Mogadishu (PP Editorial) — Shortly after he returned to Hargeisa the President of Somaliland Administration Muse Bihi Abdi made a speech in which he had to defend his decision to sign a maritime Memorandum of Understanding with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Dr Abiy Ahmed. Bihi claimed that all previous agreements with the Federal Government of Somalia contain clauses that allow for the Somaliland Administration to sign bilateral agreements for economic development.
In a soon to be released interview with President Bihi he challenges the sovereignty of Somalia by posing the question: “What borders does Somalia control [to claim sovereignty over Somaliland]? His question points to where talks with Somaliland administration went wrong: there have not been no red lines. The Federal Government of Somalia encourages Somaliland to behave as a separate entity able to lease a coastal district to Ethiopia for 50 years. An International Law expert told Puntland Post that Ethiopia could seek to bank on the claim made by the Somaliland President about agreements with the Federal Government of Somalia, but that claim can be undone if President Bihi questions the sovereignty of Somalia over territories controlled by the Somaliland Administration.
In December 2023 Somaliland Administration and the Somali Federal Government signed agreements to continue previous agreements signed by successive governments, including the economic development clause invoked by the President Bihi to defend the maritime Memorandum of Understating. One of those agreements empowers the Somaliland Administration to forcibly displace Somalis from the South under the pretext that their ancestors do not hail from what was the ex-British Protectorate, and to shell unionist districts such as Laascaanood. Last year, at the height of the shelling of Laascaanood Somaliland forces, Somaliland Administration rejected all calls to withdraw its troops from the outskirts of Laascaanood. Somaliland called for a two-state solution as a precondition for ending the indiscriminate shelling. Without addressing those anomalies in previous agreements President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, keen on support from President Bihi to push a controversial amendment to the draft federal constitution through the bicameral legislature, had agreed to renew all previous agreements without a clear policy to end the conflict in Sool.
Coupled with this political misjudgement is the renewal of defence pact between Somalia and Ethiopia signed in December 2023 in Addis Ababa, a pact that had emboldened the Prime Minister of Ethiopia to sign a maritime Memorandum of Understanding with the President of Somaliland Administration in violation of the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia.
The Federal Government of Somalia leaders put narrow political interests at the centre of any talks with the Somaliland Administration and Ethiopia. Afterall, it is President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud whose government signed a bilateral agreement with Ethiopia to allow for the deployment of its troops in Somalia without being mandated by ATMIS (then AMISOM) five years after the signing of the agreement between the Alliance for the Reliberaton of Somalia and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. A rubber-stamp legislature in Mogadishu vulnerable to intimidation by the National Intelligence and Security Agency limits the prospects for Somalia to weather the storm of the Ethiopian geopolitical adventurism.
© Puntland Post, 2024
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