- Title: [SW Country] (Pioneer Press) Yusuf Omar Al-Azhari - Former
Somali Ambassador to the US visiting the Twin Cities
- From:[]
- Date :[25 April 2000]
Yusuf Omar Al-Azhari - Former Somali
Ambassador to the US visiting the Twin Cities
LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO STAFF WRITER - PioneerPlanet / St.
Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press
He's been shot, imprisoned and tortured, but a former Somali ambassador to
the United States visiting the Twin Cities says he
believes that peace may finally be at hand after nearly 10 years of civil
strife in his country.
Yusuf Omar Al-Azhari, who represented Somali as its 28-year-old
ambassador more than 30 years ago, said the people of Somalia are so
weary of the past decade of bloodletting and terror that they yearn for a
peaceful alternative.
``The warlords' time is almost over; they are being outmaneuvered by
the peacemakers and the international community. The people have no
confidence in them anymore,'' Al-Azhari said in an interview Monday
before speaking at Concordia University in St. Paul.
Al-Azhari, who runs a program in northern Somalia to make peace
between combatants in the civil war, is in the Twin Cities for a week as
part of a three-week tour of the United States, including Washington,D.C.,
and Richmond, Va.
Al-Azhari is trying to drum up support for his efforts from the United
Nations, the U.S. government and local citizens' groups. He was invited by
the MRA Initiatives for Change, formerly known as Moral
Rearmament, a social advocacy group with a history that dates to the
1930s.
The Twin Cities' Somali population has attracted several other
international figures this year, including Edna Adan, a former first lady of
Somalia, and Hassan Shire Sheikh, the co-director of a Somali human rights
organization. Al-Azhari also crossed paths last weekend
with an ambassador from the nation of Djibouti, which lies at the
northern tip of Somalia and is sponsoring a peace conference next
month.
Peacemakers such as Al-Azhari need the aid of the international
community, particularly the United States. His country, which has had
no government since it plunged into civil war in late 1990, faces a
catastrophic drought now in its third year that already has wiped out
many of the nomadic Somalis' livestock herds, driving the people into
overcrowded cities.
``Unless the international community sees walking skeletons, they won't come
to the rescue,'' Al-Azhari said.
There are strategic reasons for the United States and western countries to
intervene as well as moral ones, Al-Azhari said. Somalia is vulnerable to
influence from terrorist nations who could fill the void left by the lack of
a government and woo the Muslim populace.
Al-Azhari was the youngest ambassador to the United States when he
was appointed in 1968 by his father-in-law, then-Prime Minister Abdu
Rashid Sharmarke. Sharmarke later became president but was
assassinated in 1969 in a Soviet-supported coup by Gen. Mohammed
Siad Barre, who ruled Somalia until his downfall in 1991.
Al-Azhari had served briefly as an ambassador to Nigeria under Barre
but fell out of favor in 1975 and was imprisoned and tortured.
After his release, Al-Azhari met Barre and forgave him, he said. His
capacity to forgive released him from bitterness and gave him the moral
authority to seek peace from the warlords of today, he said.
But it's a risky mission. Once, he and 21 other peacemakers were fired
upon by an angry warlord and his militia after negotiations broke down.
Al-Azhari was one of only three negotiators who survived, and he still
carries a bullet in his right leg from the attack.
``Hatred is a burden that imprisons you forever,'' he said of his
willingness to forgive. ``Now I can talk to anyone, challenge anyone, go
anywhere with an open heart.''
Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at lsuzukamo@pioneerpress.com
or
(651) 228-5475.
© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press - All Rights
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