NAIROBI, Kenya – Somalia cut diplomatic ties with Kenya on Tuesday, accusing the neighboring East African country of meddling in its internal political affairs weeks before a crucial general election.
The information minister said Somalia cut relations because Kenya had violated its country’s sovereignty. In an announcement broadcast on state televisionthe minister, Osman Dubbe, said Somalia would recall all its diplomats from Kenya and gave Kenyan diplomats seven days to leave the country.
“The federal government of Somalia came to this decision in response to the political violations and continued blatant interference by the Kenyan government in the sovereignty of our country,” said Dubbe. “The current leadership of the Kenyan government is working to divide the two nations who share common interests.”
The move to cut diplomatic ties creates an additional sign of instability in the region, after the United States recently announced plans to withdraw its troops from Somalia – a move that Somali and other Western officials fear, the militant group says. Motivating Shabab to escalate her offensive around the world. Somalia and the Horn of Africa.
The gap with Kenya is the culmination of years of steadily deteriorating relations. It came a day after the president of Kenya received the president of Somaliland, the northwestern region that declared its independence from Somalia in 1991.
While not internationally recognized, Somaliland has largely avoided the same violence that engulfs the rest of Somalia and has established its own military, political administration and monetary system. The two leaders came on Tuesday agreement that Kenya would open a consulate in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, by the end of March, with Kenya Airways and other Kenyan airlines operating direct flights between Hargeisa and Nairobi.
Somalia also accused Kenya of meddling in the election campaign ahead of a parliamentary vote scheduled for later this month as the country struggles to transition to a more stable political system with smooth power transfers.
The Kenyan government said on Tuesday it would set up a committee to review and address the deadlock with Somalia.
Somalis have already faced numerous threats – floods, desert locusts and the coronavirus pandemic – and on Tuesday, opposition groups and their supporters clashed with police in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, when they launched protests to incite the government to fair. mood.
To add to the uncertainty in the country, the United States announced a little over a week ago that it would withdraw its troops from Somalia, voicing concerns that the security gains made over the past decade against the Shabab, a terrorist group that ties to Al-Qaeda are being undermined and the militants could try to claim it as a victory.
Kenya and Somalia share a 430-mile boundary, both haunted by the violence of the Shabab. They have been involved for years in a maritime dispute that is currently being settled at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The latest escalation in tensions began in late November, when the Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Nairobi of meddling in the upcoming elections, recalled its ambassador to Kenya, and required Kenyan passport holders to apply for visas in advance rather than obtain them on arrival.
Somalia said at the time that Kenya was exert pressure on the leader of the state of Jubaland in southern Somalia after threatening to boycott parliamentary elections.
As part of the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Somalia, Kenya has deployed more than 3,600 troops in the country. A majority of these are located in the Jubaland region, which borders Kenya, and in 2012 Kenya helped liberate Jubaland’s capital, Kismayo, from the Shabab.
Somalia’s election campaign has been heated in recent weeks when presidential candidates accused President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who took office in 2017, of trying to stay in power by using intelligence services to monitor the electoral process.
Rather than using a single-person electoral system with one vote, clan leaders select delegates to elect legislators who, in turn, elect a president.
With election preparations lagging behind, a stalemate has emerged between regional states and the national government. Experts say these tensions could give the Shabab and other militant groups an opening to capitalize on that divide and disrupt the whole process.
Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a former national security adviser to Mr Abdullahi and chair of the Hiraal Institute’s research group in Mogadishu, said the rift with Kenya allowed the president to distract from the troubled electoral process.
While the president was “deliberately picking this diplomatic feud with Kenya for election purposes, it will certainly have far-reaching implications for both regional stability and counter-terrorism efforts,” he said.
In addition to Somalia’s woes, more than 5 million people in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations, with flash floods displacing tens of thousands and desert locusts threatening crops.
Murithi Mutiga, the Horn of Africa project director of the International Crisis Group research organization, said on Tuesday that neighboring countries should work together to address shared challenges, particularly in the area of security. The Shabab continues to attack civilians and military targets, making millions of dollars annually by extorting local businesses.
“Both sides seem unable to give diplomacy a chance and are instead locked in an escalation cycle that does neither side well,” he said.