By Andrew Rettman

Mogadishu: the scene of a US helicopter battle in 1993 (Photo: wikipedia)

BRUSSELS, June 13, 2006 – The EU on Monday (12 June) called for fresh Somalia peace talks after Islamic fighters last week captured Mogadishu, but post-colonial political correctness is helping stop Europe from publicly backing the best regional model of stable democratic rule - the breakaway republic of Somaliland.

"The EU will continue to fully support...all efforts by the Somali Transitional Federal Institutions (TFI) for dialogue, national reconciliation and stable governance," the EU foreign ministers' statement said after Islamic militias seized the capital from US-funded secularist warlords on 5 June.

The Islamic victory has complicated international conflict resolution efforts under the umbrella of the TFI, sitting in the southwestern town of Baidoa, with the US fearing the country could become a new base for al Qaeda-type terror cells just a short distance from Middle East oil flows.

Further north in the former UK colony of Somaliland, 3.5 million Muslims have already established a peaceful de facto state seen as a model of good governance in London and Brussels - but EU governments are shunning public support for the region's independence bid.

EU diplomats do not even refer to Somaliland by name, with Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen and the TFI arguing that secession would inflame instability and with Europe wary of sparking African Union (AU) accusations that neo-colonial powers are once again meddling in Africa.

"The [TFI] peace talks have not been going very well. But this is an issue that nobody wants to discuss," one EU official told EUobserver. "It's too sensitive to call it Somaliland, so we refer to it as 'the existing area of tranquility' in EU documents."

"If the African Union as a whole would take the lead on recognition [of Somaliland], then we might feel more comfortable with it," a western European diplomat indicated. "We cannot be seen to take the lead in Africa, telling Africans what to do."

Actions and words

Behind the scenes however, the UK and the European Commission's actions indicate Europe is exploring Somaliland as part of the future Somalia solution alongside the faltering TFI-led talks.

The European Commission already does business with Somaliland, using its Hargeysa-based administration to channel part of its € 30 million a year Somalia aid package due to a lack of functional institutions in Mogadishu and Baidoa.

The UK is more daring - giving Somaliland € 700,000 to fund its September 2005 parliamentary elections, as well as paying for an overseas observers' mission that gave the vote the flavor of international respectability.

The Welsh parliament in March welcomed the speaker of the Somaliland parliament, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi and, in a cute twist, the BBC's flagship political show Question Time will on 7 July give a platform to Somaliland's British-educated foreign minister, Edna Adan Ismail.

Meanwhile, some individuals in Italy's Transnational Radical Party are among the only politicians in Europe to openly back Somaliland's independence bid.

"This is not a secessionist movement, because there is no state to secede from," Radical party member Nicola Dell'Arciprete told EUobserver. "In a situation when for 15 years nobody has been running Somalia, we should just give them our compliments."

Pandora's box

An African Union fact-finding mission on Somaliland last year undermined the Yemeni and TFI secessionist precedent line, arguing that Somaliland is a "special case" due to its colonial history and concluding that it "should not be linked to the notion of ‘opening a pandora's box'" of African separatism.

The influential NGO the International Crisis Group encouraged the AU in May to "respond to Somaliland's request for recognition" as a new approach to the moribund Somalia peace process, with South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki also championing the cause.

But with European officials reporting that the AU is "deeply divided" on Hargeysa while spending most of its energy on intervention in Sudan, the prospect of Somaliland emerging as a player in the Somalia peace process in the short term seems slim.

"It's not very likely," an EU diplomat predicted. "The whole situation is so complex, there's a great deal of reluctance to add another element to the mix."

Source: EU OBSERVER