Hiiraan Online

One of Multiple entities emerging from the wreckage of Somalia

by Mohamed A. Elmi
Friday, February 29, 2008

The principle based on the sovereign equality of all states affirms that existing member states be allowed to freely exercise a monopoly of jurisdiction within their borders (1). Thus, the United States was guilty of conferring legitimacy on the secessionist insurgency and bypassing the current transitional government of Somalia over its own internal affairs.  The conferral of diplomatic legitimacy on Somaliland was confirmed by the surprise arrival of U.S Assistance Secretary of State for African Affairs in Hargeisa to meet with leaders of the break-away region of Somalia, Somaliland.

Before delving into a somewhat deeper analysis of how the Somaliland entity has normatively sunk into irrelevancy, I would first discuss reasons for the creation of Maakhir State of Somalia; a new sub-state whose model for regional self-governance is tailored to the successful realization of the system of building blocks, a federal legislation for restoring the Somali Republic. In addition to Maakhir’s federalist and moral position in preserving the territorial integrity of Somalia, its historical imprint of the survival of a “Muslim Sultanate” (2) until 1920 and its experience of self-governance after the collapse of the Somali state refute the argument that Maakhir would fail to self-sustain itself and so regress into an unviable state.

Conversely, I would discuss the geographic dimension of the former British protectorate, its colonial history, and the contentious legal and political issues in seceding from Somalia and finally conclude my paper with a synopsis for a case study of Kosovo, whose declaration of independence on ….was recognized first by EU followed by the United States.

A little zoom into the political development of Somali history prior to our independence from Italy and Britain clearly proves that the two Somali regions agreed to merge forever as one juridical family prior to their unitary independence and therefore had one flag and one constitution. Second, the history of the SNM, which was a rebel Somali faction like the SSDF, reveals that they had no Manifesto that said it was fighting for secession from the rest of Somalia.

The primary objectives, therefore, for the formation of these political movements including the United Somali Congress (USC) were to whip up the sleeping masses under repressive dictatorial regime of Mohamed Said Barreh, so they all united under the banner of the forceful eviction of the last Somali regime. However, the Somali Republic was gradually let to slip into the current, intractable disintegration bringing about massive starvation, displacement, ethnic-cleansing and all the other consequences of civil strife. Somalia now being a failed state needs to be reconstituted and in the meantime preserved the North (Puntland, Maakhir and Somaliland) into its mutual peaceful relationship.

The formation of Maakhir state, for instance, on the northeastern part of Somalia is a great asset to the northern unionist. Its political geography falls mainly in the region of Sanaag and western part of Bari region.  Its independence was declared on July 1, 2007 at a communal conference in Badhan and Dhahar districts, in Sanaag region.  Since then, Maakhir state has unilaterally joined the federal constitution of Somalia. Though it has been startling to many outside the community, the idea is not strange to Maakhirites to either remain independent or neutralize the separatist intentions “Somaliland”.

However, dominant actors in the TFG who hail from Puntland Province seemed to have disregarded the call and placed Maakhir under the mercy of Puntland for strategic calculation. Despite the silent rejection of the TFG’s endorsement for this new state, it is within a general consensus that the creation of a number of political units within Somalia is an essential conflict resolution mechanism in order to restore the collapsed Somali Republic.  The successful implementation of the model from bottom up approach has yet to be initiated by the Transitional Federal Government.  Its feasibility, nevertheless, to resolve the cleavage between coalitions of various clans embroiled into a perpetual intra-conflict arising from the effect of what the political realists call, the security dilemma, has been questioned.

Barry Posen best illustrates the concept of the security dilemma and its theoretical underpinnings: a collective fear of physical security and wellbeing among various entities vying for power. Consequently, and in this relevant case, an intense social and military conflict is inevitable after a state collapse, where the state neither monopolizes the use of coercive actions nor guarantees the safety and social equity of its people. A sweeping natural competition for power, self-defense, control of the state, or the acquisition of state property and power is viewed to be as the clan’s greatest achievement or its greatest enemy. In this theoretical illustration, it appears to be an insurmountable hurdle to determine the political and economic feasibility of the building blocks model in order to restore the proper Somali state, but it provides the incentives to build the broken units from the bottom up.

