Exposing the Hideous Face of the Puntland Regime

For no apparent reason the so-called leaders of Puntland region in Somalia consider themselves Somalia’s Iraqi Kurdistan and they try to play a political role similar to that of Iraqi Kurdistan. They are ignorant of the fact that Kurdistan is a region whose natives belong to the wider Kurdish nation, which is spread all through the major countries in the Middle East.

They also fail to comprehend that they do not possess the resources, culture, population and a historical background that matches the Iraqi Kurdish population. The so-called Puntland (Majertenia) leaders can not be swayed by any logical means, the fact that Puntland lags thousands of years behind Iraqi Kurdistan in all those fore mentioned areas. Puntland was created just a decade ago and it is the poorest and the least densely populated region in poverty-stricken and civil war-ravaged Somalia, it has a population of couple thousands according to 1970s census carried out by the Siad Barre regime, who was then sympathetic to Majertenia region and probably must have inflated their numbers.
 
For overtly unknown reasons the Puntland leaders are fixated and fascinated with the 1/3 figure. They fallaciously claim that Puntland is 1/3 of Somalia’s total area; they equally deceitfully claim that 1/3 of Somalia’s population lives in Puntland. To match these magic 1/3s they expand the Puntland map to cover large area chunks of South Somalia and the eastern regions of Somaliland. More surprisingly they believe that 1/3 of the future parliament and public servants in Somalia should come from Puntland. They constantly edit the Wikipedia and insert this out of this world information.  There has been no census carried out in Somalia since the 1970s, therefore, there is no coherent basis for their make-believe of 1/3 figure.
 
The Puntland Mafias have invested heavily in businesses in Kenya, Tanzania and in the UAE with the monies that they acquired through piracy and human trafficking. They obnoxiously and ignorantly assume that the pirate and human trafficking generated funds and the international development assistance alone could bring down all the Governments in the Horn of Africa. Unlike the cultured people of Iraqi-Kurdistan, the leaders of Puntland chauvinistically deem their small clan to be intellectually and racially more superior than the rest of the Somalis. This distorted rationale leads them to believe that they are entitled to be the leaders of the Horn of Africa.
 
The Puntland leader, who is also the piracy and human trafficking cartel godfather, sees himself superior to the Somalia’s transitional government president, because the latter is not of a Majertenia clan. He also believes that either the president or the Prime Minister of Somalia should permanently be of Majertenia origin. That is why things went sour between Faroole and Sheikh Shariif, after the nomination of Mr. Farmaajo to the Prime Ministerial post of Somalia’s Federal Transitional Government.

To proof his weight Mr. Faroole demands to be an adjunct to the TFG Somalia president in all foreign visits and when Sheikh Shariif refused this childish hassle of Mr. Faroole, who wanted to accompany him to Djibouti, Faroole simply threw out tantrums and threatened to withdraw his support for the Transitional Government in Somalia. Later on, the so-called Puntland leader angrily lashed on the internally displaced persons (IDP) from Southern Somalia and deported hundreds of them out of his region, after he was denied a seat in the plane to Djibouti.
 
Mr. Faroole is constantly inviting the Southern Somalis to have a reconciliation conference In Puntland, with the aim of trying to become the next president of the Transitional Federal government and to acquiring more powers for his clan’s men. Faroole is even speculating moving the Somalia capital from Mogadishu to his regional capital, Garoowe.
 
The Puntland paranoiac leaders think that the whole world is out there to get them. They work hard to capture the sympathy of the leaders in the Arabian Peninsula. One low-priced tactic they use is going around the Arab world telling people from different countries that their ancestors migrated from those different countries - not knowing that we all live in a global village. For instance, Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed the deposed leader of Somalia’s TFG and founder of Puntland erroneously told Yemenis that the inhabitants of Puntland were Mehris and that their ancestors were migrants from Yemen.

In several other occasions Mr. Faroole told members of Al-kassimi dynasty that rules the Emirate of Sharijah in the UAE that his ancestors came from Sharijah originally and that they too are Al-Kassimis. Most properly Mr. Faroole is confusing the Al-kassimi dynasty with the ancient name of Bander Kassim, the present day coastal town of Bossaso in Puntland. Bender Kassim was named after a Persian merchant who settled there centuries ago. Hence, with this bit of information give away, I will not be surprised if Mr. Faroole takes a plane to Teheran or even to the city of Qom claiming to be the Iranian Imam’s long-lost cousin.
 
More so than his predecessors, Mr. Faroole of Puntland is a war-bent dictator. He used the terrorism card and tried to physically eradicate a whole clan that is native to the Somaliland-Somalia border area, which casts off his dictatorial rule. He massacred hundreds of people, destroyed villages and turned those who survived his massacre to refugees in their own region. He equally teams up with the ONLF, a violent Ethiopian rebel group to destabilize both Somaliland and Ethiopia. Both the ONLF and Puntland receive their arms and material support from Eritrea, which also sponsors the Al-shabab terrorist faction in Somalia.

Moreover, Mr. Faroole’s piracy cartel is getting more violent day after day and it puts the lives of innocent people in more danger than ever. Just last week, it was reported that four Americans were killed by the Faroole sea piracy cartel. If these reports are proven to be true then sooner or latter Faroole will certainly face justice in an American court.
 
 
The Puntland Mafia have insidiously named their faction militia “Darawiish” after the militia of the notorious clan militia of the controversial Mohamed Abdullah Hassan AKA the Mad Mullah, who was badly defeated by Somaliland clans in the early 20th century. They use the name Darawiish for the sake of gaining the sympathy of the wider Darood clan, whom they secretly pledge the creation of Daroodland, between Burao, the second capital of Somaliland all the way up to Beletweyne, the capital of Hiiran region in central Somalia.
 
The Puntland regime claims to have been elected democratically, but there has been no history of elections ever held in that region. Puntland was run in its short history by dictators that come from one and only one clan - Majerteen. Just like any other ruthless dictator, Mr. Faroole has hired a South African mercenary company to train his closest clan members to violently quell any upraising against his dictatorial regime. The chance for Puntland having another leader in the life times of Mr. Faroole and his own son is minimal. Faroole wants his son who is virtually the deputy head of Puntland to inherit his father’s fast Piracy and human trafficking fortunes and he surely wants them to prosper unabatedly.
 
All these above written specifics expose the true hideous face of the Puntland regime. I hope the so-called Puntland leaders will call a halt to their malicious actions and realize that we all live in a global village and that nothing can be hidden under the carpet, no matter how small that thing is.

Yusuf Dirir Ali - MD  

Email: drdirir@gmail.com