Ethiopia regrets posting map online showing Somalia as part of its country
Addis Ababa sorry for posting a map showing Somalia as part of Ethiopia.
By The Star Staff Writer
MOGADISHU – Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has on Sunday regretted posing “a wrong and unacceptable image” online showing Somalia as a part of Ethiopia.
The incorrect map “crept in on” the ministry’s website and was “immediately removed,” said the ministry’s unsigned statement entitled “clarification”, adding that its information and communications technology team “is working to ensure the security” of the site.
“We sincerely regret for any confusion and misunderstanding this incident might have caused,” said the statement posted on the website of the ministry of foreign affairs.
The incorrect map was a cause for alarm in Somalia, where Ethiopia is loathed and its actions and statements about the Horn of Africa nation are easily interpreted as a casus belli.
The Somali government is yet to comment on the matter. But an official at Somalia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told The Somalia Star that Foreign Minister Ahmed Isse Awad received the Ethiopian clarification on Sunday. The official dubbed the Ethiopian map “offensive.”
On Sunday, Somalis expressed anger, disbelief and shock over the Ethiopian map, with one lawmaker calling it “an act of aggression” and an analyst saying it laid bare Addis Ababa’s “expansionist tendencies and colonialist mentality.”
The Ethiopian ministry initially seemed to try to cover up its blunder by stealthily replacing the map with another that included Somalia that was incorporated into the Ethiopian map.
The ministry didn’t say how long the map was on its website, nor did it mention Somalia or South Sudan in its statement.
Under the headline “African Countries”, the map — which clearly spells out the names of all African nations except Somalia and South Sudan — seems to recognize the northwestern Somali region of Somaliland as an independent country, separating it from the rest of Somalia that it added to the Ethiopian map.
The blunder is likely to further undermine the much-vilified initiative to economically integrate the Horn of Africa nations, to which the American Ambassador to Somalia, Donald Yamamoto, is giving a top priority.
Somalis dismiss the proposed integration as a capitulation to their arch-foe, Ethiopia. On Dec. 9, dozens of irate lawmakers filed an impeachment motion against President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo, accusing him of cutting secret deals with Ethiopia and Eritrea. Although the lawmakers later withdrew their motion, yet the Somali public’s concern about the actual consequences of the integration — whose details remain secret — still persists.