Hiiraan Online

by Bashir Goth
Sunday, October 05, 2008

As the piracy of the Somali coast took a new and dangerous turn with the hijacking of a ship carrying T-72 Tanks, rocket-propelled grenades and other ammunition destined for Southern Sudan, a Kenyan lawyer had the audacity to call neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia to annex the hapless country and divide it between them as a final solution for the Somali problem.

In his opinion article carried by Kenya’s Daily Nation, Mr. Donald Kipkorir, who is an advocate of the Kenyan High Court, argued annexing Somalia was the strategic interest for Kenya, viewing it as the only way to stop Kenya’s tourism industry from teetering towards destruction.

But what Mr.Kipkorir sees as a strategic interest is a strategic miscalculation for disaster which will not only bring the destruction of Kenya and Ethiopia but will usher in an era of balkanization in the entire region of the Horn of Africa.

Mr.Kipkorir forgets that Kenya and Ethiopia are tribal mine fields that are waiting to be triggered and his call for the annexation of Somalia is only what it needs to start genocides in Kenya and Ethiopia. One has to remember the recent election crisis in Kenya and how the country stood on the brink of ethnic fragmentation. Kenya has more than 42 ethnic groups, speaking more than 62 languages and adhering to various religious affiliations while Ethiopia has about 118 ethnic groups with almost similar number of languages and different religions. The summer 2008 ethnic strife resulting from the Presidential election crisis had exposed the fragility of the Kenyan peace and stability and the degree of hatred and hostility among the Kenyan tribes. The scenes of machete-wielding mobs slaughtering their neighbors and looting shops reminded the world of the horrors of Ruwanda. These were just symbolic of how ugly a tribal strife can turn in Kenya if something disturbs the elusive patchwork of loose tribal confederation called Kenya.

Mr.Kipkorir also seems to have forgotten that despite its current problems, Somalia is the only homogenous country in Africa. Somalis are one ethnic group who speak the same language and adhere to the same religion. They may look divisive and anarchic in their internal skirmishes on the country’s meager resources but they have history of quickly clinging together when they face a common foreign threat.

Remember Mr.Kipkorir, it is these people that you call rag-tag army of semi naked men that stood against the British and Italian armies for 20 years in one of the longest drawn out African rebellions against foreign occupation. It was the dervish movement led by the Somali hero Mohammed Abdulla Hassan, known in history as the Mad Mulla, the derogative name given to him by the British, that the Royal army failed to defeat until it used military aircraft against them in the first aerial bombardment ever used by a European power in Africa, even before the Italian air bombardment of Libya.

It was the same rag-tag Bedouin army led by another Somali hero Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (c1507-1543), who conquered much of Ethiopia; prompting vanquished Ethiopian emperor Lebna Dengel (reigned 1508–40) to appeal to Portugal for help. By then, the Imam, known as Gran or Guray, left-handed, marched all the way to the province of Tigray where he defeated an Ethiopian army that confronted him there, and on reaching Axum destroyed the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in which the Ethiopian emperors were coronated for centuries.

http://wardheernews.com/Articles_06/Jan/28_Akbar's%20Somalia%20Notebook_BGoth.htm

It is the same rag-tag army of semi naked men that forced the American army to flee from Mogadishu after the Black Hawk Down battle. Despite its gruesome history which we Somalis are not proud of, it showed the grit and the mettle of the Somali people when they are forced into a corner.

Now, Mr.Kipkorir if you really want to invite these modern Mongols to Kenya to turn Nairobi into ruins, then you better know what you are calling for. Invading Somalia will not be a piece of cake as you tried to portray it and the Somali legislatures in Nairobi will not be easy to walk over. The moment the first Kenyan bullet is shot inside Somalia, Nairobi will explode and the Kenyan patchwork will fall apart. And God knows how many Kenyan mini-states will emerge from the ashes. And this is not a thing that I wish for my Kenyan brothers. I am proud of what they have achieved until now because unlike Mr. Kipkorir, I pride myself in the progress made by any African country, let alone my neighbors.

