Could Somalia be auctioned to the Highest Criminal Bidder? A rejoinder

[NASSIR]

Could Somalia be auctioned to the Highest Criminal Bidder? A rejoinder

By Muhsin Mahad

Feb. 18, 2010

 

Reading the above article by former ambassador Yusuf Al Azhari in WDN, it is clear that it has been triggered by his anger with the recent demonstration in Nairobi when few individuals in the large crowd waved Al Shabab's flag in protest against the detention by the Kenya authority of an Islamist preacher of Jamaican origin. Rather than target these individuals for their provocative action, it is incredible that someone like Al Azhari, with his distinguished background, should instead tar most Somalis hailing from Somalia with the same brush as "common criminals masquerading as refugees". His Excellency's spurious assertion, clearly appreciated by his Kenyan hosts, amounts to a perversion of justice when the true victims (Somalis) are portrayed as criminals at the stroke of his pen and the guilty (Kenya authority) gets sympathy and support as the victims!

 

The fact of the matter is that Kenya, and particularly Nairobi, has one of the highest crime rates in Africa and perhaps the world. These crimes are committed by Kenyan Africans and Somalis play only a negligible part if at all. Those who fled Somalia's internecine conflict are not criminals but genuine refugees who are recognised as such by the UN and are mostly sheltered in camps in NE Kenya. These cannot commit crimes outside the camps. What Mr.Al Azhari has in mind therefore must be those Somalis Eastleigh. Most of the residents of this famous district consist of Somalis from Kenya, Somalia and returning Diaspora from around the world. The overwhelming majority of these people have legal documents to be in Kenya. Contrary to the false picture painted by Mr. Al Azhari, they are law-abiding, hardworking, enterprising people who, despite the daunting difficulties and daily harassment they face from the Kenyan authority at every level, are running booming businesses and turned Eastleigh into the most thriving area in Kenya.

 

A community that brings in so much capital - admittedly some of it ill-gotten- ,and who provide popular and affordable goods, and create badly needed employment, would have been valued in any other country. Unlike the Asian Kenyans, who milk the country and stash away their money in Europe, with little or no re-investment in the country, the Somalis bring their own money, skills and business expertise and build Kenya. That is why the people who resent the Somalis most are not the ordinary grateful Kenyans who daily benefit from the Somalis, but the Asians who have lost to the Somalis and who are often behind the on-going relentless and scurrilous media attack on the Somalis.

 

What Mr. Al Azhari has failed to acknowledge is that, since Kenya's independence, both Kenyan Somalis and those from Somalia or elsewhere have been defenceless prey to the discriminatory and exploitative whims of the Kenya authority at all levels for their different ends. For the ill-paid Kenya police, it has become an institutionalised, endemic and accepted practice to extort money from Somalis by stopping them and asking them for their papers; and, if no cash is immediately forthcoming, to hold them in detention and incommunicado until they do so, irrespective of whether they have proper documents or not. Kenyans are also asked for bribes and pay up but that is only when they have committed an infraction of the law. What makes the situation of the Somalis different is that they are subject as a people to this treatment, often for no other reason than that they are Somalis.

 

The inhumane and degrading treatment of the Somalis in Kenya, and particularly in Nairobi, is reminiscent of the infamous South African Pass Law which fined, banished or imprisoned black Africans if found in so-called white cities after sunset or without permits to be there. In some ways, the plight of the Somalis in Kenya is worse to the extent that they are daily harassed, extorted, punished and deported even when they have proper documents. What is amazing is that these flagrant human rights abuses are accepted as something normal in Kenya. That includes the Somali community itself who are always ready with the cash to get out of a difficult situation. It also includes Somali ministers in the Kenya government or Kenya Somali MPs. Even the otherwise vociferous Farah Maalin, the deputy parliamentary speaker, who often will miss no opportunity to berate about issues in Somalia, rarely ever concerns himself with matters closer to home.

 

As for the Kenya government and Parliament, the Somalis serve as a handy whipping boy to divert attention away from Kenya's internal travails of the time for which they are responsible. Every now and then, when such needs for Somali-bashing arise, Kenya politicians fall over themselves in their scramble to take potshots at Somalis, hoping to win instant plaudits with their public. This time, it is the bogey of the threat from Al Shabaab, or alleged laundering of piracy money, that are behind the current demonising of Somalis.

