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Politics:

Peace Talks Are Against the ‘Unity of Somalis

HAN "Djibouti Monitering
Dr. Ahmed yasin
Geeska Afrika Magazine

Sources • Special to Arab News

JEDDAH, 15 August 2003 — The president of Somalia’s Transitional National Government (TNG), Abdi Qassim Salad Hassan, has said that the Somali peace talks go against the unity, aspirations and beliefs of the Somalis, media reports said. He has reiterated his rejection of an accord reached on July 5 by Somali parties attending the present peace talks in Kenya. The talks are sponsored by an East African body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, Hassan said he was suspending participation in the talks, saying the IGAD technical committee had authorized the partition of the country. The TNG president was referring to the northern breakaway region of Somaliland. The region seceded and declared itself the sovereign republic of Somaliland after the downfall of the Somali government in 1991. Since then, it has boycotted all Somali peace talks.

“Contrary to the wishes of the Somali people, the technical committee has unilaterally decided to exclude (northern) regions from the conference, which amounts to the dismemberment of the Somali Republic. The conference is against the unity, aspirations and beliefs of the Somali people. I have no option but to suspend our participation in the conference until the issues we mentioned are satisfactorily addressed,” Hassan said.

Under the July 5 accord, the Somali faction leaders and the TNG representatives attending the talks agreed to form an interim federal government and a new parliament for Somalia. The TNG president has already opposed the decision in which traditional clan-elders would select the members of the parliament. Salad has accused his Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah, who was the TNG’s chief negotiator in the peace talks, of signing the accord without consulting him. The TNG was formed in Djibouti in 2000 during another round of peace talks. Its mandate expires on Aug. 26.

*** The Brussels-based think-tank the International Crisis Group (ICG) has noted in a report that the demand of the northern region of a breakaway Somaliland for recognition presented the international community with stark choices.

“Recent developments have made the choice faced by the international community considerably clearer: Develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland’s demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic — a course of action almost certain to open a new chapter in the Somali civil war,” noted the report, which was published on the ICG Website on Tuesday.

Any attempt to coerce Somaliland back to the Somali fold, says the report, would entail a bitter and probably futile conflict. “The question now confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives,” it stressed.

Seek local solutions to Somalia crisis

Thursday, August 14, 2003

SAM MAKINDA / PEACE TALKS

After more than 12 years without a government following the departure of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, there is no doubt the people of Somalia desperately long for peace, order and security. The negotiations taking place in Nairobi, under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)'s technical committee, are expected to provide a blueprint.

Since last November, Kenyan diplomat Bethwell Kiplagat, who chairs the talks, and his counterparts from Ethiopia and Djibouti have made great efforts to persuade the delegates to accept a particular formula.

However, the July 30 walkout by the president of the Transitional National Government, Mr Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, followed by another on August 7 by a Mogadishu-based political leader, Mr Muse Sudi Yalahow, are symptoms of the rough road ahead. The Kiplagat committee and other sponsors would be justified to argue that these two leaders, and others unhappy with the draft charter, should not be allowed to veto or slow down the negotiations.

Indeed, the UN Secretary-General's special representative to Somalia, Mr Winston Tubman, has been quoted as saying the process will go ahead even without some of these key players. This begs the question: Whose peace, then, will it be?

If the intention is to create a workable political formula, the UN and the rest of the international society have to recognise that the Somali problem is extremely complex and requires considerable patience. IGAD and overseas sponsors, including the UN, are justified to be impatient and demand visible progress. Yet it is better for them to delay and produce a sound agreement than to go ahead with something guaranteed to fail. If the draft charter is rejected by key sections of the Somali society, the international community will have let down the people once again. It should be recognised that for a formula to work effectively, the people have to believe they own it.

IGAD, the UN and the international society as a whole need to rethink their strategies, their understanding of the current Somali borders and the role of clans and clan elders in the political structure.

In Seeking Peace from Chaos: Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia, I proposed a federation of clans for Somalia, arguing that clans could play the role of the Swiss cantons.

Prior to its publication, 10 years ago, I had discussed the proposal with one of the UN envoys to Somalia who thought it was brilliant, but he was overruled by his bosses in New York. The problems the IGAD committee faces are enormous. But, with a proper approach, they can be surmounted. One of them is that the TNG, under President Hassan, lacks popular legitimacy. It controls only a fraction of the country. Another major problem relates to the self-declared republics of Somaliland and Puntland, governing themselves effectively for many years. But the international society does not recognise them. The most difficult and sensitive issue relates to Somalia's history between 1960 and 1990. Before independence, Somalia was composed of two colonies, British and Italian Somalilands, which united in 1960.

The issue that held the two parts of Somalia together was irredentism– the desire to unite with those parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti inhabited by ethnic Somali – "Somalia Irredenta" ("unredeemed Somalia") – into a greater entity. As soon as this goal was abandoned in the 1980s, Somalia started to disintegrate. By the late 1980s, Somalia's cabinet under Siad Barre functioned like a federation of clans, with no desire to work for a common goal.

Even the armed forces were divided along clans lines, and new recruits were often sent to units commanded by people from their own clans. The point is that the Somalia that existed between 1960 and 1990 was not at peace with its identity. Therefore, those who seek to reconstruct a new Somalia from the ruins of the 1990s have a hard task ahead.

Whatever constitutional formula Mr Kiplagat and his team come up with, it must recognise the history and structure of Somalia's segmented society.

Prof Makinda, a former Nation editor, teaches at Perth University, Australia

General assignments reporter and can be reached Through HAN Email Edited by, Dr. Ahmed Yasin -HAN News Group.