Congratulations to Sheikh Sharif on his recent election as the fourth Somali President after the collapse of the Somali government. The three presidents before him (Mahdi, Qassim and Yusuf) have all failed miserably to bring peace and stability to our troubled country. Let us hope that this time the current President who has the support of a large section of the Somali population will succeed.

Sheikh Sharif is in the same difficult position as President Barak Obama who is saddled with a broken economy, two major wars, a battered world image and a conservative right such as Limbaugh who shamelessly pray for his failure on all fronts. Somalia suffers from fragmentation, anarchy, piracy, poverty, starvation to name just a few.

While President Obama has the means and tools to tackle these problems, the Sheikh will have to rely on the goodwill and support of outsiders and insiders who may not be willing to see him succeed. Many in Somalia who thrive on chaos will do their best to frustrate his efforts to rebuild the Somali Nation. The important thing is the fact that he has the support of the majority of the Somali people just as President Barak Obama has the support of millions of Americans and world citizens alike. This is hopefully enough ammunition to defeat all the spoilers.

According to the Bush doctrine an Islamist Leader is a terrorist in disguise who should be neutralized by all means possible and hauled over to Guantanamo Bay to rot in perpetual captivity.  With the disappearance of Bush, his doctrine and neo-cons, let us hope that Obama and the West will drop this attitude and help this moderate Islamist to stabilize Somalia and bring it back into the fold of the International Community. All he needs is a chance to prove that Islam is not a violent religion that is out to get the West and destroy its cherished way of life.

Islam is a way of life that can potentially tackle a lot of the problems many countries like Somalia face; countries that are fragmented along clan or regional lines. When Malcolm X first went to Mecca, his attitude changed completely when he realized that Islam is for the black and the white, the poor and the rich, all unified by a two piece white cloth and their declaration that God is great. In Somalia Islam has the potential to eliminate the years of hatred and divisions fostered by evil warlords supported by some countries in the neighborhood.

One major difference between Baraak Obama and Sheikh Sharif is the ability of Obama to pick his team directly while Sheikh Sharif will have to select a Prime Minister who will then assemble a cabinet that needs to be approved by more than 500 people with different agendas and affiliations to entrenched interest groups inside and outside the country.

The current system of using a 4.5 formula to allocate seats is a major problem for the current President. Being a member of one of the so-called four major groupings in Somalia, he will have to pick a Prime Minister from the other 3 groups while unfairly excluding the so-called .5 from the process. In the absence of a credible census, the claims of the four major groups as being superior in number to their downtrodden brothers should be looked upon with suspicion.

Since he cannot satisfy the other 3 groups if he picks one of them and ignores the other 2, it may be a safe bet to pick a Prime Minister from the sidelined group, the .5 or others as some may like to call them; a section of the Somali community that lumps together many disparate Somali groups; a section that has been discriminated against consistently and marginalized mercilessly over the years. Justice would dictate that they be given a chance this time since the others have failed all the time. May be it is time to test a member of this group as Obama will be tested as a member of a disadvantaged minority class that suffered from ages of discrimination.

Another option is to select a woman for the post although this will infuriate the hardliners and alienate them completely. The hardliners should take solace from the fact that Prophet Solomon did not object to the fact that the queen of Sheba was a woman as mentioned in the Qoran. A woman Prime Minister may finally give some justice to the millions of Somali women who struggle to support broken families under very difficult circumstances while most men chew Kat or devote their energies and wealth to accumulating more wives and concubines. The Somali male has proved time and again that he lacks what it takes to extricate the country from the quagmire that he helped sink it into. May be it is time for a Madam Somali PM like Benazir  of Pakistan, Khalida of Bangladesh, Thatcher of the UK or Indira of India; all of them women who managed to successfully rule populations far superior in number to Somalia.

Another option would be to pick a Prime Minister from the North West, an area that desires to break away from the rest of Somalia due to grievances that started with the old regime and continued over the years. As of 1990, the focus of the International community has always been to support the South and regard it as the legitimate representative of Somalia thus ignoring half of the country as if did not exist at all. All reconciliation conferences that took place focused on establishing a Somali government in the complete absence of legitimate representatives from the North. This attitude has only served to empower the hardliners in the North and gave them more ammunition in their efforts to break away from the rest of the country. No serious effort has been undertaken by any country in the region to invite and influence the leaders of Somalialnd to participate in these conferences. Some regional and Western countries may have engineered this situation in order to break Somalia into tiny enclaves that do not pose any threat to neighboring countries. As we all know some of our neighbors accept the Somaliland Passport for travel to their countries indirectly signaling their de-facto recognition..

A visit by the President to the North West and North East would help bring Somalis closer and help heal the rift that has been exacerbated by divisive leaders and reconciliation conferences held in countries that never desired the rebirth of Somalia as a strong nation. The President has a lot of goodwill in many parts of Somalia and he can use this goodwill to unite us again.

President Sharif also needs to extend an olive branch to his former brothers in arms, the Asmara group, and open negotiation channels with its leader, the war-hero Sheikh Xasan Daahir Aweys as soon as possible. Enough Somali blood has been spilled and it is about time that the flow of young Somali blood has been finally stemmed once and for all.

Let us all hope that this humble former teacher will succeed in the difficult task of brining Somalis together again under one roof. Let us all forget clan and regional differences and rally around this one man who has the potential to bring us back from the abyss.

Ali H Abdulla
It Consultant
Email: aliegeh@gmail.com_______________________________________________________________________________

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