The question is no longer whether Somaliland can govern itself. It already does. The question is how long it must keep waiting for the rest of Somalia to find coherence and whether indefinite waiting is a moral or political virtue.

Republic without name, yet functioning

Somaliland has demonstrated that legitimacy is earned not through acknowledgment but through accountability. It has built democratic institutions, organized peaceful transitions of power, and upheld civic participation with admirable consistency. Its parliament deliberates, its courts adjudicate, and its currency circulates with trust. By the legal and moral measures of sovereignty, such as territory, population, government, and capacity to relate externally, Somaliland meets every condition.

It has done so with minimal foreign aid and maximum discipline, relying on internal consensus rather than external benevolence. If statehood were a theorem, Somaliland would have long since proven it. The world merely refuses to record the answer. The moral inquiry, therefore, is not about eligibility but endurance. How long must one region’s competence be shackled to another’s collapse?

When Somaliland voluntarily joined the South in 1960, it did so out of idealism. The union was not imposed but inspired by a vision of one Somali flag from Zeila to Kismayo. Yet what began as romance became subjugation. Power was centralized in Mogadishu, and the North’s voice faded. By the 1980s, the partnership had deteriorated into persecution. Entire cities were leveled, communities slaughtered, and dignity buried under rubble. What Somaliland declared in 1991 was not rebellion but resurrection, the attempt to live again after being destroyed by its own state.

To call that secession is to misread it. To call it restoration is closer to the truth. Yet the world, held hostage by the fear of redrawing borders, prefers paralysis over principle. In Africa, colonial lines are treated as sacred even when they suffocate reality. Somaliland’s tragedy is to have inherited legality without legitimacy, while Somalia inherited sympathy without stability.

Still, some experts argue that Somaliland missed a historic moment of moral and political opportunity when the Somali state collapsed in 1991. In the chaotic aftermath of national disintegration, when millions of Somalis fled their homes in fear and confusion, Hargeisa could have become the symbolic refuge of unity rather than the epicenter of separation. Had Somaliland called for healing instead of retreat and invited the rest of Somalia to make Hargeisa a temporary capital for reconciliation, it might have transformed grief into grace and provided the moral ground for renewal. Such a gesture could have allowed the North to lead not through grievance but through generosity, showing the wisdom of peace amid ruin.

Thirty-five years of functioning governance cannot be dismissed as a temporary experiment.”

If that had happened, history might have turned differently. Even if the unity could not have been sustained, Somaliland would have carried an unassailable moral claim to independence, rooted not in separation but in sacrifice for national healing. The level of destruction might have been softened, and its case for recognition would have been even more compelling to the world. Yet history moves not by hypotheticals but by choices, and the choice to withdraw rather than reconcile remains both Somaliland’s justification and its burden.

Mirage of reunification

Every decade brings renewed promises that Somalia will soon be rebuilt and the union restored. But the arithmetic of time defies optimism. Three and a half decades have passed, governments have risen and fallen, and foreign troops still guard a fragile capital. Reunification, once a noble dream, has hardened into an illusion sustained by nostalgia rather than negotiation.

For Somaliland, waiting has become an involuntary national policy. One generation waited for peace, another for recognition, and now a third waits for clarity. If patience were a currency, Somaliland would be rich beyond measure. Yet history grants no interest in time wasted. Even the African Union’s 2005 fact-finding report acknowledged the uniqueness of Somaliland’s case, calling it self-justified, but political caution remains the continent’s default posture. In this arithmetic of waiting, hope multiplies while progress divides.

Confederation: Balancing equation

Between unity and separation lies a middle ground called confederation. Two sovereign entities could coexist, sharing selective institutions of trade, security, and diplomacy while preserving internal autonomy. Such an arrangement would not erase history but elevate it, transforming emotional attachment into pragmatic partnership.

For this to happen, Mogadishu must find the moral courage to understand that letting go can be an act of leadership, not loss. Allowing Somaliland to breathe as an equal or as a neighbor would prove that Somalia’s strength lies not in possession but in wisdom. The mathematics of peace often begins with subtraction, removing the source of tension to preserve the whole.

Argument of fear, morality of time

Opponents of recognition invoke the specter of fragmentation, insisting that acknowledging Somaliland would encourage others to follow. But this fear is misplaced. Africa has weathered the birth of Eritrea, the independence of South Sudan, and numerous autonomy arrangements without implosion. What threatens Somalia is not recognition but repression, the insistence on holding together what no longer holds.

Unity sustained by denial is a negative sum. It subtracts legitimacy from both sides while adding resentment. Far better a negotiated separation than a coerced togetherness that erodes moral capital.

