The Threat to Somalia’s Unity from Hassan’s Perfidy, By Mohsin Mahad

President Hassan will go down in history as the man who started his office with unparalleled nationwide goodwill no other Somali leader has ever enjoyed since independence and yet chose to betray the nation for his own personal and clannish agenda. As it turned out, his divisive, clan and corruption driven politicking have become the hallmark of his presidency from the moment he ascended his office. But for most Somali patriots and unionists, their overarching concern is his threat to Somalia’s unity arising from his sympathy for and support to the one-clan-based secessionists in northern Somalia, aka Somaliland.
Hassan’s pro-secessionist stand had shown its true colours from the outset at the first talks in Turkey between him and the leader of the secessionist enclave. That was the time when, at the stroke of his pen, with no constitutional authority, he granted Somaliland de facto equal status with Somalia and, to boot, rewarded them with give-away concessions as reflected in the communiqué. To add insult to injury, he would disingenuously claim on his return from these talks that he defended Somalia’s unity when the opposite was the case. This double talk has been his template ever since.
Of all the talks with the secessionists, none has been more damaging to Somalia and its unity under Hassan’s watch than the one held in Djibouti on 20 December 2014. The outcome of the meeting was hatched up before hand by the pro-Somaliland organisers of the meeting, namely Presidents Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud and Omar Ismail Geele. Given their shared positions, what remained was a propitious timing for this plot to be executed, a time when president Hassan would be free from any parliamentary and government challenges.

This timing presented itself when the former Prime Minister (and his government) was out of the way, ousted by President Hassan through vote-peddling parliamentarians, and when his successor and his government not yet formally in charge. It speaks for itself that President Hassan’s delegation, except for the pliant former foreign minister from Awdal, consisted entirely of members from his clan sharing his position, and none from the principal stake holders from northern Somalia – Khaatumo, Awdal and Makhir States- or from other wider Somali clans in Somalia. In crude Somali terms, this was a meeting and an anti Somalia outcome conceived by leaders not from representative mandated governments but by oligarchs (one of them masquerading as a mediator) sharing common interest and hailing from three Somali clans to the exclusion of the others.
The exclusion of other clans is all the more reprehensible when it ignores the on-going liberation struggle in northern Somalia being waged by all the four unionist clans against the occupying secessionist clan. Their cause is not only to be free of the secessionist clan’s hegemony but above all to defend Somalia’s unity. In normal times and under true Somali leaders, they could have counted on automatic support from Mogadishu. But under Hassan, it is perversely the other way round; it is the secessionists he is supporting, covertly or overtly, against the unionists for his own ends.

The first indicator to gauge Djibouti’s support for Somaliland’s aspired status as a separate country from Somalia is the reception accorded to Siilaanyo on his arrival at Djibout Airport. Needless to say, President Ismail Omar Geele went out of his way to give him a reception with all the pomp and ceremony normally reserved for a visiting head of State: red carpet, guard of honour and an immediate audience with President Geele. Siilaanyo, and for that matter no other Somaliland leader, had ever received such pomp presidential treatment until now. No wonder the normally torpid leader was animated beaming with pleasure.
The second indicator is the status given to Siilaanyo at the meeting itself. Here again, Hassan and Siilaanyo were treated as equals, addressed respectively as the President of Somalia and the President of Somaliland; in other words, two presidents representing two separate countries, brazenly in denial of the fact that Hassan is the President of the whole of Somalia including Somaliland and Siilaanyo the president of the one-clan secessionist enclave just as Abdiweli Gaas is the president of the Regional State of Puntland. Given the leaders’ shared common perspectives, the direction of the substantive discussions and the outcome of the Djibouti talk were predetermined and predictable.
Given the status that President Hassan and President Geele accorded to Siilaanyo and his enclave, Somaliland got the deal due to a favoured separate country on par with Somalia: among other things, co-hosting control of “Somalia and Somaliland’s” airspace; non-interference in what the secessionists consider their internal affairs, entailing that President Hassan and President Geele accept that the unionist regions/States of Awadal, Khaatumo and Makhir are part of Siilaanyo’s separatist kingdom, thereby legitimising his occupation of these regions and misappropriation of international humanitarian and development aid earmarked for these non-Isaaq unionist regions/states.
As observers have pointed out, every Somali State/region/clan has an air space, so what legal or constitutional basis gives one State/region/clan to claim special status over others to co-host Somalia’s air space? For once, Abdelweli Gaas of Puntland got it right when he pointed out in an interview with VOA that Puntland has a better claim than Somaliland to co-host control of Somalia’s air space given that they are part of Somalia unlike Somaliland’s secession declaration.

The Somaliland delegation had every reason to go wild over the deal they were given on a plate by Presidents Hassan and Geele. The good news had spread like wild fire to every corner of the enclave. This was received as de facto Somaliland’s recognition. With this mindset, it is difficult to believe as President Hassan does that he has changed Somaliland’s hearts and minds or that he defended Somalia’s unity at the talks. With this gain, it is unlikely that the secessions can be persuaded in future to give up what they had won from Hassan and Geele. But Hassan would always repeat his mantra every time he returns from such talks that he defended Somalia’s unity when in fact he has betrayed it. Either he reckons nobody cares or everybody is gullible.

On the positive side, the unholy alliance of the trio in Djibouti against Somalia’s unity is a sideshow bound to unravel sooner or later and come to nothing. Hassan can trot on the stage as the big man unilaterally dispensing with Somalia’s unity and territorial integrity. But the end of the day, he has no constitutional powers to act that way. It rests with Parliament to control him and where he abused his powers to make him accountable to it and to undo his misdeeds. But even if that fails, it is the determined will of the people of Khaatumo, Makhir and Awdal to remain in Somalia which will in the end defeat the secession and discredit the Djibouti conspiracy against Somalia.
No other Somali leader has been so much engulfed in scandal and shamed by the United Nations investigations as Hassan for alleged unscrupulous and unbridled malpractices. Devoid of credibility through his own actions, he remains in office not for what good he can do for Somalia but what more damage he may inflict.