On the Las Anod issue, President Hassan put clan’s interests over the nation’s. He just exposed his patriotism deficit and poor leadership.

By The Star Editorial Board

First off, let’s get the basic facts on the inter-communal conflict in Las Anod straight.

In 1991, an Ethiopian-backed clan moved to break away from Somalia and impose its rule on the inhabitants of other neighboring clans. It carried out a frivolous referendum to lend legitimacy to its illegitimate exercise.

Taking advantage of the collapse of the central government in Mogadishu, the clan — Isaaq — called itself Somaliland, formed its own militia, adopted its own currency and presented itself to the world as an independent state. No country has recognized it, but that didn’t stop it from subjugating other clans until one clan said enough is enough.

Late last year, the Dulbahante clan in Las Anod rose up against the clan entity, which is headquartered in Hargeisa, after members of its militia carried out targeted killings, according to locals, in the city. The residents are now demanding the total withdrawal of the Isaaq-led militiamen from their regions. They said they no longer wanted to associate themselves with secessionists.

In response, the clan entity sent heavily armed militiamen to Las Anod to try to foil its residents’ desire to form their own administration. The militiamen shelled the city’s main hospital, schools, mosques and residential areas and killed dozens of civilians, including women and children.

On Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk expressed concern over the killings in Las Anod and called for a “credible and impartial investigation into the clashes to determine who is responsible and hold them to account in fair trials, including for reported damage to homes.”

“These potentially unlawful killings come just a month after at least 20,000 people were displaced by clashes in Laas Canood, and could contribute to further displacement, compounding the already fragile humanitarian situation in the region,” Türk said in a statement, using the Somali spelling of Las Anod.

On Wednesday, the aggression by the Hargeisa militiamen trained by the UK and other foreign countries was still continuing, with the civilian death toll rising rapidly.

Hargeisa has waged this offensive to undermine Somalia’s territorial integrity and to force other clans to join it in its endeavor to eventually break up Somalia.

The war in Las Anod is between right and wrong, unionists and secessionists. The militiamen from Hargeisa are on the offensive. Las Anod residents are on the defensive. It is a black-and-white matter.

But, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, blinded by clannish consideration, sees it differently. It seems that he has forgotten that he is the head of state of Somalia.

In his speech on the issue on Tuesday, President Hassan elected to equivocate.

“What is going on in Las Anod is a political perspective and a political perceptive can’t be resolved through a gun,” he said, shamefully equating the aggressor with the victim. Interior Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi, who’s known for his inclination toward clannsim, issued a similar statement.

There was no official word on how the clan entity is trying to break up the country. There were no concrete steps on what the national government is doing to help the victims under attack, raising pertinent questions on whether President Hassan, Minister Fiqi and the whole government in Mogadishu are tacitly in favor of the Isaaq clan’s attack on Las Anod. Or worse, whether they don’t care about the sovereignty of the country they claim to be representing.

No one expects the Hassan-Hamza administration to offer military assistance to the people in Las Anod, but it can offer clarity: It can clearly say the clan entity called Somaliland is an illegal formation and its actions in Las Anod are illegal.

That is not what President Hassan said. In fact, his utterances seemed to have been an attempt to protect the existence of the illegal clan structure at the expense of the territorial integrity of Somalia.

To understand who President Hassan is, just look at the photo accompanying the editorial that shows him with the leader of the secessionist entity, Muse Bihi, and Djibouti’s dictator, Ismail Omar Guelleh, who can’t even provide basic services to his less than a million people, while he and his family are wallowing in dollars.

That meeting in Djibouti last December was not a part of a negotiation on how to bring secessionists in Hargeisa back to the Somali fold, nor was Guelleh a mediator. The get-together was a part of a nefarious scheme — sources tell The Star — to build up an alliance that can lord it over other clans.

The Las Anod uprising exposed the true colors of the three men: Muse’s militia started to slaughter innocent civilians in Las Anod, mainly women, youngsters and children. Guelleh and Hassan covered for Bihi’s crimes. Guelleh even went as far as sending an invitation to Dulbahante elders to mediate between them and the separatists, the Isaaq, so as he tries to save the clan entity in Hargeisa from an imminent implosion.

In his willingness to show blind obedience to Guelleh, President Hassan has allowed the Somali nation, its political independence and territorial integrity to be slaughtered at the altar of clan interests, indeed at the altar of preserving the titular entity, Somaliland, because Bihi, Hassan and Guelleh are distantly related.

