Somaliland’s hybrid political system once offered exactly what the country needed. By combining customary clan consensus, xeer, and elder leadership with constitutional democracy, it helped communities disarm, reconcile, and rebuild after 1991. That achievement deserves respect. Yet the institutions that secured peace in the 1990s are increasingly ill-suited to today’s political, economic, and diplomatic pressures. Somaliland now needs a social contract centred on equal citizenship—not to erase kinship, but to place public authority above it.

From negotiated peace to equal citizenship

The conflict around Las Anod and wider tensions in Sool and Sanaag exposed the limits of lineage-based legitimacy. When citizens interpret government through clan identity, taxation, security deployments, and public appointments can appear to serve one community over another. That perception weakens national loyalty and gives outside actors an opening to exploit local grievances. A civic model offers a stronger foundation: equal protection under the law, fair regional investment, meaningful decentralization, and public institutions that serve people because they are citizens.

Recognition requires modern institutions.

Somaliland’s case for........

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