By Jama Mohamed Ghalib
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
As anticipated, catastrophic consequences of human suffering of the recent war of invasion of Somalia sanctioned by the United States of America have been tremendously unfolding. Pathetic news casts continue to emanate from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, by the hour and numerous accounts of these have already been written by Somali scholars and non-Somali writers. All Somali managed cyber-cafes and many other international websites contain a lot of these accounts, as well as stimulating poems of land mark values. A great deal of constructive debate and analyses are abounded. I have read with keen interest many of these written accounts including pertinent articles by Prof. Abdi Ismail Samatar, one of which contains some concrete proposals for a new transitional structural arrangements. And also a PINR article lately prepared by Dr. Michael Weinstein whose reporting on this subject I often concur with. I would, however, like to add a few emphases to the ongoing discourse, just for the record.
- The international community have not even so belatedly come to grips yet with the fundamental basic realities as the only course of resolving the present Somali crises, including the following:
- The key to any such resolution is an all-inclusive and genuine reconciliation process to be held in a neutral venue that can lead to a positive political settlement. Nonetheless, any steps ought to be taken in this direction is for the time being out of the question unless and until the so much abhorred Ethiopian invading forces leave the country and end their illegal occupation, ipso facto.
- The international community naively continues begging the question by their mantra pronouncements of supporting the Ethiopian foisted Trojan horse, the so-called TFG that ingratiated itself with the unholy invasion of the motherland that visited mayhem and misery on the Somali people. By its own making the TFG is already dead for all practical purposes, once and for all. Its supposed incumbents have miserably failed to serve the nation in the last three years and can never be accepted as national leaders by the Somali people. They are not even acceptable to an overwhelming Somali majority to play any more future role in the national crises, because they have become the marked cause of these immediate crises and cannot be part of their solutions. They have become pariahs and not many Somalis will ever want to sit with them on the same table.
2. Even in the event of some temporary rapprochement between the Ethiopian foisted entity and the National Resistance under an unlikely Peace-Keeping Force umbrella, the TFG will hardly out last the departure of that force at the expiry of its mandate. It is, therefore, a waste of both time and resources to attempt making worthless re-adjustments to the existing pseudo transitional structures that have failed to deliver nor can they in the future either, but instead a new transitional order ought to be reconstituted altogether through a process of reconciliation.
3. The necessity for the all-inclusiveness in any future reconciliation process is a sine qua non. Many Somali reconciliations had failed in the past because of the exclusion of some legitimate stakeholders or vice-versa. The oft mentioned eligibility of participants at such reconciliation process, especially repeated by Jendayi Frazer who seems becoming more ignorant of the Somali affairs at every subsequent occasion, appear to be designed to the exclusion of core individuals of the National Resistance against the illegal occupation of their homeland. Any planned exclusion of these legitimate stakeholders will be counterproductive and can only serve to wreck the prospects of a reconciliation ever becoming feasible. Any attempt of such exclusion of the National Resistance would be tantamount to have had the late John Garang excluded from the Sudanese peace process or the Tamil Tigers from that of Sri Lanka.
4. IGAD not only supported the Ethiopian foisted TFG and the subsequent aggression of the foreign invasion of Somalia and its continued illegal occupation. But IGAD has also burnt the last card of its role in the Somali affairs by the resolution of its foreign minister’s meeting of 13 April 2007 despite reservations by some of its members. That resolution, which has been widely condemned by the Somali people both inside and outside the country, praised current Ethiopian actions inside Somalia, the massacre and displacement of thousands of innocent Somali civilians by the indiscriminating artillery firing and aerial bombardment of areas with no presence of the National Resistance. All schools have been forced to close down and the former banditry and all the other lawlessness that had ceased during the short-term authority of the Islamic Courts have resumed since the invasion and the foreign occupation. These Ethiopian war operations have also even obstructed relief efforts among other daily atrocities meted out to the Somali people that have clearly transcended into war crimes, and possibly genocide? Likewise, the AU’s continuous support of the United States sanctioned invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian mercenaries of proxy forces makes itself incapable of effectively addressing the Somali crises any longer.
5. The EU also impaired its proper role in the Somali scenario by at first cobbling together the Eithiopian foisted Trojan horse, the so-called TFG, without support on the ground inside Somalia and has later acquiesced the US Bush administration’s sanctioned aggression against Somalia. By extension, the EU also shares responsibility for the war crimes committed by Ethiopian forces in Somalia. The EU gives Ethiopia a huge financial and humanitarian aid that allows Zenawi to divert a great deal of his national resources to commit military aggression against Somalia and other neighbouring countries.
6. The last meeting of the so-called Somalia Contact Group recently held in Cairo was diversionary and therefore counterproductive. Its only purpose, as Dr. Michael Weinstein also seems to have come close to the assumption that the United States was manoeuvring to salvage the unsalvageable puppet entity, the so-called TFG, from its present abyss by trying to garner international support for it.
7. For the present time the above seem to only leave the League of Arab States chair, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UN and a few others likely to play any positive role in the Somali crises, the United States having misused UN Security Council resolutions about Somalia without the least hindrance by other Council members notwithstanding.
Jama M. Ghalib
[email protected]
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