Somaliland: On the Road to
Independent Statehood?
J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
In
October, in my testimony to a House Subcommittee on Africa and
Global Health hearing on security in the Horn of Africa, I stated:
The most significant national interest at stake for the United
States in this complex context is to prevent al-Qaeda (or another
like-minded international terrorist network) from acquiring a new
base and opening a new front in its war against us and our allies…
I would be remiss if I did not avail myself of this opportunity to
raise the question of the remarkable reemergence of the Republic of
Somaliland amid the ruin of Somalia and multiple conflicts wracking
the Horn of Africa. With the collapse of the Somali state, the
Somalilanders reasserted their independence and created a functional
government, complete with all the accoutrements of modern statehood
save, alas, international recognition…
Surely if America’s national commitment to support and strengthen
democracy as a bulwark against extremist ideologies and terrorist
violence has any real-world application, it is certainly the case
here. The point I made at last year’s hearing on the expanding
crisis in the Horn of Africa is even truer today: “The people of
Somaliland have made their choice for political independence and
democratic progress. While they have stumbled occasionally along the
way, their efforts deserve encouragement through the appropriate
economic, political, and security cooperation—which, in turn, will
anchor Somaliland within America's orbit as well as international
society.”
I make no apologies for constantly returning to this theme: it is to
me incomprehensible that we continue to express concern about the
state of democracy in the Horn of Africa while all but ignoring a
New York-sized region that has held internationally-monitored
elections for the presidency as well as national and local
legislatures. Talk of mixed signals!
Last week, in its December 4th issue, the Washington Post carried a
remarkable article by Ann Scott Tyson. Under the headline “U.S.
Debating Shift of Support in Somali Conflict,” the piece notes that
“the escalating conflict in Somalia is generating debate inside the
Bush administration over whether the United States should continue
to back the shaky transitional government in Mogadishu or shift
support to the less volatile region of Somaliland, which declared
independence in 1991” and quotes two anonymous Department of Defense
officials:
“Somaliland is an entity that works,” a senior defense official
said. “We're caught between a rock and a hard place because they're
not a recognized state,” the official said.
The Pentagon’s view is that “Somaliland should be independent,”
another defense official said. “We should build up the parts that
are functional and box in” Somalia’s unstable regions, particularly
around Mogadishu.
In contrast, “the State Department wants to fix the broken part
first—that’s been a failed policy,” the official said.
In conclusion, Navy Captain Bob Wright, head of strategic
communications for the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA)
based at Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, was quoted as saying “We’d love to
[engage Somaliland], we’re just waiting for State to give us the
okay.”
The next day, December 5th, the Bureau of African Affairs posted to
the State Department website a five-bullet point “fact sheet”
attempting to explain what passes as “United States Policy on
Somaliland”:
· The United States currently engages the Somaliland administration
and has provided assistance, for example to the election effort. Our
policy on recognition is to allow the African Union to first
deliberate on the question. We do not want to get ahead of the
continental organization on an issue of such importance.
· As indicated in the full quote above, the United States continues
to engage with the administration in Somaliland on a range of
issues, most directly Somaliland’s continued progress towards
democratization and economic development.
· In FY 2007, the United States provided a total of $1 million
through the International Republican Institute to support training
for parliamentarians and other key programs in preparations for the
upcoming municipal and presidential elections in Somaliland. We
expect to provide an additional $1.5 million in continued support
for the democratization process in Somaliland following the
elections.
· While we continue to engage with the Somaliland administration, we
do believe that the African Union is the most appropriate forum to
address the question of recognition of Somaliland as an independent
state. We understand that Somaliland is pursuing bilateral dialogue
with the African Union and its member-states in this regard.
· However, as the African Union continues to deliberate on this
issue, the United States will continue to engage with all actors
throughout Somalia, including Somaliland, to support the return of
lasting peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.
On the face of it, the Foggy Bottom’s position seems reasonable
enough: the United States does not want to be blamed for opening up
a veritable Pandora’s Box by backing a secessionist attempt to
redraw colonial-era boundaries in Africa which could cause a ripple
effect across the continent; better to let the African Union make
that call. However, the artful facade the diplomats put up to cover
their geopolitical inertia is utterly mendacious, despite the truly
diplomatic efforts of Somaliland Foreign Minister Abdillahi Duale to
welcome the State Department’s positive comments about the country’s
“continued progress towards democratization and economic
development.
First, as I pointed out in this column nearly two years ago: “From
1884 until 1960, Somaliland existed within its current borders as
the protectorate of British Somaliland. On June 26, 1960, Somaliland
was granted its independence by the British Crown and was
internationally recognized as a sovereign state. When, a week later,
the United Nations trust territory that had been the Italian colony
of Somalia received its independence, Somaliland joined it to form a
united republic. The union, however, was troubled from the
beginning…Amid the anarchy that ensued following Siyad Barre’s
ignominious flight in January 1991, clan elders in Somaliland issued
a declaration reasserting the independence that the northwestern
region had briefly enjoyed in 1960.” There is no question of – much
less precedent set for – redrawing colonial frontiers.
