Opposing forces belonging to the Galmudug federal state of Somalia are facing each other off at a customs depot that the Galmudug police forces ran.
It is reported that units belonging to the state intelligence of NISA raided the customs checkpoint, capturing it. As soon as they drove off the police officers manning the depot, the new masters started collecting tariffs from passing vehicles without following the proper procedures laid for the customs or using its documents.
The raiding units, according to the reports, stated that they have not been paid for months on end and they had taken this desperate measure to make up for the deficit.
Hearing of the incident, Galmudug state troops were dispatched from Galkayu to re-instate the ousted police officers who doubled up as customs officers.
Mattapan proceeds went directly to the federal state coffer to finance state-level operations which, ostensibly, should have included payment of salaries of security and civilian personnel.
The NISA units, reports add, were formerly stationed at Guri’el. Both towns come under the Galmudug administration although they are so much nearer to Beletewein, Hiiraan region, of Hirshabelle state than Galkhuyu hundreds of kilometres to the north.
Somalia administrations, security and personnel, at both state and federal levels, are largely bankrolled by the international community since the military dictatorship of Siyad Barre was deposed over thirty years ago.
” In fact, the Somali government’s own survival is heavily dependent on external troops, as it is unable to pay the salaries of its own police and military”, a Somalia situational analysis that came out on the Foreign Policy recently stated.
The international community and development partners sunk billions of US Dollars on the failed state with the United States alone, according to one of its ambassadors, contributing over five billion USD to the effort.
Despite the international community’s gargantuan operation and the full support of over 30 000 foreign troops to uphold peace and security, the country is still nothing short of a failed one. The situation presents a seemingly insurmountable – and embarrassing – dilemma where a facing exit is not even visible in the foreseeable future.
Somalia comprises regions that formerly came under Italian rule and, later, under a UN Trusteeship before independence in 1960.
Safe from this turmoil is the former British Protectorate to the north which pulled of a disastrous union with Somalia in 1991. The Republic of Somaliland, since then, built an enviable system of government with its own flag, military, parliament, currency and passport without noticeable support from the international community.
Somaliland has successfully conducted eight 1person-1vote elections and referendums which resulted in the country electing three governments, two parliaments and three local councils to office during the past 19 years alone. The two administrations that preceded the exercise were ‘selected’ traditional forms of election – a rudimentary system that Somalia is still deciding its leaders on.
