Gabiley, 18 Jul 2009 (Somalilandpress) — Some 17 army trucks and their soldiers rolled into Elbardale farmlands on Thursday, shifted out of Sool region to help restore security following last week’s violent clashes that left five dead and three wounded after a farmland dispute sparked a fresh feud between two rivalry clans in the Gabiley region.
The latest clashes between the Hared and Mohamud Nur clans is the fourth time armed conflict has broken out in the region in the past six months. Both clans claim ownership of the land and efforts to resolve the crisis have failed in the past but now the government plans to establish a military post in the region.
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Along with the 17 trucks from Sool, the government also moved army divisions from Burao to Gabiley and Awdal regions as reinforcement as well as fresh police to work alongside the military.
In a related development, Rayale also fired his commerce minister, Mr Osman Qasim Qodah and the minister of the Presidency, Mr Amin Nur Ismael – after they disagreed on the Elbardale conflict.
The government also arrested Radio Horyaal journalists Mohamed Osman Mire and Ahmed Saleban Dhuhul, and has closed Horn Cable TV (HCTV) over their reports on Elbardale on orders from attorney general. The authority accuses both private media of stirring up the rift.
Many accuse the president of fueling the unrests during pre-election period so election can be postponed again for the third time – Somaliland is poised to hold presidential elections on September 27.
Mediation efforts to resolve the conflict through diplomatic channels are also underway both in Awdal and Gabiley region.
Meanwhile, Somaliland elders, religion leaders, Diaspora communities, opposition parties and the government have all called for calm and both sides to break a ceasefire. Tribal disputes are common among Somalis even in Somaliland.
Toronto, 18 Jul 2009 (Somalilandpress) — When a Maclean’s reporter reached Somali journalist Abdi Ahmed Abdul on his cellphone as he walked back to his home through the streets of Mogadishu, he quickly ended the call, apologizing later that evening by explaining that it would not be safe for him to be heard speaking English by members of al-Shabab—the Islamist militia that controls much of the country and whose leadership has been linked to al-Qaeda. “I am scared,” Abdul said. “If they see me talking to somebody in English, I’d be in danger. If anybody is speaking in English, they think he is a spy. It means I am passing information to foreigners, what they call Christians or infidels, people they don’t like.”
Abdul lives near one of the main markets in Mogadishu, a place he calls a “stronghold of the Shabab.” He asked that his real name not be printed. “If they read this, they will come and look for me and blow my brain up.” His family has fled twice to other parts of the country. He’s considered leaving himself, but is now afraid to try.
Abdul’s description of Somalia under al-Shabab is similar to that of Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. Al-Shabab’s rule is guided by a medieval and repressive interpretation of Islam, and it has attracted foreign jihadists—who may have international ambitions—to Somalia.
This spring, Abdul says, two teenage boys and a teenage girl were sentenced to be lashed 100 times for having premarital sex. The sentence has not yet been carried out, but in June, four men accused of stealing cellphones all had a hand or foot hacked off with machetes after they were convicted by an al-Shabab Islamic court. And in October, a 13-year-old rape victim was stoned to death in front of some 1,000 spectators. “It happens—the amputations, the stoning to death, the whippings, forbidding music,” he says. “They tell women to wear the hijab. They banned films. They even control the memory cards of mobile phones to check if there are pornographic films or films that are anti-Islamic. No cinemas. No music. They even force people to pray.”
Al-Shabab, meaning “the Youth” in Arabic, grew out of the Islamic Courts Union, which briefly controlled Somalia in 2006. Ethiopian troops and covert American Special Forces toppled the Islamic Courts Union in 2006 and 2007, and a “transitional” government was installed in its place. The most radical elements from the ICU then formed new Islamist groups, such as al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, meaning “Party of Islam,” to oppose the government, which since January has been led by Sheik Sharif Ahmed. Ahmed was previously leader of the Islamic Courts Union but is a moderate Islamist compared to those in al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab receives money and arms from Somalis in the diaspora, from wealthy Arabs in the Gulf, and from Eritrea. Along with its allies, it controls all but a few pockets of Somalia outside the de facto autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland—the latter of which has become famous of late as an epicentre for piracy. The Transitional Federal Government has not been toppled because of the protection of some 4,000 African Union soldiers. Its writ barely extends over a few square blocks of Mogadishu. In recent weeks, Somalia’s security minister, Omar Hashi Aden, was killed in an al-Shabab suicide car bomb attack, and scores of parliamentarians have left the country. Barely half remain. “Even an AK-47 bullet fired by the opposition groups can hit the presidential palace,” says Abdul.
Abdul says most Somalis don’t support the Shabab, but are “ruled by fear.” Some still fight against it. When militants desecrated graves and mosques sacred to followers of the spiritual Sufi branch of Islam, normally peaceful Sufis took up arms on the side of the government against al-Shabab, defeating them in several battles in central Somalia.
