Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar

[email protected]

A heart-wrenching cry for help is coming from the peaceful and hospitable people of Mogadishu.   The sandy streets are soaking with blood.  Hospitals are overflowing with the dead and the dying.   And no body is listening. At least no Somali is listening. Have we given up being human? We lost the capacity to feel? Are we bereft now of empathy?

And it is not the combatants that are dying. Families are being massacred wholesale in their homes by stray ordinance carelessly aimed.  Children are being mowed down in the streets unable to outrun the bullets of the sociopaths running wild in the city.  Ordinary folks, peaceful folks, simple innocent folks, like you and me, are the victims of this violent social eruption. And the rest of us, Somalis, keep silent because we think our primitive tribal self is not touched for now. Because we fail to see the gathering winds of evolutionary emergency ethnic Somalis face everywhere. Like sheep our eyes will see the sky only when the executioner places the knife on our throat and by then it is too late.

Dogs of War, Not Warlords

The call themselves a coalition against terror yet everyone one of them is busy watching his back and scheming against the other thug in perpetual bloodletting that can only be explained in terms of the Costa Nostra.  This is the hidden war behind the open war in Mogadishu.  The subcontract of the “war on Terror” gives these Dogs of War few dollars, few soviet era weapons and ammunition from the storage facilities of intelligence agencies. The subcontract does not give them the discipline, purpose and persistence that are necessary for success in war.

The Armed Court has unity of belief and purpose that will help it impose its will on the dogs of war, at least in the short term. Let the Dogs of War chew on that and hopefully gag to death. Let them also know that on the western front the chief thug of all thugs, the father of them all, their nemesis and role model, the President thug is amassing tribal warriors and waiting patiently like vulture for the death of a city and its people. 

These thugs, these dogs of wars, justify their existence by claiming the role of the tribal defenders of Mogadishu against the beastly enemy tribe. But they kill hundreds of the people of Mogadishu every single day. I mean this literally.  They possess the strange logic of the war dog: the murderer did kill the victim but was actually only defending him. The murder itself was unfortunate side effect. Tell me Mr. War Dog with defenders like that why would Mogadishu need any enemy, tribal or otherwise? 

Zealots

A Zealot by definition is a fanatically committed person. The Mogadishu Zealot proclaims commitment to Islam but he is actually committed to Pol Pot’s Year Zero (1), only he mistakes it for Islam out of ignorance. And just like Pol Pot he will not hesitate to kill millions of Somalis to achieve the purity and perfection he seeks. The Armed Zealot Courts of Mogadishu are willing to sacrifice all Somalis and all of Mankind for that matter, to achieve what Pol Pot described as Year Zero. A state of perfect obedience to god as defined by the Amir of the Zealot Courts. A state cleansed of all material longings and belongings and devoted exclusively to the worship of God: a state where only men, preferably bearded men, roam the streets and rule the day. A state where women are abolished from the public space and confined to bedrooms where they wait as obedient harem for the carnal pleasures and breeding purposes of the bearded men. This of course is not a philosophy of Islam but that of pre-Islamic times (Jaahiliya) and that of Pol Pot in the modern time for the evil in men transcends time and space.

The Zealots in Mogadishu claim commitment to Islam but only when it fits their twisted logic. So the Warlords are both good tribal friends and good Moslems or infidels who must who should cleansed off the earth, all depending upon prevailing political winds of the moment.

The Year Zero Zealots profess that all innovation and progress is inherently evil. “kulu bidcatu dalaal, wa kullu dalaal fi naar’… But they don’t hesitate to innovate on how to slowly and publicly torture to death the victims of their gangster courts. They abhor taking pictures of any human yet they ensure that the torture of the poor and the defenseless they commit is documented in video. And they take the further step of widely disturbing the horror videos of human cruelty they produce, again just like Pol Pot kept a record of the holocaust he engineered in Cambodia.

