The Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper recently reported:

"The Somali government is to move to Mogadishu in May, Cabinet minister
John Koech said yesterday. The Inter-Governmental Authority on
Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU), in charge of the
relocation, will have completed preparatory work for the government to
go to Somalia. Next month, said Mr Koech, the IGAD council of ministers
will meet to "operationalise" the relocation. On its part, the
transitional government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf, would have completed its duty of "mechanisms of the physical" movement"

President A. Y. Ahmed & Prime Minister A. M. Ghedi

Well, we have been here before, haven't we? And I must say that this is
really getting very confusing for everyone. Why is everyone else talking
about the Somali government's relocation plans while the government
itself is so silent about this issue? Who is in control here and who is
setting the agenda of the Somali interim federal government? The Somali
interim government seems, at least at the outset, that it is loosing the
battle for the hearts and minds of the Somali people. Certainly, it is
loosing the propaganda war at an alarming rate. The destructive tribal
warlords are getting bolder by the day with demands and political
ultimatums. Indeed, they are now saying that their primary objective is
to impeach Ali Gedi's government and the president himself in an attempt
to complete their illegal quest for total control of the interim Somali
federal government.

Pres. Museveni of Uganda

It important to remember, that only few days ago, President Museveni told us when the first batch of the African Union troops, primarily from Sudan and Uganda will be airlifted to Somalia. Soon after that IGAD Defense Ministers issued a statement saying that no troops from the frontlines states will be dispatched to Somalia as peacekeepers, thus securing a short lived propaganda "victory" for the destructive
Mogadishu warlords and their accomplice, Matt Bryden who made a life
long career on his pursuit of destroying the Somali Nation! Shortly,
after that, and before that week even ended, we were told that Nigeria
would be sending additional troops. It is worth noting that none of
those fragmented critical pieces of information came from the Somali
interim federal government directly. The question is then, why did the
government go missing?

I believe the reason for this confusion stems from the fact that the
communication staff working both for the Prime Minister and President
Abdullahi Yusuf have failed and failed miserably in the eyes of the
Somali people and the world at large. Indeed, I was very relieved when
Sifir; the communications director and presidential spokesman was fired
few weeks ago. The Information Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Mohamoud Abdullahi Sifir have never been loyal to President Abdullahi
Yusuf and his government. He had his own political agenda and the
President knew that he was not the best man for the job. However, I
believe President Abdullahi Yusuf thought the perceived positive
political impact of bringing someone from northern Somalia outweighed
the potential damage Sifir could inflict upon the government.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the President was deceived by his
political advisors. They ignorantly overlooked Sifir's long record of
disloyalty and political opportunism. It was not long time ago when
Sifir was singing with the secessionist chorus in Hargeysa!

Fortunately, in the end, the president realized that Sifir was not only
unfit to be the presidential spokesman, but he was indeed undermining
the president's policy directives by colluding with the destructive
Mogadishu warlords. Needless to say, everyone knows now exactly where
Sifir's political loyalty lies. Indeed, he is now one of the leading
conspirators trying to destroy the Somali peace accord and thus plunge the
country into further political instability and potentially a new bloody
civil war. Obviously, Sifir and other warmongers have slim chance of
succeeding with their misguided political objective, which is, to
highjack the collective political will of the Somali people. However, he
has undoubtedly inflicted serious damage upon the government's image in
recent months.

The communications staff of the Prime Minister's office is not doing any
better either. Indeed, the people the Prime Minister surrounded himself
as his communications staff are inexperienced political neophytes who
know practically nothing about the intricacy of modern media spin.
Instead of using the media as a tool to disseminate the government's
policies, and as a means to reach out to the Somali people. They seem to
be busy with damage control, which could have been avoided if they were
smart enough in the first place. Unfortunately, these people seem to be
in a goose-chase running after the media rather than leading the media
and set the political agenda so that the collective interest of the
Somali people takes precedence over Matt Bryden's Bank accounts.

It goes without saying that Matt Bryden achieved what he wanted; free
publicity! Aden Nuux Dhuule of the BBC Somali service gave him the other
day eight minutes of free air time out of their usual thirty minute daily
program! Indeed, Aden Nuux Dhuule read direct translation over the
airwaves of what Mat Bryden's International Crisis Manufacturing Group
put out on their website without critically and objectively examining
the arguments made! I could not help but kept asking "Ma'anaa waalan
mise Cadan baa laga heesayaa?" How could this little and unelected man,
accountable to nobody in Somalia exercise such enormous political power
and incapacitate the entire Somali political establishment with his
poisonous propaganda?

One of the shameful examples of this communications failure is the
disastrous media strategy adapted by the Prime Minister's spokesman which
was designed to bar the embryonic Somali media from the press releases
he issued in the past. He foolishly thought that by punishing the Somali
journalists collectively and rewarding foreign media handsomely he could
silence the government's critics. That strategy proved disastrous for
the interim Somali government as Matt Bryden and his anti-Somali
colleagues filled the role they vacated by feeding both the Somali and
foreign media outlets with information hostile to the governments
political and security agendas. Consequently, the "genie got out of the
box" and the communications staff at the Prime Ministers office was
incapacitated by their own mistakes and thus lost the control of the
situation for weeks. This is one of the reasons why the destructive
Mogadishu warlords dominated the media in recent weeks.

Matt Bryden, the Trojan horse of the International Crisis Manufacturing
Group and Somalia's self-appointed public enemy number one has succeeded
single-handedly to turn the Somali interim government into political
disarray thus creating serious security problems for the Somali people
and as a result political chaos that will take years to repair. Indeed,
as the IGAD foreign ministers noted, the serious political damages
caused by Matt Bryden and his organization is the biggest serious
political and security issue that will continue to destabilize the
entire Horn of Africa region for many more years to come. Needless to
say, Matt Bryden kept acting as Somalia's "official" spokesman by
feeding the western media with loads of factually erroneous reports and
press releases intended solely to destabilize the political cohesiveness
of our people and thus endanger the security of our country and our people.

I must say that, I believe President Abdullahi Yusuf is doing the right
thing by staying above the current tribalist political quagmire. He is also
right to maintain his serious statesman's image and work diligently for
the collective interest of the Somali people without getting to the
nitty-gritty daily squabbles with the warlords. Having said that, I
believe both the President and the Prime Minister must reshuffle their
communications staff by bringing media savvy professionals forward.

More importantly, the government must adapt a new overall media strategy
that will help the government to reach out to the Somali people with its
message of hope and national reconciliation. That strategy must also
facilitate the government's continuos attempts to have fruitful dialogue
with its critics; after all, the mission is to save Somalia and its
people and restore the collapsed Somali state by any means necessary.
Even, if those means include appeasing the destructive Mogadishu
warlords by giving them disproportionate political powers over national
matters.

In short, the interim Somali federal government must be the one that
sets the political agenda rather than a band-wagon with a hostile media
driven by Somalia's enemies and the destructive warlords with the help of
Matt Bryden and other enemies of the Somali Nation.

I believe President Abdullahi Yusuf's successful mission to the Arab
Summit in Algiers, in which, the President managed to secure almost
thirty million dollars of cash from the Arab countries as an aid to the
Somali people must be highlighted and conveyed to our people.
Unfortunately, the current communications staff said nothing about this
thus far!

I think it is just about time that the success of the interim government
is conveyed in an honest manner rather than being too obsessive with the
destructive warlords.

Bill Ainashe
Editor,
www.ainashe.org

E-mail: wainashe@hotmail.com

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