Drought, famine, refugees, piracy and the violence and terrorism endemic to the shattered city of Mogadishu, a capital ruined by civil war: These are the images that flash through people’s minds nowadays when they think of the Horn of Africa. Such perceptions, however, are not only tragically one-sided, they are also short-sighted and dangerous.
Behind the stock images of a region trapped in chaos and despair, economies are growing, reform is increasingly embraced and governance is improving. Moreover, with Yemen’s government imploding across the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa’s strategic significance for maritime oil transport has become a primary global security concern. In short, the Horn of Africa is too important to ignore or to misunderstand.
Of course, no one should gainsay the importance of combating famine, piracy and terrorist groups like the radical and murderous al-Shabaab. However, at the same time, we have seen my homeland, Somaliland, witness its third consecutive free, fair and contested presidential election. And Ethiopia has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with GDP up 10.9 percent year-on-year in 2010 to 2011, leading Africa and rivaling China. Indeed, Ethiopia is one of the few countries in the world poised to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals on time and in full in 2015.
In the wider region, too, things are looking up. South Sudan gained its independence in July at the ballot box. And Uganda has discovered large new deposits of oil and gas that will help to lift its economy.
All of these changes reflect the fact that the Horn of Africa’s people are no longer willing to be passive victims of fate and their harsh physical environment. On the contrary, they are determined to shape their destinies through modernization, investment and improved governance.
After decades of stable enmities, the people and nations of the Horn of Africa are learning how to cooperate and align their interests. For example, Somaliland and Ethiopia are collaborating on the construction of a gas-export pipeline from Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, promising new jobs and income for people in one of the poorest and least developed parts of the world.
Although there is much that we can and will do to help ourselves, the Horn of Africa can still benefit from international assistance. However, the international community needs to do more than provide food and medicine to victims of famine and drought. Necessary as that is, we need pro-growth investments that will help provide jobs for our people and products and resources for the world. That means focusing on promoting market economies and stable government, rather than subsidizing failure and failed states.
Unfortunately, at least with respect to Somaliland, this is not the case. For 20 years, ever since we re-established our independence —we had voluntarily joined with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia in 1960 — the international community has closed its eyes to the successful democracy that we have built. Even more perverse, it appears to be demanding that we abandon the peaceful, tolerant society that we have established and submit to the control of whatever government — if there even is one — rules (or misrules) the remainder of Somalia from the rubble of Mogadishu.
Our successful democratic experiment is being ignored in part because of a hoary ruling a half-century ago by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to today’s African Union (AU). Back then, with the recent demise of the colonial empires stoking fears of tribal rivalries and countless civil wars, the OAU ruled that the frontiers drawn up by the imperial powers should be respected in perpetuity.
That taboo still claims routine support from many African leaders. And yet Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia did not lead to other breakaway movements in Africa. Likewise, South Sudan’s peaceful and internationally supported separation from Sudan has not led to new calls for Africa’s borders to be redrawn.
A 2005 report by Patrick Mazimhaka, a former AU deputy chairman, cast heavy doubt on the application of this rule in Somaliland. As Mazimhaka pointed out, the union in 1960 between Somaliland and Somalia, following the withdrawal of the British and Italian colonial powers, was never formally ratified, but his report has been left in a drawer ever since.
So when should a people be able to declare their independence and gain international recognition? The Palestinians’ decision to take their case to the UN has put this issue on the front burner. International law is of no help here; indeed, the World Court has offered only scant guidance.
The basic principles that I believe should prevail, and which Somaliland meets, are the following:
One, secession should not result from foreign intervention, and the two, independence should be recognized only if a clear majority — well over 50-percent-plus-one of the voters — have freely chosen it, ideally in an unbiased referendum;
Three, all minorities must be guaranteed decent treatment.
All three of Somaliland’s parties adamantly support independence, confirmed overwhelmingly by a referendum in 2001. So there is no question of one clan or faction imposing independence on the others. Yet, although Somaliland is deepening its democracy each day, our people are paying a high price because of the lack of international recognition.
World Bank and EU development money, for example, pours into the black hole that is Somalia, simply because it is the recognized government. Somalilanders, who are almost as numerous as the people of Somalia, are short-changed, getting only a fraction of the money invariably wasted by Somalia.
Justice demands that this change. The national interest of most of the world’s powers requires a Somaliland willing and able to provide security along its borders and in the seas off our coasts. Our people are willing. To paraphrase former British prime minister Winston Churchill: Give us the tools, and the international recognition, so that we can finish the job.
Ahmed Mohamoud Silyano is president of Somaliland.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs