By the Star Staff Writer
MOGADISHU — The current leader of the northwestern region of Somalia, Muse Bihi Abdi, and his predecessor, Ahmed Mahamed Mahamud Siilaanyo have committed a high treason for concealing the details of crucial deals they cut with the United Arab Emirates from the public, said the main opposition party in the area.
Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi Iro, the head of Wadni party, told reporters in a press conference held in the region’s capital, Hargeisa, that Muse had to opt for one of two choices.
“To resign and ask for forgiveness and call for a new presidential election,” he said. “If he declines that, he will be impeached and stripped of his duties.”
Iro was reacting to a statement by UAE’s State Minister for Foregin Affairs Anwar Gargash who told the BBC Arabic Service that the port of Berbera deal was the result of mutual understandings between Somalia’s national government and his country.
“The understanding (between us and previous Somali governments) was clear. The political understanding was to support a united Somalia,” he said. “We don’t have a consulate in Somaliland, nor do we have an embassy there.” The northwestern region calls itself Somaliland, a designation not recognized by the international community.
Gargash’s account dashed Hargeisa’s public pronouncements that its ties with Abu Dhabi are separate from those of Mogadishu.
Muse’s office is yet to publicly comment on Iro’s allegations.
But Sa’ad Ali Shire, the man in charge of the region’s foreign affairs said: “No third party was involved in that Somaliland and the (United Arab) Emirates signature” of the port of Berbera deal.
Shire told the Horn Cable TV in London that the region would ask the UAE to explain why Gargash said Abu Dhabi reached an understanding with the Mogadishu-based government before it signed the port of Berbera deal.
“Because nowhere in the agreement did it say there will be negotiation or agreement or understanding with another party. There was no other signatory party,” Shire said. “Now the (United Arab) Emirates are required to clarify the matter.”
Jama Ismail Ige Shabel, the chairman of the ruling party’s central committee, Kulmiye, dismissed Iro’s accusations, saying the Hargeisa administration on August 9, 2016 passed a copy of the port of Berbera agreement to Iro, who was then the assembly speaker.
Shabel said Iro chaired the assembly’s debate on the agreement before its passage.
Shabel dismissed Iro’s accusation as “unfortunate,” stressing that the agreement met the requirements of the region’s law.
Shabel asked: “We have to ask ourselves whether the chairman of Wadani party who has the view of the Mogadishu government committed treason or the country’s presidents who directed the world’s eye (to the region) and made easy for the international investors to come to Somaliland.”
Shabel denied that the Mogadishu-based government was party to the port of Berbera deal, saying its protest to the United Nations Security Council and to the Arab League show that Mogadishu was not a signatory.
The region, whose capital is Hargeisa and was agitating for independence from the rest of the country since 1991, has signed unilateral agreements with Abu Dhabi to run the port of Berbera and establish a military base there.
Those agreements sparked a bitter diplomatic spat between the two countries, with Somalia’s national government rejecting the deals as violation of its sovereignty, while the United Arab Emirates still maintains that they’re binding.
Somalia was particularly angered when the port of Berbera deal allowed Ethiopia to control a 19 percent stake, while DP World got a 51 per cent stake. Somalia had a 30 percent share.
Last month, Somalia took its protest to the United Nation Security Council, asking the world body to take action against the Emirates.
The Somali parliament has also last month invalidated deal and barred UAE’s DP world from operating in the country.
The Somali move irked Abu Dhabi, which is now said to be preparing for a possible downgrade of its ties with the national government in Mogadishu.
“First,” said Iro, the opposition party leader, “he (Muse Bihi Abdi) was in the loop on the treason committed” by his predecessor, Siilaanyo, against his public.
“He committed treason, he committed treason, he committed treason,” he said of Muse in Somali, then switched to English and Arabic languages and repeated the same: “He committed high treason, he committed high treason, he committed high treason.”
He said Muse Bihi duped residents of the region who assumed that their leaders signed the deals with the United Arab Emirates, although they were actually signed by the national Somali government.
“The statement from the Emirates is real,” Iro said, noting that residents are asking themselves why their leaders are yet to make public the content of those deals.
“Who has actually signed these agreements?” Iro demanded.