The TFG, for instance, equally recognizes Somaliland and Puntland as accepted members of this model though both entities proclaim different political identities of self-rule and of making giant strides towards peace and security. These two administrations have benefited from the endorsement of the United Nations’ legitimacy for their states’ respective territorial jurisdictions within Somalia (known as local levels of rule). However, both political entities, took radical positions towards one another by launching proxy war against their claims on Sool and Sanaag regions due to the security dilemma concept discussed above, therefore contributing to the security and economic deterioration of Sool region and the invasion of its capital Las Anod. The region of most of Sanaag by contrast has enjoyed a relative peace. The fall of Sool to the renegade entity has now attracted sheer political mobilization among the Dhulbahante clans in the Diaspora for a collective military action in response to the military aggression of Somaliland as it is pronounced in the declaration of a Liberation Movement at a communal conference in London.

Does Somaliland have the normative legitimacy to their quest for statehood?

Only a few cases of secession from existing member states of the United Nations were legally recognized as possessing normative legitimacy for their acclaimed right to an external self-determination, and those few cases came from states or empires constitutionally arranged as federal systems. Federally arranged states partly disintegrated owing to egregious violations of their federal charters prior to their legal merge. For instance, Eritrea was an autonomous unit federated with Ethiopia under the sovereignty of Ethiopian Crown, and the ratification of their subsequent agreements was sanctioned by the U.N. Therefore, these unique territories (such as the Baltic states, Eritrea, and East Timor) under states constitutionally arranged as federal systems,  possessed legitimate struggle against annexation, not secessionim struggle because the administrations of the states with which they were federated dissolved the federal agreements protecting their religious and linguistic rights as well as their widest measure of self-government. Besides the population in these new states were demanded of absolute loyalty and to submit to other assimilationist pressures for reasons of state integrity and security.

According to Raymond C. Taras in his article Ethnic Conflict and International Norms, he captures the legal exceptions to the international normative regime on secession. “Between 1945 and 1990, many separatist movements existed, but only one-Bangladesh—succeeded. In the early 1990s, a number of successful secessions did take place, but they were mostly concentrated in Communist states that were organized as federal systems and were in the throes of collapse. (2)

Evaluating further on whether “Somaliland” had possessed the attributes of statehood based on the history of the legal merger of the two regions of Somalia, let us revisit the Covenant on the Civil and Political Rights (CCPR), and the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514(XV) of 1960, the latter was implemented through the Charter-based mechanism. In an analytical framework to the time when both British and Italian Somaliland were granted independence and merged thereafter, one would come to know whether the break-away entity of Northwestern Somalia ever transpired into a state of its own. Under article 1 of the CCPR, the subjection of peoples to alien rule and exploitation violates the UN charter, so it can be said immediate steps were taken, in non-self-governing territories (Colonies), to transfer all powers once and for all.

Article 6 of Resolution 1514(XV) also proclaims that, after the transfer of all powers in non-self-governing territories to the people concerned, disruption of the political and territorial integrity of a country formed subsequently is incompatible with the charter. As it is evident from the widespread protest demonstrated by our leaders in 1959, the Legislative Council in Hargeisa appointed a commission to represent their voted resolution passed on April 6, 1960 by the elected members of the Protectorate on their political desire and heartfelt aspiration for an independence and immediate union with Somalia(3). Britain was quick to acquiesce to such popular demands though it regretted the short interval of timing under which the responsibility of the protectorate were to be transferred to Somalia. Another important document states that widespread political protests arising from the secret liquidation of the Hawd Reserve to Imperial Ethiopia forced Britain to “accept the eventual unification of British Somaliland with Italian Somaliland,” (4).  

Whereas the newly formed state of Kosovo possessed the attributes of autonomy under federal Yugoslavia, Somaliland had possessed no such attributes of autonomous status. Kosovo had its own separate assembly, police, and bank until 1990 when Serbian rule was imposed on them that repressed the ethnic Albanians who are ethnically distinct from the Serbs. The existence of historical rivalry and animosity between the two also dates back to the Ottoman period. For instance, Muslim Albanians were in better position than the Serbs. A further root cause of their conflict was when Albanians allied with Germany and Italy during WWII in their quest for pledged “Greater Albania” during which Muslim atrocities against the ethnic Serbs occurred.

