Nairobi (Commentary) — President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is on his first official visit in United Arab Emirates after his inauguration last week. The visit points to the direction Somalia foreign policy might take as far as Somalia’s relations with UAE is concerned.
In 2018 the Federal Government of Somalia closed a UAE-funded training scheme for the Somali Army in Mogadishu. The federal parliament rejected an agreement DP World had signed with Somaliland Administration to run Berbera Port without the authorization of the Federal Government of Somalia.
DP World is a company owned by the UAE government. It has ignored the position of the Federal Government on an agreement to run a national infrastructure and carried on with Berbera Port modernization project, which culminated in the launching of the project in which the Ethiopian government claimed to have shares in Berbera Port.
In 2017 P&O (a DP World-owned company ) signed with Puntland State an agreement to manage Boosaaso Port without the input or authorization of the Federal Government of Somalia.
The UAE government pioneers a policy to take advantage of a fragile state recovering from state collapse. The fact that Somalia has a recognized government is not a sound justification for signing agreements with sub-national entities that defy the common framework for running national infrastructures. Somalia is still dependent on foreign peacekeepers, and therefore has a government that lacks the capacity to control its territory. It is true that this very argument can fairly be deployed against agreements signed by the Federal Government of which the illegal production-sharing agreement with Coastline Exploration Ltd is a prime example. The Petrolatum Minister who signed the agreement is still in charge.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s first term (2012-2017) was characterized by an exposé about underhand attempts to recover Somaliasyassets frozen in foreign banks.
President Mohamud can take steps to protect the national infrastructures against political stakeholders whose only aim is to monetize opportunities spotted by parastatals or companies such as DP World.
It is incumbent on President Mohamud and the soon-to-be-formed government to make tougher choices about the misuse of sovereignty at different levels. This is the only to way to protect the national interest of Somalia against rogue political stakeholders at the centre and periphery. The end of the transition has made the national infrastructures more vulnerable to take-over by companies that have no regard for the sovereignty of Somalia.
President Mohamud will go down in the history either as a leader who will nip the stealth balkanization of Somalia in the bud or as a leader who will turn a blind eye to the violation of Somalia’s sovereignty by countries that exploit the fragile status of the Federal Republic of Somalia.
By Siyad Ali Jama
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