By Faisal Roble

“I Love Xamar and I love Somalia as my land more than anyone,” retorted Honorable Abdi Hashi. “We have no country now and we need to retake it even if it is with bloody force,” added Excellency Mohamed Abdi Yusuf. Then came off the gloves.

Introduction

As some of you listened to the debate Universal TV hosted for two outspoken Somali MPs on September 30th, 2015, Somalia is at a critical juncture. It is engulfed in corruption, political conflicts and the uncertainty surrounding the sovereignty of the nation due to the presence of  foreign troops in Southern Somalia. There are troops that are in the country legally and illegally; they are from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Djibouti. Unsubstantiated intelligence gathering spies from Western countries are also reported to be inside Somalia.

Honorable Abdi Hashi and former Prime Minister Mohamed Abdi Yusuf shared a myriad of political and social issues with a largely captive audience in a Mogadishu studio. Their discussion has spun upward the nation’s political debate to a tipping point. From a small podium, they relentlessly discredited Villa Somalia, the associated missions of AMISOM, IGAD and Mr. Kay’s management of the UN office for Somalia. In the ensuing days, besides the arrest of Universal TV journalists, the concept of losing Somalia to foreign powers dominated Somali social media. In short, the MPs’ populist arguments largely resonated with Somalis.

At the time of the debate, Kenya’s swindler behavior and its attempt to intimidate Somali leaders on the nagging issue of maritime demarcation had already galvanized the Somali public opinion. Additionally, the suspicion that the sitting Prime Minister allegedly “took” sums of money from Kenya to sign an unnecessary MoA in 2009 pertaining to maritime demarcation played in the MPs’ favor (This allegation of the PM is yet to be substantiated).

However, aside from echoing a timely patriotic sentiment, the question is how much of the MPs’ criticism is myth or reality. But first, a brief biography of the two outspoken Parliamentarians pertinent here.

The Content of the MPs Character

Abdi Hashi: The 69-year-old Abdi Hashi was born in a small town called Baabili, a midway provincial agricultural town between Jigjiga and the “forbidden” ancient religious city of Harar. Lured by the then pan-Somali movement led by the Somali Youth League (SYL), at age 24 Abdi Hashi moved to Mogadishu and never left since. By his own account, Mogadishu is the only city he belongs to.

Abdi Hashi is not your typical Somali elite. He is not imbibed by clan identity, and he assures us that he made a conscious decision on nationalistic grounds to defy politics of clan identity and the ideology of secessionism. Prior to Somalia’s 1991 civil war, Abdi Hashi was a member of closely-knit left-leaning civil servants. Currently, he is a member of the Somali Parliament in good standing.
Mohamed Abdi Yusuf: Mr. Yusuf hails from a prominent family with deep roots in Mogadishu. Following Abdi Hashi was Yusuf who equally electrified the audience by making a clarion call to take back the country, even if armed struggle is the path ahead. He also gave examples of multiple free advises he gave to President HSM but to no avail. In a short stunt, he was a member of a failed opposition group that once decided to mount an armed struggle from Asmara, Eretria (the “Asmara group). Also, between November 2003 and December 2004, he served as the Prime Minister of the tormented regime of President Abdiqasim.

Yusuf appears to be a man of contradictions. He has an incomparable history of activism dating back to 1963, when, for example, a handful of teenage students including him broke into the then British Embassy in Mogadishu to express a national rage over the handing over of Northern Frontier District (NFD) to Kenya. But again, he has taken a prominent role in the actualization of the 4.5-based power-sharing formula, a system most Somalis blame for the post-civil war bifurcation of the society. Indeed, he comes across as a nationalist in bondage in a clan superstructure.

The Content of the Debate

By any standard, the MPs are daring and unquestionably populists, albeit patriotic. They made history by publicly and consciously defying the political gravity that made Somalis docile in the hands of foreign interests. With this debate, they opened up a new chapter for defiance of the status quo. “Their well-publicized riveting criticism of the government, however, did not advance a new blue print to take the nation out of the quagmire. A revolution is attractive but governance is complex and challenging” says Abdelkarim Haji Hassan, of WardheerNews. He continued to say: “it is without exaggeration to say the MPs capsuled for the nation the bleak mood eclipsing the Somali peninsula. But we need more than criticizing the status qua.”

