Hargeisa (PP Editorial) — The defeat of Somaliland forces at Gooja’adde base yesterday went down in Somali history as a reminder that hubris and misguided political claims about sovereignty end up in failure no matter how politically self-important an aggressor is.
For six months Somaliland was shelling Laascaanood while political leaders and the “civil society” in Hargeisa went about their business without any pangs of conscience about the atrocities Somaliland forces were committing.
A secessionist entity that hoisted a flag bearing the Islamic Shahada لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله is banking on the political fatwa issued by Sheikhs who have not spoken up against the hatred whipped by Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi when he claims that his forces “aim to secure the border between the ex-British Somaliland and ex-Italian Somaliland”.
The Federal Government of Somalia has a role to challenge the claim of the secessionist administration that its militias are fighting terrorists and the claim that Somaliland is a sovereign republic. The Federal Government has not spoken up against those claims that resulted in the death and maiming of more than 500 civilians and the destruction of properties since February 2023. By not making its stance on the war against Laascaanood clear to protect the lives of citizens, the Federal Government of Somalia leaders have failed to discharge their duty to vocally defend the Union of Somalia; they emboldened the secessionist forces waging a war in Sool.
Visibly shaken President Muse Bihi Abdi of Somaliland administration today said that “the war will not stop.” It is a declaration of a political Jihad and clan war being waged by Isaaq militias against people of Laascaanood. Last week in Bura’o, he claimed that he saw a 22 year soldier in a hospital, who was shot in the back in one of the battles near Laascaanood and whose father was killed during the 1980s against the former military regime of Somalia. That said a lot about Bihi’s state of mind: the wounded soldier was born in 2001 unless Bihi believes a departed man can posthumously become a father.
By justifying the killing and the maiming of Laascaanood people Bihi started a civil war far more devastating than the 1990s civil war in Southern Somalia because Bihi has not learned from the follies of the civil war. This is the time Bihi needs a wise counsel from cool heads. Bihi, Saaleebaan, Gaal (Chairman of Elders’ Council), Mohamed Kahin (Interior) and Abdirahman Sayli’i (Vice President) are men whose average age is 74. They will leave a legacy of hatred and destruction if they press on with a political jihad.
People of Laascaanood and their allies have a right to defend themselves against aggression. Somalia’s days as a sovereign country may be numbered given the resumption of 1990s-style hostilities. This trend has serious ramifications for the state-building initiative that began 19 years ago under a federal system.
Somaliland President refused calls from the International Community to withdraw his forces from on the outskirts of Laascaanood before his forces had been overrun by SSC forces. If he does not return from the brink of the political jihad he declared earlier today, the battlefields will increase. In November 2018 at Tukaraq Bihi was conciliatory. “There is no need to shed a blood over an issue that can be thrashed out by talking to each other.
© Puntland Post, 2023
