Somaliland's' Grand Delusions

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm

[FAH1223]

Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

[quote="FAH1223"]Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down [/quote]

wallahi i hate the arrogance of the Isaaq Clan-Family

[FAH1223]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="FAH1223"]Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down [/quote]

wallahi i hate the arrogance of the Isaaq Clan-Family [/quote]

yeah, but they can't even take two regions

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

[quote="FAH1223"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="FAH1223"]Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down [/quote]

wallahi i hate the arrogance of the Isaaq Clan-Family [/quote]

yeah, but they can't even take two regions [/quote]


Wallahi a Laf of Dhulobohanta is karbashing the "Mighty" Habar Je'lo

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="FAH1223"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="FAH1223"]Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down [/quote]

wallahi i hate the arrogance of the Isaaq Clan-Family [/quote]

yeah, but they can't even take two regions [/quote]


Wallahi a Laf of Dhulobohanta is karbashing the "Mighty" Habar Je'lo [/quote]


the Laf of Dhulobohanta is Jamac Siyaad

[Ceelgabo]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="FAH1223"]Warsengeli and Dolbohanta holding things down [/quote]

wallahi i hate the arrogance of the Isaaq Clan-Family [/quote]


You should look up the meaning of arrogance before you label anyone arrogant...but anyway what you really hate what Somaliland is doing to rebuild its land and future.

[Ceelgabo]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"]Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm[/quote]


Ogadanese calling Somaliland indepedence delusional is an Oxymoron..

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

[quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"]Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm[/quote]


Ogadanese calling Somaliland indepedence delusional is an Oxymoron..[/quote]


ok? but still he has a valid point

[Ceelgabo]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"]Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm[/quote]


Ogadanese calling Somaliland indepedence delusional is an Oxymoron..[/quote]


ok? but still he has a valid point [/quote]


What valid???


While he is wasting his time writing about Somaliland his people are being killed both side of the border...and yet this fool wastes his time writing about people that could careless about his opinion.

[Ahmed-Gurey]

hmmm interesting

[Sadaam_Mariixmaan]

[quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"]Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm[/quote]


Ogadanese calling Somaliland indepedence delusional is an Oxymoron..[/quote]


ok? but still he has a valid point [/quote]


What valid???



3 Valid points from his Essay


1. Isaaqs are scared of being in a united Somalia , because they know they would be supressed and marginleysed by Darood(M and Hawiye.

2. The Isaaq "Gov't" is full of Warlords and former Butchers of Waqoyi known as NSS

3. The stealing of Farmlands of the Dir Qabiils(Issa iyo Samaroon) and property of Harti


Cased closed




While he is wasting his time writing about Somaliland his people are being killed both side of the border...and yet this fool wastes his time writing about people that could careless about his opinion.[/quote]

[abwaan1]

It’s my understanding the article was originally authored and posted on bandit (onlf) web site. I have not seen a single new word, the same bandit BS. Instead of commenting on something they are not qualified to have say, why not keep on dreaming about your lost camel in sky.

[Ceelgabo]

[quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"][quote="Ceelgabo"][quote="Sadaam_Mariixmaan"]Somaliland's' Grand Delusions



In May of 1991, following the abrupt collapse of Somalia's last government, a breakaway entity called "Somaliland" was declared by representatives of the Isaq clan group who inhabit some areas in the northwest of the country. The secessionist administration laid claim to all of the territory of the former British protectorate by the same name which in 1960 merged unconditionally with the former Italian colony of Somalia to form the Somali Republic.



But the decision to break away has been, and still remains, an Isaq-only affair as was the earlier armed insurgency against the country's central government. It is a matter of record that good-intentioned members of other clans who had wanted to take part in the opposition movement during its inception were unceremoniously turned away and told that they could not be trusted. The Isaq leadership had thus given their movemement a strictly ethnic definition and forefeited any claim to regional or national relevance and/or legitimacy.They had also antagonised many potential sympathisers by implicitly characterizing their struggle as a clan war pitting them against the Darod, the clan group of the Late President Mohamed Siyad Barre. This had meant that civilian members of the Darod were open to reprisals. Other non-Darod clans neighboring the Isaq were also marked as enemies and branded as government collaborators.



Although many other Somalis had always suspected the Isaq leadership of having a separatist agenda, the latter initially went to great lengths to camouflage their true intentions and to assure other Somalis that the sole aim of their opposition movement was to rid the whole country of the abuses visited upon it by nearly a quarter century of misrule. Indeed, the very name they gave their vanguard organization, the Somali National Movement, was cunningly intended to convince other Somalis that their insurrection was no more than legitimate resistance to the excesses of a corrupt and dictatorial regime.The worst fears of the rest of the country and people were, however, confirmed when secession was declared in Burao barely a few months from the fall of the military regime in Mogadishu, the immediate cause of which was the uprising staged by the local Hawiye population.



At the local level, none of the other clans who inhabit the territory in question was consulted or has demonstrated the kind of grass-roots support for the secession scheme that one finds among members of the Isaq. Rather, the Isaqs, who after the sudden disintegration of the ruling regime had found themselves in possession of a major part of the country's military arsenal, sought to present other clans in the North with a fait accompli situation and threatened them with violence if they did not meekly go along with their political agenda.



In fact, the Gadabursi clan was subjected to major violence and intimidation when, in 1991, its major town of Borama was attacked and ransacked by armed militias of the Isaq. These same militias burned down several other Gadabursi-inhabited towns and committed horrible atrocities against the civilian population there. Large tracts of farmland belonging to Gadabursi farmers were grabbed, and continue to be occupied, by members of the neighboring Jibril Abokor Isaq.



The Dhulbahante and Warsangeli in the east fared only slightly better. Many of their houses and farms in and around Erigavo were, and continue to be, occupied by Isaqi squatters who to this day refuse to move out voluntarily in spite of the many reconciliation conferences and agreements to exchange any properties that may have changed hands during the inter-clan hostilities of the past.These land issues are time bombs that threaten a renewed flareup unless the local clan elders are empowered to tackle them seriously, and the Isaq-based "Somaliland" administration discontinues its not-so-well disguised policy of backing the squatters in their intransigence



The Isaq separatists could not seek international recognition for an area encompassing only their limited tribal homeland since such an entity would have no basis or reference in history or international law. Hence their insistence on the the Italo-British boundary as defining the territory for which they want secession nothwithstanding the fact that this boundary was arbitrarily drawn by two European powers right down the middle of the traditional homeland belonging to another clan, the Harti Darod, and that it was subsequently nullified by the 1960 Act of Union.One might also add that the Dhulbahante at least had never signed a protection treaty with Great Britain and that, as far as they are concerned, the boundary in question had never existed. Their territory was occupied by Britain only after a long and bitter armed struggle lasting almost a quarter century, and with the end of the occupation, they were only too glad to regain their freedom and to rejoin their kinsmen on the other side of that unnatural, European-imposed barrier.



That is why, upon the disintegration of the country into clan-dominated enclaves, the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli formed the Puntland Regional Administration together with their Harti and Darod clansmen in the northeast. It sounds ludicrous to them that the Isaqs, who were clinging to the apron strings of the British during the Dervish wars, are now assuming colonial Britain's role and demanding to restore its long-defunct colonial boundaries.The positon on either side of the infamous border line is that never again shall the Harti and Darod family in that paricular area be divided, and that if the Isaqs want a separate country they could go ahead and set it up on their own territory, not including those originally Dhulbahante lands which the Isaq had encroached upon during, and in the immediate aftermath of, the war of resistance against the British.



The Isaqi position is so full of contradictions and at times so downright hypocritical that it cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.They want to be apart from the rest of Somalis, yet they continue to court the Harti and Dir clans of the North who are no more closely related to them than are other Somalis.They are doing this not out of love for these clans but because they find it to be expedient to do so under the circumstances.The Isaqs were the first to undermine Somali nationhood and opt for the primacy of clan interests, yet they complain that Col. Abdullahi Yusuf is forming an empire based on primitive clan associations (a case of sour grapes?) They invoke the principle of self-determination to justify their pursuit of secession, but want to deny the same right to the Issa, Gadabursi, Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans who vehemently oppose such a move. They base their extrme position on resentment of the treatment their people rceived at the hands of the former government, but that government is no longer in place. and,furthermore, the top leadership of "Somaliland" is made up of persons who held positions of prominence in that supposedly hated regime. Indeed, "Somaliland"'s current head of administration is a former colonel in Siad Barre's notorious National Security Service organization and its Head of Parliament is none other than Mr.Aden, Siyad Barre's last Minister of Foreign Affairs, both of them unprincipled, freelance fortune hunters the Isaqs have hired in yet another attempt to camouflage the true nature of their ethno-chauvinistic entity.



