My dear colleagues,

I am taking time off from my busy schedule to discharge my national duty by writing this open letter to you, as the country is at precarious position at this juncture which calls for the pooling of our thoughts and muscles in mitigating the human and material cost which is looming right under our noses. I am sure the Transitional Federal Government tried its best for the last four years but was let down mainly by the international community which hatched and constructed it in the first place. It is an open secret that the only funds released to you was payroll costs of the Mps, occasional lodging costs in Nairobi, and sundry funds for your body guards not the army and the Police.

It is no offense to cite that a minority of your members had enough Governmental experience and or knowledge to enable you to gauge the resources an infantile imported government needs to operate.

The Iraqi and the Afghanistan regimes are akin to your spirit and soul but instead of the massive funds the International community spends on them, yours is case of humiliation and marginalisation. You were treated as a small scale project  run by the UNDP civil servants and you stooped down to collect even your salaries and for that matter every little thing from the UNDP office in Nairobi which is known for its corruption and lack of political maturity and understanding of the Somali question.

It is particularly worthy to mention that the Somali people reluctantly accepted, for the benefit of doubt, a rag tag of warlords wrapped in a new package by the traditional enemies of Somalia (Ethiopia and Kenya) as the transitional Federal Government. To add an insult to injury, you crowned with glee Ethiopia, who is bent in keeping Somalia into Bantustan style states, as your political commissars.

It is crystal clear to the average Somali that you reached the end of your shelf life, and that is punctuated by the honorable departure of your president, who is known for his pride, independence and to some extent obstinacy. I wish you realize that you have nothing to show off for the good four years you were in office other than infighting among yourselves and untold human and material loses inflicted on the masses. You created the largest concentration of internally displaced people, which is almost a million and half at the time of this writing.

The new marriage of convenience between the TFG and the Sheik Sherif Ahmed ’s party, which propagated the unruly MPs to an unprecedented level (500, dwarfing most of the populace democratic nations is nothing other than the rise of the second Manifesto Group.

The TFG is by any measure dead beyond hope and Sheik Sherif Ahmed’s party is using an old map of Mogadishu based on when the uprising of the masses embraced the Islamic courts in an hour of desperation. The Islamic Courts by then were a collusion of diverse groups with different agendas and creeds who sprung up from now where to take advantage of the day’s umbrella and precisely the lack of common political thought or ideology brought its down fall quickly. The Ethiopian invasion itself could have been avoided or delayed if the courts played their political cards in Unisom rather than the mad randomness.

Now - Enter Al–Shabab

Unlike the TFG and its multitude of predecessors, which were parachuted into the political arena of the Somalis, Al-Shabab party is the first home grown political entity. They are diehards and real ideologues which kept the spirit of Somali aspirations alive when the enemies of this nation least expected. They withstood the bombardment of the Americans and the massive military machine of Ethiopia which has only one goal – to beat the Somalis in to total submission.

The Al–Shabab party now rules almost all of southern Somalia and they proved beyond any doubt that they can deliver security and governance efficiently at an affordable and sustainable price which is the only commodity Somalia needs at this time. They earned the trust of the masses and defeated the invading Ethiopian army who will never ever think of taking this adventure ever again as their sleepless nights and days in Somalia rendered the withdrawing men as insane. They really tamed the lion and put it in a steel cage for good. The Al – Shabab fighters defeated the Ethiopian army single headedly and now are marching to take over the reins of the nation which they rightly earned irrespective of the wishes of your paymasters.

In contrast your assemblage, which I rightly named as the second manifesto group, is loosely affiliated interest groups which are really bankrupt of any new ideas other than to work as stooges for Ethiopia this time not under the old name of warlord but a new name called Ahlu–Sunna Wal Jama that started its first operations in and around Dhusamareb, already causing numerous deaths and further displacement of the local people. Whatever disguise you wear, the unblinking eyes of Al-Shabab are watching you all day and night and will surely and without fail drag you in front of the courts in the very near future. Somali blood can’t be bought and sold in foreign markets anymore, and must be underscored that every warlord should be spared from appearing before people’s court for their part of the killing spree of the innocent people for the past two decades. 

Conclusions and recommendations

I am asking you, the rag tag group (TFG and its new allies), to wake up from your deep coma and open your eyes to the new reality on the ground (Al-Shabab). Al-Shabab is much stronger, robust, independent and coherent than the failed Mangistu-sponsored clan-based USC,SSDF and SNM. It is the first political organization which succeeded on standing on a national platform that transcends the ugly tribalism which kept the chaos going for the best part of the last two decades.

Your dreams of re-enacting the Manifesto - and these tactics are bound to fail because there are no gaps in the rank and file of AL-Shabab; they are comrades-in-arms who run a native party with no room for foreign masters.

My recommendations are that you:-

1. Quickly and peacefully dissolve yourselves and step aside for Al-Shabab to run the country as you are in no position to even bargain.
2. To order the army and the police to come under the control of Al- Shabab before their arms and ammunitions are forcibly confiscated to avoid the likely chance they fell into the wrong hands. Under Al-Shabab nobody can bear arms other then the highly disciplined cadres of the people’s army because there will be no need for guns as security is guaranteed under them as they proved time and again.
3. To stop the baseless negative propaganda against the vanguards of the Somali nation. The word terrorism which you often repeat like a parrot is an overused and misused word which lost both meaning and taste and that is why I avoided to talk about because it is not worth mentioning.
4. If you are dreaming that AL-Shabab will hand the power it earned on behalf of the Somali People in a testing and difficult time on a silver platter to stooges and puppets, that will not happen.
5. You already have collectively enough blood on your hands and that should suffice you for the time being.

Please leave the political scene and give ordinary Somalis a chance to sort their affairs from bottom-up reconciliation process.

Abdikarim Haji Abdi Buh
Email: Abdikarimbuh@yahoo.com _______________________________________________________________________________

We welcome the submission of all articles for possible publication on WardheerNews.com So please email your article today Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of WardheerNews
Maqaalkani wuxuu ka turjumayaa aragtida Qoraaga loomana fasiran karo tan WardheerNews 

Copyright © 2008 Wardheernews.com