Time too has ethics. Thirty-five years of functioning governance cannot be dismissed as a temporary experiment. A child born in 1991 is now middle-aged, a parent, a voter, and a taxpayer, yet still a citizen of a country the world refuses to see. If Somalia requires another twenty years to consolidate its democracy, then Somaliland will have waited fifty-five years for permission to exist. No principle of justice can justify such an arithmetic of endurance. Waiting, once a virtue, has become an injustice measured in decades.

Memory of war, burden of belonging

Whoever began the civil war must no longer dominate the national discourse. The guns are silent, but the memories echo. What one side calls a massacre, another rebrands as necessity, yet history, indifferent to terminology, has already taken its notes. The graves beneath Hargeisa and Burco do not ask for verdicts; they whisper only of pain. But to remain forever in the courtroom of grievance is to deny both sides the liberty to move forward.

The generation that fought has aged, and a new one has risen, educated, connected, and curious. They do not nurse vengeance; they nurse questions. They ask why recognition has taken so long if their case is vivid and clear. They grow up hearing stories of brotherhood and betrayal alike, uncertain which to believe. They share the same faith, language, and lineage with the South, yet live under a separate reality that the world refuses to legalize. Between belonging and being lies their dilemma.

Critics say the Somali people are one, inseparable by tongue or tradition. But language is not a leash; it is a bridge. The Arab world shares one tongue and twenty-two flags. Europe speaks many dialects and thrives in plurality. Unity does not require uniformity; it requires consent. Somaliland’s pursuit of recognition is not an act of arrogance but an appeal for acknowledgment that governance grounded in peace should not be punished by invisibility.

Those who reduce it to a tribal aspiration overlook its civic nature. Somaliland is not a clan-state but a constitutional experiment in inclusive governance. Its institutions are not built on bloodlines but on ballots. To claim that one tribe cannot be a country is to mistake demography for destiny. What holds the world back is not evidence but hesitation, a fear that truth might unravel the myth of inviolable borders. Fear, however, is not a strategy; it is paralysis in motion.

Somaliland’s demand is not rebellion but recognition, not secession but self-definition.”

The war’s memory must not imprison the living. History needs not another trial but a conclusion. Perhaps the most courageous act left for both Somaliland and Somalia is not to relitigate who began the fire but to decide together or apart how peace can at last be named.

Conversation beyond comfort

It remains an unpopular subject, a political taboo even among the educated elite. To question the sanctity of one Somalia is to risk being branded an enemy of unity. Yet silence has solved nothing. Pretending that unspoken fractures will heal themselves is the greatest illusion of all.

The younger generation, both North and South, deserves honesty. Unity cannot survive on denial; it must be renegotiated on truth. Talking about Somaliland’s fate may not win hearts, but it will clear the conscience of a people who have waited too long for clarity.

If genuine reconciliation is ever to occur, it must begin with acknowledging difference, not as division but as reality. Unity enforced through nostalgia is as fragile as glass. It shines in the sun but cracks at the first pressure of truth.

Neighbor or partner

Should Somalia succeed in rebuilding its institutions, its greatest diplomatic triumph would not be reclaiming Somaliland but reconciling with it. Recognizing or confederating with Somaliland would transform Somalia from a reluctant guardian into a respected architect of regional peace. A recognized Somaliland would not be a rival but a stabilizing neighbor, an ally in trade and security, and a partner in Red Sea and Blue Sea diplomacy.

Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti already see the practical logic of this balance. The question is whether Mogadishu dares to embrace the geometry of coexistence rather than the illusion of restoration. A recent op-ed in Addis Standard on Horn politics underscores this regional need for pragmatic diplomacy over nostalgic nationalism.

From arithmetic to ethics

At some point, political arithmetic becomes ethical algebra when numbers turn into values. Thirty-five years of waiting equals the lifetime of a nation born into ambiguity. To demand another twenty is not prudence; it is cruelty disguised as caution.

Somaliland’s demand is not rebellion but recognition, not secession but self-definition. Somalia’s journey toward full democracy deserves empathy and support, but justice cannot be conditional on the progress of another. If confederation is the bridge, let it be built. If independence is the answer, let it be dignified. Either choice is nobler than indefinite postponement.

The arithmetic of waiting has reached its limit. Thirty-five years is not a chapter; it is an era. And eras, by their very nature, demand closure. The world may hesitate, but history seldom does. The question before Somalia is not whether it can reunite with its past but whether it can release its future.

It is time to let Somaliland breathe, not as a rebellion against unity but as an act of liberation for truth itself. In politics, as in life, sometimes the hardest grace is to let go. AS

Editor’s Note: Mohamud A. Ahmed (Prof.) is a columnist, political analyst, and researcher at Greenlight Advisors Group, Somali Region State. He can be reached at owsdfund@gmail.com