How Israel recognized Somaliland

In September 2024, at a Waddani party rally in Hargeisa, presidential hopeful Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi stood before a hall of supporters delivering what sounded like a familiar campaign pitch. Abdullahi, known locally as Irro, spoke at length about Somaliland’s security, economy, justice system and governance as women ululated and the crowd applauded during his pauses. But, as throughout much of his campaign, the question that has long defined politics in Somaliland — international recognition — was in the background. “In Somaliland, there are many problems now,” he told the crowd. “We are striving to lead the change that the people of Somaliland want, and I am ready to lead.” For decades, the unresolved recognition question had set the tone in Somaliland. Yet on the campaign trail, Irro — who himself described the lack of recognition as “collective punishment” — treated it not as the key issue, but as one concern among many. The economy was in dire straits, and Somaliland had lost control of a significant portion of its eastern territory to forces which wanted to merge it back into Somalia. When he won the presidency that November, officials in Mogadishu allowed themselves some respite. Irro, a former Somali diplomat who continued to serve Somalia even after Somaliland declared independence, was regarded as measured and pragmatic. After years of escalating tensions under his predecessor, Muse Bihi, they believed they had found someone they could work with, Samira Gaid, a Somali security expert who advised previous Somali prime ministers, tells Mada Masr. Within twelve months of taking office, though, Irro secured what no Somaliland leader before him had managed: formal diplomatic recognition, which his team viewed as a pathway to greater international acceptance. That it came from Israel, announced in an afternoon post on X by Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on 26 December, 2025, made it all the more extraordinary. In Hargeisa, the news landed like a bombshell and was followed by widespread celebration. But in Mogadishu, it triggered an emergency government meeting, in which the country’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, would go on to describe the recognition as the “greatest” violation of Somalia’s sovereignty.   Over the past few months since the announcement, Mada Masr has spoken with officials in Somalia and Somaliland to understand how this development came about.  How a president who campaigned on bread-and-butter issues went on to deliver the most dramatic breakthrough in Somaliland’s history, and why Israel chose that moment to act, is a story that runs through Somalia’s security collapse, the changing strategic calculus of the Red Sea in the wake of Gaza, Washington’s conservative foreign policy establishment and the worsening of relations between Somaliland and Somalia that momentarily appeared to be entering a more constructive phase.  On December 12, 2024, Irro was inaugurated as Somaliland’s president. In his inaugural address, he made one striking commitment on the question of recognition: Somaliland would never “beg” for it. The phrasing was a pointed rebuke of the posture of his predecessors, but it was also, in its way, a signal of de-escalation. He was not going to make recognition his obsession, as there were other things to do. In Mogadishu, officials viewed Irro’s election as a realization of their hope for a friendlier interlocutor in Hargeisa. “We wanted him elected. We supported it,” a senior Somali official tells Mada Masr. “We had good contact with him.” Mogadishu’s reading of Irro as a softer politician unlikely to take bold, far-reaching steps proved to be a highly consequential miscalculation. … Somaliland’s former President Muse Bihi Abdi arrives in Washington DC, March 2022. - Courtesy: Somaliland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Somaliland’s pursuit of recognition stretches back to 1991, when it declared independence from Somalia as the rest of the country descended into a protracted civil war and state collapse. In the decades that followed, it developed a distinct political identity and enjoyed relative peace. The contrast with Somalia — dated when repeated today — was a key part of its pitch. Yet, no country formally recognized its declaration, leaving successive governments in a peculiar legal and diplomatic limbo despite the hopes of its past leaders. The groundwork for what eventually happened in December was laid years earlier. In 2022, Somaliland’s then-president, Muse Bihi, had visited Washington, meeting officials at all levels of government and putting Somaliland in front of members of US Congress, officials in the Joe Biden administration and policy think tanks, including The Heritage Foundation. Somaliland had already moved to establish a Taiwanese representative office in Hargeisa, burnishing its credentials as a territory aligned with the West and opposed to Beijing. The Biden administration, after Bihi’s visit, committed to exploring defense ties with Somaliland, a meaningful if limited step that reflected the growing interest in the territory’s strategic potential at the gateway to the Red Sea. But that was as far as the Americans were willing to go. It was the China hawks in the Republican establishment who took the keenest interest. The first sign that Somaliland’s visibility problem had punctured a key barrier came when Project 2025 — a conservative policy blueprint produced by The Heritage Foundation think tank in the US — mentioned it as a hedge against what it described as the United States’ “deteriorating position in Djibouti,” as a result of China’s growing influence in the country. In 2025, a Republican-led bill, calling for the recognition of Somaliland, was introduced in US Congress.  