Talk:Somaliland Armed Forces

Overhaul

I daresay this article needs a complete overhaul, especially given the ever-fractous nature of the political situation that geographically surrounds Somaliland. I doubt I'm the only person with a cursory interest in the region and leaving out information about such a vital political entity seems ridiculous. The article as it stands is, as far as I can tell, completely made up from rumour and gossip slanted heavily in favour of a militarily powerful Somaliland.

I've tried kick starting the process by getting some reasonable figures regarding the Somaliland military. I found some documents regarding renovation of the military (from 1995) prior to any theoretical reunification which cites the number of military personnel active within Somaliland to be 40,000 at that time, with plans to reduce it to 10,000 when the economic situation dictated. I presume since then the situation has changed dramatically, but it's a better figure than the rather large 150,000 plucked out of thin air. [1]

Since I'm not prone to editing Wikipedia articles, I'll probably leave the bulk of the editing to others but before I do anything else, I'm going to remove the pictures as a matter of urgency since they're, frankly, silly. The 'USS Somaliland' does not exist and even if it did, it wouldn't have anything to do with the Somaliland military. The entire naval section should be removed for now and replaced when some information is available.

I would not want to be accused of butchering the page, but anything below 'Weaponry' should really be removed due to lack of any evidence, the fact it's drivel, the poor formatting, etc.

Of minor interest is a US government document I found in relation to the missile capabilities of Somaliland referring to their potential possession of coastal defense missiles. Can't find the link again for the life of me. I'll see if Britannica '99 has any useful information. Searching typical US and UK sources hasn't brought up much since the international community does not officially recognise Somaliland. -Rushyo

I Agree entirely. While I applaud the effort, some of the claims here are unfathomable, such as 'The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein also gave weapons to Siad Barre. He did this in order to destroy Somaliland'.

As well as this I did the sums and (I'm using British standard figures for brigade size[2], I do this because Somaliland is an ex-British colony and I guessed they use British standard) figured out some of the claims here. To have '45 mechanized and infantry brigades' Somaliland would have a grand total of 247500 infranty personal. And this is not counting the various other battalions listed.

I also point towards the 2005 BBC documentary Holidays in the Danger Zone: Places That Don't Exist, in which the presenter Simon Reeve visits Somaliland. In this documentary the president of Somaliland makes 'the point that he runs the country on just a few million pounds a year' [3] (and not even enough for the '$43.28 million' military expenditure as described in the article!), which is obviously not enough to ever run a Hawker Hunter (as pictured) without massive budget concessions in other areas, yet alone buy one. As well as this the documentary highlights the fact that Somaliland was still in the process of training it's police force in a riot situation back in 2005 (actually, the article is accurate here as the statement 'United Nations provides assistance towards police force' - while grammatically terrible - is largely correct). I doubt that since then Somaliland has managed to amass an armed forces on the scale described here.

And finally, Somali has been under a UN Arms Embago[4][5]. While I realise that Somaliland is a de facto independent nation, it is still included underneath this embargo for technical reasons. This makes the claim that 'their equipment is usually bought from abroad and shipped in to the country' highly unlikely by my book.

This either needs an urgent re-write or a deletion. I'll look into it. --Evilhairyhamster 17:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Evilhairyhamster: I find your argument to be flawed for a number of reasons. First of all, you are making a pretty big assumption by guessing that the Somoliland military uses the British standard for unit size on the basis that they were a British colony. So was the US, and we have our own standards. Plus, whoever wrote the article may have mistakenly used the wrong terminology. They may have meant something else, like battalions. And you state that the country is under a UN arms embargo, so it is "highly unlikely" that arms could be purchased and shipped in from abroad. So what? A UN arms embargo doesn't mean that suddenly no weapons can get into a country. If you'll recall, South Africa was under a similar arms embargo in the '80s, and they still managed to purchase and import plenty of top of the line equipment. And a UN arms embargo certainly didn't stop Iraq from 1991-2003. Ditto for Croatia and Slovenia before they were recognized, and Taiwan. And then there's the black market. Black market arms dealers tend not to listen to the UN, and they have plenty of materials to work with what with the fall of the Soviet Union and all, and many of the weapons systems they use are older model Russian stuff, from the '60s and '70s. Coincidence? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.50.151.8 (talk) 10:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

I've removed the unsourced parts. No need to have them as they were too long present. Wikipedia needs to be a reliable encyclopedia. --TheFEARgod (Ч) 15:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

CORRECT INFORMATION The information which is available in this website is correct and according to the last updated information about somaliland as of 2007 they are more than the number described here. the equipments which their status is unknown remain unknown as somaliland authorities dont disclose all thier weapons for security and political reasons. it came very clear that they are different from their neighbours by displaying high competency and use of mofern weapons compared to what the other guy termed as a state under embargo. actually we can accuse you of being the butcher of the facts and figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.200.24.107 (talk) 09:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The listing of equipment is practically identical to the list of the article Military of Somalia. It seems to me that someone just copied it.--Ganimoth (talk) 17:36, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Propaganda

This whole article appears to be Somaliland propaganda. If Somaliland actually has any of the armaments listed here, they are likely rusting in a junk heap somewhere. Maintaining an operational air force, navy, and 60,000-strong mechanized army on $6.8 million per year???

Somaliland's "military" likely consists of 5,000-10,000 militiamen and a few dozen technicals. This article should be deleted outright, in my opinion. Jrule (talk) 19:48, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Especially the naval section. Chamberlian (talk) 16:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Generally I agree with you; I've added citation needed templates and tried to tighten up some of the references (which are not terribly reliable themselves). The main problem is that there is little well sourced information out there that I can find. I was surprised to find some pictures of tanks and rocket-carrying vehicles [6] on display; it is possible that the Army at least has some of the equipment listed, especially since most of it is pretty ancient, ie fifty years old or more. Of course, having it painted for an inspection is quite different than using it effectively in combat.Erudy (talk) 20:43, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

July 2014

Theyuusuf143, can you please come to the talk page? AcidSnow (talk) 14:41, 26 July 2014 (UTC)