an opinion piece by Pete Butigieg on Somaliland from 2008. Gives you an interesting perspective on his past experiences and foreign policy stance. (Also is a bit shorter than the guardian article but still gets the point across about Somaliland)
My take on the situation: when you're a small country you're just a pawn for the bigger countries around you, including the world powers.
That's sadly the truth in some of our African states.
The Islamic killers kill more Africans too. Boko Haram are killing far more Somalis than they are Americans or Europeans. It is cynical, but it's probably not (on balance) morally wrong to support the opposition, god knows BH and friends get plenty of foreign support from our favourite Islamic customer in the middle east and others, so it's not as though the Americans are the only ones corrupting the failed state there.
In the end, maybe they came to the conclusion that it's better to buy peace with money than to deploy US/EU troops ( now there are African Union troops in Somalia assisted by US units).