Contrary to your argument Mr.Kipkorir, Somalia was not a lawless state until 1960 and if you are not aware, Somalia was the first country in Africa where an elected civilian president was replaced in a democratic election in 1967. Aden Abdulla Othman was the first African President to hand over the reins of power to his successor Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke when Kenya was languishing under one-man rule. Somalia was not a haven for terrorists and pirates as you tried to paint it but as you know Somalia had the strongest and best disciplined army in the 70s. It was Somalia that negotiated a peace deal between the neighboring countries of Nyerere’s Tanzania and Idi Amin’s Uganda.

You must know Mr.Kipkorir that with the exception of Mogadishu every other town in the Somali region whether it is in Somaliland, Puntland, Baidoa or even Kismayo at the border of Kenya have better degree of security than your cosmopolitan Nairobi. In Hargeisa for example like any other town of former Somalia, women sell gold in the open market and leave it without any guard at times of prayer without anyone stealing it, while in Nairobi people are killed for the watches they wear and the mobile phones they carry in bright day light.

It is true that we have problems in our country and that due to a strange amalgam of tribal and alien ideological factors, Somalis cannot make reconciliation among themselves but by the same token one cannot deny the ingenuity of the Somali people in creating business and managing to prosper amid calamity. The bustling business the Somali community has established in Nairobi’s Eastleigh area is something that should invoke a sense of pride in you as an African and not enrage you.  It may also be worth mentioning that over the past difficult 18 years, the Somali people have founded more airlines than they ever had, created more schools and universities that any African country has and built some of the most beautiful hotels and bungalows in the peaceful parts of the country.

  As an imminent lawyer, you should have known better Mr.Kipkorir than taking America’s annexation of Texas from Mexico in 1845 as a legal precedent to support your alleged invasion and annexation of Somalia. You know that the 19^th century was a time for international robbery. Although slavery was in its dying days, European powers were dividing Africa as booty among themselves in the Scramble for Africa conference of Berlin in 1884. It is therefore a pity that a man of law, a son of Africa in the 21^st century and an heir of Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau warriors, a semi-naked men like us, had to call for the colonization of Africans by Africans in the 21^st century.

I hope you are aware Mr.Kipkorir that if your wish were ever realized, you would be the first to suffer and that you would not be writing such insidious articles in ritzy hotels in Nairobi but will be biting your fingers in a feeding center in the African bush, probably feasting on dates donated by the Arabs whom you pride yourself in their enmity, ignoring that you owe so many things to them even your Swahili language. I hope you could handle that because the semi-naked Somalis have handled it for so many years.

How shameful, Mr.Kipkorir, that in your desperate attempt to give your loyalties to the West, you had to belittle your country by describing it as an ally of the West and therefore a natural enemy of the Arabs. “The truth of the matter is that as a Western ally, Kenya is an existential enemy of the Arab countries, Sudan included,” you said, forgetting that 11 out of 53 African countries are Arabs and that the West will not blink an eye to sacrifice the whole of Kenya including its safari tourism for the Arab oil.

Mr.Kipkorir, it would have more becoming of you as an African intellectual to call for united Horn of African countries where the brotherly countries of the region can share their resources and face the challenges of globalization, rising oil prices and crumbling financial markets as a common front instead of calling for the colonization of Africans by Africans. This is exactly what Djibouti, that little African country that you tried to trash in your article, is doing by attracting hitherto unprecedented international investment for one of the dream projects of Africa; which is to link Africa to Arabia with a bridge across the red sea. This is what I call strategic thinking my African brother and not mobilizing your forces to blunder your suffering African neighbors.

I am not sure whether you are intentionally trying to reopen the old wounds of the division of the Somali people by the colonial powers and test the resolve of the Somali people to reviving their dream of greater Somalia, but if that is your intention then rest assured brother that unlike you Somalis know that in the 21^st century they would be in a better shape to have greater Africa than greater Somalia.