Challenges Facing Somalia SRRC

Column
[SW Column](Ali Hassan Naleeye ) Challenges Facing Somalia SRRC :Posted on [20 Feb 2002]

Opinions expressed in this column are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of SW.

By Ali Hassan Naleeye <ahassannn@yahoo.com>

February15, 2002

Given India and Pakistan’s back-to-back nuclear device test and the brewing hostility American military faced in the Arabian Peninsula, in 1999, I wrote a letter to the American government requesting them to kindly reconsider restoring its bilateral relation with Somalia. Two years later, my plea was answered as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in the U.S. Now the Somalia Reconciliation and Reconstruction Council (SRRC), a grouping of Somalia’s Central and Southern factional leaders, based in Baidoa, is extending the lone-star blue flag nation’s red carpet to the U.S. However, while our nation is at the crossroads of a life and death question, a critical testing time, many Somalis sit idle, content onbickering what has become Somalia’s national past time over the last three decades: spinning off tribal misdeeds.

Its a national tragedy to stand by, ruminating endlessly about who did killed whom, who allied with whom, and who can’t be part of the peace negotiation as unprecedented peril is drawing closer and closer to the Somali people. Instead of backing and rallying behind their united militia, which controls most of Somalia brand them as bunch of warlords grasping the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in the United States as a last minute chance to seize power with the help of Ethiopia, Somalia’s traditional enemy.

All Somalis are acutely aware that their social, economic, and political institutions are shredded. Their coasts and land have become the hub where other nations dump their hazardous nuclear waste, which is not only killing our fish, poisoning our grazing and farming land, but will endanger the health of future Somali generations. In a highly globalized world, Somalia’s "free duty" unpoliced border became a magnet for other nations to export to Somalia their expired or fake prescription drugs and foods-knowing perfectly that Somalia lacks customs inspectors. Illegal arms traders dump deadly mines and weapons into Somalia so the last remaining Somali on the planet would not run out of ammunition to kill himself. The Somali youths instead of carrying books in their hands, carry AK-47 to terrorize the civilian Somali population and to rob the little remaining Somali resources.

A few irresponsible greedy Somalis calling themselves businessmen rendered our Somali Shilling currency valueless by printing it in zerox moneymaking machines bought from Indonesia. Rich Arab nations exile their hard-core religious extremist fundamentalist groups to Somalia to keep them out of sight and out of reach from stifling their population and destabilizing their regimes. In turn, to satisfy their extreme religious views, these extremists use their Zeka and Petro-dollar money to brainwash our youths, bringing sea changes to centuries old religious tolerant Somali culture, hijack any Somali peace conference and attempt to install in Somalia a Taliban style government. Where in turn, America in its hot-pursuit war against international terrorism might get a Carte Blanche from the United Nations, and say to its Pentagon, "let us roll boys"-giving Somalia a last hour ultimatum to bomb already shell-shocked Somalia.

A million of Somalia’s literate and once proud middle class business people beg foreign nations’ refugee handouts, wearing on their necks annually renewed I.D. cards to fill up the host nation’s shrinking population. Few of these tired Somali refugee gain the coveted revocable second- class citizenship. And last but not least, Somalia’s economic mainstay, our livestock, face an unprecedented danger as traditional Somali nomads who constantly move their animals around in the country in search of better grazing land quit looking for grazing land in fear of igniting a new round of bloody tribal warfare.

Wherever civil war occurs its primary objective is for civilians to kill civilians. For the Somali people the past three decades have brought nothing but sorrow, pain, tears and fear that can never be forgotten nor compensated completely.

After realizing the sheer size of the calamity confronting the Somali people, the SRRC became duty-bound to sacrifice their interests for the sake of their country and people. All the countries in the world except Costa Rica and Switzerland (who use regional military treaties for protection) are protected by their military. If Afghanistan militia ethnic groups of Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajikistani, and Pashtu can unite and put aside their differences to form a national Afghanistan government after fighting decades of bloody civil war, why then can’t homogenous Somali people of one ethnicity sit together and reconcile their differences to form a central Somali government?

Last week, in their separate IRIN interviews, both SRRC senior leaders, Hussein Aideed and Hassan Mohamed Nur ‘Shatigadud’ committed to put the interest of the Somali people above their own interests. When asked their role in the future Somali government, Mr. Aideed responded, "If I do not get those I will stay out of the government and wait. For me I want unity first. And I want constitution." And ‘Shatigadud’ replied, "I do not want any specific role, I want real power sharing among the people." The IRIN interview sounds like the 2000 American Presidential election, where candidate Al Gore, who in the final disputed election results against George Bush said that if he fail to get enough votes in the hand-counted votes, he would concede the election to Bush and leave the government. Gore pledged that he wants the unity of the American people first, and to put his country’s interest above his personal interest.

In saying the SRRC is only after power when it allied with Ethiopia’s Prime Minster, Meles Zenawi, is preposterous and is to ignore the history of Somalia and the history of East Africa. Why we expect Ethiopia to nurse Somalia in the intensive care unit, when the Somalis are the ones who are shredding their country? Once French populist leader General Charles De Gaulle, said, "Countries do not have friends, they have only interests." Every country’s foreign policy is centered on first addressing its own priority and interest. Somalia’s SRRC, Ethiopia and the U.S. all have their interests converged in Somalia; they all fear Somalia being used as the hub, training camps, command and control center of extremist Islamic Fundamentalist groups.

