His Excellency the President of the Republic of Somaliland, Musa Behi Abdi, and a delegation he led is on a state visit to Guinea following an official invitation extended to him by President Alpha Conde’.
The red carpet, the fanfare, the Somaliland flag fluttering above, the waiting helicopter and the classy reception by the Guinean Foreign Minister, Mamadi Toure, was to the weak, international community supported Mogadishu government tantamount to diplomatic recognition for Somaliland.
Somalia media reported that the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Awad, scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m., Wednesday, at which he was to fly into yet another harangue about some country – this time Guinea – violating ‘Somalia sovereignty’.
https://twitter.com/PPRMOFA/status/1146361120883695616
Per @PPRMOFA, @MinisterMOFA delays a press conference he expected to hold today at 2pm local time in #Mogadishu, the #Somali capital. Reason yet unclear.
— Garowe Online (@radiogarowe) July 3, 2019
@MinisterMOFA becomes apoplectic upon seeing how President @musebiihi of #Somaliland Republic was most royally received in #Guinea. He called a press conference to protest only to cancel it the last minute. Instead, he'll be writing another envious, silly letter to the AU. pic.twitter.com/mxLwjJVWnb
— Hassan Heiss (@JIbrahimj) July 3, 2019
The meeting was called off at the last minute.
Similarly, a Tweet attributed to Villa Somalia President, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed ‘Farmaajo’, which was hastily pulled out, circulated the social media.
“We are against all forms of diplomatic breaches witnessed in recent days, we call all brotherly countries to respect Somalia’s sovereignty and statehood,” the President, reportedly said in his Tweet before it was deleted.
To make matters worse, the Somalia government dispatched its ambassador to the EU to Senegal, sharing boundaries with Guinea where President Behi is to try to sway the Senegalese government to influence President Alpha Conde’ to lower state of reception for the visiting President.
I understood #Somalia have send her EU representative to Senegal to protest somaliland's engagement with Guinea. Can someone tell our neighbor. Africa is not EU. Guinea is not Senegal and somaliland is not Somalia. Just fix your own country and leave us alone.
— Ayan Mahamoud MBE (@Gobannimo) July 3, 2019
Ms Ayan Mohamoud, Somaliland Head of Mission in the United Kingdom, was quick to point out how Somalia is misreading all the signs, continuing on a spree of embarrassing misjudgments.
President Behi’s visit to Guinea, obviously, is making other unexpected quarters jittery, too.
The Tweet below purports that President Behi is not only paying a state visit to Guinea to discuss bilateral relations and strengthen cooperation between the two East and West African countries but that there is a hidden agenda to the visit: to negotiate with Russia on a p[ossible Russian base in Somaliland.
The Tweet, as you can see below. fails to explain why that cannot be done at any place closer to home.
Analysts, however, dismissed above Tweet as another Somalia-inspired hoax to open many fronts on a more successful, but not internationally recognized, 28-year-old Somaliland.
Somalia (see below) has made another feeble lunge at Kenya and Somaliland protesting to the use of the word ‘countries’ in a Tweet the Kenyan PS of Foreign Affairs, Macharia Kamau, used in relation to a meeting he had with ROS Foreign Affairs Minister, Yassin Haji Mohamoud.
Somaliland and Somalia had never been signed or passed by parliament. It is only a matter of courtesy that Somaliland is talking to Somalia on matters relating how their relationship would be shaped without the union – or reunion as Somalia is obsessed with.
Somaliland was an independent nation recognized by more than 35 countries before the SNL party, led by the late president Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal unconditionally handed it over to Mogadishu only five days after independence in the mistaken belief that he was pioneering a Greater Somalia union of 5 Somalias.
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