A WDM Editorial
History has an uncomfortable habit of exposing truths that modern politics prefers to ignore. One such truth lies buried in an obscure Italian diplomatic note from 1938. It is only a few lines long, yet it speaks volumes about how the world’s great powers once viewed what is today Puntland.
In his diary entry of 30 August 1938, Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano recorded a remarkable conversation with Benito Mussolini:
The Translation of the note:
“The Duce… also informs me of his plan to make Migiurtinia a concession for international Jews. He says that the country has considerable natural resources that the Jews could exploit…”
Pause and think about that.
This was not an offhand remark. It was a discussion taking place at the highest levels of Fascist Italy while Europe was marching toward the Second World War. Mussolini was simultaneously discussing Adolf Hitler’s plans over Czechoslovakia and contemplating the future of Migiurtinia (Majeerteenia) in northeastern Somalia.
The significance is profound.
The region was not viewed as a barren colonial outpost. It was regarded as a territory possessing “considerable natural resources.” That assessment came from the colonial administration itself—people whose primary interest was extracting economic value from conquered lands.
Today, many Somalis casually dismiss Puntland as merely another federal member state. Yet eighty-eight years ago, one of Europe’s most expansionist regimes considered the region sufficiently valuable to feature in high-level geopolitical planning.
This should force Somalis to ask difficult questions.
What did Italian colonial planners know about Puntland’s economic potential that successive Somali governments have failed to investigate or develop? Why were foreign powers already identifying strategic value in the region while contemporary Somali politics remains trapped in endless clan rivalries and constitutional disputes?
History repeatedly demonstrates that outsiders often recognize the value of a country before its own leaders do.
Puntland occupies one of the world’s most strategic maritime locations. It commands the approaches to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Its coastline stretches for more than 1,600 kilometres. It possesses rich fisheries, untapped mineral prospects, hydrocarbon potential, and access to one of the world’s busiest maritime trade corridors.
These are not recent discoveries. Colonial planners understood them nearly a century ago.
The 1938 diplomatic note also illuminates another historical reality that many observers continue to overlook. Puntland’s emergence as the principal champion of a federal Somalia was not an accident of modern politics. It was grounded in its own history, geography, and strategic importance.
For centuries, the Majeerteen Sultanate maintained functioning political institutions, maritime commerce, and diplomatic relations with foreign powers. During the colonial period, Italy itself regarded the region as strategically valuable because of its location and natural wealth. Mussolini’s reference to Migiurtinia was yet another acknowledgment that this was no ordinary colonial possession.
When the Somali state collapsed in 1991, Puntland’s founders did not advocate the return of an all-powerful centralized government. They understood from history that concentrating authority in Mogadishu had repeatedly produced instability, exclusion, and eventually state collapse. Instead, they envisioned a new Somalia based on the devolution of power, constitutional power-sharing, and regional self-government within a united Somali state.
That vision was neither emotional nor opportunistic. It reflected historical reality. A region that had long exercised significant political autonomy and understood its strategic value naturally concluded that Somalia’s future depended upon sharing power rather than monopolizing it.
The establishment of Puntland in 1998 and its subsequent advocacy for federalism therefore represented far more than a regional political project. It became the intellectual and constitutional blueprint for rebuilding Somalia after civil war. Whether one supports or opposes federalism today, it is impossible to deny that Puntland’s federal vision emerged from historical experience rather than political expediency.
Ironically, while Fascist Italy recognized Puntland’s strategic importance almost ninety years ago for imperial ambitions, many Somali politicians today continue to underestimate the very region that supplied the constitutional framework upon which modern Somalia now rests.
Unfortunately, Somalia’s political class has rarely demonstrated comparable strategic thinking. Instead of building institutions capable of unlocking this immense potential, successive governments have devoted their energies to political intrigue, centralization battles, and zero-sum struggles for power.
The 1938 diplomatic note also reminds us that Somalia has never existed in geopolitical isolation. External powers have always viewed Somali territory through strategic calculations. Sometimes those calculations involved military bases. Sometimes maritime routes. Sometimes natural resources. Occasionally, as this note suggests, even demographic engineering.
The lesson is not that Mussolini’s proposal deserved consideration—it did not. It emerged from a fascist colonial worldview that treated occupied territories as assets to be disposed of without the consent of their inhabitants. That mentality belongs in history’s museum of failed empires.
The real lesson is different.
If colonial powers regarded Puntland as strategically indispensable in 1938, why do so many Somali leaders today fail to appreciate its importance? Why has nearly a century passed without a coherent national strategy for developing one of the Horn of Africa’s most strategically located regions?
A nation that forgets how others valued its territory risks undervaluing it itself.
History is not merely about remembering the past. It is about understanding why powerful states make the decisions they do. The Fascists saw value in Majeerteenia because they were thinking strategically—even if their objectives were morally bankrupt.
Modern Somali leaders should learn the strategic lesson without inheriting the colonial mindset.
Puntland is not strategically important because Mussolini said so. Mussolini’s words matter because they inadvertently reveal what serious geopolitical planners already understood: northeastern Somalia occupied an important place on the world’s strategic map long before today’s political disputes.
The fact that Puntland later envisioned and championed a new Somalia based on the devolution of power was therefore no historical accident. It was the logical political expression of a region whose historical experience, strategic location, and institutional traditions had long distinguished it within the Somali peninsula.
That reality has not changed.
What has changed is the quality of leadership entrusted with managing it.
History has preserved the evidence. The question is whether Somalia is prepared to learn from it—or continue allowing others to recognize the value of Puntland before its own leaders do.