It has all the trappings of a country - a government and parliament, army, courts, elections, passports, and a currency - but it doesn’t feature on any map other than as a terra incognita marked by a speculative broken line. However, this geographic entity has been in existence since 1991, yet the wider world stoically denies its existence. Somaliland seceded from greater Somalia in 1991 after that country’s dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, a major general who seized power in a 1969 coup, responded to local unrest by unleashing his army on the region and dismantling the economic and political power base of the Isaaq clan which had dominated the area since Medieval times.