Furthermore, the gratitude somewhat subdues whatever misgivings or disappointments that Somalilanders may harbor about Ethiopia’s real or apparent policies on the issue of Somaliland’s reclamation of its independence. Or, for that matter, whatever misgivings or disappointments that Somalilanders may harbor about Ethiopia’s real or apparent policies towards Somalia. Indeed, there is a great deal of unease and disenchantment which many Somalilanders feel about their current relationship with Ethiopia. In the spirit of free and candid debate, I intend to express my musings on that subject later in this paper. But in the meantime first, I would like to elaborate on why the gratitude is so overpowering. For the Somalilanders, an immensely weighty consideration in the matter is that, at their hour of most dire need, they found the indispensible safe havens they so sorely needed in Ethiopia. And for that happenstance alone, the Somalilanders are and will be grateful to the Ethiopians. Short of an Ethiopian act that would call for or lead to an assault on Somalilanders’ existence or freedom, the gratitude should and will endure.

An Unlikeliest Silver Lining In The Darkest of Clouds

nce upon a time Somalilanders, thoroughly attrited, were fleeing in mass on foot for dear life. The Somali armed forces—supposedly their very own; supposedly instituted to protect them—was using every weapon on the book in bombarding them from the rear and above. They were desperately looking for any direction to escape from the merciless army on their hot pursuit. Unfortunately, on one side laid the Gulf Aden. Deep Blue Sea! Only in biblical times, specifically in Moses’, with his magic rod that allegedly had dried up a passage in Red Sea, was a whole nation known to have crossed a sea. The fleeing Somalilanders could certainly not count on divinely empowered Mosesian benefits. So no dice there! And neither was another optional getaway route: the Djibouti border. The Northerners had not been able to elude the reach of the Somali regime’s long and suffocating tentacles in Djibouti even at better times and even when their fleeing numbers had been a countable few rather than the masses on the move now. It had not been lost to them that the Djibouti government had been, to all intents and purposes, a subservient puppet of the Somali regime in as far as the regime’s policies towards the Northerners were concerned. Had not Djibouti, they reminded themselves, been enforcing a longstanding policy of handing over—on demand despite international law or plain old decency if nothing else—any Northerner to the regime on request or whim? Besides, not only was this border too far away, too short in length and too heavily guarded on both sides, it also had other impediments such as electrified fences and mine fields—relics from the colonial times.

The only remaining alternative was towards the border with Ethiopia. But that option, too, offered the Somalilanders running away from imminent danger nothing but great apprehension. They were all too acutely aware, historically speaking, that there had been no love lost between the Ethiopians and the Somalis. From the times of Ahmed Gurey in the fifteenth century, the Somali-Ethiopian relationship had been one of conflicts, hatred, rivalries and mistrust. The two countries had gone to war twice since the inception of the Somali Republic in 1960. Though Ethiopia eventually prevailed, the last war in 1977 had been especially ferocious and costly to both nations. The Ethiopians, certainly, could not be expected to forget that the causes of these conflicts had been the pursuit of one or the other people to dominate the other on either religious or ethnic grounds. In more modern times, the ugly legacies of colonialism and Somalis’ post-independence quest for “Pan-Somalism” had been intractable issues of contention. The Northern Somalis—the very ones now in flight from fellow Somalis’ brutality—were that quest’s most ardent promoters as they had amiably demonstrated when they had sacrificed their own independence in 1960 in order to set the ball rolling towards the achievement of this goal.

On every fleeing Somalilander’s mind swirled a dreaded question: Would the Ethiopians be indifferent or even be gleeful at the spectacle of the slaughter that had been taking place amongst the theoretically hated Somalis by refusing refuge to those of them fleeing from it? It did not help the wretched and hunted masses’ sense of helplessness that the governments of Ethiopia and Somalia had, just months earlier, reached the most unlikely of agreements. For years, the Somali National Movement (the SNM), a rebel group consisting mostly of Northern Somalis and with rear bases in Ethiopia, had been waging an effective guerrilla war against the Siad Barre regime. Siad’s extraordinarily brutal counterinsurgency measuresi had been proving counterproductive. These countermeasures had succeeded only in inadvertently swelling the ranks and coffers of the SNM thus making it even more formidable and threatening. To make matter worse, other rebellions were coming on steam in other parts of the country, especially in South/ Central Somalia and around the nation’s capital, Mogadishu, the docility of whose residents the regime had been in the habit of foolishly talking for grantedii. By this time, the regime had felt so threatened that its only concern became its own preservation. Acutely aware of the failure of its hitherto applied counterinsurgency measures, it realized that as long as SNM rebels were enjoying their sanctuaries in Ethiopia, it would have been impossible to defeat or contain them. Throwing to the wind all pretenses of national responsibilities, national interests and principles, the regime made Ethiopia an offer it could not refuse.

Somalia would forfeit all territorial claims on Ethiopia and would officially recognize the inviolability of the hitherto disputed borders between the two countriesiii. As a sweetener, Somalia would additionally expel all anti-Ethiopian rebels that had been operating from within Somalia and would deny them any further sanctuaries and assistance. In return, Ethiopia should expel the SNM and all other opponents, whether armed or unarmed, of the Somali regime from its territories and cease all assistance, in any form or shape, that Ethiopia had been awarding them. As mentioned earlier, the regime already had under its belt a rewardingly (for the regime) operative and reciprocal no-opponent-in-either-country pact with Djiboutiiv. Now, if cemented and rounded with this far more comprehensive and watertight treaty with Ethiopia, Siad Barre confidently calculated, it would mean the inescapably certain annihilation of not only the stubborn SNM insurgency in particular, but also the final solution of what he had perceived as the Northerners’ inherent irritations and threats to his regime in general.

Such an agreement with Ethiopia would furthermore flush out the SNM combat troops out of their Ethiopian hideouts and into the open. With their superior firepower and resources—in fact the resources of an entire country arrayed against an essentially ragtag, though motivated, rebels—all that the regime’s army had to do was finishing off defenseless sitting ducks. The regime only had to pull the noose, which it had ingeniously custom-made for SNM’s exposed neck. All that remained for Siad Barre was to sign the dotted line with his Ethiopian counterpart, Mengistu Haile Mariam and how eager was the Somali dictator to do exactly that without wasting another moment or allowing trivial matters like national interests, principles, honor or simple human decency or suchlike to be on the way. The Ethiopians could not believe their stroke of luck. To them, Siad Barre’s proposal amounted to all their wishes and dreams served to them on a silver platter. They had everything to gain and nothing to lose by agreeing to the Somali dictator’s offer without delay. Why would they care if the deal would essentially mean the near certain slaughter of the Somali rebels both governments had been hosting—i.e. the SNM in Ethiopia and the anti-Ethiopian Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) Somali-Ethiopian rebels operating from bases in Somalia? The slaughtering would befall on Somalis alone and no harm would come to a single Ethiopian. And would such a treaty not be the merciful end, at long last, of the sharp and painful Somali thorn that had been pricking their sides for so long.

Of course, Ethiopia readily accepted the offer. Subsequently, much to both dictators’ unimaginable jubilation and somewhat relief a formal treaty was duly signed and sealed by Siad Barre and Mengistu Haile Mariam in Djibouti in June 1988. Now, so confident the was Siad Barre of the validity and ingeniousness of his final solution, that he felt no need to offer amnesty to the SNM and other opponents or consider alternative ways to promote reconciliation with them. To him, the safest SNM insurgent or, for that matter, any opponent was simply a dead one. Common sense was all the fleeing Northerners had needed to assume that if the Ethiopians were to take sides between the Somali regime that had just recently delivered the absolute abandonment of the “Greater Somalia” dream to them on the one hand and that dream’s most devoted sponsors-now-turned-victims on the other, the choice would be a piece of cake. Mr. Common Sense would more than likely have placed his bet on the side of the regime. Sure, Ethiopia had rendered safe haven and material assistance to the SNM, but that was prior to the regime’s capitulation. At any rate, it was widely suspected that the Ethiopian support for the SNM had not been based on genuine sympathy with SNM’s cause. Rather, it had been but one dimension of an Ethiopian government’s multifaceted strategy to weaken or better still topple the Siad regime, which Ethiopia had considered the biggest of devils. This suspicion gained credence, if any were needed, when Ethiopia promptly kept its part of the deal with the regime by expelling the SNM from its territory—the very act that had directly precipitated the Northerners’ ongoing mass exodus from their homes.

For the SNM, surrender to the regime was not an option as a matter of principle as well as for practical reasons, regardless the absence or availability of amnesty. Nor did the SNM, to the regime’s dismay, become sitting ducks as it had expected. Unbeknownst to both the Ethiopian and Somali governments, the SNM reacted to this Ethiopian-Somali immoral conspiracy in a manner that was entirely unpredictable as much as it was seemingly reckless. Instead of becoming sitting ducks, the SNM turned out to be fearsome eagles. Understandably, they had decided that since the Somali regime had proposed, Ethiopian government had acquiesced and in the event that God had disposed on their ultimate demise, they would rather die standing and fighting. Somehow, the freedom fighters evaded the amply reinforced and heavily armed regiments that the regime had deployed all along the border, with the mission of either killing off or taking the expelled SNM fighters prisonersv. With those unexpected elements of surprise and daring, the fighters attacked and overran the regime’s main military garrisons in Hargeisa and Burao, the two main cities in the North. Only Hargeisa airport-cum-airbase escaped the SNM assault. With the regime’s army and other cohorts cleared of these cities, their residents breathed some refreshing air of freedom for a long time.

Sadly, it turned out to be a short-lived air of freedom. The Somali military had been considered Africa’s most powerful army in black Africa just a decade earlier. Its ignominious defeat—some would say total rout—during the Somali-Ethiopia war of 1977; the SNM’s attritional guerilla warfare in the eights; the all too numerous purges of professional officers and their replacements with others whose only qualifications happened to be their tribal affiliation and loyalty to Siad Barrevi—all these factors undoubtedly had collaboratively weakened and demoralized the army. Yet, it had been still a formidable force. The West, true to their Cold War era tendency to sleep with the devil as long as it was anti-Soviet, had replaced the entire regime’s lost weaponry and then some. For its part, the regime had dedicated nearly all the national resources and treasury to the army. Furthermore, as former General Mohamed Ali Samatar—politburo member, vice-president, prime minister, minister of defense, the nation’s top military among his numerous titles during the regime’s tenure and arguably its most capable military strategist—publicly and on not entirely infrequent occasions lamented, Siad had, against better judgments and counsels including Samatar’s, degreed the deployment of nearly 90% of the army’s personnel and materiel in the Northern Regions (Somaliland)vii solely against the SNM. This lopsided deployment enabled the regime to rush reinforcements and replacements to the overrun cities. Like the SNM, the army also unexpectedly (or was it too naïve on Somailanders’ part not to expect it?) changed its tactics. It is now known that the regime had a well-thought of and comprehensive strategyviii for such an eventuality. The only mishap was that the eventuality occurred before the regime’s scheduled timeline.

Contrary to expectations and to the principles of a fair battlefield dual, the regime’s army did not engage the SNM fighters in close frontal combat or in street fighting. Instead, it lined up–in the case of Hargeisa–thousands of artillery pieces and hundreds of tanks, shoulder-to-shoulder, one to the rear of another, on the hills to the South of the city. In unison, on around the clock, days on end, these killing machines shelled directly into the heavily populated city, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. For good measure, from above, waves after waves of fighter jets and bombers, ironically flying from the airbase just five miles to the south, incessantly bombed the city. It hardly bothered the bombardiers’ and certainly not their commanders’ consciences that the residents of the city were trapped within the walls of their homes as the barrages rained on them. Nor was any incongruity discernible in the fact that the upkeep of the regime that was committing such mayhem and the lethal assets it was using to perpetuate it were being financed through their victims’ tax treasury. Moreover, Burao, the second biggest Northern city, was suffering the same fate. The army was carrying out similar and simultaneous shelling bombardments and aerial bombings on other Northern cities, towns and villages, even on some which had no SNM presence.

It was evident that the regime’s strategy had been not simply to defeat the SNM. Rather theirs had been plain scorched-earth mission. The objective had been to cause as much casualties as possible and for good measure to utterly destroy and depopulate the Northern cities, towns, villages, and countryside settlements. The killing, the maiming, the raping, the displacing and what not of their residents would continue for as long as necessary. The strategy allotted same fate for those who were fortunate enough to survive the initial overwhelming shock and awe. Attrition through aerial strafing and by pursing ground forces awaited those who had managed to flee from the devastatingly opening assaults. The strategy had been a very comprehensive, mind you. Like all well-thought of strategies, it had been designed to be proactive, not reactive. With all borders closed to the damned Somalilanders as escape routes—on the strength of signed, sealed, and binding bilateral agreements with neighboring countries—and with history devoid of records relating to a whole population that had ever succeeded swimming hundreds of miles across a sea to safety (The Gulf of Aden: no dice there, remember?), the harsh elements of nature and the army’s unrelenting mop up operations would, in due time, conspire in rendering the Northern Somalis’ vexing irritations mercifully no more.

To cap it all, Should some of them somehow manage surviving this collusion of calamities by escaping to where the regime’s iron fist could not crush them to smithereens and for others of their kinship who had been beyond the fist’s spiked reach on account of having been abroad in the first place, there would be nothing for them to aspire ever coming back to their once-upon-a-time homeland. For the regime’s comprehensive anti-Somalilanders strategy had not been designed to end not only with the killing, the maiming, the raping, the displacing, the dispossessing and/or the destruction of their properties. It had contained another pivotal component: The Depopulation of the North of Its Natives and Its Repopulation with Kindred Tribesix! So meticulously was the strategy’s preliminary phases executed that the Somalilanders could not have had the time and the frame of mind to digest fully its methodical implementation, much less its present and future implications. There were the initial shock, incredulity and disbelief that they had been suffering such unspeakable mayhem at the hands of their supposedly own government and their own fellow Somalis. But as the assault continued unabated, it dawned on them that, whatever the government’s intentions, they had to run for their lives.

