The president of Somaliland is bargaining for recognition

The deal has outraged Somalia, which describes it as an act of “aggression”. In April it expelled the Ethiopian ambassador. Now it is threatening to do the same to more than 8,000 Ethiopian soldiers who are stationed on its soil to fight al-Shabab, a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda. But in Somaliland, a de facto state with its own government, flag, army, currency and courts, the mood is very different. “We are struggling for our independence, as every other country in the continent…has done,” says Muse Bihi Abdi, the president of Somaliland, speaking to The Economist in Hargeisa, the capital.