The unraveling of Somaliland, a US and UK-backed separatist breakaway from northern Somalia, has been expedited by the decision of its president Muse Bihi Abdi to hand over part of its coastal land and sea to landlocked Ethiopia.
The unionist forces in its western region of Awdal, who were already organizing a struggle to liberate themselves from the self-declared republic and reunite with Somalia, have taken up arms. An armed conflict is brewing in the west at a time when Somaliland has already been reduced to less than half its previous size after losing to unionists its control over the eastern region of Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC) last year.
Amid such an existential crisis for Somaliland, President Abdi — who has been holding on to office without an election since his term expired in November 2022 — signed the fateful MoU with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on January 1.
Alleging that Abdi did not consult or even inform his ministers, who only learned about the MoU from the media, Defense Minister Abdiqani Mohamud Aateeye tendered his resignation on January 7. Commerce minister Mohamed Hassan Saajin also criticized Abdi for being party to Ethiopia’s alleged plan to annex part of Somaliland.
“In exchange for 20 km sea access for the Ethiopian Naval forces, leased for a period of 50 years, Ethiopia will formally recognize the Republic of Somaliland, setting a precedent as the first nation to extend international recognition to our country,” Abdi maintains.
Ethiopia, however, has clarified the limited nature of its commitment. Its National Security Affairs Advisor Redwan Hussein said that Ethiopia will “consider taking a stand in recognizing Somaliland as a sovereign country” only after the “agreement is completed” and “Ethiopia receives the land.”
For now, far from making any tangible progress toward receiving international recognition, the MoU has received international and regional condemnation as a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty, which is globally recognized to extend over the breakaway Somaliland. On January 6, Somalia’s president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud signed a law “nullifying the illegal MoU.”
The MoU has not only stoked fears about a potential conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia that could further destabilize the Horn of Africa but also invited a domestic crisis of legitimacy for Somaliland’s separatist regime, even in cities considered its strongholds.
In Somaliland’s capital and largest city Hargeisa, protests erupted the very next day after the MoU was signed. Clashes have been reported between protesters and the security forces, who were trying to secure the city’s entry points by setting up checkpoints, reportedly bringing traffic to a near standstill on January 8.
Earlier on January 6, security forces raided the headquarters of MM Somali TV in Hargeisa after it hosted a debate on the MoU. Damaging and seizing its equipment, the security forces also assaulted several journalists, at least three of whom including the network’s CEO, were blindfolded and forcibly taken to an undisclosed location.
Several other cities are also witnessing unrest, including Somaliland’s second-largest city, Burco, where thousands have taken to the streets to protest the MoU. Historically, residents of both Hargeisa and Burco have largely backed secession from Somalia.
With the decision to hand over part of the breakaway territory to Ethiopia, Abdi’s regime is at risk of losing its main pro-secession support base, at a time when its unionist opponents are organizing to take Awdal in the west and have already liberated SSC in the east.
Liberated SSC region reintegrating with Somalia
Defeating the Somaliland army in a war that went on for most of 2023, the unionist forces in SSC formed the Khaatumo State which is now in the process of reintegrating with Somalia. Unionist protests for reunification with Somalia began at the end of December 2022 in Sool region’s capital Las Anod, which is now the administrative capital of the Khaatumo state.
By the first days of January 2023, Somaliland’s security forces had killed at least 20 protesters. Following these killings, the unionists organized armed militias and forced Somaliland forces to retreat to the outskirts of the city. Later that month, activists, civil society members and elders of the predominant clans in the SSC region held a conference in the city, which concluded in the first week of February with the passing of the Las Anod Declaration.
“We are not part of the Somaliland Administration and… we have never agreed to or participated in the secession program, although the Somaliland administration is trying to force it upon us contrary to international norms and laws,” it proclaimed.
Declaring SSC a part of Somalia and deeming the presence of “secessionist Somaliland administration” in its territory “illegal”, the conference elected a committee to administer the region independently in the interim until reintegration with Somalia is complete. Later, on August 5, the committee elected Abdiqadir Ahmed Aw-Ali, popularly known as Firdhiye, as the interim President.
By then, the Somaliland army’s repeated shelling and attacks on Las Anod had caused the death of over 300 and displaced an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 residents from the city. “On August 25, secessionist forces attempted an entry from both the east and west,” Elham Garad, a UK-based Somali activist who has been in Las Anod to help the unionist cause, told Peoples Dispatch.
SSC’s unionist forces “not only repelled the attack but pursued Somaliland’s army, ultimately encircling their base at Goojacade,” which was the command center of several other smaller bases around the city, hosting about 100,000 soldiers in total, she said.
