A WDM Editorial

Sometimes history is recovered from archives. Sometimes it emerges from the mouth of a man who was actually in the room.
Ambassador Hussein Ali Duale — better known as Ambassador Awil — has been both witness and participant in some extraordinary chapters of modern Somali political history. His extended Geed Fadhi interview therefore deserves more than the usual Somali political reaction of applause from one camp and denunciation from another.
It deserves an examination.
And once examined against Awil’s previously published memoir material and accounts of the events he discusses, parts of his testimony are remarkably well corroborated.
Three episodes stand out: the intervention by Somaliland leaders with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi during Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s presidency; Awil’s argument that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s uncompromising approach toward Somaliland helped drive Hargeisa toward Israel; and Awil’s own participation in the failed military revolt in northern Somalia in December 1961.
These are not three disconnected anecdotes. Together they illuminate a persistent Somali political habit: when domestic political accommodation fails, Somali actors repeatedly seek leverage outside the Somali political arena.
That habit is older than today’s leaders, older than Somaliland’s declaration of separation and almost as old as the Somali Republic itself.

The Riyale-Awil Mission to Meles Zenawi
The most politically explosive part of Awil’s story concerns the government of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
Here, precision matters.
It would be excessive to claim, without additional documentary evidence, that Awil, Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi entered into a formal “conspiracy” to overthrow Abdullahi Yusuf.
But what Awil himself says happened is serious enough without exaggeration.
His account did not begin with the recent Geed Fadhi interview. Material from his memoirs published by Geeska Afrika in 2016 provides an unusually detailed description of the episode.
According to Awil, after Ethiopian troops had entered Somalia, Meles invited President Riyale to Addis Ababa. Awil, then Somaliland’s finance minister, accompanied him because the foreign minister was abroad.
Meles reportedly asked Riyale for his assessment of Ethiopia’s intervention and specifically expressed concern that Ethiopian forces could become trapped in an uprising by Hawiye constituencies in Mogadishu.
Riyale’s response, according to Awil, was extraordinary.
He advised Meles not to permit Abdullahi Yusuf to use Ethiopian forces against the Hawiye and portrayed Yusuf’s objectives as essentially retaliatory rather than state-building.
Then Meles asked Awil to speak.
Awil says he went considerably further. He described Abdullahi Yusuf in deeply hostile political and clan terms and argued that Yusuf’s objective was not the reconstruction of Somalia but the destruction of Hawiye political and economic power.
That is not an allegation made today by Abdullahi Yusuf’s supporters.
It is Awil’s own account of what Awil told Meles Zenawi.
There is an important distinction.
We cannot independently establish that everything said during that closed meeting happened exactly as Awil remembers it. Nor can we establish that the advice given by Riyale and Awil determined subsequent Ethiopian policy.
But we can establish that Awil publicly recorded this version of events years before the present interview.
That gives his latest recollections substantial historical weight.
Advising the Power Behind the TFG
The political significance is difficult to overstate.
Ethiopia was not an ordinary neighbouring government at the time.
Its military intervention in late 2006 had been decisive in driving the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu and allowing the Transitional Federal Government to establish itself in the capital. Ethiopian troops consequently possessed enormous military leverage over the political environment in which Abdullahi Yusuf governed.
And here were two senior Somaliland figures — its president and finance minister — advising Meles about how Ethiopia should handle the president of Somalia.
Whatever terminology one prefers — lobbying, political intervention, strategic advice or manoeuvring — this was certainly not neutrality.
It also exposes one of the magnificent contradictions of Somali politics.
Somaliland has spent decades condemning interference from Mogadishu in its affairs.
Yet one of its most senior former officials proudly recounts travelling with his president to Addis Ababa and advising the Ethiopian prime minister about how he should constrain the policies of the Somali president.
Apparently interference is objectionable only when the aircraft flies in the opposite direction.
There is another fascinating piece of evidence. In the same memoir material, Awil recalled Somaliland’s immediate condemnation of Abdullahi Yusuf after his election in October 2004. He also recounted an Ethiopian official telling him that Somaliland’s condemnation could damage Yusuf’s international momentum.
The hostility therefore preceded the later meeting with Meles.
This was not spontaneous advice delivered over Ethiopian coffee.
There was political history behind it.

