By Faisal A. Roble
Last night at about 3 AM, one odd spooky call from Nairobi wakes me up.
“Is this Faisal Roble,” the voice on the other end of the call said.
“Who is it?” I enquired.
“You don’t know me mudane Roble, but my name is Ibrahim,” just like an incognito detective would say
“What is it?” I went.
“Indha Qarsho’s residence has been blown up; the security chief is killed, and the Alshabab terrorists are parading inside Villa Somalia…..”
“Wait! Wait!” and I jumped out of my bed.
“Yes, walaahi… Even the President is at risk because they invaded his Masajid inside Villa Somalia.”
After few minutes, reality sunk in and I began a dreadful Friday, a black Friday if you will.
The attack on Villa Somalia (Presidential compound) in Mogadishu by Alshabab militia on Friday 21, 2014 is without a doubt devastating both to President Sheikh Mohamoud and to the families of the victims. Without a radical departure from the status quo, Security will not improve in Mogadishu.
I could not help but sympathize with the President, especially after I read his tweeted press release, which in effect conveyed a sense of loss and resignation. He sounded dark, downcast, and dreary. In his follow up radio address, he was incoherent and at times lost the focus, like the time when he chastises regional leaders.
By some estimates, as many as forty people, , including Mahamoud Abdulle Hirsi (Indha Case), chief of staff in the Prime Minister’s office, with whom I briefly communicated on the debate of the UN’s arms embargo a year ago, are reported to have died. His death in particular aches my heart for he left behind 9 children and a wife in Ottawa, Canada. He was a brilliant man, RIP.
This is one of the most shocking and disconcerting news to have come out of Mogadishu. The representative of AMISOM, ambassador Annadif’s press release on the matter was all the more one of resignation and hopelessness too.
Ambassador Annadif said: “AMISOM cannot protect Somalia from or defeat Alshabab if the Somalis themselves are not willing to fight to get rid of Alshabab.” Whether this is a reaction from a fainted heart or an inclination of a comprehensive re-assessment of the entire AMISOM mission remains to be seen. Needless to say, AMISOM too failed in Somalia just as did its predecessor, UNISOM.
However, any reaction and a subsequent assessment of this latest Alshabab triumphalist act must go a bit beyond solidarity provided to the President, or a sorely needed sympathy extended to the fallen individuals’ families. Solutions to this nagging security problem must be radical with an out of the box approach.
Events Leading to February Meltdown
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud came to office in August of 2012 with three simple goals as his priorities: “security, security, and security,” he said with his face wearing the biggest smile one can expect from a rooky President whose only job prior to this weighty position was managing marginal Non-Governmental Organizations.
Despite rhetoric and feel-good speeches to overenthusiastic sectarian diaspora groups, terror was coming back to Mogadishu by December of last year, and normalcy was steadily slipping out of hand. The government turned a blind eye to many calls to dismantle the terrorist infrastructures all of which are housed and nurtured inside Mogadishu.
But many Somalis including this author believe that the President, himself a member of the wider political Islam and a hard core sectarian in Somalia’s’ fractured politics due to its humpty dumpty clan structure, has repeatedly failed to take offers and advises to help him re-energize the country.
By March 2013, some of us were convinced that Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud was not that one leader to take Somalia out of the quagmire and terror. For example, In “Somalia: A Government failing at its own Peril,” I opined the following in assessing the return of terror to Mogadishu:
“On March 19, 2013, the New York Times carried a front-page story about Alshabab resuming its aggressive acts of terrorizing the residents of Mogadishu. This is one of a series of troubling signs of the deterioration of Hassan Sheikh’s administration. Despite his premature and uninitiated over-pledging pronouncement to the nation that his three top priorities are “security, security, security,” the nation is less secure now than six months. Security is slipping out of hand; dead bodies continue to turn up in Mogadishu’s dark alleys as if we were experiencing a de Javu of the days of extreme anarchy.”
