Hiiraan Online

by Hassan Zaylai
Tuesday, June 09, 2009

From the title above, it may appear I have gone crazy. I know, but before some of you readers start foaming at the mouth and send your blood pressures to the roof, allow me to explain myself.

Major screw-ups in Somali Society have made the militant Islamists an alternative by default. From Somalis’ desperate demands for peace and order, political and military Islam of the most extreme has filled a void.

Understandably, but never justifiably, the utility or implementation of a frightening version of Islam by extremists in Somalia is no accident, for it produces a precious commodity for them: fear in people.

Once few hands of thieves cutoff and lifeless limbs dangled in front of crowds, potential stealers overnight transform into honest (and respecting of others’ properties) upstanding citizens.

Such fear-invoking public demonstrations benefit the extremists in taking credit for the resulting law and order in areas which come under their rule. Legally, these Islamists selectively backup each bloody event with a verse or chapter in the Holy Qur’an or Hadith. To them, God’s given right for victims to have a say on what to do with their victimizers—including forgiveness, which would allow, say, a thief or even a murderer to walk free—is as if nonexistent in the holy texts. Jailing criminals, one of many choices allowed, is out of question too, even if that was logistically possible.

For them extremists, it does not pay, for their political image as protectors of society from the anarchy of crime and vise, to allow other than severest prescriptions of Islamic law.

Somalis under their rule now, whose lives and livelihood often endangered under anarchy then, are not protesting against any offense to their traditional sensibilities about public bloody punishments of criminals. Human beings, wherever they are, hardly shed much tears over criminals punished horrendously.

For instance, in many states in the United States of America, the champion of human rights, underage kids—as young as 9 or 10 years old—are tried as adults. Sometimes, they receive lifetime in prison or death sentences! 

In anarchic Somalia, the traditional Islam in Somalia would never principally approve, undertake or stomach such gore-based business of butchering people to affect preferred behaviors. Traditional Islam, such as represented by Sufis (Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jama'ah), has no ambitions beyond spiritual matters.

So, clever Somalis had subcontracted the job to Wahabbism, which has no qualms with spectacles of limbs-tearing, blood-gushing, and stoning underage girls to death.

No matter, the Islamists are on solid and unifying principles. Regardless of my feelings, or your feelings, about them and their ways, they know where they are coming from; they also clearly know where they are going. They stand, all be it twistingly, on God’s constitution. Their methods of giving criminal justice produce results.

On the other side, many trials at governance by secular warlords, politicians and others have utterly failed, time and again, to rule beyond their immediate compounds or turfs. Even this latest hybrid type of an administration now in Mogadishu, of Islamists and secularists—the so-called national-unity government led by Sheikh Sharif—would not work. It simply has no compass, like others before it, to navigate through 18 years of “law of the jungle” disposition in Somalia. It has yet to bring peace and order to any one single neighborhood in Mogadishu.

By the way, what does this government stand for?

President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid

This president speaks in monotonic, reactive Verbality. You readers judge the following: “Those opposing my government are not fighting for Islam,” the president said on this last Thursday on June 4th. Other utterances from the president follow the same tack. As for the prime minster, he is mute!

This is in no-way, in any stretch of imagination, a substitute to a leader’s duty to communicate—and often—with his people in a frank and lengthy discussion about Somalia’s stubborn conflict. Where is the compare and contrast, in ideas and principles, between their government and the Islamists? Where is the attempt to call on all Somalis for common ground, based on tradition, nationalism and religion, which the populace could buy into? Where are the emotion stirring, rallying cries and calls from these leaders?

I have something better though! Let someone give both of them the vocal speeches, I am sure they are available, of Somalia’s Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Obama rolled into one as oration in speech-making in Somali goes. That is the man unequaled, whatever else one may take away from or say about him, in invoking goose bumps from his listeners: Jaalle Maxamad Siyad Barre!

Lock both of them in a room with these tapes playing for a day or two, until they have learned something from it. Call it speech 101 in Somali! 

Seriously, if these two men at the helm of Somalia’s national-unity government are decent and have the best for Somalia at heart, then they must have imbeciles for advisers. The Islamists seem to win, hands down, even the daily political public relations (PR).

Few months back, the government stated its intention to approve and implement Shari’ah Law as the country’s constitution. No sooner than the words left from the lips of the president, one of the Islamist spiritual leaders would cleverly jump all over it as an “offense against God.” “How dare mere humans would even say they would approve what the Almighty has already decreed,” he said!

These ignorant advisers of this government would not even know the difference between all-encompassing blockade and discriminatory interdictions of air and sea traffic to Islamist-held territories. Having no capacities to undertake either, which make them dependent on international cooperation, they would opt for the blockade. In other words, not even food, clothes or medicine laden-ships or airplanes would be allowed to supply businesses and people there.

