By Khadar Hanan
13th November 2024 marks the culmination of seven long years of political nightmare, resulted in deep social polarization, economic stagflation and political isolation(s).
At the geneses of the predecessor’s inauguration, Somaliland starts with a tough statement by the then president elect HE Musa Bihi Abdi, that those who have voted for him would surely had to feel remorseful for what they have voted for! People have had different interpretations of such strange statement in the country’s adopted consensus based political culture, where every elected president would deliver a post elections reconciliatory national statement that HE is the president for every citizen regardless of their presidentialchoice(s).
Bihi’s election as a president was largely seen a crucial at the time, as his predecessor the late Ahmed Mohamed Mohamud (Silanyo) suffered an age-cum-ailment administrative incapacitations presumably during his first 100 days in the office (Hirsi’s book “Miyiga ilaa Madaxtooyada” the pages 145 to 146). The president’s untimely incapacitations had never been made public but again was an open secret from visible depletions not only in his long-known leadership capabilities and eloquence but his charismatic personality too.
Critics claim that some of his immediate family and the two chairmen of the ruling party and opposition parties viz. WADANI and KAAH were among those who’ve unconstitutionally filled the administrative gaps that had eventually ignited a fierce power challenge within the above-mentioned opposing forces in the country’s presidency.
Hirsi Haji Ali, the WADANI party chairman along with a handful of key minsters had resigned from the government in a broad daylight on 26 Oct 2015, where his counterpart of KAAH had landed the former’s position in the presidency till Bihi’s inauguration after winning the 2017 presidential elections by a margin of 54%.
President Bihi had to embark on a presidential journey for the next seven years included two years of unconstitutional extensions. His government structure was mainly the extractions of the two major Isaq subclans Habar Awal and Habar Je’lo as they were the powerbase of the KULMIYE Party.
As the clan politics and clan-democracy have always been strategies for conflict and crisis in Somali politics in general; Garhajis, the largest subclan of Somaliland who predominantly inhabits 5 out of the six regions of country didn’t welcome the Bihi’s formation of the government and expressed deep concerns over such clan centric strategic power consolidations, where many had preconceived notions that the power would interchangeably play between the aforementioned subclans of KULMIYE party.
On top of that, it had left little or no room for many of the minority clans/subclans included those experienced a prolonged political marginalizations, the power inclusivity of whom have just come into fruition with the president elect HE Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi (Iro)’s government.
President Iro had always been a strenuous protagonist for the political inclusions of the marginalized tribes far beyond the amplified rhetoric(s) during campaigns and even proven that, as he has financially and psychologically supported MP Barkhad Batun to have won his seat in the country’s House of the representatives.
Other subclans of Isaaq, who have had no solid representations in the country’s political sphere since Somaliland came into being have just had their first full ministerial appointments too. And last but not the least, women saw several key portfolios to uplift the political appetite of the country’s female society or perhaps meet the so-called gender balances in a country where matriarchy is yet to be socially and culturally entertained.
The Eastern regions’ conundrum and Bihi’s misunderstanding of Somaliland being a Fragile State
Bihi’s new administration had inevitable atrocities in the Sanag region where armed bloody conflicts erupted between two brethren subclans in El-Afwayn district.
Enormous internal efforts were made to contain those atrocities and prevent them from spilling over into the other territories, specifically the major cities.
Las-Anod of the Sool region had to experience a new but more sophisticated developments, where undercover assassins would eliminate any government official or anyone whose political sentiment was deemed to be aligned with Somaliland.
Somaliland government had unfortunately failed to provide answers to the critical questions by the region’s people but instead practiced a disastrous scapegoat strategy where many innocent people of the Southern Somalia who had internally displaced by wars and draughts were forcefully exiled from the city they had lived for decades as blue color jobbers, small shop owners and vendors in the local bazaar.
Painful accounts were well documented on such forceful expulsions which could amount to crimes against the humanity. After expelling those people, the assassins’ illicit executions continued and fueled a wider uprising against the Somaliland administration.
Dhulbahante traditional leaders; the Las–Anod Trojan–horse
Dhulbahante Traditional Leaders including Garad Jama Garad Ali “alias wage the war on” (gala dagaalka in Somali) with armed militia on gun mounted vehicles entered the city in a broad daylight with a clandestine agenda i.e. to remove the Somaliland administration from their territories.
