The Civil War in Northern Somalia and the Misuse of History

[Deeq A.]

Ali Garad Jama has the distinction of co-signing the Independence Declaration of Somaliland Protectorate in 1960, not demarcating a border, as falsely argued by President Muse Bihi.

Ali Garad Jama did not demarcate a colonial border.

Mogadishu (PP Editorial) — In 1946 when decolonisation was the key agenda on the post-World War 2 Order, Somali subjects in the North, then known as the British Somaliland Protectorate, were bracing themselves for the bitter reality that the British Empire had secretly violated the Protectorate Agreement and ceded Somali territories to Ethiopia. In 1968 at the Royal African Society, the former Somalia Prime Minister Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal accused Britain of betrayal. “In the middle of the nineteenth century, only a few years after Britain had cynically signed flamboyant Treaties of Protection with the people, it had secretly signed treaties with Ethiopia, ceding to that country a portion of those very lands it had undertaken to protect” wrote Egal.  The sovereignty of Somalia provided Egal with a platform to address a historic injustice that resulted in wars between Ethiopia and Somalia. Egal did not refer to colonial borders to make his case against ” the proverbial perfidy of Albion [that] caused the rupture of diplomatic relations and the severing of the traditional ties between Somalia and Britain.”

In 1968 Egal accused Britain of violating Protectorate Agreements to cede territories to Ethiopia.

The indirect rule through which the British Empire controlled the North did not grant elders powers to challenge the secret decision to cede Somali-inhabited territories to Ethiopia.  The experience of the South stands in sharp contrast to the North, where preparations for independence was only hammered out in May 1960 following a constitutional conference to expedite independence and enable Northerners to unite with their Southern brethren who benefited from a state-building initiative based on Trusteeship.

The claim by the secessionist administration of Somaliland that it is enforcing colonial borders is baseless and in violation of the African Union Charter. Militant secessionists back up their arguments with factual inaccuracies to argue that the North was a Protectorate not a colony and that Northerners have never been colonised. This misguided defence of colonialism could make Somalis the odd one out in Africa. Documentary evidence indicates that the North, unlike the South, was a coterie of clans with different statuses in ex-British Somaliland. Some clans were, by dint of the Protectorate Agreements, British-protected.

Bihi claims to be enforcing colonial borders

When President Bihi accused Puntland of drawing new colonial borders, he was misleading the International Public Opinion. Bihi is asking for preferential political treatment based on the non-jurisdiction-based agreement some clans signed with the British Empire (East Sanaag Clan signed a jurisdiction-based agreement with the British Empire). If the logic of Bihi were to be applied Somalia will be divided into fiefdoms whose claim to sovereignty is belied by a failure to protect a shared sovereignty.  

At the Eid prayer in Hargeisa Bihi claimed that Ali Garad Jama demarcated the border between the ex-British Somaliland and the former Trust Territory of Somaliland. Ali Garad Jama has the distinction of co-signing the Independence declaration of Somaliland Protectorate in 1960. Ali Garad signed a document that states the protectorate agreement with Somali tribes would come to an end on 26 June 1960. The clan to which Ali Garad Jama belonged did not sign a protection agreement with the British Empire. He had left that factual error unchallenged to achieve the Union of Somali territories under one flag. 

©Puntland Post, 2023

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