What a misery awaits Somalis, all Somalis if these Zealots win the day, as they seem set to. And what a danger awaits the rest of the world from the emergence of neo-Taliban state.

 The Deepening Crisis

And here we go again:  the last reconciliation conference conceived and delivered in the pig farm of Mbagathi is breeding more death and more war in Somalia.  Arms are pouring into the country like never before. Lines of hatred and future wars are becoming ever more clearly defined. The stage is set for what should be called the Mbagathi Horrors. And it has started to unfold in Mogadishu.

True the neo-Talibans in Somalia are gaining strength. But we should know, unlike what the neo-conservatives in the US will have us belief, it is not money from outside or secret Al-Qaida funds that is fueling the resurgence and growth of Islamic militancy in Somalia.  It is much more basic. Hope is the nourishing element.  New converts to the cause are streaming in as ordinary people are increasingly reaching the very rational decision of preferring the imminent death with the option of getting to heaven on the other side offered by the neo-Taliban to the equally imminent and certain death without options that is the norm in Mogadishu today. How do you defeat hope with guns?

On the other side the dogs of wars are brimming with new weapons and new wealth. They are recruiting and training as fast as they are losing through poor discipline and lack of an ideology. Money buys things and people too. And the dogs of war are in the market for both.

On the western front Abdillahi Yusuf keeps vigil.  Abdillahi Yusuf the homeless president deals with the nuisance of homelessness like the experienced veteran of the condition that he has become. He was evicted from Nairobi. He was evicted from Jowhar. And he is fighting eviction notice in Baidoba now.  Like homeless people everywhere he seems strangely tranquil about its effect. Calmly, persistently and cleverly he is amassing weapons and trained and trusted tribal forces. The tribal nature of the force he is creating deepened the national crisis. But then it should be no surprise to those who know the man, for Mr. Yusuf worships only power and survival. Nothing else ever mattered to him. And that is the measure of the man.

Yet one must give him credit for his native cunningness. He was able to foster and maintain for himself the support of the UN Political Office in Somalia that is based in Nairobi by carefully nourishing their illusion of having single handedly succeeded in building a successful central government for Somalia. They pour funds to him by diverting aid money to what they refer to as the Federal Transitional Institutions of Somalia in their everlasting talk factories.  By persisting in this Illusion and pouring money into the creation of tribal forces the UN political office in Somalia has played a central role in sustaining the Somali crisis. The total abolition of this office has become a national necessity.

And so four years after the beginning of the Mbagathi  “Peace and Reconciliation” process, two years after the unleashing of “the transitional federal institutions” the Somali crisis is deepening, the loss of life escalating and horror of the days to come more frightening. Possible options for the solution of the crisis are becoming ever more elusive, ever more remote.

A Call to Sanity

At this time of national nightmare Somalis everywhere should cultivate empathy and solidarity with the people of Mogadishu. We should start at the heart. Each one of us should do all we can personally to save one person, one child, one mother or one father. At this time our priority should be sparing the civilian population.

Is there really a rational possibility for the solution of the Somali crisis that does not include forcibly disarming the dogs of war and Pol Pot progeny? Are we at the end of the line? Have we reached a stage where the only rational approach remaining is to accept, nay actively seek, foreign occupation?

NB a note to Somalilanders: It is quite understandable for Somalilanders to be wary about being sucked back into perpetual chaos. The human tragedy unfolding in Mogadishu and threatening the rest of the region can no longer be ignored.  It is time to set aside the triumphal chest beating. It is time to ask what can we do to help save the Somali race? What can we do to help save Mogadishu today?

(1) For those of you too young to remember Pol Pot ruled from Cambodia in 1975-1979. In these short few years he killed between 1-3 million Cambodians. His philosophy was based on Year Zero and meant the return to agrarian Utopia of a perfect society without classes and without Buddhism.  His methods of destroying all vestiges of western capitalist influence are eerily similar to that of the Taliban Movement.