DEMAND OF
RECOGNITION
SOMALILAND

The international community has made several brave
efforts to rescue and recons truct the disintegrated
State of Somalia. All these brave efforts had however
fail ed and Somali proper still lies in ruins and is
still a theatre for marauding warring mi litants. All the
experts, the political analysis’s and the experienced
anthropologists called to help, have in their turn also
failed to diagnose accurately the causes of th e dilemma.
These experts have for the first time came up against
native problems, which defie d their pet theories, their
quaint conclusions and their misinterpretation of the
abs tract indices of native cultures.
The poor eminent men and women could not admit that all
their learned treaties w ere wrong, it was more
convenient to accuse the leopard of changing its spots.
The search for a solution of the Somali problem was
always dogged by anomalies and ambivalences, which in
one form or another emasculated every reconciliation
effort. To understand those anomalies and ambivalences
we must go back to the recent history of the Horn of
Africa.
In 1943 after the defeat of the Italian Colonies in East
Africa a British Military adm inistration took over all
the Somali inhabited territories in the Horn of Africa.
For th e first time in one hundred years the Somali
people were under one common admi nistration, with a
common currency and a common tariff. With the help of
the huge military expending of the conquering British
forces, there was an unprecedented boom in the Somali
territories. The idea of remaining united and holding on
to this bonanza of the union took hold over the minds of
Somali leaders.
The British Labor government of the time welcomed the
Somali aspirations and pro posed an expanded British
Protectorate over all the Somali territories except the
French Somali Coast; as the present Republic of Djibouti
was known then. The prop osal never found support in the
council of the great victorious powers but the Som ali
clung to their hope and Greater Somalia was over since
then the centerpiece of their political aspirations.
In 1960 British Somaliland Protectorate and the Italian
Trust territory of Somalia g ained their independence and
immediately united as the first step towards Greater
Somalia. In 1963 the third step was almost taken when
the British conservative G overnment of Harold Macmillan
showed some sympathy and undertook to ascertai n the
wishes of the people of the NFD, Kenya and promised to
act according to tho se wishes. Then an alarmed emperor
of Ethiopia appealed to President Kennedy an d a phone
call from the Oval Office in the White House to No 10
Downing Street up set the Somalis for good. Consequently
a disappointed and a bitter Somalia took up unrelenting
confrontation with its neighbors and Horn of Africa had
never known p eace or constructive development.
Eventually the rebellion against the Siyad Barre
Dictatorship broke the spell of extreme nationalism.
Now all the great powers, the AU, and the Government of
the Horn of Africa coun tries, who is the 1960s denied
Greater Somalia and made it into a pernicious conc ept,
are now talking in a confused ambivalence about the
Territorial integrity of So malia. The Territorial
integrity of the Democratic Republic, which was ruled by
Moh amed Siad Barre “Af-Weyne”, is that of Greater
Somalia but the Territorial integrit y of Somali is that
Territory which was once an Italian Colony. What is
required for the solution of the Somali Problem is
clarity of objectives and expressions. The polit ics of
the Nile River must not be allowed to bedevil the Somali
reconciliation and th e Ethiopian ambivalence over
Somalia and Greater Somalia must be resolved. A
tru ncated Greater Somalia composed of the former Italian
colony and the British Prot ectorate is impractical and
unacceptable.
What then? I am proposes that if the Territorial
integrity of the Democratic Repu blic of Somalia is to be
preserved, then I am asking that the Government of
United States of America, the Government of France, The
Government of UK, and the Gove rnment of the Republic of
South Africa should form a panel to organize the
format ion of a state of the Somali inhabited Territories
in the Horn of Africa. Then were a golden opportunity,
which was missed in 1960, and a humanitarian mission of
the first category. The problem of the warning factions
will immediately evaporated at the moment this mission
is announced and a new grateful nation will appear in
the Horn of Africa, bringing constructive contributions
to the region and an everlastin g peace to the Horn of
Africa. We abjectly beg this Government to pity the
agony of this tortured nation and to do the right thing
at long last.
Without embracing this noble scheme of building the only
homogeneous nation if A frica, the nation of any other
territorial integrity is a blasphemy, under such
circ umstance
SOMALILAND DEMANDS RECOGNITION of its
sovereignty and resents veh emently and equation of
itself with the factions of Somalia.
ANIIS A ESSA.
SOMALILAND ADVOCACY GROUP
WASHINGTON DC
ANIIS@YAHOO.COM
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