About Somaliland

Capital city:
Hargeisa

Other main cities:
Burao, Berbera, Borama, Erigavo, Las Anod

Main Regions:
Awdal, Maroodi Jeex, Sahil, Sanaag, Sool, Togdheer

Official language:
Somali

Religion:
Islam

Currency:
Somaliland Shilling

Population:
3.5 million

Land area:
137,600 sq km2 (53 100 sq miles)

Coastline:
900 km

Land boundaries:
Djibouti 58km, Ethiopia 800km, Somalia 500 km

Weather & Map

The country has a tropical monsoon type of climate; however, there are four distinct seasons. A main rainy spring season from April to June is followed by a dry summer season from July to September. There is then a short autumn rainy period from October to November, and finally a long dry winter from December to March. The latter is the most difficult for the animal herding rural population and to the farmers to a lesser scale. If the April-June rains fail, the result is a drought that could kill most animals which have already been weakened by the December-March dry season, which also severely hits the country's economy.

Annual average precipitation ranges from less than 1000 mm on the coast to 500 mm inland except for limited areas where it may reach 900 mm. Rain variability, is very high. Hargeisa, the capital, for instance, with a long term average of some 400 mm has recorded variations from 209 to 810 mm per annum.

Temperatures also show some seasonal variations. The winter months are normally cool with average December temperatures in the range of 15 - 26°C, while the summer months are the hottest averaging 26 - 32°C in June.

Somaliland Map


Somaliland History

The Land of Punt

Somaliland together with Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti (collectively known as the Horn of Africa) were known to the Ancient Egyptians as the Land of Punt.  The earliest definite record of contact between Ancient Egypt and Punt comes from an entry on the Palermo stone during the reign of Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty around 2250 BCE. It says that, in one year, 80,000 units of myrrh and frankincense was brought to Egypt from Punt as well as other quantities of goods that were highly valued in Ancient Egypt. From the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Dynasty, the contact between Egypt and Punt was broken. This was due to the fact that Egypt was invaded by the Hyksos. The fifth ruler in the Eighteen Dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs was Queen Hatshepsut, daughter of Tutmose III. She became Queen in the year 1493 BCE and made a landmark expedition to the land of Punt which is recorded on the walls of the Deir ci-Bahari temple located in Alexandria (Egypt). Her eight ships sailed to the land of Punt and came back with cargoes of fine woods, ebony, myrrh and cinnamon and incense tree to plant in the temple garden.

The roman emperor Augustus sent an expedition to conquer actual Yemen. During that military expedition the roman fleet of Gaius Gallus destroyed the port of Aden in order to open a safe sea route to India and to the Punt for the roman merchants.

Ancient Somaliland

In the Classical era, the port city of Berbera prospered due to largely the involvement of the spice trade, selling myrrh and frankincense to the Romans and Egyptians. Somaliland became known as hubs for spices mainly cinnamon and the cities grew wealthy from it the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea tells us that the northern Somaliland regions of modern-day Somaliland were independent and competed with Aksum for trade.

Ottoman Somaliland

On 1548 CE, the port city of Zeilla was annexed and became part of the vast Ottoman Empire. The reason for this was that Zeilla is situated in a strategic location on the Red Sea because it is near the Bab-el-Mandeb strait; a key area for trade with the East. For 300 years, Zeilla enjoyed trade with other countries and was home to Arab, Persian and even Indian merchants. On 1884, when the empire was on the brink of collapse; Egypt, an Ottoman vassal at that time, occupied western parts of Somaliland, the other regions being controlled by Somaliland. Then, during the Scramble for Africa era, the region now claimed by Somaliland was the British Somaliland Protectorate.

British Somaliland

In 1888, after signing successive treaties with the then ruling Somali Sultans, the British established a protectorate in the region referred to as British Somaliland. The British garrisoned the protectorate from Aden, Yemen and administered it from their British India colony until 1898. British Somaliland was then administered by the Foreign Office until 1905 and afterwards by the Office. Generally, the British did not have much interest in the resource-barren region. They principally viewed the protectorate as a source for supplies of meat for their British Indian outpost in Aden.

The state of Somaliland achieved its independence from Great Britain on June 26, 1960, by a Royal Proclamation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In accordance with the United Nations Procedures pertaining to decolonisation, the documents establishing the transfer of sovereignty were deposited with the United Nations. The new state of Somaliland was immediately recognized by other UN member states, including the five permanent members of the Security Council. On July 1, 1960, Somaliland and Somalia declared their union as the Somali Republic. The merger was intended to pave the way for unification under a single flag of all the Somali territories: Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, the Northern Frontier District (NFD) of Kenya and the "Ogaden" region of Ethiopia.

Despite their common Somali Heritage, Somaliland and Somalia approached the merger as very different countries, with distinct institutional, legal, linguistic, and political arrangements. The links between them were negligible and in 1960 less than one percent of Somaliland commerce was with Somaliland few Somalilanders had ever seen the new capital, Mogadishu.

As the 1980s unfolded, the Siad Barre regime became increasingly unstable, due to the SNM expanded its control in northern Somalia. Mogadishu responded by instituting draconian measures in the north to suppress the SNM. When these failed, the government indiscriminately used raids and bombing campaigns to assert control. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1990s, the SNM controlled virtually all of the northern Somalia including the major towns of Burao and Hargeisa. In January 1991, the brutal Barre government collapsed

Restoration of Somaliland sovereignty: (May 18, 1991)

In January 1991, the brutal Barre government collapsed and the SNM took power in the North. As the struggle for power in southern Somalia degenerated rapidly into civil war, the SNM leadership abandoned hopes that an acceptable government could be established in Mogadishu and withdrew its forces from the battle for the capital. A peace conference of the clans of the north was called in Burao in April 1991. On 18 May 1991, the 1960 union was unilaterally dissolved by the northerners who declared, on the same day, the restoration of Somaliland as an independent state.