Somaliland offers port to fight pirates

Seeks independence, recognition

Geoff Hill THE WASHINGTON TIMES
updated 05:45 a.m., December 15, 2008

A breakaway region of Somalia with a name that is bound to confuse outsiders - Somaliland - plans to offer its harbor on the Gulf of Aden as a base for U.S., British and Indian warships to battle pirates.

In the process, Somaliland hopes to raise its international profile and ultimately advance its campaign to become an independent nation that is recognized worldwide.

"This crisis is not going to go away by itself, but we can solve it," Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin told The Washington Times by telephone.

"We will place the deep-water port of Berbera at the disposal of the U.S., British, Indian and other navies, but our [proposal] goes well beyond that," Mr. Kahin said.

Somaliland consists of the northern leg of Somalia, which was cobbled together from former British and Italian colonies.

Somaliland declared independence from a dysfunctional Somali government in 1991. Since then, it has stayed out of the international spotlight.

It avoided the famine and violence that first made Somalia a household name with the 1992-93 U.S. invasion. It also remained unaffected by the near-takeover by the rest of the country by Islamic militants, which prompted an invasion by Ethiopian troops in 2006.

Mr Kahin said now is not the time to discuss sovereignty for Somaliland.

"The piracy problem is far greater in the short term than any talk of flags and embassies," he said.

MOGADISHU, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in northwestern Somalia said Saturday that local security forces captured five men suspected of planning to carry out piracy activities off the coast of the region, reports reaching here said.

    The local coast guards managed to apprehend the five men along with their weapons and boat following a short exchange of gunfire in the Sanag province, Abdulahi Ismael Irro, a local Interior Minster, told reporters in Hargiesa, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic of Somaliland in northwest Somalia.

    Irro said at a news conference in Hargeisa that there were no casualties from the gun fight between the suspected pirates and local coast guards, adding that the men were from the neighboring semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland, hotbed for the piracy off Somalia.

    Somaliland has not received international recognition for its secession from Somalia since the collapse of the Somali government in 1991. However the region enjoys relative stability and has its separate self-government, flag, police and military forces and currency.

    An international conference on piracy in Somalia concluded this week in the Kenyan capital Nairobi . A number of international warships are currently deployed off Somali to fight piracy while the UN Security Council is expected to authorize further actions to deal with the scourge.

    More than a hundreds ships have been attacked off Somali coast while nearly half of that figure have actually been pirated but most were released after huge ransoms were reportedly paid.

it may be significant too

that the pirates were captured somewhere in sanaag province

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa/somalia_pol02.jpg

because it remains unclear if somaliland has retaken effective control there from puntland

& or from the march of maakhir

http://www.laasqoray.net/view_article.php?articleid=1011

http://www.markacadeey.com/maqaalo/maqaal_abdalla_hirad_20070811.htm

which is an additional factor that could impede recognition of somaliland within the full uti possidetis borders of the former british somaliland

but with the growing vacuum in mogadishu now so likely to be refilled soon by an islamic force

& with washington having already been eyeing berbera covetously for some time anyway

it looks like hargeisa is seeing a real window of opportunity now

to close a deal with washington & all turtle bay

& become a sort of kosovo or panama of africa roughly speaking

whether washington recognizes somaliland for the purpose of fighting pirates now

or to preserve somaliland from an eventual islamist takeover of mogadishu & all somalia

which ironically would check the pirates anyway

also significant from

http://www.somaliland.org/2008/12/14/if-the-au-cannot-persuade-member-states-to-reinforce-amisom-and-the-security-council-ignores-the-problem-the-au-should-consider-how-at-least-to-protect-somaliland-lord-eric-avebury/

“If the AU cannot persuade member states to reinforce AMISOM and the Security Council ignores the problem, the AU should consider how at least to protect Somaliland” Lord Eric Avebury

December 14th, 2008

“If the AU cannot persuade member states to reinforce AMISOM and the Security Council ignores the problem, the AU should consider how at least to protect Somaliland, which has been de facto independent for the past 18 years, now under a democratically elected Government. The Minister told me in a Written Answer that we were reassessing the situation in Somaliland to see how we can implement our programmes of assistance and opportunities of enhancing our support. One way would be to encourage the AU to recognise Somaliland, so that it would have the backing of international law against any attempt by Mr Aweys to occupy it, and to stabilise it against further acts of terrorism. Somalia is already a haven for terrorists and pirates, and we should at least seek international agreement to prevent them extending their control over a law-abiding neighbour. ” Lord Eric Avebury

Lord Avebury: My Lords, a few hours ago the Minister said that we invaded Afghanistan to prevent it becoming a haven for international terrorism. She did not remind your Lordships that that was also one of the excuses given for the invasion of Iraq, which, as President Mubarak said at the time, was likely to create 100 bin Ladens. He was probably out by a factor of 10, but that has happened. It has also involved us, as the noble Baroness said, in a £700 million contribution so far towards reconstruction, has placed huge burdens on our Armed Forces, and is an ingredient in the motivation of terrorists across the world.

