The Editor-in-Chief of Geeska Afrika newspaper, Mohamed Hussein Jama (Rambo), interviewed Ambassador David Shinn on different issues. Ambassador David Shinn is a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia (1996-99) and Burkina Faso (1987-90). He is also an author. Here is the full text of the exclusive Geeska Afrika interview with Ambassador David Shinn.<\/p>\n
As a diplomacy, What can you describe the new relationship between Somaliland and Taiwan?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: Taiwan has agreed to open a \u201cRepresentative Office\u201d in Hargeisa and Somaliland has agreed to open a \u201cRepresentative Office\u201d in Taipei.\u00a0 It is important to understand that this is not the same as formal diplomatic recognition.\u00a0 Taiwan is formally recognized by fifteen countries today and only one in Africa\u2014Eswatini.\u00a0 On the other hand, Taiwan has five \u201ctrade offices\u201d in Africa: Johannesburg, Algiers, Cairo, Nairobi, and Lagos.\u00a0 It also has \u201cliaison offices\u201d in Pretoria and Cape Town.\u00a0 I would judge that the \u201crepresentative offices\u201d being established in Hargeisa and Taipei are similar to the \u201cliaison offices\u201d in Pretoria and Cape Town.\u00a0 It would seem to be the goal of both Taiwan and Somaliland to expand their foreign outreach.<\/p>\n The only Chinese foreign military base locates in Djibouti, few miles away from Somaliland, and now Somaliland is hosting a Taiwanese diplomatic mission, Somalia and China, both of them opposed the current diplomatic move, so, what is that mean for the Horn Politics?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: The fact that China has a military base in Djibouti will probably have no impact on Somaliland.\u00a0 Somalia opposes this development for obvious reasons.\u00a0 It recognizes Beijing and considers Somaliland to be part of Somalia.\u00a0 China opposes it for equally obvious reasons.\u00a0 Since 1949 China has advocated the \u201cOne China\u201d principle and consistently opposed diplomatic recognition of Taiwan.\u00a0 On the other hand, it has accepted Taiwan\u2019s trade and even liaison offices designed to pursue non-political and non-diplomatic goals.<\/p>\n The US and Taiwan has a very close relation, and now US state department is involved the talks between Somaliland and Somalia, do you believe that this diplomatic move will support the talks?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: An anonymous tweet from the White House National Security Council on 9 July stated: \u201cGreat to see Taiwan stepping up its engagement in East Africa in a time of such tremendous need.\u00a0 Taiwan is a great partner in health, education, technical assistance, and more!\u201d\u00a0 While this is a most unusual communication, it does not necessarily suggest there will be any further U.S. involvement on this matter.<\/p>\n We know the political challenges between China and US, and now China is trying to undermine the nationhood of Somaliland, do you think that US or other western nations will support Somaliland if China tries to wage diplomatic war?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: China will oppose diplomatically any effort by Taiwan to establish formal diplomatic relations with Somaliland.\u00a0 But as I noted above, fifteen countries have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and many have trade offices.\u00a0 A few such as the United States and South Africa have liaison offices in Taiwan.\u00a0 I doubt China will do much more vis-\u00e0-vis Somaliland, although Hargeisa has probably been removed from any consideration of foreign aid by Beijing.<\/p>\n Somalia Government, a western backed, is now supporting China, earlier, Somalia government permitted the Chines companies to fish all Somalia Water. On the other hand, US is their main supporter, all USAID programs are now in Mogadishu while they ignored to help the people of Somaliland, so do you think that US Government will reassess where their aid is spending?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: I was under the impression that USAID has been providing some assistance to Somaliland, although most US assistance has gone to Somalia.\u00a0 In any event, I do not think Taiwan\u2019s engagement with Somaliland will have any impact on the flow of American government aid to the Horn of Africa.<\/p>\n US has backed Somaliland-Taiwan new cooperation,\u00a0<\/strong>the US National Security Council,\u00a0has commented on this new diplomatic page. What you describe this?<\/strong><\/p>\n Shinn: \u00a0I would not read too much into an anonymous tweet from the National Security Council.\u00a0 There may be no more comments on this subject from the US government but this administration is full of surprises and I could be wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Editor-in-Chief of Geeska Afrika newspaper, Mohamed Hussein Jama (Rambo), interviewed Ambassador David Shinn on different issues. Ambassador David Shinn is a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia (1996-99) and Burkina Faso (1987-90). He is also an author. Here is the full text of the exclusive Geeska Afrika interview with Ambassador David Shinn. As a diplomacy, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-english-news","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arabsiyonews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/David-Shinn.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5kp1p-fc9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58416,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58413\/revisions\/58416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arabsiyonews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}