Since 2017, the political, security, military, economic, legal and administrative situation of the Federal Republic of Somalia has been improving positively, and the federal state of Somalia has been able to strengthen its security, jurisdiction and international relations.
This positive development in Somalia’s situation is not to everyone’s taste, and above all it runs counter to the interests of the East African mafia known as « Qawlaysato ».
The strengthening of Somalia’s ports, airports and borders in general will have a negative impact on the illegal activities of the Qawlaysato mafia (trafficking in arms, uranium, drugs, human beings and money laundering, etc.).
Djibouti’s President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, upon his election to the presidency of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) at the summit held in Djibouti on June 12, 2023, is killing two birds with one stone with Abiy Ahmed Ali’s future Ethiopian naval force project.
By facilitating the rapprochement between Hargeisa and Addis Ababa, Ismael Omar Guelleh succeeded in getting rid of Abiy Ahmed Ali, to whom he had promised, firstly, to grant a naval base in the town of Tadjoura for the future Ethiopian naval force and, secondly, to worsen the security of Somalia, which was at risk of going to war with Somaliland and Ethiopia.
These kinds of tensions and destabilizations are the hallmark of Ismael Omar Guelleh, the master of political manipulation known as « Shidaarad Gerisa » with its regional dimensions.
As proof, elected to the presidency of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) at the summit held in Djibouti on June 12, 2023, Ismael Omar Guelleh’s project was bizarrely surprising at first, but as the months went by, people began to understand the objectives Guelleh was aiming for.
In early July 2023, discussions began between IGAD and the Republic of Chile through its embassy in Addis Ababa.
Through IGAD, President Ismael Omar Guelleh is asking the Republic of Chile to sign the IGAD-Chile memorandum of understanding, the main aim of which is to share with Santiago, in a spirit of South-South cooperation, its experience in the century-old conflict that seems to best define the diplomatic relationship between Chile and Bolivia. The century-old conflict between Santiago and La Paz concerns Chile’s denial of Bolivia’s access to the sea following the war known as the « Pacific War of 1879-1884 ». (https://igad.int/igad-chile-agreement-on-maritime-security-cooperation/)
Of the eight IGAD countries, Djibouti and Ethiopia were aware of the real interest in signing the aforementioned IGAD-Chile memorandum of understanding.
Elected to the presidency of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) at the summit held in Djibouti on June 12, 2023, Ismael Omar Guelleh is preparing, like a French master chef, a political-diplomatic imbroglio of continental proportions for Somalia.
Under the aegis of IGAD, on October 10, 2023, Ethiopia and Chile held their first political consultation in Addis Ababa to further diversify bilateral ties in various areas of cooperation (maritime, naval, etc.).
On Wednesday, October 11, 2023, in Addis Ababa, IGAD’s Director of Peace and Security, the Hon. Siraj Fegessa, on behalf of H.E. Workeneh Gebeyehu, IGAD Executive Secretary; and the Chilean Foreign Ministry’s Director General for the Middle East and Africa, Ambassador Juan Pino, signed a memorandum of understanding that sets historic milestones for cooperation in maritime safety and security.
To take advantage of this IGAD-Chile memorandum of understanding, on December 7, 2023, in Addis Ababa, the Somali Minister of Defense of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Abdulkadir Mohamed Noor, signed an agreement with Ethiopia. The agreement includes a clause stipulating that « Somalia and Ethiopia will cooperate in matters of maritime security ».
Mogadishu, which has blind faith in Guelleh, has fallen into a diplomatic trap that threatens to do real damage to its already precarious security and stability.
On December 28, 2023, Ismael Omar Guelleh organized in Djibouti a masquerade of discussions between Muse Bihi Abdi and Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud to make the Somali people of the Horn of Africa believe that Mogadishu had a hidden role in the draft memorandum of understanding between Hargeisa and Addis Ababa, and that at that time only Guelleh, Bihi and Abiy knew.
On January 1, 2024, Muse Bihi Abdi, President of Somaliland, left Djibouti for Addis Ababa and signed a memorandum of understanding with Abiy Ahmed Ali, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, granting Addis Ababa 20 km of land in Lughaya, on the Red Sea, for the future naval base of the Ethiopian navy.
President Ismael Omar Guelleh’s daughter, Madame Haybado Ismael Omar, posted her support for the memorandum of understanding on her Facebook account. The president’s daughter, Madame Haybado Ismael Omar, published her first article in support of the memorandum of understanding a few hours after it was signed (https://fb.watch/ppweOZwv90/).
On January 2, 2024 at 1:35 a.m. East African time, a Somaliland social network account called Hargeysa-News, close to Mohamed Said Guedi, published a congratulatory letter addressed to Muse Bihi Abdi and bearing the emblems of Djibouti and the signature of Ismael Omar Guelleh.
The Somali people in the Horn of Africa, several Arab countries, countries in the region and Western countries oppose this memorandum of understanding.
On January 3, 2024, the two chambers of the Federal Parliament of the Federal Republic of Somalia and the government met and described the memorandum of understanding between Hargeisa and Addis Ababa as Ethiopia’s aggression.
Somalia’s president announced on the evening of Saturday January 6, 2024 that he had signed a law to « cancel » the maritime memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and the breakaway region of Somaliland.
IGAD President Ismael Omar Guelleh did not openly denounce the memorandum of understanding, but issued communiqués calling for calm and proposing the opening of peace talks between Ethiopia and Somalia.
On January 11, 2024, the President of the Republic of Djibouti and IGAD, Ismael Omar Guelleh, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, calls for an extraordinary IGAD summit to be held in Uganda on January 18.
The extraordinary IGAD summit in Uganda will focus on setting up discussions between Ethiopia and Somalia concerning the memorandum of understanding signed on January 1, 2024 between Addis Ababa and Hargeisa for the granting of a permanent 20 km maritime base to the future Ethiopian naval force on the Somali coast.
The Republic of Chile, with which IGAD signed a memorandum of cooperation on October 11, 2023, will be the special guest at the IGAD Extraordinary Summit scheduled to take place in Kampala on January 18, 2024.
If Somalia agrees to open discussions with Ethiopia about the latter’s invasion project, the Republic of Chile will be in charge of these discussions, as the latter has a century’s experience in maritime disputes, the main issue of which concerns Bolivia’s access to the Pacific, lost by the latter since the Pacific War (1879-1884). In 2011, a high-level binational commission was unsuccessfully set up to deal with this issue.
In this dispute, similar to the one that has just been created between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa, the Bolivian government accuses Chile of not respecting all the clauses of the 1904 treaty (notably that of discussing exclusively the maritime theme), the interpretation of which is at the root of the historical tensions between the two countries.
La Paz urged its main partners and allies in the region to ask Chile to ratify Resolution 426 of the Organization of American States (1979), which declared Bolivia’s access to the Pacific a « permanent hemispheric interest ».
Faced with Chile’s firm stance, Bolivia took action before various international bodies. The « maritime theme » is indeed at the heart of relations between the two countries, and forms the basis of a Bolivian nationalism reactivated by the government in La Paz since 2006.
To be continued…
Hassan Cher
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