Communicating Arts - Main Web Site"BBC Africa analyst Mary Harper says the overall picture for southern and central Somalia is of a country collapsing into conflict.
"The area previously controlled by the UIC is fragmenting into a patchwork of unstable regions, each beset with insecurity, she says.
"The violence does not appear to be co-ordinated and it is rare for anybody to claim responsibility for the attacks." [1]
It's always in the journalist's interest to relay conflict. It's compelling stuff. Whatever else may be happening in the quiet spaces occupied by suits armed with checkbooks, nothing competes for attention like atrocity.
We don't really want to look.
We just can't look away.
For about a week now, imho, and probably coinciding with the uptick in violence in Iraq and elsewhere, the Shabelle top headers have drifted some from the rosey picture of Ethiopian-Kenyan-Somali-US solidarity in administration, democratic initiative, and security matters and back to the sorry business of killing every which way imaginable.
A roadside bomb slams an Ethiopian patrol, and the troops grab the first kids they can get their hands on--three brothers--remove them to a few yards of cover and shoot them. Government-military inquest promised: and the reportage stops there. [2]
Best advice, Somali: if you're anywhere near an explosion, especially one involving military forces, get indoors or out of the area quick and wait for the authorities to come knocking or pass through. They're sure to be as pissed as wet hornets.
Must violence have cause?
What if it's completely anarchic, boosted by the easy availability of arms and fueled by boredom?
What if, and right down to the brutal, senseless horror if it, it's about vanity--my power vs. your power, and my power is the very hand of God omnipotent, autocratic, beyond judgment?
What if it's not about humiliation, injustice, poverty, and suffering?
What if it's about art--instead of guitars, Kalashnikovs?
The western box may be to want to make things sensible in a western way: the violence is but a tantrum, the familiar politics by other means.
Step out of the box: see, the Somali violence--the odd grenade, the bullets spraying down a marketplace--perhaps has its own life.
All the actors--the angry Islamists, the story-making journalists, the fears of the people, the pride of warlords and officers of the government all breath the fire into being.
1. "Somalia food aid trucks stranded." BBC News.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
Comments