By Mohamud Tani

Somaliland is in the process of reclaiming all land within its historical and internationally demarcated boundaries. That is something good for the Puntlanders if they understand that peace and good neighborly relations is fundamental to human coexistence. The question is do they?

In Mogadishu Abdillahi Yusuf began his days with genocide. Before even establishing a rudimentary Administration, he and his allies killed thousands and thousands of civilians. They maimed tens of thousands more. They displaced hundreds of thousands. What has happened recently in Mogadishu is in chronicles with Srebrenica, with the holocaust, with what happened in Rwanda and with Afwiene regime’s terror at the present day Somaliland. I take my hat off for my friend Dr Abdishakur Ali Jowhar for identifying himself with the victim in his Ich bin ein Hawiye.

Soon Abdillahi Yussuf will join the fate of Milosevic and Charles Taylor. The very allies who are backing him now will take him to Hague in chains. He is becoming an international embarrassment. Ethiopia will soon wash its hands off the arch criminal. Will he claim at the court that he is just a escape goat? I wonder!

Those who are clapping hands for Abdillahi Yussuf‘s crimes now. Those who are manning their children with his forces busy at his women and children killing fields. Those in Puntland. They will be the greatest losers. They still have time for redemption. Puntland and its people must disown him before it’s too late for them. If they do not do that now, they have much to explain later on. History is full of people who followed a mad man to hell. I am warning the people of Puntland from the fate of the Serbians and the Nazis and the Hutu extremists who lived ever after in the life of a mind tormented by crimes that they tried to justify in the name of revenge.

Abdillahi Yussuf is a citizen of Somalia. He has every right to be the president of his own country. I can not enjoy the same right. I am from a different country called Somaliland. What Abdillahi Yussuf and nobody else have the right to do is to be the MONSTER in Mogadishu or anywhere else. What is unfortunate is that it looks like the Monster has carved himself a place in the minds and the hearts of the people of Puntland. What I’m telling the people of that region is to save their souls and to exorcise their minds from the Abdillahi Yussuf mania that is possessing it right now. Never support a criminal. It will always haunt you!!!

mohamudtmohamud_t@yahoo.com