Reaping the Whirlwind in the Horn of Africa
Kulmiye, Dam-ul-Jadeed & Albion
Introduction
In the Bible, Hosea chastises and warns a morally
corrupt and spiritually wayward Israel in the 7th
century BC of the consequences of its apostasy “They sow
the wind and reap the whirlwind.” In this context
‘sowing the wind’ means planting something worthless and
foolis h, i.e. moral corruption and straying from the
path ordained by God, which will inevitably res ult in
suffering His divine wrath, i.e. ‘reaping the
whirlwind’.
In modern usage, the phrase “reaping the whirlwind” has
come to mean suffering the calam it ous consequences of
one’s ill-advised actions. Thus, it is particularly apt
to describe the curent travails besetting the government
of Ahmed Mahmoud Silanyo in Somaliland and the
supposedly ‘permanent’ Somali Federal Government (SFG)
of Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud in Som alia, which are both
suffering severe political setbacks as a result of their
own actions and policies. Further, the phrase is also a
pertinent description of the equally ill-considered and
near-sighted machinations of the ‘Donor’ Powers directed
at the erstwhile Republic of Som alia which are
grandiosely, and mendaciously, presented as enlightened
‘policy’ based upon Somali interests.
The Kulmiye Government
The present government lead by Ahmed Mahmoud ‘Silanyo’
came to power in July 2010 afte r routing the UDUB
government of Dahir Riyalle Kahin in Presidential
elections that May. Kulmiye ran a successful campaign
that was slick, energetic and media-savvy in its
presenta tion. Further, capitalising upon the fatigue of
the Riyalle administration that had been in offi ce for
some eight years and had largely run out of new ideas,
Kulmiye promised the people of Somaliland a government
that was modern in approach, modest in number,
professional in execution and meritocratic in the
selection of its office holders. Little wonder then that
an overwhelming majority of the people voted Kulmiye
into office.
However, underneath the slick presentation and ‘promise
everyone everything’ approach to securing support, the
Kulmiye campaign was characterised by a dark underbelly
of naked tribalism. Clans and sub-clans, particularly
within the majority Isaaq clan group, were specifi cally
and consciously targeted for exclusionary appeals
designed to de-legitimise the ruling party and secure
their support. While a certain level of ‘tribal’
politicking is inevitable in a so ciety where the
principal social cleavage and identity is the clan or
sub-clan, the 2010 Kulmi ye election campaign was easily
the most ‘tribal’ experienced in Somaliland since the
countr y recovered its sovereignty in 1991. This fact,
and the Kulmiye government’s role in elevati ng the
primacy of the ‘tribal’ imperative in politics, is
evidenced by the plethora of clan meet ings, or “shir
beleed”, that have been held, and are being held, by
different clans and sub-clans since 2011. This practise,
whereby individual clans or sub-clans hold meetings to
discu ss their political and social interests and how to
advance same, harks back to the early 199 0s and the
clan conflicts of that era. Indeed, such meetings have
not been a feature of Som aliland politics since the
democratic constitution was enacted in 1997 inaugurating
the era of party politics, and the decline of the shir
beleed was considered by many Somaliland and foreign
observers and commentators as a significant indicator of
the growing maturity of the Somaliland polity.
Immediately after taking office, there coalesced around
the President a coterie of relative s/kinsmen, mainly
comprising young diaspora expatriates, that controlled
access to him with an iron fist. Many senior cabinet
members soon found that in order to gain access to the
President they had to navigate an impenetrable maze of
Presidency officials and assorted relations, usually
with little success. Conversely, those in the ‘charmed
circle’, so to speak, – whether they are businessmen,
government officials or ordinary people – could gain
access to the President at the drop of a hat! It is
common for heads of government to gather arou nd them a
small group of trusted colleagues and advisors to
discuss and debate sensitive policy issues, indeed these
groups are often called ‘kitchen cabinets’ and Harold
Wilson, the crafty Labour Prime Minister of Britain
during the late 1960s/early 1970s was a notable afici
onado of the kitchen cabinet and used it extensively to
the fury of many of his colleagues. However, what we
witness in the Somaliland Presidency is not a ‘kitchen
cabinet’ that debat es and discusses policy
alternatives, but rather the operation of a ruling
clique within the government that has abrogated solely
to itself all executive power and authority. The fact
that this clique is characterised in the main by blood
and familial ties to the President and his immediate
family serves to accentuate its exclusive and
impenetrable nature.
