless allegations are intended to mislead the international community and undermine Somaliland’s diplomatic progress. Somaliland remains committed to regional stability and peaceful international cooperation.”

Israel’s formal recognition statement made no reference to any quid-pro-quo conditions, security arrangements, population transfers, or military concessions. The persistence of these allegations, despite repeated public denials, suggests they function less as evidence-based analysis and more as deliberate political messaging aimed at mobilizing regional sentiment.

This selective application of principle is further illustrated by the official position of the Palestinian Authority. On 27 December 2025, the State of Palestine reaffirmed its full support for Somalia’s “unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” and rejected Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. President Mahmoud Abbas framed the move as a threat to Somali sovereignty and praised Arab positions opposing it, alleging it formed part of attempts to displace Palestinians.

The contradiction is stark. While Palestinians rightly demand international recognition of their own right to self-determination, their leadership simultaneously rejects Somaliland’s right to the same principle despite Somaliland’s distinct history, borders, population, and decades of independent governance. Self-determination cannot function as a universal moral claim when invoked for one people and dismissed as illegitimate for another.

Some political and media discourses sympathetic to the Palestinian cause reinforce this inconsistency by condemning denial of Palestinian statehood while excusing or endorsing Somalia’s denial of Somaliland’s existence.

Acknowledging these contradictions does not minimize Palestinian suffering, nor does it imply that diplomatic recognition constitutes moral absolution. Somaliland’s leadership must nonetheless remain attentive to reputational risks associated with timing and perception, particularly within Arab and Muslim public opinion. A responsible diplomatic posture requires clarity: no population resettlement schemes, no coercive security arrangements, and no moral endorsement of atrocities elsewhere. Somaliland’s Foreign Ministry has articulated these red lines publicly, and they must remain central to its international messaging.

Ultimately, Somaliland’s pursuit of recognition is not a tactical maneuver born of marginality, but the culmination of decades of survival, reconciliation, democratic governance, and state-building under conditions of near-total international neglect. To subordinate this reality entirely to the “shadow of Gaza” is not an act of moral seriousness; it is an act of erasure of history, of political agency, and of the institutional achievements that have allowed a functioning polity to emerge where collapse might otherwise have been expected. It is also an erasure of the basic fact that Somaliland’s claim to sovereignty did not originate with Israel’s decision, nor with the current geopolitical moment, but with a political settlement forged in decades and sustained through repeated elections, peaceful transfers of power, constitutional development, and a durable social contract.

To reduce Somaliland’s recognition to a symbolic diversion, or to treat it as meaningful only insofar as it refracts other regional injustices, is to collapse an entire political project into someone else’s narrative architecture. States are rarely born under morally pristine circumstances; they come into being through a mixture of legality, negotiation, realpolitik, and the accumulated weight of political reality. Somaliland is no exception, but neither is it an aberration. In this context, to dismiss or defer its claim to sovereignty because the international system is morally imperfect is not principled restraint—it is a refusal to confront how sovereignty has always been constituted.

And erasure, however elegantly or ethically presented, remains erasure.

• Editorial note: The article Recognition in the shadow of Gaza appears with a title and cover image chosen by the editorial team. The author had no involvement in the selection of either the title or the cover image.