A former senior Somali security official who was serving in government at the time, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, says, “We knew they were knocking doors all over the place,” but did not anticipate that anything would materialize beyond cooperation on specific areas that Somalia would not necessarily object to. Israel’s engagement ran on a separate, quieter track. Contacts between Israeli and Somaliland officials stretched back at least four years before the eventual recognition in 2025, initially oriented toward something far more modest: a trade office or lower-level diplomatic representation, a former Somaliland official says.  Ehud Yaari, an Israeli journalist who had hosted a delegation from Bihi’s administration, wrote that successive Israeli governments had been reluctant to go further.  The reluctance, however, was not only on the Israeli side. The same former Somaliland official tells Mada Masr that the outgoing president was not “politically prepared for Israel to go first” on recognition. He was privately concerned about the backlash — domestic and regional — that full recognition by Israel would bring.  Bihi was also vocal on his commitments on Gaza, delivering a blistering speech in November 2024, during the election campaign, in which he blasted Western inaction on Gaza. “While our ability to make a significant impact may be limited, our commitment to the Palestinian cause and their pursuit of freedom remains steadfast,” he said at a packed-out hall in Hargeisa.  The contacts between Somaliland and Israel continued but without the momentum needed to push them toward a conclusion. That would require a different president and a different moment. Yaari, the Israeli journalist who had hosted a Somaliland delegation from Bihi’s administration, wrote that the pace of those negotiations began accelerating meaningfully only after Irro’s election. What changed was not just the administration, but the regional environment.  Upon taking office, Irro’s foreign minister, Abdirahman Dahir Adam, sent a letter in March to Israel’s public broadcaster following reports about the possible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to third countries. In the letter, addressed to Israel, he said Somaliland’s overriding priority was recognition and that his government was “open to discussion on any matter.”  The move reflected the new approach of Irro’s administration, which has been keen to signal a willingness to engage with any state that could advance this core diplomatic objective, a Somaliland official, who is close to the president, says.  Speaking to the German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Irro warned that if the West was not interested, then “China will knock on the door. And Russia will, too.” The environment that made recognition possible was also shaped, in large part, by what was happening in Somalia itself. Through 2025, Somalia’s security situation deteriorated sharply, reversing years of hard-won gains. Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda’s East African affiliate, launched a major offensive in February, recapturing swathes of territory in Hiran and Middle Shabelle that the government’s 2022 counteroffensive — which had retaken more than 215 locations — had fought to secure.  By mid-year, the group had advanced to within 50 km of Mogadishu, seizing the strategic towns of Moqokori, Tardo and Buq-Aqable in central Somalia. In March, it carried out an assassination attempt against President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in the capital itself, using a remote-detonated improvised explosive device (IED). Playing down the incident, the president told BBC News Somali that he had survived several attempts on his life and that it came with the job. An increasingly fraught domestic political landscape compounded the security collapse.  Constitutional changes governing Somalia’s elections made in 2024 had alienated the leaders of the influential semi-autonomous federal states of Puntland and Jubaland. The federal government, for its part, was seeking to deliver on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s manifesto pledge to hold one-person, one-vote elections, a plan opposition politicians had dismissed as a ruse to rig the polls. Both states subsequently withdrew from the federal system, declaring they no longer recognized its legitimacy. Puntland’s president, Said Deni, said, last April, that “until we see a Somali government that respects the constitution and does not serve the interests of a specific group or individuals,” the state’s position would not change.  