Sub: Somaliland’s war on SSC people and what is required from the UK government
Dear Mr. Michell,
A lot of people in Somalia particularly in the Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) regions are asking themselves whether your recent visit to Somaliland and the timing that Somaliland chose for its recent attacks on the Cayn region was a mere coincidence.
Your Excellency’s visit was on the 31st of January and barely a week later on the 7th of February, Somaliland forces launched a major attack on nomads from SSC in Kalshaale, near Buhodle, the capital of Cayn region, using tanks, artillery and heavy machine guns, killing over 50 civilians and injuring over 100 while in the process occupying and declaring the area a military zone. Two weeks later, on the 22nd of February, they carried out another attack on Hagoogane & Maygaagle, both close to Buhodle, killing over 60 civilians and injuring close to 150, some of them run-over by tanks and military vehicles. For a comprehensive background about the causes and nature of these latest Somaliland attacks please read Silanyo’s Darfur in the making.
While no one is claiming, or even making a mere assertion, that the UK Government is supporting the secessionists’ war against the people of SSC, nonetheless Somaliland’s military’s attacks on SSC so soon after your visit and your announcement of substantial increase in aid to the enclave is disturbing to say the least, and has caused considerable concern to Somalis generally and particularly those from the SSC regions. It is fair to say that the attacks that followed your visit has created some sort of connection between the two events in the mind of a lot of people. Worse still, the president of the secessionist enclave, Silanyo, who is by the way a UK citizen, seems to have misconstrued your visit to Hargeisa as a great diplomatic achievement, a de-facto recognition of Somaliland, a tacit approval for the occupation of SSC regions and a green light to continue his murderous policies and the crimes his forces has been perpetrating against the SSC people.
Your Excellency’s visit to Somaliland and coddling its leader reminded Somalis, specially those from SSC regions, of frequent western officials visiting and shaking hands with dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Muamar Gadafi at a time when western governments were well aware of those dictators’ brutality against their own people.
Although visits to any part of Somalia by high level international and foreign governments’ officials, and the support and aid they may bring are always welcome, there is no denying that the mere presence of your Excellency and its significance as the first by a UK cabinet minister, has buoyed the Silanyo administration’s hope for recognition, stiffened its secession, and emboldened it to intensify and widen its war against the unionist SSC people. This war of aggression started some years back on the pretext of forcefully bringing SSC regions – which used to be part of former British Somaliland before the territory’s re-unification with Italian Somaliland – under the control of the current self declared one-clan based “Republic of Somalilad” to facilitate obtaining international recognition.
Further, the announcement that aid to Somalia is to be trebled from £26m in 2010/11 to £80m in 2013/14 and that half of it will be allocated to Somaliland has no doubt boosted the confidence of the administration about its long term financial solvency and its ability to carryout its programs of which no doubt the subjugation of the SSC people comes on the top of the list. On the other hand, increased aid to Somaliland has filled SSC people with great trepidation because of successive Somaliland’s regimes tendency to use aid money for military purposes.
I understand that the UK aid is intended to provide emergency nutrition, safe drinking water, access to basic, life-saving health-care and help for people to keep their animals alive during droughts. However it is unclear what safeguards and mechanisms are in place to ensure that this aid will reach its intended recipients and it will not be diverted to other purposes. It is also unclear how the successive Somaliland regimes since 1991 has used aid provided to them from British tax payers money.
The British aid is officially given to Somaliland and is used exclusively for the benefit of the secessionists to the exclusion of the unionist regions such as the SSC. This more than anything else persuades many people in Somalia that Britain is not only sustaining the secession but is ultimately working for the break-up of Somalia. Everything Britain has done, including the regular visits of the British ambassador in Addis Ababa to Hargeisa over the head of the internationally recognized government of Somalia, adds up to this strongly held misgiving about the role of successive British governments towards Somalia and in particular to its former colony.
Even if Britain’s aid is for the whole northern region, the fact remains that not a penny of that aid has reached the people of SSC which Somaliland regime has been claiming to represent since 1991 and has been receiving aid on behalf of its people. Therefore the best that SSC people can hope for is that this aid is used by Somaliland regime purely for the humanitarian purposes that it has been provided.
However, even if the UK is able to ensure the integrity of aid use, it will not be able to prevent the regime from diverting to its already formidable war machine whatever own resources it was planning earlier to commit to nutrition, health-care, safe drinking water, etc now that the UK aid will take of care of those humanitarian needs.
Therefore to prevent resources diversion it is important that the UK government make it clear to Silanyo regime that UK’s humanitarian aid should not be considered as a substitute for Somaliland’s own expenditure on social needs and that the regime’s military expenditure should not be increased in line with increased aid assistance.
Your Excellency,
I believe it is imperative on the UK government to completely distance itself from the actions of its citizen Silanyo and use its influence to ask him to:
* stop immediately the war it is waging on Buhodle, the second largest city in SSC;
* withdraw its forces immediately from all parts of SSC including the capital city of Lasanod;
* refrain from interfering in the affairs of the SSC people and regions;
* stop claiming SSC regions as integral part of Somaliland;
* leave disputes between nomadic populations of SSC and Somaliland to be resolved peacefully by clan elders and traditional leaders.
Stopping Silanyo’s war on SSC is not only in the interest of SSC and Somaliland but it is also in the interest of Britain. As you have rightly explained on numerous occasions “This is not just aid from Britain; it is aid for Britain too. Our aid to Somalia is helping to make Britain safer, because conflict doesn’t just claim innocent lives in Somalia, it also leads to international problems like piracy, migration and terrorism. None of these will be solved without tackling their root causes: ongoing instability and extreme poverty.”
It will be ironic if British tax payers money leads to more of the same problems it is trying to solve; extreme poverty, piracy, ongoing instability and yes more refugees particularly from SSC. That is exactly what will happen if Britain does not stop the mad war of its citizen Silanyo on SSC
