“Somalia seeks military and political support”. “Somalia seeks urgent support as it faces rebel ultimatum”. “Somalia president intensely lobbying East African states for support.” These are some of the news headlines this week.
As Somalia sinks deeper and deeper into the nether world, Sheikh Sharif and members of his fictional government are roaming the world looking for money, arms, troops, you name it. We are starting from below zero, they say to anyone who would listen. We need everything, they say. Give us money, arms, and troops and we will defeat the radical Islamists, they say. Nobody is asking them: what happens to the fees that you collect from Mogadishu’s port and airport? Nobody is asking: what happened to the millions you already received? Nobody is asking: how come all the military hardware you received, including the latest 40 tones of arms and munitions from the US have not made any difference in your performance on the battlefield? Nobody is asking them about the fact that their undisciplined militias are selling their weapons to the other side, that their commanders are constantly defecting, that their ranks have been penetrated.
And because nobody is asking the questions that need to be asked, Sheikh Sharif and company are making more and more outlandish claims. Now they are saying give us money and we will end piracy within less than a month. As Abdulrahman Adan Ibrahim, Somalia’s first deputy prime minister said to the Financial Times, “Starting from July 26, if we have the kind of support we want from the international community, we will patrol the whole coastline of Somalia”. And when the Financial Times asked how an entity that controlled only a few blocks in Mogadishu will end piracy, here is how that newspaper described the minister’s reply: “Abdulrahim Adan Ibrahim, fisheries and marine resources minister, insisted that, even though the government controlled only parts of Mogadishu, the capital, it could have the service running by the end of the Indian Ocean monsoon next month.”
Sheikh Sharif and company are promising not only to attack pirates at sea but on land too, which means they are ready to go to war with Puntland, where the pirates are based. As Minister Abdulrahim Adan Ibrahim said, “Unlike the foreign navies now patrolling off Somalia, the coastguard would also seek out pirates on land” because as he put it, “The problem is not coming from the sea. It’s coming from land.”
Of course, of course, all of this good stuff, to use the words of Abdulrahim Adan Ibrahim, “will need foreign funding.” As usual with Sharif and company, it’s all about money. Arms and troops are ok, but their first and foremost goal is to fill their pockets with as much money as possible, before they are either driven out, replaced, or killed. In this respect they are not any different from their predecessors: Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, Ali Khalif Galadyh, Hassan Abshir, Ina Buba, Ali Geedi, and Abdillahi Yusuf, Nur Adde, none of whom left behind a single cent out of the millions they collected in the name of Somalis.
Several sources that had dealings with Sheikh Sharif or Sheikh Xariif (the shady one) as he is called these days concur that he and the people surrounding him are even greedier and hungrier than their predecessors. The fact that he appointed one of his associates, Sharif Hassan, a former seller of Qat (a mild narcotic chewed by Somalis) to the position of finance minister is a pretty good indication that he sees whatever they get as a gift to himself whereby he takes most of it and throws a few morsels to his flunkies. The website Dayniile.com wrote about the rampant corruption among Sheikh Sharif and company: “The ministers who have appropriated huge government funds include the Minister of Planning, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the Minister of Finance, Sharif Hasan Sheikh Adan, the Minister of Fisheries Professor Abdirahman Ibbi, the Minister of Post Offices, the Minister of Commerce Abdirashid Mohammed Irro, Prof. Abdirizaq Jurille and many others.” (Wasiirada sida weyn dhaqaalaha meelaha u dhigtay ayaa ah Wasiirka Qorsheynta Cabdiraxmaan Cabdi Shakuur Warsame, Wasiirka Maaliyadda Shariif Xasan Sheikh Adan ,Wasiirka Kaluumeysiga Prof. C/raxmaan Ibbi iyo Wasiirka Boostada,Wasiirka Ganacsiga Cabdirashiid Maxamed Ciro iyo Isgaarsiinta Prof. Cabdirisaaq Cismaan Jurile iyo kuwa kale oo badan.”)
Sheikh Sharif and his inner circle are actually getting so good at this game of filling their pockets that they figured the best way to keep this racket going is to hire the accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), so that a paper trail and documentation will be created for non-existing projects. PricewaterhouseCoopers will be getting a 2-4% commission. Someone might say to us: but how do you know that PwC will be documenting non-existing projects? Our answer: Because that is the only thing a “government” under siege and holed up in a few blocks in Mogadishu can do.


 

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