Faisal A. Roble

My last article posted on Wardheernews, “Somalia Sliding back to Political Conflict” May 29, 2013, which must have touched, I assume, some raw nerves, and precipitously generated quite a significant feedback.  I must say that most of the letters were positive and supportive of my on-going engagement with the self-selected Dem-Al Jadid dominated regime in Mogadishu.  But some were decidedly critical.

One of the most supportive and poignant letters came from a young man, who said he is a native of Hargaisa, and a college student in London.  In his rather long letter, he reminded me of several articles I wrote over the years on the glorious past days of Mogadishu, the Mogadishu of the past that once was Somalia’s indomitable capital city, the deteriorating situation of the current regime, and the challenges facing Somalis.   He, like many other supporters, availed his service in the future to expose the dangerous political maneuverings Mogadishu cabal are spewing.

However, the most emotionally touchy letter came from a lady who said that she lost her husband in Mogadishu, and her undying hope that one day justice will be served. The most gratifying letter came into my wrack as I was drafting this essay and said the following:

“Mr. Roble, your account about the government of Hassan Sheikh derailing itself and sliding back to political conflict became prophetic as Mogadishu begins to instigate conflict inside Kismayo.”

As much as I would have liked to say “I told you so,” it is rather a somber and painful reality to see the hopes Somalis saw only few months ago being dashed in front of their own eyes.  Forget past missed opportunities, including the missed opportunities Ambassador Sahnoun had described in his book, Somalia: The Missed Opportunities, 1994, when the late General Aidid was on a political stampede of senseless killings, I am afraid we are currently witnessing in Kismayo the calm before the storm revisits us once again.

In acquiescence with my supporters, especially on the debacle the Mogadishu government generated, I have yet to see a more charlatan leadership than the current cabal in Mogadishu.  Hassan Sheikh and his associates succeeded to renew war and conflict in southern Somalia in less than a year.  Conflict is the last thing any sane person would wish for Somalia.

When the Irrational Rules, the Society Suffers

A limited number of sectarian letters, however, strongly expressed their bone of contention with me, often either distorting the main ideas in my article, or deliberately sticking to a hardened position of their own.  Some others tried to cyber terrorize me in the same fashion Mogadishu cabal often politically terrorizes or intimidates dissent voices as a means to an end.

Most of these critics in many ways went the extra mile to deny the massive atrocities, or what is now coming to be known as “clan cleansing” that took place in Southern Somalia.

One particular critic who signs as Irrir Samaale showered me and what he termed “my clan” with unbridled, if not blasphemous, words as well as barbaric expressions of hate mongering.  The most striking sentence in this cyber terrorism reads:  “sending the Darood Arabs back to Yemen by any means necessary.”

This is one critic I chose not to directly respond to, despite that I learned one erroneous lesson which I am not even sure the extent to which said lesson is true … that “Daroods came from Yemen!!!”

“Really,” is all that I could silently mutter in my own solitary way? I was not careless to not quickly succor myself by saying: “Al-hamdulilah for being in the land of the “free,” “lest I could have been at the mercy of a fool like this chap.

After I finished reading Irrir Samale’s hate-ridden letter, which I shared with about ten close friends, I kept reaffirming to myself that, unlike Mr. Irrir Samale’s claim, Daroods are as indigenous Africans as the rest of Somalis are.

One lesson I took away from this letter is that Mr. Irrir Samaale does not speak for the millions of descent Hawiyes who like other Somali groups are equally hungry for peace, justice and development.

But, even if this crazy guy is right and Daroods came from Yemen, so what?  Is he going to dump all those millions of Daroods, plus Arab Somalis, who number hundreds of thousands and are productive Somali citizens at that, the likes of Ahmed Naji and Ahmed Rabsha, into the Indian Ocean?  To complicate matters more, what is he going to do about other Somalis who claim to trace their mythical lineage back to the Arab genealogy, like the Barwanis, the Tunis, the Xamar Cad and so forth?  Force them to choose between being decedents of Arabs or Irrir Samale?  My consolation: I simply hope I never meet Mr. Irrir Samaale!

