Senior Journalist Slams Ageing Politicians of Somaliland Administration

[Deeq A.]

Gatekeepers: From left — the incumbent Somaliland administration president Abdirahman Irro, Muse Bihi, Mohamed Kahin, former interior minister, and Saleban M. Adam, the Speaker of the Elders’ Council.

Hargeisa (PP Report) — A senior journalist in Hargeisa criticised septuagenarian and octogenarian politicians of the Somaliland administration for being out of touch with the political realities of the Horn of Africa. “They pursued a quixotic secessionist war in the North, only to underscore the presence of a strong unionist constituency in what was once known as the ex-British Somaliland,” said the journalist.

The Somaliland administration had been banking on strong support from Mogadishu elites, who entertained North-South dialogue as a means to isolate Puntland State of Somalia. Muse Bihi Abdi, the former President of Somaliland administration, realised that Mogadishu viewed the secessionist administration as being in a weaker position after the Goja’dde defeat. As a face-saving measure, Bihi agreed to a hastily arranged summit in Djibouti to revive past Mogadishu-Hargeisa agreements. He leveraged the clause on the “non-politicisation of aid” as a stepping stone to signing a maritime Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopia, in an attempt to grant the landlocked country a naval base.

The maritime MoU underscored Bihi’s wiliness, as he inadvertently triggered a geopolitical crisis that gave Egypt a much sought-after foothold in Somalia. Ethiopia was eventually forced to withdraw from the MoU after intense diplomatic pressure from Somalia.

President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, Bihi’s successor, has treaded carefully, despite comments from his foreign minister, who implied in an interview with an Israeli radio station that the Somaliland administration would consider resettling Palestinians in the territories in North Somalia.” 

Unlike Mogadishu, which underwent an abrupt generational shift following the Union of Islamic Courts’ defeat of a coalition of warlords funded by the United States — paving the way for the emergence of a quasi-religious political class in 2006 — Hargeisa remains unable to disentangle itself from the grip of political leaders who worked with the pre-1991 military regime and the Somali National Movement (SNM), the former armed opposition  to the regime. “The incumbent president of Somaliland was a senior diplomat in the Somali government before 1991; his predecessor was a colonel in the Somali army and later a senior member of the SNM, which he joined after defecting in the early 1980s; and the speaker of the Elders’ Council, Saleban Mohamud Adam, had served as a deputy education minister in the Somali government before joining the SNM in the late 1980s” a researcher in Hargeisa told Puntland Post.

Even in Puntland State of Somalia, a discernible generational shift has taken place, with the vanguard leaders who founded Puntland being replaced by a new generation of politicians.

Secessionist arguments, often based on legally indefensible claims—such as the inviolability of colonial borders under the African Union Charter—fail to hold weight when measured against the sound legal principles upon which the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia rests. “The ageing politicians of the Somaliland administration should not burden the younger generation with fatuous political commitments that undermine the political and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia” the researcher said. 

© Puntland Post, 2025

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