Puntland was established as an autonomous region in March 1998

Evidence

Although, like so many Somali new governmental initiatives, this body was never actually set up, a Majerteyn-wide conference held at Garoe in March 1998, with Darod delegates from Somaliland, established the new ‘Puntland state of Somalia’ as an autonomous local entity, with Abdillahi as its first elected President, an outcome which Imam Muhammad Abshir did not accept (although U.N.O.S.O.M. did). — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 668

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the third building block (with Somaliland and the earlier S.S.D.F. experiment) in Lewis’s narrative of the E.U. ‘building blocks’ policy in the north.