By Godwin Ijediogor
IF recent events and news emanating from Somalia are anything to go by and different from others in the past, the war-torn country might as well be on its way to reclaiming its statehood, once again.
On Monday, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a renowned academic, emerged as the country’s new President, defeating incumbent Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a run-off with a convincing majority of Somali parliamentarians in an indirect election held in Mogadishu, the capital city.
Mohamud is one Somali leader that never gave up on Somalia, despite years of conflict, clan rule, piracy, Islamist insurgency and civil war.
A peace activist and educational campaigner, he remained in Somalia throughout its tempest moments, unlike many other Somali intellectuals.
Like Ahmed, Mohamud is of the Hawiye clan, one of the country’s main groups based in Mogadishu. But unlike Ahmed, clan influence, which impacts on virtually all aspects of life in Somalia, was not the main determinant of his victory. Rather, it was largely because he had not soiled himself in the political and clan conflicts.
Born in central Hiran region in 1955, Mohamud is linked to al-Islah, Somalia’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he is not known to be extremist.
He studied engineering at the Somali National University and became a lecturer in 1981, but travelled to India in 1986 to study and obtained an MBA from Bhopal University.
A man at home in Somalia even at a time many of his contemporaries left, Mohamud worked as a consultant with non-governmental groups, UN bodies and on several peace initiatives and helped set up the Simad University in 1999, where he was its Dean for 10 years.
He founded the Peace and Development Party (PDP) in 2011 and was elected a parliamentarian last month.
Described as a moderate Islamist, Mohamud is also said to have close links with the Union of Islamist Courts (UIC), although his followers say he simply supported any activity aiming to restore peace and stability; hence he was known for his efforts in resolving clan disputes.
He participated in negotiations in 1997 that oversaw the removal of the infamous “Green Line” that divided Mogadishu into two sections controlled by rival clan warlords.
Already, Mohamud had his first baptism of fire in Wednesday’s assassination bid, just two days after his election.
He and the Kenyan Foreign Minister Sam Ongeri survived an attack on a Mogadishu hotel, where they were meeting.
Mohamud was unharmed after two blasts went off outside the hotel, but three soldiers were killed in the attack claimed by Al Shabaab.
Somalia has had a chequered history since 1969 when the late dictator, President Mohammed Siad Barre, until then the country’s Army Commander, took over power following the killing of President Abdurasheed Omar Sharmark by his own bodyguards.
After over 20 years of Barre’s dictatorship, a disagreement arose among the ruling class and snowballed into a coup that ousted him in 1991.
That was a culmination of a conflict that ostensibly had some clan or ethnic sentiments, which started way back in 1977 when the Somalis and Ethiopians fought a bloody war over the Ogden region, which the latter won.
Historically, the Somalis are also found in Ethiopian, Kenya, Djibouti and Somaliland, but there has been no love lost between Somalia and Ethiopia.
While Barre supported and funded opposition against the late President Mengistu Hale Miriam of Ethiopia, his Ethiopian counterpart also supported and funded the rebellion against his regime.
Interestingly, both leaders succeeded, and were equally losers at the end, as their opponents overthrew them almost the same period.
For Somalia, it marked the beginning of its present debacle and inability of a central authority over the country.
Following the ouster of Barre in 1991, the country descended into the rule of clan warlords, with Somaliland rebels, under the umbrella of Somali National Movement (SNM) and others holding sway in southern Somalia.
As the confusion raged, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid’s United Somali Congress (USC) aligned with Gen. Adan Gabyo’s Somali Peoples Movement (SPM) to take over power. Aidid was a Hawiye.
But the ruling alliance members couldn’t agree on power sharing and a rift soon developed and they splintered into the Habar Gibir faction, led by Aidid, and the Ali Mahdi’s Abdal faction.
Mahdi claimed authority simultaneously with Aidid in Mogadishu and fighting went on until 1993, when the severe drought and famine made the United Nations (UN) to send a mission, UNISOP, headed by a United States General, to the country mainly on humanitarian basis.
The mission later changed to a political and security one and started taking on Aidid and his men to restore some semblance of law and order.
Aidid was later declared wanted and a bounty placed on his head, just as retaliated against the US General.