These armed intrusions caused the nation felt apprehensive about the future of Sool region, asking so many questions on what could be the hidden agenda or the plausibility of civil war as we have witnessed. But the then interior minister “the current chairman of the KULMIYE Party,” colonel Mohamed Kahin Ahmed, a long comrade of president Bihi along with the former military commander in chief General Noh Tani have together held a press release to disavow all the claims that armed personals with the traditional leaders were allowed to enter the city.
The minster and the general have expressly told the media that the army so escorted them were belong to the Somaliland army to safeguard the security of the traditional leaders who would discuss ways to foster peace and stability in a conflict plagued region__ absolutely a trumped-up claim without a single iota of fact(s). The sad reality was that the traditional leaders have forcefully entered the city capitalized the overboiled emotions of the people to finally execute their camouflaged agenda.
This opened a pandora’s box for the whole region where the Somaliland administration had equally failed not only to decipher but with hindsight to contain it through wisdom and understanding. Las-Anod was unfortunately took apocalyptic proportions, where according to Amnesty International__ the conflict resulted in the death of hundreds of people, displacement of more than 200,000 as refugees and distractions of the city.
Mosques, schools and health facilities were even not spared by Somaliland forces’ indiscriminatory shellings (sources).
Bihi’s first term was to expire amidst such internal problems, but again proposed two years of unconstitutional extensions in quid-pro-quo of five years term extensions for the Somaliland’s House of Parliament (the Guurti), an absolutely rotten institution and Bihi’s right hand to have all hispolitically orchestrated motions approved, with apparently no national considerations whatsoever.
This move had further exacerbated the political tension between Bihi and the opposition parties. WADANI and then UCID parties have together vowed not to accept what they called unjustified extensions and in contrast organized a nationwide civic protest (the unpopular whistleblowing) on 11th Aug 2022, where 11 innocent youth of WADANI supporters were cold bloodedly murdered with life bullets by Bihi’s administration, scores were injured and dozens were jailed and kept in imprisonment without trial(s) for months.
More than 20 females including young lactating mothers were separately taken and held for an indeterminate period of time in a prison at Gabiley district__ where even their immediate families couldn’t be able to pay visit(s).
The life of the incumbent president was seen jeopardized by the riot police vehicles where his security details have heroically seen confronted the vehicles by deflating the vehicle tires with life ammunitions preventing them from reaching the presidential hopeful Mr. Iro who was leading the strike at that particular point in time.
A gruesome account indeed caught on cameras and still could be rewound on the YouTube channel, where president Iro could be seen wearing an orange cap in the middle of a small crowd, probably of his party members and supporters. At this juncture, Somaliland had visibly plunged into a deeper political quagmire where Bihi’s government had again failed to manage such internal upheavals.
Government sponsored social media trolls of different capacities coupled with the venomous rhetoric(s) by certain KULMIYE politicians had systematically been resonated with the entire nation, resulted in loss of trust among the peace-loving people, weakening social cohesiveness and implanting antipathy between the brethren people who’ve united under the Tawhid (faith) inscribed colorful flag of Somaliland. The same media trolls of WADANI mainly reactive to those of the government have equally had their fair share of such social disintegration(s) too.
As most of the political crisis in Africa usually stems from election disputes, coup d’état and totalitarianism(s), these term extensions prompted an armed tribal militia of Garhajis subclan stationed at Ga’an Libah strategic mountains of the Sahil region.
Whilst Bihi’s government blamed it for WADANI party, the militia had claimed to have voluntarily organized by themselves to according to them redirect the whole country back to the common democratic path as being enshrined in the country’s constitution.
On 11th of Aug 2023, barely a year after the whistleblowing protest(s), Bihi’s government carried out an audacious attack to kill or capture the chief commander of the militia, aka Oofwareen along with a few fighters who went for a short errand to a nearby village on the environs of the Ga’an Libah mountains.
The militia who somehow had eavesdropped the planned attacks have ambushed the government deployed Rapid Response Units RRU (a counter terrorism trained special forces), where around 10 of them had been killed and many others injured.
This aleatoric operations have categorically shifted the political compass of the country to a whole new direction, where the Bihi’s inner political circles with their Machiavellian maneuvers have together convinced the president to attack and dismantle these militias in the mountains, stipulating that their existence would always have a constant challenge to all government’s efforts to fight in Las-Anod__ another stochastic move which resulted in a hefty loss of both military personals and hardware with the Somaliland government (alias Goja,ade).
