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By Saeed Farah Abdi
Let alone resolving their longstanding tribally-based political feuds, Somali participants in the current peace-making gathering in Nairobi are reported to have had, on December 17, another dog-fight among themselves. In light of this latest episode there is a glaringly imminent failure out of the IGAD sponsored 14-month old Nairobi gathering, named the reconciliation conference, by the funding international Community. For the last decade, similar conferences organized by the international community, had taken place in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, etc., with the same theme: reconciliation conference for Somalia. But the outcome of those meetings was invariably impotent and unproductive. In view of the successive failures of those many peace-making endeavors, it is tempting to briefly review their recent history which may highlight the underlying causes of the intractable situation within the failed state of Somalia.
On July 1st, 1960, Southern Somalia, which had been under the infamous Italian colonial system of Africa Orientale for more than 80 years, and the British protectorate of Somaliland merged, embracing the name "Somali Republic", with a unitary system of constitution. In less than a year this development proved to be unmanageable. The republic's top officials, including the President Adan Abdille Osman, the Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermaarke, the Minister of Interior Abdirazad Haji Hussein, the Minister of Finance alternately Haji Farah Ali Omer, and Abdel Qadir Mohamed Adan (Sobbe), General of the National Army Daud Abdille Hersi and General of the Police Force, Mohamed Abshir Musa, were all southerners.
But the great imbalance in the division of political power can't be blamed solely on the southerners. A major part of it was attributable to the politically immature and sentimental northerners. For on their arrival in Mogadishu on 1 July 1960 for the union, the northerners, obsessed with "Somali Weyn" - greater Somalia - surrendered and forsook all their regional political rights. Consequently, the political event celebrated in July 1960 developed into a lamentable and painful exercise. A volatile situation and unease emerged in the northern half where even integrating government civil servants was difficult to implement. The reason for the difficulties faced in integrating the two administrations was, mostly, due to differences in the colonial heritages which they inherited from the 19th-century "great African hunt" by the western colonial powers.
The first presidential contest on 7th July 1961 was between two candidates of the Hawiye clan: Sheik Ali Jimaale Barale and Adan Abdille Osman, reflecting the predominance of the Hawiye clan in southern Somalia. Because of his marital connection with the Majeerteen, a sub-clan of Darood, Adan Abdille, the Speaker of Assemblea Nazionale (Southern Parliament) won the contest by one vote. He thus became the first president of that quasi nation state of Somalia. He was a cool-headed liberal and a man of peace. In addition to the usurpation of political power by the southerners, development projects, mostly provided by friendly foreign countries, were concentrated in the South. President Adan Osman's position being mostly ceremonial, he didn't concern himself with correcting the imbalance and did not try to harmonize the two sides already in political conflict. He was often considered more attached to former Italian officials (and later to the banana-exporting Italian community in Mogadishu).
A military mutiny or attempted coup d'etat led by Lieutenant Hassan Abdille Walan Wal, which took place in Hargesia in late 1961, was a manifestation of discontent in the North. However, northerners grudgingly remained a part of the sloppy political partnership only to experience at later times more alienating and destructive developments.
The imprudently implemented political union had one positive dimension for the South. In the last days of the pre-independence government of Prime Minister Abdillahi Isse Mohamoud, many anticipated a violent scenario in the capital Mogadishu, over who should be in Villa Somalia (the presidency) on independence day. Beyond a shadow of doubt, a violent confrontation would have ensued between the Hawiye clan, led by Sheik Ali Jimaale Barrale, a powerful minister in control of all the social ministries and the Darood clan under the leadership of Haji Musa Boqor who was in control of the Interior Ministry. Thanks to the arrival of the un-bargaining northerners, with a mere proposal of unconditional merger, the broadly envisaged violent political battle between the two southern Somali tribes was averted.
As time went by, on 7th July 1967, the second presidential election was to be conducted by the national parliament. As required by the constitution the contest had taken place on the same day - 7th July 1967 - between the incumbent president and a former prime minister - Abdirashid Ali Shemarke. 64 out of 122 National assembly members from different political parties cast their votes in favour of Abdirashid Ali Shemaarke, ending the 7-year presidency of Adan Abdille Osman. Because of the crucial role northern parliamentarians played in the voting process, the new president appointed Mohamed Ibrahim Egal as the Prime Minister. Yassin Noor Hassan, a 40-year-old millionaire MP, who was not only a close political associate but also had tribal affinity with the president, was given the interior ministry portfolio.
