January,
15, 2002
I.Background
Puntland
Administration has declared neither independence nor intention to secede
from Somalia. The regional administration, which bears some resemblance
with the demised Somali government, controls Bari and Nugal regions and
part of Mudug, Sanaag and Sool regions. The Puntland Administration has
instituted a semblance of a government: elected parliament, executive
branch, independent judiciary and operational police force.
The
Puntland entity accommodates a number of clans affiliated to the Harti
confederacy. The Harti confederacy consists of Majertain, Dhulbahante,
Warsengeli, and Deshishle clans belonging to Darod tribal family. Other
nonHarti Darod clans residing in Puntland include: Leelkase and Owrtableh.
Both of these clans inhabit the Mudug region of Puntland. In the south,
Puntland’s territorial control ends at Galkacyo, the Capital of Mudug
region – a city occupied by both Majertain and the Sa’ad sub-lineage
of the Habargedir sub-clan.
Col.
Abdillahi Yusuf, an astute and seasoned politician and a longtime opponent
of Siad Barre’s regime has been elected as the first president of the
regional administration. Col. Yusuf has been instrumental in the formation
of the Somali Democratic Salvation Front (SSDF), the first armed
opposition movement against Siad Barre’s regime. He hails from the Omer
Mohamud sub-clan of the Majertain clan family, which is dominant in
central Somalia. Traditionally, Omer Mohamud used to be in command of the
Majertaini politics. However, since the port city of Bosaaso gained
prominence as a regional economic hub in the past decade, the political
weight of Osman Mohamud, another sub-clan of the Majertain clan family,
increased ostensibly.
Until
recently, the territory of Puntland has been calm and peaceful and a
remarkable economic recovery prevailed. The Bosaaso port became the major
conduit for commercial imports destined to Somaliland, Southern Somalia
and the Somali region of Ethiopia. A booming construction,
telecommunication and transport businesses flourished within Puntland
while trade with the Gulf Arab States increased in proportion. The
regional administration took a number of initiatives towards the
reconciliation of rival factions squabbling in southern Somalia. But, all
of a sudden, the steering wheels got stuck in Puntland and all the
positive developments became derailed overnight.
II.The
roots of the current Turmoil
A
politically motivated troubling unrest, with the potential to unravel the
erstwhile prevailing stability has been propelled forcefully in Puntland
in mid 2001. In May 2001,
some of the prominent clan elders in Puntland demanded the authorities to
hold elections for a new parliament at the expiry date of the tenure of
the Puntland Administration that was due at the end of June. However, the
regional parliament, contrary to the call of the elders and allegedly
“acting on provisions stipulated in the constitution”, unilaterally
extended its term of office for another three years. The decision to
extend the term of the legislative body, which also automatically extended
the term of the Puntland Administration, led to a legal wrangling between
Col. Yusuf and the chairman of the Supreme Court, who insisted that the
parliament has no legal jurisdiction to exten d its life span. As a result,
a section of the clan leaders and opponents of Col. Yusuf rallied behind
the chairman of the Supreme Court. This was followed by a mutiny in
Bosaaso where a group of the police force allegedly manipulated by
politicians affiliated to AlIttihad rebelled against the Puntland
Administration.
Subsequent
to an uneasy standoff, Col. Yusuf mobilized troops from Garowe, the
capital of Puntland, to quell the rebellion in Bosaaso, in August 2001.
Brief skirmishes took place between the mutinous police force and the
troops dispatched from Garowe, led by Col. Yusuf. Owing to the strength of
the rebellious forces and the fact that a section of the population of the
area has been mobilised and equipped with arms, Col. Yusuf’s troops were
pushed out of Bosaaso and forced to retreat to Garowe. Likewise, Col.
Yusuf quickly lost control of Garowe as his power base has intensely been
shaken by the events of the Arta peace conference held in Djibouti last
year, which served as important catalyst in the eventual unseating of Col.
Yusuf. The hasty and sudden abandonment of Garowe, the regional capital,
has been explained by Col. Yusuf and his entourage as an outcome of a plot
contrived by AlIttihad, an ex tremist Islamic movement that has been
included in the list of terrorist organizations whose assets have been
frozen by the Bush Administration, recently. Deposed, Col. Yusuf
eventually took refuge in Galkayo, the capital city of Mudug region, where
half of the population is from his sub-clan, Omer Mohamud of Majertain
clan family.
Ever
since his flight from Garowe, Col. Yusuf had been claiming that he has
lost power to the fundamentalist AlIttihad organization. Although
Islamists have made successful reappearance in Puntland through
socio-economic occupations, opponents of Col. Yusuf insist that they have
made no noticeable inroads into the already uneasy regional political
arena. Col. Yusuf has, however, been consistent in his claim that he has
been undermined by Al-Ittihad, which according to him run training camps
in the Bari region of Puntland.
A
conference of clan leaders opposed to Col. Yusuf that has been taking
place in Garowe since August has finally elected Col. Jama Ali Jama as the
new president of Puntland on 15 November 2001. Col. Yusuf rejected the
election of Col. Jama as unconstitutional coup d'état. Earlier, Col.
