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by Ali H Abdulla
Sunday, February 01, 2009
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Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, President of Somalia
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Congratulations to Sheikh Sharif on his recent election as the third Somali President after the collapse of the Somali government. The two presidents before him failed miserably to bring peace and stability to our troubled country. Let us hope that this time the current President who has the support of a large section of the Somali population will succeed.
Sheikh Sharif is in the same difficult position of President Obama who is saddled with a broken economy, two major wars and a battered world image. Somalia suffers from fragmentation, anarchy, piracy, poverty, starvation to name just a few. While President Obama has the means and tools to tackle these problems, the Sharif will have to rely on the goodwill and support of outsiders who may not be willing to see him succeed.
According to the Bush doctrine an Islamist Leader is a terrorist in disguise who should be neutralized by any means and hauled over to Guantanamo Bay. With the disappearance of Bush, let us hope that Obama and the West will drop this attitude and help this moderate Islamist to stabilize Somalia and bring it back into the fold of the International Community. All he needs is a chance to prove that Islam is not a violent religion that is out to get the West and destroy its cherished way of life. Islam is a way of life that can potentially tackle a lot of the problems of many countries like Somalia, countries that are fragmented along clan and regional lines. When Malcolm X first went to Mecca, his attitude changed completely when he realized that Islam is for the black and the white, the poor and the rich. In Somalia Islam has the potential to eliminate the years of hatred and division fostered by evil warlords.
One major difference between Obama and the Sharif is the ability of the first to pick his team directly while Sheikh Sharif will have to select a Prime Minister who will then select a cabinet that needs to be approved by more than 500 people with different agendas.
The current system of using a 4.5 formula to allocate seats is a major problem for the President. As one of the so-called four major grouping in Somalia, he will have to pick a Prime Minister from the other 3 thus excluding the so-called .5 from the process.
Since he cannot satisfy the other 3 if he picks one of them and ignores the other 2, it may be a safe bet to pick a Prime Minister from the so-called .5, a section of the Somali community that lumps together many disparate Somali groups; a section that has been discriminated against consistently and marginalized over the years. Justice would dictate that they be give a chance this time as the others have failed all the time.
Another option is to select a woman for the post although this will infuriate the hardliners and alienate them completely. A woman Prime Minister may finally give some justice to the millions of Somali women who struggle to support broken families under very difficult circumstances while most men chew Kat or devote their energies to accumulating more wives. The Somali male has proved time and again that he lacks what it takes to extricate the country from the quagmire it has sunk into.
Another option would be to pick a Prime Minister from the North West, an area that desires to break away from the rest of Somalia due to grievances that started with the old regime and continued over the years. The focus of the International community has always been to support the South and regard it as the legitimate representative of Somalia thus ignoring half of the country as if did not exist at all. All reconciliation conferences that took place focused on establishing a Somali government in the complete absence of legitimate representatives from the North. This attitude has only served to empower the hardliners in the North and gave them more ammunition in their efforts to break away from the rest of the country. Some regional and Western countries such as the United Kingdom may have engineered this situation in order to break Somalia into tiny enclaves that do not pose any threat to neighboring countries.
A visit by the President to the North West and North East would help bring Somalis closer and help heal the rift that has been exacerbated by divisive leaders and reconciliation conferences held in countries that never desired the rebirth of Somalia as a strong nation. I have no doubt that the Sharif will be received as a hero in all corners of Somalia.
The Sharif also needs to extend an olive branch to the Asmara group and open negotiation channels with its leaders as soon as possible.
Let us all hope that this humble former teacher will succeed in the difficult task of brining Somalis together again under one roof. Let us all forget clan and regional differences and rally around this one man who has the potential to bring us back from the abyss.
Ali H Abdulla
It Consultant
[email protected]