Hiiraan Online

When IGAD leaders this week summoned members of the Somali Parliament as well as the three highest constitutional officers in the country for an Extraordinary Session in Nairobi, they gave the impression that, granted their de facto lien on Somalia, and their now public displeasure with the inept leadership of the TFG, they were ushering in a new leadership for the dwindling government.

Emblematic of them, however, they dashed the vulnerable hopes of the Somali public once again, and left their Extraordinary Session with an extraordinary inaction. Short of the public jab that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi took at the leadership of the TFG, the Session was yet another wasted opportunity to rearrange Somalia’s political landscape.

The mere presence of the leaders of the main opposition group not only raised an unrealistic hope, but gave the impression that a facelift was in the works for the TFG. Instead, what we got is yet another arbitrary deadline for a “new cabinet,” a particularly depressing phrase.

Notwithstanding IGAD’s realization that the top leadership of the TFG was a “paralysis” on Somalia, (to borrow Zenawi’s characterization), the leaders of the neighbouring countries failed to hold TFG leaders accountable for their disastrous performance.

If the problem of Somalia is not inherently a “security problem” as Zenawi opined, wouldn’t it be wise to infuse a new blood to dysfunctional TFG in order to detoxify its internal relations?

In its final communiqué, IGAD leaders made an interesting observation (one that the rest of Somalis made literally years ago). Among other things, it said that we “regret the lack of unity and unhelpful competition among the leadership of the TFIs [Transitional Federal Institutions] as their working at cross-purposes has been the principal factor that has allowed the deterioration of the security situation in the country, and led to lack of progress in the national reconciliation effort.”

Yet instead of moving to repair this inherent problem, IGAD leaders followed up with this preposterous statement: “[we] call upon the international community to support the strengthening of the TFIs through capacity building and provision of technical assistance.”

For lack of a better word, we are dumbfounded by the audacity of inaction and reverse logic utilized by IGAD. Why in the world, you may ask, would IGAD “call” upon the international community to pour more resources in the Pandora’s Box?

In the absence of a logical response to that vital question, one can only arrive at an old conclusion: that African leaders flock to the rescue of their colleague at times of uncertainty, even if that “leader” is woefully incompetent or categorically incapable.

From the inaction fiasco in Nairobi, Somalis have learned another bittersweet lesson: that the ultimate solution ought to be organic and must come from within. Our IGAD neighbours (minus Djibouti) are distant shadows.

They talk the talk and hardly walk the walk!

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