Thus, en masse, and with the barest of possessions, they took to the hills and countryside, mostly to the north and west, which the SNM had somewhat cleared of the regime’s army. At first they did not go that much far. They had hoped that they would be able to return to their homes as soon as the fighting between the army and SNM ended one way or another. The people’s shock and disbelief were redoubled and the government’s intentions became somewhat clearer when low flying warplanes soon continued strafing them and pursuing soldiers made the unmistakable point of relentlessly machine-gunning the feebler and the wounded amongst them; those who could not have made enough progress away from the cities as well as those who had been unfortunate enough to make a late start in fleeing. These acts left no doubt in their minds that the only safe places were locations where the regime’s army could not reach them. Obviously, such locations could only lie beyond the Somali territory across the borders. It was a sorry spectacle that was simultaneously playing itself across the major population centers of the North. Thus a great mass of people were on the move while under constant harassment across the plains, hills and other unfamiliar or harsh terrain. They were on the move with no clear idea of where safe locations across the borders would be and whether indeed they would be able reach there or indeed whether they would be welcome there if or when they did. Somaliland-Ethiopia Relationship

It was under these dark clouds of gloom and expectations of no sympathy at best and hostility at worst from the Ethiopians that the Northerners nervously approached the border. Still, in their desperation-weighted reckonings, they had concluded that Ethiopia held their best hope for at least some respite from the regime’s sadistically unrelenting brutality and the unforgiving elements of nature. Despite the uncertainty of the Ethiopians’ reception, they knew that the border was too long and porous for any government sealing it effectively. The vast areas just beyond the border were the traditional grazing lands of kindred nomadic tribes on whom they could count for help. And any help was so sorely needed. Finally and yet as importantly, the vastness of the country would come in handy for the purposes of concealment and evasion if the Ethiopian government decided on their forceful reparations.

So their pleasant surprise, all their fears turned out mercifully to be unfounded. Not only did the Ethiopians display commendable compassion and humanity by allowing the wretched fleeing masses unfettered safe passage into their country, they also availed them some desperately needed amenities such as nutritional and medical emergency aid, meager as this was due understandably to their limited means. Soon, crowded refugee tent-city camps, with names such as Harta Sheikh, Dul A’d and Camp Hashem cropped up overnight across the Ethiopian plains barely a few kilometers from its border with Somalia. There were seemingly no end of newly arrived people on the edge of their lives to add to the congestion and the claims on the all too inadequate resources available in the camps. The living conditions, as can be expected in any refugee camp or in any displaced people’s shelter—when they happen to emerge not only in a destitute and third-world country like Ethiopia, but also in an immensely wealthy nation as America (remember Hurricane Catherina and Louisiana?)—well, the living conditions in these camps were certainly no picnic.

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the Ethiopians rose to the occasion and in the nick of time. In the very least, thanks to them, the desolate Somali people in the Ethiopian camps were now safe from the bullets, the shells, the bombs, the landmines, the pullets, the swords, the machetes, the raping and the mundane, but still humiliating, physical and verbal abuses that had been their misfortune suffering from for so long and strangely from their fellow Somalis. Furthermore, there were other things that the Ethiopians did that helped matters much for the Somalilanders. Amongst these, they officially designated refugee status to everyone who had crossed the border. This designation accorded the Northerners legal protection under international law and paved the way for more substantial humanitarian assistance from both Ethiopian and international organizations and governments. It was truly an unlikeliest silver lining in the darkest of clouds. hat silver lining was what singularly foiled the wholesale genocide and irreversible ethnic cleansing of Somalilanders that the Siad Barre regime had so cynically contrived for them; so hard had striven to perpetuate and achieve as well as had pulled off to a not so inconsiderable degree. This, for the information of anyone in bafflement or in derision of it, is the source of Somalilanders’ overpowering gratitude to Ethiopians.

On the meantime that almost the population of the North was streaming into Ethiopia, the regime’s extensive bombardments of cities, towns, and villages were still in full swing. Mass executions of rounded civilians in their hundreds (whose remains were latter discovered in countless mass graves all over the country; new ones are being exposed to this day after almost every seasonal torrential rain) were being carried out. The aerial strafing of the still fleeing civilians was continuing with unabated zest. The SNM fought on. However, as mentioned earlier, the army had denied the fighters close frontal combat, SNM’s forte. Lacking logistical support and re-supplies, they run out of ammunition for their long-range weaponry and of other necessary combat provisions. For lack of shells and fuel, they abandoned the heavy weaponry that they had earlier captured from the army. This weaponry had been their sole answer to the army’s ceaseless barrages on their positions besides on cities’ proper. Further, the SNM, to their disadvantage, as to the bombed cities’ residents’ disaster, was defenseless against the constant aerial bombardments for lack of anti-aircraft defenses.

Eventually, the SNM had to withdraw from their captured positions in the cities. Its fighters, to a considerable extent, as intact as they had come, dispersed into mountains and countryside to regroup and refurbish their supplies as best as they could. The regime’s fear, reluctance or failure in engaging SNM directly—rather than shelling and bombing defenseless city dwellers—was, as General Samatar had feared, certainly one of Siad Barre’s many militarily senseless shortcomingsx. But that understandably offered little solace to the city dwellers. Soon, the SNM were able to resume their previously deadly and affective guerilla attacks on the army’s positions; biting interceptions on its convoys and disruptions of its supply lines—battle-tried tactics that had proved highly costly to the regime’s army in both men and materiel. When the regime’s monomaniac atrocities finally had abated for want of meaningful targets, those be humans or infrastructures, the results were unspeakably gruesome. In Hargeisa alone, which took the brunt of the regime’s rage and wrath, figures of 50,000 to seventy five thousand dead are knowledgeably cited. In all, no less than 200,000 people died by conservative estimates across the North. Those wounded or maimed were countlessxi.

Moreover, most of the major cities’ buildings were either fully destroyed or irreparably damaged. The once teeming urban centers became ghost towns populated only by roving dogs and hyenas satiating on a feast of the abundant human remains. Before long, another feast of a different kind kicked off earnestly in the depopulated cities. It was time the victors helped themselves to the riches of the vanquished. And what a treasure trove was in store for these singularly moral-deficient vanquishers! The surviving residents, stricken with shock, surprise, terror, and disgust with the sudden heavy onslaught, had fled with nothing more than the rags on their backs. All other worldly possessions and assets, whether liquid or fixed, had been left behind. It had been one of those rare occasions, when one’s sense of well-being is that one is still clinging to one’s dear life and one is so grateful to God Almighty for that gift alone!

As the second largest city of the erstwhile Somali Republic, Hargesia had been appropriately and expectedly the depository of the nation’s second largest concentration of its wealth. Unlike Mogadishu, the capital, and other economically favored cities of the South, Hargeisa’s wealth had been almost entirely privately owned. For decades, successive Southern-dominated governments had, as a matter of course, been shutting the Northerners out of their fair shares of governmental jobs and contracts. The North, additionally, had been disfavored where developmental policies and programs were concerned. This concerted disenfranchisement had impelled relatively more Northerners to seek their livelihoods from other avenues that had not been overly dependent on government patronages—mainly trade and service industries. The officialdom, though, had still paradoxically not been amused at the rewarding successes that had become the inadvertent and inverse consequences of its own policies of deprivation.

At any rate, great and abandoned wealth of every kind had awaited the looters. Whole depots, factories, warehouses, stores, shops and kiosks holding, every commodity, equipment, product, and merchandise under the sun; safes and boxes containing jewelry and cash in currencies some of which unheard off; homes full of all sorts of belongings—cars, personal effects, furniture, household utensils, electronics and, yes, more and much more; even live animals such as goats and cows that many households used to keep—well all these riches and much more had been in store to be taken. And eagerly as well as systemically taken these treasures certainly were. Daily for months on stretch, convoy after convoy of loot-laden trucks left Hargeisa eastwards and some westwards. So intense was the pillaging, that the robbers, who were mostly the regime’s soldiers, officers and regime-affiliated tribesmen who had come for the purpose, often got into deadly infightings over the booty.

As soon as denuding the buildings of every separately removable item had been done with, the plunderers turned their energies to dismantling the buildings themselves thoroughly and methodically. First to come out were single or double unit components of the buildings—gates, doors, windows etc. Next to go were every other possibly removable building material—the roofing; the ceilings; the wooden beams, panels, linings; the plumbing including underground pipes; the electrical pits and pieces including the wirings; you mention it! Nor were the street utility infrastructures spared. Gone were the water mains and pipes; electric transmission lines and poles; everything! When the looters had, at last, accomplished this monumental scavenging, an odd section of a stone or masonry wall of an odd building in an odd block was the only thing left standing. From above, every major city of the North looked like mile after mile of Babylonian ruins. Though the world cared not to watch this great urban robbery as well as its preceding preparatory monstrosities or if it did, could not be bothered nonetheless, those double back-to-back colossal atrocities would arguably qualify not only as one of most vicious butcheries of humans but also as one of the greatest wanton destructions as well as one the most utmost illegitimate confiscations of wealth.

And Then The Chickens Came Home To Roast

At any rate, the long and painful North-South saga that had begun at independence in 1960 was entering its final stages or at least the final stages of one of its last chapter. The persistent entanglement of Somaliland-Somalia affairs, at least in the eyes of the International Community (IC), and of the citizens of Somalia—though not of Somalilanders—indicates that the end of the final chapter is perhaps yet to come. One the one hand, the survivors of the aforementioned multiple carnages, now mostly domiciled in the Ethiopian refugee camps, were steadily and determinatively getting on with their lives as best as they could. Their habitual spirit and resourcefulness had not abandoned them. Many proceeded from the camps to other lands where they could be economically more productive and capable of assistance to their kith and kin back at the camps. Other started businesses in Ethiopia itself and did well by. The Ethiopians to their considerate credit did not place undue restrictions and debarments on their refugee guests and on their activities.

Furthermore, they definitely did not forget their homeland. The horrendous experience of longstanding persecution at the hands of their fellow Somalis that had culminated in their harrowing exodus from their land only redoubled their unshakable determination to reclaim it, but at this time around, under conditions that would be devoid of Southern direct and decisive impact or influence on their future lives and destiny. Towards that goal, it seemed that every able-bodied and levelheaded Somalilander, regardless of where one was and under whatever conceivable circumstances, has made the same reflexive and solemn vow: to leave no stone unturned; to spare no effort or endeavor; to shun no sacrifice in life, limb or riches; to endure any hardship or deprivation; to contemplate any deed or any thought in the pursuit of turning the tables on the regime to its ultimate and speediest utter downfall. Without any persuasion or the slightest of coercion, every Somalilander became a SNM active member in some role or another. The insurgency’s ranks and resources swelled exponentially beyond its widest dreams.

On the other hand meanwhile, the feeble seams that had been holding the army and other mainstays of the regime’s terror apparatus together started their falling-apart process, as eventually they were bound to do. Many of the rank and file began to wander why almost all the officers and so few of the foot soldiers dodging the bullets in the front lines were from a particular tribe. Nor was their morale much helped by the intensified deadly SNM guerrilla attacks. Why, they began asking themselves, did they have to fight the SNM anyway? Their endless combat tours, without relief, replacements, and rotations as they, all the while, were away from homes, families, and friends raised in their minds certain obvious questions. The answers to those questions instigated a steady and escalating trend of desertions, defections or surrenders to the SNM. To further encourage and facilitate these trends, the SNM policy had been to provide safe passages and other assistance to all who had chosen on taking this course of action.

In the South, in the meantime, the regime’s disintegration was also gaining momentum. There too, the tribalist demagoguery of the regime was, at last, being challenged in the only way the regime could understand i.e. through armed resistance. Gen. Samatar’s prophesy of the fallacy of the regime’s earlier knee-jerk decision of deploying the bulk of its army in the North at the expense of weakening its nerve center’s defenses started playing like a horror movie on the regime. Within weeks of the inception of the Southern insurgency campaigns, the rebels were at the gates of Mogadishu, the nation’s capital and seat of the regime. Somaliland-Ethiopia Relationship

For the regime, the chickens finally came home to roast.

In January 1991, coordinated SNM/USC offensives in both North and South, finally and decisively defeated the regime’s army. Siad Barre along with his cohorts fled his palace and Mogadishu in tanks and armored vehicles and later into exile. The fascist regime was no more. And with that, an ignominious era of infamy met at long last an equally shameful end. Equally at long last, Siad Barre regime’s grisly propositions for Somalilanders also came to its conclusion in a way which, despite its best efforts, was contrary to the regime’s expectations, hopes and wishes, but rather in a manner that was thankfully more in conformity with Almighty’s much more charitable dispositions. So Irrefutable And Yet So Unexplainable Facts Nonetheless, one or two facts render the above detailed epic carnages visited on Somalilanders so uniquely unfathomable, so grotesquely brazen; so singularly unjustifiable as well as so understandably unforgettable even if possibly forgivable. It was not another race; it was not another people of the same race; it was not alien colonizers (as happened to the Red Indians in America or to the aborigines in Australia); it was not imperialists; it was not crusaders—well, it was none of the above who saw fit perpetuating these calamities.

Rather, the victimizers and the victims were of the same race; of the same people; of the same ethnicity; of the same culture; of the same language; of the same religion and of the same country. It was a Somali-on-fellow-Somali carnage and expropriation! It was not in olden and more primitive times; it was not only in the dead of nights; it was not in concealed and intricate labyrinths; it was not in cobwebs of secretive underground bunkers and tunnels; it was not in a far off, godforsaken and inaccessible corner of the world; it was not in the absence of fellow human beings in that world—well it was in none of these times, places and conditions in which these calamities took place. Rather, it was in the twilight of the just ended century; it was in broad daylights as well as at nights; it was in open, easily visible land; it was in a geopolitically prominent country; it was on foreign diplomats’ and intelligence services’ watch; it was under the glare of spy satellites; it was in the knowledge of the world media and human rights groups—well, it was in these times, places and conditions in which these calamities took place! The Ethiopians never killed, maimed or wounded the tiniest fraction of the Somalilanders who were thus victimized at the hands of their fellow Somalis! Fellow Somalis never saved the lives of the tiniest fraction of the Somalilanders who owed their lives to the compassion of the Ethiopians! The Ethiopians never relieved of Somalilanders the tiniest fraction of the wealth that they lost to fellow Somalis! Moreover, fellow Somalis continue posing the greatest threat and opposition to Somalilanders’ right to self-determination and to be the sole drivers of their own destiny in the way they see fit while Ethiopia renders Somalilanders—if not absolute but at least—some tangible and practical assistance in their endeavor to exercise these rights!

