By Hassan Ahmed
In July, my cousin and I went to visit our aunt in St Cloud, MN. On our way to her house, we saw a billboard commercial ad on the side of the highway we were traveling on. The commercial had a negative cigarette ad. It showed two different kinds of cigarettes that were next to each other: one was a tobacco cigarette and the other one was an electronic cigarette. The words “fool us once” and “fool us again” were written underneath the tobacco and electronic cigarette respectively”.
This billboard ad made a lot of sense for my cousin because he used to be a smoker, and he wanted to quit smoking for years. However, he did not have the strong will to do it. When the e-cigarette was introduced to the market, he said he was one of the first people to try it, in the hopes of being 
able to quit smoking. However, he did not know what he was getting himself into all over again, just like when he was young and stupid that led him to be a smoker. Once he made the switch from a tobacco cigarette smoker to e-cigarette smoker, it did not change anything or make him feel any different, except for him being a continuing loyal customer of tobacco companies.
Tobacco is one of the leading cause of death in America, and around the world, yet it is legal to sell. It was not too long ago when the cigarette was a cool thing to smoke and heavily promoted. Pretty much people could smoke anywhere from indoor to outdoor. After years of studies provided evidence for the harmful impacts of tobacco, laws were placed and tobacco companies were mandated to write on the side of each bag of cigarette its harmful cause, and regulation has been introduced with designated areas of smoking. Let’s see some of the harm that smoke can cause and what people can get from smoking cigarettes: “Hydrogen cyanide found in insecticide and cigarette smoke, nicotine changes the way your brain works, cigarette smoke is a toxic mixed of over #7000 chemicals, nicotine is highly addictive, and highest of all is addiction and it says addiction can make you feel trapped.
To deal with every problem that comes, there is a need for careful scaling and management of the situation to lessen the damages. Let us contrast with Somali government and why the Somalis wanted to govern themselves.
The Somali revolution was essentially a movement that influenced and transformed the political structure of Somali Youth League (SYL) from 1947-1960. It was a movement for political and social reform. The people of Somalia were wary of the traditional “centrality of power” in which the colony held absolute power over the political structure and state of affairs. Moreover, a number of factors contributed to the revolution.
The year 1960 was the birth of a young Somali nation. Right after the birth of the young independent nation, the SYL selected President Aaden Abdule (Aadan Cade) note he was not elected, the SYL Party selected him from the other members of the party. Cade, was the first independent Somali nation president. Cade was a towering figure for the young nation. Somalia became the only nation in Africa that had democratic smooth transition change from colonial government to self-governing, without military takeover or revolution dictatorship, and the young nation became the envy of their era. In 1967, President Cade made an unprecedented action that shocked certain countries including Somalia: he conceded a loss to his former Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Sharma’arke. Sharma’arke had some dispute with the president during his administration in office, then Sharma’arke was given a choice and advice to either go alone with the president’s vision of how to govern the country or to resign. Sharma’arke chose to resign and run a campaign against his ex-boss president Cade, which he won by narrow victory in 1967. Unfortunately, President Sharma’arke was assassinated after only being in the office two years; his assassination came during famine tour that devastated the northwestern part of the country.
In 1969, after the death of President Sharma’arke, Sheikh Mukhtar. M. Hussein, who was the president of the parliament, became temporarily the president of the country. That was what the constitution said, and he was to remain till a new president was elected. During that transition period and the preparation of deceased president’s funeral, the chief of the military Mohamed Siyad Barre, was asked to defuse the up-rising chaos situation the country went into, because the police couldn’t handle the situation. President Barre, decided to lead military coup revolution. Mohamed Siyad Barre, was the longest Somali president served in the office. President Barre, developed and advanced the country when it compare to his predecessor and his successors. President Barre’s political party was called, Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC). Here’re some of his administration’s achievement: agricultural co-operative farming, new Somali language writing system, schooling from primary to university, building strong military, infrastructure, manufactures; however, President Barre’s admiration as much as it did advance the country also it derailed and produced a savage generation, that couldn’t differentiate between patriotism and self-sufficiency. One can argue that the products of his administration still resound today. But no doubt, he still remains the best president of Somalia.
Afterwards, Barre’s military government rule was eventually forced from power in 1991 by a coalition of armed opposition group called the United Somali Congress (USC). Soon after that, a businessman Ali Mahdi self-appointed himself the presidency, also, shortly after that, General Mohamed F. Aidid, claimed presidency as well.
In 2000-2004 Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, was elected in Arta (Carta) Djibouti. 2004-2008, Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed, was elected in Nairobi, Kenya. 2009-2012 Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was elected in Muqdisho, Somalia.
In 2012 Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud was elected in Muqdisho, Somalia. President Mahmoud was the hope of the nation, both for the people in mainland and as well as the Somali in diasporas. President Mahmoud had the incalculable help of the president’s office, which none of his predecessors had. Here are some of the few privileges he had coming into office: the military men power of the neighboring countries, which was controversial, the International communities of cash follow, the best brains and the Intelligence of the Somalis anywhere in the world, whom were willing to help the country at his service.
