Charles Tannock’s Appeal to Meles Zenewi to Recognise Somaliland: A Response
| Charles Tannock’s Appeal to Meles Zenewi to Recognise Somaliland: A Response By Osman Hassan  September 07, 2011 |
Charles Tannock MEP, European Conservatives and Reformists group foreign affairs spokesman, said on the first of September at a meeting in Addis Ababa with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi that “Ethiopia should take the lead and declare Somaliland – the former British protectorate breakaway region within the state of Somalia – an independent sovereign state”.
Mr. Tannock is a well-known and long-standing supporter of the one clan based secessionist enclave calling itself Somaliland. His call for its recognition as such will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with his campaign to dismember Somalia. This is something he had aired ad nauseam in the past. What is surprising this time though is his audacity to lecture, of all people, to the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenewi- a man in charge of a nation of over 80 million souls and the last man who needs a sermon about what is in the best interest of his country, least of all when it comes to rewarding secessionist renegades in his backyard.
Needless to say, Meles Zenewi would have recognised Somaliland long time ago without Mr Tannock’s prompting if he thought the benefits to be gained would outweigh the considerable and costless dividends he is currently drawing from Somaliland’s unrecognised status as well as the adverse domino consequences that Somaliland’s recognition is bound to precipitate in his own home country and beyond in East Africa. Nothing would come as a boon to his own restive separatist regions more than Ethiopia recognising Somaliland.
Given these considerations, it is clear that Meles Zenewai correctly calculates that the prevailing status quo, in which the enclave is firmly under his thumb, serves Ethiopia’s interests better than an independent recognised Somaliland that is unlikely to remain compliant once it got its recognition and has no reason any longer to be in hock to its Ethiopian minder. In a nutshell, nothing could be more dangerous to Ethiopia’s own stability and territorial integrity than an independent Somaliland. That is the gamble that Mr. Tannock wants Meles Zenewi to take.
In pushing for Somaliland’s recognition, it is not Ethiopia or Somaliland’s interests that Mr. Tannock has at heart, but the wider benefits the west will gain from a separate independent Somaliland that will put all its strategic assets, land and sea, at their disposal. Ethiopia is merely a Trojan horse that, as he openly reckons, will encourage other African countries to follow its lead. Mr Zenewi, whatever else he may be, is no fool and the fools are those who take him for a fool and think they can outsmart him.
No less incredible is Mr. Tannock’s legal basis to justify Somalia’s dismemberment, an unforgivable act pioneered in the first place by his country in the 19th and 20th Century. Recycling the hackneyed secessionists’ mantra, he contends disingenuously that Somaliland’s claim for recognition is “legally a case of re-recognition rather than recognition after Hargeisa, much to its subsequent regret, joined the former Italian Somalia in the south for an unhappy marriage which lasted until 1991. ¨
This is an insult to our intelligence for a country that has not been recognised in the first place and ceased to exist as a separate country could not be re-recognised again. It is one thing when secessionist historical revisionists disseminate such baseless claims, but it is another thing when someone of Mr Tannock credentials echoes such banalities. Mr Tannock’ needs to be reminded, if he does not know already, that Somaliland’s five clans sought independence from Great Britain in May 1960 not to be a separate independent country to be recognised as such by the international community but for the sole purpose of uniting with their brethren in Italian Somaliland immediately on their independence. It was on that basis that Great Britain granted independence to its colony on 26 June 1960, leading to its union with Italian Somaliland five days later, on the 1 of July 1960.
The international community saw no point in recognising a country that was to remain independent for only 5 days and thereafter become an integral part of the united Somali Republic. It’s Somalia, as a united country, that the international community recognised on the 1 of July 1960 in which the former British territory became permanently an integral part of it. The stance of the international community has not changed to the present day, and is unlike to change in the future whatever conspiracies Somalia’s enemies may contemplate.
Mr. Tannock’s statement about Hargeisa’s “unhappy marriage with Italian Somaliland” and its “regrets about the union” would be true if and only if that is to apply to the position of the secessionist clan for whom Hargeisa is their citadel. Otherwise, he would be guilty of gross and reprehensible misrepresentation to imply that all the other four unionist clans and their regions in the territory share this un-Somali and treacherous sentiment. Needless to say, the unionist regions and clans are as ardently committed today to the union as they were from the first day of union in July 1960. The proof is their on-going struggle to free themselves from Hargeisa’s illegal occupation in order to remain part and parcel of Somalia.