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In a country that has not had a functioning government for almost 20 years, and where much of the population is malnourished, the fighting has made an already devastating humanitarian situation even worse. Tens of thousands have fled Mogadishu in recent months, and already there are some 250,000 Somali refugees in Kenya. Daniela Kroslak, deputy director of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Groups, describes their conditions as “dire in all aspects.” And, she told Maclean’s, “The Somalia situation is one of the worst, if not the worst, situation on the continent.”
What most worries the United States and other Western governments, however, is not the humanitarian crisis, but the possibility that Somalia may become a base for international terrorism.
Many of the ingredients are there already. Al-Shabab has sheltered several Islamist terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda, including Aden Hashi Ayro, who was trained by al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and conducted numerous attacks against foreigners in Somalia before he was killed in a U.S. air strike last year, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, who is wanted by the United States for his alleged involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Al-Shabab has also opened its camps to international jihadists. The suicide bomber who killed four South Korean tourists in Yemen in March was trained in Somalia, according to Yemeni security, and might have been the attacker who blew himself up in an attempt to murder the South Korean ambassador and investigators a few days later.
Even the insurgency inside Somalia has taken on international dimensions. Osama bin Laden, in a March audiotape address, described the conflict as “a war between Islam and the international crusade.” Al-Shabab echoes this. “They don’t recognize borders,” says Abdul. “They say this world is for Muslims, and there is no difference between an Afghan and a Somali. They do not use the word ‘foreigner’ to describe a non-Somali fighting alongside them.”
These foreign fighters in the ranks of al-Shabab are another worry. Abdul says al-Shabab no longer tries to hide their presence. They come from all over the world and number at least 1,000, according to J. Peter Pham, an Africa security specialist at James Madison University with contacts in Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa.
“The danger is not only that these fighters operate there,” Pham says. “But also there are ethnic Somalis from the diaspora who are taking excursions to fight in Somalia, including young men from the United States and western Europe. The real danger is that while there, they link up with other non-Somali extremists who may have an agenda that directly attacks or at least targets the United States and its allies.” We have already seen what might have been a precursor to such attacks. In October 2008, a series of suicide bombings in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, killed at least 20 people. One of the bombers was an American of Somali origin.
So what can the United States and its allies do to mitigate the danger coming from Somalia? It’s a vexing question, in part because all too often it’s near impossible to know just how serious a terrorist threat is until it’s too late. This is especially so in Somalia, where, according to a knowledgeable source, the CIA has only “an attempt” at a station. “Everyone knows who and where they are,” the source says.
“One of the problems that the United States faces is that there are a lot of poorly governed spaces around the world where al-Qaeda, or allies of al-Qaeda, or loose affiliates of al-Qaeda, could potentially set up shop,” says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defence policy at the Council on Foreign Relations who previously taught at the U.S. Army War College. “If every time one of them comes up on the radar screen we decide that it’s going to require a massive effort by the United States to respond, then we’ll bankrupt ourselves.”
The other dilemma is whether responding to the threat might not make it worse. Sending soldiers risks provoking resentment. Air strikes can eliminate wanted terrorists, but often at a heavy price. It took the U.S. several attempts to finally take out Aden Hashi Ayro last May. The failed assassination attempts killed civilians and almost certainly increased popular anger against the United States.
“It comes down to this question: can we intervene without doing harm?” says Brownwyn E. Bruton, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If you want to deal with it properly, you’re looking at an Iraq-style investment, where 20,000 peacekeepers isn’t going to do it—maybe 40,000, maybe 60,000. You’re talking about building a government and security forces from the ground up. It’s going to be a 10-year effort. And there’s going to be a lot of violence in the short term, as there was in Iraq.”
Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, a former resident of Ottawa and deputy prime minister of Somalia until Sheik Sharif Ahmed’s government was sworn in this year
Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, a former resident of Ottawa and deputy prime minister of Somalia until Sheik Sharif Ahmed’s government was sworn in this year, hopes that the international community will shoulder this burden. In an interview with Maclean’s, he drew comparisons between Somalia and Afghanistan and argued that the international response should be similar. He wants the United Nations to send troops. While some Somalis would reject any international presence, Adan believes most would accept it as necessary. “Somalis are killing each other every day here on the streets, so why wouldn’t they accept anyone who is coming to save them?”But any large-scale intervention in Somalia would require a massive American contribution. And with its hands full in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s unlikely the United States would contemplate such an investment. This leaves less intrusive options.
Some analysts, such as Daniela Kroslak, believe al-Shabab and its allies need to be brought into the government. “We have to offer something to those people to share the cake,” she says. “There is no way around negotiating with the insurgency.” Adan, the former deputy prime minister, considers this view naive. “This is what we tried to do in 2008, when I was in government,” he says. “I was leading the government delegation in a peace process. We tried everything possible to include them in the process, and they didn’t want to be a part of it. So anyone who now says there needs to be a dialogue with them simply doesn’t understand the reality of the situation.”