At this point, president Bihi’s peerless ego and the country’s long built reputations suffered of both political and psychological setbacks.
Today Las-Anod tends to be a place where interests of different motives are competing i.e. the Somalia stray politics (see the prime minister’s visit), terrorist operatives and the domestic emotions of statehood. On top of the city’s continuous security uncertainty due to command less marauding tribal gangsters, an Ethiopian official of Garawe Liasson Office has recently been abducted from his hotel room, tortured and eventually killed and dumbed his body at an open ditch in the outskirts of Las-Anod, a shocking episode the responsibility of which still rests in the mid of dark clouds of doubtfulness.
Eastern atrocities have tested and negatively exposed KULMIYE’s level of cognitive intelligence in understanding not only the complexity of the civil wars but the fragility of the state too, as Somaliland is not a recognized country with all the necessary resources.
After months of political hibernation and perhaps a psychological recovery Bihi have traveled across the country from east to west presumably to test his luck as the election timelines were approaching but seemingly turned out to have had sinister plans i.e. to play more expensive cards to close the Ga’an Libah chapter.
Traditional values had to devalue Bihi’s expensive card!
Back in the dates of Somali colonial era, the governmentcognizance of the two former territories the South and the North was at variance. The South reached a degree of governance but the North had a strong nostalgic driven nationalism which caused to lose their five days old independence for the expense of achieving the unachievable, “the so-called (Ban Somalia)”.
In the South the cultural values acceded to the pressure of the modern statecraft where many attribute it to what fuels the current alien clan-federalisms which was a non-Somalia product but imported and would have a constant challenge to the formation(s) of any functional Somali central government. When the British came into the Somaliland shores in the late 19th century, traditional authorities of the society in the North had to deal with the British colony, where the British understood the mores and ethos of such culture and conformed into much of what they had to breach.
With all its negative and positive influence, these cultural values had developed an inextricably strong relationship with the postcolonial modern nation states where they even had a constant challenge with all the elite Western educated politicians.
As the cultural and political chemistry constitutes the very pillars on which Somaliland was built, the traditional leaders of Habar’Jelo of the Isaaq subclan had to intervene the country’s highly sensitized politics to make a breakthrough to the impasse and circumvent any potential armed clash(s) between the government and Ga’an Libah militia.
Thanks to these Traditional efforts, with their suggestions and judgments__ Somaliland had to go for joint elections__ the presidential and national political parties.
Elections were peacefully held on 13th November 2024. President Bihi was unseated by large margins of roughly 65% of the popular voted efusing the overboiled public tension(s) as a result.
But, the other side of president Bihi’s book of leadership history, he has signed bold to invest and held two joint elections__ the House of Representatives and Local Councils in 2021 and the presidential and political parties in 2024 with no apparent interventions, a history he would ever be remembered with and a pride that Somaliland would treasure in both regional and global political arenas.
President Iro is in the House now, but what is at stake?
12th Dec 2024, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, colloquially known as ‘Iro’, has officially been sworn in as the 6th President of Somaliland amid high expectations and uncertainties of domestic and regional pressures.
During his month-long transitional break, he hosted almost all the clans/subclans of Somaliland to receive their complimentary messages with demands for the power inclusion(s). Critics claim that the president wasted much time on this when he would rather utilize it for deep contemplations on building his government and studying the kind of people he would employ for the critical government positions.
A plausible claim indeed when you look into the mismatches between some key portfolios and the expertise so deployed, which would fall short of delivering the highly anticipated transformative public agenda.
Ironically, the Achilles heel of the new system is the fact that President Iro has yet to complete his government after more than four months, where key institutions, including the whole country’s Judiciary system, were still kept intact.
The fact that several key minsters have come by the recommendations of the two chairmen of the WADANI and KAAH, with a certain KULMIYE political elite nominations as consultants right from the precedency to the other national institutions is another pain in the butt and implies a behind-the-scenes network of strong political influence that potentially could undermine critical decision-making of the president or perhaps turn the whole system like a cocktail government where opposing stakeholders could politically shop with comfort for their critical agendas.
President Iro must not leave static for any KULMIYE political remnants in his system for the best interest of his own national and political program, which is under the public spotlight.
Eastern regions’ atrocities of different scales and impacts, coupled with the internal social fragmentations due to the election campaigns, public debt and gross inflations are all what inherited by the incumbent president and are really what is at stake. Since all those grim chronological episodes of different magnitude had unfortunately happened__ the below appended transformative strategies on peace, economy and security are strongly recommended.
