Current Issue
“MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES,” says a classical
Chinese curse. Lately, the Horn of Africa in general, and Somalia in
particular, has been in the grip of “interesting times.” Consider the
concatenation of these calamities: in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, an
insurgency rages on that pits an Islamic-clan alliance against an Ethiopian
intervention force in support of the fledgling Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) of Somalia, headed by President Abdullahi Yusuf.
Embroiled in a savage fighting against ruthless insurgents, the beleaguered
Ethiopian troops are alleged to have committed massive atrocities on the
civilian population. A cycle of massacres and counter-massacres has left
an estimated 400,000 displaced persons, now huddled in plastic-sheet
hovels just outside of Mogadishu. Malnutrition, starvation and disease
haunt the hapless Somalis. More alarming, there is a growing risk of
cholera and other opportunist epidemics breaking out in this vast human
wastage.
In an equally savage insurgency in the Somali-inhabited Ethiopia’s
eastern region of the Ogaadeen, government forces are locked up in a noprisoners-
taken conflict with the self-styled Ogaadeen National Liberation
Front (ONLF). Once again reports of gross human violations keep
trickling out.
For his part, Mr. Yusuf has finally managed to sack his incompetent,
reputedly penny-grabbing prime Minister, Ali M. Geddi. Geddi, who is
said to have driven a hard bargain for an asylum sanctuary and a cushy
pocket for family and self in return for agreeing to resign, is now about to
settle comfortably in the United States. And there is no guarantee that the
new Prime Minister, Muhammad Hussein Nuur, better known by the
nickname of Nuur Cadde, or Nuur the White, an ex-police officer, will do
better by unhappy Somalia. No doubt he has the approval nod of the prime
minister of Ethiopia, strongman Meles Zenawi. There is no need here to
remind the reader that nothing gets done in the TFG that does not have the
express blessing and support of the dour Zenawi, a circumstance that raises
an awkward question: did anyone ever dream that a leader of Ethiopia,
Somalia’s putative foe, would one day come to have a veto power over the
appointment of a Somali prime minister? Who knew!? For his part, the
wily Zenawi has positioned himself as the Pervez Musharraf of the Horn,
thereby milking the al-Qaeda-paranoid American cash cow. Having
triumphantly deployed himself as an indispensable ally of the West in the
“War on Islamo-Fascist Terrorism,” he has forced into silence erstwhile
European and American critics of his increasingly undemocratic regime.
Meanwhile, dictator Isaias Afeworki of Eritrea, a man with a small
country and a large ego, who presides over a terrorized starving populace
and whose mental stability is the subject of debate among Eritrean
intellectuals, is hosting an assortment of Somali mullahs and malcontents,
in a bid to fish in the troubled waters of Somalia. He has entered into the
Somalia action to play the game of proxy war with his bête noir, Mr.
Zenawi. Meantime, the feckless Somalis pay in blood and treasure.
And, on another front, as a sideshow to the generalized Somali
miseries, nearly every other month a boatload of Somali emigrants, trying
to cross over to Yemen in search of a better life, perish over the sultry
waters of the Indian Ocean, as the rickety overcrowded dhows of Arab
smugglers capsize in the violent storms of the deservedly-named “Bab al-
Mandeb,” or the “Gate of Tears,” that separates the Somali peninsula from
southern Arabia. As well, for good measure, nuclear-waste containing
canteens litter the Somali coast, spewed out into the open by the quakes of
the recent tsunami that devastated Indonesia. These “demon bottles” are
alleged to have been buried in there as a result of business deals involving
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a Somali warlord and the Italian mafia. Additionally, the Somali coast
crawls with homespun pirates, indiscriminately kidnapping men and
materiel. In a weird comedy of errors, occasionally, an American patrol
boat shows up to, literally, blow these rascal-thugs out of the water. “May
you live in interesting times,” a la Chinese, indeed.
Thus, in the words of the wise Solomon, “Without a vision the people
perish.” While by no means a dues ex machine, the material in this 2007
volume of the Horn seeks to serve as a guidepost to a better future for the
Horn region. Rigorous in method, meticulous in research, underpinned by
a wealth of documentation and penned in elegant prose, Professor
Maimaire Mennasemay’s lead article surely sets the bar high in Horn-of-
Africa studies. In “The Horn of Africa as a Democratic Project,”
Mennasemay’s delightfully unorthodox scholarly tour de force invokes the
ghosts of the various familiar orthodoxies of governance, exposes their
weaknesses by brilliantly dissecting them, only to discard them. He, for
example, by turns trashes “Electoral Democracy,” “Liberal Democracy,”
“the Global Millennium Initiative,” etc. Even “Civil Society,” beloved of
pundits and policy makers, does not escape his wrathful censure.
According to Mennasemay, these gods of governance have one fatal flaw
in common: they all foster “dependency”—politically, economically,
socially—and hence inevitably lead to poverty and hopelessness.
