Puntland, Its “Ego” “Injured” by Galmudug Recognition, Withdraws from Somalia; In Reply, Mogadishu Sends in Warlord

Recalled Puntland MPs returning to Galkayo after being recalled from Mogadishu

Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gas, president of the Puntland State of Somalia, which governs itself like an independent state but has steadfastly called itself a part of the to-all-practical-purposes-nonexistent country of Somalia, declared August 1st that his pirate-infested desert fief at the very tip of the Horn of Africa was withdrawing from the Federal Government of Somalia (F.G.S., also called S.F.G.)—such as it is—in Mogadishu.

Members of Puntland’s Council of Ministers
ratifying Pres. Gas’s withdrawal announcement earlier this month

A newspaper based in the neighboring unrecognized Republic of Somaliland, another fragment of the former Somalia, described the scene fairly dramatically: “This revelation was made by Gas during a post regional administration cabinet meeting press briefing in which he also ordered all legislators representing Puntland in the Mogadishu based parliament to decamp back to Garowe within 15 days.

The visibly incensed president Gas reported to have roughshod over his council of ministers during the hastily convened meeting on the night of 31st July at his Garowe residence.”

Somaliland is the area to the west of Puntland, though the border is in dispute.

Gas’s announcement of withdrawal was in reaction to a decision taken by the government in Mogadishu the day before to formally recognize as legitimately autonomous another de facto independent entity, the even-more-pirate-infested Galmudug State of Somalia, which lies just to the south of Puntland.  Galmudug, whose name is a portmanteau of two provinces of “Somalia”—Galgadud and Mudug—uses Galkayo, a city lying on the Puntland–Galmudug border, as its capital.  Puntland, which uses Garowe as its capital, governs only the northern half of Galkayo but claims all of Mudug, including all of Galkayo, its capital, as a constituent province.

It is not clear whether the Somaliland journalist or the Puntland administration itself is responsible for the awkward English version of Gas’s strident statement of protest, which states, “Puntland ego has been severely injured by the participation of the international community at the Mogadishu endorsement of the new regional administration.”

Somalian and Puntland flags flying side by side

But bruised Puntlandic egos may be the least of it.  Puntland’s withdrawal has led, among other things, to reports that a former president of Galmudug, the warlord Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid (a.k.a. Abdi Qeybdiid), is launching plans to “invade” Puntland via the airport at Galkayo.  The same newspaper referred to above, the Somaliland Sun, stated that the office of the F.G.S.’s president, Hasan Sheikh Mahmud, admitted openly that it had hired Abdi Qeybdiid to “raise mayhem” and to “dislodge” Gas from power.

Abdi Qeybdiid (with microphone), pictured here in the days of his presidency,
is said to be gunning for Puntland’s current leadership—literally.

In what may or may not be a connected development, the chairman of Puntland’s military court, Abdirizak Haji Adan Ahmed, narrowly survived an assassination attempt on August 9th when gunmen said to be members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist terrorist network al-Shabaab riddled his car with bullets in Bosaso, the large harbor city on Puntland’s north coast.

Abdirizak Haji Adan Ahmed is the latest to be targeted.

This is not the first time Puntland has taken its ball and gone home.  Almost exactly a year ago (as reported at the time in this blog), Puntland’s president at the time, Abdirahman Farole, announced a similar withdrawal.  That time, Puntland’s grievances were over more general issues of sharing of resources and powers between itself and Mogadishu, as well as the status of another autonomous state within “Somalia,” Jubaland.  Mogadishu was at that point refusing to recognize Jubaland, which is in the al-Shabaab-infested far south of “Somalia,” while Puntland backed it.  That confrontation was quietly resolved in the weeks that followed.  (Jubaland is now run by an interim administration, while Mogadishu has taken over the running of its harbor, Kismayo.)  Through it all, Puntland never goes quite so far as to use the word independence, unlike its western neighbor, Somaliland, which announced a formal separation from Somalia in 1991 (discussed at length in an article from this blog).  That was the year that Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia’s Communist dictator, was deposed in one of the many global reverberations of the implosion of the Soviet Union.  The former Somalia has been in a state of constant civil war ever since.

Jubaland has also at times been called Azania and Greenland.

