Somaliland: The pull
of terror
Somaliland is not Somalia. Ever
since Somalia fell apart in the early 1990s that has been the
message hammered out by Hargeisa's would-be officials, who would be
officially officials if Somaliland was ever officially recognized.
The latter has not yet happened,
despite Somaliland's relative stability and nascent democracy -
casting the rest of what was Somalia more clearly as the wanton
haven for pirates, warlords, terrorists and chronic suffering that
it is - with over 3 million people homeless due to fighting, and aid
workers a constant target for murder and kidnap.
Somaliland has a working political system, government institutions
and its own currency. It also has a 740-kilometer coastline along
the Red Sea - a vital outlet for Ethiopia, which has been landlocked
since the Eritrean secession in 1993.
Somaliland's democratic transition began in May 2001 with a
plebiscite on a new constitution that introduced a multiparty
electoral system, and continued in December 2002 with local
elections that were widely described as open and transparent.
Presidential elections held in 2003 were seen as another milestone,
with nearly half a million voters casting ballots in one of the
closest polls ever conducted in the region, and the would-be state
is gearing up for general elections due next year.
While Somalia was riven by, inter alia, vicious clans, aid-stealing
warlords, al-Qaida, an invading Ethiopian army and a weak but
internationally-backed transitional government, Somaliland was
holding successive rounds of elections, with both winners and losers
sticking to the rules. This was laid on a bedrock of traditional
authorities showing leadership and maturity, the utilization of
indigenous means of negotiation and a measured, positive-sum view of
inter-clan rivalries.
Unlike its now-archetypal failed-state neighbor to the south,
Somaliland not only has emerged with the basic trappings of
self-government, it has some solid legal grounding upon which to
build a case for sovereignty.
In 1960, Somaliland was independent for a few days, between the end
of British colonial rule and its union with the former Italian
colony of Somalia (southern Somalia). Forty years later, in 2001,
voters in the territory overwhelmingly backed Somaliland's
independence in a referendum. Somaliland declared its independence
from the rest of the Somali Republic in May 1991, following the end
of the Cold War and the collapse of its leech regime in Mogadishu.
Somaliland voluntarily joined with its newly independent southern
counterpart (the former UN Trust Territory of Somalia that was a
former Italian colony) to create the present-day Republic of
Somalia. Somalilanders note that they voluntarily joined a union
after independence, and that, under international law, they should
have the right to abrogate that union, as they did in 1991.
But without official recognition from other states, Somaliland, to
its chagrin, is still Somalia. For now, that is in name only, and
things could change, both for the better, as Hargeisa sees it, or
for worse.
Maybe not by the fiat of international law or African Union
pressure, or even by some powerful and dominant entity taking
control in Mogadishu, but Somaliland could become Somalia - in the
reductionist, pejorative sense, with country name used as synonym
for terror-wracked failed state.
It would be a shame, but that seems to be the method-in-madness
rationale behind recent terror attacks in Hargeisa - and in
pirate-alley Puntland, a region in Somalia that claims increased
autonomy, but not outright independence, from the barely existing
transitional government in Mogadishu.
On 30 October, just days after the Ethiopian and US-backed
transitional government signed an agreement in Nairobi with some of
the Islamist opposition - a potential landmark given that both sides
were at war in 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union tried to take
control of Somalia by force before the Ethiopian Army intervened -
five near-simultaneous and apparently coordinated suicide attacks
struck high-profile targets in Hargeisa and in Bosasso, the economic
capital of the neighboring region of Puntland.
In Hargeisa, the bombs targeted the presidential palace, the UN
Development Programme's compound and Ethiopia's diplomatic
representation, killing 19 people on the spot.
Somaliland is a US ally, and as such is seen by Somalia's hardline
Islamists, most notably the misnamed al-Shebaab ("the lads" or "the
youth") group - which opposed the Nairobi talks - as a perfidious
abomination backed by an Addis Ababa bent on further breaking up the
historic "Greater Somalia," which should include the Somali-speaking
Ogaden in Ethiopia and parts of northern Kenya, not just Somalia as
mapped today.
Somaliland has perhaps been designated an easy target by an al-Shebaab
seeking vengeance for the 1 May US airstrike that killed its leader,
Aden Hashi Ayro, in the central Somali town of Dusamareeb. That hit
came just weeks after the US State Department designated al-Shebaab
as a "global terrorist entity." Afghanistan-trained Ayro was linked
to the murder of 16 foreigners, including a number of aid workers
and BBC journalist Kate Peyton.
Reacting to the assassination, David Shinn from Elliott School of
International Affairs at George Washington University told ISN
Security Watch last May that "I have no doubt that al-Shebaab will
attempt to avenge Ayro's death by attacking American, Kenyan and/or
Ethiopian interests in the region."
The US has not moved on recognizing its unofficial ally Somaliland,
out of deference to the African Union, which places a priori value
on state sovereignty and integrity, even though both are effectively
history in Somalia. What is an effective, relatively free and de
facto sovereign state, is denied recognition as such, in favor of a
fractious, war-torn country where the state has had at best limited
control over the past decade and a half.
If Somalia's Islamist terror groups have their way, Somaliland's
strong case for recognition will be dismantled - not by Somalia
arguing a compelling counter-suit, but by undermining the real
democratic and governance gains made by Hargeisa since 1991. This
will drag Somaliland into the violent struggles over faith,
fatherland, turf and tribe that have made Somalia the failed state
par excellence since the early 1990s.
Simon Roughneen
Source:ISN ETH ZURICH
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