Unfortunately, the millionaire minister of interior put irresistible pressure on both the president and his premier, persuading them to support his policies for the forthcoming third parliamentary election and on his part undertaking to ensure the second 7-year term for the president, with the rest of the government remaining in power. He was allowed to have absolute and unconstitutional powers to handle the process for the third national parliamentary election to be held in a 3 months' time on 30th March 1969. In accordance with his autocratic policies for scooping more than 70% of parliamentary seats, a machiavellian political formula was adopted. Under the illegal method, more than 60 so-called contesting political parties were created and funded by the government within a short period of two months, causing a wider division and disarray in the country.
Because of the untold rigging, more than 50 out of the 64 parliamentarians or the "kingmakers" who voted for Abdirashid Ali Shermaarke, lost their parliamentary seats. But the fraudulent strategy of the notorious minister of interior brought about violent confrontations in 6 regions of the Republic in which 12 died and 50 were wounded in Togheer, Sool, Garowe, Qardho, Aildheer and Baydhabo, in both northern and southern Somalia. The national assembly was packed with the uneducated, inexperienced - some of them drivers by profession - and people who had no idea of what a parliamentary mandate really meant. They went by the "man proposes and God disposes" age-old dictum.
The illustrious President Abdirashid Ali Sheramaarke was assassinated on 15 September 1969 in Lasanod, northern Somalia, by his own police bodyguard. Thus, with the government having already earned a bad reputation and being unpopular with the general public, a military coup d'etat led by General Mohamed Siyaad Barre took place on October 21, 1969 in which he took over the reigns of government, and put Prime Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Egal and his government behind bars. But Mr. Yassin Noor Hassan, the millionaire minister of interior of the overthrown government, was not jailed because Mohamed Siyaad Barre owed him a favor. Sometime earlier, Premier Egal, who saw Siyaad Barre as a potential threat to the establishment, had sought to get him out of the way by proposing that he be sent to Lavove Military Academy in Russia for two years. Yassin blocked the move on tribal ground (Darood), reflecting the absence of either a party-line or principled politics. So, in Somalia, tribalism and political blindness could serve as a protection, for it provided a golden opportunity for Mohamed Siyaad Barre to stage a military coup d'etat.
Now, with the embryonic Somalia plunged into the hands of a military dictatorship, not trained even in the Soviet-style socialist system they were to implement, and pawns in the service of cold-war politics, suppression and totalitarian methods of government were soon felt domestically. Taking their cue from "Socialist advisers" of the Soviet bloc countries and in total disregard of local conditions, the Junta immediately nationalized all export and import businesses. Agricultural products or crops such as sorghum or maize could be sold only to the newly established Agricultural Development Agency (ADA) at less than 6 USD per quintal, far below the production, paving the way for complete stoppage of agro-production for profit making.
Expressing anti-policy opinion or verbal or written critique against the military Junta soon became taboo.
To preclude possible opposition, 3 military officers, 2 generals and one colonel and 11 clerics were executed in Mogadishu, in the early 1970s for alleged anti-government activities. The repressive policies forced many Somali professionals to flee the country, leaving behind ill-oriented, hand-clapping masses in public rallies, and chanting empty slogans: "Hawl-iyo-Hanti-wadaag" (commonly owned socialist development).
In the early days of his rule, Siyaad Barre, with the exception of a few experts and technocrats from other clans, tribalised his administration in the hope that the entire Darood clan would ultimately rally around his government.
Soon after the abortive coup d'etat in early 1978 by young military officers, the dictator became paranoid, trusting only his own Marehan clan and few of his political cronies like the Minister of Defense, General M.A. Samater from a minority clan. A former police officer during the colonial days and adept in the art of divide and rule, Mohamed Siyaad Barre managed to forestall the unity of several tribally- based armed anti-government insurgencies, established outside Somalia during the 1980s. Hypocritically reviving the old tribal tactics of ''Daroodism'' in 1985, he succeeded in courting the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), a small guerrilla force that was operating in the central region of Galkayyao. With the exception of a few men, including its leader, Colonel Abdillahi Yusuf, SSDF abandoned the struggle and laid down their arms in exchange for government positions, mostly in northern Somalia, and other rewards.
