Monday, April 27, 2009
He controls only fragments of Somali territory and even these are vulnerable to attack by Islamist militias (once his allies). To extend the writ of the trans-itional government and restore stability and services he must neutralise warlords, insurgents and now pirates responsible for turning Somalia since 1991 into the archetype of state failure. Yet he has few basic tools of state to hand.
Nonetheless, the 44-year-old former schoolteacher from a family of Sufi clerics notched up a breakthrough last week, securing $213m (€162m, £145m) of backing at a donor conference in Brussels both for African peacekeepers and for a new national security force. Hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian and reconstruction aid could follow.
The outcome of the conference has raised hopes that for the first time since the mid-1990s, when Mogadishu warlords forced UN peacekeepers into retreat, there are the makings of a concerted effort to reassemble Somalia's broken parts.
"There has always been this issue of the international community not being forthcoming enough and not being forthcoming enough at the right time," Sheikh Ahmed told the Financial Times.
"Secondly, there has been a lack of leadership that has been ready on the Somali side to seize the opportunity . . . Today we believe these two things have come together," he said in an interview accompanied by his Oxford-educated foreign minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Omar.
The fresh impetus derives partly from Somali pirates. Their proliferating attacks on a busy trading route have defied a fleet of naval vessels from around the world, pointing up the need to act on land as well as sea.
It makes little sense, Mr Omar argued, that the pirates can earn as much as $150m a year in ransoms while the government has been unable to raise a fraction of that to curtail them. If that situation is beginning to change, it is partly thanks to budding confidence in Sheikh Ahmed.
His profile is very different from the warlords and politicians associated with 15 prior attempts to create a viable government since 1991.
First stirred into opposing Somalia's myriad profiteers by the kidnapping of one of his students, he rose to prominence as leader of an alliance of sharia courts, the Islamic Courts Union.
ICU militias captured Mogadishu in 2006 and for six months were able to restore order to much of southern Somalia, enforcing at times puritanical forms of Islamic rule. This virtually eliminated piracy.
But Washington was preoccupied then with alleged links between al-Qaeda and extremists within the ICU and gave the green light to neighbouring Ethiopia (which had its own reasons) to oust them.
Events turned full circle when Ethiopian troops withdrew, their former warlord ally resigned as head of the transitional government and Sheikh Ahmed emerged from exile in January as Somlia's new leader, elected by parliament.
He has brought with him moderate elements of the Islamist resistance movement and is attempting to build further alliances within Somalia's complex web of clans. But the government is still opposed by radical al Shabab militias active across southern Somalia with support from foreign jihadists.
Sheikh Ahmed says he is prepared to accommodate any willing party in reconciliation efforts, something that could yet make western donors uncomfortable.
His reconstruction plans hinge initially on establishing Islamic sharia, something that is both "practically and psychologically" vital to "bringing people on board for the reconstruction of the state", he says.
Sharia has become the closest thing to a set of rules governing Somali society and was passed as national law in parliament last week. Sheikh Ahmed wants to build up a national army, police and judiciary to enforce it and take on the pirates and other elements opposed to peace.
"Preparations in terms of the readiness of the public for peace are gathering pace. In parallel, if we are also able to get the security forces on the ground operational, we believe it will be almost a natural process for the rule of law and the administration to reach those parts where they don't already exist," he said. "There will come a time when those who act illegally either have to leave or . . . give themselves up."
Judging by the crowds who travelled across Europe to see him in Brussels, he carries significant goodwill from the Somali diaspora. Last month his government raised $1.5m in duties at the Mogadishu port. On Friday it passed a national budget, the first since 1991.
These are small beginnings. But there is a whiff of hope Sheikh Ahmed
may succeed, where countless others failed, in converting them to something bigger.
Source: FT Times, April 27, 2009