fiogf49gjkf0d
Abdulkadir A. Hashi
Saturday, October 11, 2008
As reported on the 6 October, 2008 edition of the New Vision Newspaper, President Yoweri Museveni became the first IGAD head of state to officially endorse an IGAD ministerial communiqué on Somalia which would have involved a nearly complete relocation of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia including Parliament, the President, the Prime Minister and Cabinet back to Nairobi four years after it was founded in the Kenyan capital under the partial auspices of this regional organization. IGAD’s unprecedented initiative which would have certainly become a first in the history of the modern nation-state system and has already engendered enough anxiety in Somalia and among Somali communities abroad may have now irreversibly fallen victim to the unwitting propaganda of a lone a Kenyan lawyer.
In the 3 October, 2008 edition of the Daily Nation newspaper Donald B. Kipkorir called upon the governments of Kenya and Ethiopia to “annex and divide” Somalia between themselves as a “final solution” to the long lasting problems of what he calls a “lawless” country. In his article, Kipkorir writes and I quote, “For Kenya and Ethiopia having the Somali legislature to endorse the annexation will be a cake-walk.” He adds, “We will have them convene in one of our Hotels and to pass the appropriate statutes dividing their country.” Despite a series of corrective protestations by well meaning Somalis the author chose to reiterate his nonsensical arguments. I was particularly surprised by the relative ease with which the Daily Nation, Kenya’s supposedly premiere daily publishes his hateful, propaganda.
The Daily Nations will ultimately have to bear some of the responsibility for liberally disseminating this kind of racism and blatant Islamophobia. Kipkorir’s provides unwelcome fodder for those segments of the Somali society most susceptible to conspiracy theory, and unfortunately, in this day and age that is almost all of our estimated ten million souls. Enemies of globalization and good neighborliness and their ideological manipulators are having the field day of their lifetime. Such find sustenance in the kind of impetuous crab so carelessly unleashed here by Kipkorir. Lest then Kipkorir’s is consumed for more than its worth, I thought I take the unenviable task of measuring the Donald’s present day malice against his not too distant musings regarding Kenya and Ethiopia and their capacity to undertake the rather hefty ‘strategic’ task he now assigns them.
In an equally egoistic-check out the first paragraph- opinion he published in the same newspaper in February, http://kidali.blogspot.com/2008/02/commentary-by-donald-kipkorir-at-this.html Kipkorir offers a sharply different portrayal of the state of affairs in Kenya and Ethiopia likening them to the very war-torn Somalia he wants them to conquer. He wrote, “Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda and Somalia…are failed states… Their leaders are tin-pot dictators who brook no divergent view.” In that same piece he advises Kenyans to forego their hard won independence by trading rampant corruption for renewed colonialism. “It is time we begged Britain to come back.” He further writes that. “As said above, Canada, Australia and others have lost nothing for being part of Her Majesty’s Royal Dominions.” The author is clearly unschooled neither in the true nature of the loose relationship between Canada, Australia and Britain nor in Kenya’s own ties with the British Commonwealth.
His love for dominionship can therefore be a function solely of his ignorance about it. “We will remain a parliamentary democracy in its fullest and truest meaning, but under a constitutional monarchy. Being independent and poor is never a source of nationalism.” Yet at the same time as he craves for an imperial solution to Africa’s current and hopefully passing political problems he has the audacity to call President Museveni, a man who took over a country debilitated by the twin evils of civil war and an HIV AIDS pandemic and transformed it into a modern and fast developing African success “an emperor.” The same can, setting our Somalia/Ethiopia problems aside, be said about Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia’s tenure. While ongoing over-expansionist policies in Somalia risk to imperil the impressive economic gains thus far made, Ethiopia under his leadership took considerable developmental strides that are the envy of many African states.
And although Djibouti did not do as well since independence, I am confident that les citoyenne Djiboutienne will rather want to remain free and feeble than to risk being relegated back to a colonial file in a French cabinet. Interestingly, Kipkorir argues in his most recent article, that since Somalia outperforms Kenya economically-his own statistics- conquest will only advance the latter’s imperial efforts. “Kenyans ought to know that although Somalia is a failed state, its positive statistics are impressive. Without a structured economy, its gross national income per capita is US$600 (Sh40,000), when ours is $550 (Sh36,800).” This demonstrates a surprisingly shallow understanding of ‘strategy’ which among other things requires careful weighing of desirable objectives against available means. How can Kenya conquer Somalia when the latter is, according to your own statistics, outperforming her; when the most high prized freight destined to her ports is being somewhat helplessly daily harassed by the ill-reared, bare naked boys of this apparently much coveted, ripe for conquest El dorado, and, finally, when you have no confidence neither in your own nor in your proposed co-conspirator’s ability to pull the trick off?” This is unbelievably dumb, Donald! Your lack of the most fundamental familiarity with your favorite fields-liberal democracy, terrorism, Her Majesty the Queen’s relationship with former British colonies and vice versa-, strategy, Somalia, so on and so forth is staggering to say the least.
Hence the following ABCs: Donald you might want to know that Liberal democracies like Britain are not as nostalgic about colonialism as you, a first rate lawyer of Kenya’s First Court apparently are, and would have liked them to be; that Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not ruled from Queen Elizabeth II intoxicatingly impressionable palaces and that their constitutional relationships with London are not an iota different from Kenya’s and for that matter Uganda’s; that Somalia was not always a failed, lawless space where half-naked, rag-tag pirates erect maritime roadblocks in the high seas; that not all Arab and Islamic states sympathize with or support terrorism; and, finally, that western liberal democracies and certainly most of their citizens including this writer are too sophisticated to consume for ‘liberalism’ the kind of Mein Kampf-kish populism carelessly spewed by Kipkorir. The only effect your piece will likely have is to thwart, if unwittingly, this controversial initiative by IGAD on Somalia. May be this was a god send of sorts after all!
Abdulkadir Abdi Hashi is a former Somali diplomat. He holds an MPA and an MA in international relations from Brock University in Canada and West Virginia University where he is also a doctoral candidate respectively. His research interests include International Conflict, Terrorism, African Politics. He can be reached through [email protected]
Related: