The plot was simple. Although Sherif Ahmed mysteriously turned out to be the successful character in the saga, he had many other accomplices in the execution of the plot. These included the former TFG Prime Minister and others in his government, the Speaker to the House, who remains in the same post because of his underhandedly victorious role in the game that removed the former President. In addition, the President of the tiny, winy, neighboring Djibouti, who is a political enemy of the former President, and Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, the Representative of the Secretary General to the United Nations, who had to do anything to earn the commendation of his Boss, with the prospect of landing on a more prestigious job in the UN System. The former PM, Nur Hassan Hussein, infamously lost the election for President, the attainment of which was, sadly for him, his main motivation for participation in the plot against his President—Abdullahi Yusuf Other Ministers in his government including the Foreign Minister and the Minister of Information also seem to have missed the feats they were tempted to achieve if they played their part in the coup.

Sherif Ahmed seems to have outsmarted them all. Mr. Nur Hassan Hussein, the former PM, lost the election, mainly, because he earlier agreed to the addition of 275 members to the 275—member Parliament, on the grounds that this would bring about reconciliation by uniting the ARS rebels with the TFG Parliament on an equal footing. It was the agreement which President Yusuf refused to accept and for which he was supposedly ousted, on the grounds that he was divisive and against unity and reconciliation. But, it was only natural that all the additional, new members—or, at least, the majority of them—were members of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS)  and were, therefore, allied  to Mr. Sherif Ahmed who led the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia from which all were picked. Like the Prime Minister, the other Ministers who expected a leap forward in their  carrier, as a result of the success of the plot, all lost their positions, because they apparently had made a leap in the dark. Thus, Sherif Ahmed came back to Mogadishu, as the new President of Somalia, feeling triumphant and , in his thinking, with a lot of political capital—to borrow the American expression—in his possession. However, Mr. Sheriff Ahmed and company were wrong, because the agreement included only one wing of the ARS. The Asmara wing still remains at large and that is why President Sheriff Ahmed’s political capital has not been as sufficient as the Sheikh and his co-conspirators had anticipated. In fact efforts are now way by some countries to mend the relation between Aweys and Mr. Sherif Ahmed, as a last ditch effort to boost political support for the spurious government of Mogadishu.

The notion of unity was supposedly derived from the amalgamation of the TFG Parliament with the so-called Free Parliament who left for Asmara with the UIC leadership and established camp there. The rest of them were from the UIC. However, Mr. Sherif Ahmed, in achieving his political goal—becoming President—he seems to have splintered the ARS instead of uniting the nation. Therefore, he was welcome with fire by the radical Islamists on his arrival in Mogadishu. Since then, he has been trying to trade his horses for mules—painstakingly trying to obtain the loyalty of his old radical, Islamist compatriots, including Aweys, by offering to give away his claimed reputation as a moderate for loyalty from the hardliners. He has been trying to draw in the hard line Islamists by promising that he will apply the Islamic Shari’ah. But applying the Shari’ah is not the only issue. The other question which the hardliner Islamists are steadfastly advocating is to remove the AMISOM forces from the country, which he may have earlier agreed to in response to a ceasefire settlement introduced by the Mogadishu Council of Religious Clerics.

However, the Foreign Minister of the Unity Government, Mr. Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar, requested the Security Council of the United Nations for more AISOM Forces. The uproar against the request was very loud in Mogadishu. The Islamists opposition groups were up in arms against the idea, arguing that it was contradictory to the agreement with the government on the basis of the truce negotiated by the Council of Religious Clerics. But the strange thing was that the Chairman of the elders of the Hawiye Clan, who was in Nairobi, was furiously against the plan and in support of the opposition. It was even stranger that the Minister of the Information 1 of the same government did bring into disrepute the position taken by the Foreign Minister at the Security Council, in New York. He denied that it was his government’s policy to bring in foreign troops at this stage. The APA 2 , also, reported on 23 March, that the Deputy Minister of Information, AbduShakur Mire Adan, for reasons unexplained, criticized the statement by the Foreign Minister in New York. “Somalis are tired of the deployment of foreign troops. This is the time for reconciliation not creating violence,” AbduShakur Mire Aden said. “The unity government is needed to unite the warring factions rather than bring in more foreign troops,” he added.

Mr. Sharmarke, the PM, according to HOL, simply said:” The Somali Government will not do anything that will drastically affect the Somali people, and declared that the Foreign Minister will hold a Press Conference to explain what he meant by the controversial statement which he made at the Security Council.” [Translation of the PM’s statement is mine].It is also a bit of a surprise that the Foreign Minister was on a tour with the President in the troop donating African Countries just before he made his request to the Security Council. It is, therefore, safe to assume that Mr. Omaar was on instruction from the President to make the statement he made to the Security Council. Furthermore, it has been reported by some sources that the President himself did support the deployment of more troops. Indeed, on Sunday 29th March 2009, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of The African Union Commission for Somalia, Nicolas Bwakira 3 , welcomed “the firm declaration by President Sheikh Sheriff Sheikh Ahmed that AMISOM should remain in the country to continue the important role it is undertaking.”

