Though yet bereft of nation-wide legitimacy and is incredulously cumbersome in its composition, the selection, since last October, of a Transitional Federal Government opened a narrow window of opportunity for both the leadership of the TFG and the Somali people to step into a more constructive national future. That possibility is now in immediate danger of vaporizing, and its place taken by a new and even a grimmer chapter of the civil war. In what follows, then, we briefly touch upon the latest developments, pose a central question, discern three scenarios, and recommend one of them we deem to be the wisest to adopt.  

The National Civic Forum (NCF), established last September, has been closely monitoring the current political crisis surrounding the proposed deployment of foreign peacekeeping troops in Somalia . It's to be remembered that soon after his selection by the newly formed Transitional Federal Parliament in October, 2004, President Abdillahi Yusuf paid a quick visit to the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa . There, he launched an appeal to be provided with a 20,000- strong foreign troops to assist the FTG to relocate inside the country and establish the necessary security measures. While there is a general consensus for the utility of deploying foreign troops, there is, however, wide and deep disagreement over which countries these forces may come from.

It is public knowledge that President Yusuf's first and insistent choice is that the troops should be sent by member countries of the Intergovernmental Authority and Development (IGAD), with the bulk coming from Ethiopia . This proposition has caused a storm of protest from many quarters that include a significant majority of parliamentarians and the Somali public. So acute is the resistance to the possible presence of Ethiopian troops inside the Somali Republic that Parliament took up the issue in a very recent debate. After a heated discussion, the overwhelming majority rejected the motion of the deployment of troops from the frontline states ( Djibouti , Ethiopia , and Kenya ). This resulted in an uproar in the Parliament which degenerated into a bloody fistfight, with many injured. The National Civic Forum deplores such feral acts and condemns those who use violence to solve problems. In addition, we are of the opinion that the vast majority of the Somali people share our judgment.    

    CENTRAL QUESTION

If the fleeting promise of the Nairobi dispensation is to be salvaged, an orderly return of the TFG to Moqdishu is indispensable. Wisely planned and intelligently executed, such an accomplishment will be the first and eminent cut in the formidable challenge of at once garnering legitimacy for the TFG and creating a conducive milieu for communal reconciliation across the country. Consequently, the glaring question is this: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

    SCENARIOS  

    A. Ride with Ethiopian Military

This option portends two immediate consequences. First, Ethiopia , through the application of force, assumes dominance over Somali affairs and, in the process, turns the country into a sphere of direct influence. Subsequently, and second, the leadership of the TFG becomes, in all likelihood, an armed satrap beholden to its imperial overlord. In the past, various Ethiopian regimes have wished for such an arrangement. However, even in their most disabling moments of internal factionalism, the Somali people and their leaders have, until the current state of apostasy, always stood together when it came to the protection of national integrity. Bluntly, this option is a non-starter. All it will accomplish will be to trigger a new and perhaps more vicious version of the civil strife, as well as seal the fate of the TFG as a neocolonial and illegitimate phenomenon. In the end, both the Somali and Ethiopian peoples who ought to, ordinarily, build a rich and mutually respectful neighborly collaboration will pay the greatest cost. That is, they will, for a long time, eye each other through new hatred.  

   B. Warlord Supremacy

To leave the capital city, its decade and half of ruinous defilement notwithstanding, to the whims of the mean egos of various zonal warlords will continue the agony and shame of the past fifteen years. Both the millions of decent Somalis who still live there and the country at large cannot afford to surrender the city to personalized and sectarian violence. To do so is to abort whatever little promise the Nairobi agreement may bring forth, worsen the alienation of both individuals and the rest of the regions, and, in the end, naturalize a growing global stereotype that Somalis are the world's ultimate losers who deserve to be left on the extreme margins of contemporary human civilization. This scenario, too, seems at once more of the same and, therefore, unacceptable.

     C.   A Grand Compromise

This option, the one we deem most worthy of pursuit, proffers a major intelligent compromise on the part of the TFG, the Moqdishu warlords, the denizens of the city, and the international community. We suggest six parts to the compromise:

To be sure, this compromise and its attached particulars are not easy to undertake. Nonetheless, by its nature, a compromise requires a genuine degree of give and take that offers a reasonable probability that, despite mutual concessions in the immediate, the long term will bring gains for all. The National Civic Forum thinks that the grand compromise is the most feasible way to turn all of us into winners and snatch victory from an otherwise calamitous prospect.  

The National Civic Forum (NCF) is an independent, non-partisan organization founded by a cohort of Somali professionals and scholars that met on September 20 th – 24 th , 2004 in Nairobi , Kenya . NCF's mission is to generate and disseminate creative ideas that will assist in the establishment of a democratic political order, durable peace, justice, rule of law, and sustainable development.

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