At the same time, he promulgated yet another oppressive legislation to be applied more rigorously in northwestern Somalia where another northern-based armed insurgency - the Somali National Movement (SNM) - was waging effective guerrilla warfare against the Hargeisa based 26th military sector. General Mohamed Hashi Gani, a close relative of the dictator, and General Mohamed Saeed Hersi Morgan, his son-in-law, the alternate commanders of the 26th military sector (the strongest segment of the Somali national army) were at the same time the governors of the six northern regions. The two henchmen reactivated the notorious National Security Service (NSS), Dhaberjebin (back-breakers) and other para-military organizations. Arbitrary arrests, torture, detention without trials, summary executions and rapes were the order of the day. The shocking and heinous crimes committed in the then northwestern Somalia (Somaliland) during the 1980s, are too long to enumerate.
General Morgan, General Mohamed Hashi Gaani and other war criminals should have, long ago, been arrested and held accountable for massacring over 50,000 people and the disappearance of countless civilians. To recite only a few of the atrocities committed, in June 1984, 44 merchants were dragged out of their shops, stores and commercial sites in Burao town, Togheer region, kept in the district military barracks and summarily executed a few days later. In August of the same year, 52 men suspected to be SNM sympathizers were, according to SNM reports dumped alive into 80 meters long water wells in Gebiley, 60 km northwest of Hargeisa, and perished there. Around that time, the livestock export trade from Berbera port to Saudi Arabia, usually in the hands of experienced traders from the local Issaq clan, was made an exclusive monopoly of a few untrained men of the president's Marehan clan.
A high price had to be paid in order to liberate the north from this tribally-based oppression. In 1988, Hargeisa, the second capital, was subjected to an aerial bombardment by artillery pieces and by Mig fighter planes to flush out possible remnants of SNM sympathizers. To escape the onslaught, men, women, children and the elderly, from the main centers of Hargeisa, Burao and Berbera, had to flee in a mass exodus to refugee camps in eastern Ethiopia set up by the UNHCR. The refugees from northern Somalia (currently Somaliland) stayed in these Ethiopian camps for more than 10 years, because their original homes in Somaliland were ruined and destroyed by the Somali military's indiscriminate aerial bombardment. The criminal actions and atrocities committed by the power-hungry dictator, Siyad Barre, rendered the whole concept of the once-cherished Somali unity to be profoundly detested. As verified by UN human right officials in 1998-1999, mass graves of hundreds of people in hand-cuffs or tied together were discovered in Hargeisa, Buroa and Berbera in Somaliland.
Undoubtedly, exacerbated by a century of a colonial rule, the foul-smelling phenomenon of Somali tribalism was revived by Siyad Barre's 20 odd years in power. International efforts during the last decade aimed at finding a solution to the conflict, specifically in southern Somalia, have all proved to be futile and to no avail. The reason is that those who were 10 years of age when Mohamed Siyaad Barre seized power are now over 40 years of age, and they not only constitute 70% of the present Somali population but have never experienced anything else. They have grown up in a tribal and sectarian political environment. Despite huge funding by the international community, anyone familiar with the situation doesn't expect success out of the 14-month-old IGAD-sponsored, peace-making meeting currently taking place in Nairobi, Kenya.
Because its country is affected by the Somali question, the present Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has made a real commitment toward finding a solution to this problem, painstakingly bringing together the greatest number of southern warlords for reconciliation - the best initiative by far - again to no avail. Reconciliation endeavors of the last 10 years initiated and funded by various bodies of the international community have achieved one and only one thing: legitimizing un-credentialed war criminals like General Mohamed Saeed Hersi Morgan, the son-in-law of the late dictator. The remnants of the old regime are trying to make a comeback after being called "Somali leaders" by the reconciliation-sponsoring international community.
Again, it is the legacy of the former regime's policy that made the situation intractable. The southern warlords in Nairobi are not interested in peace-making. The only thing they know is to have dog-fights in the lobbies of expensive hotels, while their bills are paid by the international community. If the international community is really interested in finding a solution for Somalia, they must focus on Somalia itself where they could find elders, real traditional leaders and native headmen who never had formal schooling, but ironically, are better equipped for successful tribal negotiations than the present warlords who are commercializing and trading on the pains of their people. Whereas modern international political mediation of the Somalia conflict has failed for the last 10 years, there is an 85% probability of a lasting peace if negotiations are conducted using the traditional method, under the acacia tree.
The author served as a Member of Parliament from 1964 to 1969, elected from Burao, Somaliland, and was an ally and one of the advisers of the late President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal of Somaliland.
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