History Matters 

Some of the more pseudo rational but still biased critics, to whom I respectively responded in person, accused me of intentionally minimizing the atrocities the government of Siyad Barre committed against the northern Issaqs.  In particular, one Santuur Jimcaale, alleged me that I avoided criticizing the Barre regime while reveling in the “clan cleansing” committed by the United Somali Congress (USC).

To prove his point, he quoted a sizable portion of my original article as such:

“There are many socioeconomic factors that led to the demise of the once cohesive Somali state. However, the main and most immediate factor for the state to fail was the massive “clan cleansing” campaign which the militia of the now defunct United Somali Congress (USC) orchestrated inside Mogadishu under the leadership of the late General Farah Aidid (Lidwien Kapteijns, 2013).”

This accusation is, for the lack of a better word, a hog-wash and is at best nothing but an expression of failure to either carefully read the treatise that I advanced, or intentionally deny the “clan cleansing” of 1991 as the main factor that precipitated the collapse of the Somali state.

Denying history that took place in one’s life time is one thing is a national obsession for some.  However, it is particularly irksome when “clan cleansing” deniers masquerade themselves as critics, yet lack the sophistication to command the subtlety of the language.

To understand correctly the argument that I advanced here, one needs to carefully read the main line in the above quote. I wrote:” the main and most immediate factor” for the center, meaning here all state structures which were housed in Mogadishu at the time, to collapse was the USC war against the Darood civilians.  The emphasis here lies in the “main and immediate factors leading to the collapse of the central government was due to the communal war the USC leaders initiated in Mogadishu.

The full description and account of the historical, political and economic factors that precipitated the collapse of the Republic of Somalia is indeed beyond the scope of my essay. Yet, it is plausible to come to the conclusion that the “immediate factor” leading to the collapse of the last Republic of Somalia was delivered by the USC.  As matter of fact the aftermath of 1991 war in Mogadishu is also the main impediment in the reconstitution of the Somali state.

The level of violence carried against the communities in the north and northeast, the “clan cleansing” carried by USC are both unforgettable and must be thought to all Somali school aged children with the following purposes:

1. Sensitizing children to the negative impact of   “violence,”
2. Teaching Somalis the origins of the bifurcation of the once cohesive Somali community, with particular emphasis on the Barre policies, the formation of the Ethiopia-friendly armed groups, and
3. To help educate Somalis that no national army or national asset should be used against Somali civilians no matter what.

The latter point is very instructive mainly because the current government in Mogadishu has the propensity to use violence once again against certain groups in the groups.  As observed by James Traub in a recent article carried by the Twincities.com:

“The political process was supposed to include a parallel process of fostering local and provincial government structures. That, says Mahiga, hasn’t even begun, in part because President Mohamoud fears empowering rival clans to his north and south. There has been no movement towards drafting a permanent constitution which would enshrine a federal system. Meanwhile, negotiations with Puntland have been “very painful and scratchy.” There is no dialogue at all with Somaliland. That sounds like a dangerous form of drift.

Moreover, the Shabele regions, the least armed and most dominated among the Somali groups, are at the moment under violent occupation by armed groups who don’t belong to the Shabelle, Bay and Bakol regions.  Additionally, covert conflict production in the Jubbaland state instigated and financed by the government in Mogadishu has started in earnest, notwithstanding a promise Prime Minister Saacid’s office shared with me in an email that his government’s troops or weapons would never use against its own people.  For now this promise is broken in light of the shipment of weapons that his government was about to send to the Jubbaland theater.

Two Violence and Different Outcomes 

A persuasive argument advanced by Dr. Lidwien postulates that the wars in the north and northeast vs. the one in Mogadishu are technically and ideologically both violent conflicts with different outcomes.  In the case of northern and northeastern Somalia, a seating government that drew its cabinet members from all the Somali targeted rebel groups and their support base. The political purpose for this faulty policy was to control insurgent groups to submission.  When failed, it went after the community that it alleged to have supported the cause of the rebellion.

The violence that took place in Mogadishu in 1991 under the command and control of General Aidid, however, was what writers in this field called “communal violence.” Swift decisions were made by one heavily armed group and a victorious one (Aidid and his cousins) against one and only one clan. The victorious USC   had to choose between ruling the Darood resident in Mogadishu or to waging a mass killing, raping, looting, and/or displacing them.  The USC command and control unfortunately chose the former. Dr. Lidwien calls this type of violence “clan cleansing.”