As the president of the Somali Republic that also includes Las Anod and Hargeisa, Hassan should have — as should every Somali irrespective of his political and clan affiliations — supported the Dulbahante uprising, but he didn’t. He failed to show leadership and affirm his belief in the territorial integrity of Somalia by openly siding with the people who are rejecting secessionists and dying to live in a united Somalia.

Instead, the president engaged in bothsidesism, exposing his patriotism deficit and poor leadership.

In his first speech on Las Anod, President Hassan equated the victim with the aggressor, skirting the core issue on hand: The Dulbahante desire to be a part of a united Somalia.

“Las Anod people, you yourself have to be eager for dialogue and stop the violence, aggression and unpleasant statements that are aired in the media,” he said, calling the victims the “Las Anod people” and the aggressors the “government of Somaliland.”

In his insipid speech, the president didn’t touch on the clan entity’s danger to the very existence of the Somali Republic.

Let’s call a spade a spade. President Hassan was never a nationalist to begin with, nor was he an enthusiastic patriot. He showed nothing to indicate that he was proud of his Somaliness. For him, it appears, Somalia is a mere means to achieve his selfish interests. He will go down in history as the leader who focused more on his personal and family interests than on rebuilding a united country. He failed miserably in his first term and he’s likely to fail again.

In his public statements, President Hassan has been tacitly, it appears, supporting the Isaaq clan, which dominates Somaliland, to subjugate others, in this case the Dulbahante clan, because that serves, in his narrow clannish worldview, the interests of the Irrir group of clans. This irrirism message was publicly amplified by Hawiye clan elders who last month threatened to fight alongside the Isaaq clan if the fighting in Las Anod morphed into a war between two major clans.

At The Star, we support a united Somalia. We’re against clannism because we believe it is the tool that Somalia’s enemy and corrupt, incompetent politicians use to prolong the country’s chaos. We also support the uprising of the Las Anod people and the wider Dulabante clan that is fighting and dying to be a part of the Republic of Somalia.

The clan entity in Hargeisa has no legal and moral rights to send armed militiamen to Las Anod and other disgruntled regions, where non-Isaaq people live. Forcing people into accepting an illegal formation that is against Somalia is not only a blatant expansionism, it’s criminal.

Already, video evidence showing the Hargeisa militiamen boasting about killing Dulbahante people and threatening to annihilate all, including women and children, have emerged.

“I need to eat even the children. I won’t leave here till I eat the children…I am not lying,” said one of Hargeisa’s militiamen in a video clip posted online. He said he personally had killed 12 people. A fellow militiaman cheered him on and said “even the women.”

“No one will be spared,” the militiaman said.

The Dulbahante clan has been under the misrule of Hargeisa for decades, but a spate of assassinations that targeted the “the crème de la crème” of its society has led to the ongoing uprising, which started last December.

The reason why President Hassan is unable to come out strongly against the Hargeisa militia’s attack on Las Anod has a lot to do with clan interests. Hassan — who employs the clan card when it suits him as he did in the run-up to the presidential election — doesn’t want two regional administrations led by the Darod clan in the northern part of the country.

But President Hassan, a ceremonial head of state who has been illegally usurping the powers of the prime minister, lacks foresight. He could have looked at the bigger picture of the tension in the north, seized the moment and turned the Las Anod conflict into an opportunity to end the faulty federal system, the bane of the Somali nation, and restore the old central system of governance.

The ills of the federal system have already become obvious in Somalia. The clan entity of Somaliland says it wants to secede from the rest of the country. Each of the five regional administrations has one main clan bullying the rest. There’s a perennial bad blood between regional chiefs and the national government in Mogadishu. The country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity got lost in the mix.

The federal system was never suitable for Somalia, and, like Somaliland, will unravel one day. If Tanzania’s over 120 ethnicities with different languages, religions and cultures can live under one central government, there’s no way whatsoever why Somalis, who share almost everything, can’t create the most cohesive nation in the world. That would need a sound leadership, which the current administration in Mogadishu lacks.

President Hassan claims to have a doctorate degree in peace and governance, but his reasoning and problem-solving skills are wanting, even well below an average Somali.

“Don’t you have a mind that can differentiate between good and evil,” said a Somali mother, who hails from the same sub-clan of that of the president in a widely shared video clip. She was angered by reports that Djibouti’s dictator, Guelleh, was angling to come between Dulbahante and Isaaq clans.

“Didn’t you swear by the Quran, didn’t you swear (to defend) Somalia when you’re equating a person who wants the (Somali) flag with another who rejects it, and Irrisism… is utilized — or your oath (of office) was a lie,” the mother said.

“Behave like a Somali or resign,” the mother urged President Hassan.