I'm recording on December 30. Four days ago, Israel officially recognized Somaliland is a separate

country. And it was a strategic move. It has to do with their location near the Babbunandam

Straits. It gives Israel some options when it comes to future fighting against the Houthis of Yemen.

It's not complicated. It's not

dramatic. But the response has really surprised me and gotten me to think that there's a lot

happening in this region that really isn't well understood in the international community,

and it's time to get into it. It's time for the international community to get a lot more

serious. The response of the United Kingdom, the response of some members of the African Union and

other African states, the response of the Palestinian Authority, this mass across-the-board

rejection of Somaliland's existence as a state or the ability to recognize as a state,

it's fascinating and it matters.

And it matters not because of Somaliland itself or because of, you know, Israeli maneuvers in a strategic area that Israel has

military and national security interests in. None of that is the core. The core is the hypocrisy.

The West is very bad at looking at the third world. It's very bad at looking at Africa. And the entire response to Somaliland really drives that point home, and I want to explain why. I'm going to try to do this without any romance, utopianism. I'm not going to pretend Somaliland is Switzerland. I'm also not going to pretend it's just another Somali warlord zone that declared

independence for some tribal reason. Because it isn't. And the fact that it isn't tells us something

really important. Let's start with the basics. Somaliland is a de facto independent state in the

Horn of Africa. It is basically northern Somalia up until 1991. It declared independence in 1991,

and since 1991, it has functioned to an astonishing extent, more than you could possibly

demand or ask for as a separate polity. It has its own government. It has its own parliament.

It has its own courts. It has its own parliament. It has its own courts. It has its own army. It has its own currency. The Somaliland shilling. It has elections. Not perfect elections, sometimes delayed elections, but repeated, fair, open elections with real campaigns by opposition parties. And maybe most significant to being a state,

it controls its territory. That already puts it in a different category from a whole lot of

internationally recognized states, and I'm not just talking about the Palestinians. Here's what

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