Yemen’s Saleh Is Not The Man To Prescribe How ‎Somalis Should Behave

EDITORIAL

Yemeni president Abdulla Ali Saleh is just not the right man to prescribe how the two rival factions in Somalia ’s Transitional Federal Government should end their differences. Mr. Saleh has been the main supplier of arms to the Jawhar-based TFG faction headed by Abdillahi Yusuf. Yemeni military cargo planes and chartered ships discharging new consignments of arms have become a familiar scene at Bossaso’s airport and harbor.

The stockpiling of Yemeni-supplied weapons in his native Puntland and places as far as Jawhar and near Kismayo and Baidawa, have encouraged the former warlord-turned-president Abdillahi Yusuf to prepare for a military rather than peaceful solution to his differences with the Mogadishu-based faction of the TFG.

The scale of this armament, unprecedented since the fall of dictator Barre, together with Abdillahi Yusuf’s persistence to seek deployment of foreign troops to help him prevail over all other clans in Somalia, have been the single most important element in fuelling mistrust and hostilities among the antagonists in Somalia.

President Saleh said that a repressive totalitarian government in Somalia would be preferable to the present vacuum and anarchy. He also paid tribute to former dictator Siyad Barre allegedly for preserving keeping the state intact and preserving unity of Somalia .

Ever since he took power through a military coup de tat about 3 decades ago Col. Abdulla Saleh has ruled Yemen like his own fiefdom. His survival as a ruler depended to a large extent on the support and security protection he continuously enjoyed from his minority Ziyuud tribe which constitutes about 25% of a population of 20.5 million. Like the Alawites of Syria, Saleh’s armed Ziyuud tribesmen subjugate the majority Shawaafec Sunnis as the only way to keep them at bay.

It’s this systematic repression that has been driving many Yemenis to join Al-Qaida rather than Usama Bin Laden’s Yemeni origins. Mr. Saleh is flirting with Abdillahi Yusuf’s idea of building a similar tribal-based dynasty in Somalia on the module of Yemen . He also wants Somaliland to be destroyed lest southern Yemenis are often reminded by their lost independence.

But Yemen ’s little dictator forgets that he himself sits on a time bomb. Somalia ’s name is always mentioned when the world talks about failed state. But Yemen has all the ingredients of a failed state in the making too.

In both Somalia and Somaliland people have learned that unless governance was owned by the people it was worthless.

In Somaliland people have devised their modules for conflict resolution as well as an indigenous governance which facilitated the creation of an enabling environment for peace security and democracy.

In Somalia , appropriate methods for reconciliation and governance haven’t yet emerged mainly due to frequent external attempts to impose ill-devised solutions on the conflict there.

Somalia might seem more precarious than Yemen now, but compared with Yemen , Somalia has better chances to pull itself together and come out potentially as a viable state.

Until then it is better to stay in chaos than living under one tribe’s dictatorship rule as in Yemen .

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