Although there might be questions about the precise identity of the persons who committed the atrocities in Mumbai, they share the mindset of those who attacked the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in the 1990s, and the perpetrators of 9/11, Madrid and the bombing of hotels in Jakarta and Islamabad, right up to the latest strikes on Indian hotels. All these acts are motivated by a particular aberrant Islamic worldview inspired by the fundamentalist ideologues of Qutb and Maudoodi. Apart from a need to bring the perpetrators of the offences to justice, we should address the problem of the hate ideology that damns the whole world of what they call Dar al Harb as wholly evil and corrupt.

It is a losing battle to deal with individual acts of terrorism while ignoring the hatred and violence that is, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, spewed out

by thousands of madrassahs, which, I may add, are funded by oil money, and which churn out graduates indoctrinated with loathing for Governments and people who do not conform with their ideas of Sunni orthodoxy.

Therefore, the Foreign Secretary says that we must prevent Afghanistan again becoming an incubator for international terrorism. However, neither in the blog of his visit nor his interview with the “Today” programme, nor in the Prime Minister’s recent meeting with President Karzai, nor, indeed, in the noble Baroness’s speech this morning is there any recognition of the fact that military solutions alone, which ignore the underlying ideology, are doomed to failure. My noble friend Lord Ashdown rightly said that winning in Afghanistan is not a military operation. With a huge effort, the Taliban may be contained, but unless we confront its underlying philosophy of loathing which not only spurs the Taliban but also al-Qaeda and other organisations like Lashkar-e-Toiba, it will simply be reincarnated in another form or another part of the world.

At the same time we need to address, as has been said by several noble Lords, the genuine grievances of Islamic populations throughout the world, and particularly the failure to arrive at a proper solution for the sufferings of the Palestinian people and to implement the declared intention of the international community to assist in creating a two-state solution.

In Somalia, we seem to have no idea what to do about the security vacuum that will be heightened by the departure of the Ethiopian forces at the end of the year. It spells the end for President Abdullahi Yusuf, and, as I suggested several years ago to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, when he was a Minister, we put too many eggs in the basket of the TFG without having a plan B.

The Secretary-General’s last-minute development of the concept of an international stabilisation force was not pursued by the Security Council’s November resolution, so that 3,000 AMISOM troops who had been hanging on in the hope of being reinforced are also certain to be withdrawn. They had been helping the Ethiopians to protect the two major cities of Mogadishu and Baidoa, leaving the rest of the country to the extreme faction of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, under Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is in fact on the UN list of terrorist associates. It is only a matter of time before these terrorists take control of the capital, making it impossible for the international community to continue its recognition of the TFG. The moderate Islamist leader of an ARS faction, Sharif Ahmed, who signed a new deal with a faction of the TFG last week, appears to control no territory at all. What does the Minister think that the international community should do at the end of this month, when all these things arise?

Eritrea’s involvement in Somalia, which includes hosting Mr Aweys’s base in Asmara and probably giving him logistical help, may have been one way of its retaliating against Ethiopia for Meles’s prevarication over the boundary commission determination of April 2002. I remind your Lordships that, under the distinguished chairmanship of the British jurist Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, the commission tried to get agreement on physical delimitation but finally had to admit defeat

in September 2006, contenting itself with expressing the border in terms of its co-ordinates. If the UN had been much firmer since then with Addis Ababa in calling for unconditional acceptance of the commission’s determination, for removal of their troops from Eritrean territory and for demilitarisation of the legal boundary, it would have allowed both countries to divert enormous amounts of money and manpower lavished on their armed forces over the last six and half years into peaceful development. It would have meant that both countries might have been co-operating in the development of a peaceful political settlement for Somalia.

If the AU cannot persuade member states to reinforce AMISOM and the Security Council ignores the problem, the AU should consider how at least to protect Somaliland, which has been de facto independent for the past 18 years, now under a democratically elected Government. The Minister told me in a Written Answer that we were reassessing the situation in Somaliland to see how we can implement our programmes of assistance and opportunities of enhancing our support. One way would be to encourage the AU to recognise Somaliland, so that it would have the backing of international law against any attempt by Mr Aweys to occupy it, and to stabilise it against further acts of terrorism. Somalia is already a haven for terrorists and pirates, and we should at least seek international agreement to prevent them extending their control over a law-abiding neighbour.

