Israel’s decision to extend diplomatic recognition to Somaliland has provoked outrage in some quarters of the Islamic world. Yet beneath the noise, indignation, and ritual denunciations lies an uncomfortable truth that many Muslim-majority states would rather avoid. This recognition has not created a new injustice; it has exposed a long-standing one. It has laid bare a deep hypocrisy within parts of the Islamic world—one that proclaims solidarity, justice, and human rights in theory, while in practice shielding dictatorships, excusing mass atrocities, and punishing societies that choose peace, democracy, and accountability.

Somaliland’s political story is neither obscure nor legally implausible. It is, in fact, one of the clearest cases of interrupted statehood in post-colonial Africa. From 1884 until June 26, 1960, Somaliland existed as a British Protectorate with clearly defined colonial boundaries. On that date, it attained independence as a sovereign state, recognized by more than thirty countries. Only days later, driven by pan-Somali idealism rather than constitutional prudence, Somaliland voluntarily entered into a hurried and legally dubious union with Italian-administered Somalia, which became independent on July 1, 1960 to form the now defunct Somali Republic.

That union was never ratified through a mutually agreed and properly enacted legal framework. Power was centralized in Mogadishu, Somalilanders were marginalized politically and economically, and dissent was met with repression. The experiment in unity collapsed spectacularly. By the late 1980s, the Somali state turned its weapons on its own citizens in the north. Between 1988 and 1990, cities such as Hargeisa and Burao were systematically bombed, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and hundreds of thousands were displaced. What occurred was not an unfortunate by-product of civil war; it was a deliberate campaign of collective punishment that meets every credible definition of genocide.

One might have expected the Islamic and Arab worlds—so often vocal about Muslim suffering elsewhere—to rise in defense of Somaliland’s civilian population. They did not. On the contrary, many Muslim-majority states either openly sided with the Somali regime responsible for the atrocities or chose silence and diplomatic evasion. Even when........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)