Mogadishu 10,Nov.07 ( Sh.M.Network)-A debate is raging within the Bush administration over possible US recognition of Somaliland and a consequent shift away from its longstanding support for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.

According to an unnamed senior US defence official quoted last week in The Washington Post, the Pentagon believes Somaliand should be independent.”

The provocative remark was made in the course of Defence Secretary Robert Gates’s visit to the base in Djibouti that houses the US military’s Horn of Africa Task Force. The official made explicit reference to the disagreements between the State Department and the Pentagon on Somalia policy that seldom seep into the open.

The Horn of Africa Task Force is eager to carry out missions in Somaliland, but the State Department is standing in its way, added US Navy Captain Bob Wright.

“We’d love to,” Captain Wright told the Post. “We’re just waiting for State to give us the OK.”

The anonymous Defence Department source who urged US recognition of Somaliland also criticised the current American approach of seeking to strengthen central authority in Mogadishu in hopes of quelling the chaos that has engulfed Somalia for the past 16 years.

“The State Department wants to fix the broken part first — that’s been a failed policy,” the Pentagon official asserted.
By contrast, the Defence Department source suggested, formal recognition of Somaliland would add a key element to an alternative US strategy of encirclement and containment.

Close collaboration between the United States and the three countries bordering Somalia — Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti — has apparently helped prevent attacks in East Africa by Al Qaeda militants who, Washington says, are able to find shelter in Somalia.

Islamists hostile to the United States remain powerful in parts of Somalia despite last year’s US-backed invasion by Ethiopia that was intended to rout Islamist militias and to bolster the pro-Western TFG. For now at least, the Bush administration is continuing to focus on efforts to stabilise Somalia by supporting both the TFG and the Ethiopian occupation force.

Somaliland, an area in northwestern Somalia that unilaterally declared independence in 1991, enjoys the inter-clan tranquility that Somalia itself so ruinously lacks. Somaliland has also managed to put in place a democratically elected government.

These achievements have come about with little or any assistance from the West while Somalia has remained a failed state despite having received hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of US and European aid.

“Somaliland is an entity that works,” a Pentagon official told the Post during Mr Gates’ stopover in Djibouti.

Some mid-level American officials have visited Somaliland in recent years and leaders of the breakaway territory have likewise come to Washington in search of aid and recognition.

But the US remains reluctant to accord Somaliland full diplomatic status partly out of concern that such a move would encourage the further fracturing of already-splintered and ungoverned Somalia.

Washington’s unwillingness to endorse Somaliland’s claim of independence also reflects US agreement with the African Union’s policy of discouraging secessionist tendencies on the continent.

Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer reiterated that position in the Post’s December 4 story.

“We do not want to get ahead of the continental organisation on an issue of such importance,” Ms Frazer said in an e-mailed response to questions posed by the Post reporter covering Secretary Gates’s visit to Djibouti.

In addition, recognition by the United States and, perhaps, the European Union “would not give Somaliland legitimacy in the eyes of other Somalis,” said Ted Dagne, an expert on the Horn who works at the Congressional Research Service in Washington.

Certification of Somaliland’s independence would likewise encourage other centrifugal parts of Somalia to seek the same status, Mr Dagne added.

“What would be the containment mechanism to prevent there being four or five Somalias?” he wondered.

Offering a perspective similar to that of the State Deparment, Mr Dagne said, “At the end of the day, Somalia must develop some sort of federal structure

Source (Washington Post)

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