Did They Bring Down Abdullahi Yusuf?
Here WDM should resist turning evidence into mythology.
Abdullahi Yusuf’s resignation in December 2008 resulted from a much larger crisis: his confrontation with Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, deteriorating relations with Ethiopia, international pressure, the insurgency and profound disagreements over the Djibouti political process.
It would therefore be historically reckless to declare that Riyale and Awil “removed Abdullahi Yusuf.”
They did not possess that power.
But Awil’s testimony supports something narrower and still politically consequential: Somaliland’s leadership attempted to influence Ethiopia’s policy toward Abdullahi Yusuf at a time when Ethiopia was the external actor with the greatest immediate leverage over his government.
That is the defensible conclusion.
WDM does not need to inflate the evidence. The evidence is damaging enough at its actual size.
Hassan Sheikh, Somaliland and Israel
Awil’s second argument requires a different standard.
He reportedly contends that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s refusal to compromise or pursue meaningful reconciliation with Somaliland helped push Hargeisa toward Israel and eventual Israeli recognition.
This should be described precisely for what it is:
Awil’s political interpretation.
It is not yet an independently established chain of causation.
Somaliland’s pursuit of international recognition is decades old. It dates to its 1991 declaration that it had restored the sovereignty of the former British Somaliland protectorate. Its diplomatic outreach therefore cannot reasonably be explained by Hassan Sheikh’s current policies alone.
The more defensible argument is subtler.
If Awil’s point is that the deterioration of Mogadishu-Hargeisa relations convinced Somaliland’s leadership that negotiations within the Somali political framework were exhausted, and consequently increased its incentive to seek unconventional international partnerships, that is a legitimate political argument.
But Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland must also be understood through Israel’s own strategic interests.
Foreign governments rarely redesign regional policy simply because Somali politicians have stopped talking to one another.
The Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Yemen, Berbera and the wider security architecture of the Horn matter.
Somaliland wanted recognition.
Israel had strategic calculations of its own.
Those interests eventually intersected.
Hassan Sheikh’s policies may have contributed to the political environment. They cannot alone explain the outcome.
That distinction strengthens Awil’s argument rather than weakening it because serious political analysis should never confuse contributing conditions with exclusive causes.
Then Comes the Most Remarkable Admission: 1961.

The third episode is far easier to verify.
Awil was indeed one of the young northern military officers involved in the failed coup of 10 December 1961, barely eighteen months after the independence and union of the former British Somaliland and Italian-administered Somalia.
Historical accounts specifically identify Awil Ali Duale alongside Abdillahi Aden “Congo,” Abdillahi Said Abby and other junior officers involved in the revolt.
Their grievances concerned the political and military arrangements following union.
Northern officers believed that former Somaliland personnel were being treated unfairly in promotions, command structures and appointments. Some travelled to Mogadishu to raise their complaints with senior military leadership but felt that those grievances had been dismissed.
Then grievance became mutiny.
The conspirators detained senior officers, including Colonel Mohamed Ainanshe and — in another extraordinary historical intersection — Abdullahi Yusuf himself. Radio Hargeisa and other strategic facilities were targeted. The attempt quickly collapsed after loyal soldiers discovered what had happened.
Awil’s involvement is therefore not speculation.
Accounts based partly upon the recollections of Awil and Abdillahi Aden explicitly identify both men as participants.
Somaliland Separatism Did Not Begin With Siad Barre
And this fact should force a correction to one of the laziest narratives about Somali history.
It is often suggested that northern separatism began exclusively with the atrocities of Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime during the 1980s.
That is historically incomplete.
The brutality of the Barre regime, particularly the devastation inflicted upon northern cities and populations during the late 1980s, profoundly shaped the Somaliland political project that emerged in 1991.
That cannot responsibly be minimized.
But dissatisfaction with the union existed much earlier.
The December 1961 coup proves it.
Barely eighteen months after union, officers from the former Somaliland territory were already prepared to use military force against the newly unified state.
That does not prove that every northerner opposed union. They certainly did not.
Nor does it retroactively validate Somaliland’s later claim to independence.
It establishes something historically more useful: the union encountered serious political and institutional grievances almost immediately, and some northern officers concluded as early as 1961 that those grievances justified attempting to reverse the political order.
Awil was one of them.
That makes his testimony particularly valuable.

