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By John
Drysdale
One must make no mistake about it, the interests in Somalia of the
United States and Ethiopia arise from their own respective concerns
about the political and economic collapse of Somalia. Not the collapse
itself but Ethiopia’s fear of Somalia’s Islamist penetration of
Ethiopia, and America’s fear of Somalia becoming a redoubt for Al Qaida.
Both these anxieties are real but they do not in themselves explain why
Somalia has collapsed into one of the world’s most dangerous failed
states and what, if anything, can be done about it.
The reasons for Somalia’s collapse have a fifty-year-old history since
1960 of internal and external fiascos, of perennial wars and of civil or
military governance, or no governance at all, that has driven Somalis
frantic with confusion, losing their natural, social equilibrium,
forgetting their sound democratic, cultural heritage, but, alas,
remembering with hatred the ineptitude of the performances by the United
Nations and the United Sates, especially, in Somalia and the
irresponsibility and terror of some of their own leadership.
The fiascos have shown that the first nine years of independence since
1960 - an incomplete union of Somalia and Somaliland known as the Somali
Republic - had at first a workable, though a limited form of unsuitable,
home made democracy and scandalous financial management. The government
became irrecoverably corrupt and was followed by a military coup d’etat
and twenty-one years of Soviet-styled military totalitarianism,
including mass graves for the innocent, without United Nations
intervention at that time. This was followed by inappropriate United
Nations, United States and Ethiopian ad hoc interventions, until to-day
- twenty years later.
There is still no elected Government in sight, only armed, power-seeking
insurgencies in its place, but militarily the insurgents have taken over
most of the towns in Southern and central Somalia. This is a recipe for
a dangerously failed state with poor prospects of recovery.
Recovery is thought by the sadly ignorant United Nations, the United
States and some of the International Community to lie with 4,000 United
Nations African military peace-keepers, now turning military fighting
men, to take on the heavily armed Islamic insurgents with the possible
support again of Ethiopian troops and American airpower to help the
ineffective Transitional Government to defeat its insurgents.
This was tried before when the Islamic courts were driven out of Somalia
in 2006 by combined American air power and Ethiopian armored ground
troops, with the courts now replaced by a more potent, second edition of
the former (not unpopular) Islamic Courts.
The quality and stamina of Somalis as formidable fighting men who have
no qualms about accepting death, is well-documented in wars in which
Somalis participated in Ethiopia in the 16th Century, in Somaliland
against the British for 21 years from 1900 to 1920, and the campaign in
Burma (Myanmar) during World War II, with the First Somali Battalion.
Since 1960., fifty years of international and local incompetence, blood
and terror have destroyed the hopes that Somalia’s peoples once had in
foreigners and in some of their own leadership, turning minds to the one
thing Somalis can trust - Islam. Will history repeat itself?
It probably will if military action is again taken against insurgents by
America and Ethiopia in a never ending spiral of mutual distrust.
Alternatively, recovery, if at all possible, has to be through private
face to face negotiations by proven Somalis and foreigners in this field
with today’s very different leaders, whether it is based on traditional
political concepts or Islamic precepts, or both, there must not be
foreign military interventions to secure a continuing unstable,
one-sided ’solution’.
Ultimately, Somali political leaders of whatever political color, need
foreign assistance. The West, if it is serious about a stable Somalia,
deeply distressed people, and its pirate-infested waterways, needs to
find unique political and development solutions to complex problems in
order to trump undesirable suitors from Eritrea, Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
A new concept of power-sharing is needed, probably based on Somali old
fashioned, but still active and reliable, consensus forms of their
ancient democratic governance, compatible with Islamic precepts (without
decision-making individuals) rather than political parties, which no
longer exist, and the ballot box technique which may not be relevant any
more.
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