Somalia insists on assuming sole control over Somalia-Somaliland airspace

Mohamed Abdullahi Salad, Somalia’s minister for Aviation paid, Friday, a visit to the ICAO Nairobi office which manages presently manages Somalia and Somaliland airspace.According to the minister’s delegation, the visit aimed to touch base with the ICAO office and the officers responsible for airspace matters before the ‘FGS took complete control over Somalia’s airspace.

Minister Salad went on a guided tour of the office and the facilities used to manage and control the Somalia-Somaliland airspace, at the end of which he addressed the Somali and Kenyan personnel running the facilities and office.

“I must tell you that we are in the final process of taking over full control of Somalia’s airspace,” he said.

“This is not to say that it will be next week or the week after but the day Somalia will re-assume full management of its airspace is not far away,” he said.

Minister Salad’s words and visit only re-confirmed Somalia’s unilateral moves to assume full, unshared and unaudited control of an airspace the larger part over which it no longer has jurisdiction of. Main international air routes to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East run over the Republic of Somaliland, a country that has been running its own, peaceful, fully democratic, fully-functioning state since 1991. Somalia has been in turmoil in the duration.

Somalia’s renewed efforts to browbeat the international community to hand the whole of Somalia-Somaliland airspace is a direct violation of the internationally sanctioned ISTANBUL II COMMUNIQUE of July 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey, between the Republic of Somaliland and the then Transitional Government of Somalia.

Points 7 and 8 of the Communique’ established that the two sides will nominate an Air Traffic Control Board  within 45 days of the signed agreement, going on to establish that two parties agreed to appoint an ad-hoc technical committee composed of 4 members, (two from each party) to prepare the terms of reference of the Air Traffic Control Board. Hargeisa, Somaliland, was to be  the HQ of the to-be-established office.

The United Nations envoy to Somalia/Somaliland of the time and the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia, Mr. Nicholas Kay, supported the agreement on airspace, stating that ‘the agreement between Somaliland and Somalia on shared management of airspace could be a model for other areas of mutually beneficial cooperation‘.

The envoy, briefing the UN Security Council on the Secretary-General’s most recent report on the situation in Somalia at the time, expressed, same as every else concerned about Somali affairs, the joint management of Somaliland-Somalia airspace and the equitable sharing of revenues as spelled out by the Istanbul Communique’.

The agreement never came off the ground due to unilateral moves and communication the Somalia government made with ICAO offices in Canada and Nairobi, which gave it a sort of a nod to go ahead with its un-enforceable designs on Somaliland-Somalia airspace and its callous disregard for the internationally-driven talks that started between the two sides on multi-lateral sectors and issues of mutual concern. The talks were given a first kick-start at a meeting the UK government called the two sides to in 2012 in London at which an impressive presence of international bodies and nations was recorded.

This latest indiscretion on the part of the Somalia government augurs ill for the stuttering, asthmatic talks that needed a positive impetus, not another manifestation of Mogadishu’s devastating domineering, age-old stance that precipitated the downfall of the reigning military regime, and Somaliland withdrawing from the ill-fated union it entered with Somalia in 1960.

If Somalia continues on the reckless carousel it embarked on, Somaliland will be left but one option: to completely withdraw from the talks and submit its legitimate case to the international community once more to save the region from an uncertain future.