But who are they fooling? It seems that the only people falling for Isaqi cheap tricks have been a couple of naive and gullible British parliamentarians who were so taken in that they had to propose official recognition of " Somaliland" in the British parliament. I would like to believe that they were unsuspecting victims of Isaqi wiles and did not have any cynical or sinister motives.



In the matter of human rights violations that the Hargeisa administration has been shedding so many crocodile tears about, little does the world know that the mass graves unearthed in Hargeisa really contained the remains of the Ethiopian Darod refugees who were resettled there in the aftermath of the Somalo-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and who were massacred by the thousands following the fall of the national government.



The current situation of the Gadabursi merits some examination. In a characteristically cunning move calculated to deceive public opinion and to bestow credibility on the Isaqi administration's bid for international recognition, Mr. Dahir Riyale Kahin, a Gadabursi clansman, was appointed to the position of president following the death of the late Mohame Ibrahim Igal in 2002. This decision was also intended to woo the support of the Gadabursi clan by making its members believe that they have a big stake in the realization of Somaliland's ambitions for sovereign statehood. This, however, has succeeded little in winning the whole-hearted backing of the Gadabursi mainstream who are known for their Somali patriotism and who entertain bitter memories of the atrocities committed against them in 1991.They are also suspicious of the sudden display of reverence and goodwill toward them by their their traditional adversaries and detractors, particularly the Habar Awal Isaq. Many question the wisdom and long-term ramifications of committing to the Isaqi camp and turning on the Darod, their traditional allies in the North and neighbors in the Somali territories under Ethiopia's rule. Given the fickle nature of Somali politics and the impermanence of their alliances, the Gadabursi could not trust that the Isaq's current amicable attitude will last for long. It could be a mere tactic designed to isolate them from their natural allies as a prelude to subjecting them later to complete Isaqi domination and control.



Isaqi strategists and policy makers make no secret of the fate they have in store for non-Isaq clans once international recognition is secured. In a manner reminiscent of Hitler's "final solution" or of post-Tito Yugoslavia, they would immediately embark on an ethnic cleansing campaign to uproot the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli from their ancestral homelands and force them to resettle in Somalia's northeast and/or the southeastern regions of Ethiopia, while the Issa and Gadabursi would be temporarily retained as subject peoples who pay taxes and do the bidding of the Isaq. It is envisaged that ultimately the whole of the formerly British-ruled colony would be exclusively inhabited by the Isaq who view themselves as the sole legitimate custodians of, and heirs to, Britain's colonial legacy in the area.Viewed in this light, the whole "Somaliland" farce is nothing but a land grab scheme alla Hitler's 'lebensraum' dream---more living space for the noble Isaq people who have grown sick and tired of being assigned a minority status in the context of a united Somalia, and are desperately yearning for a place where they, not the Darod or Hawiye or Rahanwein, form the majority!



In view of the recent decision by the "Somaliland" parliament to, as they put it, secure and defend the boundaries of the country, a euphemism for invading Dhulbahante and Warsangeli territory, it seems that the long-deliberated issue of moving these two clans out of the way of Isaqi political and territorial ambitions could not be postponed any further, since their very presence on the land constituted in itself an annoying obstacle to the goal of attaining recognition. Thus, the new thinking, apparently adopted by the Hargeisa administration, is that it would be better to deal with the "question of the eastern borders" sooner rather than later. Once the territory is under complete Isaqi control,goes the argument, international recognition would follow automatically, and would also serve to give international blessing to the completion of the ethnic cleansing operation.



It seems now, however, that the Riyale administration has ignominiously backed away from this step once the Isaq realised the full implications of hostile action in the East.The Hargeisa administration had already, through its ridiculous prentensions to sovereign statehood, antagonised many people in the region and the rest of the country. Labeling Somali citizens from the south as foreigners and territorists, and subjecting them to unlawful torture, incarceration and deportation while stripping them of their meagre possessions has not endeared it to many Somalis in the south whose relatives or clansmen were affected. Also, in a meek and servile measure calculated to please its sponsors and overlords in Addis Ababa, it has jailed and tortured members of the Ogaden Darod clan and handed some of them over to the Ethiopian authorities claiming they were members of the Ogaden Liberation Front that fights for independence from Ethiopia. This has outraged the whole of the Absame Darod clan and has interrupted the flow of trade from its territories in the west and south to Berbera and Hargeisa.Thus, these recent aggressive moves in the east have had the effect of placing the Isaq territories under a complete self-imposed economic siege which, compounded by the conditions of extreme drought in many Isaq-inhabited regions, represents a sure recipe for disaster.



