The question in the minds of many Somalis today is: has Turkey’s Somalia policy—which is on steroids— veered into a troubling new, uncharted territory?
Consider the subversive “Somali Mediation” meeting that was concluded in Ankara on April 13, 2013 under the auspices of the Turkish State. It was attended by the heads of two unrepresentative cabals, falsely claiming to represent all Somalis in the yet unresolved political dispute dogging the Somali Federal Republic. Turkey, it seems, wanted to reconcile what they mistook for the main feuding parties in the country along the lines of a mythical north—south divide. And for those unacquainted with Somalia’s intractable politics, which is wrapped up in clan-driven issues and concerns, the exercise looked rather benign.
But the reality is quite different and the outcome of the deal cooked up in Ankara is neither benign nor benevolent; unlike the rosy portrayals put forth by the self-selected participants, it’s fraught with far-reaching political problems for Somalia.
As shown in the so-called “Ankara Communiqué”, the vituperative meeting created fictitious symmetry between the fickle Somali national government and a separatist group that claims illusory independence status. Under normal circumstances, such a move would be a red flag to any patriotic national leader. Not so President Hassan Sh. Mohamud. He gives no indication of concern with issues of national interest in any meaningful way. His passion lies elsewhere!
Accordingly, he focused his time trying to cement bi-lateral, inter-clan pact with the aforementioned secessionist faction to the exclusion of the pro-union communities. So the two sides organized a scandalous fête in Ankara in which a tangled web was weaved for the purposes of cornering the uninvited Somali communities into a political trap; the host country, Turkey, was an accessory to the resulting perfidy. As willing dupes, the Turks provided diplomatic cover as well as much coveted visibility for the plotters’ high jinks. The aim of the set up was to get unwarranted political advantage for their respective camps. And shortly after Ankara, the schemers gleefully began to celebrate their perceived success. They even flew to major world capitals as sort of victory laps!
But who were the plotters? They were respectively: Ahmed Mohamoud Siilaanyo, the head of Somaliland—an entity that forfeited the right to any sort of legitimacy for having set up an illegal, separatist enclave in Somalia’s north; a fiefdom that is fixated on empowering one clan at the expense of the four other clan communities in northwestern Somalia.
The other party in that ill-fated meeting was the head of the moribund regime in Mogadishu, President Hassan Sh. Mohamud. His hapless administration, which clings to life thanks to protection by African soldiers, is similarly working feverishly to delegitimize its own authority by constantly engaging in sleazy, clan-oriented activities that are manifestly inimical to Somali national unity and territorial integrity.
President Hassan Sh. Mohamud is a political neophyte. But he does not let lack of public policy expertise and political acumen get in the way of his passion for pursuing a prickly dual-track policy of his own: 1) “to restore Mogadishu to its former glory” as the epicenter of Somalia’s social, economic and political life (sans the folks who actually built the place); and 2) to use the resources under the disposal of the central government, covertly and overtly, to wage rear-guard battles in furtherance of the long simmering USC faction aims (buttressed by the sectarian ideology of Damul Jadiid miltants). The President’s objective which is incidentally shared Mr. Siilaanyo is: to try to contain the power and influence of a certain clan-family that spans not only the length and breadth of the Somali peninsula but the entire Horn of Africa region!
Examples showing President Mohamud’s sectarian and clannish predilections in support of that kind of prejudiced mind-set are innumerable.
One telling incident took place during his recent visit to the US. A questioner in the City of Minneapolis asked what he was planning to do about all the looted properties in his backyard, namely Mogadishu. The president’s characteristic impolitic answer: “Those who keep harping on past issues would miss the future altogether”, shocked his audience. And then there was the time, some months earlier, when he exhorted a crowd in Hiiraan to establish their own federal state; only few days later, however, he foreswore that his government alone, not the bona fide residents of the Jubaland regions, would form government for that federal state.
Now that the Jubaland federal state is a reality, he is still on the war path, fomenting all sorts of trouble to the point of risking resumption of a fresh civil war in the war-weary country.
These two episodes, among others, signify how President Mohamud abuses the limited authority entrusted in him. The President’s justification of the theft of private property (and associated crimes) shows his utter contempt for the rule of law. Equally troubling, he sneeringly breaches the Somali Federal Constitution by ignoring the fact that the charter empowers the residents of the various regions, not the central government, to form their own state and local governments on the basis of federalism.
Further, both Mr. Siilaanyo’s Somaliland (SNM) faction and President Sh. Mohamud’s regime (USC/Damul Jadiid) openly and unabashedly pursue unjust, discriminatory and prejudiced agendas in furtherance of their active hostility to certain communities that they consider adversaries. But neither camp is in a position to turn such biases into a winning formula, because the Somali people in general would not stand for unfair sideshows to disrupt the on-going democratic processes based on federalism principles and fair play.
Turkey’s Role in All This
Among the myriad problems associated with Turkey’s ill-advised mediation effort is the wrong-headed assumption that “Somaliland” speaks for all the communities in the northwest—a supposition which is belied by the objective reality. Thus Turkey’s apparent acceptance of and recklessly acting upon such an outlandish notion has complicated, rather than help untangle, Somalia’s knotty political problems. In so doing the Turks have helped, wittingly or unwittingly, confer quasi-legal status to a renegade, clan-centered administration in Hargeisa. They seem to have missed or ignored altogether the fact that “Somaliland’s” twenty-year quest to dismember the Somali nation failed precisely because pro-union northwestern communities, including those in Makhir (which is part and parcel of the Puntland Federal State), Khatumo and Awdal, fought them tooth and nail and stopped them on their tracks.
