Academic View Of Somaliland Recognition

[Kowneyn]

Academic View Of Somaliland Recognition

I.M.Lewis — London, UK — 08 January, 2005

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BUILDING THE SOMALILAND REPUBLIC

 

With the liberation struggle over in Somaliland, energies turned to the gradual restoration of the country. Peace-making and social reconstruction has followed a bottom-up path, starting at the grass roots with small local clan groups, and building up gradually in ever widening circles. This slow and often irregular process which, not without setbacks, has taken several years is reflected in Somaliland's contemporary two-tier parliament: A house of elected party representatives, and an upper house of nominated clan elders. This arrangement ensured a widely representative parliament and a government whose ministers similarly reflected Somaliland's diverse clan composition. As everyone here knows, there have been impressively conducted national elections favourably judged by international observers.

 

The same constitutionality obtained in the smooth succession of President Dahir Rayaale Kahin when Mohammad Haji Ibrahim Egal died suddenly in South Africa. As is also well-known, there has recently been a dangerous confrontation on the eastern border with Puntland , involving the Dulbahante clan who have long successfully exploited their position as frontiersmen with multiple loyalties. But this potentially serious clash has been resolved peacefully with both the Somaliland and Puntland forces exercising discretion. Anyone who knows anything about Somali society will appreciate how this outcome indicates good judgement and effective control by the authorities on both sides. For different reasons, it is of course in the interests of neither party to become embroiled in fighting at this juncture when so many other interests are at stake.

 

These locally evolved Somaliland political institutions have delivered a degree of political stability and democratic government so far unattained in any other part of the defunct state of Somalia( with, perhaps, the brief exception of Puntland in its founding years). Today Somaliland is an effective functioning state, based on good governance, to an extent that is sadly now rare in Africa. The restoration of civil society is well underway, schools and hospitals are under construction with help from diaspora Somalis and some friendly NGOs. Much has been achieved in demobilising former militias and retraining those who cannot fruitfully be absorbed into the local police or army. Police training, incidentally, now includes learning reading, writing and maths-and even human rights.

 

Although there have undeniably been serious ups and downs in the process summarised above, the overall achievement so far is truly remarkable, and all the more so in that it has been accomplished by the people of Somaliland themselves with very little external help or intervention. The contrast with fate of southern Somalia hardly needs to be underlined.

 

Far from seeking to applaud or encourage these developments in spontaneous Somali democracy, the outside world has taken little interest and remained largely indifferent. This, of course, contrasts strikingly with the frequent pronouncements by Western leaders of their concern to promote good government and democracy in Africa. As the chairman of the politics department at Princeton University has recently put it: 'One would think that the natural response of the outside world to the extraordinary achievement of the Somalilanders would be respect and recognition' -especially in contrast with Somalia'.

 

BARRIERS TO RECOGNITION

 

Here, up till the present, Britain-the obvious patron and advocate for diplomatic recognition-has been especially remiss. True, British officials in the FCO Horn of Africa department and our embassy in Addis Ababa have consistently offered encouragement and support. But the major political breakthrough has yet to be achieved. The path-breaking recent visit to Somaliland by British MPs and the subsequent debate in parliament are important milestones.

 

And it is gratifying that these developments have so quickly been followed by the present visit to London of (Somaliland) President Dahir Rayaale Kahin, and Foreign Minister Edna Aden and other cabinet colleagues.. I naturally hope that the ensuing discussions with British Ministers will tangibly advance the process towards diplomatic recognition. Some of us think it is long overdue, especially on the part of a government that talks so virtuously about promoting democracy in the Third World. The contrast between their lack of interest in Somaliland and excessive intervention in Iraq speaks volumes.

 

Now, as in the past, the situation is complicated by the persistent problem of anarchy in southern Somalia despite no less than fourteen high level UN and now EC attempts to cobble together a government in Mogadishu. This has been going on for almost fourteen years and the current fourteen months' long effort in Kenya is evidently falling apart amid fierce allegations of corruption, fraud, and bias directed at the local organisers and their external backers.

 

This colossal waste of effort and money (reputed about $10 million and some of it diverted from EC aid allocations already promised)) was, in my opinion, misconceived from the start. Cannot any of the policy makers involved learn from the past? What contribution to peace is achieved by enabling Somalia's warlords, and sundry self-appointed representatives of 'civil society', to holiday in luxurious hotels in Kenya? A century ago, the Ethiopian emperor would have treated these people rather differently. They would have been invited to an imperial banquet and poisoned! (Today they should have been arrested in Kenya as suspected war crimes perpetrators.) More appropriately, all the negotiations should have been held inside Somalia with, if necessary, an external force in Mogadishu to maintain the peace. Of course that is the real difficulty, no one wants to undertake that high risk role. If the mighty warlords were incapable of doing that, what chance is there that they could establish a viable regime in southern Somalia?

