Since Musa Bihi Abdi was elected as the head of the breakaway “Republic of Somaliland” based in the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, he has worked to extend his term. This project was opposed by the civil society and the two official opposition parties of the same clan.
After two years of political chaos over whether to hold a presidential election on time before political parties 10-year expiry date, opposition frustration culminated in street protests in Hargeisa, Burao and Erigabo in September 2022. Calling it a threat for safety, Bihi unleashed the police to use live ammunition, mass incarceration and torture to suppress the opposition.
However, the Gurti, an unelected body of clan elders that extends its own term at will, sided with the president and approved his illegal 2-year extension bid. With this mandate to do things as Bihi sees fit, Somaliland has gone from a decline that began under his leadership to an irresistible free fall.
Bihi only represents his sub-clan and his friends
Anyone who thinks Bihi is the president of Somaliland should have no illusions. He only represents himself, his family, his collaborators and the interests that revolve around them.
At the head of his party, Kulmiye, which was founded and brought together former SNM rebels, of which Bihi himself was the militia leader, made sure to spread out over all sectors of power. It should also be noted that the clan of the president is found in the majority in the membership of the party. It should be added that all the key positions in his government and the machinery of Somaliland are occupied by his close relatives.
By extending his mandate, he perpetuates at the same time his family stranglehold on the meager resources of the breakaway territory. Indeed, the transactions of this sprawling and mafia-like family have revealed themselves in various scandals.
It started with the agreement with Trafigura, the arms trafficking which pass through the port of Berbera and end up in the hands of Al-Shabab, the monopoly on air transport and the airport of Hargeisa and the illicit contracts with oil companies operating in the eastern regions, among other wrongdoings. These latter companies are the ones fueling the war in the Sol region.
Bihi and his entourage who are now the crosshairs of the United States and the United Nations are too connected with the other much more sprawling and mafia family leading the Republic of Djibouti. The president of this small neighboring country whose pocket and coffer of state merge has considered Bihi as a master piece on the Somali chessboard and a partner in crime on the arms trade.
In addition, Somaliland, which claims to have Awdal under its authority, did not hesitate under Bihi to almost abandon this region to Djiboutian authority, making this region a co-managed region. The illegal exploitation of the water resources of Tokhoshi and the sands of the coast, without forgetting the exploitive taxation in Lowayada and the blocking of the port of Zeila for the benefit of Djibouti, makes Bihi a supreme traitor.
Las Anod conflict will only end with Bihi off the board
Musa Bihi has dismissed out of hand all calls for a ceasefire and dialogue since December when he again used brute force to suppress protests by residents of Las Anod. Since February 6, his forces through their continuous bombardments have emptied the martyred city of the majority of its residents and completely destroyed the civilian infrastructure.
This level of cruelty is unprecedented in Somali history of a Somali authority bent on committing a major massacre against other Somalis. But Bihi is not at his first massacre as evidenced by the devastation he left behind in Awdal as a rebel leader in 1991.
Clan leaders from the northern and southern Somali regions, Ethiopia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations were not enough to waver his resolve to continue to shed blood.
What about his backers like the UK, Djibouti, those secessionist hardliners and the thousands of young people they misled the last three decades and ironically the current president of Somalia and his party.
The British who are at the origin of the division of Somalia and financed this Somaliland project in order to get their hands on the oil resources in this region have taken the wrong colt to keep northern Somalia under its influence.
Musa Bihi’s incompetence, divisive actions, lust of gratuitous violence and stubbornness further embarrassed the British but have not stopped them from accelerating their oil drilling projects now that they have a friend in Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, the last representatives of the Sol region, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) find their positions untenable and the desertions of prominent figures follow one another reducing Somaliland’s claim to be a nation.
The end of a peaceful and democratic Somaliland
The only ones preparing a lifeline for Bihi are the presidents of Djibouti and the Somali federal government. However, their plans to keep Somaliland together…as a regional sub-state of Somalia is not the independent country diehard secessionists and other brainwashed youths hoped for.
One cannot expect a restorative coup from an armed force that is under the sway of its clan. An army that has bled a lot lately and is reduced to hiding in Gojacadde in the hope that the resistance army of Las Anod would miraculously vanish.
The only vestige of a clan-based democracy that is living its last days, the House of Representatives whose Speaker was immolated on the altar of Las Anod conflict no longer works despite the horns and cries of believers in participatory democracy such as Mohamed Abib.
As for them, the two leaders of an opposition whose official status is as illegal as the mandate of their sitting cousin, the public is caught between a Faysal Warabe with inconsistent remarks and a silent Abdirahman Cirro who suffers from a cruel lack of charisma.
With all this in the background, insurrections and clan wars are multiplying everywhere, as the president of the Gurti Salebaan Gaal admitted recently. It won’t be easy to contain the smoldering fires from Awdal to Togdheer. Meanwhile, the free press is suppressed and civil society, which derived its strength from a stable and united Hargeisa, is paralyzed.
Because of all the upheavals initiated by Bihi, Somaliland can say goodbye to an eventual recognition of a “democratic state”, let alone a viable economy in the Horn of Africa. The idea of a free and fair democratic election to replace him is as distant as the elusive international recognition.
