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The consequences of a series of state and federal fraud scandals executed by a criminal enterprise in Minnesota have reverberated far beyond disgraced Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) political career. The Justice Department has criminally charged nearly 100 people involved, 85 of whom are of Somali descent. And while President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security deploys immigration officials to crack down on fraudsters in Minneapolis, the State Department has paused all federal assistance going to Somalis abroad after finding that Somalia’s government fraudulently seized 76 metric tons of food aid for women and children and destroyed a U.S.-funded World Food Programme warehouse.
The only alternative to the Somali diaspora hegemony in Minnesota’s Democratic political machine will be ascertained, well, democratically, as plenty of the convicted fraudsters in the Medicaid scandals are indeed U.S. citizens. But for American diplomats looking to bypass the Somali state’s stranglehold over the Horn of Africa, luckily, there is an alternative: Somaliland.
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The Republic of Somaliland has informally asserted its independence from Somalia since at least the Isaaq Sultanate of the 18th century. But it did not legally declare its independence and begin to govern itself as an independent state until it won a decadelong war against Somalia’s genocidal Barre dictatorship in 1991. For 35 years, Somaliland has overseen four democratic and peaceful transitions of presidential power, a regional anomaly, as well as numerous successful local and parliamentary elections. In the final days of December, Israel announced it would become the first United Nations member state to recognize Somaliland’s independence.
The legal case for the United States following suit and recognizing Somaliland’s independence is self-evident. The country fulfills all four criteria of the Montevideo Convention: Somaliland has a permanent population with a defined territory, the capability to conduct diplomatic relations, and an effective government. And that government is far more effective than the failed, clan-mediated Somali state whose authority is subsumed by local terrorists across vast swaths of its dominion. Somaliland’s government has proven itself orders of magnitude more successful at quelling terrorism and Islamism than Somalia (to say nothing of the global statehood cause du jour, Gaza), and Somaliland’s population and borders have arguably held more constant in the past few decades than that of even Kosovo, which the U.S. does recognize.
But more compelling than international law, which bores and fails to persuade Trump and the Machiavellian mindset of America First, is the fact that it is undeniably in the international interest of the U.S. to curtail Somalia’s geopolitical monopoly over the Gulf of Aden, arguably in its domestic interest.
Israel has publicly positioned its newfound diplomatic relationship with Somaliland as an expansion of Trump’s signature Abraham Accords, something that key signatories tacitly confirmed in their refusal to deny Israel’s narrative. While a broad coalition of 21 Middle Eastern countries that are often trying to kill one another joined forces to condemn Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, conspicuously absent were Abraham Accords signatories Morocco, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. While 14 members of the U.N. Security Council denounced Israel’s recognition, the U.S. did not, and evidently for good reason.
To understand why Somaliland should be our friend, visualize the fact that its neighbors are already our enemies. As I’ve written about extensively in “Tiana’s Take” for the magazine, the Red Sea, which used to host some 12% to 15% of global trade, has become dominated by the Iran-backed Houthis, who control northern Yemen. Djibouti has historically been a reliable and friendly host for American military power, but the country has proven worryingly toothless against Houthi aggression and downright amenable to the Chinese Communist Party, hosting the CCP’s first overseas military base.
Somalia itself is an unstable steward of the gulf. Where it is not overran by pirates, it has willingly ceded control to Turkey, which has operated the Port of Mogadishu, the country’s international airport, and a military base for personal profit and at the fiscal expense of Somalia itself. Turkey is an American ally in the same way it is a NATO member: in name only and petrified by a pro-Western, anti-Islamist Gulf alliance that the UAE exemplifies. A strong and independent Somaliland provides landlocked Ethiopia a necessary alternative to its current unstable reliance on Djibouti, and Somaliland itself will likely become a new safe haven for Western military presence.
Now, back up the map even further to understand the Grand Theory of Trump. If the “America Aloners” are right and America First is just a slogan that means we cede the planet to the second world powers of Russia and China, none of the following applies. But if I’m right that Trump wants to make America great again on a global scale, then Somaliland recognition would be a part of the White House’s game of chess, not checkers.
Before Trump took office, the Israelis successfully defanged Hezbollah and Hamas, allowing the Assad regime in Syria to fall and allowing an oddly pragmatic Turkish proxy government to replace the Russian puppet state. The fall of Iran’s proxies allowed Trump to decimate the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s imminent nuclear weapons capability with Operation Midnight Hammer, and now democratic revolutionaries may very well be on the cusp of overthrowing the regime entirely. Trump unilaterally arrested and deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro with Operation Absolute Resolve, leaving the South American oil giant in the de facto control of American interests, and oil prices are coming within $10 of Russia’s break-even point for profitability. As I explain in this coming issue of the magazine, killing the profitability of the Russian government’s primary revenue source could end its war on Ukraine faster than any military action or battle plan.
All of this is to say that a strengthened and independently recognized Somaliland would constitute yet another new roadblock in China’s physical supply chains, to say nothing of a practical counter to its military presence. Somaliland would serve not just as a theoretical rejection of China’s attempt to recolonize Africa through the Belt and Road initiative, but also a practical, corporeal hindrance to its access to the Suez Canal, which currently hosts some 60% of China’s exports to Europe.
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Besides enraging the Somali tribalists who have hijacked Democratic politics in Minneapolis, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and party mayoral nominee Omar Fateh, the U.S. would domestically benefit from an empowered Somaliland. While the Obama administration accepted 54,000 refugees from Somalia, the Somali diaspora has not thrived. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the majority of the Somali diaspora in Minnesota lives in poverty despite also receiving taxpayer-funded healthcare and groceries. Half of all working-age Somali men in Minnesota who have been in the U.S. for at least a decade do not speak proficient English. A strong Somaliland would be much better suited to accept Somali refugees, who share a language, religion, and Sharia law. A stronger Somaliland could also neutralize the American remittances-to-al-Shabaab pipeline that Chris Rufo at the Manhattan Institute documented. Somalia’s economy itself could become less reliant on remittances from the Somali diaspora here at home, which in turn could allow our own communities to focus on enriching themselves instead of subsisting at the taxpayer’s teat.
In the White House’s largest cold war against the Chinese, Somaliland is a bit player, but it’s an easy play to make. Recognizing Somaliland would mark Trump’s first expansion of the Abraham Accords of his second term, and turn up the heat on the CCP to match.