Horn, Red Sea Braces for Instability as Somaliland Moves Toward Islamist Reunification With Somalia (1) Posted on July 17, 2010 at 01:35:15 AM by mb3
Horn, Red Sea Braces for Instability as Somaliland Moves Toward Islamist Reunification With Somalia
- By Gregory R. Copley. July 16, 2010
The Election Commission of the Republic of Somaliland on July 1, 2010 — as noted, the highly-iconic 50th anniversary date of the original union of the Republic of Somaliland with the former Italian Somaliland to create the Union of Somalia — announced that the pan-Somalist, radical Islamist Kulmiye party candidate, Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo, had won the June 26, 2010, Presidential elections.
Kulmiye — with major support from a broadly-based network of Islamists throughout the region, a range of pan-Somalists and southern Somalian clans, several regional governments, and at least one major Western front organization — prepared a broad campaign for which the UDUP Government under Pres. Dahir Riyale Kahin, although fully warned, were totally unprepared. Kulmiye had stage-managed significant elements of the Election Commission, and the media, and had prepared a round of post-election back-up plans which included adding prepared, loaded ballot boxes, and a campaign of street protests in the event that it looked as though all other steps failed and in the event that the Government had, in fact, taken strong pre-emptive steps to curtail Kulmiye’s creative electioneering.
Kulmiye leaders and other pan-Somalists and Islamists with who they were working had been noting that July 1, 2010, would be the symbolic date of the beginning of the reunification of the two Somalilands. That the Election Commission, which had been strongly influenced by payments from foreign sources (as GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs had noted earlier), withheld announcement of the results of the June 26, 2010, Presidential elections until the iconic date of July 1, as if confirming the reports of collusion with the pan-Somalists.
The ramifications of the event will gradually become apparent, quite apart from short-term impact on Somaliland’s hitherto stable society. Domestically, shari’a law will become dominant, and cooperation with jihadist groups, such as al-Shabaab, will become routine. Somaliland, for even as long as it continues to exist as an entity, will cease meaningful cooperation with the West on counter-terrorism and counter-piracy issues.
The key sponsors of the Kulmiye take-over, particularly Egypt and Eritrea, and possibly Iran, will push for Somaliland to tighten controls on international trade, through Berbera, to sustain landlocked Ethiopia. Clearly, the Kulmiye and al-Shabaab leadership will also push to take over control of the Government of Somalia, such as it is, within any new de facto or de jure reunion of the two Somalilands.
One very direct result will be to add pressure on the Meles Zenawi Government in Ethiopia, forcing it to rely more, once again, on Djibouti as the entrepot for Ethiopian trade. This will add significantly to Ethiopia’s costs, given Djibouti’s history of exploiting its position in this trade in the past. This accords with Egypt’s wishes to weaken Ethiopia, which controls the headwaters of the Blue Nile, the major source of water for Egypt. Egypt’s position of hostility to upstream riparian states on the Blue and White Niles, and Egypt’s refusal, this year, to come to an agreement on Nile water usage with other riparian states.
Egypt’s challenge to Ethiopia, as the principal water source for the Nile, may, however trigger a backlash, and actually cause Ethiopia to attempt to dam or divert Nile waters for energy and agricultural purposes, literally leading to a reduction in flow to Sudan and Egypt. The Egyptian Government has noted in the past that any attempts to deny Egypt the water to which it feels it has a legal right — in contradistinction to inter-state legal precedent on the topic — would represent casus belli: cause for war. The Egyptian Government has put interference with Nile waters ahead of any other possible cause for war.
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Eritrea, meanwhile, still harbors hopes that Ethiopia would be forced to an accommodation with Eritrea to use the ports which Eritrea assumed from Ethiopia when Eritrean independence was willingly given by Addis Ababa — at the express command of Prime Minister Meles — in 1993. This is, perhaps, still the major point of contention which Ethiopians have against Prime Minister Meles: not just that he gave Eritrea, historically always a part of the Ethiopian Empire, its independence, but that he included in that “give away” before he even became an elected head-of-government coastal areas and ports of Ethiopia which had never been part of the Eritrean province. That move left Ethiopia land-locked and dependent on Eritrea for port access, a move which Eritrea exploited so ruthlessly — demanding that Ethiopia receive untradeable Eritrean currency for all of its exports — that a break in relations came, precipitating the Ethiopian-Eritrean wars.
