Puntland

The name Puntland recalls the Land of Punt, the source of incense and myrrh for ancient Egypt, which some historians place on this coast. Frankincense and myrrh from the hills of Bari have been traded for thousands of years, and the Greek and Roman guide to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade described ports along the Horn.

In the 19th century the Majeerteen Sultanate, ruled by Boqor Osman Mahamud from the coast near Aluula, and the breakaway Sultanate of Hobyo to the south, founded by Yusuf Ali Kenadid, dominated the area. Both signed protectorate treaties with Italy in the late 1880s but kept considerable autonomy until Italian forces conquered them in the mid-1920s. The region then formed part of Italian Somaliland and, from 1960, of the Somali Republic.

After the collapse of the Somali state in 1991, elders and politicians from the Harti clans of the north-east, meeting at Garowe, founded the Puntland State of Somalia in 1998, with Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as its first president. It defined itself as an autonomous state within a future federal Somalia rather than a breakaway country. In the late 2000s Eyl and other coastal towns became bases for pirates who seized ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean until naval patrols and local action curbed them from about 2012. Puntland's relations with Mogadishu have often been strained, and in March 2024, after changes to Somalia's constitution, it stated that it no longer recognised the authority of the federal government, while still considering itself part of Somalia. It also disputes the Sool and Sanaag regions with Somaliland, and has fought al-Shabaab and Islamic State fighters in the Bari mountains.

Puntland's people are Somali and Sunni Muslim, with the Harti clans of the Darod family — above all the Majeerteen — predominant; clan structure shapes its politics as much as any constitution, and its presidents are elected by the state parliament.

The region takes pride in the legacy of its sultans and in being the home of frankincense, and Somali oral poetry, songs and the buraanbur, poems composed and sung by women, are as prized here as elsewhere. Most people live by or close to pastoralism, and the camel remains both livelihood and status.

Society is conservative: modest dress, strict observance of Ramadan, and the central role of mosques and Qur'anic schools. Tea and hospitality are offered to visitors, and in the afternoons men gather to chew khat. Somali is the everyday language, with Arabic in religion and business with the Gulf.

Bosaso, with several hundred thousand people, is the largest city and the main port, trading livestock out and food, fuel and goods in from the Gulf; many of its residents have fled drought or conflict in the south and live in camps on its outskirts. Garowe, the capital, has grown quickly around government offices, a university and the airport, and Galkayo, straddling the boundary with Galmudug, is a major trading town. Qardho is an inland town of Bari.

Livestock exports, fishing, frankincense, remittances and telecommunications drive the economy, and mobile money is used for most payments. Drought is the recurring disaster, killing herds and pushing families into towns. Politics turns on relations with Mogadishu, the dispute with Somaliland in the west and security operations in the Bari mountains.

The everyday diet is the northern Somali one: canjeero flatbread with tea at breakfast, rice or pasta with goat or camel meat at lunch, and a lighter supper. Muqmad, also called oodkac, is meat cut small, dried and preserved in ghee, a traditional pastoralist food.

The coast adds fish, and the fisheries of Eyl and the Indian Ocean shore land tuna and lobster for domestic and international markets. Camel milk, fresh or soured, is drunk daily, and dates, many imported through Bosaso, are eaten at every opportunity, above all to break the Ramadan fast.

Sweet spiced tea and the rich confection xalwo complete meals and celebrations, and no alcohol is sold.

Garowe itself has little to see beyond its markets and the town's life along the dry Nugaal watercourse. The Nugaal valley, running from the interior plateau towards the Indian Ocean, is pastoral country of wells, grazing and seasonal floods, and reaches the sea at Eyl, a fishing town at the mouth of the Nugaal.

On the Gulf of Aden, Bosaso is a working port with a busy seafront, and the hot spring and palm groves of Biyo Kulule lie south-east of the city. East of Bosaso the coast runs past Aluula to Cape Guardafui, the headland at the tip of the Horn of Africa, crowned by an old Italian lighthouse and looking out towards Socotra.

South of the cape, the Hafun peninsula, joined to the mainland by a narrow sandbar, ends at Ras Hafun, the easternmost point of mainland Africa, and old trading sites on its shore have yielded pottery from the ancient Indian Ocean trade. The hills of Bari behind the coast hold the wild frankincense and myrrh trees that gave the region its fame.