Al-Shabaab cuts someone’s arm and leg. Al-Shabaab stones someone to death. Al-Shabaab carries out suicide bombings. Al-Shabaab desecrates graves. Al-Shabaab kicks out international NGOs. Al-Shabaab bans listening to the BBC and VOA. Al-Shabaab orders Mogadishu’s residents not to eat meat. Al-Shabaab indulge in these crazy and criminal actions with such a monotonous regularity it is hard to expect anything else from them. But truth be told, when it comes to craziness al-Shabaab does not have a monopoly on it. Actually, western rhetoric and some of the Western policies towards Somalis are as crazy as al-Shabaab’s. After all what is crazier than American officials saying that the Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu offers “a window of opportunity” for peace and security in Somalia; or American officials calling Abdillahi Yusuf’s TFG Somalia’s best hope. Once it finally dawned on US officials that Abdillahi Yusuf was not the “best hope” that they were trying to market to Somalis but the Somalis’ worst nightmare, they dropped him, then began to use the very same epithets to describe Sheikh Sharif, the man they recruited to take Abdillahi Yusuf’s place. Suddenly Sheikh Sharif was no longer the head of a terrorist organization and the man who introduced the desecration of graves to Somalia but a “moderate Islamist”. Clinton said about him, “the best hope we have had in quite some time for a return to stability and the possibility of progress in Somalia.” Even when Sheikh Sharif introduced the Sharia law, Deputy Assistant Secretary Phillip Carter justified it by saying “it will have to be looked at within the context of reconciliation in Somalia”. Asked to give an assessment of Sheikh Sharif’s first year in office, Mark Zimmer, a public affairs officer in the US Embassy in Kenya said, “He has done a tremendous job”.
Lately, even British officials began to join in this American non-sense. A good example is the claim in the UK-Somalia press statement which said that Sheikh Sharif was helping in the release of British hostages Paul and Rachel Chandler. This is a ridiculous statement because Sheikh Sharif’s influence and authority is limited to 2 km of Mogadishu and he has no influence over the pirates who are hundreds of miles away (unless reports of the British government using Sheikh Sharif as a conduit for bribing the pirates are true). Another example is the recent claim by the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that the “Tide [is] Turning Against Extremism” in Somalia, when in fact al-Shabaab’s influence in south-central Somalia is on the rise and the areas under its control have increased. With statements like these, no wonder that David Miliband was called Britain’s “least significant foreign secretary”.
Al-Shabaab is a rigid, extremist organization that does not give much weight to logic or persuasion. Whereas Western countries pride themselves on their democratic culture which are based on rationality and persuasion. However, when it comes to Somali policy and commentary on Somali issues, Western countries, particularly the US, and lately Britain, have shown the same predilection for crazy statements and self-serving policies as al-Shabaab.


























 

Home | Contact us | Links | Archives | Search