Mogadishu (PP Editorial ) — The relentless shelling of Laascaanood by Somaliland forces based on the outskirts of the district shows the extent to which state-building initiative in Somali turned into a farcical exercise. Somalia has an internationally recognised government dependent on the largesse of EU, USA and other Western countries keen to prevent Somalia from developing “ungoverned spaces” anew. The threat to the global security that António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations mentioned at the 2017 London Somalia Conference is as potent as it was six years ago given the indiscriminate shelling of Laascaanood that the International Community, indifferent to the possibility of large-scale intra-clan hostilities in the North, has been unable to address.
Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi has ignored the UN Security Council’s call to withdraw his troops from Laascaanood. His claim that his forces are enforcing pre-independence borders and at the same fighting terrorism forces is absurd.
More than 200 people have lost their lives in the indiscriminate shelling of Laascaanood by the secessionist forces. The latest victim of the shelling was Jama Kadiye Elmi, an 81-year-old poet, who died after Somaliland artillery hit the car in which the poet was travelling in Laascaanood and caused his death on the spot.
Thirty-two years after the ouster of the military regime threw Somalia into a vortex of intra-clan wars and state collapse, the Horn of Africa country is peering into a similar abyss. This time the likely scenarios are far more devastating partly because of the failure of the state-building project that only serves to keep Somalia in perpetual dependency on peacekeeping forces, and the divisive attitude of the Federal Government of Somalia whose leaders turn a blind eye to the plight of the Laascaanood people.
© Puntland Post, 2023
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