In the most brazenly blatant violation of the talks recently concluded in Djibouti between the presidents of Somaliland and the President of Somalia, the Director General of the Ministry of Minerals of Federal Somalia, Farah A Hassan, called a Chinese mining company in Awdal to immediately leave Somaliland or else following a Press Release from his Ministry on same vein.
The DG, confident of his government’s backing, claimed Awdal was part of Somalia, and so, came under his and his government’s jurisdiction. He so clearly ignored Somaliland and all that it stood for over the past 23 years of independence, peace and development.
Worse, the man made naught of the talks that started between the two countries that the international community fully backed.
In the press release the Federal ministry of Minerals, Mogadishu, released, it was said that ARC, the Chinese company currently at work on the Simodi mountains, leave the country (Somaliland) immediately. The Mogadishu Ministry claimed that the company drafted armed militia to protect it and its interests and that such militias caused local residents to flee the area in fear for their lives.
The Press release went on to ask the Chinese government not to permit its nationals to ‘unlawfully’ go into illegal partnerships with elements that have no prior permission secured with the Ministry.
In response to the Mogadishu threats, the Somaliland Minister for Energy and Minerals, Hussein Abdi Dualeh, challenged the Mogadishu administration on its imaginary control over a Somaliland that reclaimed its sovereignty from an ill-fated union with Mogadishu that lasted thirty years in 1991,
The Minister also pointed out that, since Mogadishu could do nothing to deter Somaliland development or stop its quest for sovereignty, the Mogadishu ministry only laid bare its government’s hypocrisy the talks between the two sides that the international community placed so much hope on.
This latest development augurs ill for the meaningful continuation of talks between the two governments as it equally embarrasses the presidents of Djibouti, who hosted the latest bout of the talks, and the two presidents of Somaliland and Somalia – the latter the more so than the two others as it makes him a dishonest, double-faced liar in the eyes of the world.