Ongoing power struggles between the federal government and regional states, which have their own substantial security forces, had undermined coordination and hollowed out broader counterterrorism efforts. The former Somali security official says even “lower levels of coordination which benefit all of us,” which were once routine, had been disrupted. The United States, which had supported the 2022 counteroffensive — and had long been one of Somalia’s key battlefield partners — was watching the losses with mounting frustration. The US maintained its own separate channels of cooperation with Somalia’s federal states and, for example, conducted a major aerial campaign, in support of Puntland’s offensive against Islamic State-Somalia, with dozens of airstrikes, which began in early 2025. A US State Department spokesperson tells Mada Masr that while the US continued to prioritize its counterterrorism partnership with Somalia, it was frustrated by the contrast between the size of its investment and the “very limited results” it had seen in return. That was a bad omen for Somalia in its dealings with a US administration fixated on extracting a favorable deal for its efforts.  Larry André, a former US ambassador to Somalia who left his post in May 2023, tells Mada Masr that under the Biden administration, security cooperation had appeared to be going well. Somalia had begun clawing back territory from Al-Shabab after Hassan Sheikh Mohamud took office, a push that dovetailed with heightened concern among Democrats over the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Africa. Despite that progress, André says donor fatigue over Somalia’s persistent political dysfunction — in a country where more than two-thirds of the national budget is funded by international partners — and, ultimately, the 2025 security collapse, remained a serious challenge.  Under Donald Trump, those issues were no longer afforded the patience needed to achieve the broader goal of degrading those armed groups, and though security cooperation continued, the political relationship began to suffer. Trump had never concealed his hostility toward Somalia, and his administration pursued policies that directly harmed Somali interests, including a dramatic cut to aid in early 2025. He had spent large parts of 2025 attacking the US’s Somali community, often describing the country in unflattering terms. On one occasion he called Somalis in the US “garbage” and said Somalia was “the worst country on Earth.” In March 2025, as Trump settled into power, the Financial Times reported that US policy on Somalia was under full review.  Somalia’s government was aware of the transactional attitude of the new administration and attempted to work with it, granting a license to Starlink, a company owned by Trump’s ally, Elon Musk. In April, Somalia’s ambassador to the US, Dahir Hassan Abdi, invited American energy companies to drill in an area claimed by Somaliland, in its eastern region, but which is aligned with Somalia.  André, the former US ambassador, tells Mada Masr that the Trump administration was “hostile” to Somalia and that he did not believe broader concerns about Somalia’s territorial integrity would outweigh the administration’s relationship with Israel in Trump’s calculations.  Washington’s attitude toward Somalia, a reflection of its broader posture to Africa, effectively removed the risk of American pushback, a crucial precondition for Israel’s recognition, a second Somaliland official tells Mada Masr. This stood in sharp contrast to the previous year, when Ethiopia’s memorandum of understanding with Somaliland had prompted Washington to join dozens of countries in opposing it. Then US national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said Ethiopia’s recognition agreement “threatens to disrupt the fight that Somalis, Africans and regional international partners, including us, are waging against Al-Shabab,” arguing it would hand the group — which has long portrayed Ethiopia as a power occupying Somalia — a potent propaganda tool. As Somalia’s standing in Washington suffered, the relationship between Hargeisa and Mogadishu was quietly unravelling too. The optimism in Mogadishu about Irro had not been entirely baseless. He was genuinely more open to dialogue than his predecessor, and officials in Mogadishu had cultivated what they believed was a real channel to him. The senior Somali official tells Mada Masr that they had wanted Irro elected and had maintained good contact with him. Somali officials had even recommended his May 2025 visit to Qatar, which has close ties with Mogadishu, the same senior official tells Mada Masr. They were delighted when he accepted and hoped that by building a relationship with Doha, which had established itself as a venue for resolving regional disputes, it could earn Somaliland’s trust as a mediator and move a long-stalled process forward. The Qatar trip, however, illustrated the limits of that approach. It was the first time a Somaliland president had set foot in the Gulf country, whose leaders Hargeisa had traditionally viewed as aligned with Somalia. When Doha issued a statement after the meeting reaffirming its commitment to Somalia’s “national unity,” it provoked a domestic backlash in Somaliland and made Irro look weak. For many Somalilanders, their president had walked into a