Somaliland ministers speaking at a function inaugurating a new centre for the rapid response units (RRU) of the police forces at Las Anod of Somaliland’s Sool region, Thursday, revealed for the first time why Mohamed Hussein Roble, the current PM of Somalia, was previously reported of the Republic of Somaliland.
The Ministers responded to recent, disparaging – and largely irresponsible remarks – the Somalia Prime Minister made regarding the Somaliland government’s deportation of a number of Somalia-born individuals from Las Anod. The measure aimed to eliminate suspected pockets of militants and assassins who claimed the lives of a hundred prominent residents of the town during the past two decades or so in targeted killings.
“Roble was identified as the most corrupt official at ILO’s Somaliland office. That is why he was unceremoniously sent packing home,” Suleiman Yussuf Ali Koore, Minister of Information stated.
Koore lamented the fact that Roble was now leading Somalis in Somalia.
“I feel sorry for the people of Somalia. I, in fact, believe they are jinxed. To be saddled with a corrupt, unscrupulous character like Roble heading their government,” he added.
“We empathize with Somalia brothers when they face situations that threaten their security, their lives. But, unfortunately, they revel in denigrating Somaliland gains – the peace, stability and development it aspired for and has largely achieved,” Saeed Sulub, Minister for Livestock and Fisheries said.
Sulub reminded Somalians that the two erstwhile partners in the failed, ill-fated union of 1960-1991. The two countries, he said, parted ways politically but that did not necessarily mean they were sworn enemies as Somalians seemed to draw pleasure from.
“Roble, I am sure,” he added, “would have been among the people sent back to Somalia if he himself was here.”
Sulub recalled how irresponsible Roble’s words on the deportation of Somalians were.
“He exhorted people in one of the cities of Somaliland to compromise their safety and continue being killed in target assassinations. He incited people to rebel against the government calling them Somalians, denying them their Somalilandhood and the nation they belonged to,” he said.
We believe, he said, that Somalia planned to turn Las Anod into a base from where it launched subversion operations.
Mohamed Kahin Ahmed, the head of the high government delegation now overseeing security operations in Las Anod, accused Roble of inability to govern or secure the safety of 50 kilometres to each side of the capital he stayed.
“A man who was not able to govern or freely visit even the nearest cities to Mogadishu such as Afgoye or Jowhar had the gall to goad people in a Somaliland city to subvert their security and continue being picked off one by one,” Kahin said.
“Roble, who was then the head of the ILO office in Hargeisa, was summarily expelled from the country when we could no longer countenance the gross corruption he practised on his official capacity.
“Roble worked with the line ministries of Interior, Social Affairs and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Transportation and Roads Development. All three ministers agreed that his corruption could no longer be overlooked. I was the Minister who signed his expulsion orders,” he added.
Minister Kahin lamented that a shady character like Roble was now leading Somalia.
“WE ask Roble and his elk to attend to their sorry affairs and stabilize the land they governed. We ask them to stop interfering in a neighbour that has mastered its own,” he said.
Kahin added that Somaliland, even fully well knowing the bellicosity and scale of enmity it harboured for Somaliland as a whole, still wished Somalians well.
“I advise Roble to – for once – give more time to the people who unfortunately find themselves under him. In this unsavoury backdrop of his, that he attempts to incite Las Anod to rebel against their own safety is an indication of how daft he really is,” Kahin said.
Practically contradicting Roble’s call, Las Anod residents came out in force to support the government’s security measures.
Political observers agree that Somalians as a whole are largely united to fragment Somaliland unity and to, one day, see it in the same kind of turmoil it languished in for the past 30 years – years that Somaliland, in contrast, leapt from one gargantuan achievement to another. International writers, across the spectrum, labelled it as an ‘Oasis of stability in a volatile region’, the ‘Best Kept Secret of Africa’ and many more.
As expected, Somalia blew the Las Anod security measure out of all proportions. The government, opposition, media, public all made it appear as if the deportees were evicted of a Somalia town. None admitted or even acknowledged the fact that Somalia and Somaliland had very little in common since 1991 or that the two were first introduced in 1960.
Somaliland, to the world, is now a reality none can ignore any longer.
