History[edit]
Main article: History of Somaliland
The earliest human artifacts in the area are the Laas Geel cave paintings, dating from before 3000 BC. The region is sometimes thought to be part of the Land of Punt. Islam was introduced to the northern Somali littoral early on from theArabian peninsula, shortly after the hijra.[23] Various Muslim Somali kingdoms were formed around this period in the area.[24]Centuries later, in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire occupied Berbera and environs. Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt, subsequently established a foothold in the area between 1821 and 1841.[25] In 1888, after signing successive treaties with the then ruling Somali Sultans such as Mohamoud Ali Shire of the Warsangali Sultanate, the British established a protectorate in the region referred to as British Somaliland.[26] The British garrisoned the protectorate from Aden and administered it as part of British India until 1898. British Somaliland was then administered by the Foreign Office until 1905, and afterwards by theColonial Office.
Generally, the British did not have much interest in the resource-barren region.[27] The stated purposes of the establishment of the protectorate were to "secure a supply market, check the traffic in slaves, and to exclude the interference of foreign powers."[28] The British principally viewed the protectorate as a source for supplies of meat for their British Indian outpost in Aden through the maintenance of order in the coastal areas and protection of the caravan routes from the interior.[29] Hence, the region's nickname of "Aden's butcher's shop".[30] Colonial administration during this period did not extend administrative infrastructure beyond the coast,[31] and contrasted with the more interventionist colonial experience of Italian Somaliland.[32]
On 1 July 1960, the protectore and the Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) united as planned to form the Somali Republic.[33][34] A government was formed by Abdullahi Issa, with Aden Abdullah Osman Daar as President and Abdirashid Ali Shermarke as Prime Minister (later to become President, from 1967 to 1969). On 20 July 1961 and through a popular referendum, the Somali people ratified a new constitution, which was first drafted in 1960.[35] In 1967,Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal became Prime Minister, a position to which he was appointed by Shermarke. Shermarke would be assassinated two years later by one of his own bodyguards. His murder was quickly followed by a military coup d'état on 21 October 1969 (the day after his funeral), in which the Somalian Army seized power without encountering armed opposition. The putsch was spearheaded by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, who at the time commanded the army.[36] The new regime would go on to rule Somalia for the next 21 years.
The moral authority of Barre's government gradually eroded, as many Somalis had become disillusioned with life under military rule. By the mid-1980s, resistance movements supported by Ethiopia's communist Derg administration had sprung up across the country. Barre responded by ordering punitive measures against those he perceived as locally supporting the guerillas, especially in the northern regions. The clampdown included bombing of cities, with the northwestern administrative center ofHargeisa, a Somali National Movement (SNM) stronghold, among the targeted areas in 1988.[13][37] The bombardment was led by General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, Barre's son-in-law.[38]
Although the SNM at its inception had a unionist constitution, it eventually began to pursue independence, looking to secede from the rest of Somalia.[39] Under the leadership of Abdirahman Ahmed Ali Tuur, the local administration declared the northwestern Somali territories independent at a conference held in Burao between 27 April 1991 and 15 May 1991.[40] Tuur then became the newly established Somaliland polity's first President, but subsequently renounced the separatist platform in 1994 and began instead to publicly seek and advocate reconciliation with the rest of Somalia under a power-sharing federal system of governance.[39] Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal was appointed as Tuur's successor in 1993 by the Grand Conference of National Reconciliation in Borama, which met for four months, leading to a gradual improvement in security, as well as a consolidation of the new territory.[41] Egal was reappointed in 1997, and remained in power until his death on 3 May 2002. The vice president, Dahir Riyale Kahin, who was during the 1980s the highest-ranking National Security Service (NSS) officer in Berbera in Siad Barre's government, was sworn in as president shortly afterwards.[42] In 2003, Kahin became the first elected president of Somaliland.
The war in southern Somalia between Islamist insurgents on the one hand, and the Federal Government of Somalia and its African Union allies on the other, has for the most part not directly affected Somaliland, which, like neighboring Puntland, has remained relatively stable.[43
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