diplomatic ambush which reaffirmed concerns in some quarters about his commitments to Somaliland as an independent polity, says a source close to Irro’s government. Born in Hargeisa in 1955, he had spent the years of Somaliland’s independence struggle not at home but abroad, serving as a diplomat at the Somali embassy in Moscow until 1996, five years after Somaliland had declared independence from the collapsing Somali state. He moved to Finland later. Some of his Habar Yonis clansmen — a sub-clan of the Isaaq that dominates Somaliland — had also been perceived in Somalia as leaning toward reunification. He, himself, had avoided staking out a hard line on the issue for much of his career, leading to charges, when he was in opposition, that he was quietly opposed to Somaliland’s independence. Some key officials around him, including Presidency Minister Khadar Hussein Abdi, were viewed similarly, says the source close to the government. But this source firmly pushes back on Irro’s characterization as a closeted unionist. That perception, the source says, was not a reflection of Irro’s position and was based more on “political attacks” from his years in opposition.  What Mogadishu had taken for possible ideological affinity on the part of Irro was more a result of his political style. As a diplomat, he adopted a more cautious, pragmatic and measured stance on Somaliland’s most contentious issues when he was in opposition and sought to distinguish himself from the former president, Muse Bihi.  For example, Irro opposed Bihi’s shelling of the eastern city of Las Anod. After the assault, the city was captured by local forces that aligned themselves with the Somali government, ceding a large chunk of territory. He also raised concerns about the former president’s memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia over recognition, questioning the secrecy surrounding its contents, and took a cooler stance on ties with Taiwan over concerns about alienating China. Mogadishu, seeing in him what it had hoped to see, believed it had found its man. A source close to Somaliland’s ruling Waddani party, which Irro founded in the early 2010s, says officials in Mogadishu mistook his reputation as a moderate within Somaliland’s political landscape for ambiguity over whether Somaliland should reunify with Somalia. “He didn’t push back against that … so they underestimated [him],” the source close to the government says.  Tensions between Hargeisa and Mogadishu had been rising, driven in part by measures the Somali federal government introduced that required businesspeople and travellers in Somaliland to work through Somali institutions, including an e-Visa system which had leaked private information. These bureaucratic measures reimposed Mogadishu’s rule by fiat, to the annoyance of officials in Hargeisa who had enjoyed a special status and minimal federal interference for years. According to a second source close to Irro’s government, Somaliland’s elites perceived these moves as “provocative” and “escalatory,” as Somali governments had tended to make exceptions for Somaliland on certain matters owed to the sensitivity around its status. The second Somaliland official says the Somali government’s measures did not directly drive the decision to seek external recognition, adding that the process had its own internal logic and was already in motion. But they accelerated it, sharpening the sense of urgency among Irro’s team and hardening the political will within Somaliland’s elites to press forward. Mogadishu, in trying to tighten the screws, had hastened the very outcome it was trying to prevent. … In May 2025, Irro told a gathering of his cabinet that he had written to more than 190 heads of state, offering strategic access and cooperation in exchange for recognition.  The majority did not respond. Some, like Denmark, replied but stopped short of expressing any readiness to develop ties, the second Somaliland official says. In January, Irro revealed during a cabinet meeting that “only Israel responded to the desire of my people [for recognition] … and we give thanks for that.”  “From the Arab countries, we’re waiting for a response,” he added.  The reason Israel was receptive, when others were not, had been building for some time.  During the war on Gaza, Israel had traded fire with the Houthis who had launched missiles and drones from northern Yemen and targeted Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea. Israel had never been targeted from Yemen before the war on Gaza. Israeli strikes against the Houthis had been extensive, including the killing of leaders in the group, yet unnamed Israeli officials told The Jerusalem Post that the Houthis remained undeterred. Of Iran’s regional allies, the group has been the boldest but also the hardest for Israel to reach, with each strike requiring a flight of nearly 2,000 km. The failure had prompted calls within Israel’s security establishment for a fundamental rethinking, including from the Israeli army’s Dado Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies, due to what it said were significant changes in the “characteristics of Israel’s security environment”. An assessment published in November by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies noted that Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and a platform for direct operations. Berbera, Somaliland’s port city on the Gulf of Aden, sits roughly 500 km from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, later went to Berbera when he visited Somaliland in January. During the trip, Saar told an Israeli journalist the country aimed to begin strategically shaping — rather than merely reacting to — security threats in its neighborhood, ushering in what he described as a new approach. “It’s a kind of move from containment to proactive handling of risks,” he told Israel Hayom.  