There are several unique attributes to the USC instigated and commanded “clan cleansing” of 1991. Two of these unique attributes are as follows:

(1)  The now-defunct USC carried discriminate killings, rape, expropriation and displacement of the members of one clan who had established roots in Mogadishu in the last 150 years. Commanders of the USC did so by utilizing sophisticated slogans and popular war songs that depicted the victim side as “rich people” who has amassed ill-gotten material wealth in Mogadishu.

(2) The very some people who partook in the state sponsored war against the north and northeast of Somalia (people like Kulmiye, Cabdiqaasim, Galaal and Nero were recycled into a USC leadership or advisory positions to manage this new campaign of targeted killings, while luminary personalities the likes of the late Professor Professor Ibrahim Mohamoud Abyan (former dean of SIDAM), who spent life time struggling against the military dictatorship, were killed because of their lineage affiliation with victim group.

One of the more painful attributes of Somalia’s clan culture is that no one stands accountable so far.  Some even are playing active role in the production of open conflict in Jubbaland as they advise President Hassan Sheikh.

The main difference between the state sponsored war in the north and northeast by the former military regime (with all his associates in cahoots) and the “clan cleansing” in Mogadishu by USC is that the latter violence served as the immediate cause of the total collapse of the state.  Also, members of one clan were armed and agitated by the USC leaders to kill, loot, and rape members of another clan with impunity, without regard to class, gender, wealth, geography within the targeted group.

The Myth of who Dominates Somali Politics 

A third bizarre comment sent to me said the following:

“You could have used your intelligence a more productive way instead of criticizing everyone you dislike.  However you try to demonstrate Daarood as a noble, creative, rational and peace-loving human being – while Hawiye tribes are savage and trouble-makers; you won’t succeed and Somalis are more sophisticated than you think. The Darood hegemony has collapsed with the collapse of Siad Barre (may god give his mercy to him) regime. You have live with reality that Somalis won’t be satisfied with anything less than equality and liberty.” 

I simply reproduced here my response to this critic by writing back to him as follows: I don’t know where you get all these terminologies.  In my article, I did not call Hawiye savages or trouble makers.  Neither did I say Daroods are noble, creative and rational.  Besides, Hassan Sheiklh Mohamud is supposed to be the president of all Somalis.

As to the Daroods having hegemonic grip on Somali politics, that is utterly at best a myth or worse, a nonsense; it is a false story concocted for years to spew hate narrative so as to create a captive audience, as evidently has been done so far.

I responded to this critic by saying this: “If you just take a minute, President Hassan has associates like Shirdoon who he is a Darood.”

With respect to Darood hegemony in Somalia’s politics, let us list all the past presidents of Somalia:

1. Abdullahi Issa (Hawiye)
2. Adan Abule Osma (Hawiye)
3. Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke (Majeerteen)
4. Mohamed Siyad Barre ( Mareehaan, a military takeover)
5. Ali Mahdi (Hawiye)
5. Aidid (Hawiye)
6. Abdiqasim (Hawiye)
7. Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed Yey (Majeerteen)
8. Sharif Ahmed (Hawiye)
9. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (Hawiye)

Daroods dominated the politics of Somalia?   Where is the Math?  Contrary to these silly critics, Somali politics has been undemocratic and has been dominated by a cabal of elites, as the case is in Hassan Shiekh’s administration who had at the same time failed the people of Somalia. Neither Hassan Shiekh nor Shirdon so far showed us a vision worthy of national endorsement.

My last and departing words with the above mentioned critics, who see the current government in Mogadishu as the savior of Somali, should rather join those of us who want to engage and challenge the bunch of incompetent and less professional elites in Mogadishu.  With Hassan Sheikh and his Dam-aljadid band proofing to look much like the late  Aidid plus Al-Shabab combined, it is simply a matter of time before Somalia fully slides back to a full blown conflict.

Faisal A. Roble
Email: Faisalroble19@gmail.com
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