The UN is already overstretched, and member states are having difficulty meeting requests for contributions to peacekeeping forces elsewhere in Africa. The Security Council decided on a Chapter VII mandate for Darfur as long ago as August 2006, but the hybrid UN/AU force deployment timetable has slipped yet again, as has already been mentioned, to reach 80 per cent of its final strength in March 2009. That has dire consequences for the region as a whole, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, has said. There has been deterioration in the security situation, including deadly attacks on peacekeepers. Their freedom of movement is undermined repeatedly by government-imposed restrictions. UN helicopters have come under fire several times and, although the Government say that they are committed to a ceasefire, they bombed villages in November, and, in the previous month, their militias attacked dozens of villages, killing 40 innocent civilians.

The long history of broken promises has not yet come to an end. The Security Council should insist that all aggressive operations by the armed forces of the country should cease and that the persistent obstruction of humanitarian agencies should also come to an end. One of the items on the “to do” list of Mr Djibril Bassolé, the UN chief mediator, should be to get agreement on independent international monitoring of ceasefire violations to resolve the arguments about responsibility that arise whenever civilians are killed or injured. It would be useful to know whether that has been discussed with Khartoum.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/81204-0011.htm

finally

& likely underlying it all

from

http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/20081211_geopolitical_diary_significance_pirates

Geopolitical Diary: The Significance of Pirates

High-level discussions began Thursday over a U.S.-sponsored resolution at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) that seeks to strengthen the international response to piracy in waters off the coast of Somalia. The new resolution -— which comes just a week after the UNSC passed another U.S.-penned resolution, extending the current U.N. approach to Somali piracy by another year —- would authorize foreign countries to send military assets ashore into Somalia and into Somali airspace in pursuit of pirates.

This would significantly intensify the international fight against Somalia-based pirates, who are now in possession of some 17 major ships. Thus far, international law has authorized foreign warships to invade Somali territorial waters in counter-piracy operations, but their activity has been confined to maritime interdictions. The U.S. push for broader authority is meant to strike at the pirates in Puntland, the lawless part of Somalia where they find safe haven.

The slow expansion of piracy off the Horn of Africa increasingly has dominated headlines in recent years, but on a strategic level it has been little more than a nuisance for global commerce. After the capture of one supertanker from Saudi Arabia, major oil shipments from the Middle East to the West began steering an extremely wide berth around Somalia.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy, which is the de facto guarantor of worldwide maritime shipping security, has plenty of bandwidth to address any real challenges to freedom the of seas. Washington has been taking its time with the piracy issue politically, and slowly working to build an international consensus through the UNSC, because Somali piracy has not yet reached the point that it poses a strategic threat to U.S. interests. The request for further U.N. authorization means not that Washington is punting the issue, but rather that it is starting to consider taking on piracy more forcefully.

The deeper meaning of the piracy issue is that it runs up against the underlying U.S. interest in control of the seas: the foundation of U.S. global military dominance, and in turn the foundation of U.S. global economic dominance. Combating maritime piracy has been a perennial concern of the United States, and is in essence the cornerstone of U.S. naval policy.

Throughout its existence, the United States has depended on maritime commerce for its survival. Even the early European colonies in North America were at first heavily dependent on seaborne lines of communication to Europe, and over time the colonies came to rely heavily on commercial maritime trade, which was protected from piracy by the European navies. In 1783, however, when the American Revolutionary War officially ended with the Treaty of Paris, the U.S. government suddenly became responsible for the safety and protection of its own merchant traffic overseas.

The United States, with its Continental Navy in the process of being disbanded and the new government deep in war-related debt, could not protect its interests abroad and was forced to pay annual tribute and occasional ransoms to the “Barbary” states of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis -— North African regencies of the Ottoman Empire that had long extorted payments from ocean-going powers through the threat of piracy. It was not until the turn of the 19th century that the reconstituted U.S. Navy was equipped with its first frigates. When tribute was demanded of President Thomas Jefferson’s new administration in 1801, he dispatched the Navy to protect U.S. commercial interests on the other side of the Atlantic. What followed was a series of naval engagements and the first U.S. expeditionary assault on foreign soil: the Battle of Derne in Tripoli, which the United States won and which was the decisive action in the First Barbary War.

U.S. interest in freedom of the seas —- and the U.S. Navy’s ability to protect that interest -— would only continue to grow. The core American imperative of ensuring the free flow of traffic on the high seas was a key factor in the War of 1812, as a Britain engaged in the Napoleonic wars forcefully impressed sailors aboard U.S.-flagged ships into Royal Navy service. And arguably one of the most important outcomes of World War II was that the United States achieved an effectively unchallenged hegemony over the world’s oceans — a hegemony only further solidified in subsequent decades.

The Somali pirates do not, at this point, pose a strategic threat to the U.S. interest in freedom of the seas — but the push to intensify operations against them shows that Washington wants to act against them before they have a chance to rise to that level.