Many Somalis around the world came back to their country in the hopes of transcending the damage and destruction of the past two decades. I personally knew some of the people who went back to Somalia. They took all their families and sold their houses, and businesses never to return. Unfortunately, within a short of period of time, 97% of them came back with crushed dreams and broken hearts. Some stayed behind and joined the government, with the sincere hope of helping the young government.
The first speech that President Mahmoud gave the nation was that he will select a prime minister, that everyone will be happy with. He also added that he will make sure to work with his prime minister to implement the six point campaign promise he made. After appointing his prime minister, the prime minister started to assemble his cabinet. However, the president was the one who was assembling the government and started to run the government solo. He combined the office of the president and the office of the prime minister.
His intention was to have a docile government. He began to dismantle the constitution, and started to challenge aggressively. He brought back the terrible wounds of the civil war to the minds of the people. His government viciously started to attack Jubbaland and openly denied their fair and free election even after the completion of all prerequisites.
President Mahmoud, had a different intention than what his campaign led people to believe. In his first two years, he became so busy with destroying what little accomplishment the country had, and totally ignored the public outcry. His government waged war against Jubbaland, simply because they disagreed with the process and he spent millions of dollar that could have helped people. On the other hand, he illegally created an unconstitutional region of Galmudug, without the fulfillment of the basic requirement of the Somali constitution and spent millions more of illegal dollars.
President Mahmoud, started to create a legacy of corruption. I am not saying that we were free of corruption, but it was never at the level shamelessness during President Mahmoud’s term. After selecting his first prime minister, Saacid, we all remember his heart-touching line from his speech: “he will work with the government and will do anything to build prosper government.” The next thing that we learned was the impeachment of his first prime minister, Saacid, without any explanation or without allowing the prime minister to exercise his constitutional rights that allowed him to defend himself by speaking in front of the parliament. Again, such a denial was a calculated one. Who did it? The president. How? By paying off some of the hungriest, immoral of members of the parliament. Moreover, his second prime minister, Abduwali, went down the same path as Saacid.
President Mahmoud, also didn’t think that the people of Shabeelada Dhexe (Middle Shabeelle) region, were not mature enough to form their own government, so he decided to form a government for them. He started seclusion of the natives of the region and the exclusion of their say in matters of import. The natives gave resistance. The president after realizing that he couldn’t buy those who had rejected his plan, he started arming his pro regime through the government’s account and begun to attack them. It was an unjust and destructive act that cost the lives of innocent people including women, children and elderly people. This was done deliberately to scare the opposition and at the same time it was sending a message to any of his opposition.
President Mahmoud is now realizing that he has no single accomplishment even after more than four years of being in office. The only thing that he is accountable for is dividing the nation further. He began to look for something or someone to blame. In fact, when any reporter asks the president what his adminstration has achieved or if he could elaborate on any of his six agenda points, he changes his tone with a new slogan, “we have to remember where we were and how far we came thus far”. In reality, he couldn’t name a single achievement, and he begins with a bold face to remind the people of a time that never existed, which is misleading. One point to note here is that he couldn’t even prepare a platform of an election, let alone lay policies that could have change lives, and of course the reason is obvious, continuation of destruction, division, and corruption on his part.
I started my writing with a billboard cigarette ad that I saw on the side of the highway I was traveling, and talked about its health problem, effectiveness, and as well as its addiction on an individual level and on the society as whole.
If we had today’s knowledge of cigarettes in the past when smoking cigarettes became commercial, I think many of decision makers of that time wouldn’t have allowed it. In this day and age, a nation that had long history of suffering from its own self-inflicted wound allow itself to be manipulated by its own. After now knowing what we know about president Mahmoud and his stance and his credentials, I think any nation would do anything to keep him out of office. We now have at least a so-called government, but we will not have anything after he leaves the office, if he ever leaves. What he introduced to the country is political cancer at its highest order and that is what the next generation to come will follow. No nation can ever recover this type of governing from the rest of their existence. It’s worse than any kind of disease or addiction that you can name or think of.
Each government that held the office of Somali government left a legacy. Their legacies vary, some were mix of good and bad and others were worse than good; however, the current one has a distinguished violation of record. They were given everything on a silver platter, and sadly, they used it in dishonest and very disgusting way.
After a long and thoughtful consideration, I couldn’t help but to title this essay Nihilism. Nihilism, according to dictionary.com, is total rejection of established laws and institution, anarchy, terrorism, or other revolution activity, total and absolute destructiveness, an extreme form of skepticism, the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth, nothingness or nonexistence.
Unfortunately, president Mahmoud’s administration has all of these negative qualities. If we cannot stop him to be re-elected, because he has accumulated more money than the entire budget of the county and he can buy out the entire parliament members, then we shouldn’t quietly sit on our backside. We should at least raise our voice and make sure to be heard. If that is the least we can do for our country.
Hassan Ahmed
Email:hnkahzms@gmail.com