It is not that these cataclysms occurred; what happened had happened and obviously cannot be undone. After all, though the Siad Barre regime strived so hard to assign Somalilanders to history, at the end of the day, the matter ended in the other way round—the Siad Barre regime is history. Besides, after they eventually prevailed over the regime, Somalilanders have decided not to be overly obsessed on their recent sufferings and misfortunes as incalculably crippling and undeserved as these were. They have chosen on looking hopefully forward rather than staring listlessly backward. That Somalilanders have opted on a course of communal peace and reconciliation as opposed to that of retribution against their past tormentors—some of them fellow Somalilanders and, as tables turned, the joke could have been on them—would, if honesty is to be valued, be distinguished as nothing less than virtuous if not saintly. In as so far as practical matters are concerned, Somalilanders have demonstrated remarkable resilience and stamina in rebuilding their lives at the both personal and public levels. Cities, towns and villages have not only been rebuilt but have grown beyond imaginations. The Hargeisa that looked like Babylonian ruins in 1991, when its surviving residents returned to it, is now a teeming and prosperous metropolis of 1.2 million people. Schools, universities, hospitals, health centers, roads, factories and farms have appeared where they had never been. True to their legendary entrepreneurial flair, all sorts of successful businesses proliferate.

On the political front, Somalilanders have not entirely forgotten their unenviable past in mapping out for their future. Soon after Siad Barre’s fall, they consensually decided to withdraw from the union with Somalia that had brought them only untold misery. Then they set out to build the perquisite solid foundations, sturdy pillars and appropriate symbols of a viable state. Today, Somaliland credibly boasts all the fundamental tenets of statehood: established and known borders and essential control over them; essentially cohesive population; own flag; own national anthem and emblem; own referendum-approved constitution; own currency; own passport; every conventional national institution and, last but least, a democratically elected government with built-in appropriate checks and balances. There is no doubt that all above facts are irrefutable. There is no question that Somalilanders have chosen to deal with these facts in ways which have been typified by levelheaded rationality and pragmatism. No malice or vengeance has figured in the selection of their choices and actions thereof. Yet there is one more fact that continues to be particularly and persistently worrisome and unexplainable to Somalilanders. It seems that, amongst the Somalis, it is themselves alone who have a reasonable idea of the horrors through which they underwent. It appears that the best most other Somalis could come up with is the pretension of no, or just a vague, idea of the magnitude of these tragedies. But all Somalis especially the sectors thereof who were essentially responsible for these mayhems through their almost exclusive roles in leaderships, commands, formulation of strategies and tactics, setting out core objectives, participation in the policy- and decision-making processes certainly know better. It is nothing less than unconvincing theatrics that are childishly amazing but supremely not amusing if and when particularly the more culpable Somalis plead ignorance or, worse still, denial of their own crimes as well as if and when generally the less liable Somalis assume that the offenses were entirely none of their business since they had not been involved in the conceptualizations of, and the leadership behind, these offenses.

Somaliland-Ethiopia Relationship

It was agonizing enough that, as they were at the receiving end of these atrocities, Somalilanders have been comforted by no or precious little fellow Somali display of inclinations, or of courage or of efforts of mentioning, of examining, of questioning, of acknowledging, of expressing sympathy or regret, of decrying, of condemning, of visibly opposing, of mitigating the effects of, of appealing for forgiveness due to—these unspeakable events. It is doubly heartbreaking and certainly more polarizing that, after twenty one years of hindsight and meditation, Somalilanders could discern from Somalians not only the an obstinately continued laissez-faire or straight-faced denial of that recent ugly history but also consistently and steadily hardening Somalian attitudes and intrigues against Somaliland and its achievements even as Somalilanders’ dispositions towards Somalians were trendily getting more amenable in their favor.

For Somalilanders, the first national priority is ensuring the avoidance of a situation in which the catastrophes of yesteryear could replay on them. They have been striving and will continue to strive achieving that objective in a manner that would not be detrimental to Somalians. Somalilanders cannot fathom how their withdrawal from the Union could be so unacceptably nocuous to their brethren to the South. Of course, the Union had been a desirable Ideal for all and Somalilanders had been in the forth front of its promotion. Nonetheless, the Ideal had been mismanaged in a way that only brought woes, of various severities, on all concerned. The primary culprits in the grand mess-up of that Ideal had been those who had held the political reins in the Union and whose principal mission had been to make the Ideal work for benefit of all concerned. No one can arguably blame the Somalilanders to have been the said culprits.

Thus, since the Ideal turned out to be disastrous, common sense dictates that other less desirable but, at very least, less harmful avenues of inter-Somali relationships should be explored and considered. It was in that vein that Somalilanders saw fit to reclaim their independence by withdrawing from the Union. As indicated earlier, that Act could not be credibly portrayed as gravely deleterious to Somalia. Furthermore, it would have been more in line with common sense and in the spirit of goodwill were the reactions of the Somalians to the Act contained even the mere semblances of understanding and consideration rather than their now familiar, condescending and counterproductively polarizing “No-no-you-can’t-secede” wails. The wails sound particularly delusional and bizarre since the Somalians could not tangibly do much to prevent or negate the Act.

At any rate, Somalilanders harbor goodwill or, in the very no malice, towards Somalians even as the apparent lack of reciprocity on their part, at times, runs the risk of rekindling or aggravating some past resentments and, at other times, of calling the very wisdom and the deservedness of the goodwill itself into question. The intractable and multifaceted tribulations through which Somalians have been undergoing for the past 21 years have been nothing but a source of pain and dismay to most Somalilanders. A manifestation of their benevolence was abundant, if any were needed, in the manner they have responded to the famine that ravaged Southern Somalia last year. Themselves destitute and suffering from nature’s near similar unforgiving harshness, Somalilanders went deep into their pockets in contributing towards the famine relief efforts and did better than many countries of easier means.

Nevertheless, the establishment of any genuine, comprehensive, solid and lasting reconciliation, amity and fraternity between Somalilanders and Somalians should address certain issues that have, hitherto and unwisely, been swept under the carpet, or been glossed over or been entirely ignored. On the onset and before commencing any exercise in that direction, it should be clear to all concerned that the overriding purpose in addressing these issues is knowledge above all. No one should contemplate or entertain any hope or expectation that once these issues had been addressed, any of the outcomes would grant anyone the right to—or anyone else the fear of—Somaliland-Ethiopia Relationship retribution. None of the possible outcomes would entitle anyone to additional—or deprive anyone else’s of one’s fair share of—rights and obligations within the Somali societies.

Let us go through one possible course the process could follow. It could first start by undertaking an objective, incisive and broad examination of the post-1960 Somali history. The second is to chronicle all whatever events, facts and conditions which transpired from such historical study—the good, the bad and ugly. The third is to identify exactly where and with whom the responsibilities thereof lay without the intention of bestowing rewards for good deeds or administering punishments for bad as would have been appropriate under normal circumstances. The fourth is for all concerned to acknowledge, accept, publicize and preserve for posterity the findings as part of the Somali people’s history and heritage. Only then and then only could the process of inter-Somali healing start in earnest. Only then could genuine and heartfelt goodwill and trust between Somalilanders and Somalian have a chance of starting a renewal. Only then could an atmosphere conducive for meaningful and level-headed dialogue between Somalilanders and Somalian on their present and future statuses and destinies exist. The earlier that is done the better for all Somalis. But if there one sector of them who is more capable of waiting, it is the Somalilanders. Somalilanders are used to waiting for quite one or two things in their times. They waited for genuine freedom until they laid their rightful claim to it on May 18, 1991. They have been waiting for the IC’s acknowledgement of their freedom since then. They are willing to wait for as long as necessary for the day the Somalians or, for that matter, the IC come to their senses.

A Lifeline For An Otherwise Ignored Infancy

Somalilanders’ gratitude and goodwill to Ethiopia received further somewhat subdued boost, relatively speaking, that is, after Somaliland reinstated its independence. Since then, Ethiopia has been serving a role of unique and vital importance for Somaliland. While it officially tows IC’s non-recognition line, it is the only country in the world that, to all purposes and intents, treats Somaliland as a de facto sovereign nation. Government officials are accorded full diplomatic status, when in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian capital is also their main gateway to other capitals of the world when they travel on official business. It is one of only finger countable countries which, however reluctantly, accept Somaliland’s passport as a legal travel document. Almost alone amongst the nations of the world, Ethiopia has been providing (and still provides), literally, the lifeline that has been facilitating Somaliland’s external relations in the delicate infancy of its nationhood—an infancy which almost every other nation chose to ignore or, worse still, muffle.

In the foregoing, it is understandable that Somalilanders would always have a soft spot for the Ethiopians. Somalilanders would not wish to have anything but best of fraternal and neighborly relationship with Ethiopia. Somalilanders could have found much harder to reclaim their land without the benefit of Ethiopian assistance. Besides following Somaliland’s re-independence, as every other nation in the world slammed its doors in the infant country’s face, Ethiopia proved to be Somaliland’s most sympathetic and active state in all spheres of nation-to-nation intercourse. Returned to Stone Age circumstances by Siad Barre regime’s thorough destruction of their country, Somalilanders needed every helping hand; they certainly needed no further aggravation of their already dire predicaments. The Ethiopians stand to be commended for refraining from applying such undue and further destabilizing interferences on Somalilanders as they painfully strove to mend their much broken society back to a civilized condition. To Require a Hare to Acquire a Fox’s Consent Despite the foregoing overpowering gratitude, Ethiopia’s policies towards Somaliland after its re-independence should, in all fairness, to be subjected to as much scrutiny as the policies of other nations. The obvious questions here pertain, like to any other country’s, to whether Ethiopia’s professed intentions of its policies can be taken at their face value or to whether there are hidden agendas behind these policies’ facades.

The Ethiopian publicly stated policy position on Somaliland’s withdrawal from its Union with Somalia and reinstatement of its sovereignty is that it is an internal Somali matter (read, a matter for the nation that was known as Somali Republic). Lest it would be blamed of interference or worse in the internal affairs of the failed Somali Republic, Ethiopia would not be the first country to recognized Somaliland. However, if other nations or pertinent organizations such as the AU and UN granted Somaliland recognition, Ethiopia would be amongst the first countries to fellow suit. Beyond that, Ethiopia, like any nation, has legitimate security and economic interests in its neighboring countries. Ethiopia, of course, like (again) any nation, would safeguard these interests as best as it deems fit. And Somaliland, recognized or not, is one of Ethiopia’s neighbors. However, there is no shortage of accusations of Ethiopian ulterior motives behind its policies on Somaliland and Somalia. There are those, especially the Somalis of Somalia and the Arabs, who say that Ethiopia is bent on fragmenting the erstwhile Somali Republic into client and weak mini-states that would serve its interests in accordance with its directions. Others allege that, while Ethiopia might not work towards the direct dismemberment of the Somali Republic, it would frustrate the establishment of any effective government that is—in reality or, at the very least, in the eyes of the Somalis—genuinely representative, legitimate and free of undue foreign manipulation or sponsorship. Both of these distracter schools of thought invariably always point to the Ethiopia-Somaliland unconventional relationship as an amble case in point of Ethiopian malice towards the Somalis.

For their part, many Somalilanders themselves definitely harbor serious misgiving about Ethiopia’s policies and sometimes lack thereof towards their country. Some suspect that Ethiopia sees Somaliland mainly through the prism of Pan-Somalism or, at a minimum, in the context of the erstwhile Somali Republic. They fear Ethiopia connives that neither the erstwhile Somali Republic nor any part of it that opted to stand alone from it (read Somaliland) becomes a viable entity in its own right and with the full rights of a state within the comity of nations and therefore to which International Law and Conventions fully apply. In this regard, the continuing chaos in Somalia, which much diminishes that country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, suits Ethiopia just fine. This would give Ethiopia the leeway and the cover of legitimacy it needs to meddle in Somalia’s internal affairs under the ruse of safeguarding its legitimate national interests. And Somaliland’s non-recognition status—with all its attendant political, economic and social deprivations for Somalilanders—serves Ethiopia’s purpose just as fine. Weak, destitute, unrecognized and therefore bereft of legal protection under International Law, Somaliland could not ever afford to be anywhere but on the side of Ethiopia’s good graces. The situation literally leaves Somaliland with preciously little choice but to submit unquestionably to Ethiopia’s biddings even when Somalilanders’ hearts and minds lie elsewhere. If indeed these are Ethiopia real purposes (and, think of it, they are not far-fetched scenarios) then it makes perfect sense that all Ethiopia wishes and strives for is a fictional existence of the erstwhile Somali Republic, which retains its territorial integrity and unitary status (ostensibly including Somaliland) nominally intact, but which is wholly and perpetually ungovernable and its regions fragmented and rebellious. Thus Somaliland is just one piece of these wider chessboard pieces of an ungovernable erstwhile Somali Republic.

In this regard, Somaliland should best be left and kept rotting in its non-recognition status for as long as it remained sufficiently capable of being rebellious and a contributor to the Somali Republic’s state of un-governability. There is quite deeply held consensus amongst knowledgeable Somalilanders that if Ethiopia’s goodwill towards Somaliland extended to its political recognition, Ethiopia possessed enough power, influence and rationale to do so and get away with it. Ethiopia is the regional powerhouse in Eastern and Horn of Africa. It possesses a credible military muscle. It is arguably the most influential country in sub-Saharan Africa save, perhaps, South Africa and Nigeria. The seat of the AU is in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia has always had sub-Saharan Africa’s unquestioned support in its past struggles with Somalia. The Western Powers consider Ethiopia a natural, kindred and reliable ally through which to advance their interests and especially so after 9/11 and its ensuing Wars on Terror. Besides, Ethiopia is no stranger to parts of a same country parting ways. In 1993, it acceded to Eretria’s, hitherto an integral part of Ethiopia, independence and sovereignty as a separate nation.

