Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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Reading the Résumés of Cadaado’s Four Frontrunners

By Faisal A. Roble

The ongoing Cadaado conference, a herculean effort to establish an administration for Somalia’s central regions, has many ills and challenges. One challenge is whether Cadaado, with its 1.5 regions, fulfills constitutional requirements to become a state, or it is only an Interim Administration. Another challenge is Cadaado’s entanglement with Puntland state on matters regarding boundary issues.

In a recent radio interview, the country’s Prime Minister, Sharmarke II, said Cadaado conference does not concern Puntland’s regions including the city of Galkayo. Some view this position as a noncommittal and vaguely as maverick as the PM himself. Nonetheless, it completely contradicts or eclipses previous remarks made by his boss, President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, that Cadaado concerns both Galgaduud and Mudug. Whether the PM and his boss are intentionally misleading us or have different positions on this volatile issue remains to be seen.

qaybdiid
Abdi Hassan Qaybdid

Still a third potentially devastating challenge is another rival conference for similar objective that is taking place in Dhusamreeb sponsored by Ahlu-Sunna wal Jama, a semi-Sufi religious group with para-military armed militia. There is a lot of uncertainty as to how much of a stumbling block Ahlu-Suna Waljama can be.

State formation in post-civil war Somalia is wrought with incessant local squabbles on representations and clan interest balancing. Manipulation of the process by Villa Somalia tops all problems. In the past, it blackmailed Jubbaland, totally controlled the outcome of Southwest, and is now poised to controlling the outcome of Cadaado. Given the mounting challenges facing this region, only a competent, consensus building and someone who knows what public policy is can help it with stand its challenges. My small contribution here is to highlight the resumes of the frontrunners.

Abdi Hassan Qaybdid

To start with, I would never wish any Somali to be a subject or citizen in a government, local or otherwise, presided by one of Somalia’s notorious warlords – yes you guessed it right, Abdi Hassan Qaybdid. This candidate, whose name when translated into English, reads as “he who does not accept equal share,” should never be in Somali politics. Pushing to his mid or late seventies, he represents a relic that reminds us Somalia’s civil-war and as such should have either disappeared from the political scene into a retirement oblivion, or be answering questions of “ethnic cleansing” to an international tribune. In the last few years, a period where many Somalis have been trying to ameliorate the impacts of past pains, this candidate has been beating war drums aloud.

Abdikarim Guuleed

abdikarim Gulet
Abdikarim Guuled

So entrenched in Somalia’s post-civil war political Islam, candidate Abdikarim Guuleed’s resume does read more as a leader to be avoided at any cost. He suddenly rose from the ranks of an unemployed small time deacon to Somalia’s interior minister at a time when the nation needed a competent steward. It was due to his lack of prior experience at high offices that Abdikarim showed extreme incompetency in managing the 2014 Ankara talks between Mogadishu and Hargeisa.

A not so insignificant issue is that he is affiliated with dumel Jadid, a hard core religious cult that is only one shade away from Al-shabab. His education level is dubious and unimpressive.

During his brief tenure at Villa Somalia, this candidate created bad omen between the people of Jubbaland and Mogadishu; he fanned conflict and fomented inter-group war. According to the 2013 Monitoring group’s repost, he is accused of diverting public resources to Al-Shabab commanders in the area of both Marka and Jubbaland.

Both his version of political Islam and lack of experience in governance may not serve well the Central region given its massive unattended needs (famine, lack of infrastructure, coexistence and cooperation with its neighboring regions).

Ali Faqi Moallim

Until 2012, this third candidate was Somalia’s security chief and was fired by the current President. Ali Faqi Moallim is a longtime friend and political protégé of President Sharief Ahmed. During Sharief’s reign, he served as an intelligence boss, as ambassador to Sudan, and as Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency (SNISA) Chief.

Fiqi
Ali Faqi Moallim

There are unsubstantiated allegations against Ali Faqi of torturing innocent civilians while he was on the hunt for Al-Shabab militia. Yet, because Somalis have negative memories about past national intelligence forces, such accusations will prove to remain resilient and hard to dispel.

To his defense though, he claims that he had taken draconian but necessary measures to neutralize Al-Shabab during his tenure, but was always sabotage by traditional elders in Mogadishu. His other sore point on his image includes accusations of financial corruptions, almost all of which he denies.

Ahmed Abdisalam

A diplomat, Western educated Somali Canadian, and a former deputy Prime Minister (2007), Ahmed Abdi Salam Aden appears to be by far the most qualified and most experienced political agent for change in the region. His resume reads like a modern secular politician that should not only run the affairs of Central Somalia, but given the right circumstances, that of the entire country.

Amb Ahmed Abdisalam
Ahmed Abdisalam

While organizing this region at the grassroots level and consulting with elders to improve local security and establish local governance, “in 2012 he was wounded in a suicide attack by Al-Shabaab in Dhusamareeb. It is a personal matter to him to be a crusader for the war on terror against Al-Shabab as well as to establish a system of government for his region. He has been involved in this project longer than any of the candidates.

As a matter of fact, he is the only one in the pack who can claim to be free either from Somalia’s post-civil war infliction – religious extremism, or from the political culture of warlords.

Ambassador Ahmed is a man who is well positioned to creating coalitions among Somalis, a badly needed skill in contemporary Somalia that is so compartmentalized. Being a cosmopolitan person by nature, he has shown that he has the potential to work with his neighboring Puntland region. He believes that the two sister regions can coexist and cooperate on mutual interest areas, can work out their differences in the most amicable way and replace confrontation with cooperation. Ambassador Ahmed’s personal and political relationships both at the local and regional levels represent an asset that none of the rest of the frontrunners has.

The rest of the job – picking the right candidate rightly belongs to the residents of the area.

Faisal Roble
WardheerNews contributor
Email: [email protected]
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Faisal Roble is a writer, political analyst and a former Editor-in-Chief of WardheerNews, mainly interested in the Horn of Africa region. He is currently the Principle Planner for the City of Los Angeles in charge of Master Planning, Economic Development and Project Implementation Division.

 


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