By ITN Foreign Correspondent Rageh Omaar and James Cowan , CEO of The HALO Trust.
The mass media sometimes paints distorted pictures.
For many people living in western countries, the Horn of Africa evokes one of two images – the Band Aid pop song about the Ethiopian famine in 1984, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this turn-of-year period, or Black Hawk Down, the Hollywood treatment of a US Army operation in Somalia that went wrong.
But the Horn of Africa, which comprises the countries of Ethiopia, Somalia and the contested territory of Somaliland, and sits across the Red Sea from Yemen, has another to story to tell.
How many people know, for example, that late in 2024 there was a democratic election, and a peaceful transfer of power, in Somaliland – a territory that became independent from colonial British rule in 1960 and is now in sight of strategic shipping lanes that pass by Yemen?
And how many people are aware that there’s currently a building boom in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, a country that was Italian Somalia until WW2? Today, high-rise apartment blocks are shooting up in Mogadishu to take full advantage of spectacular Indian Ocean vistas.
We’re not about to counter one distortion for another, unrealistically rosy picture. As the biggest landmine clearing charity in the world, The HALO Trust is well aware of the history of warfare in the region. HALO’s brave demining staff help remove the deadly debris of conflict in Somalia and Somaliland every day. And we hope that work will be expanded, in Ethiopia, in the coming months.
This part of the world deserves as much serious attention as any other.
Take Somaliland. It declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and since then has become a de-facto state that has held a series of democratic and peaceful transfers of power. The latest election, in November last year, saw opposition leader Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi win over 50% of the vote and assume the Presidency. The US Embassy in Mogadishu tweeted that the poll and its peaceful outcome were “a model for the region and beyond”.
The US, like most of the rest of the world, does not currently recognise Somaliland so does not have an embassy there. The situation is unusual; Somalia says Somaliland is part of its sovereign territory and some people in the region are concerned when Somalilanders flex their ambitions of independence.
As a humanitarian organisation, The HALO Trust doesn’t have a position on whether Somaliland should be a recognised country. The charity’s job is not politics but making land safe so children can walk to school and farmers can dig their fields. In the past year alone, HALO has made over a million square metres of land in Somaliland safe – that’s the equivalent of over 140 soccer pitches.
Most of the minefields in Somaliland are on the border with Ethiopia, a legacy of wars from the 1960s to 1990s. Through painstaking work in the boiling sun, HALO staff have – again, just in this past year alone – taken over 130 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines out of the ground. Any one of those could have killed or maimed multiple people.
If you haven’t heard much about Somaliland until now, that could be about to change. Located near the Red Sea shipping lanes and just across the water from Yemen, it is in a potentially dangerous neighbourhood. Somaliland has built, with support from the United Arab Emirates, a world-class freight facility at the port of Berbera. Its landlocked neighbour, Ethiopia, is negotiating access to the sea along the same coastline. Ethiopia and Somaliland have signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ on the subject.
Although the memo has not been officially published, it is widely reported that in exchange for a slice of Somaliland’s strategic coast, Ethiopia may recognise the territory as an independent state. This prospect has infuriated Somalia, which says neither Somaliland nor Ethiopia have a right to make decisions about what, it asserts, is still part of Somalia.
Turkey, for one, knows this is a place to take seriously – a place that’s far more than just a backdrop for Black Hawk Down. Turkey has long had close relations with Somalia. It trains the country’s army, has its biggest Embassy in the world in Mogadishu, and has had a large gas exploration ship searching up and down Somali waters.
In recent weeks, Turkey has launched a diplomatic push to cool down any disagreements between Ethiopia and Somalia. The Ethiopian and Somali leaders met in Ankara and an agreement was signed. It’s not yet clear how this agreement will pan out.
Other regional powers quietly support Somaliland.
HALO takes note of what’s going on – we have to be aware of political developments. Most recently, we saw problems in the south of Somalia, where a regional election in that contested part of the country caused relations to sour between the south and the national leadership in Mogadishu.
We take note, but we also get on with our work.
There are mines from Twentieth Century wars in Somalia to clear up as well as mines and home-made explosive devices relating to more recent internal conflicts – mainly the conflict with the Islamist insurgent group, Al Shabaab. These explosives are crippling for the population, over half of whom are nomadic herders; people need to roam to feed their camels and goats. HALO has been working in Somalia since 2015 and since that time has made the equivalent of over 1,900 soccer pitches-worth of land safe.
That’s quite an achievement, but we want to do more. HALO recently signed its own Memorandum of Understanding with Ethiopia – but this one is less controversial than the political deal with Somaliland. It sets out our ambition to do more work in Ethiopia, clearing deadly landmines. However, it’s important to point out that HALO’s work not only makes people safe from explosive devices left behind by conflict. Demining also enables the regeneration of environmentally degraded land, so improving food security and mitigating the impact of climate change.
This helps alleviate poverty in communities that are harmed by war economically. Demining, in short, lays one of the foundations for development by allowing people to move around safely while they build or repair infrastructure.
These are real life benefits in a region that should matter to us all.
Demining may not command the same attention as celebrity commentary about Band Aid and it doesn’t have the cinematic drama of Black Hawk Down. But HALO Trust deminers are quietly getting on with saving lives. Their painstaking work helps people make a living without fear that the ground might explode beneath their feet.