Even if Ethiopia insisted on not gaining a possibly naughty and reproachable distinction of happening to be the first country to recognize Somaliland but nonetheless really wanted to assist Somaliland in attaining its rightful aspirations, it has other ways to go about it. Ethiopia possesses enough wherewithals and influence to egg one or two kindred African countries to break the ice on the issue and take the first plunge. It has enough considerable weight and sway in the AU and IGAD to make these organizations more favorably disposed towards Somaliland’s recognition quest. It can lobby its Western friends to be more forthcoming on the issue as well. Once any of these endeavors bore some fruit, Ethiopia will have, well deservedly, eaten it with nothing but bon appetite the only reasonable remark in order from any observer’s lips if, indeed, there were observers prying after all. If Ethiopia took on that course, it could perhaps have attained the unique distinction of being the first country that never, beyond any reasonable doubt, did what, as a matter of fact, it did beyond (again) any reasonable doubt! It would have been a stroke of political ingenuity. It would have accorded the Ethiopians the required cover of plausible deniability and the capability allowing her credible deflections of blame if necessary. How would even those in the know accuse Ethiopia of misbehavior of any kind when the record clearly showed, for all to see, that the country had, indeed, not been the first country which had recognized Somaliland? That Ethiopia is unlikely to have contemplated above or any other alternative policy with the same purpose, only lends credence to the strong suspicion that all Ethiopia really desires is that Somaliland should best be left and kept rotting in its non-recognition status for as long as it remained sufficiently capable of being rebellious and a contributor to the Somali Republic’s state of un-governability. If that, in essence, is the crux of Ethiopia’s policies, then a related question naturally begs for an answer: What could possibly be Ethiopia’s motive for consistently adhering to these uncharitable policy lines for the twenty-one years since Siad Barre’s fall and with no apparent change of heart, at least in the foreseeable future, remotely discernible?

For possible answers, enter the following fictional interview which a fictional high-ranking Ethiopian official granted to two fictional journalists of a fictional American newsmagazine. There are those who suspect that the essence of the interview could not be perfunctorily dismissed as entirely fictional though. The World Chronicler’s (in Somali, Waayo Sheegaha Aduunka), Roving Editor, Mr. Truce Digger (In Somali, Md. Mashqac Ku-Baadhe) and Investigative Reporter, Mr. Blunt Bothersome (in Somali, Md. Meel Xun Abaare) recently caught up with a senior official of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry in Addis Ababa. TWC agreed to the official’s condition of remaining anonymous in granting this interview—The Managing Editor Somalis are Somalis. Never mind whether they are Somalians or Somalilanders or those residing in my country or in fraternal Kenya or in that hellish place called Djibouti—it is the name of their capital city too—or in wherever. As such, Somalis are our eternal enemies. Listen guys, this ‘eternal enemies’ thing is strictly confidential; like what you journalists call it in your particular lingo—yes, that is right, you call it “off the record”, don’t you? I know we agreed that I’ll stay anonymous in this interview and presumably that would be enough to protect me, but still this bit about eternal enemies is off the record. You see, I’m a diplomat and diplomats don’t talk about eternal enemies. They, by the nature of their profession, talk about eternal friendships and friends, even as they’re designing your demise. This eternal enemies bit is off the record; it that clear, guys?

I see you’re silent about my little request regarding this little eternal-enemies thing. But wasn’t silence said to denote consent? Thus, I take your silence means your consent to my little request. I was saying as our eternal enemies, a safe Somali is a …… I wouldn’t go as far as to say a dead one—no, no, that wouldn’t be a decent and humane thing to say; though, come to think of it, if a Somali died, I wouldn’t be the first or even the second person to shed tears on account of his misfortune. If I did, Somalis would characterize my tears as crocodile tears anyway! See, neither Somalis nor we don’t appreciate shedding tears on account of each other’s demises or other misfortunes. No, no, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that, but I’d say that a safe Somali is a weak one. One who is eternally under our mercy; a Somali who is always under our peck and call; one into whose land and home we can always have an easy excess, nay, we can always invade whether or not he likes that. How any Somali would possibly like us to invade his country, you asking me? You saying that my last statement alluded to as much. Well, well, looks like you guys don’t know a great deal about Somalis! I can’t blame you, since you haven’t been living as their neighbor as we Ethiopians, by no choice of ours—if it were our choice, we’d have said “Thanks, but no thanks”—well by no choice of ours have been destined to live as their neighbors.

So I wouldn’t blame you for your ignorance of the Somali ways, but to answer your question, yes, definitely yes, some Somalis really like us invading their country. As a matter of fact their governments officially beseech us to invade their country now and then. Remember their first real ‘president’, that old sage, Abdillahi Yusuf, now deceased, I believe—well, remember that good ‘president’ of theirs, no less, literally begged us to invade his country back in late 2006! And we obliged him (what else could we have done; we’d literally feared for the old sage’s sanity if we didn’t oblige him?). From then on, the beseeching from their governments to invade their country never stopped. To be honest with you, it sometimes gets rather tedious, the beseeching from the Somali leaders’ to invade their country, that is. But we do what we can to oblige them in consideration of the leaders’ sanity and even, at times, their very survival. As a matter of fact, as I speak now, our army is heavily involved in several different operations deep inside their country and only praise is what we’re getting from their leaders as well as others.

You saying that we routinely have a heavy hand in molding their leaderships and governments and therefore they could do no less than beseeching us to invade their country now and then and praise us when we oblige them? Listen guys! That is a preposterous thing to say to me! “A heavy hand”?! “A heavy hand”, you say?! That is entirely not true. We categorically deny it. I’m telling you that, guys. You see, guys, as the Somalis’ best neighbors and African brethren; and as the Somalis amongst themselves couldn’t agree on constituting their own effective governments and good leaders for decades; and as an effective government with good leaders is to the best interests of all concerned i.e. to them as no country cannot be without an effective government for so long; to us as their best neighbors and African brethren; to you as your country is so concerned of terrorism and piracy and what not; to Dick, to Harry, to all and sundry for whatever reason—well, in light of all the foregoing, we have an obligation to do what we can to help them in establishing an effective government with good leaders in their country, haven’t we?

In this regard, we might have had a lithe finger or, at a maximum, an easy touch or a slow hand in their governmental and leadership selection efforts, but never, ever a heavy hand as you have so impertinently and disrespectfully accused us. And one more thing: It is not only Ethiopia that lends the Somalis a lithe finger or an easy touch or a slow hand in such matters. Other caring countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti … do it. I suspect even you guys’, own country, the US, do it in a kind of roundabout way. Even some Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and suchlike do it, though the Arabs, true to their inherent awkwardness and incompetence, aren’t as good at it as others are. Organizations like the UN, the AU, the IGAD and others do it. So what is the problem if we, Ethiopians, likewise do it? I can even say, without naming names, that some of the others use poking fingers or rough touches or clumsy hands, which we never do and I never heard anybody blaming them. So I’m puzzled why Ethiopia is blamed when we so discreetly use only the lithest of fingers or the easiest of touches or the slowest of hands of them all!

speaking of blame apportioning and name calling, where you journalists are concerned, it is always ‘damn if you do and damn if you don’t! I’m certain that you’d have still blamed us if we—as their best neighbors and African brethren—didn’t do the right thing by the Somalis and failed to employ occasionally as well as discreetly a lithe finger or an easy touch or a slow hand on their good behalf. Anyway, before you popped your annoying question, I was in the midst of an important thing. Jesus! Where was I? I thought that in this interview I’d just read from my well prepared and well thought over notes and that’d be that. But you somehow derail me and I blab-blab about things I didn’t prepare well or thought over properly prior to the blab-blabbing. Anyway, where was I? Yes, yes, now I remember, Thank Heavens! I was talking about who a good Somali should be, wasn’t I? I was saying that a good Somali is a weak Somali, one whose assets are ours; one who would never collude with a fellow Somali to ever put up any meaningful resistance to whatever we’d like to do to him or with him. Is that clear, guys?

You’re saying ‘Yes’? Thank you, guys. Good that for once you’d understand rather than derail me from my course. You should be smart enough to know how to treat a Somali. Of course we expect no less from you, Americans, who are our eternal friends and who always see things our way as far as matters pertaining to Somalis are concerned. So I was saying this Somali should be kept in perpetual turmoil and, when we are extraordinarily nice to him, in timeless limbo. I’ll explain what I mean by ‘timeless limbo’ later; but let me first elaborate a bit on the ‘perpetual turmoil’ part.
For this ‘perpetual turmoil’ purpose, it’s fine with us that the Somalians (meaning those from Somalia) continue to slaughter each other. If an effective government, in the conventional sense of government as understood by everybody else save a Somalian, have eluded them for so long, well, that too is, eeerrre … fine with us as long as it is fine with them. And twenty years on, who doubts that this situation is perfectly fine with them? Some say that we are behind this “no-effective-government” business, but then, isn’t everybody entitled to his opinion?! Suffices to say that any “president” in Villa Somalia is a brother and should behave like a brother. If he isn’t a brother and doesn’t behave like one, then all we can say is to wish good luck. But whatever happens to him after that is none of our business.

We’ve been exceptionally nice to them. Remember, our army has been to their very capital and beyond—all the way to Kismayo and the Kenyan border. And didn’t we withdraw our troops after we helped them liberate themselves of that ignoble Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) terrorist gang and in its place installed their astute “president” Abdillahi Yusuf in Villa Somalia? Others might’ve colonized Somalia and kept their occupation forces in their country for centuries, but we’re not others; we’re their best neighbors and African brethren. Of course, we’d not expect Somalians, being Somalis after all, to be grateful to us for all that trouble we’d gone through on their behalf. Can you imagine that they turned against that old sage Abdillahi Yusuf? We knew they’d never get a better “president” but when they rejected him, and since we still wanted to be nice to them, we helped rehabilitate and install Sheikh Sharif as their new “president”. That Sheikh Sharif was the very “president” of the UIC terrorist gang whom we’d chased out of the town (Mogadishu, that is) earlier at the behest of their astute late ‘president’ Abdillahi Yusuf, but whom (witness their contradictions!) most ordinary Somalians and other Somalis and even many non-Somalis had chastised us for doing so.
omaliland-Ethiopia Relationship That Sheikh Sharif was the one who’d (can there be a worse crime?) made Asmara his base for anti-Ethiopian activities after we’d chased him out of town, Mogadishu, that is. That he’d been all such things and worse and still we helped in installing him as their new ‘president’, is an amble testament of our being their best neighbors and African brethren; of us being exceptionally nice to them as no one else possibly could. I can bet on that!

Nonetheless, you can never expect the Somalians to be appreciative however exceptionally nice you’re to them! Can you imagine that, guys?We hear that the Somalians, being … well, Somalis, have turned against the Sharif himself as well, can you believe it? What, in Heaven’s Name, do they really want? They ask for one particular “president” and as soon as they get him, they say “No, no, we don’t want him!” without even the merest of thanks for the efforts of getting him when they asked for him.They not only say “We don’t want him”, they also propose doggedly and in a manner of unbecoming physical composition (usually in small pieces rather than in one piece as, at the very least, in decency is proper) sending him (their ‘president’, that is) to his grave somewhat earlier than God disposes. Of course, we and other good Samaritans view such a proposition as uncalled for or as inhumane even if it were. Therefore we helped the AU in deploying 10,000 “peacekeepers” (AMISOM we call them) solely to protect the Somalian “presidents” in the Villa Somalia.

Appropriately, the “peacekeepers” take their job rather seriously. Count on woe to befall to anyone who as much as contemplates harming the “presidents”. Whenever Villa Somalia is shot at with even as small a weapon as a handgun, AMISOM naturally responds with a barrage of artillery shells in the direction from which the offending fire has come. What else could they do, we want to know? Is there any other way to deal with people who are bent on sending their “presidents” to their early graves—and not even in one piece—without first consulting God Almighty, Who Alone manages such things? If in the all-important task of protecting the Somalian ‘presidents’, innocent civilians are killed, maimed, wounded or displaced by the AMISOM barrages—well, that’s an unfortunate and unintentional consequence of the game. In Americanese, it’s called “Collateral Damage”, remember? Anyway, in the spirit of best neighborliness and African brotherhood, we’ll continue to be nice to Somalians in spite of their characteristic ingratitude. We can do no less, can we? Others and even some Ethiopians say why don’t we just say good riddance of a bad apple and simply wash our hands of Somalia’s intractable problems? Good question. But nobody answers the other equally good question: If we, Ethiopians, who’re supernaturally (and through no choice of ours) fated to be their best neighbors and African brethren don’t lend them a helping hand in their hours of need, who else, pray tell me, would do it? So, we’ll continue to be nice to them, the great expense to us notwithstanding. We’ll continue to send our troops across the border into their territory whenever we feel their effective and legitimate “governments” are under threat from one or other of their myriad and unfathomable armed groups. In fact, we’ll continue to activate our lithe fingers or easy touches or slow hands in helping them set up their effective “governments” and “presidents” whenever the need for them arises. We’ll continue to help protecting their legitimate “governments” and “presidents”. We know that–given the Somalians’ knack for disliking their effective and legitimate “governments” and “presidents” as soon as they’re installed for them–well, we know that all that is a tall order, but one’s got to do what one’s got to do, hasn’t one?

As for the Somalilanders, and here the ‘timeless limbo’ part comes into play—well, as for the Somalilanders, they’re Somalis likewise, aren’t they? As such they too are our internal enemies, aren’t they? So, let them stay in their timeless non-recognition limbo to infinity. That is what I meant by the ‘timeless limbo’ thing. “Why?!” “Why?!” “Why?!” We, all three of us, asking the same question in unison! So amazing, isn’t it, guys? Believe me, guys, my asking “Why?!” was, I admit, a bit rhetorical but, certainly, not entirely outside the course of clarifying my narration while I suspect your exclaiming “Whys?!” were more due to your tendencies of derailing me from my normal lines of thought. One way or another and since I unintentionally shared in the asking of the question, let me give the answer right away. See, Somalilanders are a naïve people. They think it was a change of heart on our part when we saved them from extermination at the hands of their fellow Somalis some two decades ago by allowing them into our country in droves. No, that was not our real intention, stupid! Our real intention was to topple the fascist Siad Barre regime that had the temerity of attacking Ethiopia and nearly succeeded in dismantling our state. Only dismantling his own state, no less, could have done as punishment for Siad Barre’s cardinal crime–talk about giving one a dose of his own medicine. See what I mean?

