An Oasis of Stability in East Africa
Dr. Bob Arnot NBC NEWS
Unknown
to many Americans, there is a Somalia that didn’t murder U.S.
Rangers and drag them through the streets, where U.N. soldiers never
set foot, and where there are no roving gangs of warlords. It is a
land where refugees are eagerly returning, where there is a
functioning democracy, where free enterprise is booming and what is
more a country where they love Americans. So why can’t Somaliland
get any respect?
SOMALILAND HAS accomplished everything that America ever hoped that
Somalia would and more from ending clan violence to establishing a
parliament. What is its reward?
Ten years after it broke away from the rest of Somalia and declared
its independence, no country has yet formally recognized Somaliland.
And that has caused real hardships. It cannot sign agreements with
multilateral donors such as the World Bank or International Monetary
Fund.
It cannot receive more than token aid - for emergency and
humanitarian reasons - but no meaningful bilateral development
assistance from other governments let alone substantive loans to
rehabilitate its dilapidated infrastructure.
Somaliland sorely lacks the extensive veterinary care it needs to
guarantee its livestock are free of disease for export. It cannot
drill for oil, build new industry, improve its universities or
rebuild its roads. It can not create jobs for the tens of thousands
of refugees returning to Somaliland’s relative stability, nor build
a substantial police force or army to protect itself.
SOMALILAND HAS accomplished everything that America ever hoped that
Somalia would and more from ending clan violence to establishing a
parliament. What is its reward?
Ten years after it broke away from the rest of Somalia and declared
its independence, no country has yet formally recognized Somaliland.
And that has caused real hardships. It cannot sign agreements with
multilateral donors such as the World Bank or International Monetary
Fund.
It cannot receive more than token aid - for emergency and
humanitarian reasons - but no meaningful bilateral development
assistance from other governments let alone substantive loans to
rehabilitate its dilapidated infrastructure.
Somaliland sorely lacks the extensive veterinary care it needs to
guarantee its livestock are free of disease for export. It cannot
drill for oil, build new industry, improve its universities or
rebuild its roads. It can not create jobs for the tens of thousands
of refugees returning to Somaliland’s relative stability, nor build
a substantial police force or army to protect itself.
DISASTROUS UNION
And what Somaliland fears most is a forced reunion with Somalia.
Somaliland, a former British colony, was severely punished, after
its first marriage to the former Italian colony in the south in
1960.
After that union to create what used to be known as the Republic of
Somalia, tens of thousands of Somalilanders were murdered by Somali
Army officers. Bodies are still found today, bound together, and
buried in mass graves, with bullets through the backs of their
heads. Over 40,000 men women and children were murdered in the
capital city of Hargeysa when government MiG jets bombed the city.
After such a dreadful union, who would want rejoin Somalia again? As
it turns out, it is almost no one in Somaliland. Somalilanders call
the Somali Republic’s actions genocide, and are saying “never again”
to a reunion.
But not so in the south, in the former Italian Somalia, where there
is a fervent desire to reunite a greater Somalia. And it is that
wish which threatens the fragile democracy in Somaliland.
Somaliland has pleaded and begged with the international community
for recognition, but that plea is not based on hardship alone.
Somaliland argues that America needs a strong and faithful ally at
the border of Africa and the Middle East.
Somaliland shields the soft underbelly of Ethiopia and, as a secular
democratic state, is a bulwark against extremist international
anarchy and terrorism. On a practical level, it offers a huge
airstrip, over 13,000 feet, and a deep-water port of Berbera on the
Gulf of Aden, which, the government points out, is safer for U.S.
warships than Aden, in Yemen, where the USS Cole was bombed by
terrorists last October.
One of the pillars of the Organization of African Unity is that
African colonial borders should not be redrawn.
QUEST FOR INDEPENDENCE
So who is opposed to recognition of Somaliland? From Rome to Cairo,
there are many powerful players trying to nix Somaliland’s quest for
independence:
Sudan, supported by Egypt and Libya, thinks an independent
Somaliland sets a precedent for dividing warring Sudan into two
independent countries, North and South.
