Turjumaad ayaa la diyaarinayaa

Somaliland’s fight for statehood takes center stage in Farah Bakaari’s essay, “Sovereignty’s End and Beginning,” exploring genocide, diaspora identity, nationalism, and the global politics of recognition In the winter of 2025, when Israel formally recognized Somaliland as a sovereign state, celebrations erupted in parts of Hargeisa. Israeli flags illuminated downtown streets, young Somalilanders flooded social media with jubilant posts, and officials hailed the breakthrough as the culmination of a struggle spanning more than three decades.

But for Somaliland-born writer and academic Farah Bakaari, the moment represented something far more conflicted: the collision between a long-denied quest for statehood and the moral compromises that can accompany geopolitical survival.

In her sweeping essay, “Sovereignty’s End and Beginning,” published in Boston Review’s Spring 2026 issue, Bakaari traces Somaliland’s painful history—from genocide and civil war to diaspora identity and the burden of statelessness—while interrogating what happens when the pursuit of sovereignty overtakes the ideals that once justified it.

“The passport was both symbol and its negative,” Bakaari writes, recalling an encounter at the U.S. Embassy in Djibouti years earlier, when American officials refused to stamp her Somaliland passport directly because Somaliland lacked international recognition. “Its power cemented in the very moment it was declared moot.”