It appears, nevertheless, that the Bush administration is still perched upon its unilateralist approach on global issues, inclined to overlooking and infringing international treaties and conventions. The Pentagon system, as writes by Chomsky, has long been “the [U.S.] engine for economic growth and preserving the technological edge”(2). In my personal struggle to construct a political framework for unraveling the geopolitical mystery in the Horn of Africa is whether the United States’ foreign policy is complicit in Somalia’s protracted conflict for her potential solidification of critical interest in Somalia; of course, the U.S. considers the Middle East in which Somalia is part of as an area of vital concern.

American multinationals want to exploit Somalia’s resources by resuming, after perhaps an imposed but not mutually acceptable partition, the exploration of the untapped vast reserves of oil deposits and minerals in Sool and Sanaag regions of Somalia, mainly inhabited by the Dolbahante and Warsangeli sub-clans of Harti-Darood, respectively. However, the recent statement by the State Department lends credence to the territorial integrity and national unity of Somalia. The statement unfairly acknowledges Somaliland’s de facto status and so instructs the transfer of its  responsibility to the African Union to decide whether to bring “Somaliland” into legal existence or not. This raises the suspicion that if AU, a financially bankrupt and ineffective organization controlled by corrupt and tyrant African leaders, recognizes “Somaliland” the United States and its EU friend will follow suit, which also bypasses the fair dealing of this case by the United Nations based on the principle of non-intervention and the territorial integrity of member states.

There are official reports, confirming the existence of vast reserves of oil deposits in Sool and Sanaag regions, from American multinational corporations such as Shell and Conoco that held contracts in these two regions before declaring force majeure. For instance, in an article, “Oil hopes hinges on North Somalia” published by the Petroleum Economist on 30 October 1990, states;

“Results of analysis to date, which indicate that the region is definitely oil-prone as well as gas-prone, are to be presented at this month's meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Eastern Hemisphere group, in London. Regional connoisseurs pick out northern Somalia as particularly prospective. Exploration here dates from the turn of the century and was conducted in the former colony of British Somaliland by British and Italian geologists. The area rewarded explorers with numerous oil seeps and oil and gas shows in wells drilled in the 1960s. It is geologically analogous, in parts, to southern Yemen, on the other side of the Gulf of Aden, and almost the entire area was under licence to companies by the time hostilities with the central government broke out in 1988.”

Shifting the U.S policy from the core nucleus which holds the intricate parts of Somali unity intact will not be a practical solution but building an effective and robust central government is the panacea through the tangible support of unitary policy by taking the following steps:

• Giving pledged financial support for the implementation of the fragile civil institutions of the TFG;
• Genuine support for conflict management mechanism for the various political groups;
• and most importantly adopting and enforcing nonintervention policies in the region.

It is true and feasible, as Erich Weede argues in his much celebrated piece, “The diffusion of Prosperity and Peace by Globalization,” that “co-opting conflict-prone states into a capitalist world order” is prerequisite to the spread of democratic peace and the strengthening of global economic interdependence, which is vital to the peace and prosperity of the United States and its major allies. By restoring the Somali Republic, Ethiopia’s fears for the Greater Somalia ideology will be reassured. The United States should not be swayed that the reconstitution of a Somali state raises the specter of this ideology, which endangers the internal security of its great ally in the Horn. The concern for Democracy over security best serves the survival of U.S interests in the Horn over more competing forces in the future.   Somalis have resiliently evolved into natural capitalists and innovators over the entire duration of Somalia’s state collapse and anarchy.

Thus, if given a benign chance and nudged toward the global system, by resuscitating its collapsed state, Somalia shall demonstrate its credibility and ability to strengthen free-market institutions and policies and consequently enhance peace and security in the Horn of Africa, a region that has been extremely isolated from the rest of the world by intractable conflicts and poverty though it can be a potentially sizable market for major foreign direct investments. Will the West change their old foreign policy options or will China fill the vacuum and turn this benighted Horn of Africa nation into Dubai? Time will tell.

Mohamed A. Elmi

Email: [email protected]

San Diego, CA