Could you imagine the Government of the United States of America 🇺🇸 breaking diplomatic ties with the Government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (Great Britain)? Could they do it successfully? It is the same thing Somalia trying to sever relationships with Djibouti, Kenya or Ethiopia. These relationships have been developing over many centuries in a multi-dimensional fashion, and most importantly, between peoples of these nations. Nairobi is now the irreplaceable Somali business and travel hub. An amateur and naive politician like Farmajo couldn’t simply appear in the scene and try blindly to do away the historically cemented relations without doing much harm to Somalia’s vital national interests and economic havoc in the entire region.
Even a Somali camel man grazing his herds in the country knows full well that cutting ties with Kenya isn’t only practical, but also infeasible and wrong, for he is, at least, aware of his relatives in refugee camps in Kenya. With today’s globalization, he is in constant communication with his kinship in Dhadhaab Refugee Camp, not to talk about others in all urban centres of Kenya.
This is not to say nice things about Kenyan Authorities – they share much of the blame in worsening relationships with Somalia. But, the unwise experiment in this diplomatic fiasco hurt not only many lives and livelihoods, but also did great damage to the national economies of both countries. The losses could be in the billions of dollars. I wonder if any lessons learned from this childish and futile exercise.
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