It is difficult to imagine much room for common ground between al-Shabab and any Western-backed government. President Ahmed agreed to implement sharia, or Islamic law, but is nonetheless dismissed by al-Shabab as an infidel’s stooge. Bin Laden declared him to be an apostate.
But betting everything on a government that is unable even to control the capital is also risky. The problem with trying to create a strong central government is that it discounts the decentralized and tribal nature of Somali society. “We keep investing in illegitimate top-down approaches, and Somalia has traditionally never had anything but bottom-up movements,” says Pham. “It’s a society where power is traditionally diffuse.”
To the extent that it’s possible, the West should engage directly with the Somali people. They have traditionally followed a moderate version of Islam and are therefore not natural allies of al-Shabab. “The Somali people in that respect are our best asset,” says Bruton. “The Shabab are so foreign and so harsh and so un-Somali in their conduct, that they’re just never going to be able to make it work. And if you accept that, then the best thing you can do is just let them go on and shoot themselves in the foot. What you don’t want to do is galvanize the population into seeing the Shabab as a defence against outsiders, who they really don’t like either.”
Bruton suggests investing in humanitarian relief, economic support, and microcredit projects. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for more direct, forceful intervention. Pham says the arms and money pipeline from Eritrea needs to be shut down. And high-value terror suspects should be tracked and captured or killed. But these operations must be conducted with precision and care.
Finally, it might be time for the international community to become more engaged with Somalia’s breakaway regions of Somaliland and Puntland. Engagement with Puntland might have the collateral benefit of undercutting piracy in the region, while Somaliland has constructed a stable, comparatively democratic society but remains diplomatically isolated. Protecting and strengthening Somaliland would restrict al-Shabab’s potential to spread. It would also provide Somalis with a visible alternative to the radical and violent Islam of al-Shabab.
“Partly it’s a conceptual problem,” says Jamal Gabobe, a writer for the Somaliland Times who now lives in Washington. Al-Shabab and its allies have offered their answer to Somalia’s broken society. “If there is another model that is working, you can say, ‘You don’t need to go that way. You can have a peaceful consensus that is not opposed to Islam. It’s a moderate way to express your belief.’ ”
None of these strategies promises quick results. And meanwhile, Somalis are dying from starvation and war, or suffocating under al-Shabab’s interpretation of Islam. There is also the risk that al-Shabab’s camps are already home to those plotting attacks abroad. Should such threats materialize, any strategies proposing patience and restraint will appear recklessly foolish. Somalia is a problem with no easy solutions.
HARGEISA, 18 Jul 2009 (Somalilandpress) — Somalia’s economy is dominated by trade in khat, a narcotic banned in the U.S. and much of Europe.
Eye-popping, head-buzzing khat is loved by Somali men who chew the leaves for their stimulant effect. While most of war-torn Somalia’s economy is moribund, khat does a bustling trade estimated at well over $50 million annually. Doctors warn, however, that the drug is not only a drain on limited Somali resources but is also destroying lives.
Hargeisa is the capital of Somaliland, the northern territory nominally independent from Somalia which maintains peace and economic activity, especially the khat trade.
Lounging on a rug on the second floor of an ostentatious glass and stone mansion overlooking Hargeisa, Mohamed Yusuf Moge, aptly known as “The Fat Mohamed,” lit up another cigarette. In front of him was a pile of leafless khat twigs. His eyes were wide and red-rimmed, a symptom of the leaves that have been chewed.
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“We bring in 80-tons of khat every day,” he said. “We have many vehicles and two airplanes for transporting our produce. We control the market: We are the De Beers of the khat industry!”
“We” is “571 Allah Amin,” a family business started 15 years ago that has grown to become Somaliland’s biggest khat importer. Moge is 571’s country rep. Although he would not reveal how much the company makes, it is estimated that its revenue is $320,000 a day.
Downtown at the company depot, the second of the day’s trucks arrives from the highland farms of neighboring Ethiopia mid-morning. Thursday is the busiest day of the week because, as one man explained, Friday is the Muslim day of rest so everyone can sleep off their khat hangover.
As the khat truck pulled in, barrow boys and vendors crowded round the tailgate to unload the 70 kg sacks of khat wrapped in hay to keep it fresh. Inside are small bundles of shoots that are bought wholesale for $1 and sold retail for $1.50.
“Business is good!” shouted Omar Hersi Warfa, 571’s depot manager, over the clamor. “We are working hard and people are chewing!”
Khat vendor Shamis Abdullahi Nur, 50, squatting on the ground nearby, agreed.
“Business is very good because of our security and peace,” she said as she directed a sack of khat to be loaded into the back of a beat-up station wagon for the drive across town to her stall. Others pushed smaller consignments away in wheelbarrows.