Galvanised by the Darod-hating sentiment displayed by these measures, the Ogaden and other Darod in the west have pledged full military support for their kinsmen in the East should the Isaq decide to initiate hostilities.



Some observers who closely monitor events in Somalia speculate that Hargeisa's recent escalation has been prompted by the government of Ethiopia. The neighboring country has demonstrated once and again that it is determined to prevent the re-emergence of a united Somalia. It had in the recent past scuttled many attempts to bring about national reconciliation in the country and to set up a national unity government. Now, they say, that Ethiopia's role in the Nairobi reconciliation conference has been somewhat curtailed, it has instructed its loyal and subservient clients in Hargeisa to stir up trouble so that this latest attempt in Nairobi would meet with the fate of its predecessors. It seems that the Ethiopians have convinced the Somalilanders that it was also in their interest to boycot and undermine any effort at Somali reconciliation, since the longer anarchy prevailed in Mogadishu the better their own chances of attaining international recognition.



In fairness to the Isaq, however,it should be mentioned that there has always been a significant minority opposed to the idea of secession on the grounds that it was neither viable nor dsireable. In this camp are some prominent politicians, e.g.Mr. Osman Ali Jaama, better known as 'Osman-Kalloun', a former minister in Somalia; the former commander of Somalia's police force, Mr.Jama Mohamed Qalib; and the nationally renowned poet, Mr. Mohamed Ibrahim 'Hadrawi'. But this group's voice of reason has been drowned out by the cacophony of the Isaqi crowd whose sentiments have been ruthlessly manipulated by the demagogic politicians who are in control of the Hargeisa administration and their rabble rousers. Most recently, a widely respected traditional clan leader, Boqor Osman Bur-madow, has been thrown in jail without any recourse to a fair trial for voicing his opposition to war in the East. The law in Hargeisa is that anyone who advocates union with the rest of the country or opposes the maniacal administration's military adventures gets automatically arrested and charged with national treason! So much then for Hargeisa's claim of being an oasis of stability, democracy and human rights in a wilderness of anarchy and violence!

Musa Y. Hussein
MusaH207@aol.com


http://www.ogaden.com/Sland's_Grand_Delusions.htm[/quote]


Ogadanese calling Somaliland indepedence delusional is an Oxymoron..[/quote]


ok? but still he has a valid point [/quote]


What valid???



3 Valid points from his Essay


1. Isaaqs are scared of being in a united Somalia , because they know they would be supressed and marginleysed by Darood(M and Hawiye.

2. The Isaaq "Gov't" is full of Warlords and former Butchers of Waqoyi known as NSS

3. The stealing of Farmlands of the Dir Qabiils(Issa iyo Samaroon) and property of Harti


Cased closed




While he is wasting his time writing about Somaliland his people are being killed both side of the border...and yet this fool wastes his time writing about people that could careless about his opinion.[/quote][/quote]



"1. Isaaqs are scared of being in a united Somalia , because they know they would be supressed and marginleysed by Darood(M and Hawiye."


To unite with what, people that have been killing and butchering each other for 16 years... Anyone who loves peace would be scared of the prospect of uniting with Southern Somalia.



"2. The Isaaq "Gov't" is full of Warlords and former Butchers of Waqoyi known as NSS "

Warlords??? None of the Politicians voted in Somaliland Parliment have their own militias...the only Militia is the army and Police responsible for peace and order...so were do the Warlords come from and what is NSS...if you mean SNM...they are liberators and they put their weapons down once the country has been liberated from dictator Siyad Barre.


"3. The stealing of Farmlands of the Dir Qabiils(Issa iyo Samaroon) and property of Harti "

Have you been to SOmaliland to proof accussation or are you just talking from your ass as usual.


Fat boy the only thing you proven here is how desperate and jealous you really are.