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Mogadishu,
Somalia, November 21, 2009 (SL Times) – In further indication of his
immaturity and unpreparedness to be a president of any country, let
alone a country with such severe problems as Somalia, the “president” of
Somalia, Sheikh Sharif, managed to anger Somaliland, Puntland and Ahlu
al-Sunnah in interviews that he recently gave to the press.
In one of those interviews, Sheikh Sharif intimated that Somaliland is
waiting for a solution that will bring it back to the fold of Somali
unity. He also added that if Somaliland has grievances, all Somalis have
grievances. Sheikh Sharif’s statements angered many Somalilanders which
prompted Somaliland’s foreign Minister Abdillahi Muhammad Duale to
respond in an interview with the BBC Somali Service on nov.17, 2009.
Somaliland’s foreign ministers dismissed Sheikh Sharif’s claim that
Somaliland is interested in uniting with Somalia, and instead,
emphasized that Somaliland’s independence is irreversible. He also
advised Sheikh Sharif to focus on the disastrous situation in Somalia
and to put his burning house in order rather than making false and
diversionary statements about Somaliland.
By using the conditional “if” (if Somaliland has grievances, all Somalis
have grievances) to refer to the atrocities that were committed by
Somalia’s military regime, Sheikh Sharif was clearly putting in doubt
whether those atrocities did take place at all, and was in effect,
denying the holocaust that was perpetrated in Somaliland by Somalia’s
former military regime. Somaliland’s foreign minister did not call
Sheikh Sharif on this point of being a denier of Somaliland’s holocaust,
but instead, concentrated his critique on Sheikh Sharif’s belittling of
the gravity of the crimes that Somalia’s regime committed in Somaliland.
The foreign minister also objected to the misleading and false
equivalence that Sharif made between what the military regime did in
Somaliland and what it did in other places.
The foreign minister pointed out the fact that the atrocities in
Somaliland were committed by Somalia’s government and not by rag-tag
militias as in elsewhere in Somalia. He also added that Somalia’s
government had used tanks and airplanes against defenseless civilians.
Somaliland’s foreign minister criticized Sheikh Sharif’s involvement in
a host of anti-Somaliland activities such as trying to persuade
international organizations not to extend aid to Somaliland, and
participating in a meeting in Washington for former officials of
Somalia’s military regime, many of whom are war criminals who murdered
innocent civilians.
Somaliland was not the only entity that Sheikh Sharif angered recently.
He also accused Puntland of making unreasonable demands on his
government which elicited angry responses from Puntland’s
administration. Likewise, Sheikh Sharif called Ahlu al-Sunna wa-al-Jama
just another armed group which did not sit well with them.
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