“I’ve been selling khat for over 30 years and now is the best time. There was a time of war, a time when I was a refugee, but now you can see I am sitting here eating my mango,” she said with a sticky, happy smile
Street prices are highest in the early afternoon because this is gayiil time when most men chew the khat and shoot the breeze. They can be found sitting on carpets in shady spots close to khat kiosks, with an ashtray, a flask of sweet tea and a jug of water at their feet. Women often sell khat but are not invited to chew.
But increasingly men are also chewing in the morning, the evening and throughout the night. The stoned man in a cotton wrap tottering in a daze along a crumbling potholed road with a fistful of green stems is a common sight.
Some warn the national habit does psychological damage. In the mental wing of Hargeisa’s main hospital, a staff member walked past the patients, many of whom were chained to a bed or a post or sat staring vacantly on the floor. “The majority of the men here are affected by
chewing khat, most are schizophrenic,” said Faisal Ibrahim.
Dr. Yassin Arab Abdi, the hospital’s chief doctor, said: “Chewing is part of it although there are many reasons for mental illness. Before they used to chew at a certain time for a few hours now there are four sessions 24-hours a day. These people are addicts.”
Back at the khat mansion, “Fat Mohamed” Moge and his colleagues, however, extolled the virtues of the drug.
“Khat plays a great role in our society. If there’s conflict people have to sit down, chew, talk about it,” Moge said. “It is not like a drug which destroys the mind. It is a stimulant. If you chew khat in the right manner it doesn’t affect you.” But, he admitted, “There are some guys who are addicted, this is because they are jobless and have nothing to do.”
Unfortunately this description applies to many Somali men. The last national government — a military dictatorship — collapsed in 1991. Since then the unrecognized state of Somaliland has declared itself independent while Somalia has descended deeper into war and chaos. Isolation on the one hand and war on the other have left the formal economy shattered with many surviving on remittances sent from relatives abroad.
Yet it is not unusual for men to spend $5 or $10 a day on khat, making the habit a huge drain on very limited resources. The government’s entire annual budget is less than $50 million, around $14 a head for each of Somaliland’s 3.5 million citizens.
Such is the love of khat that to outlaw it would be political suicide. Nevertheless a senior Somaliland politician, Musa Behe of the opposition Kulmiye party, said, “The Somali man works less because he chews khat. We won’t ban it but we need to raise awareness of the harm
khat does.”
Tristan McConnell and Narayan Mahon traveled to Somaliland on a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
NAIROBI — Two journalists were arrested and a television station shut down in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland while several others were beaten in the self-declared state of Puntland, a media watchdog said Friday.
The two Somaliland journalists Ahmed Saleban Dhuhul and Sayid Osman Mire were arrested Monday after police raided a private radio station in the region’s capital Hargeisa, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
They were accused by Somaliland president Dahir Riyale of stirring a tribal dispute that killed four people, while the region’s attorney general ordered a local TV station shut for airing the same dispute. [ad#Google Adsense (300×250)]
In Puntland, police attacked and beat up several journalists covering a trial of pirates in the port city of Bossaso.
“While the international community?s attention is focused on the abduction of two French government advisers who were posing as journalists in Mogadishu, the real journalists continue to be arrested and attacked with complete impunity,” the group said.
France has denied reports that the two security advisers kidnapped Tuesday in a Mogadishu hotel were posing as journalists.
Somalia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. Media houses have been routinely shut down by the authorities and many reporters, Somali and foreign, have been kidnapped by armed groups.
The United States government condemns the recent arrests in Somaliland of Radio Horyaal journalists Mohamed Osman Mire and Ahmed Saleban Dhuhul, and the suspension of Horn Cable TV (HCTV).
We call for the immediate release of the journalists, and we strongly urge that Horn Cable TV be allowed to resume broadcasting without impediment during this important, pre-election period.
Mombasa, Jul 17 2009 (Somalilandpress) — The deployment of the much hyped and celebrated Sea Cable System (SEACOM) Africa cable in troubled Somali waters has been completed and the connection of the cable stations directly to India and from India to Europe is expected ahead of its switch date this month.
SEACOM postponed its switch-on date by a month after threats by Somali pirates along the Indian Ocean route from India Kenya disrupted cable installation plans.
SEACOM CEO Brian Herlihy confirmed that all construction for phase one of the cable is now complete and that testing is under way on the fully powered system. Herlihy said all the testing to date is positive and that the company does not anticipate any further delays in lighting the cable.
[ad#Google Adsense (336×280)] The US$600 million SEACOM project is now expected to light up its cable July 23, a month late.
Somali pirates are terrorizing ships along the Gulf of Eden and have out-powered foreign and local navy ships from neighboring Kenya and NATO countries patrolling the waters.
