By Faisal Roble
A recent editorial, nominated Fahad Yasin, Chief of Staff for the administration of Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo ” Person of the year 2017.” By and large, the nomination was unorthodox and dwelled more on what some may view as a negative portrayal of Fahad Yasin. It also made him as the single most powerful individual in the entire administration. I would only guess Wardheernews attestation was meant to provoke the administration with a hard hitting editorial that zoomed into the Chief of Staff.
On January 16, a rebuttal, “Wardheernews Defamation Case against Fahad Yasin, appeared on Hiiraanonline. The author of the rebuttal, Abdinur Mohamed, is possibly the Director of Media in the office of the Chief of Staff. Whether intended or not, and whether or not Mr. Abdinur is the Director of Media in Fahad Yasin’s office, the content of the defense marshaled in this article does unfortunately a disservice to the very person intended to be defend.
Abdinur grabbed the bait of Wardheernews editorial board. By concocting his own defamation about one of the editors of Wardheernews isn’t a credible way to defend Fahad Yasin.
Fahad Yasin is a high ranking political official with one of the heaviest responsibilities in the country. As the kitchen cabinet, there is too much attention, mostly unwarranted, focused on him for the simple reason that the Chief of Staff wields tremendous influence on the President; and rightly so. As such, he will be criticized rightly or wrongly. He is on a more noticeable political pedestal that which is a magnet for criticism.
It is arguably impossible to shield him off from attacks. Therefore, those who work for him, or his supporters needn’t pick their smartphone every time he is criticized. Doing so would put them in an exhausting bondage that would condition them to tweet every time someone says anything about their benefactor.
I understand the pain it causes when a loved is attacked, especially when the attacked person feels wrongly victimized. We all regularly experience that and blame it on the democratization of the media.
But again, it is not Fahad per se, but the position he holds that attracts due or undue criticisms. Some may criticize him appropriately. Others will do so harshly and even defame him. It would be up to the reader to sort matters out in their own design and be able to separate the chaff from the wheat.
Those who love to defend Fahad Yasin needn’t become Trump type tweeters and try to answer everything against him, or even when protecting other officials. It is better to let things take their natural course, or sometimes attempt to resolve conflicts privately.
One is in politics to win more friends and minimize his/her enemies. As a junior High School kid, I used to read the works of Daniel Carnegie books on self-improvement. A handy book that comes to mind that could benefited those trying to help Fahad Yasin or other politicians is Daniel Carnegie’s 1936 book: “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Reading such a material or similar ones would have prevented the author from quickly jumping on his own defaming course towards one of the editors of Wardheernews in order to defend Fahad Yasin against alleged “defamation.” In politics, a Zero-sum game, which Abdinur seems to have fallen into, produces the least desirable results for all parties concerned, and in the end wins more enemies and less friends.
I don’t believe Wardheernews team did their editorial because of a personal vendetta against Fahad Yasin, as Abdinur prematurely argued. On the contrary, Wardheernews has a long history of taking powerful people, especially Somali politicians, into task. This case may not be different.
For about four years, I served as its Chief Editor. Although I no longer hold any official position in Wardheernews, I intimately know one or two things that most people who read the pages of this successful website do not.
Throughout its existence, it has employed a two-track policy, and I know no change to such a policy. First, No article with decent content and style should be rejected. Although at times some articles may make into publication without careful fact check, the editorial board takes extra caution to authenticate about the author’s identity, and vet to the extent possible the facts in articles.
The second tract concerns the editorial board. To my knowledge, there are about five members in the editorial board. Three of the members have or are Ph.D. candidates. The other two have MAs and professional degrees. They all work voluntarily and limit undue outside influence. The website is sustained on a voluntary basis – they do it for the “love of labor,” as the late Said Samatar used to often quote this Calvinist ethic. All this is for the simple reason to weed out undue outside influence. Member of the board have equal share of responsibilities of any editorial piece posted.
Owing to a division of labor, usually one or two members suggest a topic; after a cursory discussion, one or two members take the first crack to draft it. The final posting does not take place without the endorsement of all the members of the board.
After I read Abdinur’s piece, I was forced to contact three of the editorial board members, and they all confirmed to me that they have endorsed the posting of the issue on Fahad Yasin. I believe all the members have endorsed the posting. The piece was perhaps harsh; many people may disagree with the position Wardheernews took. Nonetheless, the editorial piece was a hard-hitting piece.
Even so, what Abdinur did is rather worse than what he has accused Wardheernews of doing. He tried to right what he had perceive wrong by committing a serious mistake. He defamed others in order to defend Fahad Yasin from what he had perceived to be a “defamation.” I think Fahad Yasin deserves to be defended but in the right way. Abdinur’s piece didn’t serve Fahad Yasin well.
I met Fahad Yasin on October 10, 2017 when I visited Mogadishu. Upon hearing my presence, he invited me to meet with him for exchange of ideas. He came across as a friendly, welcoming and humble person. He did strike cord with me in that he seems to be fond of ideas and discourse. Both of us were comfortable, and I attribute this to the fact that I was there with no task on my part.
I personally liked him for the following reasons: One, he is a self-made person who comes from a humble background (I sure can relate to that). Second, he does not boast the privilege of those claiming to be from large furtive clans (qabiilada isla weyn). Third, given my short experience, he is a strategic thinker and knows minute by minute exactly what he is doing. Fourth, he is loyal to his boss, an attribute in deficit in the Somali community, but big in other societies. Fifth, he is apt and uniquely able to identify talent and those who can help him to get to his objectives. Whether these attributes are the result of a natural gift, or one born out of experience is beside the point. The man is a very capable and smart strategist.
One last credit I would give to him comes from some of the answers he gave to me to a question I put to him. I asked him how he handles all the attention focused on him. He told me this without any concern to the pressure placed on him: “if you look at the history of Somalia, we often focus on individuals – bad and good from Said Barre to present difficult times,” he said. Why, I asked.
His answer was on the money: “because, we don’t have institutions and parties but individuals perceived be either strong or not strong. The focus is on X today; tomorrow it is Y,” he told me. He concluded by saying that this trend of overemphasizing individuals will continue as long as we don’t have institutions.
In the final analysis, all these are good attributes that can carry Fahad Yasin far as a Chief of Staff, and better serve his president who claims to let each office in his administration exercise its mandate. Fahad’s friends must focus on wining more friends and less enemies.
Defaming one of the editorial board members of Wardheernews is akin to Trump’s and Asad’s methods of attacking independent thinkers and the press. I hope Abdinur gets the drift of my rejoinder and join me to defend Fahad Yasin or any other person wrongly attacked in the right way.
Faisal Roble
Email:[email protected]
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Faisal Roble, a writer, political analyst and a former Editor-in-Chief of WardheerNews, is mainly interested in the Horn of Africa region. He is currently the Principal Planner for the City of Los Angeles in charge of Master Planning, Economic Development and Project Implementation.
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