The Awil Paradox
And here lies the fascinating contradiction in Ambassador Awil’s political biography.
The young Awil participated in an attempted revolt against the Somali administration in the north.
The older Awil served the Somali Republic as a military officer and ambassador.
Decades later, the Somaliland minister Awil accompanied President Riyale to advise Ethiopia’s prime minister about the government of another man from his military generation — Abdullahi Yusuf.
And today the elder statesman Awil explains Somaliland’s strategic turn toward Israel partly as a consequence of failed political accommodation with Mogadishu.
One man.
More than six decades.
Almost the entire unresolved argument of the Somali Republic compressed into a single political biography.
Union.
Rebellion.
Diplomacy.
Civil war.
Somaliland.
Ethiopia.
Federalism.
Israel.
It would be difficult to invent a more Somali political journey.
But This Is Bigger Than Awil
Mogadishu should not celebrate these revelations too enthusiastically.
The disease exposed by Awil’s testimony is not confined to Somaliland.
Successive Somali governments, opposition groups, federal member states, armed movements and political factions have repeatedly sought foreign leverage against domestic Somali competitors.
Addis Ababa yesterday.
Nairobi tomorrow.
Ankara, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Washington or somewhere else the day after.
The capital changes.
The habit survives.
A Somali politician loses an argument at home and suddenly discovers an urgent diplomatic appointment abroad.
A regional administration quarrels with Mogadishu and begins cultivating foreign patrons.
Mogadishu quarrels with a federal member state and mobilizes international partners against it.
Then everybody returns home and delivers a speech about sovereignty.
Somali sovereignty must be the hardest-working word in the Somali language.
It is invoked immediately before being subcontracted.
The Lesson From Awil’s Testimony
The importance of the Geed Fadhi interview therefore lies beyond whatever embarrassment it causes today’s politicians.
Awil belongs to a disappearing generation of Somali public figures who personally witnessed the Republic’s earliest crises.
Their testimony should be recorded, challenged and preserved.
But oral history is evidence, not holy scripture.
Memories must be compared with memoirs. Memoirs must be checked against contemporary documents. Ethiopian archives should eventually be examined against Somali accounts. Abdullahi Yusuf’s recollections should be placed beside Awil’s. Participants who remain alive should be interviewed independently.
That is how political memory becomes history.
And after applying that standard, the essential findings remain substantial.
The 1961 episode is historically corroborated: Awil participated in the failed northern officers’ coup.
The Meles episode is supported by Awil’s own previously published memoir account: he says he accompanied President Riyale to Addis Ababa and personally advised Meles against Abdullahi Yusuf’s policies while Ethiopian troops were operating in Somalia.  What cannot presently be established is that this meeting constituted a formal conspiracy or that it caused Yusuf’s eventual resignation.
The Hassan Sheikh-Israel proposition is best treated as Awil’s political analysis, not yet as independently proven causation. Somaliland’s search for recognition long predates Hassan Sheikh’s present political confrontation with Hargeisa.
Those corrections do not diminish the story.
They make it stronger.
Because WDM has no need to manufacture an indictment when history has already written one.
For sixty-five years, Somali political actors have struggled with the same fundamental question: when political grievances arise, do we resolve them through Somali institutions, or do we search for an external power capable of defeating our Somali opponent for us?
In 1961, some officers reached for the gun.
Decades later, politicians travelled to Addis Ababa.
Today they travel the world searching for diplomatic recognition, military partnerships and foreign political leverage.
The actors change.
The patrons change.
The flags change.
The instinct survives.
And perhaps that is the most disturbing conclusion emerging from Ambassador Awil’s testimony.
He has not merely told us something about Somaliland, Abdullahi Yusuf or Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
He has inadvertently narrated one of the enduring failures of Somali politics itself: when reconciliation becomes difficult, the foreign capital becomes easier.
That is not simply Ambassador Awil’s history.
It is Somalia’s unfinished history.
— Warsame Digital Media (WDM)
Commentary and Critical Analysis