Mogadishu (PP Report) — No one expected that, after talks with the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Djibouti during the last week of December 2023, Muse Bihi, the President of Somaliland Administration, was planning to go to Ethiopia and sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, to lease a coastal land to the landlocked country for 50 years. Bihi kept his rivals in the dark about the plan, and only a few people knew of the proposal his administration submitted to Ethiopia in September 2023 after his forces were defeated at the Goja’adde barracks on the outskirts of Las Anod. Bihi offered Ethiopia the option of gaining access to the sea through Lughaya in Awdal.
Ethiopia rebuffed a claim by the Foreign Minister of the Somaliland administration, Essa Keyd, who, in February 2023, when the Las Anod conflict was raging, told a newspaper that “Somaliland is a buffer zone for Ethiopia” against Al-Shabaab. The Somaliland administration misleadingly labelled pro-union Sool, Sanaag, Ceyn and Khatumo administration as “Al-Shabaab fighters” and rejected a ceasefire proposal from an Ethiopian delegation visiting Garowe in 2023 to mediate between the Somaliland administration and the SSCK interim administration.
During the Las Anod conflict, Bihi considered a ceasefire and talks with the SSCK administration, but through intermediaries, the Federal Government of Somalia assured him that a guiding principle of future Somalia-Somaliland talks would be that he represents what was once known as the ex-British Somaliland. When Somaliland forces were defeated, the Federal Government of Somalia welcomed the SSCK interim administration as the legitimate representatives of the unionist people in Sool, Sanaag, and Togdheer. Bihi viewed this volte-face as a betrayal.
Initially, Ethiopia hesitated but later agreed to the proposal from Hargeisa. The Ethiopian government informed a representative of the Somaliland administration, who was secretly travelling to Addis Ababa, that the date for signing the MoU would be either the 3rd or 4th of January 2024. Ethiopia was waiting for the signing of a Defence Pact between Somalia and Ethiopia, proposed by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud through his Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed. The Defence Pact aimed to upgrade the bilateral agreement that the Federal Government of Somalia signed with Ethiopia in 2014, which deployed Ethiopian defence forces as peacekeeping troops outside the AMISOM mandate. In 2015, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud participated in the 40th anniversary of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front held in Mekelle, where he described the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as a visionary leader.
The Somali Defence Minister signed the defence pact with his Ethiopian counterpart in the second week of December 2023 There was a clause on maritime security in the pact. The Federal Government of Somalia withheld the agreement’s details to evade scrutiny. This was the justification Abiy Ahmed used, along with the agreement between the Somaliland administration and the Federal Government of Somalia in Djibouti two days before the end of 2023 to be able to sign an MoU with the president of a secessionist administration in Northern Somalia. On New Year’s Eve, Bihi travelled to Addis Ababa, where, on 1 January 2024, he signed a maritime Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopia.
Upon returning to Hargeisa, Bihi claimed that the MoU with Ethiopia reflected the letter and spirit of previous agreements with the Federal Government of Somalia about economic development. The Interior Minister of the Somaliland administration Mohamed Kahin showed the media a printout of a Puntland Post editorial calling on the Federal Government of Somalia to repeal the defence pact with Ethiopia.
The bicameral legislature in Mogadishu supported the defence pact, fearing targeted assassinations of Senators and MPs. Before the defence pact, the former director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA), Mahad Salad, signed an intelligence-sharing agreement with his Ethiopian counterpart in Addis Ababa.
“Damuljadiid, the faction to which President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud belongs, has caused incalculable damage to the sovereignty of Somalia. The faction controls the bicameral legislature, although MPs and Senators from Jubaland and Puntland have now broken ranks with it,” said a journalist in Mogadishu.
To deter Ethiopia from setting up a naval base in northern Somalia under the illegal MoU with a secessionist administration, President Hassan Sheikh welcomed Egypt and Turkey as defenders of Somalia’s territorial integrity despite his repeated foreign policy failures and nepotistic practices. “President Hassan Sheikh poses as much of a threat to Somalia’s sovereignty as Ethiopia does,” added the journalist. The constituency of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has never spoken up against the violation of the agreement between the former Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed in 2008, which paved the way for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia in early 2009. His predecessor, President Sharif Ahmed, a former ARS Chairman, was neither critical of the return of Ethiopian troops to Somalia under a bilateral agreement nor the defence pact signed with Addis Ababa last year.
© Puntland Post, 2024
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