Soon after taking office, the Kulmiye government also
embarked upon a concerted and cal culated campaign to
nullify and obliterate political opposition to its rule.
In the wake of its resounding defeat, UDUB embarked upon
an internecine struggle which resulted in its effec tive
collapse, thereby obviating the need for the government
to take any action against it. The other national party,
UCID, had also emerged from the election in disarray
having regist ered a dismal showing. Its leader, the
mercurial Faisal Ali Warabe, reneged on his ill-timed
pledge before the elections to step down if defeated at
the polls. This inevitably angered ma ny party stalwarts
that either saw him as an electoral liability, or were
preparing to mount a leadership bid themselves. Seizing
upon this conflict, the Kulmiye government fomented a
split within UCID by encouraging and financing a
leadership challenge by a disaffected group lead by the
Deputy Chairman of the party and Speaker of Parliament,
Abdirahman Moham med Abdullahi ‘Cirro’, even going as
far as enabling the dissident, ‘Cirro’ group to storm
the central offices of the party in Hargeisa and lock
out the group loyal to Faisal, the party’s founder. The
fractious dispute between the two factions of UCID ended
up in court which ruled that the ‘Cirro’ group could not
simply oust Faisal without holding a party conference.
In the end, the ‘Cirro’ faction left UCID and formed a
new opposition party called WADANI which has
distinguished itself by not opposing the Kulmiye
government, and instead being supportive of many of its
most controversial policies.
With UDUB and UCID thus eradicated as a credible
political opposition, the Kulmiye governme nt set about
removing those elements within the government and the
ruling party that coul d present an obstacle to the
unquestioned supremacy of Silanyo and the clique
gathered ar ound him. These elements comprised the
perceived political heavyweights of Dr. Mohammed Abdi
Gaboose, the Interior Minister, Ahmed Hashi Elmi,
Finance Minister and Muse Bihi, the First Deputy
Chairman of Kulmiye who had been promised the party
nomination for President after Silanyo’s term of office.
These three figures had been crucial to Kulmiye winning
the el ection not only because of their tireless
campaigning, but because, even more importantly, they
were able to ‘deliver’ their sub-clans for Kulmiye and
Silanyo. However, these were seasoned political players,
with both Elmi and Bihi having been key members and
leaders of the SNM, while Gaboose had been a cabinet
minister under both of the preceding administra tions.
Thus, they were not expected to meekly acquiesce to
policies or actions that they pe rceived as damaging to
their own political interests. Neither would they take
kindly to being upstaged or being subservient to the
clique of largely diaspora-sourced relatives and kins
men that comprised the clique which wielded power in the
Presidency, since they viewed th em as upstarts and
political neophytes. The first among the three to see
the ‘writing on the wall’ and decide to jump ship was
Gaboose who resigned in August 2011 after serving just
one year to establish his own party.
In March 2012 Elmi was fired after he refused to back
down in a dispute with the Minister of Energy, Water &
Mines regarding the proper appropriation and application
of monies paid by foreign companies for oil concessions.
However Bihi was a different kettle of fish altoget her.
Firstly, he was not part of the government since he held
no executive position but is instead the de facto head
of the Kulmiye Party, thus he posed no direct, immediate
threat to Silanyo and the clique surrounding him.
Secondly, before the 2010 election he had secure d the
public pledge of Silanyo to endorse Bihi’s nomination as
Kulmiye’s candidate for Presid ent in the next election
scheduled for 2015, and he was not going to forego that
opportunit y by any means. From the beginning of 2011
until now, Silanyo and his clique have employed every
tool at their disposal to induce Bihi to despair of
acceding to the top position and leave Kulmiye to no
avail. Indeed, they have gone so far as Silanyo
announcing his support for Abdul Aziz Samale, Elmi’s
replacement as Finance Minister and a clansman of both
Bihi and Elmi, as Kulmiye’s nominee for President at the
next election, in direct contradiction of his public
pledge to Bihi. Yet, Bihi refuses to rise to the bait
and continues to bide his time.
