Awate Team
Target: Somalia (From Awate Archives)
By The Awate Team
Jul 11, 2006, 21:17 PST
The following article was originally published in December 22, 2001. It (actually, 25 words in the article) raised a firestorm of criticism including Mensour Kerrar’s classic Baboor Ye Gebeyka (“Train, You Are Headed The Wrong Way!”) as well as a mention in our “Did They Really Say/Do That” retrospective of September 1, 2002. Our response to the firestorm was mostly “only time will tell.” Well, Somalia is in the headlines again and we are re-posting it for our readers to judge if time has told...
Target : Somalia
By: The Awate Team
December 22, 2001
Authoritarian governments always invite their citizens to focus their attention elsewhere. This is why there are more Eritreans who are experts on Ethiopian politics and will write volumes of critical pieces about Ethiopia but nothing on Eritrea. Similarly, Ethiopia is awash with Eritrea experts (include Ethiopia’s version of the Flat Earth Society: “Assab Is Ours”) who won’t write about Ethiopia. This website has always held the opinion of Clean Your House First, that we are an Eritrean website and there is enough going on in Eritrea to keep us busy. But now we have to make an exception. It seems that preparations are underway to punish Somalia and, notwithstanding the welcome mat of Hassan Abshir Farrah, Somalia’s new Prime Minister, we feel sorry for the helpless Somali people. Our heart goes to the Somali people who are victims of both religious extremism and political stupidity.
The assault planned on Somalia begs for an exception and we will exercise it. The Somalis have always been true friends of the Eritrean people. When all the countries in our region (including Sudan) and beyond were shifty, indifferent or inimical to the Eritrean struggle, the Somalis held an unswerving stand and supported the Eritrean cause from the early sixties to the day of Independence. By an ironic coincidence, the year Eritrea gained independence was the year Somalia went into deep chaos.
The fall of dictator Siad Barre and what ensued thereafter pushed the country into an abyss. Clans, tribes and foreign interests played a destructive role in worsening the situation in Somalia. The role of Islamism, the reaction of the neighboring countries to this phenomenon, the power struggles for political hegemony, the end of the Cold War, the misguided policies of the Clinton Administration have all conspired to destroy Somalia. But Islamism, in the person of Bin Laden, is what is bringing Somalia to the attention of the world and we will attempt to shed some light on that and invite the Bush Administration to not repeat the mistakes of the Clinton Administration of picking on unreliable partners.
Islamism & The Horn
Islamism had been around in North Africa—long before Jemal Abdel-Nasser crushed Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement. Although there were traces of Islamism in the Eritrean field as early as the 1970s (ELF dismissed a few from the Eritrean field), Islamism did not gain ground in the Horn of Africa until Sudan’s ruling party came to power backed by Dr. Turabi’s charisma and exploitation of religious sentiments.
Like all ideologues, Dr. Turabi had ambitions far in excess of his capabilities: his particular obsession being to install Islamist regimes all over the place. Simultaneously, the decades old crisis in Southern Sudan deteriorated with the interferences of regional and international interests and re-emerged as a secular/African/Christian vs religious/Arab/Muslim feud. This, unfortunately, is how the Bush Administration was oriented to Sudan, thanks in no small measure to the powerful lobbying efforts of Christian Fundamentalist movements in the US. In reality and historically, the Sudanese conflict had to do with a common challenge to African states: degrees of autonomy, centralism vs decentralism and resource/power allocation, etc.
Seven years later, what is the situation like? A full year before 9/11, Turabi had lost his power struggle when he was bested by one of his students, Al-Bashir. Bashir seems to give serious signs of reversing some of the more extreme elements of Turabism. After September 11, the reforms were accelerated—enough to win lifting of sanctions on Sudan by the US (the Europeans were already on board) and he is being seen in better light--never mind that he rigged the last election.
In Eritrea, the Jihad movement is practically dead. Was this due to the “resolve” of the PFDJ, as its propagandist claim? Not at all. As the leader of the G-1 once said (in a threat directed to Ethiopia), it is fairly easy to “create instability anywhere” and the Jihadists could sustain their hit-and-run assaults west of Tessenei indefinitely. The credit for the demise of Eritrea’s Jihad goes to the patient work of the traditional opposition, particularly the ELF-RC, which has attempted to influence and contain the militant and intolerant aspects of Eritrea’s opposition. (This website has called on the ELF-RC and the ELF to go a step further and disown and remove the Jihad movement from the Alliance.)
Writing for Le Monde, Jean-Louis Peninou, one of the sharpest observers of the Horn of Africa, had this to say about the demise of the Eritrean Jihad movement: “One of the three factions in the tiny Eritrean Jihad is supported by al-Qaida, but it is a small and not very active group and has been further marginalised this year in the traditional opposition to the regime (the Alliance), itself less important since the emergence of strong internal opposition.” In other words, the marginalization of Eritrea’s Jihad movement had nothing to do with September 11 or the punitive measures of Isaias; it had to do with the legitimization of opposition to Isaias. The more the opportunities for peaceful and mainstream opposition, the less the appeal of the militant and extremist organizations.
After the attacks in Kenya and Tanzania and the responses of the governments (and the FBI) to these attacks on US Embassies, the only foothold Islamism might have in the Horn now is in Somalia, a fact that has not escaped the US and its allies.