Mr Tannock’s statement that “Somaliland is…..a nation with a small cohesive population and which has strong economic prospects with unexplored possible significant oil and gas resources…..” may contain an element of truth but is otherwise bogus. For a start, Mr Tannock throws whatever credibility he has out of the window when he confers the status of a nation on a one clan secessionist enclave that in the eyes of the international community is part of the wider Somali nation and the Somali State.
As for the claim of a “cohesive population” in the former British territory, suffice it to say that nothing could be farther from the truth. No objective observer could attribute such blatantly false picture to the present realities in the territory. The secessionist invasion and occupation of recalcitrant unionist regions and the consequent on-going armed struggle in the regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) attest to the widening divide between the four unionist regions and clans on one side and their secessionist antagonists.
Somaliland’s crimes in the SSC regions (and to some extent in the Awdal region), eclipse any committed by the former colonial power even in its worst days. Under the secessionist occupation, numerous SSC nomads have been killed, thousands displaced, countless imprisoned, access to humanitarian aid siphoned off or blocked, curfews routinely imposed as collective punishment for opposing the secession and occupation. These actions are not symptomatic of peace and stability nor of a cohesive united people in the territory. Far from being cohesive, the unionist regions, in their endeavour to distance themselves from the secessionist enclave, have set up, or are in the process of establishing, their own regional administrations to join existing ones in Somalia, such Puntland, Galmudug, etc.
In terms of economic prospects, it t is true as Mr Tannock points out, that unexploited oil and gas resources remain to be tapped in the north (as elsewhere in southern Somalia). But these unexploited resources are in the unionist regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) and as such they belong first and foremost to its people and secondly to the people of Somalia. Period! Those who exclude themselves from Somalia also exclude themselves from its bonanza and blessings.
Going over the top in his specious portrayal of Somaliland, Mr. Tannock claims that the enclave is ” is a relatively peaceful, stable……polity, a world away from the failed state of Somalia where the TFG’s remit barely reaches beyond Mogadishu and which still faces the brutality of the Al-Shabab insurgency….” As mentioned before, the on-going conflict with the SSC regions (and Awadal region) puts to rest this purported “peaceful and stable” polity.
As for the Somaliland being a world away from Al Shabaab, Mr. Tannock may be uninformed, or his memory may be short, but he should be reminded of the bombings in Hargeisa in October 2008 by Al Shabaab suicide bombers. The Islamist Jihadists has widespread support in the enclave. It’s leader and many of its veterans hail from Hargeisa. It is has been their strategy to conquer the south first and subsequently the north, thereby completing their control over the whole of Somalia. Any recognition conferred on Somaliland by any country, more so by Ethiopia who most Somalis see as their arch enemy, will be for Al Shabab like a red rag to a bull and they are bound to give a religious spin to the conflict and forcefully intervene. It is Mr. Tannock who is a world away from the realities in Somalia’s northern regions.
To sum up, the recognition of “Somaliland”, as claimed as a territory by the secessionists, would lead them no where except to fan the flames of the ongoing conflict and usher incalculable dangers to the region and beyond. To be sure, the unionist clans and regions will never accept to be part of a “Somaliland” that is independent and separate from Somalia. All such recognition will do is galvanise their struggle to use all legitimate means at their disposal to defend their inalienable right to remain in Somalia in conformity with international law. It is difficult to believe that the west will be so misguided as to entertain the recognition of such a puny, barren and unsustainable enclave which can only open the flood gates to the Balkanisation of Somalia with a host of other clan-based “Somalilands” likely to mushroom all over the country. That is the road to more conflict and instability, to say nothing of the Pandora box domino it is bound to trigger elsewhere in Africa. Only the enemies of Somalia can wish or contribute to such an outcome. Mr. Charless Tannock, Clearly, is one of them.
Osman Hassan
External Relations Commission
Sool, Sanaag and Cayn Regions of Somalia
Email: osman.hassan2@gmail.com