But perhaps the master stroke of Silanyo and the Kulmiye
government in destroying their political opponents was
in permitting the establishment of political parties to
contest the municipal elections in November 2012. Every
Tom, Dick and Harriet that harboured Presidenti al
ambitions immediately set about establishing a political
party and announced that, in addi tion to their party
contesting the municipal elections, they were the
nominees for Pres ident of their respective political
parties – never mind that the Presidential elections
were some three years and two elections (municipal and
parliamentary) away! To borrow from Churc hill’s famous
and historic salute to the RAF in World War II, “never
has an electorate witne ssed such a naked greed for
power exhibited by so many for the benefit of so few”.
For a full calendar year, the people of Somaliland were
witness to a ‘tribal’ political circus wherein the vain,
the deluded and the outright venal jostled and jousted
for media attention and their political support. Since
the newly created parties had no political programs to
speak of and were only established as vehicles for the
political ambitions of their founders, the appe als for
support were inevitably based upon clan affiliation.
Thus, each clan and sub-clan grouping called for and
held a “shir beleed” in order to maxim ise their
electoral muscle and so extract optimal concessions from
the prospective candida tes. As the ruling party,
Kulmiye was more than happy to play this game since they
had the largest war chest in the form of the government
exchequer and unmatched patronage on offer. In addition,
the municipal elections were held without a proper
electoral register since the register prepared for the
Presidential elections some two years earlier had been
revea led to be seriously flawed with widespread
multiple and ‘ghost’ registrations. This fundame ntal
shortcoming was exacerbated by the compromising of the
independence of the National Election Commission (NEC)
which began to function as an arm of the government. The
munici pal elections of 2012 were characterised not only
by a large turnout among the electorate but was also
peaceful and took place in an atmosphere of celebration.
Nevertheless, there were clear instances of substantial
vote rigging, stuffing of ballot boxes and destruction
or diversion of entire ballot boxes in certain areas.
Unsurprisingly, Kulmiye won these elections handily and
their success was vehemently disputed in various cities
and towns, e.g. Hargei sa, Berbera, Gabiley and Borama,
with large demonstrations, some of which turned violent
and resulted in civilian and police deaths. In addition
to Kulmiye, UCID and WADANI emerged as the other two
national political parties qualified to contest the
upcoming parliamentary and Presidential elections, while
the plethora of other parties and their presumptive
Preside ntial nominees were officially disqualified and
politically spent. It is important to point out here
that after much debate the public overwhelmingly chose
to stop the street protests, some of which had turned
violent, and accept the election results notwithstanding
the wide spread consensus that the election was deeply
flawed and many results were fraudulent.
Finally, it is necessary to briefly comment upon the
foreign policy of the Kulmiye governme nt, since the
debacle of this ill-conceived misadventure has had an
important impact upon domestic Somaliland politics. The
Kulmiye government embarked upon a new approach to
foreign affairs whereby it abandoned two of the guiding
principles of Somaliland foreign policy since 1992,
which were:
Not to participate in international meetings convened to
form so-called ‘governments’ in Mogadishu, or to discuss
reconciliation and re-establishment of the state in
Somalia, since Somaliland is an independent country and
not part of Somalia;
To open dialogue on matters regarding separation and
‘good neighbour’ relations only with a government in
Mogadishu that was legitimate and formed by the people
of Somalia through an open and representative process.
Instead, the new government decided to attend
international conferences convened to discuss matters
concerning reconciliation and re-establishment of the
state in Somalia, and the first such conference attended
by Somaliland representatives was the Wilton Park
Conference convened under the auspices of the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office of the UK under the heading –
Somalia: Building Stability, Accepting Reality – in
February 2011. Participation at this conference, which
caused a great furore inside Somaliland, resulted in a
decision brokered by the UK government for Somaliland
and Somalia to commence a dialogue to resolve their
differences. Thus, abandonment of the first principle of
the country’s long standing foreign policy directly
resulted in abandonment of the second principle. In
addition, the Kulmiye government agreed to attend the
subsequent international conference for Somalia which
was convened by Turkey which had evidenced its desire to
play an active role in establishing a permanent
government in Somalia, as part of its new assertive
foreign policy under Premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This
was the Second İstanbul Conference on Somalia on 31
May/1 June 2012 under the heading – Preparing Somalia’s
Future: Goals for 2015.