With little due diligence on her part, Turkey could have discovered that treating Somaliland as a legitimate state is tantamount to an unforgiveable betrayal of those pro-union communities. These are the communities that continue, without fanfare, to valiantly defend Somali national unity, which the rebellious enclave of Somaliland, had been trying for so long to sell down the proverbial river!
And the record is quite clear on this. As a clan-specific secession project, Somaliland lacks any historical or legal justification to claim independence much less annex neighboring communities. A cursory examination of the record would have revealed to the misinformed, ‘Unspeakable Turks’ that the so-called Somaliland Protectorate came about as a result of different agreements between the various northern clan communities (except for Khatumo which fought the colonial powers) and the British.
During the decolonization period, the unionist communities’ natural desire to join with their southern brethren prevailed and the actual unification took place within couple of days of independence—between June 26, 1960 and July 1, 1960— resulting in the founding of the Somali Republic. The act of union was subsequently ratified in the 1961 national referendum that garnered an overwhelming support from Somalis throughout the country. These are the incontrovertible facts that the Ankara confab sidestepped for reasons only known to the hosts!
It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that the by-passed stakeholders in the north and in the south see the whole injudicious effort concocted in Ankara as good as a dead letter. Purported good intentions aside, Turkey has made egregious errors that suggest that she is operating from a narrow prism that recalls the colonial times when the biggest town, however dilapidated, and presiding head honcho, however incompetent, constituted the center of a colonized nation’s universe. Call it the post Ottoman Turkish bubble!
How else would the generous largess given in the name of Turkeys’ Tax-payers be poured into one rat-hole, consignment after consignment, only to be divvied up by few corrupt, clan-oriented individuals? Meanwhile, the City of Mogadishu is increasingly becoming a virtual armed camp under the protection of overstretched African soldiers. Its overall atmosphere is characterized by pervasive sense of misery, which is compounded by the fact that the wretched government headed by Hassan Sh. Mohamud is incapable of providing the overwhelmingly indigent residents with public services of any kind.
Somalia went through that horrific situation before. That is why many communities have made the determination never to be put in such a dismal state of affairs, again. What the Turkish sponsored fiasco might recreate, intentionally or by happenstance, in Somalia’s hair-trigger political culture, is a renewal of conflict. Ill-considered interferences from abroad such as the Ankara huddle have been known to send dangerous signals with dire, unintended consequences.
This may not have been Turkey’s objective but neither would the botched up mediation effort be her finest hour in diplomacy!
The Somali Federal Republic-in-the-making does not need this kind of help from self-styled friendly nations. The country certainly can ill-afford to waste another generation by resuming mindless civil war (prompted by mixed messages from abroad). That is why Turkey should not take sides in the Somalia’s political muddle, nor should they assume that the regime in Mogadishu, as it is currently organized, is representative of the country as a whole.
President Mohamud is quite literally trampling the Somali Federal Constitution by assuming powers that are not accorded him in that charter. For example, he was elected by the parliament (not the Somali public). As such he is a parliamentary president with responsibilities mainly confined to ceremonial activities. However, he brazenly usurped virtually all the executive powers conferred to the Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers and the largely rubberstamp parliament. He is also, in so many underhanded ways, actively opposing the formation of federal states, specifically that of Jubaland on the basis of thinly-disguised clan animus—a pathology he shares with Mr. Siilaanyo’s SNM-Somaliland regime in Hargeisa. That is why Turkey’s shoring up that kind of a regime is nothing short of a travesty. Any assistance given to the regime beyond humanitarian aid to help the suffering population there, would only encourage more corruption and clan chauvinism. It would also harm Turkey’s hitherto unsullied reputation, for a very long time to come!
Finally, Turkey should reassess her bewildering Somalia policy, which at the present seems to be driven by hubris and hazy visions of grandeur. Her legions, led by Prime Minister Erdogan, descended into the Horn of Africa country, like gangbusters, a little more than two years ago. However, they misread the ‘tea leafs’ and ever since then they were busy dispensing political and economic medicine that is proofing to be worse than the disease they supposedly seek to cure!
Lastly, the right course of action for Turkey’s Somalia policy is to consult widely and actually engage all the various communities. With that approach Turkey would be able to provide genuine help to Somalia and at the same time advance the geopolitical interest that brought her to Somalia’s shores, in the first place. After all they correctly identified the country as a strategic gateway to Africa. But the Turks should also quit worrying about the political fortunes of the regimes headed President Mohamud and Mr. Siilaanyo. These folks are wasting their time with crude, unproductive plots. In all likelihood, their regimes will end up in abject failure all by themselves; running interference from abroad would only compound their troubles.
Mahdi Sheikh Ahmed
Email: [email protected]
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Related Article
THE ILLUSORY “SOMALILAND”: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT By NSPU
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We welcome the submission of all articles for possible publication on WardheerNews.com. WardheerNews will only consider articles sent exclusively. Please email your article today . Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of WardheerNews.
WardheerNew’s tolerance platform is engaging with diversity of opinion, political ideology and self-expression. Tolerance is a necessary ingredient for creativity and civility.Tolerance fuels tenacity and audacity.
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