Hargeisa, Capital of a State in Limbo: to the capital of Somaliland, a democracy in international limbo

[Deeq A.]

Welcome to the capital of Somaliland, a democracy in international limbo.

Officially, Africa is made up of 54 countries, with 54 capitals. For historical justice, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), or Western Sahara, with capital in El Aaiún, is usually counted as the fifty-fifth African country. But little is said about Somaliland, self-proclaimed independent in 1991, and about its capital: Hargesia. That is why today, touching on its 27 years of struggle to be recognized as the capital of a new African State, we want to know it little more closely and analyze the political context in which it is erected.

Somaliland was a British protectorate until 1960, when it merged with Italian Somalia. After the start of the civil war in Somalia in 1991 and during the regime of the ruthless dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, Somaliland said “enough” and declared its unilateral independence, managing to exile the dictator and his military forces. After more than two decades of diplomatic isolation, Somaliland presents itself as a state in limbo, and yet, safer – 70% of its budget is invested in security – stable and a more promising future than Somalia, which is in the hands of the terrorist group Al Shabab.

On November 13, the nearly four million Somalilanders that make up the country, an internationally unrecognized state, elected the former Air Force exile and rebel commander Musa Bihi Abdi, of the ruling Kulmiye party, as its fifth president since the country be separated from Somalia. It was the sixth consecutive time since 2003 that its citizens participated in multi-party elections.

Funded in part by the European Union and the United Kingdom and supervised by international observers, the elections were exemplary given the turbulent political context in the region, where Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, into a greater or lesser extent, have fallen into strongly authoritarian regimes, armed conflicts or periods of violent political turmoil. However, the recent elections have shown signs of significantly differentiating themselves from the tone of their neighbors, using even a pioneer voter registry around the world based on biometric iris recognition technology.

In spite of everything, the elections were not exempt from protests, both in the capital, Hargeisa, and in the cities of Burao and Erigavo, after the main opposition party, Waddani, accused the electoral commission of fraud. Two people died in an outbreak of post-election violence and Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter were blocked for several hours, although the government justified it by saying that it was a security strategy to prevent false news.

Beyond the questionable freedom of expression and the media, the country is considered an island of peace and prosperity within the region, with its own army, currency and government, like any sovereign state. Recently, it has also begun to show signs of progress in the area of ​​human rights by passing the first national law that sentenced rapists to 30 years in prison, a rule that does not exist in Somalia. Publications such as The Economist have defined it as “the strongest democracy in East Africa” ​​and its economic growth has been stable in recent years, despite the worrying drought that plagues the region and has ended with 80% of livestock of the country or of what has been described by the UN as “one of the greatest humanitarian emergencies since 1945”.

Critical voices towards the African Union or the international community, which have refused for almost three decades to recognize Somaliland as an independent country and keep it in legal limbo, coincide in the fact that the international agencies coordinate and direct from Mogadishu, Somali capital devastated by the war more than 1,400 kilometers away, only aggravates the catastrophic crisis caused by climate change.

Given that Somaliland is isolated from most of the external assistance that arrives via Mogadishu, and can not access loans directed to states such as those granted by the World Bank, the social contract between Government and citizenship has become very strong. Somaliland’s democracy has been based on a series of massive public consultations or clan conferences, which give it an unusual degree of legitimacy. The most striking feature of its political system is the upper house of the clan elders, known as Guurti, a clan society that guarantees a broadly representative government and supports much of the country’s consensual political culture.

Somaliland, a strategic enclave for the region

Optimism and hope for the future do not leave their population, and the Somali diaspora is returning to invest in the country. This is shown by data from the World Bank, which reveal that 90% of its GDP comes from private investments. At the beginning of 2017, the actors of the Gulf have already begun to show their interest in Somaliland geo-strategically. The United Arab Emirates decided to invest 366 million euros to modernize the port of Berbera, where they also plan to build a criticized military base and an airport. The UAE has also committed to create an international Free Trade Zone to convert the city of Berbera into a multimillion-dollar logistics center in the Horn of Africa and has invested 166 million more to develop the so-called Berber Corridor, which will connect the port with the border with Ethiopia.

Addis Ababa, without own access to the Red Sea, has also realized the importance of investing in Somaliland, and finances 19% of this project with the aim of reducing its dependence on exports via Djibouti, which until now have monopolized the 95% of Ethiopian maritime traffic. This may represent a nefarious blow for Djibouti, after Ethiopia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland in 2016 that would allow diverting up to 30% of its trade to the port of Berbera. However, it represents a unique development opportunity for the new administration of President Behi, which would enable foreign direct investment, in the absence of external assistance due to international non-recognition.

In this way, Somaliland could see its high unemployment rates decrease and compensate the enormous cost of being an unrecognized Republic, 70% of which is less than 30 years old. The Somalilanders, whose life expectancy is only 50 years, suffer from literacy rates much lower than those of other countries in sub-Saharan Africa and a weak health system, which urgently requires international recognition of the country to be able to start build yourself once and for all. Little is the international will to recognize Hargeisa as the fifty-sixth African capital.

GEMMA SOLÉS I COLL