The Enemy We Love to Live With And
The State of OurAffairs
Ismail Ali Ismail 
August 23, 06   

Print     “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight canbe built.”
Immanuel Kant     

The Nature of The Enemy

Human history has been characterized by constant fights between tradition and modernity.  Nowhere has this been so glaringly obvious in our society as in our struggle to free ourselves from the shackles of clanism so as to step into a new era of material and social progress. In our various battles with clanism we had but three, unfortunately brief, successes: the early years of the movement for independence in the South; the struggle in the North for independence and union with the South; and the initial years of the military rule when we symbolically burned and buried clanism, all seemed to herald its end – a pleasant prospect that was never to be.  

But clanism – always resurgent – had a laba kaclayn of its own which was unleashed upon us with unremitting vengeance.  Like successive tsunami waves (we know what these are now) it caused untold miseries: our fields were strewn with the bleached bones of the multitudes who lost their lives, our national capital, destroyed, was emptied of its population save, largely, for the marauding gunmen who senselessly fired at everything that moved, and a million (by some estimates) of our people, displaced and dispossesed, were flung to the four corners of the world.  To this day, so many of our desperate compatriots are lost at sea every time a dilapidated and overloaded little dhow ventures a trip to the other side of the Gulf of Aden.   There are, surely, those few who survive the harrowing ordeal  and reach the other side, almost lifeless, only to find that the grass is not, after all, greener on the Yemeni side. Our State, far from being able to help, was itself the first casualty.  The enemy (which goes by the name of clanism) had never been so fierce, so devastating, so merciless, so unrelenting.  Yet, that same enemy remains our bosom friend, for we court it, keep it close to our hearts, even let it control our actions, and we thus nourish it.  And whenever our minds rebel and try to guide our actions clanism whispers into our ears and tells us not to listen.

In my view – and I have said so before - the remedy is within our reach and does not even require any strenuous effort on our part.  The first thing we should do is to admit to ourselves that as a nation we suffer from a pernicious social disease which tends to render meaningless our rare homogeneity that is the envy of much of the world. The solution to a problem begins with being aware of it.  We have to admit to ourselves that we all harbor, in varying degrees of course, a smouldering of the fire that is clanism. 

What I am saying here about clanism brings back memories of my days in the field administration in our country when as a district commissioner I had to work hand in glove with clan elders and notables.  Although I felt inner pride as a young university graduate (rare in those days and rarest in the field administration) I was keenly aware that in dealing with the real life-and-death issues staring me in the face I would have to learn from the experience and wisdom of those elders and notables; and  I was a willing student. But that well-known sage of Hargeisa, Haji Abdi Hussein  (better known as Haji Abdi Warabe; he was then“Chief Local Authority” and I am happy to learn that in his ninetees he remains sharp and active in the Guurti) surprised me one day by saying that clanism was simply a miniature form of nationalism; in other words a nationalism on a small scale.  He added that there could not be a nationalist who was not at the same time a clanist.  It is an interesting viewpoint which opened my eyes to the similarities and which, I think, we cannot dismiss so easily.  But, I was adamant in my view, as I am still, that the two are in fact antithetical despite the similarities. The contradiction could not be more apparent today.

Being aware of the problem, however, is only the first step. Many of us believe that clanism is intractable because it is deeply imbedded in our hearts.  It is a social disease for which time and tact are the great physicians.  While we progress in education and economic performance we should refrain from nourishing it with the words we pen or those we utter and the vile deeds we carry out on its account. We simply need to stop adding fuel to the fire so that the fire will die out: we should not, at least, provide the fuel to intensify it or cause a wind to spread it.

The Federal Parliament

A positive attitude is certainly helpful in solving a problem; negativity and cynicism are the tools of destruction and we Somalis, like our fellow Africans, have no shortage of them.  We have a parliament born of a tedious two-year process in which issues were hammered and the inevitable haggling was so tough that it threatened to kill the process so many times. A great deal of money from external sources was spent and mis-spent. And there were many deliberate attempts to derail the process. Our neighbors were in the thick of the process and were by and large helpful. Our European benefactors were patient, generous and determined that the fourteenth attempt at a Somali national reconciliation should not fail.  We Somalis have much to be grateful for: the world has been very kind to us at the moment we have been tearing ourselves apart.

