Dr. Abdiweli Gass, President of the Federal Somalia state of Puntland, scornfully disparaged the very idea of a resumption of talks between the Republic of Somaliland and the Federal Somalia Government.
Mr. Gass disdainfully scoffed at the concept itself, in the first place.
“By saying that Somaliland and Somalia are engaged in talks, one is admitting that two diplomatically equal sides are on either side of the negotiating table. This is tantamount to a recognition and elevation of Somaliland to the same pedestal as that of the Somalia Federal government which is ridiculous,” he stated at a banquet held in his honor by Puntlanders in Brussels where he took part in the just-concluded Somalia Partners Forum (SPF).
President Gass, heading a traditionally inimical state, Puntland founded in 1998, to a Somaliland that restored, in 1991, an independence it lost to an ill-fated union with Somalia in 1960, was alluding to a commitment on the part of his leader, president Mohammed Abdullahi Farmajo, of the FGS, on the resumption of talks between the two sides which had been sputtering on and off since 2012.
He also questioned how the presidents of each side could sign implement a resolution that went against the grain of each side’s central objective behind the continuation of the talks.
“President Farmajo cannot tell his people that he was letting go of Somaliland – if it came to that, and President Musa Bihi of Somaliland, likewise, cannot tell the people of Burao and Hargeisa that he was going back to a union with Somalia,” he derisively stated.
Mr. Gass, of course, singled out Hargeisa and Burao to put a question mark on the loyalty of and belief in Somaliland of other Somaliland cities such as Borama, Las Anod and Erigavo – areas he believed were the FGS’s for the asking.
He made it very clear that the talks will not be only barren and fruitless but a pointlessly meandering tail-chaser.
Puntland flies the Federal Government of Somalia flag beside its own state standards and is bound by the federal constitution, since its one of the five states that established the federal, central government in Mogadishu.
Somaliland has built a fully functioning, democratic republic from the ashes and rubble of a protracted civil war which in 1991 toppled a cruel, military regime which reduced many Somaliland cities to forlorn, teetering hulks as it was responsible for tens of thousands of persecuted civilians and many, many more in refugee camps in neighboring Ethiopia.
Somaliland never took part in any of the Somalia reconciliation conferences for the past 27 years and was not planning to do so at this stage, according to its leaders and a wide cross-section of a public that jealously guards its gains.
Puntland president shares the Federal Government’s Farmajo and the other four ‘Somalia’ presidents of Galmudug, Hirshabelle, Northwest and Jubbaland federal states that Somaliland cannot strike out on its own as a separate, sovereign state, intentionally ignoring that all these six ‘presidents’ always belonged to the Italian Somalia of 1960 whereas Somaliland, an ex-British Protectorate, went to unite with them an independent, fully recognized state.
All sic ‘presidents’ sat side-by-side at the Brussels PSF promoting their ‘Somalia’. Somaliland was not there as it did not belong to the same ‘Somalia’ fold. As in other venues, the six presidents who belonged to the Somalia Federal Government negatively spoke against Somaliland as one – as usual.
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