We’d to sleep with quite a lot of devils to achieve this all-important objective, and Somalilanders happened to be some of those devils. That this devilish bed fellowship made incumbent on us saving the Somalilanders from genocide at the hands of their Fascist tyrant Siad Barre was just one of those inexplicable ironies of this topsy-turvy world. But believe you me, we were just after toppling Siad Barre’s regime and not after saving the Somalilanders from genocide. That just happened to be an unintentional consequence in the perusal of our core objective. But, like I said it was and still is a topsy-turvy world, don’t you agree, guys? Now, Somalilanders may be naïve, but strangely for being ethnically Somalis, they seem to have still some sense left in their heads. Unexpectedly, they pacified and restored the rule of law in their country. They established effective and legitimate governments (no need to put inverted commas on the word governments in their case). Amazingly they did all this all by themselves and well before they grabbed our—or anybody else’s—attention. See, the little scamps stealthily held all their peacemaking and state-building conferences squatting in dusty squares in their little dusty towns and sustaining themselves with unpalatable camel’s meat and other unsavory nutrients. This is so unlike their Southern brethren who demand five star accommodation and the lifestyles of the rich and famous in foreign capitals (at enormous cost to the IC) before they agree even to hold a conference. So don’t blame us or the world at large if the Somaliland peace and reconciliation gatherings eluded our attention and consequently lacked any input from foreigners including from us, their dear best neighbors and African brethren. The damn rascals—Alas! They duped us all, didn’t they?!!! Worse still, this colossal deception didn’t end there. The Somalilanders went on to meet all the prerequisite parameters of a sovereign nation–borders, currency, constitution …, you name it–in reclaiming the sovereignty they had enjoyed for just five days way back in 1960 before they merged with Somalia. Thus, they presented us and the world at large, still unawares, with a treacherous fait accompli: They said to all and sundry, “We’re called Somaliland. We’re independent. We meet all the conditions of statehood, including the moral ones. So recognize us!” That was the worst part of this colossal deception.

This is because, between you and me, if they were not Somalis and therefore not our eternal enemies, we’d have said that they’ve had a valid point. If they were not Somalis, believe me, we’d have extended them our political recognition right away. In point of fact, if objectivity were heeded, they merit recognition, all sorts of assistance, admiration and what not, if simply they were not Somalis and therefore not our eternal enemies! But since it was too late to avert this paradox–damn it, the Somalilanders duped us as well as everybody else–we and the world at large were left to being reactive instead of being proactive when dealing with Somaliland. Of course, we’d have preferred to have been proactive, but our being reactive, though not as effective, isn’t without its consequences, thank Heavens! Why I say thank Heavens, you asking? You see, you young man, you’re the junior of the two of you. Isn’t this your senior Editor as you’ve introduced yourselves to me at the beginning of this conversation? You saying ‘Yes’? Then how come you’re always asking me very bothersome questions? How come you’re asking me any questions at all when somebody senior to you is present and he’s so mute, though he’s furiously scribing on his notepad? Don’t you have respect for seniority and rank? For the life of me, I can’t understand the Western Mentality and Attitudes—even after I’ve been to their places so many times in line of my work! It must be due to deficiencies of my mental faculties or something else—whatever it is!

See, guys, in my Ethiopia and Ethiopian culture, such behavior is unacceptable, thank Heavens. We’ve respect for seniority and rank, so we don’t talk or ask questions if we’re junior in both. But, Oh! I understand your behavior now—stupid of me to have missed it at the onset of this conversation. Your very name, Blunt Bothersome, explains it, doesn’t it? Certainly, you’re blunt and no doubt you’re bothersome. Aha! And him, so-called Senior Editor’s name, Mr. Truce Digger! That’s why he’s been furiously scribing on his notepad all the time, like he was not wanting to miss nothing I say and how I say it! His name, Truce Digger, is very much telling on his behavior and demeanor too, though he slightly played with its spelling. He’s seriously into finding the truth as if I myself ain’t into keeping the truth out in the open anyway! So, guys, your names are telling on you. I used to hear the refrain, “What is a name?”And people used to say in return, “Nothing!” Obviously, these people never met you, guys. I think for their own good, they shouldn’t either. Shall we go back to the subject, you say OK? We agree? Thanks, guys. In answer to last question, forget why I said ‘Thank Heavens’ because that’s neither here nor there. Rather, hear this information which carries more substance.

See, our nation, Ethiopia, is the Grand Old Man of Black Africa. Other African countries look up to us for guidance on what they should do and how should they do it. We’re an old civilization that was never colonized. The seat of the African Union (AU), the Pan-African organization with a capital name and as likewise capital ideals, but in point of fact just a talking shop nonetheless; this ‘talking shop’ bit, like the ‘eternal enemies’ bit earlier, is likewise off the record, understand, guys? Silence again? Thanks anyway, guys. I was saying the AU Head Quarters is in Addis Ababa, our own Capital city here. We’re America’s and Europe’s major ally in Black Africa. What we say or do carries as much weight as what we don’t say or don’t do. If we recognized Somaliland today, we’re sure a dozen other African countries and the US and Europe would fellow suit within hours. The Somalians and Arabs would cry and hue and proclaim that the world has presently come to an end as the result of our recognition of Somaliland. But, then, when was the last time anybody paid much attention to Arab or Somalian sentiments, sensitivities and opinions? They’re of no consequences. Their barks are loader than their bites; wasn’t that always the case? No, guys, that isn’t definitely the reason why we don’t want to recognize Somaliland. The answer to the question of why we shouldn’t recognize Somaliland is the question itself: Why should we? What’s the benefit to us in doing so? Get it straight from me, guys, we won’t do it. First, they’re ethnic Somalis and therefore our eternal enemies. Never forget the big picture, mind you! Second, it’s easier to manage and manipulate them in their non-recognition status than in otherwise. If they were recognized, they’d be able to interact with the world directly instead of through us as they presently do, wouldn’t they? Their Presidents and government officials would be able travel to foreign capitals without transiting through Addis Ababa as they presently do, wouldn’t they?

We know some trouble- and rumor-mongers allege that this transiting through Addis Ababa involves a little more than the transiting per se. Maliciously, they say the transiting involves a certain briefing sessions for the Somaliland leaders on their way out to foreign capitals and another some debriefing sessions of the Somaliland leaders on their way back from foreign capitals. If you asked me point blankly if we, in point of fact, do such briefings and debriefings with the Somalilander leaders, I’d say “No comment”. Only that the trouble-mongers don’t appreciate our role as Somaliland’s best neighbors and African brethren by mentioning even the briefings and debriefings per se. I’m afraid they’re fond of defamations directed towards good countries like Ethiopia and good people such as the Somaliland leaders who transit through here on their worthless sojourns to other world capitals. But come to think of it, unlike these trouble-mongers, and between you and me-like, I don’t see what wrong there’s with a little briefing to and a little debriefing of foreign leaders if one can do it without too much cost or effort. Tell me, guys, of any country in the world that wouldn’t have seized the same opportunity if it presented itself. In fact, most countries spend fortunes to avail themselves of the same advantages. It’s called espionage, if my recollection isn’t failing me as it sometimes does; but I don’t think my recollection would be so uncharitable right now, Thank Heavens! I think you realize by now that my lips love saying ‘Thank Heavens’ but don’t worry; it’s neither here nor there.

Lest we be diverted by the grumblings of the trouble-mongers, let us continue with the subject, shall we? Where were we? Anyway, we’re afraid that if Somaliland got political recognition, Somalilanders would put on airs. These people who, in contravention to conventional wisdom, were able to accomplish so much and all that much without rattling any feathers, could theoretically act and behave like a real sovereign nation, couldn’t they? Example: They could stand up for their national rights. They might resist some of our requests, mostly of the security kind, that they presently submit to without too much persuasion. Specifically, we’re afraid that they might forget or, worse still, ignore that we’re their best neighbors and African brethren. If such a scenario materializes, we might reluctantly be compelled to take some remedial actions. Such actions might look like entirely neither neighborly nor brotherly. These (i.e. such actions) might not be entirely compatible with international laws. Therefore, there’d be hues and cries and condemnations and such-like from many quarters on account of such remedial actions that we’d have been reluctantly compelled to take on account of Somalilanders forgetting or, worse still, ignoring that we’re their best neighbors and African brethren.

You see what we mean now? I see you’re nodding your heads and I think that means that you see what we mean. Thank you for seeing what we mean, guys. If Somaliland is recognized, international laws and regulations would apply with regards to our relationships with Somaliland. Our hands would be tied and we’d find it difficult to exercise as much influence on them as we do now or as we would like to or as we deem it as necessary for the sake of our national interests or for the sake of continuing to be their best neighbors and African brethren. So we’ll see to it that Somaliland rots in its unrecognized never-never land. Don’t lose sight of the big picture. Somalis are Somalis. Never mind whether they are Somalilanders or Somalians or Djiboutians or Somali-Kenyans or Somali-Ethio…………. Somalis are our eternal ene…….Sorry, we said this bit at the beginning of this conversation and this bit is highly confidential and therefore off the record. Thank you, you guys with amazing, though not amusing names. Thank you. Note: TWC believes that the anonymity of the Ethiopian Senior Foreign Ministry Official is enough to protect him and therefore we opted to carry the interview in its entirety in spite of his request to keep certain parts of it off the record—The Managing Editor Yhere is another school of opinion as to what Ethiopia’s real intention on the question of Somaliland’s political recognition is about. It is more down to earth, if for Somaliland it is no less ominous. Its essence is that Ethiopia prefers, for good or bad, to deal with just one central and all powerful entity or authority in erstwhile Somali Republic. To this purpose, Ethiopia, like most other countries and political organizations (the UN, AU, AL etc), is just bidding its time until such central and all powerful entity or authority is firmly and irrevocably established in Mogadishu. When that objective is achieved, Somaliland will be railroaded to rejoin Somalia. Period! It is quite obvious that all above rationales are detrimental to Somaliland.

In general, other Ethiopian policies and actions, especially those pertaining to Somalia, cause Somalilanders’ honest disagreement or discomfort. It is no secret to Somalilanders that any government in Mogadishu which lacked Ethiopian express approval and/or sponsorship could not expect but bite the dust. The Transitional National Government (TNG), constituted in Djibouti in 2001, could not take a step forward or even a step or two sideways in large part because Ethiopia it did not enjoy Ethiopian good graces. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG)), formed in Nairobi in 2004, was much luckier since, as the ‘Ethiopian official’ have been reminded by ‘Messrs Digger and Bothersome’ in the above ‘Interview’, Ethiopia have had a “heavy hand” in its creation. Yet, Ethiopia has been in the thick of the tragicomic tribulations that have been the only characteristic of the TFG since its inception. The crux of the matter is that the opinions, wishes and consent of the Somalians are not factors which Ethiopia grants any respect or considerations in as far as Somalian governments are concerned.

It was lost to Somalilanders that many of the warlords that had been bedeviling Somalia, before their utter defeat in battle with the United Islamic Courts (UIC) in early 2006, had been under the sponsorship of Ethiopia. Ethiopian patronage of Somali armed groups sometimes defies conventional wisdom. While it is understandably diehard anti-Al Shabab, it is strangely highly supportive of Ahli Sunna Wa Jama’ah (ASWJ). Though the former are admittedly dangerous Al Qaeda affliated Islamists, the latter’s use of the Islamic Religion as a means towards their political objectives makes even many Somalis rather uncomfortable. Ethiopia must be privy to something that Somalis are unaware of in accepting the ASWJ as bedfellows. At any rate, the analogy of the Western support for Al Qaeda during the Anti-Soviet war in Afganistan in the Seventies and Eighties simply because the enemy of your enemy is your friend seems to have escaped Ethiopian logic. Most Somalilanders did not approve of—and were immensely dismayed by—Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in 2006/2007. If Ethiopia were ever honest with its proclamations of noninterference in the affairs of Somalia, there could have been no convincing justification for that invasion.

In early 2006, the UIC had taken over power in Mogadishu and most regions of Southern Somalia after years of warlord mayhem. Not only had the long suffering denizens of Mogadishu and Southern Somalia for the first time in a decade and a half, become blessed with a semblance of peace, tranquility, and rule of law (any law), but the UIC was the closest thing to a Somali-owned governance that emerged in Somalia and which could claim somewhat the consent of its subjects. Ethiopia, the United States and other major western countries were stricken by what seemed to be nothing less than fright and panic at this development. The trigger of their instantaneous and almost kneejerk anxiety was one adjective and one acronym: Islamic and TFG. Though the adjective was part of their name and notwithstanding that caution and a monitoring regime on them were on order (for any use of religion for political purpose is an abuse of religion), there was no indisputable proof that the UIC was fundamentalist Islamists. In spite of the amateurishness of some of its members in their rhetoric and pronouncements, especially as directed at Ethiopia, there was very little likelihood that the UIC had any other agenda save pacifying and returning the rule of law to Somalia. The UIC neither possessed the wherewithal nor displayed manifest intentions that could have posed a credible threat to any foreign country, Ethiopia included.

As for the acronym, the TFG, let us first decode it. It stood and still does for the Transitional Federal Government. At the time headed by ‘president’ Abdillahi Yusuf, it was holed up in Baidoa under the protection of thousands of thousands of Ethiopian troops. This presence of the Ethiopian army units must have been the direct cause of the UIC’s previously mentioned careless and pompous rhetoric and statements against Ethiopia; but even in this case, who was the real provocateur—the government which informally, though quite openly, deployed its forces in another country or one of that country’s major political contenders which decried such illegal deployment? However, there was one supremely fundamental factor in the TFG/UIC/Ethiopian saga. It was a factor that was being (and still is being) ignored; a factor which if or when necessary was forcefully being (and still is forcefully) negated; a factor that was never (and continues not to be) given its rightful consideration. That factor is this: Since its inception, if the Somalians’ popular opinion, preferences, wishes and/or consent counted in a reasonable measure to the foreigners with fingers in Somalia’s political pie, the TFG would never have seen the light of the day in the first place. If it did, it would have perished long before the advent of the UIC. Provided it, as unlikely as it would have been, survived to the UIC era, it would have taken the UIC mere hours to sweep the TFG aside. The Basic reason the TFG would not have come into being, or would not have endured for days if it did, had nothing to with UIC or any other Somalian armed group. The real reason was and still is that, in the eyes of Somalians, it never remotely enjoyed or earned the prerequisite attributes of a viable government: Indigenousness, Principles, Legitimacy, Competence—Nothing that would qualify it as a government in the real sense of the word. But, as things were at the time of UIC’s emergence, the TFG could count on the crucial and decisive advantage of its original sponsors’ protection and sustenance. Ethiopia, Kenya, the UN, the AU, and the IGAD directly and the US and its Western allies indirectly were exclusively the backers of the TFG. Now they realized that their baby faced the most credible and imminent danger of the long suppressed Somalian wishes getting their way in the embodiment of the UIC. Having taken over all over South/Central Somalia including the all important Mogadishu (which they couldn’t have without Somalian popular support and consent), Baidoa remained the major urban center for the UIC to overrun and the TFG to be assigned to history.

