Speaking at a press conference, aired by the federal state’s television station, PLTV, on Tuesday, Ali Dhega’adde, a long-time serving member of the Puntland parliament, called for the assassination of the Somaliland leader, popularly known as Faisal Ali Waraabe.
MP Ali, addressing Sool clans to which he belongs, himself, claimed “all the 200 people who died in Las Anod since the ‘Jeegaanta’ government was in control can be directly traced back to Faisal Ali Waraabe” – the word ‘Jeegaanta’ was coined by WADDANI party to derogate the Kulmiye Party win of the November 2017 presidential elections over the two other national parties which put the incumbent president, Musa Bihi Abdi, at the held of the internationally unrecognized but very successful, de facto government of the Republic of Somaliland.
The number of people who died which the MP quotes were largely killed in revenge killings among the related clans in the region.
“I am giving you an order”, he cried “to kill Faisal Ali Waraabe wherever you find him – in the country or abroad”. “He is the one who masterminded the killings and dispatched the assassins.”
He also ordered the killing of all officials loyal to the Republic of Somaliland as well as anybody, even the wounded, who was on the side of Somaliland.
“One can only die once,” he harangued. “Isn’t there even a single fighter who can use a rocket-propelled grenade (Bazooka) to hit the wounded who are being ferried from Tukkaraq, passing Las Anod, on their way to Oog and Ainaba?”
Since the escalation of armed clashes between the Republic of Somaliland troops and the Somalia Federal state of Puntland mix of militias and trained military and naval personnel near Tukkaraq, 81 kilometres inside the colonial borders of Somaliland, Puntland officials, led by President Gass, flew wild allegation every which way to incense the public in order to drum up blind support for the indefensible position they have taken.
The two sides locked in head-on military collisions on several occasions since January 2018 when the Somaliland army advanced a few kilometres to Tukkaraq in order to preempt a planned tour of the area of Somalia’s President Farmajo on visit to nearby Garowe so lend moral and political support to Puntland’s geographical claims on area. President Farmajo was following up a visit his planning minister made to eastern Sanaag – the first of its kind for 27 years – which violated agreements reached by Somaliland-Somalia officials on non-incursion on each other’s administrational turfs – physical or otherwise. The two incidents, Somaliland maintains, largely – but not solely – precipitated army engagement in the area.
Earlier, the Puntland Defense Council, taking cue from President Gass’s often emotional exhortions and vows to wage an unending armed offensive against Somaliland, declared that anybody from the Sool, Sanaag and ‘Ayn’ regions, otherwise of the Dhulbahante and Warsangeli clans, who was found guilty – or reported to be – of support to Somaliland – tacit or overt – would be sentenced to death and that his/her belongings would be impounded by the state.
Puntland claims that Sool, Sanaag and Buuhoodle come under its administration simply because people in Puntland are ethnically related to clans in these regions. If that logic were to hold, then Puntland would be invading Ethiopia and Kenya (Northeastern province), next, where the same clans lived. Many accuse of Puntland of executing a grand plan that would link clans in Jubbaland, Southwest, parts of Hirshabelle, Puntland, parts of Somaliland and the eastern regions of Ethiopia under one planned government based on the premise that clans in these areas all descended from the same ancestor. Farmaajo, the FGS President was said to be the bursar of this movement syphoning down Qatari political and financial support to make it work.
On the other hand, Puntland officials claimed that it said for Greater Somalia unity – a dream that went dead as soon as the former British Protectorate of Somalia and Italian Somalia united in 1960 but the three other members of the dream failed to follow suit: Somali Ethiopians covering Ogadenia and Haud/Reserve area, NFD of Kenya and French Djibouti. Somalia, using firebrands such as Puntland, still exploits the idea to fulfil a myriad of own schemes.
Observers note that Puntland has reached a point-of-no-return since it has already blown the Tukkaraq confrontation out of all proportions striving to give it a clan-gainst-clan hue which it is not. Another major clash – and possibly more is inevitable, they conclude.