The first signs of the current total melt down of Mogadishu’s security were visible to the naked eyes for some time now. By the start of the New Year, Mogadishu was awash with rumors of a weak and isolated President; the US intelligence community wrote him off as a “weak and ineffective leader.”
The February 2014 edition of the Africa Confidential reports that the President is “isolated” and tormented. Also, some unconfirmed reports suggest that the EU and Turkey have already given up on President Hassan’s leadership; the EU in particular is said to be on the lookout for his replacement.
The confluence of (1) an ailing President, who was flown to Turkey, (2) the expose of a culture of “slush money” and cash in $100 bills laundered out of the Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, and (3) the releasing of about 700 former Somali National Army (SNA) members from their duties are all parts of the total ingredients that make up the perfect storm that hit Mogadishu’s security sector, and the eventual melting down of Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud’s regime almost claimed his own life.
The crowning of this melt down was none other than the findings by the United Nations Monitory Group on Somalia and Eretria. It said:
“Somalia could not account for about 1,000 AK-47s delivered from Uganda” and it has obtained documentary evidence corroborating information that a key advisor to the President, from his Abgaal subclan, has been involved. Some of the weapons also went to another subclan (Habar gidir via the Interior Minister, Abdikarim Gulied). Moreover, weapons were also delivered to Alshabab leader Sheikh Yusuf Isse ‘Kabukatukade’, who is also Abgaal.”
PM is Missing in Action (MIA)
The dereliction of duty on the part of the Prime Minister has indeed aggravated the situation. Almost a week ago, at a critical time when the President was out of the country and when Alshabab fighters were incidentally crashing on the gates of Villa Somalia and skirmishing with soldiers on the street in front of Presidential palace was already there. Yet, the Prime Minister “vacated Villa Somalia” to take a lavish tour covering several countries.
Call this a messed up priority. No executive leader of any sort in any part of the globe (mayor of a city, governor of a region or state, President or a vice President/Prime Minister) would abandon his people at such a critical moment.
Mogadishu was in a high (red!) alert state on February 14, 2014 when the PM left town. And, to date he is still out of the country! Picture side by side the death and torment in Villa Somalia that he had vacated on the 14th of February and his staying at five star hotels abroad. Words that he uttered in Nairobi such as the country is in a dire condition have all eroded whatever confidence his office may have otherwise enjoyed.
No matter how you slice it, it is simply an ugly picture that comes out of the PM’s MIA status with a bad after-taste (Where is Amin Amir when you need him!). Worse, that his chief of staff, Mohamud Xirsi Abdulle (Indha Case), a bright man, is in the meantime dead inside the palace says it all.
If Somalia did not need this Prime Minister’s input and his service at this juncture, let alone President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud not having his consultation at hand in the war room, there is no other worse time Somalia should need this PM’s service. It seems obvious to me that the nation can do without him.
Some simple, sincere yet bold steps may help this lame duck President to get out of the quagmire, and realign/restore hope in the immediate future:
– Replace the Prime Minister or shadow him with someone who has a sense of urgency of the nation’s business and wellbeing. If the nation did not need the current PM in the last 24 hours, then he is not so critical to the nation’s search for recovery.
– Call for a meeting with the regional Presidents of Puntland and Jubbland and others that are established, and come up together with an honest plan that is incremental and has achievable goals to first stabilize Mogadishu and the rest of the country. This effort must be a Somali owned project. Also, such a project must involve dismantling the terrorist infrastructure inside Mogadishu particularly that of the President’s clan of Abgaal and Habar gidir establishments.
– Move some functions of the federal government to peaceful areas (Puntland, for example) and begin a serious conversation on how to integrate the security apparatus of Puntland’s Darwih army, Jubbaland’s Raskamboni units, and Mogadishu’s untainted units of its purported SNA. Alshabab cannot be defeated by any other power except an indigenous and willing Somalis.
– Be humble and admit to the nation of your failings. The nation is capable to forgive and side with you in a new and honest compact to bring back their nation. Once failed should not mean forever failed.
Faisal A. Roble
Email:[email protected]
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