A Little Advice for Sheikh Sharif

by Hassan Zaylai 
Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Mr. President: win or lose your current struggle with your former Islamist colleagues on legitimate principles. Your presidency over Somali national-unity government obligates you and all the members of your government to speak and act on behalf of the Somali national interest.

The existence and utility of one clan elders’ organization in Mogadishu has been and still is antithetical to the nation’s interest. For that reason, you missed an opportunity, upon taking office in Mogadishu, to disband the Hawiye’s Traditional and Unity Organization. Such one clan-identified entity should have been transformed into Pan-Somali Elders, in the symbolic city of pan-Somalia. Instead, you have continued to make use of it.

It is one thing to have clan elders whose concerns are confined to their own subclan issues, for which no government can dictate against. This has been a long-standing Somali tradition and always separate from state affairs. It is quite another, this is new in Somali entire history, to have a major Somali clan represented in this way of meddling and mischief-making.

As far as I know, there has never been any recallable Somali history in which a major Somali clan was unified and spoken on its entire behalf. Therefore, this all-Hawiye thing is clear subterfuge to begin with. The same would apply if there were ever all-Darood, All-Isaaq, and all-Rahanwayn elders’ organization. The very existence of such organization is and could only be someone’s idea to play a clan card—whenever the need for it arises—for their selfish interest and against all Somali interest. The two interests cannot be reconciled or coexist, period!

One of many evidences on this is the following. Just yesterday, it was reported a revealing statement from Ahmed Mire, the self-appointed spokesman for all Hawiye. He said: I regret a promise I made, when Ethiopians were in Mogadishu, that “If the Ethiopians left Somalia, I guarantee there will be no more fighting in Somalia.” To me, such an arrogant statement, as it were, could have only been made out of the delusion of “war and peace in Somalia only dependent on the Hawiye clan.”

Clearly, with no shadow of a doubt, the destruction of Somalia, for the last 18 years, was done by Hawiye’s successive misleaders. I suspect these misleaders are not ready to confess it. However, this only proves how any major clan, such as the Hawiye, in a tribal society, with devilish leadership, can devastate a country. All things being equal, in negative clan politics and opportunities to implement them, the Rahanwayn could have done just the same!

However, the ever-changing tactics for the underlining usage of clan politics have time and again produced, for its owners in Somalia, unintended consequences. The initial pure clan-based wars on other clans, had failed, as other clans successfully repelled them in their domains. When that failed, the result was one of the most brutal Hawiye-on-Hawiye fighting in Mogadishu, as inter-clan recriminations surfaced.

Yet another result from that were turf-warlords in the Somali capital. Then it was time to don on Turbans and Egals (Cumaamad iyo Cigaal). It was time to hold up and waive the word of Allah, the Qur’an. This produced a very devastating consequence, of many faces, for Somalia and Somalis. First, this fostered a very rigid and uncompromising stance, which negated any Somali solution, for country and people, between Powerful Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and the 4.5 all clan-formula Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Baydhabo.

The ICU would not also limit their program to Somalia. They had to telegraph a holy war to neighbors, especially to Somalia’s ‘til judgment-day enemy Ethiopia. One of the lowest point of Somali histories, a clear Somali collective failure, would be the result: Ethiopian forces in, of places, Mogadishu. On that fateful day for all Somalis, the spirits of Ahmad Gurray, Sayid Muhammad Abdulle Hassan, General Daud, and, yes, Muhammad Siyad Barre must all cried uncontrollably, as they watched it.  

When you open a can of worms, you will always pay for it. Clan misleaders’ official invitation to power of Wahabbi fundamentalism in Somalia has them today, as I write this, as the target of the very thing they brought. Those who live by religious extremism, as another means tactic to power, are surely to die by it.     

Mr. Sharif: You speak the international language of branding your former Islamist friends as terrorist, on one hand. Somalis would not buy your latest tactic, which is clearly for the consumption of Western powers, that handful foreign fighters are tipping the war scale in favor of the Islamists. Your feigning amnesia about the professional and well-equipped 4000 AMISOM foreigners completely cancels such argument. 

At the same time, you have also chosen to dip into that old and failed jar tactic of activating and arming your clan base to oppose your former brothers-in-God. This cunning opportunism makes me realize now how unfit you are for the national office you occupy.

If you are the president of all Somalia and Somalis, then you must behave, in words and actions, consistent to the solemn oath you took for the job. That is the job for all Somalia and Somalis, and not for your or any others’ respective clans! Tell your fellow Hawiye MPs, and for that matter any MP, to refrain from on the side, clan-motivated monkey business.

Then there is that other side of you, Mr. Sharif: your claim to be a man of God, who follows God’s laws. You should remember that God forbids deceit and doublespeak. God forbids clannism for sinister purposes, as he commands all his faithful, like all his Somali believers, be ruled justly without any distinction.

In conclusion, unifying powerful ideas, such as sincere nationalism or even religion, however extreme, trumps clannism. Mr. Sharif: that was what enabled your Islamic Courts Union (ICU) to rise to power in 2006; it was what made you overcome and defeat the combined forces of the Somali warlords in Mogadishu.

Therefore, in the face of much more principled, whether in the wrong or not, and disciplined former comrades, your only chance to defeat them is to inspire Mogadishu and its surrounding residents to something greater than narrow clan politics.

Win or go down to defeat on nobler Ideas, for God sakes. It is not too late, before you completely drown yourself in the filthy and poisonous clan waters! 

[email protected]