We are the expatriate generations, bred in at least modest comfort, living now in western countries with their generosity, looking back to the images of Somalia that we inherit.

Not in a distant past, Somalia was, in a relatively speaking, strong country with an international outlook; the only country in Africa with homogenous society, the least scarred by outside world including Ethiopia. The hope of one day becoming stronger nation was always in the minds of our leaders. We have witnessed Somalia being a good member of the UN, exerting its diplomatic muscle in Middle East politics as well as Pan Africanism. In short, many of us began maturing in apathy, some times being thankful for the free public education that we received from federated republic of a loosely held nation.

As we grew older, however, our comfort was demystified by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the subtle and horrific fact of struggle, without national agenda, is characterized by clan ideology that appeals to our tribal sentiments. The result was a human and ecological degradation symbolized by a clan struggle against State. Group isolation was the answer for social movements that drew its members from kinship recruitment. This type of disposition to clan ideology constrained most of us from being loyal to global state and strayed us to a tribalist disposition, not knowing how to depose an ailing regime. Second, the surrounding fact of this clan activism has been a recipe for disaster and continued to probe more and more clan hegemonies until the Somali State was arrested.

While these and other problems either at once demoralised us or annoyed our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to see a demographic shift, urban violence with clan demarcations. The false assumption "My tribe must rule Somalia." sounds hollow before the fact that nations are made of collective people with single currency. Hence, no wonder that the proclaimed peace conference from international communities contradicted or has been anathema to psychological wounds inflicted by clan sentiments.

Remind you that Yalahow is only a new phenomenon with a new twist of oligarchic hooligans. His trails and tribulations of oligarchy have produced mobility taxation where individuals are denied movements from a distance to distance unless a roadblock fees are paid. Compared to the Kremlin, Russia refused to bow to this kind of Oligarchy, especially from one of its brightest capitalist, Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's architecture for venture capitalism. He is now behind bars serving 9 years imprisonment after years of "Isbaaro" business in Russian oil industry.

Russia may have the state tools needed to persecute such individuals. Yet, the international community, in order to bring back the hope and aspiration of the Somali masses, hastily put the failed state of Somalia together. Their tactics were to put people like Yallahow in the conference and compete for position of power.

Then Sharif Hassan came along with his regular attire of Muslim skullcap. His dress code sent the right message that finally a religious man from the "fifth clan" would make impartial judgment when the floor of the parliament becomes unruly. Somalis hailed him as savior, a man who had no factional interest but a nation building agenda. Apart from his flaws of parliamentary procedures, he is now standing one corner and confined in the capital. He speaks unity but has strong opinion when it comes to militia disarmament. He assembles parliamentarians but instigates deliberate motions of conflicting agenda. He should have consulted neutral experts on the clarity of such motion before rushing to the floor with malicious intention of dividing a nation that was getting closer together, the dichotomies of faction allegiance and a nation building!.

Coming back to Yallahow, when all phases were done after arm-twisting and nose bleeding, he is still out of the loop hoping to collude with his friends in order to bargain his ill-gotten state properties. We are witnessing an era of our time in which societies can regress in the most primitive form of human existence. Even with this hype of "Mogadishu cleaning", there is and always there are, such plundering motives of financial compensation from men who virtually sought money in the most unscrupulous sense.

Executives of this so-called transitional government are not immune with criticism. If Mr. Yusuf and his prime minister, Ali Gedi, think that they have the silver bullet for a fractured Somalia, then they are too naïve, to say the least. A brute force works only in so far as the state apparatus are functioning, the subjugation of fear from the police or the military. The current situation of the country would best be served not with force but by increased negotiating and more reconciliation. However, this is not to say that other friendly countries should not be invited to keep the peace. The problem is, as I see it, the president and his rivals are not doing enough to honor the will of the Somali people. If they were, they would have hammered out the details of peacekeeping force issue, the number of countries that would participate, and the mandate of that force. Instead, this false notion of Ethiopian factor has shifted the momentum of politics into new factional fighting, the alliance and counter alliance of renewed spirit of old politics.

Beneath the consistent bluffs from a president in exile, beneath the spectator's wishes that Somalia will "be fixed", beneath the depression of Mogadishu warlords who have rained every Somali party, is the pervasive feeling that our times have witnessed the enervation of clan hegemony. We define our selves' physical beings that have a body in the west but a mind in Somalia. We, the people in Diaspora, have too much to bear psychologically and we contribute little because we have also appealed to a tribal sentiment. Kipling may have been right when he referred to Africans as half devil and half child, but if truth were told, all Africans are not same because some Africans are pragmatic and willing to adopt a change. Only my Somalia is left out in this wind of change. Tragically, the Abyssinians that we call savages and intruders, they are now pioneering democracy projects, a project that may help other Horn African countries. Can our president and Mogadishu leaders take a note? It remains to be seen how far the silly Ethiopian debate will continue, a debate that kept us in the category of a failed state. Who can deny that our country has became a classical example of that offensive poem of Kipling's White Man's burden?

Bashi Hosh Jibril

E-Mail: bjibril@yahoo.com

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