The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born -- that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born- Warren G. Bennis

The greatest problem bedeviling Somalia thus far is not how to rule the country but how to find a competent visionary leader who excels in the art of governance. Somali leaders lack faith in themselves; they have failed to create articulate visions and they have failed to present themselves as role-models. Lack of moral conviction, deficiency in inspirational communication, and being short of moral-correctness has been the determining factor that disqualified the dysfunctional abilities of many who attempted to govern Somalia erroneously in the past. The absence of situational interaction, charisma, knowledge, and the skills required to effectively drive the nation to its right course have all led to the formation of enormously absurd power vacuums. The notion that leaders are born is no longer accepted in academia; instead, leaders are made. Heaping blame on tribalism and the legacy of imperialism, colonialism, and foreign meddling is not a convincing excuse. Somalia needs to get out of the current quagmire. It is time to hunt for transactional, transformational, laissez-faire, task-oriented and people-oriented leaders who will get the country back on track.

Since the collapse of the military regime in 1991, Somalia has seen several Presidents and an equal number of Prime Ministers come and go. Of the Prime Ministers, two were Professors. Of the Presidents, some were military men while others were civilians. Unfortunately, the Prime Ministers were employed as one-time-use instruments while the interim Presidents left without finishing their official mandates. The last President, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, an uncompromising colonel and ex-guerilla fighter, bowed out a few days ago in a pensive mood without fulfilling his dream of pacifying and uniting the country. In fact, he hurriedly left behind convoluted networks of mysterious splinter groups with varying levels of unrelenting militancy. Pressure from the international community coupled with pounding political entanglement with his Prime Minister Hassan Nur Hussein, forced Yusuf to pave way for a better breed which to me seems hard to create given the tribal, stubborn, spurious, egotistic, and nomadic paths Somali leaders have chosen to pursue.

Ex-President Yusuf failed to broker peace during his tenure of office; he failed to unite his bloated parliament; he failed to facilitate the day to day running of the highest office of the land; above all he has not produced any tangible results nor partaken in serious deliberations aimed at unifying the crippled state. Instead, he has become famous for hiring and firing Prime Ministers at will without parliamentary consultations or without following the formalities established by law. Though Abdullahi Yusuf is not the first President to thrust his nose into the office of the Prime Minister, past interim Presidents also applied similar tactics and other overly draconian modalities.  The acting President, Sheikh Aden Madobe, who has been speaker of Somalia’s bloated parliament before Yusuf’s departure, is a former warlord lacking the administrative skills required of a leader. If there is any truth to it, the claim by unreliable sources that Sheikh Aden Madobe intends to hold on to the Presidency is obviously an outright infringement of the Somali constitutional charter.  

Sadly though, the power sharing agreement recently signed between Somalia’s otiose Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and some resistance groups in Djibouti is, according to some political analysts, an irrelevant enterprise that will never materialize. How a beleaguered, impoverished, and war-ravaged nation of 10 million foots the bill required to maintain a 550-member parliament is a question worth deliberating. The calculated departure of over a dozen parliamentarians allied to the former President from the government seat in Baidoa and the subsequent evacuation of hundreds of military personnel and their families from Mogadishu to the State of Puntland is equally worth debating. Concern for their safety or fear of retaliation from antagonistic forces in the aftermath of the power vacuum, may have been the main reason for their swift flights. Also, the announcement by the Ethiopia that it is withdrawing its forces from Somalia culminated in the creation of an impending threat for anyone associated with the former President regardless of tribal, political, and ideological affiliation. Thus, allies of the former President, Ethiopian forces included, as Franklin Roosevelt echoed in one of his inaugural addresses, had “…nothing to fear but fear itself.”  Consequently, this out of the blue encroachment of revolt resulted in the creation of psychological reactions and distortions, inexistent mental creations and titular hardships that could lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for many warlords and their on the guard followers in the long run.    

The greatest threat after the departure of Ethiopian forces from Somalia will likely come from the armed religious group known as Al-Shabab. This is the militant group that has vested authority over almost the entire south of the country and henceforth there is the fear that if left unrestrained, Baidoa and Mogadishu will fall immediately when Ethiopian forces pack up and leave. The creation of Al-Shabab, a religious faction regarded as a terrorist organization by western governments, evolved not as a result of Somalia’s protracted war but as a deterrent to the TFG and the heavily-armed Ethiopian occupation forces immediately the Islamic Courts Union disbanded in January of 2007. As dark clouds shroud Somalia’s political landscape, out of the ordinary compelling issues in need of immediate interventions continue to erode the nation’s social fabric. There are humanitarian disasters lurking in many internally displaced camps within Somalia and conditions are horrific in a handful of refugee centers in neighboring states; piracy along Somalia’s coastlines has brought together former Cold War enemies and friends alike not the least to safeguard Somalia’s territorial waters but to ensure the free flow of their maritime trade while Somalia’s fisheries remain depleted due to aggressive overfishing caused by fishing trawlers dragging internationally banned fishing nets; the heavily armed Al-Shabaab faction is emerging unrepressed; assassination of the educated and community leaders and employees of donor organizations, abduction of journalists and businessmen, rape of young girls and women is a thorn in the eye and hard to contain without a functioning central government.

Anyway, Somalia is not the only country to have experienced devastation of such magnitude. Furthermore, peace is always preceded by war and destruction.  The world experienced two major world wars; the Vietnam and Korea wars had debilitating effects on life and property; the Cold War took its toll silently for almost fifty years; the fight against colonialism in Africa took the lives of millions; the Balkan wars of the 90s decimated populations that once lived in peace and harmony under strongman Broz Tito; the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has gone down in history books as one of the worst mass slaughter since WWII; Cubans endured fifty years of one-man rule under Fidel Castro in an Island that is only 90 miles off the coast of Florida and millions of poor people are dying daily due to lack of adequate food while affluent nations dump millions of tons of edible foods. Dictatorship is strife in many parts of the world; refugees remain vulnerable in Asia and Africa; human rights violations, rampant corruption, ethnocentrisms, and disparities in education remain commonplace even in the most powerful democratic nations.

Putting an end to Somalia’s protracted civil war lies not only in the hands of the current Transitional Federal Government but is one that calls for the concerted efforts of the United Nations, the incoming President of the United States, the Arab Union, the African Union (IGAD member states excluded) and donor nations. Leaving Somalia’s problems in the hands of the current so-called Somali leaders is like leaving vultures wrestle over the decaying and disgusting flesh of a dead animal. In reality, Somalia is a failed state begging to be salvaged through tough negotiations and concessions. It will require wholehearted judiciousness to avert another decade of killings, maiming, rape, piracy, plunder, and highway robberies.

In conclusion, the world is celebrating the 2009 Gregorian calendar while Muslims, followers of the Islamic faith, are rejoicing at the birth of the year 1430 of the Anno Hegirae. Equally and hopefully, the people of Somalia will be pleased to see the formation of a unity government based on justice, peace, and liberty a short time from now, Insha Allah.

Adan Makina
E-Mail:amakina@kc.rr.com
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