The mission was forced to withdraw when the Americans, Nigerians and others lost soldiers in the notorious failed ‘Black Hulk Down’ operation.
Interestingly too, knowingly or unknowingly, Aidid’s son, Hussein, then a US marine, was said to have been part of the US troops.
Aidid was later killed in a controversial circumstance in one of the battles he led. He was reportedly shot and killed from behind, allegedly by his own forces.
Hussein later returned to Somalia to succeed his father. Thereafter, so many factions emerged because of so many clan and political differences, and Mogadishu became chaotic and almost lawless, as clan rule reigned.
The international community tried to bring the different factions together, leading to several conferences in different African countries at different times.
Perhaps the most successful was the one held in Djibouti in 2000, where a Transitional National Government (TNG) was formed, with Abdi Kassim Salad, a former minister under the Barre regime and from Aidid’s sub-clan, who was never a warlord, was elected President.
His government was composed mainly of civil society members, without the warlords, and perhaps that was its major undoing.
The TNG tried to revive the central administration, security forces and the economy and even took over some areas from the warlords.
But it couldn’t continue for long, as the excluded warlords ganged up and forced it to collapse.
Then the East African (IGARD) countries convened a reconciliation meeting at Eldorate, later Nairobi in Kenya under former President Arap Moi. It lasted for two years and at the end, the warlords were invited to form a government in October 2002.
Each warlord and the TNG named delegates and a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was formed on October 15, 2004, with Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as President and Ali Mohammed Gedi as Prime Minister.
The TFG was a coalition government and the major clans shared power equally. The Presidency was rotated between the Darod and Hawiye, the two dominant clans, while others shared the remaining positions.
Yet, members disagreed on locating the government in Mogadishu. While the President, a Darod, stayed back in Nairobi foe some time, others returned and insisted on Mogadishu. Finally the President returned, but relocated his base to Jowhar, about 90 kilometres from Mogadishu.
By then, the Islamic Courts were emerging and the President, with hindsight, saw them as a threat, which they turned out to be later.
Before then, the international community made the two groups to agree on Baiduo, about 240 kilometres from Mogadishu, as base of the government, but most of the warlords stayed back and promised to liberate the capital.
That was when the Islamic courts emerged fully and the warlords formed the Anti-terror Alliance in 2006, ostensibly funded by the US.
By then, the Somali, albeit, Mogadishu public, tired of the war, embraced what looked like peace from the Courts. The Hawiye, like other clans, agreed for its sub-clan to form its own courts to check killings and other crimes in its midst, with current Ahmed as chairman of the Hawiye-Abgal sub-clan’s Islamic Court.
Later on, the clans formed a coalition, joint forces and Islamic Court Union (ICU), still with Ahmed still chairman.
With the people’s support, the ICU started to fight the warlords and by June 2006, they had defeated and chased out the warlords and taken over Mogadishu.
Just before then, the name Al Shabaab began to emerge. While the ICU handled more of administration, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was the spiritual head. The military wing, now referred to as Al Shabaab, was headed by a hardline Islamist militant, Adan Hashi Ayro, who was trained abroad by al Qaeda, as commander, surrounded by other hardliners.
The ICU went after the fleeing warlords and started expanding, taking Kismayo and threatening the government at Baiduo. Its followers even started encircling Baiduo, prompting then President Yusuf Ahmed to seek the assistance of the Ethiopians.
Ahmed was in the rebel/opposition camp supported by the Ethiopians to oust Barre in 1991. So, it was understandable why it was easy for the Ethiopians to send forces to Baiduo to protect his weak government in June 2006.
For over six months, the ICU controlled Mogadishu and its environs, bringing some semblance of peace and order to the capital, to the admiration of the people. As a result, some prominent Somalis abroad returned, and this boosted the credibility of the ICU.
But in the middle of December 2006, the big war broke out between the Somali government/Ethiopian forces and ICU very close to Baiduo and in no time, the Ethiopians pushed the ICU forces up to Mogadishu.
In late December 2006, they chased the ICU forces to Kismayo and the war gradually degenerated. By then, Ahmed (outgoing President), posing as leader of the ICU, managed to leave the country through Kenya to Djibouti and ended up in Eritrea.