Somalia & Its Neighbors
The five-sided star in the Somali flag is a symbol representing the five sections of Somalia. It included the Ogaden (now Ethiopian Territory) and other parts to the East (now Kenyan territory). The Somali nation straddles parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. [The five-sided star has been adopted by Ethiopia and is now the symbol of the Somali People’s Democratic Party (SPDP), the Somali affiliate and creation of Ethiopia’s ruling “coalition” party, EPRDF.] Siad Barre and the Somali socialists had always entertained the dream of collecting the lost territories of Somalia and they waged war on Ethiopia, through proxies, to do just that—a fight that now continues under the banner of Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). But this doesn’t appear practical now.
Notwithstanding the sincere sounding platitudes of Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, with regards to Somalia, the EPRDF—as its predecessors and other countries in the region—has always wanted a tiny, fractionalized and manageable little neighbor. The EPRDF aspired to play the role of power broker in Somalia and several meetings were hosted by Addis-Ababa about securing lasting peace in Somalia. After Ethiopia suffered few terrorist operation by Islamists in its territories, occasionally, to show how serious it was about lasting peace, the Ethiopian Government would go on “hot pursuit” of one organization or another; it would cross the boundaries of Somali territories while categorically denying that it had any presence in the area. Ethiopia, by definition, cannot be an honest broker in Somalia.
One of the organizations that Ethiopia was in “hot pursuit” of was the Al-Ittihad Al-Islami, an Islamist organization that is a byproduct of Turabism and one allegedly backed by Bin Laden. The Al-Ittihad took advantage of the instability of the surrounding countries, as well as the complete breakdown of law and order in Somalia to position itself as an authority in some areas of Somalia. In the ‘my-enemy’s enemy is my friend’ calculation of politics, the Al-Ittihad had at one time or another allied itself with some of the neighboring nations, particularly PFDJ’s Eritrea, (according to credible intelligence). In the tit-for-tat games of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war, the PFDJ also supported the ONLF under the theory of “anything that derails Ethiopia is good for Eritrea.” PFDJ’s Eritrea cannot be an honest broker because in the minds of many Somalis, the Eritrean government was only too willing to destroy Somalia if it promoted Eritrea’s interest.
Egypt is another country with a vested interest in Somalia: it is the politics of the Nile. The situation of Somalia interests Egypt because Ethiopia sits on the source of the river Nile, the lifeline of Egypt. Such interests expand to Sudan and Eritrea as well. In other words, Egypt (and Libya) is interested in Somalia only to the extent that they want to combat Ethiopian hegemony in the region. Otherwise, they give not a damn about what happens to Somalia. This disqualifies both from the role of an honest broker.
The Arab League, of which Somalia is a member, has failed the Somali people miserably. Throughout the last ten years, the Arab countries were watching helplessly when Somalia was disintegrating. Other than the mandatory resolution and letters of concern, the Arab League didn’t do anything to alleviate the suffering of the Somalis. Predictably, the OAU is no better.
Finally, IGAD “the Intergovernmental Authority on Development” is in no position to contribute anything toward the solving of the Somali crisis simply because it is a body without life: Dead. Its goals of “Food Security and Environment Protection and Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution and Humanitarian Affairs” are a blatant lie.
Somalia: The Case For UN Intervention
The UN representative to Somalia is quoted as having said that what Somalia needs is a mixture of ''tutoring, interference and encouragement.'' We believe that the world community must tutor, interfere and encourage under a UN mandate to stabilize the country and establish a central government that would function properly. Somalia is unfortunate enough to have wolves for leaders and scavengers for neighbors. What the neighborhood offers is torturing, indifference and discouragement. We are happy that Afghanistan is about to be relieved of its problems; we wish the same to Somalia. We feel that the arrangement undertaken for the establishing of the Afghani transitional government is the same model needed for Somalis: a congress of all members of social groups and clans. The international community, which contributed to the demise of Somalia, should assist Somalia to get out of the mess it finds itself in. Afghanistan suffered the rule of psychopathic zealots who thought they were God’s delegates in this world and soon began to act on it. The Somalis are cursed with strongmen who think their sole purpose in this life is to destroy the Somali nation. The Somalis have been asked by the international community to surrender any terrorist in their territory. The problem is that Somalia doesn’t have a Taliban that would be held accountable for what happens in its country. Only the eyes of God are watching Somalia. Therefore, there is no one who is qualified to oversee the would-be surrender and there is no warlord who controls more than his clan’s enclave within the war-torn Somalia. It is the job of the international community under a UN mandate.
We believe that an acceptable level of power sharing (i.e. democratization) is the only solution to the lurking terrorism in the Horn Of Africa. We would like to remind the Bush Administration that despots and authoritarian regimes are not qualified to solve problems of extremism because by definition, they are all extremists. Neither Ethiopia nor Eritrea nor Kenya can be counted on to be “partners” in bringing about stability because, with illegitimate governments holding sway over helpless citizens, they are inherently unstable nations. As history teaches us, such governments cannot protect the interest of the common people; in the opposite, their interest is in hegemony and elongating their stay in power while the interest of the people in stability, prosperity and human dignity remains unmet. Governments that terrorize their citizens cannot be expected to save their neighbors from the scourge of terror.
awateteam@awate.com
Somalia Eritrea Ethiopia East Africa Somalia Somalia Eritrea Ethiopia IC
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