TO: CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
SOMALILAND RECOGNITION IS THE
SOLUTION OF THE SOMALI PROBLEM
The international community has made several brave
efforts to rescue and reconstruct the disin
tegrated State of Somalia. All these brave efforts had
however failed and Somali proper still lies in ruins and
is still a theatre for marauding warring militants. All
the experts, the political analysis’s and the
experienced anthropologists called to help, have in
their turn also failed to diagnose accu rately the
causes of the dilemma.
These experts have for the first time came up against
native problems, which defied their pet the ories,
their quaint conclusions and their misinterpretation of
the abstract indices of native cultures.
The poor eminent men and women could not admit that all
their learned treaties were wrong, it w as 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 mu st 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 administration took over all
the Somali inhabited territories in the Horn of Africa.
For the first time in one hundred yea rs the
Somali people were under one common administration, with
a common currency and a com mon tariff. With the
help of the huge military expending of the conquering
British forces, there wa s 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 proposed an expan ded
British Protectorate over all the Somali territories
except the French Somali Coast; as the pre sent
Republic of Djibouti was known then. The proposal never
found support in the council of the great victorious
powers but the Somali clung to their hope and Greater
Somalia was over since th en the centerpiece of
their political aspirations.
In 1960 British Somaliland Protectorate and the Italian
Trust territory of Somalia gained their ind
ependence and immediately united as the first step
towards Greater Somalia. In 1963 the third st ep
was almost taken when the British conservative
Government of Harold Macmillan showed some sympathy and
undertook to ascertain the wishes of the people of the
NFD, Kenya and promised to act according to those
wishes. Then an alarmed emperor of Ethiopia appealed to
President Kenne dy and a phone call from the Oval
Office in the White House to No 10 Downing Street upset
the So malis for good. Consequently a disappointed
and a bitter Somalia took up unrelenting
confrontati on with its neighbors and Horn of Africa had
never known peace or constructive development.
Eventually the rebellion against the Siyad Barre
Dictatorship broke the spell of extreme nationalis
m.
Now all the great powers, the AU, and the Government of
the Horn of Africa countries, who is the 1960s denied
Greater Somalia and made it into a pernicious concept,
are now talking in a confused ambivalence about the
Territorial integrity of Somalia. The Territorial
integrity of the Democratic Republic, which was ruled by
Mohamed Siad Barre “Af-Weyne”, is that of Greater
Somalia but the Territorial integrity 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 politics of
the Nile River must not be allowed to bedevil the Somali
reconciliation and the Ethiopian ambivalence over
Somalia and Greater Somalia must be resolved. A
truncated Greater Somalia composed of the former Italian
colony and the British Protectorate is impractical and
unacceptable.
What then? I am proposes that if the Territorial
integrity of the Democratic Republic of Somalia is to be
preserved, then I am asking that the Government of
United States of America, The Governm ent of UK,
and the Government of the Republic of South Africa
should form a panel to organize the formation 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 prob lem 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 everlasting peace to the Horn of
Africa. We abjectly beg this Government to pit y
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 in Africa, the nation of any other
territorial integrity is a blasphemy, under such
circumstance SOMALILAND DEMANDS RECOGNITION of its
sovereignty and resents vehemently and equation of
itself with the factions of Somalia.
ANIIS A ESSA…..DIRECTOR
SOMALILAND ADVOCACY GROUP
WASHINGTON DC.
ANIIS@YAHOO.COM
|