At this time, Al Shabaab had dispersed, but their commanders regrouped and gradually started mounting hit-and-run attacks, which were new to the long-drawn Somali war.
With the Islamic Courts, they started growing again, declaring a holy war against the Ethiopian forces, seen by most Somalis as natural enemies based on history, and started recruiting the young.
Their leaders, who had been trained in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc, started introducing Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), suicide attacks and roadside bombings into the festering war.
And things began to degenerate further, as bombs exploded everywhere, with ambushes rampant, claiming lives and property.
This went on throughout 2007 and part of 2008, when the UN managed to bring the two warring factions together again for peace talks.
This climaxed in Yusuf Ahmed and Sharif Ahmed agreeing in Djibouti to form another TFG, with the doubling of the number of representatives in the parliament to accommodate the interest of the latter, who emerged as President.
Unfortunately, that did not stop the fight in Mogadishu, as Al Shabaab, viewing Ahmed, formerly one of its own, as a traitor, refused to take part in the unity government and remained unrelenting in its attacks.
The group insisted that the Ethiopians must leave the country; hence the deployment of AMISOM (African Union Mission for Somalia) forces, with Uganda agreeing to send in advance troops, followed by Burundi in March 2007.
Ahmed later relocated to Mogadishu.
The AMISOM troops were initially not attacked by the Islamist group, as the Ethiopians were their targets, but that changed once the Ethiopians left.
Attacks on AMISOM and whatever remained of Somali forces raged, despite the installation of the TFG, until July last year, when Al Shabaab militants were forced to flee the onslaught of the AMISOM forces, who were closing in on them even in places thought to be their haven, such as the Bakara Market area.
Towards the end of last year, the militant group was pushed to their last bastion at Pasta Factory area, from where they occasionally fired at AMISOM positions.
But by the middle of this year, there were completely pushed out of Mogadishu, with the AMISOM forces liberating other areas, especially with the joining of Djibouti and Kenyan forces.
A two-day AMISOM Media Conference held in Kigali, Rwanda between August 29 and 30 recommended wider roles for local media and journalists in projecting the achievements of AMISOM and how life is gradually returning to Mogadishu and other librated parts of Somalia.
Now that a new President has emerged from Somalia, it is imagined that Somalis have broken from the past, despite the activities of a few bent on continuing the war.
Source: The Guardian Nigeria News
Mohamud is one Somali leader that never gave up on Somalia, despite years of conflict, clan rule, piracy, Islamist insurgency and civil war.
A peace activist and educational campaigner, he remained in Somalia throughout its tempest moments, unlike many other Somali intellectuals.
Like Ahmed, Mohamud is of the Hawiye clan, one of the country’s main groups based in Mogadishu. But unlike Ahmed, clan influence, which impacts on virtually all aspects of life in Somalia, was not the main determinant of his victory. Rather, it was largely because he had not soiled himself in the political and clan conflicts.
Born in central Hiran region in 1955, Mohamud is linked to al-Islah, Somalia’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he is not known to be extremist.
He studied engineering at the Somali National University and became a lecturer in 1981, but travelled to India in 1986 to study and obtained an MBA from Bhopal University.
A man at home in Somalia even at a time many of his contemporaries left, Mohamud worked as a consultant with non-governmental groups, UN bodies and on several peace initiatives and helped set up the Simad University in 1999, where he was its Dean for 10 years.
He founded the Peace and Development Party (PDP) in 2011 and was elected a parliamentarian last month.
Described as a moderate Islamist, Mohamud is also said to have close links with the Union of Islamist Courts (UIC), although his followers say he simply supported any activity aiming to restore peace and stability; hence he was known for his efforts in resolving clan disputes.
He participated in negotiations in 1997 that oversaw the removal of the infamous “Green Line” that divided Mogadishu into two sections controlled by rival clan warlords.
Already, Mohamud had his first baptism of fire in Wednesday’s assassination bid, just two days after his election.
He and the Kenyan Foreign Minister Sam Ongeri survived an attack on a Mogadishu hotel, where they were meeting.
Mohamud was unharmed after two blasts went off outside the hotel, but three soldiers were killed in the attack claimed by Al Shabaab.
