By Mohsin Mahad

In an article posted in Somaliland Informer on 26 October 2014, titled “Somaliland: Dr Ali Issa, A Warlord in Goldbricker NGO Fronting Khatumo Secession”, one secessionist writer by the mane of Mohamoud Hassan Arrale, has heaped abuse and demeaning groundless accusations on Dr Ali Isse Abdi, Managing Director of the Addis Ababa-based The Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute (HESPI). He is called all sorts of names: a terrorist, a tribal warlord and an embezzler of HESPI and donors funds among others. One could have ignored his trash for what it is, but then he is among the shinning advocates of Somaliland spreading their poison around the world since their declaration of secession in May1991.

Needless to say, Dr Ali has a chequered career almost second to none. He was many years with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in his various capacities as senior economist, manager and as its Senior Representative in Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. He also worked as an economist with Citibank and the Central Bank of Somalia. And since his retirement, he created HESPI single-handedly and transformed it into a dominant respected think-tank, having among its clients the African Development Bank, World Bank, African Union, IGAD, and UN Economic Commission for Africa. Throughout his long career, his competence and propriety have come to earn him the highest esteem everywhere. He is therefore immune to the trash thrown at him by this foulmouthed writer.

Dr Ali’s crime, in the eyes of his vindictive detractor, is for “Fronting Khatumo’s secession” from Somaliland. What is immediately eye-catching about this particular accusation against Dr Ali is for leading the secession of Khatumo State of Somalia from Somaliland. This is a bizarre senseless accusation but one all same we can expect from loony secessionists for whom misrepresentations and character assassinations are part of their war against those they see as an obstacle or adversary to their cause. Since British Somaliland ceased to exist for good from July 1960, and superseded by Somalia when all the clans of the former British colony opted unanimously to unite with their brethren in Italian Somaliland, how can any sound person talk of Khatumo State of Somalia seceding from a defunct territory when in reality it is part and parcel of Somalia and recognized as such by the AU, UN and all other regional and international organisations. It is one thing to talk of the secessionist clan wanting to secede from Somalia, but to talk of Khatumo seceding from “Somaliland” is self-delusion bordering on insanity, both ingrained in good measure in the mindset of secessionists and this writer is no exception.

What unites the overwhelming majority of the people hailing from Khatumo State, which include Group 6 (later expanded to G11), in which Dr Ali Isse was a member (now disbanded since the incoming of the new Khatumo Government), is to be forced against their will to accept secession from Somalia and be part of the renegade secessionist enclave (aka Somaliland). Dr Ali and other leading lights of Khatumo are demonised for simply defending the inalienable human rights of their SSC/Khatumo people: rights to freely exercise their self-determination, right to refuse to be forced to be part of the secession, right to remain part and parcel of Somalia and the right to manage their own affairs for the benefit of their own people. These are the very same rights that Khatumo’s neighbours (Somaliland and Puntland) and other regions of Somalia enjoy and take for granted.

All these rights are enshrined in the UN human rights standards and in Somalia’s constitution. No Somali group are more militant, vociferous and adamant in demanding these rights for themselves and at the same time less willing to give it to others than the secessionists. Neither the secessionists nor the unionist clans/regions of Somalia would accept either to forgo these acquired rights. Why should the SSC/Khatumo people be forced by Somaliland and Puntland to be the exception and accept their hegemony if not downright colonization?

Just as the writer’s negative portrayal of Dr Ali Issa descends into a mockery of the facts, so does his information about Khatumo State. For example, he claims that the majority of the Khatumo people support Somaliland without providing any evidence to support it. This is of course utter rubbish but lying is not something that shames the secessionists. All the same, one has to give the devil his due and recognise that the writer is right in one sense. There is no denying the fact that some individual Khatumo people have been with Somaliland and Puntland at one time or another. But these are the likes of Ahmed Xaabsade, Xagle Toosiye, and other dropouts, dupes and opportunists who sold their soul serving the enemies of their people. When did the exception became the norm?

Otherwise, the people of Khatumo have proved their resolute undivided loyalty to Khatumo in establishing it at Taleex, an event that all the people of Somalia were witnesses to it. They also defend their territory by chasing the occupying enemy from Kalshaale, Buuhoodle and now Saaxdheer, Kala Baydh and more areas of occupied Sool. Unless Somaliland withdraws its miserable occupying militia from Khatumo territory without conditions, the liberation struggle will take its course until the enemy is defeated and the people of Khatumo reclaim their dignity and are masters of their own land.

If there is one truth that the writer has rightly and inadvertently admitted, it is his statement that Khatumo is fighting both Somaliland and Puntland. Undeniably, Khatumo is fighting them, not in their territories but in Khatumo, defending its own territory against their invasions, occupation and interferences. That is a God given right of all peoples to defend their homes and territory. And yet in the twisted logic of the writer, Khatumo is not the victim, the aggressed that it is but the villain, the aggressor, the terrorist that is dragging the region into conflict and turmoil!! Needless to say, peace and stability will return to the Khatumo territory when the aggressors respect Khatumo’s rights as an equal State enjoying the same rights as they claim for themselves. That is the only way peace can be restored and maintained and Shabaab denied the opportunities which Somaliland and Puntland are giving it on a plate.

If there is again one thing that the one-clan secessionists are collectively good at is to simultaneously and self-righteously portray themselves as victims and at the same time as God’s chosen people among the Somali people. They never stop holding the rest of the Somalis in Somalia guilty for what former President Mohameed Barrre’s regime had done to them but never admitting what they did to others. At the same time, they give themselves exclusive rights without reciprocation to recognise and respect others’ rights. Thus, their cause – to break away from Somalia, to occupy and lord over unionist clans in former British Somaliland – is seen as sacred even when it has been founded on sheer terrorism, war crimes and crimes against humanity and ushered incalculable adverse consequences for the Somali people which linger to the present day. When will they learn that the Somali people are equal and inseparable and their cause is doomed?

Mohsin Mahad

Email: mohsinmahad@yahoo.co.uk