Key constituencies reject Djibouti conference

The leader of the Rahanwein Resistance Army (RRA), Hassan Mohamed Nur ‘Shatigudud’, said on Monday that the allied Digil and Mirifle (Rahanwein) clans, dominant in south-central Somalia, were withdrawing their support for the Djibouti initiative. ‘Shatigudud’ said they deemed it unacceptable to participate in talks with “the forceful occupiers of (their) ancestral land, who killed, tortured and intimidated innocent civilians” and that Guelleh’s plan was “unrealistic and a waste of time,” AFP reported. Puntland also rejected the process last week, saying the Djibouti conference was essentially no different from the 1991 Djibouti reconciliation plan, which Puntland blamed for originally triggering Somalia’s civil war. Puntland said it had refused to take part because Puntland opposition elements had been courted while the administration’s own proposals were ignored, the BBC reported. The president of the self-declared state of Puntland, Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf, has banned public demonstrations amid a popular groundswell of opinion in favour of Djibouti, and the administration has detained people suspected of organising such events, Somali media reported.

Somaliland, the other self-declared autonomous state, in the northwest of Somalia, has also rejected Guelleh’s plan. In a statement broadcast on the official Radio Hargeysa on Tuesday, it clearly stated that “it will not attend the Djibouti meeting or any other meeting” because the conference was intending to reconcile “the southern warring factions” and did not concern Somaliland, an independent and peaceful state. Somaliland would have no objection to holding dialogue on issues of common interest with whatever national government was established in the south, it added. The statement warned the panel of some 50 Somali scholars currently working on modalities for the Djibouti conference not to get their priorities wrong by insisting on Somaliland’s participation. Somaliland and Puntland were the stable ‘building blocks’ around which IGAD and the international community had envisaged constructing a new, decentralised Somali state.