Second, the African Union (AU) itself has acknowledged the unique
circumstances surrounding Somaliland’s quest for recognition. The
official report of an AU fact-finding mission to the republic in
2005 led by AU Deputy Chairperson Patrick Mazimhaka concluded: “The
fact that the union between Somaliland and Somalia was never
ratified and also malfunctioned when it went into action from 1960
to 1990, makes Somaliland’s search for recognition historically
unique and self-justified in African political history. Objectively
viewed, the case should not be linked to the notion of ‘opening a
Pandora’s Box’. As such, the AU should find a special method of
dealing with this outstanding case.”
However, by punting the question to a body like the AU, which
decides major political questions by consensus, while simultaneously
continuing the delusional policy of recognizing the utterly
ineffectual “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) of Somalia,
which asserts sovereignty over the entire territory of the defunct
Somali Democratic Republic despite being unable to so much as
control its putative capital, the State Department belies any
pretensions of neutrality. The Africa Bureau knows very well that
there is no way the phantasmal TFG will ever permit an AU consensus
to be forged which recognizes the de facto Republic of Somaliland.
Thus the State Department’s support for the fictional Somalia’s
continued presence at international forums like the AU is
fundamentally irreconcilable with functional Somaliland’s ever
getting a fair hearing. So the only thing conceivably worse than the
State Department being cynically duplicitous in its Somaliland
policy is the possibility that its denizens don’t realize this and,
hence, are criminally incompetent in their guidance of U.S. policy
in the geopolitical sensitive Horn of Africa.
Fortunately, the TFG may not be a factor for much longer. Last week,
its “president,” Abdullahi Yusuf, was hospitalized in Nairobi,
Kenya, and had to cancel a meeting in Addis Ababa with Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice; should his condition worsen, that charade
will be over. The meeting that did take place between TFG “prime
minister” Nur Hassan Hussein and America’s top diplomat was farcical
to anyone with historical knowledge of the region. The secretary
said she hoped “Hussein will draw on his humanitarian background to
facilitate delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid.”
What “humanitarian background” does Dr. Rice refer to? His role as
police colonel under the brutal dictatorship of Muhammad Siyad Barre?
His tenure as deputy head of the despot’s “National Salvation
Court,” a military tribunal that sent thousands of regime opponents
to their deaths? Or perhaps his leadership of the Somali Red
Crescent Society where he “did well by doing good” – so well, in
fact, that as Somalia descended into chaos and its luckier citizens
fled, his children inexplicably found the capital to open a string
of internet cafés and currency exchanges in Great Britain to meet
the needs of their displaced countrymen? And while the secretary
could only “encourage” the self-appointed TFG “to develop a timeline
for the remainder of the transitional process by early January” in
the hope of staging elections sometime in 2009, Somaliland has
already held several sets of the internationally-monitored free
polls, the most recent, the parliamentary elections of 2005, was
observed and reported on by an International Republican Institute (IRI)
delegation led by Ambassador Lange Schermerhorn, a former U.S. envoy
to Djibouti who has also served as political advisor to the CJTF-HOA.
(I served as an election observer with the ambassador in Nigeria
earlier this year.)
The failure of the TFG should not be surprising. As I pointed out a
year and a half ago, the pretender regime is little more than the
product of a well-intentioned effort by the international community
to conjure up yet another government for Somalia after the
ignominious collapse the previous year of its previous attempt, the
risible “Transitional National Government” (TNG), which went through
four prime ministers and hundreds of cabinet members in three years
before going bankrupt, having misappropriated millions of dollars in
donor funds while governing nothing other than what was inside the
confines of the four walls of “president” Abdiqasim Salad Hassan’s
villa in nearby Djibouti. With even fewer prospects and, if it is
possible, even less legitimacy than the TNG, the TFG’s leaders have
little incentive to do anything other than leverage the
international recognition which is their only real asset with which
to enrich themselves.
One could hardly find a starker contrast to this than Somaliland. As
former World Bank economist William Easterly, hardly someone who
looks at Africa through rosy lenses, noted in his realistic, if
somewhat pessimistic, volume, “The White Man’s Burden: Why the
West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little
Good”:
In Somalia, the “international community” has sponsored fourteen
rounds of fruitless peace talks since the collapse of the government
in 1991, not to mention the failed UN/U.S. military intervention.
Meanwhile, without outside intervention, foreign aid, or even
international recognition, the breakaway Republic of Somaliland in
the north of Somalia has enjoyed peace, economic growth, and
democratic elections over the same period.