Peace & Reconciliations:
Somaliland people have experienced political tensions of all types during the tenure of HE president Musa Bihi, to a point where many thought that the country’s more than three decades long democracy would be coming to an end.
But the opposite has actually happened and the people took a deep breath to sooth their tension. It is certain phenomena that euphoria takes the driver seat once the peoples’ negative expectation turns into positive reality and this is one of the very reasons that Iro’s government seems to be well relaxed as of now, but the reality is euphoria lasts no longer and strong oppositions might soon be inevitable that would untimely make for the president hard to weather wisely if the suitable expertise who can carry out aggressive national and political agendas were not put in place, specifically the key government portfolios.
Eastern regions need a whole new holistic reproachments where a lasting peace could be achieved among the warring sides. A win-win based strategic atmosphere where the eastern people specifically Harti of Darot subclans could feel critical stakeholders must be created and the late Ali Khalif Galayd’s agreement with the then government of the late Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud Silanyo has to be reinvigorated and implemented. As the president noted in his maiden speech, ‘peace, peace, peace’, would always be his intrinsic agenda knowing that hostility prolongations would have a constant challenge to his rule and further deteriorate the already grueling situations of the country as a whole and those in the eastern regions in particular.
The recent reconciliation effort to cement a lasting peace among the brotherly people in El Afwayn district of Sanag region by the new government was commendable and well received by the peace-loving young but promising people of Somaliland. For, all politics is indeed local.
Economy:
Somaliland economy is mainly dependent on the seasonal livestock exportations of 3.7 million of heads per year (2023 Somaliland Economic Forum Report). The inward currency by the expat community constitutes a considerable percentage of the country’s hard currency inflows too. Nevertheless, Somaliland economy had hugely suffered from not only wars but also other calamities like the Hargeisa central market (Wahen) and Wajale market infernos, where hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth wealth had unfortunately lost and thousands of businesses affected.
The new government needs to come up and impalement both short term and long term structured economic framework towards a sustained economic strategy. For the short term it is viable for the government to exercise a free-market movement to have swift stimulations in the country’s economy, for example removing all protectionist policies and allowing a free business and tourism movements amongst the Somali people in the horn regardless of their region or polity. This would significantly generate income for many of the local business and hence add values to the country’s travel and tourism revenue.
As we unfortunately rely on the imports of many of our domestically consumed perishable goods for the daily household livelihoods, the recent US introduced sweeping tariffs on almost every country’s export would surely have both direct and indirect impacts on it and our people would be the ultimate payers of any extra levies.
However, a sustainable strategic gross incentives approach of knowledge, knowhow and resources i.e. qualitative seeds and water catchments must be introduced for promoting and bolstering the local farmers productivity to offset and protect any potential negative impact to the country’s household consumptions. There is no stability above the stomach stability.
Security:
No country is secure without a strong army equipped with sophisticated military hardware with continuous trainings to safeguard the security of the borders and, of course, to dissuade any potential threats from both neighbors or other countries.
The Somaliland military had endured years of negligence in terms of benefits, suitable training, hardware upgradation, and modernization(s). A considerable dummy numbers among the armed forces were continuously trained as a hidden resource for certain government officials and top-ranked military and police generals (sources).
The effect of such negligence has exposed the military in the Sool region wars, where clan militias have voluntarily taken arms to fill the gap and protect their territories. I commend the government for its swift move to disarm, biometrically record, and train these militias to be absorbed into the national armed forces. A huge step taken towards strengthening both the national and regional security indeed!
President Iro has campaigned that the armed forces are on top of his agenda as being even stipulated in his party’s political program and accordingly has issued a degree for salary incremental executing such a big promise which many believed impossible as it would pormpt allocating a large amount of economic resources.
On the 24th of this month, a well-decorated ceremony mainly attended by the ruling party members and supporters was celebrated in the presidency for the government’s first 100 days’ achievements.
Both the president and the ruling party chairman have commended those achievements, keeping in mind that this was just 100 days of the 5 years to come. A testimony that needs constructive work under continuous assessments and unapologetically audacious executions.
Mr. Khadar Hanan is a banker by profession; he extensively researches and critically writes about the rapidly shifting geopolitical, social, and economic landscape on the Horn of Africa. The author can be reached at: Email: khadarhanan@yahoo.com X: @khadarhanan
