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Professor Woodward’s piece, as is evident from the title, seeks to outline the principal reasons th at the international community should view Somaliland’s recovery of its nationhood negatively. This is his opinion and he certainly has every right to voice it – that is not the issue. What is at iss ue, however, is the veracity, logic and consistency of the arguments he presents to support this opinion, and this piece seeks to critically examine these factors. The first issue to examine regardi ng the piece lies in the title itself, i.e. the statement “Somaliland wants to secede…”. The simple fact is that Somaliland recovered its nationhood in 1991 when the Somali National Move ment (SNM) evicted the Somali National Army from its territory and a national conference of the clan elders of all the clans represented in that country declared the recovery of Somaliland’s sove reignty and simultaneously the union with the ex-UN Trust Territory to the south (i.e. Somalia) null and void. This decision was ratified in a public referendum in 2001 wherein the Constitution of Som aliland, which has the reinstatement of the country’s sovereignty as its first article, was affirmed by 97% of the voters. In addition, no government or other authority in Somalia, legal or clandestin e, has exercised any power or control over Somaliland territory since the eviction of the dictator’s army in 1991. Thus, the first statement in the title – that Somaliland wants to secede – is factually incorrect sin ce Somaliland has dissolved its union with Somalia de facto and de jure. This is not a mere debating point, but a critical foundation for the arguments put forward in the piece regarding the advisabili ty of the proposed secession. The fact that Somaliland has been an independent, functioning state in control over its territory and population; with representative government (both local and natio nal); with separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary for over a quarter of a century somewhat gives the lie to the phrase “wants to”. Somaliland has established peace, reco nciliation and representative government for its overwhelmingly young population, the vast major ity of which have never known union with Somalia, and in fact view such an eventuality with outr ight hostility. The second fallacy in the title is contained in the word “secede”. Secede, with respect to political usage of the term, usually references the withdrawal of a territory or region from a nation-state of which it has always formed an integral part. It is not commonly used with respect to independ ent, legal entities that agreed to unite to form a new nation-state. For example, the short-lived United Arab Republic (UAR), formed by the union of Egypt and Syria in 1958 was dissolved when Syria withdrew from the union and reasserted its sovereignty in 1961. This withdrawal of Syria from the ill-fated union with Egypt was not seen as a secession, but as a reassertion or recovery by Syria of its national status. Also, the recent referendum in Scotland was not characterised as one on Scottish secession, but as one on Scottish independence in recognition of the fact that Scotland was an independent nation before it voluntarily united with Britain to form the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Somaliland, like the examples of Syria and Scotland with respect to the UAR and the Kingdom of Great Britain respectively, voluntarily united with ex-UN Trust Territory of Somalia on 1st July 1960 (when the said territory gained its independence) to form the Republic of Somalia. The State of Somaliland had gained its independence from Britain some five days earlier on 26th June 1960, and had been recognised by the UN and some 35 countries including Britain, USA, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. To delve further into the history of the region, the British Somaliland Protectorate was established as a politico-legal entity in 1888 with the signature of treaties of protection between the Somali clans inhabiting the territory defined in the said treaties and Great Britain, while Italian Somaliland was established with similar treaties of protection between Italy and the Sultanates of Hobyo and Majerteen in 1888 and 1889 respectively. In 1908, Italy enacted a basic law to unite all of the parts of southern Somalia into an area called "Somalia Italiana" and the Italian colony of Somalia was established, whereas in Somaliland the treaty of protection remained in force with minimal British interference in Somali domestic matters, under the colonial doctrine of ‘indirect rule’, until independence in 1960. Thirdly, the piece misstates the principle underlying the objection
of the AU and its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU),