Thus, among the many others which could be adduced, there are five
compelling reasons for the United States to abandon the bankrupt,
State Department-driven policy of preferring self-appointed
“leaders” of a failed construct to an effective government of a real
country:
â–ª Counterterrorism. As the Pentagon has now publicly acknowledged
(and as I suggested earlier this year), scarce resources would be
better spent boxing in the troubled parts of Somalia, rather than
vainly asserting the questionable claims by a clearly unpopular
regime whose illegitimacy is actually a magnet for extremists. No
less a figure than Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates declared
last week while visiting Camp Lemonier that his “biggest concern for
Somalia is the potential for al-Qaeda to be active there.” Formal
ties with Somaliland would permit closer ties between U.S. military
and intelligence personnel with their counterparts in the small
country’s services. Access to Somaliland territory, including the
onetime NATO installation at Berbera, would also expand the scope
for counterterrorism and other operations by CJTF-HOA as well as the
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) which will subsume it next year.
â–ª Regional stability. Far from being destabilizing, as I told
Congress earlier this year, recognition of Somaliland would “show
the countries and peoples of the sub-region our resolve to reward
progress as well as give the lie to those who argue that our
anti-terrorism and pro-democracy objectives are not subterfuges for
an anti-Muslim agenda. (Somaliland’s population is almost
exclusively Sunni Muslims and the shahâdah, the Muslim profession of
the oneness of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God’s final
prophet, is emblazoned on its flag.)” Furthermore, U.S.-led
diplomatic recognition of Somaliland would not only allow the
country much-needed access to international institutions and finance
for development of the country itself, but also spur regional
integration and prosperity. To cite just one example, America’s
close partner Ethiopia, whose cut-off from the sea is a factor in
the border dispute with Eritrea which I discussed two weeks ago,
would benefit directly from access to Somaliland’s 900-kilometer
coastline along the Gulf of Aden.
â–ª Natural resources and economic opportunities. Earlier this year,
I reported on mainland China’s play for petroleum resources in
Somalia. Establishing formal ties with Somaliland would not only
open opportunities for American firms to bid for similar concessions
in that country, but also to invest in what could be a significant
regional market. Conversely, ties with American commercial interests
would also help anchor the strategically-placed country in the orbit
of the United States as it joins the global economy. On the other
hand, Somaliland’s considerable potential for economic and social
progress is jeopardized not only by the maelstrom in neighboring
Somalia, but also, as the AU has reported, by “the lack of
recognition [which] ties the hands of the authorities and people of
Somaliland as they cannot effectively and sustainably transact with
the outside to pursue the reconstruction and development goals.”
â–ª Moral imperatives. As I previously argued, “Somaliland’s
trajectory…has been nothing if not extraordinary, being
characterized by both social stability and democratic politics—the
northern region’s progress standing in stark contrast to the free
fall of the rest of the former Somalia. And despite being cut off
from international financial institutions, direct bilateral
assistance, and other sources of development and investment
capital—all for want of diplomatic recognition—the Somalilanders
have rebuilt Hargeysa, which was leveled during the Siyad Barre
regime’s brutal campaign against them, and resettled close to one
million of their displaced citizens.” Somaliland has already had
democratic presidential, legislative, and local government
elections; even the State Department has acknowledged that its
upcoming presidential and municipal elections are more than credible
enough to deserve U.S. funding.
â–ª Global leadership. Despite some major faux pas of American
foreign policy in recent years – both in substance and
implementation – the world still defaults to looking to the United
States to take the lead in critical arenas like the Horn of Africa.
A number of governments, both African (including those of Ethiopia,
Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia) and European (including
those of Great Britain, Germany, and Sweden), have either entered
into de facto relations with or at least made friendly overtures to
the Republic of Somaliland. In June, the German federal parliament
even passed a resolution calling upon Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
government “to work towards mitigating dangers for Somaliland’s
stability that may arise from the current Southern Somali scenario,”
including “initiatives to advance the resolution of the question of
an international recognition of an independent Somaliland.” However,
nothing is likely to advance without American leadership or at least
tacit approval – in any event, the opposite of the State
Department’s passive attendance on the AU’s capacity-challenged
policymaking and implementation processed (see my column last week
on “The Challenge of Peacekeeping in Africa”).
At the very launch of this column series, I wrote: “Since the
disintegration of the Siyad Barre’s oppressive Somali regime into
Hobbesian anarchy and warlordism, the international community has
staunchly defended the phantasmal existence of the fictitious entity
known as ‘Somalia.’ Now, however, is the time for the United States
to break ranks and let realism triumph over wishful thinking, not
only recognizing, but actively supporting Somaliland, a brave little
land whose people’s quest for freedom and security mirrors America’s
values as well as her strategic interests.” If anything, that
counsel is even truer today than ever before, as many of our
military officers have now publicly acknowledged. The only question
is whether or not America’s elected political leaders will have the
vision and fortitude to finally instruct their unelected diplomatic
mandarins on the real stakes: diplomatic, military, and economic.
Source: FamilySecurityMatters.org
J. Peter Pham is Director of the Nelson Institute for International
and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Harrisonburg,
Virginia. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C., as well as Vice
President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and
Africa (ASMEA).
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