Hargeisa (Commentary) — The Ethiopian Government mediation efforts to bring the
Northern Somalia conflict to an end seems to have hit a snag. The secession war being waged against Laascaanood by Somaliland forces unnerved Ethiopia, a multi-ethnic country that is still dealing with the aftermath of secession. Thirty years ago, Ethiopia became a landlocked county after Eritrea had seceded to become a sovereign country.
Somaliland administration refused to endorse the terms of the Ethiopian mediation including the respect for political objectives of the two warring parties, and above all the sovereignty of Somalia.
Ethiopia cannot promote secession in Somalia. A senior Ethiopian Foreign Ministry adviser told an Amharic newspaper that “Ethiopia was a victim of agression so it cannot promote secession in Somalia or back forces questioning the sovereignty of Somalia”. Ethiopia sent troops to Somalia to liberate “territories under Al-shabaab’s control.”
The war in Northern Somalia places Ethiopia on the horns of dilemma. It cannot intervene without the request of the Federal Government of Somalia and it cannot watch the conflict unfold in Somali territories bordering Ethiopia. Last week, the Somaliland government accused Ethiopia of sending troops to Laascaanood. The Somali region of Ethiopia described the accusation from Somaliland as a desire to vent political anger.
Ethiopia hosts the headquarters of the African Union where the inviolability of colonial borders is a cardinal tenet of the AU Charter. Somaliland administration claims to be enforcing colonial borders that ceased to exist on 1 July 1960, when the Republic of Somalia came into existence. Somalia is a founding member of the African Union (then Organisation of African Union). Ethiopia understands its obligation not to endorse a misguided interpretation of article 4 of the African Union Constitutive Act on colonial borders (“respect of borders existing on achievement of independence”). The AU article is only applicable to inter-state borders of Africa.
Somaliland aims to become a sovereign country, but it invokes defunct protection agreements between the British Empire and some Somali clans as a basis for its argument on the “sanctity of colonial borders”. President Muse Bihi Abdi has not found a reasonable answer to the question: Why did the secessionist administration resort to shelling Laascaanood, a district it claims to have been a part of the ex-British Somaliland?
The UN Security Council Resolutions emphasise the political and territorial unity of Somalia. If a sub-national entity wages a secessionist war to impose its outlook on unionist constituencies represented federally in Mogadishu, the risk of an all-out civil war in Northern Somalia grows. Somaliland leaders should be held accountable for aggression and a secession war in the Federal Republic of Somalia, a country recovering from state collapse.
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