The laying of the cable segment from the Mtunzini landing station in South Africa to Mombasa, Kenya, was completed over two months ago and the cable has already undergone testing.
“In addition to submarine tests, we are concurrently testing our backhaul solutions. These too are in line for our 23 July date,” Herlihy said.
SEACOM is hoping to become the first provider of fiber-optic in the East African region broadband market. With high performance optical transmission equipment, which connects customers to inland networks already installed in Maputo, Mombai and Djibouti landing stations, the cable is ready to start providing broadband services for the first time in East Africa.
A rival cable, the East African Marine System (TEAMS) cable being funded by the Kenyan government and private companies, was the first to land in Mombasa from Fujaira in the Middle East. The owners of the TEAMS cable — including Safaricom, Kenya Data Network, Africa Fibre Net of Uganda and Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates — have promised to fully deploy and test the cable and offers services by September this year, a month behind SEACOM. The two cables are competing to offer African retail carriers equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth.
SEACOM management said the cable will assist communication carriers in the East and Southern African regions in providing wholesale capacity for global network connectivity.
Explosions have ripped through two luxury hotels in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, killing at least six people, including four foreigners, and injuring10, police say.
Jakarta authorities have said the synchronised attacks at the five-star Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels were the work of a terrorist group, according to Melbourne radio station 3AW.
At least one Australian is known to have been injured in the blasts that happened within minutes of one another about 11am (AEST).
Alex Asmasubrata, who was jogging by the hotels, said he first heard a loud explosion at the Marriott.
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Five minutes later, a bomb followed at the Ritz.
He saw four bodies inside the Marriott, including one with its stomach blown out.
Witnesses said they saw injured people being evacuated by car from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the upscale Mega Kuningan business district in the centre of the city.
Police have sealed off the area near the hotels, an AFP correspondent said. Windows had been blown out of a second-storey restaurant at the Ritz Carlton.
“I heard two sounds like ‘boom, boom’ coming from the Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton. Then I saw people running out,” security guard Eko Susanto told AFP.
Witness Intan told TV One one of the explosions wrecked the lobby of the Plaza Mutiara building.
“I was having breakfast on level 16, I heard an explosion and went down to the first floor and it was a mess. I saw foreigners all bloody, about three to five of them, badly wounded,” she said.
“I saw some people being carried into a Mercedes. There was a lot of them in there, they were having trouble closing the doors,” a witness, who gave her name as Mery, told ElShinta.
The Marriott hotel was attacked in 2003, when 12 died. Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah Islamiah was blamed in that blast.
Hargeisa, 17 July 2009 (Somalilandpress) – Ethiopia’s state minister for communication affairs has refused to return home from the United Sates after an official visit, a top government official said on Wednesday.
Ermias Legesse was issued with an 11-day visa and left for the US in the second week of June, but has not returned.
“He didn’t report back, but there is nothing political in that,” said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“He has chosen to stay there. It seems he has dreamt about going to the US,” he added. “Sometimes strange things happen.”
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Ermias, who is in his thirties, was appointed to the position earlier this year. The US embassy in Addis Ababa declined to comment on the matter, but a diplomatic source said Ermias “has not been reachable for several days”.
Hargeisa, 16 July 2009 (Somalilandpress) – President Dahir Rayale dismiss some of his cabinet and appointed others in a major cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday that’s discussed what it could mean as the country faces critical time and a showdown to the presidential elections.
The former Minister of trade Osman Qasim Qodah was replaced by Abib Hassan Filfil, the minister of Presidency Mr. Nur Amin Ismail was also sacked. The State minister of Interior, Mr. Hassan Ahmed Du’aleh was asked to temporarily hold the position. Mr. Hussein Ainan Farah was also appointed as the new minister of coordination between the houses after the former Minister died last month.
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In a press statement by the President’s secretary Mr. Ahmed Mohamed Isse, there has not been any justification of such reshuffle.
Mr. Nur Amin, the Minister of presidency held a press conference the same day saying he was sacked because of disagreement with the president on the current conflict in Elbardale, between Borama and Gebiley. The minister did not give any further explanation.
Hargeisa, 15 July 2009 (Somalilandpress) –- It came as no surprise when Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace released their “Failed States Index 2009” three weeks ago that, once again, Somalia topped the rankings. What I reported two weeks ago about the country’s “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) continuing to lose what little ground it has left in the face of an onslaught from Islamist insurgents is even truer as the forces of al-Shabaab (“the youth”), the al Qaeda-linked group formally designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. Department of State last year, and its allies, including the Hisbul al-Islamiyya (“Islamic party”) group of Sheikh Hassan Dahir ‘Aweys, a figure who appears personally on both United States and United Nations anti-terrorism sanctions lists, seize control of more and more neighborhoods in Mogadishu.
