Northern Somali Unionist Movement (NSUM)

Somaliland: America’s underestimated friend: A rejoinder
NSUM  Executive Committee
March 29, 2010

Bashir Goth's eloquent article in WardheerNews(WDN) with the above title may make excellent reading but that is all that one can say for it. As usual, he gives free rein to his proclivity for exaggerations, brazen distortions or fabrications, oversimplifications and reprehensible historical revisionism in his media crusade for Somaliland's recognition. Each time he is on this subject, you can expect him to recycle the same hackneyed mantra about the one-clan dominated secessionist enclave calling itself Somaliland.

In a VOA programme last year on the anniversary of Somaliland's independence from Britain on 26 June 1960, readers will recall his unabashed baseless assertion that it was recognised by over 30 countries on independence day, that its borders are still inviolable and recognised as such by the African Union even if Somaliland ceased to exist as a separate entity once it joined Italian Somaliland on the first of July 1960, and that in proclaiming the secession of the NW region from Somalia in May 1991 they were doing nothing more than exercising their right to reclaim their sovereignty. All these groundless and contradictory claims have been rubbished as hogwash by various knowledgeable writers in WDN, but Bashir, clearly, is not one to bow to facts even when these stare him right in his face.

As if he was talking to a bunch of uninformed illiterates, Bashir's audacity goes over the top when he comes up with what is patently half truths or downright fabrications about the suffering in the north under Siyad Barre's regime or Somaliland's independence and how it joined the United Nations on independence day. This is what he has to say:

"Somaliland [is] a country that gained its independence from Britain in 1960 and has become a full member of the United Nations before it joined the Italian colonized South in a union that brought them only destruction and misery. Almost 30 years after the union, the former British Protectorate of Somaliland walked away from the union with their towns destroyed, their infrastructure in tatters and their whole population in refugee camps".

The above quoted extract is symptomatic of Bashir's disposition for historical revisionism and reprehensible distortions of the facts. Surely, not all the towns in the  north were destroyed but mainly Hargeisa in which the armed secessionist rebels (SNM) were as much responsible for all material and human collateral damage as the Somali army. And not the whole populations of the NW region (Somaliland) were in refugee camps but mainly those fleeing the fighting in Hargeisa. And not all the refugees were those who fled the fighting between the SNM and the Somali army but most were those who run away from the bloody inter-clan fighting for power in the enclave in the early 1990s.

But when it comes to Bashir's record for baseless fabrications, it is his claim that Somaliland has " become a full member of the United Nations before it joined the Italian colonized South in a union" which beats all. It is a prerequisite for any country wishing to become a member of the United Nations to follow certain procedures: First the state needs to submit an application to the Secretary General and a formal declaration which states that it accepts the obligations under the UN Charter. Then, the Security Council first considers the application. This application needs affirmative votes of nine out of the 15 members of the Security Council. Assuming this has been realised, and that none of the five permanent members has vetoed it, the recommendation is then presented to the General Assembly, once it is passed on by the Council. Two third majorities of the members of the General assembly is necessary for admission of a new state and membership is successful only from the date when the admission is adopted.

None of the above steps took place in the case of Somaliland for the simple reason that the newly independent country never wanted to be a member of the UN but only to unite with Italian Somaliland. It is important to bear in mind that it was Somalia as a united country which sought admission to the UN and that was granted by the General Assembly on 20 September 1960.

In persisting with their unfounded claims which they want to be ultimately believed, Bashir and like-minded die-hard secessionists are taking their cue from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's war-time Minister of propaganda for whom the art of maintaining big lies were indispensable to winning over ones opponents. Here is what Joseph Goebbels had to say:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

In the case of the secessionist enclave, the separatists have been feeding all sorts of lies to their people and the international community. Three big lies, apart from those listed earlier, underpin the secessionist claim for recognition. The first is that the population hailing from former British Somaliland are bound by common bonds that separate them historically, culturally and ethnically from the rest of the population of Somalia to the extent they constitute a separate people; The second and far more important big lie is that all the clans and regions in the NW region (Somaliland) are united in wishing to secede from the rest of Somalia; and the third lie is that the northerners, in contrast to what they scornfully see as the feuding savages in the south, have always been peaceful, law-abiding, responsible and progressive.

To counter Bashir and the secessionist's false assertions, there is no specific bond among the clans in former British Somaliland that would set them apart from those in ex-Italian Somaliland or for that matter those in the rest of the Somali territories in the Horn of Africa other than that they were colonised by the British and the others by different colonial powers - European and African. On the contrary, most of the clans in former British Somaliland, far from having exclusive binding bonds amongst them, have stronger blood ties with their kith and kin clans across the colonial borders.

Reference to history is instructive for better understanding the genesis of the territory as a British colony. While all other clans in the territory agreed through treaties to British colonisation, those in Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) regions resisted British colonial rule for over 21 years through the Darwiish liberation struggle. And even if they were finally militarily defeated, they never formally signed to British colonisation as other clans did. Other than this imposed common colonial experience, no exclusive ethnical, cultural, or religious ties bind the clans in the NW Somalia (former British Somaliland).