to secessions from member states as follows. In point of fact, the issue of the territorial integrity of the nation-states of modern Africa, which were determined by European colonial rulers based upon factors which had nothing whatsoever to do with the imperatives or wishes of the African inhabitants of the continent, was debated in the early 1960s immediately after the creation of the OAU. It was proposed that national borders be redrawn to accommodate ethnic, tribal and linguistic affiliations, which were ignored by the colon ial boundaries, and so create more culturally homogenous (and therefore more politically stable – it was assumed) nation-states. After much debate, this proposal was rejected in favour of retain ing the existing colonial borders in order to avoid interminable and wasteful political turmoil as fra ctious and competing claims for sovereignty based upon tribal, ethnic and linguistic affiliations were presented and disputed. Thus, was established the OAU/AU principle of the inviolability of the colonial borders. What Professor Woodward, and many others, fail to realise in their simplistic analysis of Somalilan d’s case for independence is that Somaliland is in fact applying this AU principle of the inviolability of the colonial borders, since these very borders divided the Somali people among five political ter ritories: the British Somaliland Protectorate (Somaliland), the Italian Colony of Somalia (Somalia), French Somaliland (present-day Djibouti), the Somali Province of Ethiopia (present-day 5th Provi nce of the Ethiopian Federation) and the NFD (present-day North Eastern Province of Kenya). The fact is that there was no Somali Republic until Somaliland and Somalia, as two independent count ries, chose to unite in what was envisaged as the first step towards the creation of Greater Somal ia which would include all the above-mentioned five territories. In addition, there are serious legal deficiencies with respect to the union of the two countries which further buttress Somaliland’s rea ssertion of its sovereignty and weaken the position of those that maintain the validity the failed union. Somaliland united with Somalia through an Act of Union which simply merged the legislatures of the two countries to create the Somali Republic on 1st July 1960 – the day the ex-Italian colony obtai ned its independence from the United Nations on whose behalf Italy had been administering the country. The Act of Union was to be ratified by a new constitution to evidence the new Republic and adopted through a nationwide plebiscite encompassing both Somaliland and Somalia. The new constitution was put to a vote in July 1961, and it was ratified by large majority in the ex-UN Trust Territory, but was rejected by an equally solid majority in the ex-British Protectorate, due to dissatisfaction over the terms of the union in the Protectorate. Thus, the Act of Union was never ratified by the people of Somaliland, effectively rendering the Act of Union ultra vires. No remedy to this gaping hole in the legal establishment of the Somali Republic was ever subsequently attempted, leaving many legal scholars and Somalilanders to question the legality and validity of the union itself. Fourthly, the piece makes much of the problem of border disputes between the new state and the country from which it “seceded” as a negative factor, citing the examples of Abyei in South Sudan and Badme in Eritrea. A glaring error here is that the piece states that “In 1988 there was an issue over Badme, a small town near the Ethiopian border which Eritrea claimed was theirs.” In fact, the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea over Badme was in 1998 and not 1988. The fact that the piece then goes on to equate this “dispute” with the 1977/78 war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Somali-populated eastern 5th Province of Ethiopia leads one to conclude that this is not simply a typographical error, but contains a fundamental misreading of these two wars. The former is a dispute between two belligerent states over a border town that both sides claim – there is no ethnic conflict underlying the dispute since the people which inhabit not only Badme but the region within which it is located are ethnic Tigray which are represented in both countries.
Finally, the piece argues that the economies of Eritrea and South Sudan have suffered greatly be cause of their separation from Ethiopia and Sudan respectively, and thus intimates a similar fate for Somaliland. The fact is that both these new states have suffered economically not because of their separation, but because of self-inflicted wounds which their erstwhile rulers (and new frien ds) have exacerbated, if not encouraged outright. In the case of Eritrea, the ELF/EPLF government that came into power to popular acclaim after independence, chose a path of regional belligerence, domestic autocracy and international isolation instead of economic development and representa tive government. In the case of South Sudan, after the untimely death of the unifying and charism atic figure of John Garang, the ruling, political elite of the new country devolved into competing gangs for the economic spoils of office which have divided along tribal lines between President Kiir and Vice-President Machar. This descent into tribal warfare which has condemned the tired and destitute population of that country to murder, mayhem and despair has been fomented and man ipulated for gain by neighbouring countries (including Sudan) and nefarious, corporate interests including international oil companies, mining & mineral companies and arms suppliers, not to menti on foreign powers.
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