Somalia has had a chequered history since 1969 when the late dictator, President Mohammed Siad Barre, until then the country’s Army Commander, took over power following the killing of President Abdurasheed Omar Sharmark by his own bodyguards.
After over 20 years of Barre’s dictatorship, a disagreement arose among the ruling class and snowballed into a coup that ousted him in 1991.
That was a culmination of a conflict that ostensibly had some clan or ethnic sentiments, which started way back in 1977 when the Somalis and Ethiopians fought a bloody war over the Ogden region, which the latter won.
Historically, the Somalis are also found in Ethiopian, Kenya, Djibouti and Somaliland, but there has been no love lost between Somalia and Ethiopia.
While Barre supported and funded opposition against the late President Mengistu Hale Miriam of Ethiopia, his Ethiopian counterpart also supported and funded the rebellion against his regime.
Interestingly, both leaders succeeded, and were equally losers at the end, as their opponents overthrew them almost the same period.
For Somalia, it marked the beginning of its present debacle and inability of a central authority over the country.
Following the ouster of Barre in 1991, the country descended into the rule of clan warlords, with Somaliland rebels, under the umbrella of Somali National Movement (SNM) and others holding sway in southern Somalia.
As the confusion raged, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid’s United Somali Congress (USC) aligned with Gen. Adan Gabyo’s Somali Peoples Movement (SPM) to take over power. Aidid was a Hawiye.
But the ruling alliance members couldn’t agree on power sharing and a rift soon developed and they splintered into the Habar Gibir faction, led by Aidid, and the Ali Mahdi’s Abdal faction.
Mahdi claimed authority simultaneously with Aidid in Mogadishu and fighting went on until 1993, when the severe drought and famine made the United Nations (UN) to send a mission, UNISOP, headed by a United States General, to the country mainly on humanitarian basis.
The mission later changed to a political and security one and started taking on Aidid and his men to restore some semblance of law and order.
Aidid was later declared wanted and a bounty placed on his head, just as retaliated against the US General.
The mission was forced to withdraw when the Americans, Nigerians and others lost soldiers in the notorious failed ‘Black Hulk Down’ operation.
Interestingly too, knowingly or unknowingly, Aidid’s son, Hussein, then a US marine, was said to have been part of the US troops.
Aidid was later killed in a controversial circumstance in one of the battles he led. He was reportedly shot and killed from behind, allegedly by his own forces.
Hussein later returned to Somalia to succeed his father. Thereafter, so many factions emerged because of so many clan and political differences, and Mogadishu became chaotic and almost lawless, as clan rule reigned.
The international community tried to bring the different factions together, leading to several conferences in different African countries at different times.
Perhaps the most successful was the one held in Djibouti in 2000, where a Transitional National Government (TNG) was formed, with Abdi Kassim Salad, a former minister under the Barre regime and from Aidid’s sub-clan, who was never a warlord, was elected President.
His government was composed mainly of civil society members, without the warlords, and perhaps that was its major undoing.
The TNG tried to revive the central administration, security forces and the economy and even took over some areas from the warlords.
But it couldn’t continue for long, as the excluded warlords ganged up and forced it to collapse.
Then the East African (IGARD) countries convened a reconciliation meeting at Eldorate, later Nairobi in Kenya under former President Arap Moi. It lasted for two years and at the end, the warlords were invited to form a government in October 2002.
Each warlord and the TNG named delegates and a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was formed on October 15, 2004, with Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as President and Ali Mohammed Gedi as Prime Minister.
The TFG was a coalition government and the major clans shared power equally. The Presidency was rotated between the Darod and Hawiye, the two dominant clans, while others shared the remaining positions.
Yet, members disagreed on locating the government in Mogadishu. While the President, a Darod, stayed back in Nairobi foe some time, others returned and insisted on Mogadishu. Finally the President returned, but relocated his base to Jowhar, about 90 kilometres from Mogadishu.
By then, the Islamic Courts were emerging and the President, with hindsight, saw them as a threat, which they turned out to be later.
Before then, the international community made the two groups to agree on Baiduo, about 240 kilometres from Mogadishu, as base of the government, but most of the warlords stayed back and promised to liberate the capital.
That was when the Islamic courts emerged fully and the warlords formed the Anti-terror Alliance in 2006, ostensibly funded by the US.
