Sever ties with UAE now before it’s too late

By The Editorial Board

The relationship between Somalia and the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain has been frosty since Mogadishu rejected these countries’ demand to cut ties with Qatar and lower its eminently good relationship with Turkey.

All these three Arab countries have one common goal:  To isolate Doha until it bows to their demands, which are to end its diplomatic ties with Iran and give up its dalliance with the Islamist group of Muslim Brotherhood.

The trio’s policies toward Somalia, however, are varied: Saudi Arabia opts for dialogue when Mogadishu rejects its demands. Bahrain is too tiny and inconsequential to have an independent policy on Somalia. It has to adopt the views of its powerful neighbors, Saudi Arabia and UAE.

This leaves UAE as the only country willing to have an independent, if aggressive, Somali policy. And that is where our concern lies.

Until Somalia’s parliament overwhelmingly rejected UAE’s deal with politicians from the country’s northwestern region to set up military base and manage Berbera port, the Somali government was reluctant to react strongly to Abu Dubai’s blatant interference in the country’s security, political, social and economic affairs.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre have both visited UAE and held talks with the man running the show in Abu Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, or as the West popularly call him MBZ.

Instead of addressing the source of the tension between Somalia and UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, has, after each meeting with Somali leaders, escalated his war against Somalia. The UAE has little respect for Somali leaders, and even tried many times to buy their loyalty because it has a belief that money can buy it anything, including politicians from poor countries.

When the Somali parliament threw out its unilateral deal with the self-serving politicians, Abu Dubai openly declared – and in clear violation of international law — the rogue northwestern region “a republic.” (At The Star. we’re not calling that region the Republic of Somaliland because the international community doesn’t recognize it as such.)

The UAE fails to fathom the depth of anger among Somalis toward its decision to go ahead with its plans to set up a military base in the strategic coastal town of Berbera and manage its port. Somalis are united in their opposition to any foreign interference in their country’s affairs and want their government to put the kibosh on Abu Dubai’s flagrant meddling.

In fact, irate Somalis can’t wrap their minds around why their government still keeps ties with Abu Dubai, a country that is openly undermining their national government’s writ across the nation to create a chaos similar to the one it created in Yemen.

Abu Dubai’s interference in our country should awaken us from our slumber. We should stop calling this country that is working day in day out to tear us apart and pose a great danger to our national security a brotherly country.

Let’s take a leaf out of Djibouti’s book and stand up to UAE’s wickedness.

The tiny nation on the Red Sea expelled the Ports World after realizing that an agreement it entered into was faulty and served Abu Dubai’s long-term interests and not that of Djibouti.

In Kenya, Raila Odinga, the leader of the main opposition party, has accused the government of irregularly awarding the Emirates’  DP of a tender to run the second container terminal of Mombasa port, even after a Japanese company won the bid.

Somalia should have acted earlier and severed ties with Abu Dubai, whose Mogadishu-based Ambassador in Mogadishu acts like a warlord and dishes out filthy lucre to Somali politicians to buy their loyalty and to destabilize the country.

The seizure of unmarked bags full of millions of dollars at the Aden Abdullah International Airport shows how determined Abu Dubai is to exploit our weakness to further its malicious schemes in the country.

The government’s decision to integrate Emirates-trained troops — who were in actual fact militias allied with a hostile country — is timely and should be commended.

When we’re calling for disrupting UAE’s conspiracy at home, we’re cognizant of UAE-based Somali businesses and the ages-old trading link between the two Arab League member states. But we’re also acutely aware of the danger of not calling out Abu Dubai’s interference in our country.

Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are not negotiable.

If the UAE wanted good relationship with Somalis, it wouldn’t have undercut our national government. Only a bitter enemy takes advantage of another at its time of need.

We should learn from Abu Dubai’s mischievous acts in neighboring Yemen, where the UAE is snapping up all strategic islands and ports after turning a once poor but functioning nation into a failed state.

If Abu Dubai’s recent policies toward Somalia are anything to go by, it won’t stop at nothing until it turns us into another Yemen, so as it can easily occupy all our country’s coastlines.

That is why the presence of Abu Dubai’s ambassador in the country is detrimental to our nation’s national security and cohesion. So let’s kick him out before it’s too late and, by extension, end Sheikh Mohammed’s diplomatic escapades in our country.

Through such a move, we will send a strong warning to all foreign meddlers and their Somali stooges and bring to an end to other efforts to rip the country apart.