How Somalia’s internal politics fuels obstinacy on boundary row with Kenya

Sunday June 2, 2019

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta (right) with

When Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo flew to South Africa last week to attend the inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa, he avoided Kenyan airspace.

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This comes at a time when the two countries were involved in a diplomatic tiff over immigration rules, was telling to some observers.

Kenya recently barred three Somali officials, part of a delegation coming to attend a cross-border conflict management programme, over failure to obtain visas from the Kenyan embassy in Mogadishu, a move that angered the Somalia administration so much that it asked its officials to boycott the UN-Habitat Assembly held in Nairobi last week.

Then on Tuesday, May 28, Kenya’s aviation authorities further banned unaccompanied luggage on aircraft from Somalia and insisted that all planes land at Wajir airport in northern Kenya for security checks.

The deterioration of relations between the two neighbours has been blamed on the dispute over the maritime border in a resource-rich triangle in the Indian Ocean, which is the subject of a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

But behind this dispute, analysts say, are economic and political interests as Western, Asian and Gulf powers scramble for the vast gas and oil deposits in the Indian Ocean triangle coveted by the two countries.
When Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo flew to South Africa last week to attend the inauguration of President Cyril Ramaphosa, he avoided Kenyan airspace.

This comes at a time when the two countries were involved in a diplomatic tiff over immigration rules, was telling to some observers.

Kenya recently barred three Somali officials, part of a delegation coming to attend a cross-border conflict management programme, over failure to obtain visas from the Kenyan embassy in Mogadishu, a move that angered the Somalia administration so much that it asked its officials to boycott the UN-Habitat Assembly held in Nairobi last week.

Then on Tuesday, May 28, Kenya’s aviation authorities further banned unaccompanied luggage on aircraft from Somalia and insisted that all planes land at Wajir airport in northern Kenya for security checks.

The deterioration of relations between the two neighbours has been blamed on the dispute over the maritime border in a resource-rich triangle in the Indian Ocean, which is the subject of a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

But behind this dispute, analysts say, are economic and political interests as Western, Asian and Gulf powers scramble for the vast gas and oil deposits in the Indian Ocean triangle coveted by the two countries.

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