Somaliland’s president is leaving the United States without the formal recognition he sought for his self-declared republic. Nonetheless, he considers his trip a success.
In an interview with VOA’s Somali Service on Saturday, Muse Bihi Abdi said, “The most important thing to us that we discuss with people is recognition” as an independent sovereign nation separate from Somalia.
He arrived on March 13 for a series of meetings with US government officials, UN personnel, think tanks, and civil society leaders in the hopes of gaining support. Later this week, he intends to return to Somaliland.
While the Biden administration emphasized its commitment to a unified Somalia, it also hinted at the possibility of closer ties with Somaliland.
Bihi has invited the US to establish a diplomatic presence in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, which he was welcomed at a bipartisan congressional reception on Thursday.
Somaliland portrays itself as a relatively calm and stable partner in the volatile Horn of Africa region, where Somalia has been fighting al-Shabab militants for more than a decade and Ethiopia has been mired in civil war since November 2020.
The Heritage Foundation noted in introducing Bihi’s keynote address last week at the conservative think tank’s Washington offices that the breakaway state is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden, near Djibouti, which is home to the only permanent US military base in Africa and China’s first overseas base.
The talks have stalled.
In 1991, Somaliland declared independence from Somalia, which regards it as a northern breakaway region rather than a separate country. The two sides have held multiple rounds of talks, the most recent of which took place in Djibouti in June 2020, when they agreed to form technical committees to continue discussions. Since then, no meetings have taken place.
Bihi attributes the impasse to the Mogadishu government’s refusal to negotiate with Somaliland.
“Despite nine rounds of talks,” he said at the Heritage Foundation, “the status of Somaliland never materialized.”
Taiwanese relations
Bihi compared Somaliland’s situation to that of Taiwan, an East Asian self-governing island that China has regarded as part of its territory since the Communist takeover in 1949.
“Taiwan and the United States share a common goal. We are two countries that are not recognized by the international community “Bihi remarked.
According to Somaliland’s leader, the Taiwanese “are economically developed and educationally successful We must learn from their mistakes and how they dealt with them.”
In July 2020, Somaliland and Taiwan established diplomatic relations. “We’re thousands of miles apart but share a deep-seated love of freedom and democracy,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said at the time of the agreement to establish good relations.
The move was condemned by Somalia and China, which has veto power in the United Nations Security Council.