The first two rounds of talks between Somaliland and
Somalia were undertaken with the TFG of Sheikh Sharif in
London and Dubai respectively in June 2012, with the
first meeting at ministerial level and the subsequent on
in Dubai between the two Presidents. While these
meetings were dubbed ‘historic’ and they each concluded
with important-sounding docume nts, i.e. the Chevening
Declaration and the Dubai Statement respectively, they
did not acco mplish anything of significant consequence
and no agreements were reached on the major issues
between the two parties. Indeed Ambassador David Shinn’s
apposite characterisat ion of the former applies equally
to both, “The Chevening House Declaration is unexception
al. It primarily commits both sides to continue the
dialogue and cooperate in the fight again st terrorism,
extremism, crime, piracy, illegal fishing and toxic
waste dumping. Importantly, however, it suggests that
both sides are willing to continue the talks.” Simply
put, the two sides agreed to continue talking. However,
since there was no agenda set regarding the iss ues to
be discussed, the talking could presumably continue ad
infinitum without any matters of substance being
discussed. Talking for the sake of talking is but an
empty expenditure of CO2.
Notwithstanding this, it can be argued that opening a
dialogue with Somalia is in of itself a positive step
since such a dialogue will need to eventually take place
– after all the two sid es have many issues to discuss
and resolve among themselves such as equitable division
of the assets and liabilities of the erstwhile Republic
with international organisations, creditor nations and
international banks; disposition of the properties of
their citizens in the others’ territory; among many
others. However, the decision to commence the dialogue
with a lam e-duck, transitional government that had only
two months remaining of its term of office and therefore
could not commit to any substantive agreements did not
seem wise or caref ully considered. Further, the
decision of the Kulmiye government to support the
candidacy of Sheikh Sharif for the Presidency of the
new, supposedly permanent government sponso red by the
‘Donor’ Powers, and more importantly to be perceived by
the other candidates as supporting Sharif, was not only
ill-advised but has proven to be counter-productive,
since Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud won. Mohamoud has
demonstrated his ire with the Kulmiye government by
deliberately seeking to undermine them in a variety of
ways which have unnerved the Somaliland administration,
principal among which has been his repeated and vehement
declarations affirming the inviolability of Somalia’s
territorial integrity and insistence that Somaliland
remains part of Somalia. Mohamoud has also appointed
several high profile Somaliland opponents of the Kulmiye
government to his cabinet, in particular Ms Fowzia Adan,
Deputy PM & Foreign Minister.
The Dam-ul-Jadid Government
The success of Hassan Mohamoud in the election for the
‘permanent’ government for Somalia hastily cobbled
together by the ‘Donor’ Powers in September 2012 was a
shock to many, particularly the UN, the ‘Donor’ Powers
themselves, the Kulmiye government in Hargeisa and,
perhaps most of all to Sharif Hassan. It was widely
assumed that Sharif Hassan would win a handy victory as
the most well-known of the candidates and also because
he had the advantage of incumbency with all the assets
that this position afforded, i.e. funds and patronage.
What the observers anticipating a Sharif victory had
failed to grasp was the depth of revulsion among the
vast majority of ordinary Somalis at the level of
corruption, duplicity and indifference bordering upon
cruelty to which his administration had sunk. Sharif
personally had transformed himself from the pious,
humble and retiring imam who shunned shaking women’s’
hands in public who took office in 2009, into a slick,
designer-suit clad, globe-trotting leader who revelled
in being welcomed by ululating women dancers singing his
praises. In addition, he had lost the support of the man
that had effectively rescued him from Al-Shabaab by
spiriting him away from Eritrea (where he had sought
sanctuary after initially fleeing to Kenya from the
invading Ethiopians after the short period of UIC
control over much of Somalia when he had emerged as
national political figure) to Qatar, and eventually to
Djibouti. This was none other than Sharif Hassan Sheikh
Aden, the canny Speaker of the Transitional Federal
Parliament who had become the principal power broker in
the TFG.
