By: Eng. Adam Sheikh Ibrahim Suldan, Lund , SWEDEN

There are many ways to take hostages. Individual or group hostage taking is probably the most commonly known aspect where victims are (individuals or groups) held against their wills and threatened with injuries or death, or prevented to do what they want to do unless certain demands from the hostage takers are met. There is another kind of a hostage taking that might be new to the most people: Country Hostage Taking. Country hostage taking is rare in the modern world. Bust it exists. Unlike individual or group hostage taking, country hostage taking is not organized by a single person or a group of persons, but a collection of cooperating countries. It is created when a country is held politically isolated and internationally abandoned by the rest of the world. In today’s world, no country can manage to survive and develop without the interconnections and relations with the outside world at all levels.  

A typical example of country hostage taking is manifested in the case of Somaliland . Somaliland has been held hostage by the international community. For over a period of more than 14 years, Somaliland has been showing the world (albeit many shortcomings) that its people possess unique and outstanding minds in establishing peace and security, fostering a system of rule based on democracy and pluralism with vibrant free press and civil society. This is a unique case in Africa . Instead of rewarding Somaliland for this noble work by extending diplomatic and economic assistance, the international community held it hostage. The help the international community could have given to Somaliland has been made conditional upon and linked to the stability of Somalia . The international community has been saying to Somaliland : “Unless Somalia first establishes peace and security through an elected legitimate central government, you are not going to be eligible for economic help and diplomatic relations”. The crime for which Somaliland is being punished is the simple fact that it is has skilfully succeeded in bring itself back to its feet.  

Since the collapse of the state functioning of Somalia , the international community has been trying to help the Somali people rebuild their country and repair their damaged reputation as a functional state capable of solving its own problems. A dozen of reconciliations and peace conferences have been arranged with the aim of bring an end to the culture of warlordism and at the same time establishing a functional state government. The last effort from the part of the international community is the formation of a transitional government last year in Nairobi , consisting of former warlords who had carved the country into own fiefdoms. However, it is increasingly being known that the chance of survival of this last surgically formed government is becoming smaller as days go by (in line with its predecessors) as it has already started to split into warring different factions. Its own president cannot dare to legally establish himself in the country preferring, instead, to wander in foreign countries.  

Parallel with these political efforts, the humanitarian aid from the international community has been pouring to Somalia from Nairobi in billions of USA dollars. Somaliland is being kept aside and has been deprived of its rightful share because of unknown reasons. By denying Somaliland the right to be accepted as a fully functioning state, or at least not giving it de facto diplomatic status, the international community has subjected the already feeble economy of the country to severely crippling constraints. Foreign investment capital cannot come to the country without first solving Somalilands diplomatic status. Likewise, Somaliland companies can neither establish international contacts nor enter partnership or joint-venture agreements with foreign companies because of Somalilands diplomatic isolation, rendering it a place unsafe for international business investments, contacts and transactions. International financial links that are crucial for the growth and establishment of businesses and development projects are not available in the country. If the entrepreneurship of the people of a certain country is accepted to be one of the major key factors of its economic growth and poverty reduction, Somaliland has been denied to foster the needs of its strikingly business-oriented inhabitants.  

Intellectual hostage taking  

Somaliland is not only kept as a hostage politically and economically. It is equally being held hostage in the intellectual front. The case of Somaliland being held hostage intellectually is manifested by what SODA (Somaliland Development Association) has experienced in its work in Sweden . As a chairman of SODA, I can only speak about our feeling and experience regarding the (unwritten) Swedish policy with respect to intellectually holding Somaliland hostage. Similar cases to our experience in Sweden as mentioned below might be true in other donor countries.  

Since organising conferences and seminars on the pertaining development issues of Somaliland is one of its main objectives, SODA applied last year for funds from different Swedish state agencies that are involved in helping developing countries, with the aim of organising a conference on developmental problems of Somaliland . Our application for funds for this end went even to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the conference was to bring together internationally renowned scholars on development issues in the Sub-Saharan Africa in order to discuss a variety of topics relevant to the developmental problems of Somaliland so that viable solutions could become exposed and disseminated. To our disappointment, we came to know that the Swedish developmental policy towards Somaliland was politically motivated. Instead of considering Somaliland as a reality and a physically free entity, separate from Somalia (without necessarily touching Somalilands controversial political status) and looking at the conference as a pure intellectual, non-political and development-oriented endeavour, the Swedish authorities politicized the issue and rejected our applications for funds on the basis of their strange judgement, i.e. that Somaliland is part and parcel of Somalia and such types of conferences cannot enjoy the support of the Swedish government. One wonders if Sweden was (and is still) afraid of future retaliations and diplomatic punishment from Somalia in case it helps Somaliland build up its economic base. In my pursuit of getting clarifications of the reasons behind the rejections of our applications, several officials at these agencies told me clearly (through phone) that our aim of the conference was politically motivated and that Sweden had a clear line in dealing with Somaliland and Somalia as a single nation. SODA thinks that this is an unjust treatment of a donor country towards one of the poorest countries in the world and a clear violent intervention in the freedom of the intellectual debates as well as in the integrity of the research society. It is another form of mechanism of keeping Somaliland as a hostage. After all, intellectual hostage taking is much worse than any other kinds of hostage taking in the sense that it affects the lives of many people. It also hinders the intermingling of the pioneering minds of experts on different issues as is clear in the case of SODA:s activity in Sweden at this juncture of the history of Somaliland .  

Somaliland cannot make the impossible become possible and do the magic in making Somalia come to its sense and change its culture of war and chaos so that the international help for Somaliland gets secured. In waiting for the magic to start working in Somalia so that it can be stable enough for the betterment of all Somalis and consequently for Somaliland, the international community has two alternatives with respect of dealing with the developmental problems of Somaliland; namely either keeping hanging Somaliland on the Somali ordeal as it has been doing over the last 14 years and making its development conditional upon the stability of Somalia and hence exacerbating the developmental problems of Somaliland, or facing the reality and dealing Somaliland separately when it comes to contributing to its development.  

Email: sult2a@yahoo.com  

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