According to the World Book 2002 Encyclopedia, "During the partition of Africa, under the Menelik II, Ethiopia engaged in its own colonial expansion and nearly doubled its territory to the South and the East." At the end of World War II, because of the Monarch of Ethiopia’s support of victorious Allies during the war, the U.S. and the British allowed Ethiopia to keep the Somali region of Ogaden against the will of the Somali people. Emperor Haile Selassie needed mainly pastoral Ogaden to balance the diet of Ethiopia’s largely agrarian society. To keep the lid on the Somali nationalism and irredentism, Selassie focused Ethiopia’s foreign policy for the sole goal of oppressing the Somalis in Ogaden, and to a lesser extent other minorities including the Oromo and the Tigray people. His successor, Mengistu Hailemarium continued Selassie’s tough policy against the Somalis. As a result, the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), led by Meles Zenawi, allied with the Somalis and moved to Mogadishu.

When Prime Minster Zenawi came into power, he reversed Ethiopian foreign policy toward Somalia from oppression to containing policy. Mr. Zenawi notably shouldered the burden of welcoming hundreds of thousands of Somali refugee into Ethiopia, despite our two countries traditionally being enemies. Only when Somalia’s Al-Itihad religious group began bombing Ethiopia did Mr. Zenawi begin aggressively pursuing the Al-Itihad group in Somalia. To taunt or ignore an undisputed regional superpower that controls about 90 percent of your nearly 3000-mile-long territorial border when your country is in civil war and has no government in a decade is a shortsighted foreign policy.

If Selassie or Mengistu were in power in Ethiopia today, one could argue Somalia may have been saved from the civil war. In the eyes of Somalis plunging into civil war while Haile Selassie or Mingitu Hailemarrium is watching Belet-Weyne from his Feer Feer Military post would have looked like inviting a hungry wolf to a spicy goat meat feast held once in a decade. That fear alone would have driven the Somali people to rally behind their most brutal dictator as it happened in the 1977 Somali-Ethiopia war on Ogaden.

The Somali people know that it was the Ethiopian Amharic Emperors, not Zenawi, who aggressively spearheaded the annexation of the Somali region of Ogaden and sliced Somalia into two halves. The Ethiopian Monarchy used to favor small Somali tribes at the expense of the main Somali tribes in order to dominate them. In contrast, Zenawi begin reaching out all the main tribes of Somalia. Those Somali minority groups that Zenawi failed to reach out are now accusing him that he wants to weaken and divide Somalia.

If Mr. Zenawis’ main goal were to destroy Somalia, he would not have earned the respect of the main Somali factional leaders and the Somaliland leaders. These factions have invested all their resources in Somalia And to say that all these factions and their main Somali clans are betraying their country is to believe foreign propaganda that wants Somalia to remain weak and divided so they can enjoy exploiting the unpoliced over 2000-mile-long Somali coast. For a decade Libya with its mighty Petro-dollar money working in over-time tried to unite the Somali factions and failed it. Even if Zenawi wants a weak central Somali government, still, isn’t that is better than twelve years of having nothing in Somalia but bloody civil war and anarchy?

We live in complex changing World. Despite our troubled history, Somalia and Ethiopia will always be neighbors. No two countries in this World had bloodier wars than Germany and France where millions of people died at their borders. Yet today, in terms of borders and currencies, they are one country. Just by looking the recent civil wars in East Africa sheds a light of hope that a united Somali militia might at last end Somalia’s civil war. In 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), ended Rwanda’s genocide. In 1986, the National Resistance Army (NRA), led by Musseveni ended decades of civil war in Uganda. In May 1991, Ethiopian Rebel from Tigray province restored law and order after a bloody power struggle war in Ethiopia. In 1997 Rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s Rebel prevented the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, from splitting into smaller states. This begs the question why are many Somalis then not supporting their united militia? Is the Somali militia the cause of the Somali civil war?

In fact, if the Somali militia had not separated the warring tribes during the twelve- year- old civil war, its highly likely Somalia might end up having the Rwandan 1994 type of genocide in Somalia. During the cold war, the two Superpowers, U.S. and former Soviet Union began playing Somalia like the pawn in chess game. In the 80s, the U.S. sent over 50 million dollars of arm sales annually to Somalia, in return for the use of the military facility at the strategic Red Sea port of Berbera built by the former Soviet Union. When the Somali central authority collapsed in early 90s, all these weapons fell in the hands of the civilian population. This made Somalia a country sitting on a searing volcanic molten-lava rock with a ticking time bomb.

U.S. Congressman, Howard Wople, then Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, predicting the Somali civil war before it begin, was quoted by saying "What you are seeing…is a general indifference to a disaster that we played a role in creating." The chaos following the collapse of the Somali State resulted the military breaking up into smaller militia groups. Then the foreign media began spreading in Somalia rumors that Somalis are very tough warriors, and that some strong clans are out in full spree, killing and robbing the weaker Somali clans. This fear in turn ignited a domino chain effect on all Somali clans to arm into the teeth. When in fact, these regional attacks began when some nationalist Somali military leaders began using an arms reach in an effort to unite the country to prevent the civil war. Now, Somalis understand that foreign propaganda is a lethal weapon.

It is amazing to see the thinking of some Somalis, pinning down all their hopes that a twelve year battle tested militia with many close calls behind the battle lines would graciously disappear dancing into the thin air. Its also na�ve to think such a war-hardened militia would accept orders from "civilian president" elected by a few hundred of Somalis in a foreign country. Ironically, the place most Somalis learn first time that the new leader was in the election process is from the BBC or from the CNN news, which brings us back thinking about General de Gaulle’s quote. If electing a Somali president can be achieved as easy as that then, why our civil war has been dragging in twelve years? This shortsightedness then may usher Somalis to become an endangered Homo-sapiens species. Perhaps then the Superpowers out of their once in a while glowing humanitarian concerns, will be glad to resettle the Somali land the people of neighboring Maldives Island, which due to rising sea levels their Coral Reef Island is slowly submerging under the sea.

E-mail: Ahassannn@yahoo.com