As of yesterday (August 11th), Gas said that he and the central government in Mogadishu were negotiating how to proceed, but progress had not yet been made.  He hinted that the objections might mainly be territorial, stating, “Mudug is partially divided.  Puntland controls the north and the south is under other people’s control.  We will never retreat from our rights to administer the north of Mudug region.” This may be a shift, since Gas refers here only to the northern part of Mudug.  But whether an agreement can be reached is another matter.

President Gas, waiting for Mogadishu to blink

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Yorkshire City Home to Somali Diaspora Recognizes Independence of Somaliland

The Republic of Somaliland is treated by most of the world as an independent state, and it has functioned as one since 1991, when Somalia—of which it formed the northern third or so, on the Gulf of Aden—collapsed in civil war.  No state has ever formally granted it diplomatic recognition.  But Somaliland may have come a step closer to legitimacy this week as the city of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire in northern England, recognized its sovereignty.

The City Council decided on April 2nd, in an 83-to-2 vote (with one abstention), to recognize Somaliland’s independence.  The resolution called upon “the British government to recognise Somaliland as an independent state and to encourage other governments around the world to do the same.”

Sheffield’s population of a half-million is about 2% sub-Saharan African, including possibly as many as 12,000 ethnic Somalis (many of them Somalilanders).  There has been a Somali community in Sheffield since the 1930s.  Somalilanders in the United Kingdom include prominent figures such as the Olympic track-and-field gold-medallist Mo Farah (profiled two years ago in this blog).

Mo Farah, the world’s most famous Somalilander

Somaliland’s minister for foreign affairs, Mohamed Bihi Yonis, was on hand for the Sheffield vote, and stated, “Somaliland is a peaceful, democratic nation which has been striving to be recognised by the international community since declaring its independence in 1991.  Sheffield’s decision will help strengthen our campaign for recognition.”

Somaliland’s foreign minister, Mohamed Bihi Yonis, in Sheffield

Sheffield is the first significant jurisdiction outside the Horn of Africa to grant Somaliland recognition.  Even though it is legally meaningless, since Sheffield cannot conduct foreign policy, the foreign policy nonetheless may have an effect.  It is a strategy used extensively by the Armenian-American diaspora, for example, which has (as discussed before in this blog) used its large numbers to successfully pressure city councils and state legislatures to pass measures on recognition of the Armenian genocide at Turkey’s hands as a genocide (something the United States government refuses to do; see article from this blog) and granting diplomatic recognition to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.), an Armenian—and to some extent Russian—puppet state which the fledgling Republic of Armenia carved out of the Republic of Azerbaijan’s southwestern flank in a bloody war of ethnic cleansing after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  California alone has more Armenians than Armenia itself, and observers estimate that the Armenian-American lobby is the most powerful immigrant-community political lobby in the U.S., exceeded in its influence only by the Jewish (Israeli) and Cuban-expatriate lobbies.

But after Russia annexed Ukraine’s republic of Crimea earlier this month, Armenia became one of only 11 United Nations member-states—alongside brutal regimes like those of Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Zimbabwe—to side with Russia against a U.N. resolution condemning the annexation.  This has cast Armenian-Americans in a negative—even unpatriotic light—and is an embarrassment to jurisdictions such as the U.S. states of Massachusetts (as reported at the time in this blog) and Rhode Island (ditto), New South Wales in Australia (see article), and most recently the City of Los Angeles, who have supported the N.K.R., a puppet regime not much unlike the Russian one in Crimea that ushered in the annexation.  In fact, many believe the N.K.R. may be the next territory to be formally annexed, either by Armenia or by an expansive Russia.  The post-Crimea world order is also making it difficult for aspirant states like Somaliland to secure recognition, since they inevitably use many of the arguments used so disingenuously by the Russian government in regard to Crimea.

Somaliland has everything except a seat at the U.N.

The Sheffield vote on Somaliland may seem like a victory.  But, due to world events, recognition by the international community seems even farther out of reach than it did a month ago.

Monty Python’s Michael Palin, who was born in Sheffield, is an activist on behalf
of Somali asylum-seekers in the U.K.  He is shown here with his fellow activist, Musa Ibrahim.

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Puntland’s Actual Declaration of Independence? Or Just Another Nail in Somalia’s Coffin?

On August 5th, the government of the “autonomous” region of Puntland within the Somali Federal Republic—a region which has been de facto independent in most respects since 1998—said it is now cutting off all relations with the internationally recognized but largely ineffective Somali Federal Government (S.F.G.) in Mogadishu.

