Makhir Political Action Committee (MPAC)
Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A

The Makhir Community of Somalia’s Sanaag region wishes to report the distressing news that General Nuh Tani of Somaliland, a perpetrator of war crimes in Somaliland’s 8-month-long shelling of Las Anod, is now aggressively instigating war in the peaceful town of Erigavo. On October 15, 2023, General Tani summoned, berated, and threatened the town’s Harti elders and vowed that Somaliland would fight all the way to the defunct colonial border between British and Italian Somalilands. General Tani’s diatribe against Harti elders in Erigavo, a town shared by Harti and Isaq communities but held by Somaliland, along with his call on the Isaq community to take up arms, raises a deep concern.

Unable to avenge defeat in the hands of SSC-Khatumo fighters in Somalia’s Sool region, Somaliland finds Erigavo’s Harti community an easy prey, and it is in this light that General Tani’s threats of violence must be weighed and judged. We, therefore, urge the international community to demand Somaliland’s withdrawal from Erigavo: Peaceful Harti and Isaq communities of Erigavo can run their own affairs. Letting a man (General Nuh Tani) already implicated in war crimes run amok in a peaceful community is foolish, immoral, and utterly dangerous.

President Muse Bihi of Somaliland and General Nuh Tani have already caused much pain and destruction in and around Las Anod, Sool Region. Yet, they are determined to stay on the mindless course of violence in Erigavo, Sanaag region, a mission bound to fail as it has in Las Anod. Running in the heart of the Harti community, the defunct border that Somaliland is striving to reach is hundreds of kilometers long and hundreds of kilometers from the forward positions of Somaliland’s militia. For Somaliland, therefore, the attempt to reach the defunct border is an exercise in insanity. After all, it was Somaliland’s violent push to reach the defunct border that led to Las Anod’s tragic shelling and, ultimately, Somaliland’s dramatic defeat.

The world has long ignored Somaliland’s inherently violent endeavor to secede from Somalia and, instead, heaped praise on Somaliland for its fabricated democracy and fake peace. Foreign aid, including military aid, has done nothing but embolden Somaliland to wage a secessionist war and feed its appetite for mayhem. This must not be allowed to continue. The world must learn from Somaliland’s calamitous war on Las Anod and its eventual defeat and put pressure on Somaliland to stop spilling blood, uprooting populations, and destroying properties for an unrealizable goal. Somaliland will never reach the defunct border. All Somaliland will accomplish, instead, is spill more blood and wreak heavy destruction on communities determined to remain part of Somalia.

Makhir Political Action Committee (MPAC)
Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A