By then, the Somali, albeit, Mogadishu public, tired of the war, embraced what looked like peace from the Courts. The Hawiye, like other clans, agreed for its sub-clan to form its own courts to check killings and other crimes in its midst, with current Ahmed as chairman of the Hawiye-Abgal sub-clan’s Islamic Court.
Later on, the clans formed a coalition, joint forces and Islamic Court Union (ICU), still with Ahmed still chairman.
With the people’s support, the ICU started to fight the warlords and by June 2006, they had defeated and chased out the warlords and taken over Mogadishu.
Just before then, the name Al Shabaab began to emerge. While the ICU handled more of administration, Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was the spiritual head. The military wing, now referred to as Al Shabaab, was headed by a hardline Islamist militant, Adan Hashi Ayro, who was trained abroad by al Qaeda, as commander, surrounded by other hardliners.
The ICU went after the fleeing warlords and started expanding, taking Kismayo and threatening the government at Baiduo. Its followers even started encircling Baiduo, prompting then President Yusuf Ahmed to seek the assistance of the Ethiopians.
Ahmed was in the rebel/opposition camp supported by the Ethiopians to oust Barre in 1991. So, it was understandable why it was easy for the Ethiopians to send forces to Baiduo to protect his weak government in June 2006.
For over six months, the ICU controlled Mogadishu and its environs, bringing some semblance of peace and order to the capital, to the admiration of the people. As a result, some prominent Somalis abroad returned, and this boosted the credibility of the ICU.
But in the middle of December 2006, the big war broke out between the Somali government/Ethiopian forces and ICU very close to Baiduo and in no time, the Ethiopians pushed the ICU forces up to Mogadishu.
In late December 2006, they chased the ICU forces to Kismayo and the war gradually degenerated. By then, Ahmed (outgoing President), posing as leader of the ICU, managed to leave the country through Kenya to Djibouti and ended up in Eritrea.
At this time, Al Shabaab had dispersed, but their commanders regrouped and gradually started mounting hit-and-run attacks, which were new to the long-drawn Somali war.
With the Islamic Courts, they started growing again, declaring a holy war against the Ethiopian forces, seen by most Somalis as natural enemies based on history, and started recruiting the young.
Their leaders, who had been trained in Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc, started introducing Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), suicide attacks and roadside bombings into the festering war.
And things began to degenerate further, as bombs exploded everywhere, with ambushes rampant, claiming lives and property.
This went on throughout 2007 and part of 2008, when the UN managed to bring the two warring factions together again for peace talks.
This climaxed in Yusuf Ahmed and Sharif Ahmed agreeing in Djibouti to form another TFG, with the doubling of the number of representatives in the parliament to accommodate the interest of the latter, who emerged as President.
Unfortunately, that did not stop the fight in Mogadishu, as Al Shabaab, viewing Ahmed, formerly one of its own, as a traitor, refused to take part in the unity government and remained unrelenting in its attacks.
The group insisted that the Ethiopians must leave the country; hence the deployment of AMISOM (African Union Mission for Somalia) forces, with Uganda agreeing to send in advance troops, followed by Burundi in March 2007.
Ahmed later relocated to Mogadishu.
The AMISOM troops were initially not attacked by the Islamist group, as the Ethiopians were their targets, but that changed once the Ethiopians left.
Attacks on AMISOM and whatever remained of Somali forces raged, despite the installation of the TFG, until July last year, when Al Shabaab militants were forced to flee the onslaught of the AMISOM forces, who were closing in on them even in places thought to be their haven, such as the Bakara Market area.
Towards the end of last year, the militant group was pushed to their last bastion at Pasta Factory area, from where they occasionally fired at AMISOM positions.
But by the middle of this year, there were completely pushed out of Mogadishu, with the AMISOM forces liberating other areas, especially with the joining of Djibouti and Kenyan forces.
A two-day AMISOM Media Conference held in Kigali, Rwanda between August 29 and 30 recommended wider roles for local media and journalists in projecting the achievements of AMISOM and how life is gradually returning to Mogadishu and other librated parts of Somalia.
Now that a new President has emerged from Somalia, it is imagined that Somalis have broken from the past, despite the activities of a few bent on continuing the war.
Source: The Guardian Nigeria News
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