As it turned out, the TFG backers, spearheaded by Ethiopia, could stomach to see all their hard won achievements and creations going down the drain. Since when was any consideration given to Somalians’ wishes or aspirations? Nor was it now (then) the time to loosen the reins on the Somalian aspirations and certainly not under the leadership of an organization whose name carried a frightening adjective. Thus the invasion! Regardless of whether or not the Ethiopian invasion—with at best the US and other Western countries’ acquiescence—was uncalled for, its consequences was incalculable. It was extremely disastrous for the already blighted Somalians in life, limb and livelihoods. The greatest displacement of the Somalians since the fall of Siad Barre’ dictatorial regime in 1991 and the ensuing civil wars was another lingering outcome of that invasion. Worst of all, the occupation and the understandable resistance that it inevitably stirred in countering it also motivated the birth of the phenomenon of Al-Shababism. Today, not only is Al-Shababism the biggest menace that all Somalis and all their entities face, but also it poses a credible threat to the security of many other nations; not least of which is Ethiopia and other countries that either overtly or covertly colluded with the invader in its ignoble enterprise on Somalia.

The cost to Ethiopia, though lesser in extent, was very high nonetheless. In the end, Ethiopia could not long sustain its occupation. It dawned on that country, fairly soon enough, that it had bitten more than it could chew. Moreover, it is much too uncertain that Ethiopia achieved any of the objectives, whatever they were, for which it had sustained—and to Somalians had inflicted—immense sacrifices. Quite on the contrary, Ethiopia might have lost more than it gained from its Somalia misadventure. Certainly it weakened whatever mutually beneficial rapport and goodwill that had been in the making between the Somalis and the Ethiopians after ages of senseless enmity and mistrust between the two peoples. Besides, the emergence of inherently violent groups, such as the Al-Shabab, in particular and the continuation of the turmoil in Somalia in general, proved that the ultimate outcome of the Ethiopian fiasco turned out to be decidedly counterproductive for all concerned in another front, furthermore, the serious allegations of human rights abuses that were repeatedly reported by international humanitarian organizations and media to have been perpetuated by Ethiopian security forces against civilian ethnic Somali-Ethiopians in retaliation of rebel insurgency have invoked the revulsion of many in Somaliland who remember only too well the horrors and ultimately the fallacies of such collective punishments or atrocities.

Nor are Somalilanders amused by Ethiopian security agents’ not so infrequent and not entirely concealed incursions to Somaliland’s urban centers to carry out illegal missions. Kidnappings and/or assassinations of alleged anti-Ethiopian suspects (mostly Ethiopian ethnic Somalis or Oromo) within Somaliland’s territory have not been unheard off. It is also known that the Ethiopian government sometimes presents Somaliland authority with names and simply demand their handover. At other times, entire units of Ethiopian forces have crossed into Somaliland ostensibly to conduct operations against, what the Ethiopians claim to be, anti-Ethiopian rebels. Somalilanders usually learn about such occurrences after they took place. It is clear that Ethiopia’s respect for international law and conventions or their applicability where Somaliland is concerned do not register with Ethiopia. It is equally obvious Ethiopia expects no reproach from any quarter as a consequence of this disrespect.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that Somalilanders feel many vexing disappointments at what they see as Ethiopia’s less than forthcoming attitude, coyness and ambiguities on their independence and recognition issues. Specifically, they are frankly incensed that Ethiopia ties its current and potential recognition issue positions to the goodwill and consent of entities and people who, for various though unjustifiable reasons are unlikely to endow neither. To them, this condition is tantamount to require a hare to acquire a fox’s consent to graze in the same enclosed field in which the fox hunts. It is but one of the legacies of its non-recognition status that has condemned Somaliland with so little room for maneuver, if any at all, or without any meaningful leverage which could enable her to impress on Ethiopia to adapt more equitable policies and relationships with Somaliland in particular with Somalis at large in general. The hope here is that the causes of these vexing misgivings will not continue to the limit—or cross the line—where they could seriously diminish the overpowering gratitude that Ethiopians had previously earned from Somalilanders in so good measure and on so undeniably commendable grounds.

Ahmed I. Hassan

Email: ahmedihass@hotmail.com

Warkaas ayaa ka abuuray bariga Hargeysa xiisad iyo kacdoon shacab kaas oo laga soo horjeedo gumaadka shacabka aan waxba galabsan. Magaalada ayaa hadda kala xidhan oo waxa gebi ahaanba is taagay gaadiidkii dhinaca bariga ka imanayey waxaana la isku horfadhiyaa meel u dhow masjid jaamaca weyn ee Hargeysa. Dadka ayaa u badan dhallinyaro iyo dadka xooga ah kuwaas oo la wareegay waddooyinka iyo meelaha muhiimka ah. Wararka ayaa sheegaya in dadkaasi hubaysan yihiin oo ay muujiyeen iska caabbin xooggan arrintaas ayaa keentay inay magaaladu kala xidhanto caawa.

Gacan ku hayntii bariga Hargeysa ayaa u e’eg inay ka sii baxayso gacanta xukuumada Siilaanyo waxaana ka guuray maanta guryahoodii wasiir Duur iyo wasiir Xirsi oo la sheegay inay ka kaxaysteen reerahoodii. Xukuumada ayaa hadda ku jirta ciidan urursi taas oo la sheegay in caawa laga soo qaaday Dararweyne ilaa 300 oo ka mid ah ciidanka qaranka kuna hubaysan ilaa 30 ah gaadiidka dagaalka. Ciidankan ayaa ka hawlgelaaya bariga Hargeysa taas oo la sheegay inay halkaas difaac ka geli doonaan fadhiisanna ka dhigan doonaan. Waxgaradka iyo madax dhaqameedyada ayaa go’a ruxaya oo ku dedaalaya inay hakiyaan colaada si aanay magaalada ugu fidin.

Dhanka kalena weriye Curad ayaa xabsiga ku xidhan maalintii labaad taas oo la sheegay in xalay si xun loogu garaacay jeelka. Sawirka Hargeysa ayaa caawa u e’eg kii 20kii February 1982 maalintii uu dhagaxtoorku ka dhacay Hargeysa ka dib markii la sheegay in kooxdii Ufo iyo siyaasiyiintii la dilaayo arrintaas ayaa aakhirkii galaafatay xukuumadii Siyaad Barre. Bal aan eegno inta Siilaanyo xoog iyo dil Somaliland ku sii haysan karo.

Qaran news, Hargeysa

What is a Constitution? I fully understood the word ‘Constitution’ in 1994 while I was setting up a project that was designed to help find employment and training opportunities for the Somali and other immigrant communities in the West London Borough of Hounslow. A voluntary sector trainer described the word ‘Constitution’ to me as ‘a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organisation is governed’ – Fine words. But in today’s Somalia, what does a Constitution really mean to ordinary Somalis?

In the past few weeks, the Somali people heard about the word ‘Constitution’ more often than at any time in their painful past history. If you tuned in to the Voice of America Somali Service these days, the presenter has always new guests in the studio or on the phone to interrogate about the new Draft Somali Constitution. The various Somali blogs and websites also carry headlines about the latest objections to the new Draft Somali Constitution by various Somali organisations, regional administrations and individuals.

Many people in Somalia and elsewhere put forward their opinions to be heard on air about how to put together a Constitution for Somalia; others make condemning remarks to certain clauses within the so called the Draft Constitution. In fact the Somali media and the society at large went plastic over the new Draft Somali Constitution. But who engineered such an alien document called a ‘Constitution’ for us at this stage in our lives? I am not amused at all and, although I do not believe conspiracy theories, I suspect that there must be a new grand project that is aimed at destroying the Somali society permanently. I smell a dead rat in here.

Those professing to be the Somalia politicians and their opposing sides particularly talk endlessly about what is better for the Somali people and who is better to respond to their needs effectively. But none of them offer actual facts and understandable explanations on what is Constitution or why it is good for the Somali people and when do the Somali people need such a Constitution. Almost everyone I heard on the BBC or VOA Somali radio services, the participants in the discussions on the Draft Somali Constitution conveyed a message that they really do need some sort of assistance themselves with the subject at hand. The radio presenters themselves and the Somali blogs writers also failed to shed light on what is a Constitution or why Somalia needs a Constitution now, and what is there in a Constitution for the Somali people in this state of affairs.

But how does a Constitution affect or make changes to how we, the Somali people, see this piece of modern governance instrument, if we ever had an opinion about it? Have you ever wandered or recalled when you last used an article in a Somali Constitution to your personal or environmental advantage? Why all over sudden has this piece of paper become so crucial to the lives of the Somali people. Have the so called the Somali civilian government of the sixties ever used a Constitution? And if so, which court or courts heard a case against whom; what high profile disputes where resolved using a Somali Constitution?

The Constitution was written but the successive governments never used the document to govern the country and its people. And similarly, Siyad Barre’s colourful Scientific Socialist’s Constitution had never been used by the Somali people and their institutions at the time? In fact I don’t think that any Somali individual ever used or ever needed the support of a Somali Constitution to put an argument across, let alone win it. Somali people utilised in the past and relied upon to some other tools other than a Constitution to get by and to get on with others.

And although the world is more complicated than the seventies and even the nineties, and the human beings increasingly depend on legal documentations in these difficult times, I do not understand what the fuss is about in the run up to the August 2012 deadline set by the London Conference on Somalia? The London Conference on Somalia should have thrown out the item called ‘the Constitution’ from the so called the road map.

The the road map was written in Kampala, Uganda, and Uganda is hardly an example in the countries that respect their Constitutions. The organisers of the LCS disastrously overlooked the fact that a Constitution for Somalia may be going to complicate their time table in the run up to August 2012. That time table in tatters now. Somalia has other extremely urgent priorities than a Constitution right now. Somalia needs basic institutions building.

I think this latest move about a Constitution is designed to start a new cycle of violence with which to further complicate the situation and start a new conflict among the Somali people. But who would want to restart a new conflict in the world’s worst failed nation state? This is for everyone’s guess. Whose ideas was it in the first place to bring this alien and sensitive subject before securing the country and strengthening its institutions?

In Iraq, for example, the Constitution was drafted three years after the invasion of the country by the United States and it was voted for in a country wide referendum by the Iraqis in October 2005 before being adopted as the country’s governing document. And unlike the United States, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland does not have a single document called ‘the Constitution’ that modifies the way its political institutions function. Britain’s Constitution evolved over many centuries. In one of the UK’s governing documents, the Magna Carta, which protects the rights of communities against the Crown, for example, was written in 1215. And the Bill of Rights which extended the powers of the Parliament was put together more than four hundred years later in 1689. Why put the cart before the horse?

If the so called the Draft Somali Constitution is approved tomorrow, what immediate or medium term benefits for that matter will it bring to the long suffering people of Somalia and her Diaspora communities? Isn’t it possible to have one paper that sets out the development plan for the country’s institutions, including the security services, and wait what comes next? As one famous Nigerian thinker and politician put it, ‘can you eat the Constitution’? I have more questions than I can fit in this space but sadly I have no answers.

If a Somali Constitution is adopted tomorrow and it is written on a 100gm conqueror paper, which Somali national institution will use it to safeguard the ordinary people’s rights? Is it Faroole’s or Siilaanyo’s? Or is it Indha-Adde’s or Sharif Sakiin’s? Please tell me. The Somalia Constitution, I strongly believe, will have to wait until the country is secured. If you, the International Community, helped us out in drafting a Constitution, please keep it for us in a safe house, perhaps at the United Nation’s headquarters in New York or Geneva, thank you. We will ask for it when we need it or when the time is right, whichever is sooner.

Meanwhile, I heard the other day that Indha-Adde objected to the Human Rights clause and Puntland’s Faroole objected to the Federal clause. Do you know what these two fear most in the Draft Constitution? Is there a particular clause that is designed to be used against any of the two in future Federal Somalia’s courts of law? Also do they know if they will be alive when the justice system in Somalia takes off? Or surprisingly, do they know that they are the only thugs and criminals in the former Somali republic; are they so sure about that? A lot has gone on for so long, they must just be paranoid. Most of the so called parliamentarians also objected to some sort of clauses in the Draft Constitution. Don’t mention the Shebaab terror group which rejected the document wholesale. And Somaliland has declined to participate in it in the process.

Please let me highlight a classic demonstration of a functioning society and her Constitution: Mark Fuhrman, the California detective who had prosecuted O.J Simpson in the mid 90s, used so forcefully, albeit unsuccessfully, the United States Constitution more than three cross examinations sessions during the trail. If you are old enough to remember you may recall him say again and again from the witness box: ‘I take the Fifth Amendment.’

The Fifth Amendment refers to ‘the US citizen’s right to silence during cross examinations and/or interrogations at detention facilities and the courts of law’. Mark Fuhrman was put to pieces by Johnny Cochran, who died a few years back: ‘Have you ever called a Black man a nigger or addressed the Black people as niggers in the past ten years, detective Fuhrman’? He never thought Johnny had a tape in his possessions in the brown briefcase that rested next to him! What a Constitution with properly functioning society.

I have not read the new Somali Constitution but if it contained such rights, would Faroole or Siilaanyo respect it if I was in the dock at Garoowe or Hargeisa courts? If I uttered such words, the packed courthouse, including the presiding judge, would have laughed at me as though I am in contempt of court or they would have wandered whether I have some sort of mental illness, and I would have been promptly handcuffed, possibly beating en route to my overcrowded and dirty cell in one of their prisons where there is no food or water. Most probable outcome: death. So why do the Somalis need a Constitution at this point in time? In order to have a Constitution, I believe that the society in which the Constitution is meant to govern must be functioning properly, I mean educationally, economically and socially.

If the Draft Constitution is made a priority as it is the case now, Somalis should be aware that a fifth column is at work: a group that is not among the Somalia groups. Wake up, men – and women too! If this is not true, tell me what else does this Constitution thing is about. The Shabaab still hold the fertile land of the Juba Valley more than four months after the Kenyans moved in from across the border, bombs go off sporadically in our capital, and Somali kids die every day helplessly in the high seas as the usual conflict-related famine is around the corner if political settlement is not found in the next few months.