At the beginning of last week, Shabaab leader Ahmad Abdi Godane, a.k.a. “Abu Zubeyr,” went so far as to issue an ultimatum to government soldiers to surrender their weapons and leave the front lines within five days or face being tried before an Islamic court alongside TFG leaders after the final collapse of the interim regime. Over the weekend, peacekeepers from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) apparently exceeded their United Nations mandate to limit their activities to self-defense and undertook to do what the TFG forces have been wholly incapable of doing: battling insurgents in northern Mogadishu. Dozens were killed and hundreds injured in some of the heaviest street fighting to date as the AU troops first recaptured districts in the name of the TFG only to lose them again as the insurgency deployed additional forces to the capital.
Meanwhile the TFG continued to wheel about like a drunk, its capacity for self-destructive behavior apparently unabated by the mortal peril it finds itself in. On Tuesday, two French security advisers on assignment to train the interim regime’s presidential guard were kidnapped at gunpoint from their Mogadishu hotel and marched away in their boxer briefs. According to a report by Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times, the assailants were Saleebaab lineage Habar Gidir sub-clansmen of TFG interior minister Abdiqadir Ali Omar who had been absorbed into the government’s forces but were “upset about not getting paid for risking their lives in recent battles.” The two kidnapped men have subsequently been handed over to Islamist insurgents. The congenital dysfunctional nature of the TFG (see my report earlier this year on the farcical selection process for its current president), however, did not stop the United Nations, the African Union, and the sub-regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) from convening in Nairobi, Kenya, this week yet another international conference aim at shoring up Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his remnant.
All of this simply underscores what I asserted in my Congressional testimony at the end of June: “If the failure so far of no fewer than fourteen internationally-sponsored attempts at establishing a national government indicates anything, it is the futility of the notion that outsiders can impose a regime on Somalia.”
A number of correspondents have since challenged me about what would happen absent foreign intervention, as if Somalis are somehow inherently incapable of self-governance. Fortunately, an example already exists of the emergence of a stable and peaceful Somali state: the Republic of Somaliland. While certainly far from perfect, Somaliland shows what is possible when a “bottom-up” or “building-block” approach is allowed to take place instead of imposing the hitherto favored “top-down” strategy for resolving conflicts, consolidating peace, and state-building within a political space. It also illustrates how a process that is viewed as legitimate and supported by the populace can also address the international community’s interests about issues ranging from humanitarian concerns to maritime piracy to transnational terrorism (see the report in last Sunday’s New York Times by Andrea Elliott about young Somali-Americans as fighters for al-Shabaab, “A Call to Jihad, Answered in America,” as well as the indictment this week by a federal grand jury of two men, Salah Osman Ahmed and Abdifatah Yusuf Isse, for recruiting them).
The British Protectorate of Somaliland gained its independence as the State of Somaliland on June 26, 1960. Less than a week later, it merged with the former Italian colony of Somalia in the south and east in a union which Somalilanders regretted almost from the beginning – the just one year after, the northerners overwhelming rejected by referendum the unification constitution – as they faced increasing marginalization within both government and civil society at the hands of their numerically superior ethnic kinsmen. Such was the oppression, especially after a 1969 military coup brought General Mohamed Siad Barre to power, that by the 1980s a full-fledged civil war was underway with the dictatorship taking ever harsher measures to suppress the Somali National Movement (SNM), the primary opposition group in Somaliland. Things had gotten so far out of hand that, in 1988, Siad Barre’s air force actually perpetrated one of the most bizarre war crimes in the annals of armed conflict: taking off from the airport in Hargeisa, the principal northern city, the aircraft bombed some 80 percent of that very same city.
Somalilanders will tell those who inquire that the only reason they were willing to make the sacrifice of entering into a union with the former Italian colony of Somalia was that it was part of a movement to bring all the Somali-speaking areas of East Africa under one polity. However, with Ethiopia and Kenya both long ruling out any secession of their Somali-populated regions and Djibouti voting overwhelming in a 1967 referendum to reject any unification with the Somali state, the grand nationalist dream essentially died. The rump union was hence held together by brute force.
After the dictator fled from Mogadishu in January 1991 with the remnants of the last effective government of the Somali Democratic Republic collapsing around him, elders representing the various clans in Somaliland met in the bombed out city of Burao and, on May 18, 1991, agreed to a resolution that annulled the northern territory’s merger with the former Italian colony (a number of international law scholars had long questioned the legal validity of the act of union) and declared that it would revert to the sovereign status it had enjoyed upon the achievement of independence from Great Britain. The chairman of the SNM, Abdirahman Ahmed Ali “Tuur,” was appointed by consensus to be interim president of Somaliland for a period of two years.
