by Diana Mwango   

11-July-2007: For 16 years since Somaliland declared self-independence and broke up from anarchic Somalia, this tiny nation has been pleading for international recognition as a sovereign State.

This plea has been largely ignored, even as the world powers today acknowledge that while Somalia is a failed State, this breakaway enclave remains a model that demonstrates how this troubled Horn of Africa could be fixed.

Today, not even her flag is raised in international meetings. With this unofficial status, Somaliland cannot enter into any formal trade agreement and therefore is locked out officially from trading with many nations.

The country is believed to be rich in oil deposits and has many tourist destinations yet not many can explore them. Just like many developing nations, she lacks the financial capacity to burrow into the untapped resources and expand them.

More still, she has been cut off from world financial institutions—one of the tangible benefits international recognition would give.

The meager revenue that the country receives from Somalis in the Diaspora and from livestock exports to her neighbor, Ethiopia is what she basically relies on.

This is despite the fact that Somaliland has fought terror, pursued democracy and done perhaps all the world superpowers demand of failed States.

She even bears all factors of statehood: a constitution, a defined territory, a stable population, a functional government, a national currency, passports, an army among others, but no nation has recognized the independence she craves.

A good percentage of her 3.5 million people live in abject poverty as they lack aid to support them.

The 777,000 square kilometer stretch of land in the Horn of Africa with semi-desert terrain, roughly the size of England and Wales, Somaliland declared itself a republic in 1991 after warlords toppled Somali dictator Mohamed Said Barre.

Part of the reason for the non-recognition of the self-proclaimed State is the adherence of the African Union (AU)’s principle of respecting old colonial borders to avoid fanning secession conflicts between the State and Somalia.

This is despite the fact that Somaliland’s territories were separated way back by the British and the Italians during the colonial period. Somaliland claims she has a defined territory (the former British Somaliland.)

And irrespective of the fact that African precedents for splits like Ethiopia and Eritrea in the early 1990s, were given their independence.

Analysts claim perhaps what the AU fears is that recognition might lead to continued territorial dispute like the other splits.

But this shouldn’t deter giving the people of Somaliland what they have been fighting for all these years.

“There have been many unions that have not worked out, and the partners have gone their own way,” says Dahir Rayale Kahin, President of Somaliland.

“ Senegal and Gambia, Libya and Egypt, Egypt and Syria. And when the pairs broke up, each was recognized as an independent State. We ask no more than this for Somaliland.”

However, critics say the difference in all the brief courtships, both parties agreed to separate, but the southern Somalis in Mogadishu have campaigned for a reunion and will not accept Hargeysa’s independence.

The country should be given recognition because it has already made great strides, in both the economic and political fronts.

Since Said Barre’s bombing, the country has built 137,000km of  tarmac roads; schools, hospitals and perhaps held the kind of general elections one would hope for in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe backyard, Swaziland and even Somalia.

They even have a new constitution that was adopted in 2001. This    show s great leaps for the country.

Recently, Sweden said it would regard Somaliland as a self-governing area in terms of development aid, and officials hope others in northern Europe would follow suit. This is the trend that should be followed.

In 2006, the Welsh Assembly invited speaker of Somaliland, Abdirahman Mohammed Abdillahi to the opening of a new assembly, a move that Somaliland sees as crawling steps to global recognition.

Somaliland claims there is an element of hypocrisy on the part of the international community. “We are fighting terror, we have democratized. Why put us in chains?”

The country also lacks any communication with the international community.

The country lacks a country code and often uses Somali’s. She also lacks representation in other nations as she has no ambassadors representing other States and none representing the people of Somaliland in the outside world.

A reunion with Somalia will drag the country in to war and into an unstable government. And even if Somalia controls Somaliland, the people of Somaliland might never be patriotic to Somalia because they have already built their own nation and would be comfortable being in their known home.

The hope that the only way to go is to reunite the two States will drag the prospects of building a greater Somalia.

The fact that Somaliland has imminent oil deposits might also bring to the fore more reasons to start fighting to monopolize the lucrative sector.

Somalia has been grappling with daily bloodshed and lacks a central government.

The country has its own problems and a reunion will create more harm than good. Just as echoed by Somaliland in Addis Ababa, leaders should have ‘bravery’ to recognize the sovereignty that is an overdue historical inevitability for breakaway Somali enclave.

“We are a de facto state, a stable democracy in one of the  most troubled parts of Africa. We have done all the things a good country is supposed to,” said Somaliland Foreign Minister Abdillahi Duale. “What we lack is the due recognition. So we hope some wise, decent, brave African head of state will call a spade a spade - and say yes. Then others will follow.”

dmwango@nation.co.ke