Furthermore, in Mennasemay’s contention, the political, economic and
social elites of the Horn, having been corrupted beyond redemption by the
sleazy outlook of the above panaceas, are hopelessly incapable of
providing the political leadership and socio-economic programs that are
sound enough to lift the region out of its abject poverty. Instead, the true
heroes of Mennasemay’s conceptualization are those classes that are
untainted by the corrupting influences of effete elitism, namely the
peasants, pastoralists and the urban poor. Thus, he calls for the creation of
The Horn of Africa "capability-driven participation” on the part of the latter groups,
institutionalized in a widening circle of political parties beginning with
district councils, then the provincial associations, and, ultimately, regional
political parties.
While one marvels at this vision of a political society of Somali
camel herders, Djibouti goat tenders and Ethiopian Teff tillers along with
the urban downtrodden of all three countries, one is confronted with a
question Mennasemay raises but stops short of delving into, notably
whether these “lower class” categories have the “expert knowledge” to
take center stage in a democratic, prosperous Horn of Africa. Still,
unorthodox new insights and fresh perspectives are surely deserving of a
vigorous debate. More than this, throughout Mennasemy’s lapidary prose,
one senses the sure hand of an expert deploying with philosophic precision
the various techniques of his trade in order to dispatch a host of fatuous
conventionalities.
Professor Theodore Vestal, a seasoned senior in Horn-of-Africa
studies, pulls off a scholarly tour de force by capturing in a modes-sized
essay the contours of the principal events in the region from 1945 to the
present. As such, one savors the panoramic vistas of the Horn that he
paints as he, seemingly effortlessly, journeys from Haile Selassie’s
Ethiopia to the rise of the notion of Greater Somalia, culminating in the
collapse of Somalia as a state, to Eritrea’s birth pangs and present misery.
By contrast, Professor Asafa Jalata’s “Ethiopia On The Fire Of Competing
Nationalisms” mounts a withering attack on the sins committed against the
long-suffering Oromo people by successive Abyssinian regimes—from
that of Minilik II to the benighted rule of the late Haile Selassie, followed
by Mengistu Haile-Mariam’s socialist tyrannies, and most grievously, the
atrocities currently being perpetuated against the Oromo by the present
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Woyane establishment. Needless to say that, though scholarly, Jalata’s
piece bristles with rage.
Professor Hassan Mahadallah’s “The Islamic Courts, Ethiopia’s
Intervention in Somalia, And Its Implications For Regional Stability” is an
incisive study of three recent inter-related developments in troubled
Somalia: a. the 2006 rise of the so-called Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in
South-central Somalia b. Ethiopia’s intervention on behalf of the rickety
Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and c. America’s
active support–financially, logistically, militarily–for Ethiopia’s
adventurism in Somalia.
Fresh and uncontaminated by academese, the essay is the first to trace
carefully–and competently–the origins, growth and ultimate grab for
political power of the Somali religionists. Professor Mahadallah, a native
of Mogadishu, who was also a resident of the city during much of the
period of the events in question, deploys his eye-witness opportunity, his
academic discipline and polished prose to offer a brief but vivid portrait of
the evolution, organizational structure and decision-making methods of the
mullahs during the six months (June-December, 2006) of their tenure in
southern Somalia. As well along the way he brings in, for good measure,
globalization’s disruptive effects on undeveloped Somalia, America’s
over-zealous encouragement of Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi to invade
Somalia in order to eject the Islamists, and the latter’s impatient eagerness
to oblige, thereby artfully positioning himself as the Pervez Musharraf of
the Horn of Africa. But could Mr. Zenawi also be positioning himself,
unwittingly, for the kind of troubles that are swirling around Musharraf
these days!?
Faisal Roble’s contribution makes the case against Somaliland’s
secession without, admirably, falling into the acrimonious polemics that
usually typify discussions on this subject. This is quite an achievement,
given that past discourses on the issue of secession have been characterized
by bitter disputations framed, more often than not, in abusive language.
Roble avoids that trap. Instead, employing a rather sedate style, he
marshals arguments from the charters of the UN, AU and the Arab League,
to show why the northern breakaway region’s unilateral decision to secede
constitutes an illegal act that violates all the principles enshrined in the
laws and procedures of the above international bodies. For its part, Horn
Of Africa is delighted to give the reader Roble’s anti-secession piece so as
to balance the pro-secession entries in volume XXIV of the journal.
MaryFaith Mount-Cors's robust and well-researched essay, "Cultural Contexts and Bilateral Aid in the Horn of Africa: USAID Education Funding in Somalia and Somaliland", fills an important gap in our understanding of USAID's role in Somali education.
The current collection presents Said Samatar’s chat at Chatham
House, the British Foreign Policy forum in London. It covers some of the
same ground that Mahadallah breaks. “Hussein Adam: How An Ordinary
Boy Became An Extraordinary Man” contains Said Samatar’s tribute
speech at a dinner held in honor of Professor Hussein Adam (August 17,
2007) at the tenth convention of the Somali Studies International
Association (SSIA) in Columbus, Ohio. This is followed by Adam’s
companion response, along with Mahadallah’s brief introduction.
Copyright C 2008 by Horn of Africa Journal. Reproduction of contents in any form without permission from the Editor/Publisher is forbidden.
