65 - Darkness and Light in the Horn of Africa: Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, and South Sudan
robertirotberg.substack.com
Somaliland should become Africa’s fifty-fifth state. But just as Ukraine belongs within the European Union, but cannot be accepted just now, so Somaliland should be welcomed into the African Union, but will not be. There once was a greater Somalia that included what is now Somalia – once the Italian-ruled UN Trust Territory of that name—and a colony called British Somaliland. The latter extends along the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, the former along the southeast-facing shores of the Indian Ocean. When the British and Italian administrators gave their separate territories independence in 1960, they mistakenly merged, in a misplaced patriotic desire to unite as much of the Somali “nation” as possible. Doing so excluded the millions of Somali who live in the southeastern desert region of neighboring Ethiopia, as well as the residents of what was French Somaliland and is now Djibouti, an autocratically ruled nation on the Red Sea that harbors American, French, Chinese, and Russian bases.
65 - Darkness and Light in the Horn of Africa: Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, and South Sudan
65 - Darkness and Light in the Horn of…
65 - Darkness and Light in the Horn of Africa: Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, and South Sudan
Somaliland should become Africa’s fifty-fifth state. But just as Ukraine belongs within the European Union, but cannot be accepted just now, so Somaliland should be welcomed into the African Union, but will not be. There once was a greater Somalia that included what is now Somalia – once the Italian-ruled UN Trust Territory of that name—and a colony called British Somaliland. The latter extends along the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, the former along the southeast-facing shores of the Indian Ocean. When the British and Italian administrators gave their separate territories independence in 1960, they mistakenly merged, in a misplaced patriotic desire to unite as much of the Somali “nation” as possible. Doing so excluded the millions of Somali who live in the southeastern desert region of neighboring Ethiopia, as well as the residents of what was French Somaliland and is now Djibouti, an autocratically ruled nation on the Red Sea that harbors American, French, Chinese, and Russian bases.