There are moments in the life of a political community when the narrative that sustained it begins, quietly, to shift. What once functioned as a source of cohesion and legitimacy can, over time, become more difficult to examine from within. It is precisely at such moments that internal critique becomes both necessary and difficult.

Abdishakur Hassan-kayd’s The Era of Rebirth enters at this juncture. The book traces Somaliland’s trajectory from devastation and abandonment to what has often been described as an improbable and largely self-generated process of state-building. Yet it does not remain within that familiar account. Its concern is with what follows: the period after survival, when the structures........

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