Awdal

Awdal
Basic data
Country	Somalia
Capital	Baki
surface	21,374 km²
Residents	673,263 (calculation 2013)
density	31 inhabitants per km²
ISO 3166-2	SO-AW

Coordinates: 10 ° 0 '  N , 43 ° 12'  E

At a well in Awdal

Awdal ( Somali Awdal , Arabic أودال, DMG Audāl ) is a region ( gobolka ) in northern Somalia and part of the area claimed by the internationally unrecognized Somaliland . Its capital according to the administrative division of Somalia is the city of Baki . Today, however, the significantly increased Boorama , the largest city in the region and capital according to the administrative division of Somaliland, or the port city of Zeila (Seylac) are of greater importance . The name is derived from the Sultanate of Adal, who used to rule the region .

Awdal consists of the districts of Baki , Boorama , Lughaya and Saylac and lies between the Gulf of Aden , Djibouti , the Ethiopian Somali region and the Woqooyi Galbeed (or Saaxil ) region bordering within Somalia . Awdal used to be part of Woqooyi Galbeed.

The people of Awdal are mainly the Somali - Clan of Issa on, a Subclan of you .

history

The area was part of the Sultanate of Adal , a medieval great power in the region , during the 15th and 16th centuries . In Zeila on the coast and along the southern border with neighboring Ethiopia there are still numerous ruins from this period, which were described by the British African explorer Richard Francis Burton when he visited the region in the 1850s.

In the colonial times, the area was part of British Somaliland and after independence it formed the border region of Somalia to the former French colony, whose population also consists mainly of Somali of the Issa clan, but decided in a vote against a merger and when Djibouti formed its own state.

When the central state collapsed after the outbreak of the Somali civil war , the area was under the control of the clan leaders who founded Somaliland in 1991 and have since been fighting for the permanent separation from Somalia and international recognition as an independent state, with the new capital Hargeysa .

Some clans, who refused to recognize the authority of the Isaaq majority populated Somaliland, declared the area independent as the "Republic of Awdal" in 1995. The founding of the state, often colloquially referred to as Awdalland , was not recognized by any other state and does not seem to have been implemented seriously or at least not permanently in the period that followed.

In 2009 it was re-established by opponents of the government in Somaliland, which, as Awdalland or Adal State of Somalia , aimed to separate from Somaliland, but not complete statehood, but return as a federal state to a federal Somalia. In 2011, local leaders in the region with similar motives first declared Zeila, and in the following year the surrounding area as Saylac & Lughaya State of Somalia, a Somali federal state, thus breaking away from Somaliland. The movement could not remove control of the area from the regional administration established by Somaliland.

Web links

• Map of the region at the Food Security Analysis Unit Somalia (English; PDF; 164 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ population estimation survey 2014 ( UNFPA ), Table A3 (English; PDF; 5.38 MB).
2. ↑ UNHCR: Somalia Country Information (English).  ( Page no longer available )
3. ^ CIA map of the administrative structure of Somalia, status 1988 (English).
4. ↑ Timothy Insoll: Aksum to Adal: Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa . In: The Archeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa , Cambridge University Press 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-65702-0 , pp. 59 ff. (English).
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5. ↑ Awdal Republic, Declaration of Indepence (English).
6. ^ Saylac-and-Lughaya-Staat on xariiradnews.com ( Memento of May 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on June 18, 2013 (English).