Recognizing Somaliland and using it as a launch pad of intelligence-gathering and possible attacks would be one of the measures in this updated approach and could put Israel almost within eye-shot of one of its more fierce regional adversaries.   Irro, for his part, had come to see Israel’s Houthi problem as an opportunity, rather than a liability. In opposition, he had warned against any military involvement in Yemen. In office, his calculation had changed. The second Somaliland official says the first formal talks between Israel and Somaliland took place in Addis Ababa in April 2025, where the Somaliland delegation presented its proposal at a hotel in the Ethiopian capital, outlining the reason the two sides should build ties. Mohamed Hagi, a Somaliland diplomat and now ambassador to Israel, led the team from Hargeisa’s side in building relationships, the official adds.  Subsequent rounds were held in Hargeisa, Dubai and Tel Aviv, according to the official. The early sessions were exploratory, and both sides took stock of what they could offer each other, building the confidence needed to go further. Israel had security concerns, the same official says, and they said they could help, but didn’t further elaborate on how. In October, Irro travelled to Tel Aviv for a face-to-face meeting with Saar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Saar later published a photograph of the meeting on Instagram.  From the outset, Somaliland’s negotiating position rested on a principle its officials considered non-negotiable, according to both Somaliland officials. Recognition had to be structurally separate from whatever was agreed on between the two sides in terms of security or economic cooperation.  The lesson of the Ethiopian memorandum of understanding — which had collapsed under regional diplomatic blowback, leaving Somaliland with nothing — had been absorbed, the first Somaliland official, who is close to Irro, says. If Israel recognized Somaliland first, the two countries would then be negotiating as equal sovereign states making agreements with each other. If recognition was bundled into a broader deal, it could be walked back the moment Israel came under pressure, just as Ethiopia’s commitment had been.  The recognition announcement had originally been planned for the United Nations General Assembly in September, but Somaliland pulled back. Negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire were still ongoing, and officials in Hargeisa were wary of the announcement being perceived as connected to that process, the second Somaliland official, who was briefed on the process, says.  In the meantime, Irro was preparing the ground at home. Without explicitly naming Israel, he engaged civil society, clan elders and religious figures in Hargeisa in the months leading up to the announcement, encouraging them to be ready for possible recognition and the possibility of blowback. At the same time, posters were going up across the capital, Hargeisa, heralding a coming recognition, as Irro vowed in his speeches that it would come during his term. “For more than 30 years, Somaliland has struggled to obtain recognition. Much has been done, but I want to tell the people of Somaliland that I will be the one to finish that task,” he told a gathering of traditional elders, in Berbera in late August.  The pro-recognition campaign in Washington was, meanwhile, finding its own footing. Republican senator Ted Cruz wrote to Trump in August, urging formal US recognition of Somaliland. His letter captured, in a single document, the convergence of interests that had been building for years in conservative foreign policy circles: Taiwan, China skepticism, Red Sea security and Israel and the Abraham Accords all appeared together.  Cruz warned that the Communist Party of China was using economic and diplomatic coercion to punish Somaliland for its support of Taiwan and noted that Mogadishu had, in April, allowed Beijing to arrange a ban on Taiwanese passport holders entering or transiting in Somalia and Somaliland. He urged Trump to grant Somaliland the status of a full state. Shortly afterward, Trump said he was “looking into” the Somaliland issue but did not elaborate. The first Somaliland official tells Mada Masr that prior to recognition, Netanyahu and Trump discussed the issue on at least two occasions that Somaliland is aware of. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the former chief executive of DP World, which operates Berbera port under a 30-year concession, added his public voice in September, expressing support for Somaliland’s recognition alongside Irro at The Africa Debate in Dubai.  