Abstract: | ABSTRACT This study captures the momentum of Somaliland's national reconciliation nationstate-rebuilding phase as it drives a reconstruction process involving the demobilisation of militias; internal state institutional reconstruction focusing on the House of Elders and the House of Representatives; the international dimensions of reconstruction involving humanitarian aid and developmental assistance; private reconstruction initiatives interacting with the development of a monetary exchange process and the participation of the Somaliland diaspora; and the role of women as the backbone of the Somaliland economy, and how all of these social components of nation-state building are framed constitutionally in the crafting of a multi-party democracy with northern Somali characteristics. However, the broader context in which these reconstructive dynamics unfold is conditioned by the emergence of militant expressions of political Islam within and outside the Somali coast in and around the Red Sea ‘Afrabian’ transregion and the Persian Gulf. |