Mogadishu (PP News Desk) — Ten years ago Abdi Adan Hosow was the Governor of Bay region in the South West State of Somalia. When he was appointed governor Ethiopian troops were no longer in Somalia. He recounted how Ethiopian troops behaved in Bay following their return to Somalia under a bilateral agreement with the Federal Government of Somalia.
The agreement placed Ethiopian forces outside ATMIS (then known as AMISOM) mandate. The Somali parliament did not discuss the bilateral agreement seen now as the seeds of the Ethiopian plan to annex a Northern Somali coastal district under the pretext of an illegal Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed and the President of Somaliland Administration in Northern Somalia Muse Bihi Abdi on 1/1/2024 in Addis Ababa.
Hosow said that an Ethiopian General in charge of troops in Baydhabo had behaved like an omnipotent being outside the realm of the law. “He felt unrestrained by the law of the host country. I had a fist fight with him. He commanded Ethiopian troops based in Baydhabo. I heard he had been killed in Tigray during the civil war in Ethiopia. He was Tigrayan. Ethiopia has always been against Somalia’s sovereignty” said Hosow.
On December 7, 2023 the Federal Government of Somalia renewed the defence pact to keep Ethiopian troops in Somalia. The news pact contains “cooperation in maritime security”, an argument that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed now uses as an “evidence that the Federal Government of Somalia does support Ethiopian ambition to have access to sea.” Abiy Ahmed told foreign diplomats that Somalia, during President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s term of office, also had supported the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Ethiopia withdrew its troops in Somalia in 2009 after the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the Alliance for Reliberation of Somalia signed a peace agreement. “The responsibility for making Somalia more vulnerable to Ethiopian aggression lies with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud who is still hesitant to own up to the political misjudgements” said a Somali MP in Mogadishu. If Hosow had not shared his experience of working under the tutelage of Ethiopian forces outside ATMIS, the political blunders of Damuljadiid — the ruling clique in Somalia — would not have come to light. In 2018 Hosow was appointed the Ministry of Housing and Public Works.
© Puntland Post, 2024
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