An article in Markacadey.net, in the Somali language, dated March 31, 2009, reported 4 that the supporters of the Unity Government have clannishly accused the Foreign Minister for making the statement about the requirement for more foreign troops, while the same did not criticize the President for a similar proposal. The article says that those include the Hawiye traditional elders, the Hawiye Religious institutions and the supporters of the National Unity Government who were all critical of the statement of the foreign Minister, fell short of criticizing the President for the same .statement. It is to be noted that Mogadishu is a city largely populated by the Hawiye clan; and the so-called Unity Government, given these events, has now turned into a single Clan Government—just like Puntland and “Somaliland”. That is, in case, the ENOUGH Project staff (i.e. Menkhaus and Pendergrass) is not aware of the facts. It is not therefore strange that the Unity Gov should therefore, be considered a Hawiye government, given the aforementioned developments.

Indeed, it has been surprising that one of the Hawiye Traditional Elders, who just returned to Mogadishu last week, told the media, in a Press Conference, that, while in Nairobi, he met many diplomats who assured him that they would not welcome the deployment of additional AMISOM troops in Mogadishu. As if all those events, that we just read about are not enough to highlight Somalia’s sectarian tendencies, some of the Muddulood 5 lineage, from which President Sherif Ahmed hails, have yet again organized a demonstration accusing the members of the so-called Hawiye Traditional Elders of interfering in the official business of the government, It, Hence, the Muddulood are defending the government of their son Sherif Sheikh Ahmed. This bespeaks to the alternative reality in Mogadishu that the so-called National Unity Government is no longer a national government of Somalia. Indeed, it is only the government of a City State; if not a single Clan State. Yet, in another front, it was reported that the President of Puntland, Mr. Abdurrahman Mohamed Faroole, while visiting Addis Ababa, observed that Sherif Ahmed’s government no longer reflects the feature of federalism upon which it was built upon constitution in Kenya in 2004. Mr. Faroole may have been referring to the fact that Puntland is—an autonomous entity of the federal system— may have lost its membership in the federal system, If the Central Government acquires the new name: “National Unity Government”,

 In any case, Sherif Ahmed's Government is hardly in control in Mogadishu, let alone any of the other regions of the south which is generally controlled by radical Islamists. Only some three hundred Parliament members of the 550 members were present in Mogadishu, by the latest estimate. This is despite the assertion of Ould Abdallah and the Unity Government officials that among the successes of the government were that the Cabinet and the Parliament have returned to the Capital. It seems that His Excellency, Ould Abdallah, is blowing his own horn, by making a claim like this. Already, the Minister of Interior and a Member of Parliament have been injured, assassination style.  It is just a matter of poetic justice for Somalia that, 20 years after the collapse of the last representative government, the one clan—Sherif Ahmed’s—is hardly in control of the Capital, despite claims that falls within their territory, let alone any other part of the country, for that matter. But it seems that the era of the Sheikhs in Somalia started, as an offshoot of the era of warlords in June 2006, when the Union of Islamic Courts in alliance with other radical Islamists took control of Mogadishu from the warlords.  

At the time, I wrote an article 6 on the situation, entitled “Somalia is gone for good, unless …” Another article 7 , written about the same time about the same subject is entitled “Islamism as a Political Tool”. But Dr. Ali Ibrahim Bahar sums up the story by brilliantly depicting how these Sheikhs are proliferating in an interdependent fashion and are interconnected even when they are mutually opposed. Ali’s latest article 8 is entitled:”In A Bewitched State: Islamists Are Operating under Bin Laden’s Spell”. Nevertheless, for those interested in understanding the mixed signal being given by Sheriff’s government about many of the issues that that matter most in Somalia, one can read our article 9 (Dr. Bahar and I), entitled:” President Sherif Ahmed’s Sycophancy in Somalia”. If, however, the behavior of the Sheikh (sycophancy) does not warrant explaining the Sheikhs tendencies as such, then we are all fooled, as others have been before.  With the news that mediation is going on between the two wings of the ARS, it may not be surprising to see, one of these days, the Unity Government suddenly transpiring into a coalition Government of the UIC and radical Islamists, controlling, at least, the southern regions of the country. The attempts to introduce the Shari’ah law and the effort for early removal of the AMISOM Forces may be an indication. And, why not? We have already witnessed the first step—constitutionally, institutionally and statutorily distorting the TFG.

Abdalla A. Hirad
Email: MHirad@aol.com

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References

1 http://www.wardheernews.com/News_09/March/22_war.html

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