A former British colony, Somaliland was formed in 1991 when Somalia collapsed into chaotic clan wars following the ouster of longtime dictator Siad Barre. Yet Somaliland has become a zone of stability and has declared its intention to secede. The Djibouti peace conference, ongoing since June 2000, was intended to be a new and improved conference with a different cast of Somalis. Clan leaders, intellectuals, elders, religious leaders, exiles and women were all invited to attend and participate. The parliament is to elect a transitional government that hopes someday to take its seat in the original Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Elections are to be held in no more than three years.
Despite its U.N. backing, the Djibouti peace initiative is likely to fail like many other conferences before it. Somali peace initiatives are repeatedly unsuccessful due to their failure to recognize and uphold the de-facto authority of various warlords, who control their respective fiefdoms in the country. Indeed, the only Somali warlord who bothered to attend the conference is Mohammad Ali Mahdi, according to the International Herald Tribune. In April, another U.S. government foreign aid delegation traveled to Somaliland s port city of Berbera to assess the facilities and explore the possibility of using the port to bring relief supplies to famine victims in Ethiopia. By sending a U.S. ambassador to a breakaway region, Washington is all but officially recognizing its autonomy.