In 1993, the Somaliland clans sent representatives to Borama, a town in the territory of one of the smaller clans, the Gadabuursi, for a national guurti, or council of elders. The numerically predominant ‘Isaq were allocated 90 delegates, while the Harti were given 30 delegates, and the Gadabuursi and ‘Ise split another thirty delegates. Interestingly, while the apportionment of seats on the Guurti a rough attempt to reflect the demographics of the territory, the actually decision making was by consensus over the course of the four months which the assembly met. Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, who had briefly been prime minister of independent Somaliland in 1960 as well as democratically-elected prime minister of Somalia between 1967 and the military coup in 1969, was chosen as president of Somaliland.
President Egal’s tenure saw, among other things, the drafting of a permanent constitution for Somaliland, which was approved by 97 percent of the voters in a referendum in May 2001. The constitution provides for an executive branch of government, consisting of a directly elected president and vice president and appointed ministers; a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected House of Representatives and an upper chamber of elders, the guurti; and an independent judiciary. After Egal’s death while undergoing surgery in Pretoria, South Africa, in May 2002, he was succeeded by his vice president, Dahir Riyale Kahin, who subsequently was elected in his own right in a closely fought election in April 2003 – the margin of victory for the incumbent was just 80 votes out of nearly half a million cast and, amazingly, the dispute was settled peaceably through the courts. Multiparty elections for the House of Representatives were held in September 2005 which gave the president’s party just 33 of the 82 seats, with the balance split between two other parties. As a report from the International Crisis Group noted at the time: “The elections were impressive: under the auspices of Somaliland’s National Electoral Commission (NEC), 246 candidates contested 82 seats in an endeavor involving 982 polling stations; 1,500 ballot boxes (bags); 1.3 million ballot papers; 4,000 polling station staff; 6,000 party agents; 3,000 police; 700 domestic observers and 76 international observers…their peaceful, orderly and transparent conduct was no small achievement.”
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Both elections were widely acknowledged by both domestic and international observers as free and fair. One might add that the achievement of having staged democratic polls for both the executive and legislative branches of government is even more impressive when one considers the failure to even set up a functioning government in central and southern Somalia and the generally questionable nature of elections elsewhere in the region – when they are even held at all. If all goes well, the progress will be consolidated when, on September 27, 2009, Somalilanders go to the polls for combined presidential and legislative elections, both of which have been delayed for a number of reasons, most having to do with technical competence and capacity, although one cannot help but note a certain lack of enthusiasm on the part of the incumbent president at the prospect of facing the electorate. Progress was made over the weekend as the three political parties in Somaliland – the United Peoples’ Democratic Party (UDUB), the Peace, Unity and Development Party (Kulmiye), and For Justice and Development (UCID) – signed an electoral code of conduct.
Meanwhile, civil society, so devastated in the rest of the Somali lands, has made tremendous strides in Somaliland, carving out a space for private civic and charitable engagement. To cite just one example, the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa, founded in 2002 by Edna Adan Ismail, the former foreign minister of Somaliland (2003-2006) who donated her pension from the World Health Organization as well as other personal assets to it, provides a higher standard of care than available anywhere else in the Somali lands for maternity and infant conditions as well as diagnosis and treatment for HIV/AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases and general medical treatments. In addition, the hospital serves as a teaching hospital, training an entire generation of nurses and midwives qualified to provide reproductive healthcare throughout the country and serving as a medical research center, with a special attention paid to the health problems associated with female genital mutilation.
In an op-ed piece after a visit to Somaliland’s capital of Hargeisa two years ago, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof summarized all of this rather nicely:
Here in the north of the carcass of Somalia is the breakaway would-be nation of Somaliland, and it is a remarkable success – for a country that doesn’t exist.
The U.S. and other governments don’t recognize Somaliland, so the people here get next to zero foreign aid. And when the “country” was formed in 1991, it had been mostly obliterated in a civil war and was a collection of ruins and land mines.
Yet the clans and elders here formed their own government, held free elections and even established an international airline. Relying on free markets and a general exhaustion with violence, the people of Somaliland embraced tranquility and democracy and searched for ways to make a buck.
Walk down the streets of Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and instead of gunmen you come across the thriving jewelry and financial market: scores of vendors, most of them women, are hawking millions of dollars worth of gold, precious stones and foreign currency out in the open air. (Don’t try that at home!) Continue down the street, and you see that Hargeisa has police cars, DHL service, cable television, orthodontists, a multitude of Internet cafes and traffic jams (including the horses and camels). There are public schools and hospitals—even a public library.
This is a conservative Muslim country, yet it is generally pro-American and tolerant. In the last election, more women voted than men. Women’s groups are fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation, administered to 97 percent of girls here.
The lesson of Somaliland is simple: the most important single determinant of a poor country’s success is not how much aid it receives but how well it is run. If a country adheres to free markets and good political and economic governance, it will generate domestic and foreign investments that dwarf any amount of aid.
