‘Time Is Ripe for Somaliland Demand for Statehood’

[Abdiyare]

‘Time Is Ripe for Somaliland Demand for Statehood’

 

JEDDAH, 4 August 2003 — The Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group, has noted in a report that the demand of the northern region of a breakaway Somaliland for recognition presented the international community with stark choices.

 

“Recent developments have made the choice faced by the international community considerably clearer: Develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland’s demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic — a course of action almost certain to open a new chapter in the Somali civil war,” noted the report, which published on ICG website on Tuesday.

 

The reported pointed out that Somaliland’s claims to statehood presented the international community with a thorny diplomatic dilemma at a time when other leaders are attending the peace talks under the auspices of the IGAD with the aim of establishing a new Somali government.

 

“Recognition of Somaliland, although under consideration by a growing number of African and Western governments, is still vigorously resisted by many members of both the African Union and the Arab League on the grounds that the unity and territorial integrity of member states is sacrosanct.

 

“Furthermore, the creation of a new Somali government emerging from the IGAD process that claims jurisdiction over Somaliland threatens to open a new phase in the Somali conflict,” it added.

 

Any attempt to coerce Somaliland back to the Somali fold, says the report, would entail a bitter and probably futile conflict.

 

“The question now confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives,” the ICG report stressed.

 

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