The flags of Somalia (left) and Puntland

Puntland sits at the very tip of the Horn of Africa.  To its west is the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland, which since 1991 has considered itself both de facto and de jure independent of Somalia.  To Puntland’s south is the pirate-infested “autonomous” region of Galmudug, also nominally Somalian but de facto self-governing.  South of Galmudug is a vast patchwork of clan and militia territories which the rest of the world calls “Somalia” but of which only the capital, Mogadishu, and its environs are governed by the internationally recognized Somali government.

President Abdirahman Farole

At issue in the lastest dispute is the new federal system that the newly-christened Federal Republic is supposed to respect and implement.  Puntland’s president, Abdirahman Farole, claims that Mogadishu is reneging on promises of the “sharing of power, resources and foreign aid” in a way that is fair to the regions.  Mogadishu’s most concrete expression of disdain for federalism lately has been its refusal to recognize the self-declared Jubaland State of Somalia (a.k.a. Azania) founded by Kenya-backed warlords in the formerly Islamist-infested far south of “Somalia.”  Puntland supports the Jubaland administration—or at least the same one of the five bloodily competing ones that the Kenyan military also supports—but the Somali government in Mogadishu would rather pretend to the outside world that it administers the area itself, which it doesn’t.  Some of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab militants rooted out of Jubaland merely relocated to Puntland’s mountainous regions, a situation which Puntland also blames Mogadishu for not doing enough to fix.

Like any map of who controls Somalia, this one became out of date almost immediately.  Al-Shabaab now controls less territory than shown here, and what is shown here as “Khatumo” is now mostly under Somaliland’s control.

It is not yet clear what Farole’s announcement amounts to.   In his own words, “The fragmented country has been plunged back into a vicious cycle of violence, displacement, clan animosities, and a complete disregard for the country’s genuine Provisional Federal Constitution.  Puntland hereby suspends all co-operation and relations with Federal Government of Somalia.”  In one sense, this means a return to the situation that has mostly prevailed since 1998: foreign-aid agencies and foreign corporations and governments treat Puntland as sovereign but on paper call it a part of Somalia—almost the only politically and economically stable part of it, it sometimes seems.  So maybe this is just a return to the status quo ante that prevailed before the new constitution took effect last year, succeeding the Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) that had presided over a bloody civil war since 2004.  On the other hand, maybe this is Puntland’s way of throwing out the suggestion that it couldn’t be any worse off if it took the Somaliland route: declaring independence and lobbying the world community for full statehood, without asking Mogadishu for anything.

Somaliland is not doing too badly, actually.  Just this week, the governor of the Mogadishu government’s central bank, Abdisalan Omar Hadliye, had to reassure the public that his office had not, as had been reported, pressured the United Kingdom government to shut down the Somaliland central bank’s contract with a British firm to mint the Somaliland shillin (i.e., “shilling”), the national currency. Hadliye reiterated that Somaliland absolutely has the right to mint its own currency.  Mogadishu makes a lot of noise about not recognizing Somaliland, but it knows better than to interfere in any concrete way with the sovereignty of the resource-rich quasi-state.  Puntland may be beginning to see the advantages of that approach.

After all, Puntland, with an area almost as big as that of the U.K. itself and perhaps 4 million people (“perhaps” because a national census is one trapping of statehood Puntland lacks), has elections and a parliament and government ministries, and an industrial sector, and it does a better job of policing its offshore waters to catch sea pirates than “Somalia” does.

A few days later, Farole clarified his position by framing his country’s new position in xenophobic terms, saying, “Puntland will hold presidential elections on 8 January 2014, thus the traditional elders are really required to select academics and talented Puntland MPs, not political spoilers or anti peace elements who are known for their violent activities.  Enemies of Puntland want to infiltrate troublemakers into Puntland Parliament but we are vigilant against them.”

Perhaps Jubaland will also try independence on for size.

If Puntland decides to opt for full independence, then Galmudug will have to decide whether to follow suit.  Galmudug is less stable, closer to the violence in the center of the country, and more corrupt than Puntland, but it also has potential.  Two other “autonomous states” of Somalia, Hiiran State and Ximan and Xeeb State, might find it a little tougher to go it completely alone—to say nothing of the war zone of Jubaland.  But even the loss of Puntland might push Mogadishu and its diplomatic partners to rethink the whole failed idea of a united Somalia.  Somaliland itself might be the first to benefit.