Mohamoud and his Dam-ul-Jadid (DuJ) organisation were
able to seize upon this widespread and well justified
public revulsion with the Sharif government to win the
Presidency with widespread public support amid an
atmosphere of hope that Somalia was experiencing a new
beginning. This hope was fostered in large part by the
military successes of the African troops (AMISOM)
against the Al-Shabaab nihilists and its eviction from
Mogadishu and much of the surrounding countryside. The
declared intention of the ‘Donor’ Powers to recognise
the new government as the permanent and legitimate
government of the country and that they (the ‘Donor’
Powers) would accord it such status and provide to it
substantial financial, political and military aid also
contributed to the optimism and hope for the future
among the people of Somalia, within and outside the
country. Mohamoud had little or no political experience
prior to his elevation to the Presidency of Somalia and
his professional experience was as an academic and as a
local officer for international NGOs. Thus he assumed
the Presidency with a ‘clean slate’ as regards domestic
Somali politics.
He is a member of Dam-ul-Jadid (New Blood) which is an
Islamist political organisation tied to the Muslim
Brotherhood of Egypt (MB); indeed it is reported that
prior to entering politics Mohamoud had ties to Al-Islah
which is the Somali wing of the MB, with which he
conducted various charitable activities, particularly in
the educational sector. Mohamoud and his DuJ government,
however, quickly squandered the outpouring of hope and
optimism for the fut ure by embarking upon a ham fisted
and exclusionary approach to governance that alienate d
many of the other political actors in the country.
Mistakenly and unwisely, operating on the assumption
that the designation of ‘permanent’ government by the
‘Donor’ Powers and being accorded the diplomatic
courtesies of such status enabled them to impose their
will upon all other the domestic political actors, the
DuJ government demanded their unquestion ing
acquiescence and obeisance. The inevitable result was to
engender opposition to their arrogance and elicit
defiance to their toothless commands for obedience. This
opposition to their insistence upon government from
Mogadishu to which the regions were but outposts of
central authority quickly materialised in Puntland and
Galmudug which were well establis hed regional states
that evidenced a level of self-government that Mogadishu
could only aspire to.
However, it is in Jubbaland, the deep south, inter-river
region where the clash between the DuJ’s authoritarian
ambitions and the autonomy aspirations of the regional
government took the most ominous turn. Here, in a
calculated effort to impose its will on the region and
its people, the DuJ government instigated armed clashes
between the militia of the regional government of
Jubbaland and a clan militia loyal to the DuJ. The
willingness of Mohamoud an d his colleagues to foment
tribalism to the point of the outbreak of clan warfare
among its own citizens evidences the bankruptcy of its
concept of governance and the myopia of its vision.
Further, the regional government in Jubbaland has an
alliance with Kenya to the sou th to confront Al-Shabaab
and exclude them from the region further complicates the
situa tion, with the DuJ government complaining about
Kenyan interference, even as it is seeking Kenyan
blessing and support. Clearly, the concept of political
consent as a key driver of rep resentative governance is
either completely foreign to Mohamoud and his DuJ
government or they have grievously misunderstood it. No
government can govern without the consent of those whom
it rules. Political consent is granted by the governed,
not by external powers that have given the fiat to rule.
This consent can be secured by force as is practised by
dict atorships and other authoritarian governments or it
can be elicited voluntarily as in repres entative forms
of government.
The DuJ government does not have the capability to
secure political consent from its people by force, since
it is maintained in office by foreign troops, hence it
has no choice but to seek such consent voluntarily.
Further, the DuJ government was conceived as one of
national rec onciliation and, indeed the harbinger of
permanent, representative government in Somalia. That
means, perforce, that it must seek inclusivity and
consensus; that it seeks common ground with the largest
number of domestic civil and socio-political groups.
