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by Ali Osman
Saturday, November 22, 2008
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| The Sirius Star is anchored off the coast of Somalia on November 19. Photo AFP |
Pirates of the Somalia coast and their daring hijackings are making news these days. Somali Pirates are most popular Google news item for several days now. AL-JAZEERA, BBC, CNN all showed the latest Aramco Supper taker hijacking in prime time news. All of sudden the world is fixated with this latest wave of hijackings.
As a Somali looking the situation from the sideline, I can only compare this media reaction to a popular children’s tale and movie called Chicken Little. One day Chicken Little raised the alarm: "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" And how did Chicken Little know the sky is falling? "I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a bit of it fell on my head," said Chicken Little, after getting hit on the head with an acorn while walking through the forest.
Chicken Little gathered her barnyard friends - the hen, the cock, goose, gander, and duck-all together headed off to find the King and warn him of the approaching danger. Similarly, the media was hit by an acorn (Saudi owned Oil tanker Sirius Star) apparently hauling quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily output oil and yes the King must be warned. The world leadership must send the navies to protect the ships.
What the news media are not saying is that in Somalia, the acorn has been falling all along, but it never fell on the head of non Somalis before Sirius Star. In fact the acorn started falling back in 1990’s when the Somali government collapsed thanks to IMF and the world looked the other way because it was the interest of Christian Ethiopia who was weak at the time.
The acorn again fell on Somalia when a consensus president Abdiqasim Salad Hassan was chosen in 2001 but Ethiopia and US sabotaged his administration because he was pro Islamist and independent minded.
The acorn fell on Somalia when another president Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed was chosen but the United Nations, European Union or the African Union would not provide the support he needed immediately after his selection because he might become a threat to Christian Ethiopia as he belongs to the old guard who may or may not have nationalist ambitions.
The acorn fell on Somalia when Islamic Courts Union took over most of Somalia, eradicated the piracy the world is concerned about and were on their way of building a sustainable government that could bring normalcy to Somalia. Again, instead of the world supporting them and coming to their aide the United States and Ethiopia sabotaged their efforts by accusing them of being affiliated with terror groups and eventually United States and Britain financed Ethiopia to invade Somalia and illegally occupy a sovereign people. Ethiopian military killed more than 30,000 civilians. Injured more than 300,000 and displaced more than 2 million people and are still on it while committing looting, raping and acts of massacre.
The acorn fell on Somalia when every day around 100 people escaping from Somalia die in their perilous journey to Yemen. What the Indian navy says it sunk could well be poor migrants being illegally shipped in these same waters by these same pirates who also hijack ships on their way back to shore. So, the acorn is falling, as we speak millions of Mogadishu resident are facing indiscriminate Ethiopian shelling and that is the real KAHUNA acorn.
Ali Osman
E-mail: [email protected]