Oh, except for one thing: Puntland and Somaliland can’t agree on a border, and in fact have been fighting over a swath of desert in the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (a.k.a. Khaatumo) region (which has at times declared autonomy itself) for decades.  Somaliland only just last year managed to bury the hatchet with local warlords and pacify its eastern border.  That battle may reopen soon.  If, that is, President Farole is serious.  Which still remains to be seen.

Should Puntlanders be preparing to celebrate quite yet?

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Ethiopia’s Oromos Mourn Separatist Leader

The Oromo people of southern Ethiopia this week are mourning the death on March 3rd of Abdulkarim Ibrahim Hamid (nom de guerre: Jara Abba Gadaa (also spelled Jaarraa Abbaa Gadaa)), a founder of the Oromo Liberation Front (O.L.F.) and its armed wing the Oromo Liberation Army (O.L.A.), a key player in the decades-long struggle for a separate Oromo state in southern Ethiopia.  Hamid was 77 years old and died of kidney failure in Yemen, where he had been living in exile.

Hamid was born in 1936 in eastern Oromia (also spelled Oromiya) and in 1967—during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie—joined the Bale rebel movement of Gen. Wako Gutu.  After serving a five-year prison term in Somalia, he returned to Oromia in 1976, where he helped found the O.L.F.  By this point, Selassie, who claimed Oromo ethnicity among his mixed ancestry, had been deposed by the Communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, which ushered in a period of ethnic insurrection by ethnic groups formerly loyal (of only uneasily) to the Emperor.  This period was complicated by Somalia’s aggressive territorial claims on southern and western Ethiopia, including a Somali claim that the Oromo, like the Ogaden, were in fact simply western Somalis, an issue which tore at the loyalties of some Oromo separatists.

Jarra Abba Gadaa (center, next to flag-holder), with O.L.A. rebels in 1978.

After a falling-out in 1979, Hamid founded the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Oromia (IFLO), supported by outside interests in Djibouti and Saudi Arabia—though, then as now, Oromo separatism has always been ethnic rather than religious in character.  In 1991, the collapse of Mariam’s sponsor state, the Soviet Union, led to his fall as well.  Ethiopia was taken over by Meles Zenawi’s multi-ethnic Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (E.P.R.D.F.), composed mostly of Tigrays, Oromos, and anti-Communists from Ethiopia’s dominant Amhara ethnic group.  But the O.L.F. quit the E.P.R.D.F. soon after it took power, leaving the ruling coalition dominated by the ethnic Tigray minority, to which Zenawi belonged.

The two Oromo factions reconciled in 2000, and Hamid was a key figure in the two groups’ successor organization the United Liberation Forces of Oromia (ULFO), later renamed the Front for Independent Democratic Oromia (FIDO).  Zenawi died in 2012, but Oromo rebels remain an armed opposition to the still-Tigray-dominated successor government.

There are currently attempts to bring Hamid’s body home to Oromia from Yemen for burial.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  (Meanwhile, if you still have money burning a hole in your pocket, an excellent way to support the “Springtime for Nations” blog is by considering donating a volume to the “Springtime of Nations” Research Library via the “Springtime of Nations” Amazon wish list.)]

Introducing the Republic of Wadiya

Last month in this space I introduced readers to the world and Africa’s newest (de facto) independent country, the Independent State of Azawad, carved for the time being out of the northern, Tuareg-dominated two-thirds-or-so of what the rest of the world still regards as the Republic of Mali.  While that drama is ongoing (and reported on in this blog’s “This Week in Separatist News” installments), yet another, not-too-dissimilarly named African country has made its debut: the Republic of Wadiya.  But it isn’t showing up on any real maps.  It is the fictional country ruled by the dictator Admiral General Aladeen, played by Sacha Baron Cohen in his new film The Dictator, due to be released in American theaters on May 16th.

The last time Baron Cohen parodied the third world (while at the same time parodying the West and everything and everybody else) was with his 2006 mockumentary Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.  The title character, Borat Sagdiyev, was an amalgam of numerous stereotypes of Slavic, Muslim, Middle Eastern, and third-world men in general (he is the dark side of Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd’s Czechoslovakian “wild and crazy guys” from Saturday Night Live), though the script is careful to mention he is non-Muslim, following an (invented) indigenous Kazakh religious system.  (Likewise, his new character Aladeen is “not an Arab” and is also, fairly apparently, not a “black” sub-Saharan African.)