All the while, nearly 25,000 African troops – and increasing by the week – are on the ground inside Somalia, together with the estimated 10,000 foreign terrorists. To make things worse, a criminal gang of South African and Canadian oil prospecting firms have now sneaked through into the country and are scrambling for the Somali natural resources without proper documentations from a Somali State, with almost 100% of the find in their pockets. Come on, are the Somalis insane?

Please avoid the Somali media while the debate on the Somali Draft Constitution rumbles on. I suggest that you go online and follow the Olympic hopefuls in the upcoming London games this summer.

Regards,

Abdul Ghelleh

Email: abdulghelleh@gmail.com

My contributions to the world famous fiction, the Animal Farm:
‘Somalia: What We Want? We Want A Constitution. When We Want It? We Want It Naaw!’

With a thriving democracy, exemplified by the 2010 presidential election which saw Daahir Rayaale peacefully transfer power to Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo, many African observers believe Somaliland should be destined for official statehood.

But all is not as rosy as it seems, and Somaliland’s democratic credentials are by no means untarnished. In particular, press freedoms, especially in the disputed eastern regions formerly known as Sool, Sanag and Cayn, and in the desolate western coastal areas used by the Ogaden National Liberation Front to access the sea, are said to be falling back into old patterns of repression and censorship.

Even Somaliland Focus UK, a group of former electoral observers who were so impressed with Somaliland’s potential they formed a group to champion its quest for international recognition, is concerned. Earlier this year, the group sent a letter to the newly-appointed Minister of Information, Abdirahman Yusuf Duale (“Bobe”), urging reforms of Somaliland’s media laws, and a general shift in the government’s attitude towards journalists.

“Actions against media were a regrettable hallmark of past Somaliland administrations,” Cecilia Milesi, Chair of the Somaliland Focus UK, writes in the letter, “and we are extremely disappointed to see this government continuing to employ such practices”.

“I think it’s a lack of confidence on the part of the government,” Michael Walls from Somaliland Focus UK told Think Africa Press. “They don’t really know how to deal with security threats, they don’t know how to discern between simple criticism and inciting people to violence – and those are big problems.”

Arrests and detentions

In 2011, the Somaliland Journalist Association (SOLJA) outlined fourteen incidents of government persecution against media outlets, six of which were violent. In a final note to the list, SOLJA’s secretary-general Mohamed Rashid Farah proclaimed: “Urgent measures must be taken to uphold the fundamental rights and freedom of expression for Somaliland reporters.”

In early April, television reporters Ahmed Ali Farah and Abdisaman Keise were arrested on the grounds of defamation while covering a conflict between the Somaliland government and the newly-formed Khaatumo state.

“I was visiting my friend Ahmed Ali Farah [a journalist arrested 3 days earlier] in prison and the local governor detained me for five days” Abdisaman Keise explained through an interpreter. “They didn’t tell me why I was being held, and they beat me five times and hit me with the butt of a gun when they first arrested me. I cannot work freely in Somaliland,” he added. “I want to leave the country.”

The New York-based Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ) has also been vocal in condemning Somaliland’s harassment of journalists.

“Authorities are holding Ahmed Ali Farah and Abdisaman Isse (sic) without explanation, in violation of the law, and in apparent reprisal for political coverage deemed unfavourable,” CPJ’s East Africa Correspondent Tom Rhodes said in a statement on their website.

SOLJA has over 230 members across Somaliland, providing assistance when problems with local government arise. But with little educational infrastructure in Somaliland and virtually no funding to hold training programmes, the organisation’s ability to instil a lasting change on Somaliland’s media is limited.

Journalists are commonly charged with defamation, usually in informal on-the-spot rulings by local politicians. And government and journalists both claim the media often distort facts, basing articles on unreliable sources and serving as a platform to advertise private companies.

The power of the media

The power of Somaliland’s media to influence clan relations and mobilise the public, as evidenced by coverage of Khaatumo state, is feared by the government.

“We may be sensitive to certain issues” Adbirahman Yusuf Duale explained to Think Africa Press. “Any issue related to the security and stability of the country that may create any rifts in the public – we may be very sensitive to that.”

Many journalists, however, feel this sensitivity extending into general tension on the streets of Hargeisa. “When I go to the market, people don’t like me taking photos. The moment you take photos the police are thinking of security,” claimed freelance journalist Rooble Mohamed.

A power struggle between the government and the media is now playing out, with both vying for control and influence over Somaliland’s population.

Veteran Somaliland journalist Husein Ali Noor explained: “We’ve got two forces competing for power. On the one hand, the power of the government to silence the media can challenge journalists’ freedom. But on the other hand, the government is frightened of the media’s ability to challenge their own power. So the two are constantly bickering.”

Enter web journalism

The rise of internet-based journalism has further complicated Somaliland’s media environment. Like much of the media in Somaliland, most newly-launched websites lack original and objective reporting, and position themselves in a polarised political space, often operating beyond the reach of the Somaliland government in the diaspora.

“Either you are supporting the government 200%, or you are against them 300%,” Rooble explained. Worse still, these websites often seem to employ questionable journalistic practices that rely on weak, undisclosed sources, and often appear to function as promotional tools for companies.

“There are no negative articles about Dahabshiil [a large money-transfer corporation] or Telesom [a telecommunications company] because when they pay to place advertisements in the media” claimed Rooble, there “is a clause for no negative media attention”.

The need for training

Most journalists say that a lack of educational opportunities is the underlying problem with Somaliland’s media. As well as being very poorly paid, no formal journalistic training has been offered in Somaliland since 2009, when the University of Hargeisa terminated its journalism programme.

Although Dutch-based Delmar Media, a Somali diaspora website, offers short training workshops for journalists in the summer, and USAID has held sporadic 2-3 day seminars over the past few years, no long-term solutions are in place at the moment.

Rooble elucidated the hopes of many of his Somaliland colleagues as he said: “I would like to see a training programme in Somaliland that addresses the key skills necessary to be a journalist: behaviour and ethics, writing and structure and a course on investigative journalism to help us uncover corruption.”

BY BY MARK ANDERSON

American Thinker

Thank you, Dr Ahmed Farah, for this exclusive interview. As the president of Jubbaland State of Somalia, what has caused to you to establish this administration at this time?

Firstly, thank you very much. I appreciate your effort acknowledge Somalia Report’s effort an ensuring that truthful information reaches the people. Secondly, I started to think of it in 2006 when I was in Denmark, where I lived for 30 years, when I saw the prolonged problems which the people in these regions are facing including civil insecurity. This has caused to me to ask myself what has caused this problem. Is there a solution for it? Who is behind these problems? I reached two conclusions:

1) The absence of viable functioning administration triggered by poor leadership

2) ‘Brain drain’ because the educated people in these region fled the area, which leads to the drawback and lack of development in this region.

Everyone who has declared a regional administration says the same thing so what distinction do you have?

The moment you think of making an administration, there are basic elements that needs to noted like those I said. Other key points to be mentioned are that the administration should be inclusive of all the community who are the residents of these regions in order to achieve political power sharing balance among the various clans. So our distinction from the others is that our administration is inclusive of all the clans in the region and that why while we are only two months old we enjoyed massive support from the people in these regions.

Most of the regional administration in Somalia have been established outside Somalia so what is restricting you from leaving Kenya, consulting with elders and other key decision makers in order to establish viable and workable administration?

For security purpose we were not able to access these regions, hold meeting there, and finally form our administration so we opted to declare this regional administration outside the country. Our difference from the other regions declared outside Somalia is that I have not appointed my cabinet so far and this because I know, without having consulting the local people, it will be a unilateral decision if I appoint them.

There are many people from Jubbaland in Kenya, some of them are key figures who can influence your decisions. Have you met with them, and if so what have you agreed upon?

I met with elders from the region initially when I arrived here and I am still meeting with other people in the region individually and in groups and this is still ongoing. I am willing to see, meet and discuss with any one from these regions.

Your administration is new. Did you seek recognition or explain its existence to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG)?

The elders I met here in Nairobi will take the agenda of this administration to Mogadishu and ask the TFG to recognize this administration since they are the true representative of community. We are planning to establish contact with TFG and ask recognition. We will assure our full cooperation with the TFG our administration will work to bring peace to the whole of Somalia.

Several administrations (and mini-states) have been declared in Somalia over the past years. How optimistic are you that the TFG will grant recognition to your administration?

I think the TFG have a responsibility to bring back law and order in Somalia, so if set up an administration which is committed to create peace and stability in these regions, I think the TFG will accept and I do not see why the government should have any negative attitude towards this agenda. The elders are the true representative of the community and I do not think their appeal will be boycotted by the government.

You now appear on the Somali political stage, which side are you allied with?

Politics is a chain and alliances changes on regular basis so our policy will be based on cooperation in order to maintain the overall security of the Horn of Africa regions. Jubbaland is situated in a very strategic place and shares common borders with both Kenya and Ethiopia, so it is the interest of the governments and the populations of these countries to develop mutual understanding on issues of security and other key aspects affecting them.

Every regional administration has its own armed forces. Are you planning to have forces loyal to Jubaland?

Those who are now operating in the Juba regions are the forces of the Jubbaland administration, whether they belong to certain clan or belong to the TFG they will be under our command because they are from the people of Jubbaland. It may sound very strange to you but everything will become clear when we reach the country.

The Kenyan government is supporting Azania in Juba region while Ethiopia has plan of establishing a South West state administration. How is it possible that you can influence the ongoing politics?

Personally I do not believe that Kenya is now supporting Azania because it failed to become a state at country level and international level. I have relations with the Kenyan government and also received invitation from the Ethiopian officials and I believe we will have good start of relationship with both countries.

Source: Somalia Report

Dr. Jowhar was a man blessed with the gift of gab and it was our mutual love for words and ideas that brought us together. It is therefore imperative that I remember him in the way he knew and respected me best, as a poet. In time, I will write an obituary about him to share his life as I knew him with his fans and the general public but now let me try to touch on his character, his intellectuality, his passion, his bravery, his kindness, his wisdom, his patriotism, his rebellious thought and his modesty as well as his humor, his sarcasm and his flare with language in the following poem: Geesi Loo Hanweynaa ( A Greatly Sought After Hero).

Geeriyeey gableeyaay
Gudcur iyo habaareey
***
Iyadoon laguu gogol
Oon gu’ba laguu tirin
Waxad soo guclaysood
Kolba guri mug weynaa
Goloftood ku heestaba
Miyaad goor xun socodeey
Maantana gab soo tidhi

***

Ood gabi hadhweyniyo
Geed lagu nagaa iyo
Gumbur lagu dahsoonaa
Geesi loo hanweynaa
Gab intaad ku soo tidhi
Gaar nooga qaaddoo
Goonyaha dhulkaygiyo
Gayigii u ooyoo
Shakuur lagu gunaanaday…

***

Maxaan gabay idhaahdaa
Miyuu ii guntamayaa
Godka uu baneeeyiyo
Gabalaaxsigiisii
Gololuhuu fadhiyi jirey
Gereerka erayadu
Qiimihiisi gaarkii
Miyuu gudi karaayaa…

***
Qalinkaygu gaydhada
Miyuu guulihiisii
Goohiyo dayaankii
Geesaaska sheekada
Siduu yahay gammaan faras
Qoraalkuu galbini jirey
Gibladiyo ciyaartiyo
Gurxanka iyo loolkiyo
Wilwilaha ku goyn jirey
Weedhuu gorfeeyaba
Guuxuu ka tegi jiray
Goolkuu ku dhalin jirey
Miyuu gaadhi karayaa…

***
Geesi baan abiidkii
Geeridu ka raagine
Goortii la joogaba
Guubaabadiisii
Gurmad caymadkiisii
Gaadh ilaaladiisii
Guryo oodistiisii
Gacal ururintiisii
Miyaa galalawgiisii
Durba loo go’doomoo
Gar allee la tebayaa

***
Goobtuu dhex joogsado
Gole oogistisii
Hadal godolintiisii
Gar wanaajintiisii
Talo loo gudboonyahay
Gorfo buuxintiisii
Garaad xoorintisii
Miyaa garashadiisii
Durba loo go’doomoo
Gar Allee la tebayaa

***
Jowharow waxaad guddo
Gogoshaad ahaydiyo
Beel gardaadintaadii
Dareen garashadaadii
Cilmigaagii gaankii
Waa loo goblamayoo
Goobtaad banaysaa
Jiilaal ka soo galay

***
Geeridu xaq weeyee
Somaliland gaar
Iyo guriga Soomaal
Gaban yar iyo waayeel
Geed kastoo la joogaba
Gacmahaa la hoorshoo
Gurayo hoyashadaadii
Guus iyo quraan iyo
Ducaa lagugu geebaray
***
Guudkeeda dunidani
Intaad joogtay gacallow
Waajibkaagii gudatee
Guryaheeda aakhiro
Galihii firdowsaad
Gama’ oo ku waar nabad.

Bashir Goth

Wasiir Duur oo ah nin dhalin yar, kuna cusub saaxadda siyaasadeeda, jujuubna ku soo galay, xiinkiisana ka dheeraynaya, ayaa waxa keliya ee ilaa hada u shaqanayay uu ahaa dhabar jabinta siyaasiinta beelaha Habar Yoonis ee uu ka soo jeedo, markii cid kale oo uu dhabarka ka toogto waayayna, hada isagu dhabar jabin isku samaynaya.

Sidoo kale, wasiir Duur, oo ah qalbi caruur ka hela rabshadaha iyo inuu dadka madaxa isku geliyo, ayaa wuxuu khali dooraba, oo kolba laba reer afka isku geliyaba, waxa hada gondihiisa ka qarxay dagaal sookeeyee oo uuna xalkiisa ka dabaalan karin, kaasoo u baahan khirad, aqoon iyo dulqaad ka sareeyay inta yar ee uu yaqaano wasiir Duur, lana soo shir tego.

Kitaab gaab wasiir Duur, ayaa waayadanba ka kaluumaysanayay badhtamaha mujado siyaasadeed iyo kuwo qabiil oo daadkooda isu soo daray, waxaanu hada ku haftay khiyaamooyinka iyo damaca waalan ee qaybo ka mid ah xukuumada Siilaanyo iyo shirkada Dahab Shiil iskugu bahaysteen boobka hantida dadweynaha ka dhaxaysa iyo dhulka ku suntan danta guud.

