Udub has no sool

[Gen.Aideed]

Udub has no sool
By Guled Ismail - As a Somalilander, I was heartened by the victory of the people in Sool. And it was just that - a victory for Sool achieved completely by Soolians. A group of Sool men, long dismissed as elite die-hard Somalilanders with romantic links to a non-existent notion of Northern solidarity swept into Las Anod with substantial if not quite universal welcome.

Meanwhile the hitherto impotent UDUB-run government in Hargeisa, which once infamously saw its President run out of Las Anod by pro-puntland militia and did nothing - claimed the victory as its own.

And it claimed it in its inimitably crass way too.

? affairs?.will be evaluated in Garowe[capital of Puntland] if Puntland insists on claiming Las Anod? thundered UDUB?s Minister of Information. This was a clear threat by a Somaliland Government Minister to invade the capital of a region of Somalia, a neighbouring nation.

Decent Somalilanders were outraged. For starters the threat is hollow. Many point out that the UDUB government is incapable of getting rid of the trash mounds and plastic bags that plight Hargeisa Town let alone invading the capitals of neighbouring regions. How can a government incapable of collecting rubbish from its own capital muster the strength to wage war against others? And why would it threaten its neighbours anyway?

The Second Deputy Leader of the House of Elders, the Guurti, Hon. Bashe Mohamed Farah was scathing and soothing at the same time. Speaking in the subtle language we came to expect from a member of this highly respected institution, chastised the errant minister. ?Puntland is a neighbouring and brotherly region..we want to live in peace with them?

One can almost hear nationwide murmurs of ?we second that?

But has the UDUB government miscalculated in Sool in other ways too? Some think so.

Sool is the easternmost region of Somaliland, and UDUB, the ruling party of President Riyale has its traditional powerbase in the western heartlands where most Somalilanders live. The opposition party KULMIYE on the other hand is led by Ahmed Silanyo who hails from the East of the country. Sources close to him say he was unhappy with Somaliland?s takeover of Las Anod because he saw it as a cynical attempt by President Riyale to show himself as a great national leader in advance of the Presidential elections next year. And he is right: Riyale is more popular now than he ever was and is seen as the man who brought Las Anod `home?. The fact that most Somalilanders see Las Anod as a distant irritant at best does not matter: this is Kitchener regaining Khartoum In fact the whole thing was a series of accidents and bumbling sequence of events culminating in Somaliland?s army unexpectedly taking over Las Anod. It started with a genuine local discontent about maladministration by Puntland and ended in Puntland forces attacking Somaliland positions in a cack-handed attempt to disguise a local anti-Puntland uprising as an attack by Somaliland. They lost and local pro Somaliland supporters took over the town.

But who really won in the wider Somaliland politics?

Silanyo must feel outsmarted by a man he considers his intellectual inferior. But the old man may have missed to notice the silver lining in the Sool cloud. The East West partition in Somaliland is obscured and mitigated by the wheeling and dealing and horse trading that are the hall marks of all democracies, but there it remains; not quite the elephant in the room but perhaps the small camel.

The local Las Anod Somalilanders may always gravitate towards UDUB given they got their military muscle from an UDUB government. But these are the elites. The masses are more likely to either revolt against the whole Somaliland project violently, a distinct possibility, or shift their political power towards their `local? man Silanyo.

Sool may still come back to haunt UDUB.

Guled Ismail
calidheere@aol.co.uk