After a careful scrutiny of the issues the MPs shared with an impressionable nation in search for a political solution, I organized the gist of the debate into five general topics.

Somalia under Occupation: The word “occupation” conjures up fear and negative [historical] memories for Somalia, lest the country’s history is littered with occupation and subsequent lasting division of the once organic Somali society. In the minds of many, a similar division is on the lurching, no doubt a wide-spread perception the two MPs handsomely exploited.
With a bone-chilling emotive language that drew examples from past memories, Hashi and Yusuf declared that Somalia is under a de facto occupation by multiple, interdependent, and at times conflicting powers. They pointed their fingers at neighboring countries, AMISOM, IGAD, and Mr. Kay.

To emphasize the painful loss of the single most important commodity that survived the country’s protracted civil-war. i.e.., sovereignty of the country, they looked to no farther example than to their own humiliation in the hands of foreign troops. Yusuf talked about the death attempt made against him and his colleagues by foreign functionaries. But nothing could have described the “occupation” condition of Somalia better than Abdi Hashi’s testimony that no Somali, even a card-carrying senior member of his nation’s highest law-making body, can enter Xalane compound, a fledging complex of offices and military establishments (a city within a city) that symbolizes what some consider to be the new control and command center that serves foreign interests in post-civil war Somalia.

Assessment: Is Somalia under occupation? To fully comprehend the depth of said occupation, it is probably about time that the nation hears from its leaders about the contents of the instruments that empower foreign entities in the country. In simple terms, the nation deserves an explanation of who is in Somalia? What is the total foreign military presence in the country? Twenty thousand? According to some accounts, there are about fifty thousand foreign troops in Somalia, most of them being unaccountable to any agreement with Somalia. Which troops are legally or illegally inside Somalia? What are the rules of engagement? To these, the nation needs quick and unqualified answers.

Failed Parliament: The MPs lashed against the inability of the docile Parliament to execute its duties. They cited several key legislations that missed their timelines towards the country’s movement to the 2016 vision. By invoking one legislation after another, juxtaposing them to the timelines so far vainly elapsed, Hashi and Yusuf relentlessly buried this fledgling institution under its own rubbles. They also did not mince at their words of criticism aimed at the leader of the Parliament (see a litany of charges leveled against the President ).

Assessment: Although a large section of the members of the Parliament are good and honorable citizens, their efforts are paralyzed by the ostensible obliviousness and kowtowing of the chairman to the executive branch. The MPs’ criticism is valid. Under the current chairman, the little hope of nurturing a nascent “peoples house” is diming. Instead of putting checks against the Executive’s power abuse, he had chosen to be its unholy facilitator.

Presidential Dictatorship: The most damning criticism leveled against President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was his tendency to dictatorially control all aspects of the government. They also underscored the President’s disregard for the limits to his power per the constitution. Almost every charge they leveled against the President is also reflected in the letter of impeachment signed by over 90 members of the Parliament. They seem to have succeeded to paint a portrait of a President morphing into a presidential dictator.

Assessment: Such a criticism of the President by two prominent MPs is unprecedented, but it resonated well with most Somalis and the audience at hand. Looking back at recent conflicts over power between the President and his Prime Ministers, this argument is valid; indeed the President is morphing into a personal dictator. The chairman of the Parliament must give his House the chance of up and down voting, no matter what the final results are. After all, good governance is not a result but a process.

Incompetent and Corrupt Executive Team: Abdi Hashi hammered on the inferior quality of those who run the government of HSM and CCC. Mohamed Abdi Yusuf also took a shot at those corrupt government functionaries who try to amass wealth under the current misery in the country. Charging HSM and CCC with corruption, ineptness and incompetence did not need much effort to get the message across. Most Somalis agree with them that corruption, ineptitude and patronage proliferated in all aspects of the government. Between the two top leaders, Somalia is akin to a pray dangling on the tip of a hungry hyena’s mouth (Af-Dhurwaa bay Soomaaliya ku dhacday!).

