By Michael Rubin, Hellas Journal – Washington
On December 26, 2025, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced that Israel would formally recognize the hitherto unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.
“Today we signed an agreement on mutual recognition and the establishment of full diplomatic relations, which will include the appointment of ambassadors and the opening of embassies,” he announced on X. “We will work together to promote the relations between our countries and nations, regional stability and economic prosperity.”
Greece should follow suit for reasons of both justice and security.
There is no aspirant country more deserving of international recognition than Somaliland. Somaliland, formerly a British protectorate, first won its independence on June 26, 1960. All five members of the UN Security Council recognized the state and its borders. Five days later, however, Somaliland merged with the former Italian Somaliland to former the Somali Republic which in turn became Somalia.
It was a marriage made in hell, culminating in Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre’s attempt at genocide against the Isaaq clan predominant in Somaliland and then Somalia’s collapse. Most everyone remembers the famine and how humanitarian intervention turned to disaster culminating in the “Black Hawk Down” incident.
Somaliland, however, did not follow Somalia into the abyss. It reasserted its independence, rebuilt itself, and embraced democracy. Not only has Somaliland undertaken eight elections since, many involving transfers of power between rival parties, but it became the first country in the world to secure election registration with biometric iris scans.
It built its economy on little more than customs revenue and a commitment to transparency and now hosts multibillion-dollar telecom and mobile money businesses, the second largest Coca Cola bottling plant in Africa, and the Port of Berbera, ranked by the World Bank just behind Piraeus in rankings of top global deep water container ports. Berbera’s port is also the terminus for a special corridor to Ethiopia, a huge though largely untapped market for Greek business.
Berbera is also a security lynchpin. The rise of the Houthis in Yemen and their targeting of merchant ships, including many owned or flagged by Greece, has disrupted all shipping but affected Greece disproportionately. This is why Greece joined the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian and later took a leading role in the European Union Naval Force’s Operation Aspides.
Patrolling the Red Sea is not only expensive and resource intensive, but its effect against the Houthis has been limited. To operate out of Berbera, both its port and adjacent airport which itself was once an emergency landing strip for NASA’s Space Shuttle program, Greece and likeminded countries could patrol faster with smaller, more agile ships, helicopters, and aircraft.
Somaliland is also secure; it has not suffered a terror attack since 2008. When my daughter was nine years old, she spent Christmas in Somaliland, swam in the Gulf of Aden, explored the streets of Hargeisa, and the neolithic cave painting at Laas Geel, all without any security. Simply put, Somaliland is as different from Somalia as Larnaca is from Libya.
Activist Greek diplomacy has largely secured and protected the Eastern Mediterranean from revisionist and terror-sponsoring forces. But Greece’s interests go beyond just the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
As Greece becomes a commercial and energy hub for all Europe, its interests extend to the Red Sea and Bab El-Mandeb. As Turkey chooses to double down on Mogadishu and its Islamist government, Greece should, at a minimum, join Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Kenya to establish a diplomatic office in Hargeisa. Even better, though, would be to follow Israel’s lead and welcome Somaliland into the family of moderate, law-abiding maritime nations.
Greece increasing punches above its weight diplomatically. How fitting it would be if the country that introduced democracy to humanity would welcome the world newest democracy.
* Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute