Doctors Without Borders said: “The hospital we support in Las Anod was hit during indiscriminate fighting for a fourth time in three weeks.”ĭjoen Besselink, a spokesperson for the group, explained that his colleagues were afraid to be in the hospital. Whoever exactly is behind the fighting, the Red Cross says 150 people have died and over 600 others have been wounded. It is more likely that officials in Somalia have supplied some arms. This is an allusion to Al-Shabaab, but Garad Ali denies any link to terrorism. Somaliand’s foreign affairs ministry has blamed the violence on “anti-peace militias allied with extremist groups”. He comes from the country’s largest clan, the Isaaq, and ordered tanks and artillery to surround the city last month.
It was a direct challenge to Somaliland’s president Muse Bihi Abdi. This coalition, which represents around 20 per cent of Somaliland’s territory, declared their wish to rejoin Somalia. The clan’s chief, Garad Jama Garad Ali, convened a meeting in Las Anod with representatives from three regions that make up the east of Somaliland (Sool, Sanaag and Cayn – the SSC). Their militia is drawn from the Dhulbahante, a clan that predominate in the area. Somaliland forces – including a police unit once funded by the UK – responded violently, killing an estimated 20 people.īy January, Somaliland troops had retreated from the city as protesters took up arms. They were angry at a lack of security, following the assassination of a local opposition politician. In December, demonstrators there started waving pro-Somalia flags, defying the authority of Somaliland’s de facto government. Praised by aid agencies for its relative stability but still internationally unrecognised, the country’s promising image is now threatened by an uprising in its eastern city of Las Anod. The latest example can be found in Somaliland, a former British colony that unilaterally declared independence from neighbouring Somalia over thirty years ago. From India to Iraq, Sudan to Cameroon, millions have died in conflicts caused by arbitrary borders imposed on countries by imperial powers. Lines on the map drawn by European colonisers carved up communities across Asia and Africa, putting minorities at the mercy of larger ethnic or religious groups.
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