Borat Sagdiyev in his native Kazakh village (actually, Romania)

The Republic of Kazakhstan, needless to say, was not amused at Baron Cohen’s deadpan portrayal of a Kazakh filmmaker who masturbates in public, tongue-kisses his sister, marries a prostitute, is gleefully misogynistic and anti-Semitic, cheerfully refers to African-Americans as “chocolate-faces,” and tries to stuff Pamela Anderson into a traditional Kazakh “marriage sack”—or the film’s portrayal of Kazakhstan as a nuclear-contaminated, backward, dirt-poor wasteland (the Kazakhstan scenes were shot on location in Romania) full of bigots, fanatics, perverts, and holders of an undying, unspecified grudge against Uzbekistan.

A timeline of Kazakh history, from the coffee-table book published to accompany the film Borat

The Kazakh government threatened law suits against Baron Cohen and his producers, and Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, even very somberly took the matter up with the United States’ president, George W. Bush, during a state visit.  However, a Kazakh journalist who got around his country’s ban on the movie by screening it at a film festival in Vienna, declared, “Cultural Learnings is certainly not anti-Kazakh, anti-Romanian, or anti-Semitic.  It is a cruelly anti-American movie.  It is amazingly funny and sad at the same time.  I think this is the best film of the year.”  (Baron Cohen, incidentally, is permitted over-the-top anti-Semitic jokes; he is himself an Englishman of Jewish extraction, who wrote his Cambridge thesis on the role of Jewish Americans in the 1960s civil-rights movement.)

A scene from Borat showing Kazakhstan’s supposed annual “running of the Jews” ceremony

More than five years later, Kazakhstan’s ruffled feathers are not yet smoothed down.  As I reported in this blog in March of this year, the Kazakh government flew into a diplomatic rage after a Kazakh receiving her gold medal at a sharpshooting competition in Kuwait stood on the podium and had to hear the mock Kazakh national anthem from Borat played over the public-address system.  The lyrics say, in part, “Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world / All other countries are run by little girls ... / Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place / From plains of Tarashenk to northern fence of Jewtown / Kazakhstan, friend of all / Except Uzbekistan, they very nosey people with bone in their brain ... / Kazakhstan, prostitutes cleanest in the region / Except of course for Turkmenistan’s.”  The athlete, Maria Dmitrienko, smiled uncontrollably while it played (watch her reaction here), but her government refused to believe it was not deliberate and demanded an apology.  The incident in actuality showed nothing more than the dangers of hastily searching YouTube to find obscure countries’ national anthems.  (It is also worth mentioning that the tournament Dmitrienko won was called the Arab Shooting Championships—which, with or without a hyphen, itself sounds like something out of Borat.)

Kazakh markswoman Maria Dmitrienko hears the Borat version of her country’s national anthem

The Dictator—not to be confused with the identically titled 1935 silent classic featuring Charlie Chaplin as Adolf Hitler—not only stars but is written by Baron Cohen as well.  It is a fully fictional, scripted film, unlike the guerilla Candid Camera approach taken in Borat, where Baron Cohen is mostly improvising opposite unwitting American dupes who think he is a genuine Kazakh journalist.  The Dictator tells of Aladeen’s unlikely assimilation into American life.  One feature of the new film’s promotional campaign has been a website for the Republic of Wadiya featuring film trailers but also information on Wadiya itself.  (Its level of professionalism is eerily reminiscent of the actual website for the Independent State of Azawad, which may indeed have helped inspire the fake Wadiya site.)  A map, under “Invest in Wadiya” on the Wadiya site, shows its position, on the Horn of Africa—or, rather, on what used to be the Horn of Africa until it was digitally shaven down to resemble Aladeen’s profile.  (See this announcement of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly sculpted Aladeen Beach, which more or less erodes the Puntland State of Somalia out of existence.)

