Somalilandsun: Somaliland held its seventh elections in 30 years on the 31st May 2021.
Ten European ambassadors and a European Union ambassador came to Hargeisa to show support and see the elections.
Other observers included prominent african personalities including a former president, political leaders, academics, journalists and rights activists.
No American diplomat bothered to show up, however, to celebrate democracy in one of Africa’s most peaceful and western-leaning albeit unrecognized states.
Somaliland, a former British protectorate, gained independence in 1960 and received recognition from all five members of the UN Security Council and 30 other states.
It voluntarily entered a union with Italian Somaliland to form what would become Somalia. It was an unhappy union, that ended after a brutal civil war in 1991.
While no country resumed recognition, Somaliland bypassed the fighting, chaos, corruption, terrorism, and looting which long paralyzed the rest of Somalia.
The irony is that the State Department and broader international community has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Somalia in order to hold the sort of one-person, one-vote elections that Somaliland now holds regularly at a fraction of the expense.
“Perhaps the State Department feels that to recognize democracy in Somaliland or to set foot in the region would somehow imbue it with formal recognition” states Michael Rubin a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Horn Africa Political Commentator
“This is nonsense because American officials have long visited Taiwan, and U.S. diplomats have travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan for decades and Syrian Kurdistan for years without implying recognition. European diplomats and African officials—including the former president of Sierra Leone—visit without implying any such claim, argues Rubin in his latest piece titled State Department Is AWOL In Somaliland Elections
