What Somaliland Leaders Can Learn from Protectorate Agreements

[Deeq A.]

Unequal parties: On 1/1/2024 Abiy Ahmed (left) and Muse Bihi Abdi signed an illegal maritime Memorandum of Understanding in Addis Ababa.

Mogadishu (Guest Column PP) —  Before the ex-British Somaliland gained independence on 26 June 1960, the traditional leaders of what was known as the British Somaliland Protectorate were worried that the Ethiopian empire then Emperor Haile Selassie could annex the Protectorate. Their fear of Ethiopian expansionism was justified: in 1954 in violation of the Protectorate Agreements with Somali “tribes”, the British government let Ethiopia annex Haud and Reserve Area. In less than a decade Ethiopia benefited from British war efforts. Britain liberated Ethiopia and let it annex Somali territories in the ex-British Somali Protectorate. The British Empire betrayed Somali clans who signed Protectorate Agreements at the turn of the 19^th century.  Before Professor Mohamud  Mamdani wrote his classic book Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, the answer to this question was not within easy reach. The colonised and protected natives were ruled under the customary law; the British colonisers were ruled under the Common Law.

At the Somaliland Constitutional Conference in May 1960 participants were calling for speedy union with Somalia by 1960 due to stat-building efforts that began in the south in 1950 under a ten-year Trusteeship arrangement. The political structures of the South (political parties and trade associations) were developed compared to the Northern political associations whose emergence was prevented by the Protectorate Agreements that vested more power in the traditional leaders through whom the British Empire implemented its Indirect Rule. The indirect rule in the ex-British Somaliland Protectorate was a sort of a forced consent.

When Muse Bihi, the President of Somaliland Administration, signed a maritime Memorandum of Understating to lease a coastal district to Ethiopia for 50 years, he assumed the role of traditional leaders oblivious to the futility of  an agreement between unequal parties: sovereign Ethiopia and a secession-seeking Somaliland.

While Ethiopian leaders know that no investors or no multilateral organisation can trust its institutions if Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed violates, the international norms, the President of Somaliland Administration demonstrated a fundamental lack of understating about how a country comes into existence: a secessionist movement cannot lease a part of sovereign territory to another sovereign country.  The consent Somali “tribes” gave to the British Empire was not authenticated by a royal imprimatur. This is the reason The British government violated the Protectorate Agreements. Legal advisers told the British government that Somali subjects in the Protectorate would not be able to seek a redress in the British courts because their elders ruled the natives through customary law.  Somali “tribes” signed what could be described as “Preventive Agreements” to prevent them from exercising their rights under customary law if the British government had been found in breach of what is known in history books now is known as Protectorate Agreements. 

Ethiopia cannot annex Somali territories nor can the leader of a break-away administration lease a Somali coastal district to Ethiopia. Ethiopia wants a permanent port that will substantially reduce its reliance on Berbera Port and Djibouti Port, not a naval base.

Adan M. S. Hussein teaches history at a university in Mogadishu.

© Puntland Post, 2024

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