Now, it is one thing to piss off the Republic of Kazakhstan, as Baron Cohen did with Borat.  A few Kazakhs even managed to figure out that Baron Cohen has no grudge against Kazakhstan per se; he chose it because Kazakhstan is so little known in the West, because it sounds remote and obscure and has a funny name.  It would be quite another thing to piss off an actual living dictator.  Aladeen, in his unhinged flamboyance, resembles no one more than Libya’s Moammar al-Qaddafi.  The Dictator was conceived and began shooting well before Qaddafi’s downfall and execution in October 2011, but presumably by that point Libya’s dictator was already clearly on his way out (a fate he might have avoided if he had done what Baron Cohen’s Aladeen does: in order to avert a possible future Arab Spring uprising, he has all of the spring months removed from the national calendar).  (See my blog article on conflict in post-Qaddafi Libya.)

The original Aladeen?

But, still, one doesn’t want any actual dictator deciding that he is the model for Aladeen and taking appropriate Lockerbie-esque or Salman-Rushdie-fatwa-esque action in retaliation.  So Baron Cohen has shifted his fictional country into a zone where hardly any government functions at all, Somalia.  Perhaps coincidentally, Azawad, which resembles Wadiya somewhat in name (see my recent blog article discussing the name Azawad), was founded during The Dictator’s post-production, though the name Wadiya also somewhat resembles Awdal, a self-governing pseudo-state in extreme northwestern Somalia (i.e. Somaliland).  (See my recent blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)

The actual mess that is “Somalia” today (at least as of a few months ago; it skips a few recently created statelets).

Neither Sacha Baron Cohen nor Evelyn Waugh could have made this up.

Situating Wadiya in the Horn of Africa also fits with the film’s portrayal of Aladeen and the Wadiyans as neither Arab nor really black African either—though there are hardly examples of Somali demagogues quite as colorful as, say, Qaddafi, Egypt’s King Farouk, or the Central African Republic’s Bokassa.  (Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie is a possible inspiration, however.)  In choosing the Horn region, Baron Cohen is also following in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh, whose darkly comic novels Black Mischief (1932) and Scoop (1935), which set the high-water mark for satirizing third-world inefficiency and venality, were set in fictional East African or Horn of Africa nations called, respectively, Azania and Ishmaelia.  (Azania has since then been suggested as a name for post-apartheid South Africa, for the aspirant state which was eventually named the Republic of South Sudan, and for the self-governing Somali state in the far south more often called Jubaland or, sometimes, Greenland (itself a confusingly unoriginal name, but let’s not digress too much).)  Waugh knew the Horn, having worked as a journalist in Ethiopia, covering the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.  The chances that Baron Cohen is not a Waugh fan are approximately nil.

The frontispiece and title page for the first edition of Black Mischief, including “Azania”

John Updike’s brilliant comic novel The Coup (1978), however, shifts the geographically unspecified action a bit to the southwest, Congo-ward, in the countries of Kush and Zanj, though a neighboring country referred to as Sahel perhaps suggests more proximity to the Horn—and the original, ancient Kingdom of Kush is approximately where the Republic of Sudan is now.  And readers of Marvel Comics may be aware that the superhero known as the Black Panther is actually a prince from the Kingdom of Wakanda, situated more or less in the part of Ethiopia wishing to split off as Oromia, in the Horn of Africa region.  (See my blog article on separatism in Ethiopia.)

Map showing location of Wakanda, home of the superhero the Black Panther.

Just out of shot, not far from Waugh’s Azania, is the island nation of Genosha, where mutants are kept as slaves.

(Boy, they were asking for it when they tried to enslave Wolverine, though.  I know, right?)

But perhaps Baron Cohen has not entirely escaped something like the barrage of lawsuits and diplomatic kerfuffles that followed upon Borat.  It seems possible that some African dictator—or, just as likely, some “non-state actor,” as the jargon has it—may decide that Wadiya bears a little too close a resemblance to a real country, or aspirant country, or deranged demagogue.  Qaddafi is safely in his grave, but I wouldn’t want to make any enemies among Ansar al-Dine or the Polisario Front or Boko Haram.  Their tentacles are everywhere.

Borat’s family tree.  Just because.

In the meantime, the Republic of Wadiya website’s Tourism page invites us to visit Wadiya and see for ourselves.  Attractions include the Wadiyan State Zoo (“including pandas, white tigers, and Amnesty International officials”) and the Wadiyan Museum of Tolerance (“Open daily from 9 to 5; Women, Jews, and disabled not allowed”).

The flag of the Republic of Wadiya

[You can read about many separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]