Hiiraan Online

Abdisalam Hereri, another former BBC broadcaster, who, along with Awke, unceremoniously left the BBC to join the VOA last year, also left Washington.

His whereabouts as far as career goals are somewhat murky. He is said to be joining a relatively unknown and an upstart TV station, Raad TV, based in London.

Awke’s reincarnation at the BBC, which was debuted with a high profile assignment in Djibouti, where a peace conference was underway, is remarkably telling. Last year, when he was leaving for the VOA, he trashed the BBC on air, implicitly suggesting that it was morphing into a dogmatic institution dominated by an unyielding editor.

The VOA, he declared then, was the future.

In uttering those words, Awke didn’t only seem to be burning crucial bridges, but he was committing a cardinal sin in the professional world, where, even if you despise your leadership, you don’t lambaste them publicly, for you don’t know if and when you will need them---which is exactly what happened in this case.

To hire him back at the BBC, nevertheless, could mean one of three things.

First, Awke must be an endangered specie in his field (his broadcasting talents are undeniably superior) that the leadership of the BBC felt compelled to recapture him.

Secondly, Awke must have atoned and repented about his charges against the BBC. But as far as I know, he didn’t do so publicly. Maybe he plans to do so. Privately, though, Awke does regret about what he said. I was told that he blames Hereri, his younger colleague, for losing his permanent job and his seniority at the BBC. He was rehired as a freelancer, I was told.

Thirdly, Yusuf Garaad, the editor of the BBC Somali Service, must be naïve in his managerial judgment to think that rehiring Awke will somehow make him look like the winner vis-à-vis the VOA.

Indeed, that may well be the perception of many Somalis. But substantively speaking, the VOA doesn’t seem to be limping for Awke or Hereri, or even the other two journalists that left before them.

Under the new leadership of Abdirahman Yabarow, who since last week is officially the chief of the service, its performance is surprisingly decent, notwithstanding fewer resources and now fewer broadcasters.

As it stands, though, the VOA suffers from a net loss of four journalists in a short span.

But the cat-and-mouse game between the two foreign entities is unlikely to be over. Rumors are already in full circle that we are bound to witness another spectacular staff swap.

But the whole episode illustrates that both the VOA and the BBC have lost sight of their key responsibility, which is to inform us, and veered off toward a nasty and unnecessary dog fight. That Yusuf Garaad is still in the mentality of tit-for-tat after almost a decade at the helm of the BBC is inexcusably wrong.

He needs to seriously focus on improving the quality of the BBC. Rehiring Awke (with all due respect) hardly seems like a step in that direction. For all practical purposes, Awke is not a 21^st century star. The VOA learned this lesson the hard way. When he was in Washington, Awke didn’t deliver the overnight success that the VOA had yearned for.

Same goes for Yabarow. His tenure at the VOA will be evaluated not on the big names he hires; rather, on the small steps he takes to remake the VOA’s image, which is, quite honestly, less than flattering, for its perceived hidden American agenda.

To register quantifiable success, both services need to actively recruit the abundant young talents instead of recycling old timers with little or no modern day capability.

Ibrahim Sheikh-Nor comments on Somali media. Feedback is welcome at my email: [email protected]