Djibouti (Commentary) — In December 2022, a political wedding ceremony took place in Djibouti. The Presidents of Somalia, Djibouti and the Somaliland Administration attended the ceremony. Muse Bihi, then President of Somaliland Administration, gave the hand of the Djibouti President’s daughter in marriage to Sadaq John, a senior Somali police officer.
The tripartite political alliance unravelled in January 2024 when Bihi signed a maritime Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, to lease a coastal district in northern Somalia to Ethiopia.
The MoU soured relations between Ethiopia and Somalia. It gave Djibouti sleepless nights over Ethiopian plans to build a naval base and merchant port near Bulhar (Bullaxaar) or Lughaya to reduce reliance on Djibouti’s ports for importing goods.
The maritime MoU changed the geopolitical landscape of the Horn of Africa. A key driver of Bihi’s decision to sign the MoU with Ethiopia was the 2023 conflict in Laascaanood. In August 2023, Somaliland forces were defeated at Goja’adde base on the outskirts of Laascaanood after seven months of battles. Bihi viewed the maritime MoU with Ethiopia as an opportunity to add a geopolitical dimension to the secession claim and demonstrate the Federal Government of Somalia’s inability to stand up to Ethiopia, whose forces remain in Somalia as part of peacekeeping operations until the end of this year.
The Federal Government of Somalia, which signed a defence pact with Ethiopia in 2023, had to secure similar agreements with several countries, including Egypt, Turkey and Eritrea, to counter the violation of its sovereignty by landlocked Ethiopia, which seeks access to the sea.
Earlier this month, Sadaq John was appointed Deputy Director of National Intelligence and Security Agency, two years after the political marriage in Djibouti. For President Ismail Omar Guelleh, the political marriage was an opportunity to deepen his influence in Somali politics, 22 years after the Arta Reconciliation Conference sponsored by Djibouti. It was at this conference that the discriminatory 4.5 power-sharing formula was introduced, empowering Mogadishu political elites at the expense of the rest of the country. The notorious motto xaq ma raadinayno; xal baan raadinaynaa (“We are not seeking rights; we are seeking a solution”) was coined in Djibouti during the conference, relegating more than 40 percent of the Somali population to a lower citizenship status known as “Others.”
The septuagenarian President of Djibouti sees his influence in Somalia waning, along with the unjust political system he helped establish in 2000 at Arta.
© Puntland Post, 2024
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