00:00Somaliland unilaterally declared its separation from Somalia in 1991, but in the following three decades, no other country had recognised its autonomy until now.
00:12Perhaps that's an indicator of just how complex and how fragile the geopolitical situation is in the Horn of Africa and in the broader Red Sea region.
00:22So, Awale, let's start with you as a former Somaliland minister.
00:28Why now? Many countries have liaison officers, say, in Somaliland, including the UK, Ethiopia and Turkey.
00:36So why do you think Israel felt the need to take this further step?
00:41Thank you very much, Melinda. And I'm glad the sentence you started.
00:45And I start with correcting that because Somaliland did not exist from 1991.
00:52It became an independent country from 26 June 1960, and it got recognition from Britain.
01:02So we should establish that. And then it voluntarily united with Somalia, which was Italian Somalia.
01:10So we have to establish that. And in 1991, self-determination, it decided to do the union.
01:20So that is, first, what I would like to contribute.
01:23Your second question, which you said, why now?
01:28So, first of all, the good answer always comes from the country that grants the recognition.
01:33So that is, but probably what you want me to discuss is what I think is the reason.
01:40Israel knows why it's granted recognition and is a very important country in the world.
01:48But this is what I would like to share with your audience.
01:51The current president, Abdel Rahman Abdelahi, who is a democratically elected president, came to power one year ago.
02:04The past 35 years, every president, every government appealed to international community in different parts of the world.
02:12We reached out to the Muslim world. We started with Somalia.
02:15We had negotiations with Somalia. It didn't end. It didn't result.
02:19So we moved to the other Muslim world, to the Arab world, to the global.
02:25And that continued for the last three decades.
02:28I come to the now. The president, when he came to, when he got elected, he wrote to the 40 head of states,
02:36directly appealing every one of them to look into the conditions of Somaliland and really grant international recognition.
02:45One of the responses came back from Israel.
02:47And I think that was the key and that should be credited to President Abraham Erdogan, that he appealed to 40 head of states.
02:55But if 40 head of states were appealed to and only Israel is the one that took it up,
03:00why do you think Israel wants to recognize now?
03:05It could have done it 34 years ago.
03:07And that is another thing.
03:11I think Israel was one of the first countries that recognized in 1960 Somaliland.
03:17So that is a history that is still there.
03:19But what I would like to establish and a view that I want to share with your audience and with you as well.
03:26Recognition and non-recognition of a new state is invariably a political decision, not legal decision.
03:34States extend sovereign recognition to other states based on perceived strategic national interests.
03:41And I think why Israel now grants international recognition is exactly that.
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