KULMIYE: THE PAST IS HAUNTING THE PRESENT ?
Twenty years ago, the Somali
National Movement
almost ran aground. At the time the Chairmanship of the
organization, the Chairman of the Executive Committee, and the
Chairman of the Central Committee were all in the hands of one
person. This type of organizational structure corrupts the decision
making process. The result: Complete paralysis of the day today
functioning of the organization and the cumulative strain almost
precipitated a total collapse. Twenty years later, the pitfalls of
the past is still haunting us.
Today, the largest opposition
party in the country is suffering from the same symptoms of the
disease. Our contemporary history over the past quarter of a century
is replete with often controversialised compilations-especially the
chapter dealing with the events related to the Somali National
Movement's decision to relocate its operations inside Somalia.
By the end of 1987 the military wing
and the political leadership of the Somali National Movement were at
logger-heads over the aims and the objectives of armed struggle. The
internal schisms reached at the boiling point and almost derailed
the organization's very existence. On January 31, 1988, according to
correspondence between the leadership of SNM
and the Ethiopian government, instructions were given to round up
six of the top commanding officers of the Western Sector. The
officers were:
1. Mohamed Elmi Samater
2. Mousa Bihi Abdi
3. Ibrahim Hussein
4. Mahdi Ali
5. Adan Dama’ Deriye
6. Mohamed Hassan Adan
On February 1, 1988 the remaining commanders of the Sector
were notified to attend an extra-ordinary meeting at Harshin [to be
held at 3:00 p.m. the same day]. However, the meeting never took
place because Colonel Abdirahman Dhooldahable informed the other
officers what transpired at Harshin. This incident had almost
derailed the struggle. The following documents attest to the gravity
of the problem:
Please refer to the following SNM communiqués:
1. The Security and Intelligence
Office:
Letter to the Investigation Committee, cc: Chairman of the Executive
Committee.
2. Liberation force command:
[Ref/snm/tgcx/mw-025-822 To: The 1st Revolutionary Army commander –
HARAR.
To: The 10th Division commander – JIGJIGA (Subject: Situational
Report)]. Date 4th February 1988
3. Liberation Force Command:
To: The 10th Division commander/ Subject Accusations. Date 4th
February1988.
4. Liberation Army command:
Subject: / Orders and Report/
To: the Commander of Gaarabidhaan Garrison. Date 3rd February 1988.
At the same time, the governments of Somalia and Ethiopia were
seriously negotiating the terms of a final rapprochement. The
agreement between the two governments was signed in Djibouti.
An emergency meeting diffused the crisis by re-structuring the
hierarchy of the organisation. This directly curtailed any
tendencies towards authoritarian management style.
Lest we loose track of one of the
most tumultuous chapters of our nation’s recent history, “Somalia:
Not a nice way to come home,” is an article from the archives of the
Economist Newspaper, issue of July 9th 1988. The military wing of
the Somali National Movement opted for the bold initiative of taking
the guerrilla war inside Somalia proper. The alternative was to
withdraw a distance of 20 miles from the Somalia-Ethiopia boundary.
The SNM’s decision caught Mengistu and
Barre by surprise.
This is a constant reminder to the living and a consolation to those
who paid the ultimate prize! In retrospect, what would have been the
outcome, had the armed wing of the organisation were in synch with
the politicians? The result would have been unthinkable- disgraceful
surrender similar to the SSDF of Majertenia.
This is the complete article of the Economist issue of July 9th
1988:
“Somalia: Not a nice way to come home
The Economist, July 9th 1988
THREE months ago it all made beautiful sense. Reeling from
secessionist victories in the provinces of Tigre and Eritrea, the
Ethiopian government offered next-door Somalia an attractive deal.
The Ethiopians said they would end a decade of border skirmishing
between the two countries by returning two captured Somali villages
and ending their support for the rebel fighters of the Somali
National Movement (SNM), whom Ethiopia
had previously armed and protected. The Somalis reciprocated by
declaring that they would no longer support rebels inside Ethiopia.
The relieved Ethiopians transferred troops to more desperate fronts,
and booted the SNM’s fighters out of
their old Ethiopian sanctuaries.
But if Somalia’s president Siad Barre thought he had got a bargain,
he was quickly disabused. The SNM,
deprived of its comfortable camps across the border in Ethiopia,
decided to come home fighting. Within two months of the border
agreement its guerrillas were engaged in the largest insurgency
Somalia has faced since it gained independence in 1960. At the end
of May, while Somalia’s president and defence minister were
attending a conference of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis
Ababa, the rebels captured the northern provincial capital of
Hargeysa and the town of Burao, and attacked the garrison near the
port of Berbera, where the Americans have naval facilities.
Somalia responded by moving troops from the south and bombing
Hargeysa and Burao. But its claim to have recaptured the two towns
is qualified by foreigners in the area. The say that the guerrillas,
with 5,000 or so men under arms, are holding out in pockets inside
the town as well as in nearby villages, and still control some
stretches of main road. Berbera is said to be “calm but anxious”.
Many people—some estimates go as high as 10,000—have been killed in
the fighting.
President Barre abolished tribalism in 1970, but that is mostly what
the civil war is about. The SNM is a
movement of the Isaq, a clan of northern cattle-herders and traders,
who feel that the Somali government in Mogadishu discriminates
against them. The president, on his father’s side, is from the Darod
clan, which the Isaq complain monopolises political power. On his
mother’s side, he is from Ogaden, a clan with whom the Isaq have
been in dispute ever since the Dervish rebellion against the British
early this century.
The SNM is not a separatist movement:
it simply wants to get rid of the president. Some non-Isaq Somalis
view the rebellion with modest enthusiasm because they frown on the
resolute way President Barre has centralised authority in his own
person and family. His half-brother is the new finance minister; his
son-in-law the military commander of Hargeysa; his son the general
in charge of the garrison in Mogadishu. His war against Ethiopia in
1977-78 kept the country briefly united around a dream of Greater
Somalia, which would have incorporated the ethnic Somalis in the
Ogaden. But the Somalis lost, and 800,000 impoverished Ogaden
refugees stayed in Somalia, adding to the country’s economic
burdens.
President Barre abandoned the previous Soviet-style economy in the
early 1980s in favour of IMF-inspired free-market reforms. Decontrol
of food grains led to a production boom which helped Somalia through
the worst of the drought that brought famine in Ethiopia. Prosperity
would be a useful ally in the battle against the rebels. But the IMF
stopped lending to the country in 1986 when it failed to service its
debts. Now price controls have returned, and food shortages with
them: the foreign-currency auctions that used to keep the exchange
rate realistic have been abolished.
The Somalis are still talking to the IMF. An unexpected 44%
devaluation at the end of June suggests that the war has at last
panicked the government into trying to sort out the country’s
finances. President Barre may hope that, without Ethiopian backing,
the rebellion in the north will eventually fade. But there are
plenty of wealthy Isaq traders in the Arabian Peninsula who could
willingly provide the rebels with weapons; Somalia’s coast is vast
and unpatrollable. And the president seems intent on fanning his
country’s tribal animosities. According to Amnesty International,
hundreds of Isaq businessmen have been arrested and tortured by
policy in Mogadishu in the past month alone.
© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London, July 9th 1988.”
Ahmed Ali Ibrahim Sabeyse
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