Communicating Arts - Main Web Site"He is said to have an authoritarian approach to leadership."
That's a line from the Wikipedia entry for Somalia's transitional Federal government President Abdulahhi Yusuf Ahmed [1], and it begs the question: who is to stop him?
I'll have an answer for that in a moment, but note also David Cairns' statement from Great Britain's news portal The First Post from May 2006: ". . . while the "justice" provided by Mogadishu's Islamic courts is a brutal travesty, so is that of the warlords; neither group are the "good guys". [2]
Second question: what if they're the only guys you got?
Somalian politics and warfare have certainly put the "feud" back in "feudalism", but it's hardly alone in that, and from Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon today to Puntland in Somalia, a fair part of the world seems ready to ask (third question), how do you get out of it?
The strong man says, "Like me, the benevolent dictator."
The common man says, "I don't care who rules--just leave me out of it, and leave me in peace."
I have an answer to each of the questions posed in this post's introduction. Let's knock them off one by one.
1. Who is to keep Somalian President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed from shutting down radio stations and other news outlets, among other perhaps questionable acts?
My answer: himself.
The best way through a press relations issue is to develop, promote, and protect more press because where editors and writers have integrity, there's healthy competition in both news acquisition, news scrutiny, and the development of opinions.
2. What if they're the only guys you got?
My answer: often enough, we're the only guys they got.
According to Wikipedia,"The U.S. Department of State, in its 2002 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, identifies militia members loyal to Ahmed as being responsible for at least two deliberate killings of non-combatants while he was president of the disputed regional state of Puntland." [3] The victims of the crimes were a businessman, Garah Mohammed Said Gom'ad, and a British Islamic envoy, Sultan Ahmed Mohammed Hurre, whom The Somaliland Times characterized as "respected/educated" and as symbolic of "all the Somalis killed for political reasons."
Were I now to cozy up to "Ahmed", I could ask " . . . and who's to know that the businessman and the Sultan were not bad guys too?"
But I don't wish to cozy up nor know the answers to those particular murders: in the absence of a public, observable, and regulated judicial process, there can be no such thing as "knowing."
One moves on into the present, and the present is to head off further insurrection, suppress criminal violence, get about a million people fed and sheltered, and generally create an environment where peace becomes not only a possibility but a much preferred habit as well as a productive state of affairs.
3. How do you get out of it (feudalism)? What may be done is to simply move on into the uncomfortable discipline imposed by empirical and open millitary, political, and judicial processes, and then take the buddies--the enemies, the allies, the unaffiliated--with you when you do.
I know that's easier said than done, but how else live without castles, much smaller fiefs, and so much more suffering?
One may imagine (historians: e-mail me) that feudal systems and their ways in warfare enjoyed a balance in destructive capability, population, agricultural resources, and trade that proved for a while sustainable if bloody, but the continuation of that way of life in Somalia seems to have wavered for about seventeen years between anarchy, exodus, and a bizarre (to any western mind) dark ages way of being.
Add to that--because of the associated impoverishment that goes along with violence--constant exposure to depredation by nature as well as man.
Next week's (June 14) reconciliation conference may provide some opportunity for the men who would be and were kings to reconsider the advantages, economic and spiritual, accruing to a civil and peaceful state.
1. Wikipedia. "Abdulahhi Yusuf Ahmed": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullahi_Yusuf_Ahmed.
2. Cairns, David. "Somali warlords don't deserve support." The First Post, May 26, 2006: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=2&subID=569&WT.srch=1.
3. "Sultan Hurre Remembrance Day," The Somaliland Times, August 15, 2006: http://www.somalilandtimes.net/sl/2005/239/17.shtml
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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