Interestingly, even the African Union (AU), notoriously reluctant to do anything that might suggest that the map of African could be redrawn, has, as I reported here more than eighteen months ago, acknowledged the unique circumstances surrounding Somaliland’s quest for international recognition as well as its tremendous achievements to date despite the lack of that sought-for acceptance. The official report of an AU fact-finding mission to the republic in 2005 led by AU Deputy Chairperson Patrick Mazimhaka concluded: “The fact that the union between Somaliland and Somalia was never ratified and also malfunctioned when it went into action from 1960 to 1990, makes Somaliland’s search for recognition historically unique and self-justified in African political history. Objectively viewed, the case should not be linked to the notion of ‘opening a Pandora’s Box’. As such, the AU should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case.”
Last year, the AU’s special representative for Somalia, Nicolas Bwakira, likewise reported positively on Somaliland to the organization:
Somaliland has a Constitution that emanated from grassroots consultations…the constitution serves as a fundamental law in Somaliland and does enjoy respect and wider acceptance in the wider political spectrum. It provides for the relevant branches of government (legislative, Judiciary and executive) and the effective separation of powers that go along with it. The House of the Elders (known as “Guurti”) is an additional arm of the system intended to safeguard and ensure the accountability and sustainability in Somaliland. Additionally, there is an Independent Electoral Commission which is responsible for the planning, preparing and conducting of Municipal, Presidential and Parliamentarian elections. This nascent democracy in Somaliland provides a sense of pride and needs to be learned by the rest of Somalia. It is a very encouraging and rewarding socio-political development prevailing in Somaliland compared to the rest of the country whereby insecurity, piracy and insurgent activities are rampant.
The Burundian diplomat, who has been involved in liberation struggles in Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, astutely noted the reason for this success lay in the indigenous nature of the effort: “Somaliland has achieved peace and stability, using the traditional way of solving problems (known locally as ‘Xeer’) and through a home-grown disarmament, demobilization and re-integration process and internally driven democratization.” Although he did not say so, this local origin and buy-in is precisely what I and other observers have repeatedly argued has been missing from efforts in central and southern Somalia where, as I noted earlier this year, “even by the opera buffa standards set by the fourteen attempts at a national framework for governance since the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre fled from the presidential palace seventeen years ago, the selection of the latest pretender to the leadership of the nonexistent Somali state [TFG “president” Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed] was farcical.”
Special envoy Bwakira concluded his report with some sensible suggestions for both the international community in general and the AU in particular:
As a peace dividend, the international community should provide institutional capacity building support to Somaliland infrastructure and facilitate its access to the international and regional financial institutions and banking systems.
The African Union Commission and [the subregional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] should explore channels of communication and dialogue with the Somaliland authorities, and establish the best way they could be integrated into the regional socio-economic and political discourses including issues such as migration, illegal smuggling of arms, the fight against piracy and displacement of populations.
Likewise, the authors of a just-released Human Rights Watch report – which was not without its criticisms of Somaliland’s authorities—noted:
Human Rights Watch takes no position on whether Somaliland should be recognized or which country or multilateral institution should take the lead on resolving the issue. But donors, the AU, and other key international actors should develop concrete and pragmatic policies that are tailored specifically to Somaliland’s complex realities instead of continuing to shoehorn their engagement with Somaliland into the same framework as their policies on south/central Somalia. Somaliland’s needs, achievements, and problems bear little resemblance to those of Somalia and Puntland. Recognition or no, Somaliland should not be saddled with donor policies that are primarily geared to the context of looming famine and endless conflict in the south.
In particular, donors and key foreign governments should move immediately to deepen their engagement with Somaliland’s government, civil society, and other institutions…Somaliland is at a crossroads and the territory’s impressive human rights and security-related gains could be jeopardized.
In his speech to the parliament of Ghana last Saturday, President Barack Obama outlined four areas as “critical to the future of Africa”: democracy, opportunity, health, and the peaceful resolution of conflict. While highlighting increases in foreign assistance his administration has sought, the president noted that “the true sign of success is not whether we are a source of perpetual aid that helps people scrape by – it’s whether we are partners in building the capacity for transformational change.” If these are the standards by which Africa policy is to be determined, then Somaliland surely has both moral and strategic claims on the attentions of the United States and its partners. Whatever their shortcomings, the people of Somaliland have demonstrated over the course of nearly two decades a dogged commitment to peacefully resolving their internal conflicts, rebuilding their society, and forging a democratic constitutional order. Their achievements to date are nothing short of remarkable in subregion as challenging as the Horn of Africa, especially when one considers the lack of international recognition under which they labor. It is not only prejudicial to our interests, but also antithetical to our ideals, to keep this oasis of stability hostage to the vicissitudes of the conflict which the rest of the Somali territories are embroiled rather than to hold it up as an example of what the others might aspire to – and could readily achieve if they weren’t so busy fighting over the decayed carcass of a dead state and the resources which the international community stubbornly continues to throw at it in hopes of reanimating the corpse.
