“It is the job of IGAD and UNSOM to come, talk, go, take their planes, come back and go the round again. Their job. Nothing changes. No progress is made. Let them earn their DSA,” these are the words, Vice President of the Federal Somalia State of Puntland used to express his view of the pacification efforts which the African and UN officials had been shuttling between the Republic of Somaliland and Puntland to defuse tensions between the two sides.
VP Abdihakim Ammey, speaking to SAAB TV, supported the position his boss, the President of Puntland, aired following a closed-door meeting he had with the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Mr. Michael Keating, during the last week of June, 2018. Mr. Gass said there was no peace possible with Somaliland while the latter ‘occupied’ what he termed was his country, although he was referring to regions that were internationally and geographically recognized as part of Somaliland, the old British Protectorate, which, in 1960, united with Italian Somalia in anticipation of a ‘Greater Somalia’ dream.
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“The peace Somaliland is talking about will never be durable. An integration of the peoples in the area in trading, coexistence and in peace is not possible. Tukkaraq is Puntland – land and people,” VP Abdihakim insisted.
“Compulsory peace (with Somaliland) is not palatable to us,” he added.
The AU and UNSOM have, lately, spared no effort to strike a peace deal between Somaliland and Puntland presently on a standoff in the Tukkaraq area where their respective armed forces clashed on several occasions at a high cost.
Somaliland did not demur the international organizations’ proposal package but Puntland had always maintained a belligerent position relying on hordes of civilian militias the war drum it had beaten along clan lines had drawn to its side.