 

The recent demonstration in Nairobi after the Friday prayer and the subsequent reaction of the authorities provide a typical manifestation of the way Somalis are treated. This Muslim demonstration was presented by the authority, and echoed by Mr. Al Azhari, as one organised and held by Somalis sympathetic to Al Shabab. In reality, it was one in which Muslims from different ethnic origins participated, though the Somalis might have been present in significant numbers. The demonstration was not so much a support for Al Shabab as resentment at perceived Islamophobia by the Kenya authorities.

 

Even if there were few elements supporting Al Shabab, does it justify the barbaric response of the Kenya authority and their blanket collective punishment of the whole Somali community in Nairobi and in particular those in Eastleigh? Kenya prides itself as a practising democracy where people are entitled to hold demonstrations in order to air their views or grievances. This right might be exercised by indigenous African Kenyans but clearly it practically excludes Muslims and more so Somalis as witnessed by the authority's reaction to the recent demonstration and its aftermath.

 

Mr.Al Azhari for his part assumes without proof that everyone in that demonstration, and particularly those who offended the Kenyans, were from Somalia and Al Shabab supporters. But even if they were, the arrest of countless innocent Somalis, including women (some of them pregnant), Somali TFG parliamentarians, Somalis from the Diaspora, and even Somalis from Kenya - all legally in Kenya- and their detention for days in the most degrading conditions, is a damning indictment of the Kenya government and its law enforcement organs for their unspeakable treatment. of innocent Somalis.

 

The government did what they did because that is what they have routinely done in the past with no questions asked - not least by the moribund Somali government (TFG) whose members are more keen to kowtow to neighbouring countries rather than come to the defence of their wronged people. After days of self-imposed silence, the foreign minister, Ali Jama Jangeli, allegedly owing his post to the diktat of a neighbouring country, was grudgingly forced in a BBC interview to express his muted uneasiness about what happened. His predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar, would have no doubt reacted differently and been more forthright. It is no secret that he lost his job precisely because of his undivided loyalty to his country, something intolerable to Ethiopia, the real arbiter of Somali affairs behind the TFG's dummy facade.

 

The main question raised by Mr. Al Azhari as a heading for his article is whether Somalia could be "auctioned to the highest criminal bidder". If he has Al Shabab in mind, such a claim does not hold much water whatever else one might say about them. On the contrary, if it was not for their extremist misguided interpretation of Islam, and the crude and painful manner they practice it, they would have had a glorious chapter in Somalia's history as the group who liberated Somalia from its worst enemy when others since the departure of Mohamed Siyad Barre have opted to be Ethiopia's servile puppets for their own narrow personal interests.

 

If Somalia has been auctioned to anyone, it is to Ethiopia. And Azhari should know better than anyone else that it was his former boss, Abdullahi Yusuf, who pioneered collaboration with Ethiopian at a time when it was a taboo and who since appointment as head of a state at Embaghati has handed Somalia to Ethiopia on a plate. The fact that the current government leaders are following his footsteps does not of course exonerate them but it does not change the fact that it was your former boss who masterminded Ethiopia's political and military hegemony over our country.

 

Finally, Al Azhari's raises alarm about the way the country is led and run and the shortcomings of its leaders. He says:

 

"To shepherd the country out of its political mess, a strong visionary leader of high experience in governance and a non egocentric patriot is needed. A leader who is a healer with resolute strategic political solutions, acceptable to both the Nation and friendly countries which condone public support is what Somalia is yearning for to day".

 

This is very good stuff, but strange that it should come from Al Azhari of all people. He was after all the right-hand man of a leader - former President Abdullahi Yusuf- who epitomised the antithesis of everything Azhari is now prescribing. Many people will recall his staunch defence of his boss whose only contribution to Somalia was to invite the occupation of Somalia by its worst enemy and whose motto was divide-and- rule along clan lines. Under him, Ethiopia's occupation of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia, and the destruction, death and destitution it inflicted on our capital and its people, and above all the humiliation of being conquered by our historical enemy, will enter the annals of Somali history. That is his legacy. There is nothing innately wrong with Azhari's message. It is indeed relevant on paper. What is wrong is the messenger whose message will sound for many Somalis as double talk. That is why few will take it seriously.

 

Muhsin Mahad

E-Mail:mohsinmahad@yahoo.co.uk