 

Even if the current talks achieved nominal success, serious doubts would remain about the representative status of any so-called 'government' based on them. Lacking any demonstrable mandate from the people of southern Somalia, how could the outcome of such a conference claim democratic legitimacy? It would be even less authentically representative than the TNG! The EC, and others involved in this dubious venture, seem to have lost sight of this crucial requirement. Or don't they care? Instead of wasting months in Kenya debating highly artificial laws and theoretical constitutional niceties-which have little chance of ever being implemented-diplomatic efforts should have concentrated on forcing the warlords in situ to agree on power-sharing in Mogadishu, and getting on with somehow living together.

 

Political engineering should have been pragmatically directed from the bottom, with the aim of establishing widening circles of peace and co-operation, as in Somaliland. Although I have no particular brief for warlords Morgan and Abdillahi Yusuf, I think they are right to have quit Kenya to set up their own conference on the edge of Mogadishu . Nothing positive can ever be achieved unless the southern Somali warlords can agree on how to carve up their political turfs in and round Mogadishu.

 

The recent Kenyan efforts at Somali reconstruction have been based, as usual, on the wrong top-down hierarchical model. There is the additional draw-back that the title 'Peace conference' is an unfortunate misnomer. Here it is not a question, as in the Sudan, or between Eritrea and Ethiopia, of mediating between two hostile parties. The international dispute-settling bureaucrats, who come out in force on such occasions, need to develop more sophisticated models for handling fragmented multi-stranded situations like Somalia. What is clearly at issue, here, is the division of power and economic interest among a squabbling bunch of predatory gangsters. The Italians, who haunt these Somali meetings with their grandiose dreams of a resurrected Somalia, might make a more useful contribution if they applied some of their expertise in dealing with the Maffia to sorting out Mogadishu.

 

RECOGNISING SOMALILAND HELPS SOMALI UNITY

 

Let us also note how all this frustratingly unproductive attention given to southern Somalia has increased Somaliland's international isolation and delayed appropriate recognition of its achievements. What is in effect happening here is that the bad guy is being rewarded and the good guy punished! This is certainly how the international response must strike a neutral observer. But, in my view, this has not actually helped to remedy the situation in Somalia itself that, as a long-term supporter of Somali self-determination, also concerns me deeply. My guess is that recognition of Somaliland at this juncture would have a tonic effect in Somalia. It would administer a brisk wakeup call, shaking the southern politicians out of their prolonged self- indulgent torpor, and thus help to dispel their wild political fantasies so unwisely promoted by the hasty UN recognition given to the undemocratic and insubstantial regime of Mr Abdulqasim, whom Puntland web sites call the 'defunct' transitional president.

 

Some southerners will protest that Somaliland's recognition is a blow to Somali unity. But this is sheer nonsense and sounds hollow coming, as it does, from people who in the last fourteen years have done nothing to advance Somali unity and even less to further human rights and democracy. Somali 're-configuration' as the British foreign office blandly calls it, has already happened. The people of Somaliland have demonstrated that their independence is a fait accompli whatever outsiders choose to think. Nor does this in any way endanger or diminish the ethnic identity of the Somali people and their socio-economic cohesion that reaches into Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya-an un-disruptive political dismemberment already accepted within the Somali nation. Thus, the attitude to Somaliland's independence, of those southern Somali politicians who oppose it, is akin to that of a person who has had a limb amputated, but still claims to feel it as part of his body.

 

If as I hope Somaliland soon receives the international recognition to which it has long been entitled, I hope equally that this action will provide a new impetus to social reconstruction in Somalia. It is obvious that a new approach is needed, and one that is better informed about Somali political realities and less biased by extraneous external interests. These biases on the part of the principal external actors are acutely obvious. Thus, Djibouti has politico-economic interests in both north and south, Ethiopia worries about Islamic fundamentalism, and Kenya has serious Somali refugee problems which are shared to varying extents by EC countries generally. Both countries share bad memories of Somali irredentism. For its part, Italy nourishes fantasies of her former African empire, and the Italian political parties sorely miss the subsidies they illegally derived from the national aid budget. Caught in an earlier time-warp, Egyptians retain their Pharaonic obsession with Ethiopia as a threat to the Nile. On a more distant frontier, Arab states tend to favour Somali clients who carry an Islamic banner.. What I find most striking in the attitudes of the spokesmen for many of these countries, including others in Africa, is their ignorance and complete indifference to the actual condition and aspirations of ordinary Somalis, an attribute they share with depressingly many of the self-declared leaders of Somalia.

 

 

Somaliland.org

[Suldaanka]

Some southerners will protest that Somaliland's recognition is a blow to Somali unity. But this is sheer nonsense and sounds hollow coming, as it does, from people who in the last fourteen years have done nothing to advance Somali unity and even less to further human rights and democracy

What comes to mind: Dameertu geela ha didisee, hadana way qururufleeday!