I believe that the fact that we have a federal parliament is a magnificent achievement.  Of course, it is far from being perfect but it is unrealistic to aim at perfection at this stage. The criticisms thus far are many but I shall only discuss the main ones:

1
    Parliament is composed of clans: how else should it have been composed? This criticism is simply a denial that we are a society of clans; and we never had a parliament whose members did not represent clans.  In the 1969 elections we had some 83 political parties nearly all of them clan-based, and our anti-Siad Barre fronts and (later) the armed factions were similarly clan-based.  The sad reality is that the clans are our real political parties.  I know from my long observation that we Somalis are not capable of sticking long enough to a non-clan organization. Our history is full of organizations and associations (even the clan-based ones) which have risen and fallen almost the same time.  Look at how our communities in the Diaspora are organized.  I think we have never been so clannish as we are now. 
2 Akin to this issue is the 4.5 formula which has created so much opposition, specially from those of us who have been to school.  Again, this is tantamount to refusing to come to terms with our ugly realities; it is an attitude which stands between us and logical reasoning.   There is need for our parliament to be representative of all the sections of society , and if these happen to be clans, so be it.  And, believe you me, we never had so highly representative a parliament as the one we have now.  Even the electoral process would not produce a better one, not in terms of the quality of individual members but in terms of being more representatives.  We know that many of the smaller communities represented in Parliament today cannot win a seat (let alone a ministerial post) in an elected parliament.

I think it is also beneficial for us to apply the formula to all public service appointments if we truly want the public service to be a cross-section of our society.  There is nothing wrong with having a deliberate policy of ensuring a balanced diversity in the public service. Apart from that, there are three reasons why there should be a formula: (a) to help disadvantaged communities (those who lag behind in education and development) as they do in India (the so-called scheduled castes) and protect them against discrimination; (b) to enrich the services through cultural or sub-cultural infusion; (c) to ensure accessibility by the public.  The U.N has a quota system which is called “ the principle of geographic distribution” and it is applied to all regular posts.  The U.N. is not alone in this, for all other international or intergovernmental organizations have followed its example.  The disadvantage of such a system is that it leads in many cases to a lowering of standards, and it so happens at times that a person with only minimum qualifications is selected over and above candidates who are much better qualified.   But there must, at all times, be minimum qualifications which a candidate should meet

Some public service posts – such as ambassadorships and certain top civil service posts – may be subject to political appointments.  These posts are known to be subject to political spoils or as in the UK subject to patronage or sinecure. Posts in those categories are not subject to any formula and are outside the purview of the merit system.  We may not have politicians if we introduce and strictly apply a system which does not allow them to manage resources and dispense rewards to those who helped them achieve office.


3		 Civil societies are not represented.  I agree with Hussein Aideed that they have no place in a parliament composed of clan representatives.  Besides, civil societies are not political parties and they have their own private interests to promote.  Just imagine NGOs being legislators!  I do not deny that civil society should play a part in political life, but their place is neither in parliament nor in government.

4		 It is dominated by warlords.  This, I concede, is an unfortunate anomaly.   But, the absence of warlords was what really destroyed the TNG and having learnt that lesson it was thought that bringing them in and giving them a sense of belonging would assure the survival of our national reconciliation.  After all, reconciliation was aimed primarily at them.  As the warlords could not be vanquished the alternative was to bring them in; in the end they were vanquished by the ICU and that is why the process seems much less complicated now.


The Federal Government

The verbal onslaught on the TFG has been ferocious and unprecedented and it began before the government even managed to secure a foothold in the country.  Mogadishu was burning and was patently unsafe for a government that did not have the means to defend itself let alone return normalcy to the city.  While the government was being severely scathed there were those of us who were condoning or even praising the actions of the warlords who were playing havoc in the city despite being members of the government.  And there were those who wanted the TFG to jump into the fire by moving to Mogadishu.