Neighboring Djibouti senses, although Somaliland government sources
say erroneously, that Somaliland threatens the need for Djibouti to
continue to exist.
Islamic fundamentalist states say Somaliland forms a barrier to the
solidification of their hold on Somalia and to their expansion to
Ethiopia and Kenya.
Certain Arab governments who would rather see a reunited Muslim
Somalia to outflank Ethiopia from south and east, to be used to
secure Egypt’s unlimited use of the Nile waters and to forestall any
form of future Israeli presence in the area.
France, which supports Djibouti and is desirous of enhancing its
influence in the region.
And Italy, which the Somaliland government says is “still nostalgic
dreaming of a formal colony whose capital is Mogadishu.”
However, the most potent argument against recognition centers on a
very fine, albeit dubious, technical point. Susan Rice, the
Undersecretary of State for Africa during the Clinton
administration, was flatly against recognition because it meant
redrawing colonial borders. One of the pillars of the Organization
of African Unity (OAU) is that African colonial borders should not
be redrawn.
BORDER CHANGING PRECEDENT
But here is the irony. Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania,
in the formative stages of the OAU, pleaded against redrawing
African borders so that British Somaliland would not joint with
Italian Somalia. Why? The fear was that a united Somalia would be a
harbinger for the emergence of Greater Somalia, which, in order to
annex surrounding Somali territories, would invade Ethiopia and
Kenya. (The Republic of Somalia did invade Ethiopia in 1977, and
Somali raiders still attack Kenya).
Even more ironic, Nyerere redrew his own borders, joining Tanganyika
with Zanzibar to form Tanzania. Yet nearly 40 years later, Nyerere’s
argument is being used to prevent Somaliland from being recognized
as a sovereign state even though it was, briefly, an independent
state after its liberation from British.
On balance, the OAU’s doctrine on the “inviolability” of boundaries
inherited from the colonial powers does not apply to Somaliland
because it is situated within the boundaries of the British
Somaliland Protectorate defined in 1886 when it was declared a
British protectorate.
Somalilanders lament that the United States and the United Nations
have had little trouble with redrawing borders in the Balkans or the
former Soviet Union, but still resist to recognize their nascent
republic.
PUSH FOR RECOGNITION
On the 10th anniversary of its declaration of independence,
Somaliland is beginning a vigorous international campaign for
recognition beginning with South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Somaliland’s President Mohammed Egal, has been criss-crossing the
globe, appealing to any government who will listen
. ‘Our history and our identity have completely disappeared from the
world for 30 years, and now we are telling the world that there is a
country called Somaliland.’
- MOHAMMED EGAL
Somaliland president “Our history and our identity have completely
disappeared from the world for 30 years, and now we are telling the
world that there is a country called Somaliland,” Egal told NBC
News. “We have to educate our friends and brothers and compatriots
in the international community who we are and where we come from.”
Egal, a former prime minister of the Somali Republic until he was
overthrown in a coup and jailed for 12 years, argues passionately
for an independent and internationally recognized Somaliland.
But a lack of international recognition casts a long shadow over
Somaliland’s future, seriously hindering economic development,
strangulating the burgeoning private sector and eroding public trust
in the country’s future. This, observers fear, may bring about a
political downturn which undermines the republican order and ushers
in social anarchy and lawlessness. That, they say, will spell a
doomsday scenario in which almost anything could happen.
“Certainly the forces of darkness will gleefully celebrate the
eclipse of the only secular democracy in the Somali speaking region
of the Horn [of Africa] and feverishly try to fill the vacuum by
establishing a Taliban-like regime,” says Saad Noor, Somaliland’s
representative in Washington.
“If successful, they will hookup with fellow Islamic extremists in
southeast Ethiopia and shake up the very foundation of the Ethiopian
regime. Djibouti will not be safe either. The crescendo will come to
a thunderous roar if the coveted southern shores of the Gulf of
Aden, from the entrance of the Red Sea at Bab el Mandab to Berbera
basin. falls under the control of an organization like the one that
blew up the USS Cole.”
Then and only then, many fear, will the Western democracies shed a
tear for the passing of Somaliland.
Dr. Bob Arnot covers Africa’s humanitarian and political issues for
NBC News.
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