Wasiir Duur oo ay madax martay awooda yar ee gacan loo geliyay, isla markaana la shawakhsan amaanta iyo soo dhaweynta afka baarkiisa ah ee la socota xilka uu hayo ee uu kala kulmo dgaanada Somaliland, isaga oo aan is ogayn cir iyo dhul meel uu marayo, ayaa hada waagu ku baryay ka dib markii wixii ciyaar ciyaar uu ka dhigan jiray, run run isku bedaleen.

Xukuumadii iyo dadkii uu isla lahaa isku soofee, kana ruwaayadayso, mudana dhibkooda isku maaweeli ayaa taladoodii garaha ka baxday, iyada oo maykii wax aasa la laayahay, daawaciina meel walna daasanyahay.

Horaa loo yidhi cagtii joogsan weydaa marbay ceeb la kulantaa; Wasiir Duur oo ay ugu bixi jirtay muranka, wareerka ka dhasha raga oo la iska hor keeno, ayaa waxa hubaal ah wixii uu aduunka ugu jeclaa inay maanta si dhib yar usoo galeen, waxase ay su’aali ka taagan tahay caawa ma isgoo faraxsan ayuu seexan doonaa, mise isaga oo uu madaxu buurtaa leegyahay.

Wasiir Duur, oo xukuumada uu ka tirsantahay xaar ku dul fadhido, mar kastana halis u ah inay dunto, meesha yar ee ay ka talisana lagu ka yaaco, ayaa maan gaabninadiisa inta badan ku hawlan waxyaabo ka baxsan xilka loo igmaday.

Maalmo ayaa laga joogaa markii isaga oo og inay Hargeysa qarax qarka u saaran uu badaha maaxayay, iskagana gooshayay caasimado aanay wasiir maamul goboleed waxba ka khusaynin.

Dooraad ayuun bay ahayd markii uu Siilaanyo usoo raacay Boorama, halkaasi oo uu mudaba ka waday xumaan iyo iska horkeen uu doonayay inuu madaxa iskugu dhufto reer Boorama, si uu u wiiqo wada jirkooda, ugana faa’iidaysto khilaafyada yar yar ee dhex yaal.

Dooraad uunbay ahayd isaga oo ka dhex atooraynayay xarunta golaha degaanka Boorama, halkaas oo uu hadalo isugu jira botayn iyo jees jees ku bahdilayay xildhibaanada golaha degaanka Boorama, isaga oo awood qabiil iyo tu dawladnimo labadba u sheegayna.

Wasiir Duur, ayaa ixtiraam la’aanta, facfacdiisa iyo sida uu faraha u taaftaago, ayuu dhibsadaa qof kasta oo la kulmay. Sidoo lale, ayay dad badan oo wasiir Duur la kulmay, ku tilmaamay nin waxyaabo badani iskaga khaldan yihiin, koriin badana u baahan, xilka loo igmadayna madixiisa ka weyn yahay.

Si Kastaba ha ahaate, wasiir Duur balaayadii uu Boorama ka raadinaayay si dhib yar ayay gurigiisa ugu timid, fidnadii iyo xumaantii uu raadinayayna meel aan ka fogayn ayay ka bilaabantay, balse wuxuu ka faa’iidona waa la arki doonaa. Siilaanyo haduu isla lahaa ragbaad Duur ku bahdilaysaa, ma laga yaaboo inuu wax ka badan u soo jiido.

Harowo desk, Boorama

Socdaalka Siilaanyo ee Boorama, ayaa moodaa imika ahaan inuu demiyey qaybo badan oo ka amid ah qiiqii ama dabkii dhex yaallay xukuumadda iyo dadka degaanadaasi. Sifaha loo soo dhaweeyey Siilaanyo, ayaa laga dheehana karayey siyaasiyiinta uu wafdigiisda kusoo daray kuwaasoo loo arko inay sabab u ahaayeen xidhiidhka siyaasadeed ee ka dhexeeya xukuumadda iyo dadweynaha degaanadaasi, isagoo wafdigiisa ka reebay karaaniga guud ee Golaha guurtida, Cabdilaahi Dheere, kuna abtirsda urursiyaasadeedka Nasiye oo loo aanaynayo xumaanta iyo xiqdiga soo kala gaadhay dadweynaha gobolka iyo dawladda.

Cabdilaahi Dheere, ayaa ka mid ahaa aasaasayaashii shirbeeleedkii Xeego ee kala dilay beelaha gobolka, ka dib markii dhamaadkii shirka laga soo saaray go’aamo lidi ku ah wada jirka iyo iskaashiga beelaha Awdal. Otuntii iyo nacaybkii uu beeray shirkii Xeego, ayaa keenay kala fogaansha iyo xumaanta maanta dhex taal beelaha Samaroon.

Dhinaca kale, dad badan oo halkan jooga, ayaa sidoo kale sheegay in degenaanshaha lagusoo dhaweeyey Siilaanyo anu marnaba ka jireen Boorama haddii uu wafdgiisa la socon lahaa madaxweyne kuxigeenka Cabdiraxmaan Saylici, kasoo ka soo jeeda gobolka Awdal. Cabdiraxmaan saylici oo markii hore u arkayay inay dani ugu jirto kala fogaansha beelaha Samaroon, ayaa hada laga dareemaya inay wax iska bedeleen, hase yeeshee ay ku adkaatay wadadii uu u mari lahaa maadaama oo uu nacayb badan ka galabsaday qaybo ka mid ah beelaha Gedabuursi ka dib markii uu ka hor yimid Ugaaska Samaroon.

Inkastoo Cabdiraxmaan saylici maanta Boorama kaga qaybgalay aaska marxuumkii u horreeyey ee an kasoo jeedin jufadiisa, loona baahnaa in aaskaa dabadii fadhi u qabto dadka uu magacooda ku fadhiyo kursiga labaad ee dalkan ugu sarreeya, ayaad moodaa inaan la barbardhigi karin sidii uu Siilaanyo wejiga u siiyey qaybo ka mid ah shacbigii lagu tuhunsanayaa inay mucaarad ku yihiin xukuumadiisa.
,
Saylici, la oo moodayay inuu ka faa’iidaysan doono fursada aaska Ina Sh. Cali Jawhar, ayaa markiiba dhakhso u noqday sabo aan la garanayn. Marka laga reebo dhawr oday oo ay huteel Rays isku salaameen, may jirin cid muhiim ah oo la is odhan karo way is arkeen, sidaa darteedna waxa la odhan karaa kamuu faa’iidaysan gogol xaadhkii Siilaanyo oo qodxo badan ka hor qaaday.

Salaadiintii iyo waxgaradkii Siilaanyo kula hadlay Dilla iyo Boorama, ayaa badankoodu waxay tuseen ama farta ugu fiiqeen waxyaalo qodax badan oo u baahan inay wada wajir iskaga hor qaadaan.

Ifafaalaha iyo waxyaabaha kasoo baxaya dhamaadkii safarka Siilaanyo ee Dilla iyo Boorama, ayaa markaan dib ugu eegno mooddaa in mucaaradnimadii reer Awdal la dig iyo dem lahaayeen laba sano kudhawaad kusoo ururtay meel ka hooseysa halkii laga filayey, inkastoo an la ogeyn in afka wanaagsan ee reer Boorama madaxweynmaha kula hadleen ka daacad yahay iyo inkale, waxaana la filayaa in mudo dhaw ay kala cadaan doonto.

Socdaalka Siilaanyo ee Boorama, ayaa sidoo kale daaha ka rogay siyaasiyiin reer Awdal ah oo waagii hore si weyn u naqdiyi jiray jiray siyaasadda xukuumadiisa iyo qabyaalada beelaha dhexe, kuwaasoo uu ugu horeeyo Maxaamud Axmed Bare (Garaad), ayaa markii ay ku biireen xukuumadda siilaanyo isu beddelay siyaasiyiinta ugu guulwadaysan ee haatan sooa baxay, waxaana la arkayay odayga oo si fiican u niikinya, isla markaana la shawakhsan inuu Siilaanyo maanta la socdo.

Si kastaba ha ahaatee, socdaalka madaxweyne siilaanyo weli waxba kama beddelin dareenadii Awalba reer awdal kaga caban jireen xukuumaddiisa iyo guud ahaanba maamulka beelaha dhexe ee dhinaca ka raran, iyada oo badiba dadka siyaasada ka foolaadaa isku raacsan yihiin in waxa keliya ee Siilaanyo iyo beelaha dhexe u shaqayna, kagana guulaysteen reer Awdal tahay kala qaybsanaanta iyo xumaanta ay dhex dhegeen, taaso u suurto gelisay inay xukuumadu gobolkan ka hirgaliso arimo foolxun oo ay ka mid yihiin maamul la’aanta gobolkan saamaysay, isla markaana keentay in laga qadiyo deeqaha aduunku bixiyaan iyo tayoxumada masuuliyiinta uu Siilaanyo u magacaabayo.

Hadii aan ka hadalno dhinaca reer Boorama, ayaa soo dhaweyntii loo sameeyey Siilaanyo waxa laga dheehan karayey sida ay ugu kala xoog badnaayeen beelaha Boorama wada deggen, iyadoo beelaha uu kasoo jeedo madaxweyne kuxigeenka daklku ay ahaayeen kuwa ka qaybgalkoodu ugu hooseeyey, marka laga reebo wasiirku xigeenka waxbarashada Cali Xaamud Jibriil (Cali Nus), kaas oo sida ka muuqatay ka facfac roona xitaa wasiirada wafdiga la socday.

Ugu dambayntiina lama oga fikirkla Siilaanyo kala guryahoyday Boorama, waxase hubaal ah in aanu Siilaanyo la kulmin mucaaradad adag oo la tuhunsanayaa inay reer Awdal kala hor tagaan, lamase oga wax u qarsoon labada dhinacba.

Harowo Desk, Boorama

Dagaalka saaka dhacay ee ay isku hirdiyeen shacabka hubaysan ee dhulkooda difaacayay iyo qaybo ka mid ah milatariga Somaliland oo si gaar ah loo soo xulay, ayaa dhimasho iyo dhaawacba geystay. Tirada dhimashada oo aan wali si toos ah loo xaqiijin ayaa lagu qiyaasay ilaa 10 ruux, halka dhaawacuna uu tobonaan kor u dhaafay.

Warar laga soo xigtay salaadiinta iyo waxgaradka beesha ay ka soo jeedaan shacabka la laayay, ayaa sheegay inay diideen in maykii dadka dhintay la aaso inta laga soo qabanayo cidii masuulka ka ahayd xasuuqii meesha ka dhacay.

Dhinaca kale, warar aan la xaqiijin ayaa shaagaya in dablay hubaysan oo ka soo jeeda beesha la rabay in dhulka laga xoogo ay buuraha galeen, kuwaas oo raba inay Hargeysa iyo Berbera kala jaraan.

Dagaalkan maanta dhacay ayaa sida la sheegay ku koobnaa Bariga Magaalada Hargeysa, gaar ahaana meelo ka mid ah xaafada New Hargeysa, halkaas oo ay dadka degani u badan yihiin beesha Isaxaaq (Habar Yoonis). Wararku waxay intaa ku dareen in goobta dagaalku saaka ka dhacay xalay la soo dhoobay ciidamo si gaar ah loosoo xulay, oo lacag iyo hanti loogu balan qaaday, ka dibna markii waagu baryay ciidamadii meesha tubnaa dagaal ku qaadeen dadkii dhulka lahaa, kuwaas oo qaar ka mid ahi hubaysnaayeen.

Dhulka lagu muransanyahay, ayaa sida la sheegay wuxuu damac ka galay shakhsiyaad xidhiidh la leh shirkada Dahabshiil iyo madaxtooyada Somaliland, waxaanay sida la sheegay ugu marmarsiiyoodeen in meesha laga dhigayo xero ciidan ama ay markii hore ahaan jirtay, taaso aanay xukuumadu dadka dhulka degan ka qancinin. Tuhumada la xidhiidha ujeedad xukuumada ayaa sheegaya in marka dadka laga raro lagu wareejin doono maalqabeeno ay horkacayso Shirkadda Dahabshiil.

Wararka la xidhiidha dhulka lagu muransanyahay, ayaa sheegaya in shacabka meesha degani ay mudaba xukuumada Siilaanyo ka codsanayeen inay ka tanaasusho sheegashada dhulkan ee ciidanka Somaliland, hase yeeshee waxay xukuumadu ugu dambayntii go’aansatay inay xoog adeegsato, inkasta oo sida muuqata dagaalkii saaka dhacay ay guuldaro weyn kala kulantay.

Madaafiicdii iyo hoobiyihii ay ridayeen milatariga Somaliland, ayaa sida la sheegay dhaawacay dad radiyad ah oo aan shaqo ku lahayn dhulka lagu muransan yahay, waxaanay taasi keentay mudaharaad balaadhan oo dagaalkii dabadii Hargeysa ka dhacay, kaas oo  la rabay in lagu weeraro madaxtooyada Somaliland, hase yeeshee ciidamo isugu jira milatari iyo bilays, ayaa tacshiirad isdabo jooga ah huwiyay dadkii mudaharaadayay, ka dibna kala dareeriyay, iyaga oo lafohooda u cararay.

Si Kastaba ha ahaate, dagaalkan saaka dhacay ee dhimashada iyo daawacaba keenay iyo dareenada beelaysan ee ka hoos shanqadhaya, ayaan la saadaalin karin dhibaatada uga iman karta xukuumada Siilaanyo. Sidoo kale lama oga inuu dagaalkani yahay mid dhul keliya ku kooban iyo in dano kale oo xaal abuur ah laga lahaa.

Xukuumada Siilaanyo ayaa waayadanba ku hawlanayd xaal abuuro kala duwan oo midba beel gaar ah lala beegsanayo, kuwaas oo la doonyo in dadka lagu mashquuliyo inta ay xukuumadu go’aan ka gaadhayso sifihii ay Xamar u tegi lahayd.

Dagaalkan saaka dhacay iyo arrimo kale oo isbiirsaday, ayaa sida la filayo kor u qaadi doona, cirkana ku shareeri doona xaalada siyaasadeed ee ka taagan Somaliland, waxaanay hawlahan oo dhami soo dedajinayaan in la ogaado meesha uu Siilaanyo ku socdo, taasoo dadban ilaa hada caad ka saarnaa.

Harowo Desk, Boorama