But, the government had a plan of its own.  It was to bring in an AU or an IGAD intervention force to protect key government institutions; collect weapons voluntarily surrendered; and help reconstitute and train the police and the army.  This question created a heated controversy in parliament and in Mogadishu . The people who fiercely opposed the plan were the ones who were benefiting by the tragic situation of the country, the warlords being in the forefront.  It was they who contended that Somalis – being brothers and sisters to each other – were capable of solving their problems among themselves without the presence or the assistance of a foreign force.  This was a blatant insult to the intelligence of those who cared for our country.   Everybody knows our vile deeds do not match our sweet words, for we Somalis have been slaughtering one another for fifteen years .

I agree that valid points have been made against deploying foreign forces in our country and we have had bitter experiences with American and United Nations forces.  Surely, we do not want a repeat of those humiliating experiences.  But what dignity, what sovereignty, what independence are we protecting? We have been dragging them all in the streets of our capital for fifteen years; what we have been doing to one another has been much worse than what others did to us both in terms of scale and depth of cruelty.  A rejection of outside intervention cannot but mean therefore that we should be left alone to finish each other off and that only the fittest should survive.

All wars are nasty, but nothing is so nasty as a civil war.  Wars between countries are generally of a short duration and can be stopped relatively easily.  Civil wars are different in intensity, duration and intractability. They also encourage other countries, especially the neighbors, to interfere and intervene on behalf of one group or another as the factions themselves seek outside alliances – even with the Devil.  Such has been the case in the Lebanese civil war which, like ours, also lasted fifteen years (1975 -1990).  Israel sided with the Christians and Syria with the Muslems and now Iran is a third player in that country. But the conflict was finally settled with the intervention of the Saudis in Taif.  Sometimes when your own internal system cannot cope with pain you have to swallow a bitter pill to relieve the pain.  In civil war a foreign intervention force may represent that bitter pill.  We must remember that the civil wars in the Balkans, Siera Leone and Liberia were all settled by outside powers. In our case Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, Egypt and even Iran are said to be involved, but the key to ending external meddling in our affairs is in our own hands.  I am sure if the TFG and the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) reach a solid agreement in Khartoum the controversy on the question of foreign troops and the interference of individual countries will be a thing of the past.  I do sincerely hope, however, that the TFG will not be a paper-government, the ICU our Hizbullah and Ethiopia our Israel.

It has been said that the government barely exists because it has no army to restore order, it has no resources to undertake services, has no territory and no staff.  All this is true.  However, are these not cogent reasons why we should come to its aid? It is also a fact that the ulterior purpose of emphasizing these weaknesses is to deny it the internal support the TFG needs to garner international recognition.  At the forefront of the intensive war of nerves on the government is clearly the BBC (Somali Service) which is, curiously enough, at variance with the official policy of the United Kingdom as recently enunciated by Lord Triesman.  The BBC  (Somali Service) which deserves to be called BBC (Somali Subversion) was previously on the side of the warlords and with these gone it is now fully on the side of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).  It is a great pity that instead of being a powerful voice for national reconciliation the BBC (Somali Service) chooses to tarnish its image in favor of plunging itself in a unilateral war of words.  But again, we Somalis give a clan interpretation to everything and, admittedly, the head of that Service of the BBC is a hero to some and a villain to others.

Of the incompetence of the government there can be no doubt.  Some of the incompetence can be attributed to its being nascent and feeble and the fact that it has been, since its birth two years ago, merely struggling to survive. Considering the forces that had been arrayed against it the TFG has managed to survive well albeit with the support of our neighbors and the international community at large. Some of the incompetence must certainly be attributed to an irresponsible and divided parliament on the one hand, and a cabinet said to be corrupt and is manifestly unequal to the monumental but twin tasks of national reconciliation and nation-building on the other.  But the question is: if we do away with the existing federal institutions what mechanism do we have to rally around, use as a tool for bringing our disjecta membra together and securing the international assistance we need so badly to rebuild our institutional and physical infrastructure?