Assessment: Both leaders of AMISOM and the United Nations Office for Somalia have confirmed the presence of the twin evils of corruption and ineptness in Hassan’s Government. Most Somalis have accepted that both the President and his new Prime Minister are very tainted, dishonest and incompetent leaders. There is a serious deficit in trust between the populace and the President/Prime Minister.

Divisive Federalism – The MPs dismissed federalism as a foreign imposition. Mohamed Yusuf alleged that federalism for Somalia started with the Italian colonialism, alluding to the Diggil/Mirfile’s request in the 1950s for a form of confederation government. They equated federalism to a tool intended to divide Somalia along clan lines. They pronounced the current federal system a clan system of government in the process.

Assessment: On this question, they did not command the attention of the audience as they did with other issues, because both their historical (Yusuf) and political (Hashi) references were wrong. Their analysis here was based on the concept, albeit wrong, held by some elites in and around Mogadishu, that federalism is meant for countries that are divided along ethnic, religious or race lines. They declared that, Somalia being a country of people with one ethnic, language, or religion, does not need federalism.
Unlike the MPs’ thesis, there is no requirement for nations to adopt federalism. Nations can be of a single or multiple ethnic groups or tribes. They can even be a family of tribes from one ancestor like the case is with United Arab Emirates whose federation is thriving.

Choosing a federal system of government at this juncture is a historical necessity for Somalia to addressing tangible political and social conflicts. Despite that Somalia is of one ethnic group, the tendency to try federalism is one of the consequences of the 1991 civil-war. It is also a paradigm shift from a unitary to a more decentralized system of governance.

The selling point of discrediting federalism is, as they argued, on a flawed argument that says Somalia borrowed it from oversees. As the MPs pointed out, yes Somalia borrowed federalism. But in the same token, she also borrowed the unitary state system, which is a neocolonial system of governance fashioned under the old European oligarchy. As a matter of fact, Somalia’s post-colonial government was hastily hatched out by the architects of West Minister.

Honorable Abdi Hashi proposed that regional autonomy would have been a better fit for Somalia. Failing to realize that regional autonomy is nothing but the Marxist-Leninist version of federalism, this part of the message somehow diluted their otherwise patriotic clarion call. Contrary to their arguments, Marxist-Leninist regional autonomy grants and makes allowance for secession of regions more than federalism does. For example, both [parts of] Finland and Poland seceded from Russia by utilizing the instruments of regional autonomy enshrined in the Marxist dogma espoused by Lenin’s Bolshevik party. On the contrary, the proposed Somalia Federal Constitution does not make any form of allowance for secession. It upholds the absolute unity of Somalia.

Despite my difference with the Honorable MPs on federalism, I join them in company on the issues of Somalia being under a “soft” occupation, where the nascent Parliament had failed, incompetent leadership at the helm, and where the President is morphing into personal dictatorship.

Recommendations

To regain Somalia’s unadulterated sovereignty accompanied by good governance requires a three pronged public policy discourse:

1. Come up with agreeable and broad-based public policy tools to reestablish a free and secure Somalia; this can only be attained through honest and able leaders at the top so that we can begin to establish an integrated national security forces? There is urgent need of forces integration to attain effective Somali National Army? This requires a national debate.

2. Identify issues of occupation and ways to reverse all international instruments that empower foreign countries and agents: Somali leaders shall take a full count of how many troops are inside the country- be they legal or illegal. A national discourse on the mechanisms to do away with the need for foreign troops, front line countries in particular, should top our national agenda.

3. Reconcile the Somali society at the grass roots level prior to 2016 so that we don’t re-start a tribal war once we take back the country. Such a reconciliation must go beyond the usual backdoor diplomacy between corrupt elites.

Faisal Roble
WardheerNews contributor
Email: faisalroble19@gmail.com
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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.