Overrunning all these bases surrounding Las Anod and marching 100 km northwest to Oog, unionist forces captured 260 soldiers of Somaliland’s army, along with Goojacade base’s commander General Faysal Abdi Bootaan. “Abandoned military equipment, including transport trucks, tanks, armored vehicles, rocket launchers and machine guns recently acquired from Djibouti” were also captured, added Elham.
While SSC President Firdhiye subsequently called for negotiation “so we can discuss respecting the border between us,” Somaliland’s president Muse Bihi Abdi vowed “revenge” and deployed more troops to the frontline in Oog in September. However, the Somaliland army continued to lose ground.
Following a 10-day-long discussion in Mogadishu where Somalia’s government had invited Firdhiye and his diplomatic delegation, the Federal Republic of Somalia formally supported the Las Anod Declaration in October, in effect agreeing to reintegrate SSC as a part of its administration. Somalia’s government has since begun work on establishing the education curriculum in SSC-Khatumo and training its police force, Elham said.
By November, the Khaatumo State’s forces had driven the Somaliland army out of the entire region of SSC, spanning over an area of about 100,000 sq km, over half of the 176,000-odd sq km that used to be under Somaliland’s control.
The SSC-Khaatumo administration also began taxation that month. The third deputy chairman of Somaliland’s ruling party, Hussein Aden, defected and crossed over to join the SSC-Khatumo administration in November, five months after Somaliland parliament’s speaker, Abdirasak Khalif Ahmed, had done the same.
With the help of diaspora Somalis, the administration began the rehabilitation of residents back into Las Anod by December. The city “is currently in the midst of rapid reconstruction,” Elham said, adding that schools have also reopened.
A war about to begin in Awdal?
Of the 76,000 odd sq km left under the control of separatist Somaliland since the liberation of SSC, its western region of Awdal, where a similar unionist movement has since been developing, amounts to over 21,000 sq km.
Following the MoU, thousands of protesters sloganeering “Our sea is not for sale, our land is not for sale” took to the streets in Awdal’s capital Borama, where the security forces deployed by Abdi are reportedly going door to door, conducting a campaign of mass arrests.
In Awdal’s coastal town of Lughaya, where Ethiopia has reportedly been offered a military base in the MoU, youth have taken up arms, vowing to protect the sovereignty of Somali lands and waters from Ethiopia. An armed conflict can break out here anytime. Battalions of the Somaliland army are alleged to be en route to this town.
Even before the MoU, Awdal’s residents who had joined the Somaliland army had abandoned their posts and returned to help realize their region’s unionist aspiration at the call of Awdal State Movement (ASM), its spokesperson Barisamad told Peoples Dispatch.
The ASM was established in early September 2023 at a convention in Ottawa, Canada. It was attended online by hundreds of diaspora members and physically by activists and civil society leaders from the Awdal, along with the elders of the Gadabursi, which is the dominant clan in the region.
The Gadabursi, along with the Dhulbahante and the Warsangeli in the SSC region, have been historically opposed to secession from Somalia. Only the Isaaq clan, predominant in the region between Awdal and SSC, wanted to secede. Its members largely made up the Somali National Movement (SNM) that had fought Somalia’s army in the civil war which ended in 1991 with the collapse of Somalia’s federal government.
In the aftermath of this collapse, leaders of all these four main clans met in Awdal’s capital Borama in 1993 “to establish a system in the northern region of Somalia until peace returned in the south. However, the Isaaq clan hijacked the conference and declared a separate Somaliland”, to which other clans had never consented, said Barisamad.
Ever since, the Isaaq has dominated the Somaliland administration, while the rest have been marginalized, and the regions they largely inhabit have been underdeveloped. “The airport in Borama was closed down in 2000. The port of Zeila is also closed. There has not been a single news channel, TV or radio in the region for 33 years,” Barisamad added, explaining the grievances felt by the people in Awdal. Activists opposing this marginalization of the region have been systematically killed or imprisoned, he alleged.
Scores have been arrested in the last few months since the formation of the ASM, whose founding communique declared that the region has withdrawn from the 1993 agreements that had been used to establish Somaliland.
While Somaliland’s regime continues to maintain control over the territory of Awdal, the advance of its unionist forces has been accelerated by the MoU, which has provoked not only the unionists in Awdal but also the historic supporters of secession in the Isaaq-dominated regions.
For now, there are no reports indicating an alliance between the unionists in Awdal and the protesters in the historically pro-secession cities of Hargeisa and Burco. However, in the absence of a retraction from the MoU, the possibility that the perceived threat of losing land and water to Ethiopia may prove to be a uniting force between Somalis cannot be discounted.
Several youngsters in the secessionist-dominated cities of Hargeisa, Burco and Berbera have taken to social media to praise the unionists of Awdal for taking arms to defend Somali land and waters. The chief traditional elder of Hargeisa has also stressed the need for unity to protect the territory from Ethiopia.