The Islamic Courts Union (ICU)

The ICU is the new positive force that banished those destructive warlords who turned our national capital into a rubble, slaughtered so many of its people and were the insurmountable obstacle defeating every reconciliation that was agreed upon.  The ICU changed the political landscape almost overnight for the better.  In so doing it was aided by two factors: (1) the massive support of a people who were itching to break through the gates of physical restrictions in order to go out and breath the fresh air of freedom;  (2) the possession of a military arsenal sufficient to defeat the warlords, restore law and order in the Capital and expand their territory.

As time wears out and the ICU expands, the cracks within its ranks may become more apparent.  It has been expanding rapidly and is now threatening the gates of Galkacayo.  But expanding too thinly and too rapidly may to prove to be its undoing. Among other things, it will require a degree of sophistication, huge resources and skills of networking to manage from the center the courts that will administer the affairs of the country’s subdivisions.  The ICU has not so far developed any of the immediate institutions necessary for securing their grip on the areas they have occupied.  It takes much more to administer an area than simply establishing courts for the resolution of conflicts.  The ICU system is a hybrid form of theocracy and kritarchy, and it must be of abounding interest to someone like me who is a student of government.

The TFG, the ICU and Khartoum

The TFG and the ICU have been posturing for Khartoum.  Their first encounter in June was hailed as a success and was the first flicker of light in the darkened atmosphere of reconciliation.  The main positive outcome of those talks was the fact the ICU recognized the Government and the latter recognized the ICU as a legitimate force.   It was agreed also that there should be an immediate cease fire.   Upon return to Mogadishu, however, the ICU captured new areas (including Jowhar,  the previous interim seat of the Government) and the Government refused to go to Khartoum for the second round on the grounds that the ICU violated the cease fire.  The ICU replied that the cease fire agreement was only with the government, not with other combatants.   But since the ICU and the Government had not been fighting the cease-fire could only mean that the ICU should stop fighting for expansion.  This was followed by a military contingent of the ICU moving to Bur Hakaba and appearing to be heading for Baidoa, the current interim seat of the government.   The TFG was alarmed and asked the Ethiopians to move in for protection against the ICU which retaliated by refusing to go to Khartoum “until the last Ethiopian soldier leaves our country”. 

The talks in Kartoum have been rescheduled for 30 August 2006.  I personally hope that both parties will bring their cat-and-mouse game to a quick end and the talks will start in earnest.  The ICU should not refuse again to go and cite Ethiopian presence on Somali territory as a reason.  That is an unnecessary precondition because we need a united front to ensure that our territory is not violated; such a front is only possible if the TFG and the ICU sink their differences and put together a government of national unity.

Conclusion

Our country needs us now more than ever before and we should discard the devil that pushes us to evil-doing through the instrumentality of blind loyalties to our clans or to individual leaders.   We have a government and a parliament however poor and incompetent they may be, and we owe it to our country and to ourselves to support them, help them rather than oppose them, castigate them and seek to unseat them.   We should draw wisdom here from a famous quotation from the late President Kennedy’s inaugural address in January 1960:  “Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country”. Individuals come and go but the institutions remain.   I am not hunting for a job with the TFG or looking for other favors and I am not supporting Abdullahi Yusuf  and Ali Mohammed Geedi for any reason other than that they are our Head of State and our Head of Government respectively.  I am supporting the TFG because it represents a hope, just the same way I supported the TNG in 2000 because it stood for a promise.

I am not implying that we should not support the ICU.  But the courts have done better than many of us by recognizing the TFG as the legitimate government, and I think if they and TFG strike a deal we will have a government of national unity operating from our national capital.  We should therefore encourage both parties to move to a middle ground and agree on a power-sharing formula without wrecking the Charter.  The U.S and the UK and others have advised us to do so because they recognize the legitimacy of the TFG but also see a legitimate role for the ICU.  Even the ICG which had hitherto advocated the dismemberment of our country is now urging us to establish a government of national unity.  We can no longer ignore the advice of those who want to see an end to our long saga of national tragedy.

Ismail Ali Ismail 
E-Mail:geeldoonia@gmail.com

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