Xaabsade, the minster of transportation: “We have already stopped at Mogadishu port a ship with food cargo headed to Kismayu,” he would say in a news conference declaring the blockade. He went further into such moronic policy by saying “Mogadishu will have the only ports open for traffic and that businesses elsewhere should be patient with the blockade.” 

If this government could muster a regime by which it could intercept sea and air traffic to Islamist-held areas, should not it look and confiscate only War related supplies to its opposition? Why starve the multitudes of Somalis there. Would not this act drive more Somalis to the Islamist camps?

Despite international recognition and support, this government is lame at home with no counterweight principal foundations to the Islamists. It has no wings to fly and no rudder to steady it. The same disease, of clan political machinations and intrigue, which made its predecessor Transitional Federal Government (TFG) useless, is all too symptomatic of it.

A continuous international community investment in failure will at best only produce a no-end-in-sight stalemate of a conflict in Somalia. It would be better for Somalia and the rest of the world if some group in Somalia wins this fight on their own. Let Somali-style nature take its course. If Sheikh Sharif’s government cannot win it on it is own, it would be better, for reasons I will mention, if the Islamists win and takeover.

The Sooner the Islamists takeover, the faster and easier it will be their undoing and complete eradication of their narrow ideology from Somalia! Their ascendancy to power plus the end of illegitimate governments, of unholy and unwilling coalitions of misfits and pushers of clan politics, will produce the best incentives for total liquidation of armed Islamism in Somalia.

The ingredients for common national interest and to restore traditional Islam in Somalia exist in different parts of the country. The Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama’ah’s group is not purely religious, although it exists under the banner of traditional Islam. It is also made-up of a coalition of different clans in central Somalia and former Somali Army members. In the south, there are other clans who are trying to fight the Islamists.

Feeding Somalia’s political black hole in Mogadishu, with these types of ineffective governments, will only prolong Somalia’s misery. It is what have been the main obstacle—and the invention-sight of dumb clan politics and deadly religious extremists—to putting Somalia back together.

Idea-based Islamist power in all Mogadishu will demand an equally idea-based challenge. This is what I am counting on, and I believe Somalis will be up to that challenge.  What will put an end to extreme Islam in Somalia has to be indigenous politics and force in a coalition across regions and clans to take it, in unison, to the deranged Mullahs. For that, an incentive is needed, which is for this government—if unable to survive on its own—to collapse and Islamists to win!

Law and order is the primary issue for Somalia. If Sharif’s government is no more tomorrow, what law and order it brought to any small place in Somalia will be ill affected? There is nothing to speak of or point out of any significance it has done, which could be endangered if it goes away in the next few hours!

The concerns over this government ceasing are for foreign interests. Here, let us closely examine this concern. Western powers and neighboring countries to Somalia fear such firebrand Islamists taking power. The belief is that they will turn Somalia as a base for Al-Qaeda.

First, these Islamists have been controlling major cities with ports in Southern Somalia. Them taking villa Somalia compound to make their complete takeover of Southern Somalia official does not make such concern about the “safe haven” scenario anymore remarkable!  

A fear based, sky will fall type about Islamist takeover there should not guide the Western powers into a knee jerk reaction of continuing support for a stalemate horror show for Somalia.

Somalia is different from Afghanistan. There is no Pakistan-like next door neighbor to Somalia that will give support or sanctuary to the Somali fanatics, as Pakistan has with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. On the contrary, both Ethiopia and Kenya have been working hard to disrupt and deny any gains for Somali Islamists. Eritrea, which is few doors away neighbor to Somalia, has given support to the Somali Islamists. But that is not the main reason why the Islamists have been winning in Somalia. Any Eritrean support has been secondary to Somalia’s religious fanatics becoming the only alternative to chaos. If weapons alone could win you peace and order, Ethiopia would have won it for TFG1. That is a fact.    

Somali Islamists’ ability to hold on to power will be very tenuous. Also, underlining political fissures within the Islamist camps will be highlighted by winning, which could ignite interfighting. All in all, in Somalia’s case, Islamists in power will be a lot easier, for international powers concerned, to deal with decisively. Then, it will be ripe for Somalis also, who have otherwise been divided by the arrival of successive false governments, such as in Mogadishu now, to come together naturally. The International community will then find in Somalis the best allies to erase Wahabbism from Horn of Africa!

The alternative for Western powers is to rush combat troops on the side of Sheikh Sharif in this late hour! What will that accomplish, except fuel deadlier and protracted insurgency? Would not that also make Somalia the crowning, one-way dream vacation for all Jihadists worldwide? Poor Somali Souls will never rest in their own country. I say, let the Islamists win this fight for a better chance to then get rid of them for good! 

One more, someone should advise Ethiopia to lay off its constant in and out of Somalia proper. Ethiopia is not helping by its stupid daily incursions into Somalia. That can only serve the Somali Islamic militants for propaganda purposes!

Hassan Zaylai
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