Yusuf issued several stern warnings to the conference and had in fact
indicated his determination to launch a military assault on Garowe if the
gathering of the clan leaders forms a new administration.
III.
Col. Yusuf staged a comeback
Three
months after his flight from Garowe, Col. Yusuf made a successful comeback
to the regional capital in 23 November 2001. Col. Jama, the newly elected
president, has been forced to flee to the port city of Bosaaso, a
stronghold of his clanbased supporters. The political rift between the two
archrivals effectively split the Puntland into two with no functioning
administration that could claim undisputed jurisdiction over the whole
region. At present, Col. Yusuf wields uneasy control over Garowe city,
which is neither secure nor completely under his control. Col. Jama, in
the other hand, controls the northeastern part of the region, including
Bosaaso.
Certainly
the battle for the control of Puntland is far from over. Col. Jama is
reportedly mobilising clan militia in Bari, northeastern region of
Puntland, while Col. Yusuf is resolved to take control of the entire
region. Empirical observations indicate that whoever controls Bosaaso, the
economic nervecenter of the region, would eventually control Puntland.
Like
Col. Yusuf, Col. Jama is also from the Majertain clan. He hails from the
Osman Mohamud subclan who are dominant in the Bari region of Puntland,
whose capital is the port city of Bosaaso. The hostilities between the two
are not only political in nature but maintain an important aspect of
clan-contention between the two sub-clans.
Colonels
Jama and Yusuf have been comradesin-arms of the now defunct Somali
military. They have both studied in the military academies of the former
Soviet Union, although Col. Yusuf has been senior to Col. Jama and also
been trained in Italian military schools. Col. Yusuf commanded the Somali
army division that invaded the Bale and Sidamo provinces of southwestern
Ethiopia in 1977. Col. Jama has been the governor of Kabri-dahar region of
Ethiopia for a period of eight months during the Somali military’s
invasion of eastern Ethiopia in 1977-78. Both of the colonels played a
lead role in the abortive military coup against Siad Barre in 1978, staged
by a group of disgruntled officers hailing from the Majertein clan. The
two colonels have been among the few who had survived amongst the coup
plotters. Soon after the attempted coup, more than a dozen military
officers were summarily executed. Col. Yusuf fled to Ethiopia, where he,
afterwards, stablished a Majertein-dominated Somali Salvation Democratic
Front (SSDF). The Somali government, on the other hand, held Col. Jama in
solitary detention without trial during the period between 1978 and 1990.
The frustration and ordeal of solitary detention induced him to become a
born-again Muslim, subscribing to fundamentalist Islamic ideals. (Col.
Jama was an ardent Marxist-Leninist, prior to his arrest).
Due to the radical shift of his persuasion and religious outlook,
Siad Barre refused to grant amnesty to Col. Jama, although he had pardoned
most of the political prisoners arrested as a result of the failed coup.
IV.
Conclusions
The
current standoff between forces loyal to the one time comrades is likely
to trigger a destabilizing internecine hostilities that could damage the
economic recovery process and the peace and stability which the people of
the region have accustomed to in the past decade. It could lead to the
development of unravelling power vacuum that could be detrimental to the
process of governance and sustainable peace and reconciliation. Any drawn
out hostilities could trigger spill over to the neighbouring areas and
communities. And what more? The probable beneficiaries of such a scenario
will be none other than the Islamic extremists, who are accused of sowing
the seeds of discord and are fanning and fuelling the present
confrontation.
The
current political gridlock in Puntland has been adversely aggravated by
the National Transitional Government in Mogadishu (TNG), which is alleged
to be meddling in the affairs of areas of relative stability and recovery
in Somalia such as Puntland and Bay and Bakool regions. The TNG has been
also accused of being engaged in subversive manoeuvres against the
breakaway state of Somaliland and the Somali region of Ethiopia. The
minister of information of the TNG has repeatedly warned that his
government will take unspecified detrimental actions against the
government of Ethiopia, which is translated to entail upsetting the
prevailing peace and stability in the Somali region of Ethiopia.
Col.
Yusuf enjoys more popularity and credibility than Co. Jama within Somalia
and in the Horn region. However, Col. Yusuf’s acumen will be judged on
how he handles the current split within his constituency clan family and
how successful he turns out to be in resolving peacefully his political
differences with his opponents. Col. Yusuf should rise to the occasion and
project himself as a polished statesman who can take Somalia out of the
quagmire and mayhem it finds itself mired in. Lessons learned from the
Somali civil war of the past decade had underlined the fact that clan
conflicts are not resolvable militarily and through the barrel of the gun.
Hence, if the current situation in Puntland is not satisfactorily resolved
through tact and commonsense, its ramifications would certainly be long
lasting. If appropriate solutions are not prompted, any further
continuation of the current deadlock would n ot be beneficial for Col.
Yusuf’s standing in the political climate of Puntland and may imprint
indelible mark in his eventual role in Somali politics. Col. Yusuf is
shrewd enough to avoid the likelihood of such a scenario
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