Ethiopia subsequently developed port access through Djibouti, and then Berbera. Thus the collapse of the alliance with Somaliland, as a result of the July 1, 2010, announcement of a new President there, is of profound concern for Addis Ababa. The Pan-Somalists and al-Shabaab and others involved in the change in Somaliland are themselves openly and strenuously hostile to Ethiopia, which had militarily supported the Somaliland Government and had also put troops into Somalia — including into the Somalian capital (and former capital of Italian Somaliland), Mogadishu, to fight the Islamists, including al-Shabaab.
It is highly significant that the Italian Government had supported the pan-Somalists based on historical feelings of identity with the onetime Italian Somaliland, despite the reality that this has contributed significantly to the continued instability in the Horn. Similarly, the Italian Government has sustained its profound support for Eritrea against Ethiopia, once again because of “historical solidarity” with Eritrea, which it had briefly colonized, before being defeated on two occasions in Ethiopia (1893, at the Battle of Adwa, the most significant defeat of a Western power in Africa; and in 1941). What is significant is that the Italian Government has gained nothing of strategic value for this emotional attachment, but has contributed significantly to the instability of the Horn of Africa.
It is now possible that the Eritrea-Ethiopia relations will undergo a further increase in tensions. Eritrea put in substantial guerilla forces, and support for dissidents in Ethiopia, in the run-up to the June parliamentary elections which returned Prime Minister Meles’ coalition to power.
It would be unsurprising if direct hostilities broke out again between Ethiopia and Eritrea within a year. Indeed, this may be the key to Eritrean Pres. Isayas Afewerke retaining power in his state, despite the continuing decline in the state’s economic fortunes and the increasing repression in his state.
Significantly, the transforming situation marked by the July 1, 2010, collapse of Somaliland’s moderate, pro-Western Government will be to ensure greater access by international jihadist and terrorist groups to the Horn of Africa; greater difficulty for external states to influence and reduce the incidence of piracy in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean regions around the Horn; a greater ability for groups supported by Iran to support cross Bab el-Mandeb operations against the Yemeni Government (and supporting anti-Sana’a forces based in the former South Yemen regions); as well as stimulating the prospect for Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict and possibly initiating Ethiopian-Egyptian military tensions.
Overall, the move to topple the moderate Government in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, provides a safe-haven for a wide range of activities by Islamists, jihadists, and other non-governmental actors from bases in the Horn. These will play into hostilities within the Arabian Peninsula as a whole, and will interact, almost certainly, with anti-state players in Pakistan. In all of this, Iran has historically played a key rôle in Somalia, and this will expand.
The Iran-Sudan-Egypt Connection
By Spring 2010, Tehran and its allies were increasingly worried about their strategic posture at the Red Sea as a result of the growing militant-separatist sentiments in southern Sudan. The likely outbreak of a civil war in Sudan would deprive Iran and jihadists the use of Sudan’s Red Sea ports as the base from which to block the Red Sea in case of a major confrontation with the US. The series of Israeli clandestine, air, and naval strikes against convoys and ships in northern Sudan carrying weaponry to the HAMAS in Gaza (to be delivered via Egypt and the Sinai) only added to the Iranian sense of vulnerability.
In mid-April 2010, Sudan held the first ostensibly free elections in 24 years. According to the official results, President Omar al-Bashir and his ruling National Congress Party (NCP) won 68.24 percent of the votes. Far more significant, however, was the election of Salva Kiir Mayardit with an overwhelming majority of 92.99 percent to the post of both the First Vice President of the Republic of Sudan and the post of president of Sudan’s southern region. Kiir was the candidate of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) which advocates the secession of the south in order to establish an independent state in the upcoming referendum now scheduled for January 2011. The referendum is the final step in the implementation of the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the SPLM and Khartoum.
However, Khartoum has already vowed to prevent the dismemberment of Sudan — particularly given the vast oil reserves in the south (particularly the disputed Abyei region) — and already manipulated the 2008 census results to reduce the number of eligible black voters in the south and bloat the number of Arab voters in the north. This created growing tension and fear of the resumption of the vicious civil war.