In
Somalia's break-away corner, an oasis of stability
The self-declared republic of Somaliland has elections, a strong
economy, and zero tolerance for extremists or pirates. But no one
recognizes it.
Hargeisa, Somaliland - At first glance, the dusty streets of
Hargeisa look like much of the rest of Somalia. Traffic jams consist
of the occasional late-model Toyota Corolla encountering a string of
donkey carts or a slow-moving flock of goats. Roads, water pipes,
and electrical power grids have been untouched for nearly 40 years,
but the mobile phone system runs just fine, thank you.
But Hargeisa is not at all like the rest of Somalia, and according
to its elected leaders, it is the capital of an entirely separate
country: Somaliland – a country that no one besides the
Somalilanders themselves recognizes.
A self-declared independent republic since 1991 – when civil war
broke out after the fall of Somali dictator Siad Barre – Somaliland
is an oddity in the conflict-prone Horn of Africa. A multiparty
democracy with an elected president and parliament, a secular Muslim
country with no tolerance for extremism, a thriving free-market
economy with precious little foreign aid, and a strict law-and-order
state with no patience for piracy – Somaliland is exactly the kind
of country the Western world loves to embrace.
"We are the key," says Abdillahi Duale, Somaliland's foreign
minister, during a recent interview. "This is the only safe haven
you've got [in the region]. This is the only government with the
public will and muscle to deal with the issue of piracy. With
Somaliland, you have the only willing partner."
He pauses. "This is a terrible neighborhood," he says, referring to
the ongoing civil war in Somalia and the piracy in Puntland, another
self-declared republic to the east. "We are building this nation
from scratch. We are not doing this to appease others. But we need
to get the capacity [through foreign aid] if we want to sustain
this."
Unstable by association
Denied recognition by the Western powers for nearly two decades out
of fears that it would encourage breakaway movements in Darfur,
Congo, Nigeria, and elsewhere, Somaliland has created an alternative
Somali nation in slow motion, in a region with more than its fair
share of war, famine, criminality, and extremism.
Lack of recognition has very real consequences for ordinary
Somalilanders – being seen as a province of Somalia discourages
foreign investors, to say the least – but Somaliland officials say
their moment may finally have come. The rise of piracy, and the very
real threat of an Islamist takeover in the Somali capital of
Mogadishu, may be providing Somaliland with its best argument for
recognition, as a separate, stable, friendly country in the region.
A model for Somalia
"Somaliland is a melange of traditional clan elites with modern
governance," says Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somaliland expert at the
University of South Africa in Tshwane. "They have a home-grown
method to form agreements and consensus. In three months after
independence, they disarmed militias, set up a police force, began
tax collection."
In theory, Somaliland's experience – blending traditional sources of
clan authority with elected governance – could serve as a model for
Somalia itself, just as it has for the neighboring state of Puntland.
But Mr. Jhazbhay says that in the past 18 years, Somalia and
Somaliland have drifted apart. Many Somalilanders simply want to
move on with their lives, he says, and their patience is running
out. "After 18 years, you have a neglected state. You have a total
decay of the infrastructure."
'De facto' state
With 3.5 million citizens and an economy based largely on livestock
– much of it destined for markets on the Saudi Arabian peninsula –
Somaliland was once a nation easily forgotten. But Somaliland's bid
for recognition seems to be gathering steam. In the waning days of
the Bush administration, then-undersecretary of state for Africa
Jendayi Frazer visited Hargeisa. Somaliland officials were invited
this month to an EU parliament conference on "de facto states."
Even the African Union, long wary of redrawing the boundaries of
African nations, issued a report in 2005 arguing that recognition of
Somaliland "should not be linked to the notion of "opening a
pandora's box."
Islamists lay claim with bombs
There are those, of course, who are opposed to Somaliland
independence. On Oct. 29, 2008, a young Islamist – a Somali-American
from Minneapolis, named Shirwa Ahmed – drove a car packed with
explosives into the Ethiopian Embassy in Hargeisa, killing 20
people. The attack, and four others set off simultaneously by a
radical Islamist group called Al-Shabab, was viewed as a signal that
Islamists were intent on creating a Greater Somalia, by force if
necessary.
'We must go our own way'
Like many Somalilanders, Abdulkadir Hashi Elmi, a prominent
businessman, views his country's independence as "irreversible."
"The people of Somalia and Puntland were colonized by the Italians,
and during Italian rule they were trained to rule in the Italian
way," he says with a wry smile.
But while Italian settlers profoundly changed Somali culture in
Somalia itself, he says, Somaliland was left largely untouched
during a period of British rule, because the British largely allowed
clan elders to run their own affairs until independence in 1960.
"Somalia will be difficult for years to come, because now nothing is
in their hands, it is in the hands of the warlords," says Mr. Elmi,
who owns the Maan-Soor Hotel in Hargeisa. "Somalia doesn't have any
hope to recover, not in our generation. That's why we must go our
own way."
Abdaillahi Ismail Ali, Somaliland's interior minister, says that his
country is happy to provide a model for its neighbors and to provide
a forum for clan leaders in Somalia to resolve disputes the
old-fashioned way, through consensus. But Somalia can forget about
taking Somaliland back, he adds.
"We believe – every Somalilander believes – that we cannot be
reunited with Somalia," he says. "We had hopes of making a Greater
Somalia, but that dream died. We realized that whenever we try, we
always get shot."
Source: By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
|