Instead, it has instigated the very clan warfare and
descent into zero-sum tribalism that its creation was
advertised as nullifying. The ‘Donor’ Powers that sired
this ‘government’ are either support ive of this
unconscionable assault on its own citizens by the DuJ
government or they are callously and studiously ‘looking
the other way’. While they publicly state that the
conflict in Jubbaland “should be resolved peacefully”
and disingenuously “call on all sides to show
restraint”, the truth is that the principal instigator
is their creation and exists only at their pleasure,
hence a simple and clear directive to Mohamoud and his
cohorts to desist from armed insurrection against the
Jubbaland government would suffice to stop the clan war.
It seems that Mohamoud and his government have yet to
learn this lesson, and until they do their government is
doomed to fail and Somalia is doomed to repeat its
recent history of division and anarchy. Such failure
will give succour and space to the nihilists of Al-Shabaab
as well as embolden the territorial ambitions of Kenya
and Ethiopia to carve out ‘buffer zones’ in Somalia to
the south and the west respectively. These ‘buffer’
zones are already in place, but under the control of
Somali regional authorities; however in a free-for-all
with competing warlords vying for power it is likely
that Ethiopia and Kenya will choose to take control over
these zones directly with their own troops.
The ‘Donor’ Powers & Albion’s Lead
Since mid-2010 the Western Powers, and particularly the
US, has let Britain take the lead with respect to policy
towards Somalia. This is somewhat understandable as
Britain was the colonial power in the British Somaliland
Protectorate (present day Somaliland), and was the last
colonial power that governed the entire Somali-populated
area in the Horn of Africa (with the exception of
Djibouti) at the end of World War II until 1949. This
post-2010 period was marked by a determined push by the
Western Powers to minimise their involvement in Somalia
and the British were happy to take the lead in
delivering this objective. In early 2011 AMISOM troops
began to undertake offensive operations against Al-Shabaab
and by August had driven the nihilist from Mogadishu.
The ‘Donor’ Powers, led by Britain, decided to take this
opportunity to diminish their engagement in Somalia and
commence the process to justify this withdrawal from
Somali affairs in the context of the establishment of a
‘permane nt’ government in Mogadishu. Accordingly, a
process was quickly cobbled together under the heading
“Roadmap for the End of Transition” whereby a
constitution and national ‘parliament’ were hastily
established under sustained pressure from the ‘Donor
Powers’ and the UN under a tribal/clan participation
formula dubbed 4.5. What is important to note with
respect to this process is that it was devised and
implemented to fulfil the objectives of foreign powers
to wind down their involvement in Somalia and not, as
mendaciously presented to the world, to meet the
requirements of establishing a genuine government of
national reconciliation in which the people of Somalia
had true ownership.
Britain, with the UN as hand maiden, was tasked with
stage managing this circus of a ‘const itutional’
process for the establishment of a ‘permanent’
government in Somalia through the machinations of
succeeding forums of chosen ‘representatives’, e.g. the
National Constitue nt Assembly of elders which
rubber-stamped a constitution essentially written by
foreigner s, and the Technical Selection Committee which
vetted and approved the candidates for the federal
parliament. Any member of these forums that proved
recalcitrant to the wishes of the ‘Donor’ Powers ran the
risk of being labelled a ‘spoiler’ and thus removed from
proceed ings and banned from political office in the
future. If ever there was an overtly imperial-driven
process of state and government formation anywhere in
the world, this was it, and Britain as the pre-eminent
imperial power of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries was
uniquely qualified to shepherd it to its logical and
inevitable conclusion of seeming success and actual
failure. Even as it was deftly managing this circus of
government creation under the ‘big top’ of the
international media, Britain was wooing the new Kulmiye
government in Somalila nd with promises of increased aid
in order to bring it into line with its plans for a
federal Somalia.