The latest release of the Epstein files contained a message from Sulayem sharing information about Somaliland’s international recognition efforts in mid-2018, shortly after DP World had obtained its concession, suggesting he had long been pushing the issue in elite circles. The second Somaliland official tells Mada Masr that the United Arab Emirates had facilitated the connection between officials on both sides.  The UAE’s role, however, had limits. According to the second Somaliland official, the Emirates had been made aware of the scope of the process relatively late. Abu Dhabi had not expected Israel to actually go through with recognition, the first official says. When it became clear that it would, Somaliland informed the UAE. The UAE, the official adds, had also expressed a desire to recognize Somaliland, itself, but in the end backed down and joined Arab countries in expressing support for Somalia’s unity.  What cleared the final obstacle was a signal from Washington that it would not object, the same Somaliland official says. Israeli officials had told their Somaliland counterparts that they intended to inform the United States of their decision. Strained relations between the United States and Somalia made a US pushback unlikely, as American frustrations were becoming increasingly public and vocal. In one of the most blistering attacks, a US ambassador to the UN, Jeff Bartos, told the UN Security Council in December, during a discussion on the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia, that Washington was cutting off financial assistance to Somalia’s security over what he called an “elusive” progress. The burden, he said, would fall on those “who have the most at stake,” not the United States. Two days later, Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, wrote in an afternoon post on X that an “extensive and ongoing dialogue” had been taking place between Israel and Somaliland and that Israel had decided to recognize it. “We will work together to promote the relations between our countries and nations, regional stability and economic prosperity,” he said.  The US State Department told Al Jazeera that the US had played “no role” in Israel’s decision and later said it would not follow, while maintaining that Israel had the right to pursue ties with any country it chooses. In Hargeisa, it was the culmination of a process that had been managed with remarkable secrecy, with Israeli Foreign Minister Saar himself later congratulating both teams on successfully avoiding leaks to the media. “It took almost nine months to reach the point of signing mutual recognition, but I can say the talks were very extensive and serious,” Saar said after the final announcement in December.  *** Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Irro) give a press conference at the Presidential Palace in Hargeisa, January 6. - Courtesy: Somalia Today Ties between Somaliland and Israel have developed steadily since December, in line with a trajectory officials on both sides outlined early on, with both sides having recently appointed envoys. Somaliland has been seeking investment and technical training, as well as greater access to forums where it can more effectively present its case to decision-makers in Western capitals, the primary focus of its international outreach. Israeli companies are exploring opportunities in Somaliland, and a delegation from Somaliland’s Water Ministry has visited Tel Aviv for training in water management. Le Monde has also reported that personnel from Somaliland’s intelligence agency have traveled to Israel for training and that Israeli military officials have visited Somaliland.  Observers have, however, expressed curiosity for what Israel is likely to receive from the deal. Mohamed Hagi, Somaliland’s envoy to Israel, told MM Somali TV that there was no deal in which anything was transacted with Israel. And Somaliland’s president, Irro, has said that the recognition was not targeted at any country. However, opposition figures in Somaliland, the Somali government and some religious leaders have expressed their concern that Israel is seeking a base for operations in Yemen. A Somaliland official speaking to Agence France-Presse said new buildings and an airbase facility have recently been completed at Berbera, by the UAE. Analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, confirms extensive military construction at Berbera airport, including aircraft shelters, weapons storage facilities, and what appears to be air-defense positions in facilities, which it suggests could also be used by Israel or the US. Although the US–Israel war with Iran appears to be de-escalating through Pakistan-mediated negotiations, Somali government sources have expressed concern that Somaliland could, at some point, be drawn into Israel’s regional conflicts. The Houthis have explicitly threatened to target any Israeli position in Somaliland, describing it as “hostile.” The senior Somali official tells Mada Masr that they fear deeper Israeli involvement in Somaliland could strengthen narratives that embolden the armed groups it is already fighting and that any gains Israel makes from such an arrangement would come at the Horn of Africa’s expense.The post How Israel recognized Somaliland first appeared on Mada Masr.