Another Darfur is taking shape in Northern Somalia

Most people know Somalia as a failed state where Piracy is rife and Religious fundamentalists amputate the limbs of people for petty theft and stone young girls for sexual offenses. However, the world is oblivious to a looming disaster in Somalia that is unfolding in an area that some Western experts regard as a bastion of peace and democracy and a model for the rest of Somalia. The breakaway enclave of Somaliland held presidential elections in an effort to get world recognition for its unilateral secession from the Somali Republic. These experts seem to be oblivious to the fact that Somaliland is using the meager donations it receives from western countries such as Britain to force smaller clans in the area to join its secessionist agenda.

The regions of Sool, Sanaag, and Ayn in the east and Awdal in the West are inhabited by non-Issak Somalis who would rather remain within the Somali Republic whose weak government is recognized by the whole world. Although Somalia is the most homogenous country in the world, the dominant clan in Somaliland, the Issak, wants to secede from Somalia and force the other clans in the area to join them in that endeavor. The leaders of Somaliland base their secession on pre-independence boundaries when Somalia was divided by the Western powers into five territories. However, British Somaliland joined Italian Somaliland in 1960 to form the Somali Republic after an act of union ratified by both sides.

As part of their effort to seal the old British colonial borders from the rest of Somalia, Somaliland has embarked on a military campaign that displaced thousands of civilians from their cities. The Somaliland forces invaded and occupied the city of Las Anod, the capital of some of the regions opposed to the secession in October 1997. As a result of the invasion, the population of Las Anod dropped from 150 thousand to less than 20 thousand. Most of the refugees fled to a camp in Kenya known as Xagardheer. On 7^th February of this year, Somaliland embarked on a new military campaign to invade the second major city in these regions, Buholdeh which lies along the border with Ethiopia. The death toll so far is estimated to be around 100 and all the pastoralist clans in the area fled across the border to Ethiopia. To hide their atrocities from the world community, the leaders of Somaliland portray the conflict as being caused by a group of terrorists known as the SSC militia.

The clans opposed to the secession fear genocide on a scale that would put Darfur to shame. After the latest conflict, the President of Somaliland called upon the army and people of Somaliland to defend the country against what he termed the enemies of the country. Such a call is similar to the calls used by Hutu extremists to wipe out the troublesome Tutsis in Rwanda.  The unarmed pastoralists are no match to the well equipped and well trained army of Somaliland. The salaries of the army are paid from the donations Somaliland gets from Western nations.

The World needs to wake up to the potential genocide of innocent pastoralists in Somalia and send fact-finding mission to the area before it is too late. The Western media has an obligation to expose the misuse of Western donations for killing and displacing innocent civilians.