A homeland, a horse, a horizon.

SREC is not being founded to stage an event. It is being founded because an entire equestrian tradition is currently held in living memory, with nothing underneath it — and because the window to put something underneath it is closing.

1. I

   The horse is not new here.

   In Somali life the horse carried standing, mobility and defence long before it carried a saddle number. It is named in praise poetry, remembered by temperament, and central to the mounted campaigns that shaped the country's early modern history. This is one of the oldest continuous horse cultures in the Horn — and one of the least documented anywhere in the world.

2. II

   The knowledge is leaving.

   Breeding decisions are being made without pedigree. Oral testimony sits with an ageing generation. No register records which horses exist, who owns them, or what they descend from. Every year without an institution is a year of inheritance lost that cannot be reconstructed later at any price.

3. III

   Preservation is a global interest, not a local one.

   Bloodlines shaped by aridity, distance and thirst are of real value to a global breeding industry facing a warming climate. A documented Somali studbook is not a national vanity project; it adds a genuinely distinct line to a shared international record.

4. IV

   East Africa deserves an authority of its own.

   The region hosts horses, riders and competition without a founding body of international standing. SREC is being built to that standard from the first document — rules, welfare, integrity and records first — so that recognition, when it comes, is earned rather than negotiated.