Once the end of colonisation was on the horizon, the different clans faced a number of choices about their future: first, each clan had the right, if it so wished, to go its own way and return to its pre-colonial separate existence; secondly, the clans could join together and form a new independent nation as happened in most other African colonies; or thirdly, they could agree to unite with Italian Somaliland in order to fulfil Greater Somalia aspirations. It was on the latter option that the clans agreed upon and it was on this basis that Britain ended its colonisation on the evening of 26 June 1960 when the national flag of Somalia was raised for the first time on any independent Somali soil and the national anthem played. Contrary to secessionist lies, no single country recognized Somaliland on this occasion for the simple reason that there was no point to do so when the territory was going to unite with Italian Somaliland in 4 days time and it was the upcoming united country that the international community was waiting to recognise.

Just as the choice of uniting with Italian Somaliland, and not a separate independent Somaliland, was subject to the common agreement of all the clans of British Somaliland, so equally it would require their common accord to secede from the union- assuming any Somali government of the day would in the first place endorse in principle the break-up of the country. As is clear from his articles, Bashsir (and other secessionists) would never miss an opportunity to propagate the big lie that all the clans were, and still are, united in wishing to secede from Somalia. The reality is that only one clan among the five clans in NW Somalia is committed to this treason against Somalia.

Certainly, the SSC regions, whose population and the size of their regions constitute close to a third and a half respectively of the population and geographical area of former British Somaliland, had nothing to do with the secession. The fact that the secessionist enclave could only secure control over the SSC regions not by consent but through invasion and occupation in October 2007, resulting in the displacement of over 100,000 people, including all the traditional leaders, can only send an unmistakable irrefutable message to the international community and not Bashir's cynical claims. Only this month, the traditional leaders had been meeting in Buurawadal, in Sool region, in order to work out a strategy and plan of action to liberate SSC from the invaders.

Apart from the SSC regions, the overwhelming majority of the people in the Awdal region are also unionists who also succumbed to the might of the one-clan dominated SNM militia. The few Awdalites who presently associate themselves with the secession for the financial or other benefits they milk from Riyale's presidency, an Awdalite, are bound to renounce or desert it once the presidency passes on again to the dominant pro-secession clan. Indisputably, it is not all the clans or peoples of NW Somalia who opted for secession; it is rather one clan that has hijacked all the other clans to fall into line, using the arms left over by the disintegrated Somali national army.

The third big lie is that while the south (Ex-Italian Somaliland) is terminally doomed and consumed by its endless irreconcilable conflict, the NW (Somaliland) is by contrast an oasis of peace, democracy and development and deserves reward and recognition. This positive picture is patently overhyped. Memories may be short and secessionists may chose enforced amnesia, but the enclave had its share of clan wars in the early 1990s and only the blinkered will assume the permanency of the current lull. Things are simmering below surface and it only takes a spark to set the place ablaze. An imminent war of liberating the occupied SSC regions is on the horizon as is a dispute over the outcome of the forthcoming elections could lead to bitter clan fighting and the collapse and disintegration of the whole Somaliland edifice.

Equally, the bleak portrayal of the south is grossly exaggerated. It may be true of Mogadishu but the capital does not represent the whole south. The record of Puntland in every aspect is as good if not better than that of Somaliland. The fact that pirates are roaming the high seas does not detract anything from this record. Puntland does not encourage the pirates and cannot be held responsible for the failures of the international community within Somalia and beyond its shores

Having realised that all their above unsustainable lies all these years have failed to make headway with the international community, the secessionists have fallen back on their final last cards: peddling the area's geopolitical importance to any interested country in exchange for recognition. This was the rationale in turning the area to a virtual Ethiopian satellite. France and other powers had been overwhelmed with overtures to establish bases in Berbera and along the Red Sea. It volunteered to join the war on terror on the side of Ethiopia and the USA. Numerous Ogaden refugees or residents in Hargeisa were shamelessly handed to Ethiopia as suspected supporters or members of ONLF. Israel too is the latest country to be wooed to establish air and naval facilities along the Red Sea in exchange for recognition The last offer in this sordid striptease is the one offered by Bashir in his article that Somaliland is ready to take up arms against the spread of Islam as if Islam was responsible for terror when in reality terror was the result of the injustices inflicted on Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere.

What most readers may not be aware of is that Bashir was at one time a passionate committed Somali patriot and unionist as his earlier writings attest to. In one of his writings, he devoted one chapter to what he saw as the greatest historical threat within the Somalis to Somali unity and nationhood.  Calling this threat: "The Isaaq:  Somalia's troublesome child" this is what he has to say:

"As Somalis strived towards the idea of nationhood, it has been the Isaq clan that stood alone in resisting the unity of the Somali people....The Derwish Movement, led by Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, started the first patriotic struggle against the colonialists. This nationalist movement which entered a long and bloody war with three foreign powers, namely the British, the Italians and the Ethiopian kingdom, would have been victorious if the Isaq clan did not conspire against it with the British administration"

Concluding this chapter, this is how Bashir ended:

"The unity of Somalia is one which is based on people having having one culture, one language, one religion and one national integrity. And no single clan however powerful they assume themselves to be will ever be able to nudge let alone move the mountain of Somali nationalism"

Few readers will ever believe that the Bashir who wrote this chapter is the same one who wrote the article in WDN. People do sometimes go astray or crazy or whatever. This may be the case with Bashir and all we can hope for him is that may Allah bring him back on the right path.

O. H. Omar
NSUM Excecutive Committee
Web: www.n-sum.org
Email:admin@n-sum.org
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