Somaliland Success: Africa’s Big Secret

Abdiyare · August 6, 2003

Iqbal Jhazbhay • Special to Arab News

Some major African players are taking a new look at Somaliland, that state on the strategic Horn of Africa that continues to pay the political and economic price for declaring independence twice, in 1960 and 1991.

Somaliland is labeled as a “breakaway state” by some analysts, while others describe its success as “the little country that could.” In fact, it did nothing more than end a union it had entered into as a sovereign independent state, and has since pulled itself up by its own bootstraps.

Recently, Senegal, the European Union and Somaliland’s neighbor Ethiopia have shown promising signs of wanting to end the impasse. Ethiopia played host to Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin on a state visit late last year, and President Wade of Senegal also recently welcomed the Somaliland president. A South African delegation paid a fact-finding visit to Somaliland in January 2003 and declared it to be “a challenge rather than a problem for the African Union.”

Geographically Somaliland, an area of 137,600 square kilometers, forms the top of the figure seven made by the Horn of Africa. It is roughly the size of England and Wales. It was formerly British Somaliland while Somalia — the bottom of the seven — was an Italian colony. Both colonies gained independence in 1960. Somaliland decided shortly after independence to form a union with the south. Before taking this step, however, it had already been recognized by 35 countries. The partnership was decidedly biased in favor of the south.

When southerner Siad Barre took power in a coup he brutally crushed northern opposition. This included flattening the Somaliland capital of Hargeisa, using a combination of artillery, South African mercenaries and bomber aircraft that took off from the airport on the outskirts of the city. On the outskirts of the capital lie a number of UN-acknowledged mass graves as testimony to southern brutality.

After Barre’s fall in 1991, the Somalilanders wasted no time in ending the union with the south. After months of deliberations attended by many sectors of society, the grand conference of Burco as well as the second conference at Borama revoked the act of union and reinstated the independence their territory had previously enjoyed.

This action raised hackles in the then Organization of African Unity, ever nervous about secession and determined, for better or worse, to maintain colonial boundaries. In fact, Somaliland’s declaration of independence transgressed neither of these. The country was not breaking some pre-independence bond with the south. It was merely breaking a union that it had entered into as an independent state, for which there are numerous African precedents. Somaliland has not violated colonial boundaries. It has occupied no more than that territory once occupied by the British and recognized as independent in 1960 by the international community.

Not only are Somalilanders disenchanted with the uneven arrangement and traumatized by the civil war that killed more than 50,000 of their compatriots and displaced 500,000, but they see no inducement to return to formal ties with what is to all intents and purposes an anarchic state. The rebuilding of Hargeisa, which Barre reduced to rubble and turned into a minefield, has happened without assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The economic development has been largely supported by Somalilanders working abroad. Proven oil reserves, coal and gemstone mining, livestock and fisheries production, remain untapped.

More importantly Somaliland has built a strong democratic society that seamlessly passed the test last year with the death of President Mohamed Egal. Within hours of confirmation of his death in Pretoria, Vice President Kahin was sworn in as national leader. Both Egal and Kahin had been nominated by a council of elders in 1993 that re-elected Egal in 1997. Kahin faced a full electorate in the country’s first presidential elections on April 14 this year. International observers, including South Africans, declared the presidential elections as “peaceful, orderly and transparent.”

Somalilanders had their first taste of democracy in May 2001 when an internationally observed referendum confirmed their wish to remain apart from Somalia and endorsed a new constitution. Highly successful municipal elections — also internationally observed and the first since 1969 — were held on December 15, 2002. Somaliland is undergoing a full-house of democratic procedures with parliamentary elections due to follow within a year, after the successful April presidential ballot.

Clearly, Somaliland’s extraordinary indigenous conflict-resolution methods may provide an example to the southern Somalis. But now the international community cannot remain silent on supporting Somaliland’s success story and its emerging democracy. Are we ready for this critical imperative?

— Iqbal Jhazbhay teaches at the University of South Africa and is a member of the ANC’s Commission of Religious Affairs.

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