The Kulmiye government, anxious to demonstrate its
difference from its predecessors and its new vision of
foreign policy, proved receptive to the overtures of
Britain. Thus it agreed to attend conferences held to
map the future of Somalia as an autonomous territory,
while Somalia was the recognised nation-state. The
Kulmiye government erroneously thought th at this would
demonstrate their flexibility and worldly-wise style of
diplomacy, while Britain took this attitude to
demonstrate Somaliland’s flexibility with respect to the
issue of sover eignty. Truly, this was classic example
of the deaf talking to the mute! This mutual and farci
cal incomprehension came to head recently when Nicholas
Kay, the new, British UN Special Representative for
Somalia, came to Somaliland to meet the Kulmiye
government in order to facilitate the opening of UNSOM’s
office in Hargeisa, only to be roundly and publicly
rebuffed to his deep chagrin. Whatever the Kulmiye
government may or may not have wanted to do, the simple
fact is that no government in Hargeisa can survive if it
is not clearly and unequi vocally committed to the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of Somaliland –
this is a basic precept of Somaliland politics and the
principal ethos underlying Somaliland’s existence.
Conclusion
The whirlwind that these three key players in Somali
politics have unleashed upon the neigh bouring countries
of Somaliland and Somalia is the rise of tribalism and
the primacy of clan identity in politics. Most foreign
observers do not fully understand the true danger of
incre ased clan sectarianism in Somali politics. This
danger is the de-legitimisation of national gove rnment
as ordinary people increasingly withdraw their consent
from the centre to the clan and the sub-clan. Because of
the unique common culture, language and identity among
the people, Somali politics is often characterised as
subject to competing trends of fusion and fission.
Clearly, in both Somaliland and Somalia, politics is
experiencing a severe and susta ined period of fission
which has been exacerbated, if not actually instigated,
by the policies and actions of the Kulmiye and DuJ
governments respectively. Further, both governments are
suffering from a loss of legitimacy and resultant
instability in large part due to the virulent and highly
contagious tribal virus they have unleashed.
In Somalia, the establishment of the supposed
‘permanent’ government was intended to be the first step
towards the rehabilitation of the shell of a country
which has become the ve ry definition of a ‘failed
state’ and the rebuilding of state institutions so that
reconstruction of the physical and social infrastructure
could commence. Instead we have witnessed, and are
witnessing, a reversion to warlord-dominated clan
warfare instigated by the DuJ gover nment with the
willing or silent connivance of the ‘Donor’ Powers.
Mohamoud and his collea gues have demonstrated the
callous cruelty and indifference to the plight of their
people that dethroned the Sharif’s TFG and brought them
to power.
The ‘Donor’ Powers, acting through their chosen overseer
– Britain in true ‘Perfidious Albio n’ mode –, continue
to exacerbate this situation by forcing through a
process of installing a supposedly permanent government
in Somalia that is weak, yet seeks to impose its will
upon more legitimate and stronger regional governments,
with no roadmap for effective govern ance. The prospects
for the future of the DuJ government are very dire
indeed since the conflicts with Jubbaland and other
regional governments herald the re-emergence of the
warlord era and greater involvement in Somali politics
by both Ethiopia and Kenya, which will inevitably
diminish the power and legitimacy of Mogadishu.
Overlaying this dismal and depre ssing tableau is the
spectre of the re-emergence of Al-Shabaab as a more
effective fighting force, now that it’s internal and
leadership conflict has been settled at the barrel of a
gun in true jihadi fashion.
In Somaliland, Britain has wooed the Kulmiye government
on the basis of insincerity regard ing its true
intentions with respect to the central, and defining,
wish of its citizens, i.e. indep endence. The fact that
the Kulmiye government went so far up the garden path
leading to a federal Somalia with perfidious Albion has
called into question its nationalist credentials, not to
mention its veracity and its wisdom. For the Kulmiye
government, the writing is on the wa ll, but the
maturity of the people in electing to wait out its term
over mass protests with re spect to the fraudulent
municipal elections bodes well for the survival of
Somaliland’s expe riment in representative government.
Indeed, it is likely that Kulmiye as apolitical party
will suffer the splits and demise that has befallen UDUB
and that Kulmiye so cleverly orchestrat ed for UCID.
What does not bode well for the future, however, is the
debasement and coars ening of political debate and
competition that has reverted to the pre-constitution
era of naked tribalism and the primacy of clan and
sub-clan identity over the national imperative.
Ahmed M.I. Egal
July 2013 |
|