By Dr. Mohamed Osman
Apr 1, 2026 · Member of the Society · Published at The Times of Israel (Blogs)
Dr. Mohamed Osman
Member of the Society · Writer at The Times of Israel
Retired physician and public-health specialist from Somaliland, based in Canada, with career service at Ottawa Public Health and Alberta Health Services — and a long-standing voice for Somaliland's international recognition.
How recognition redraws the strategic geography of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.
Three months after recognition, Dr. Osman steps back to look at the map. With ambassadors exchanged and embassies opening, he argues that Israel's recognition of Somaliland has redrawn the strategic geography of the Horn of Africa — anchoring a new alignment on the western shore of a waterway that carries a tenth of global trade past the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Berbera is the hinge of the piece: an alternative to increasingly crowded and contested Djibouti, a platform for maritime awareness against Houthi attacks on shipping, and a counterweight to Iranian, Turkish, and Russian ambitions in the Red Sea. Intelligence sharing and naval access, he argues, turn a diplomatic act into an operational one.
The essay's most striking idea is what he calls performance-based legitimacy: Somaliland earned recognition not through legal argument but by governing well — three decades of stability capped by a peaceful presidential transition in 2024, in pointed contrast to Mogadishu. He is honest about the risks, too, from militarization pressures to the Houthis' declared targeting of Israeli-linked facilities.
This is the Society's summary — the full article, in the author's own words, is at The Times of Israel.
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