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Lifting Somalia’s Arms Embargo and a Renewed Political Conflict
Posted On : February 27th, 2013
vBy Faisal A. Roble
“More than 100 religious leaders and business executives, a doctor and other prominent residents of this Port city were hunted door to door and killed in three nights of terror that began on the eve of the Americans landing in Mogadishu…”
Jane Perlez, New York Times, Dec. 1992
“Someone’s looter/killer is another person’s hero.”
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
This piece is the last of a three-part installment on the deteriorating political situation of the presidency of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. The crusade which his government is waging to have the world community lift the arms embargo comes at a time when political conflict is at its highest since the 1991 civil war. His zeal to go after arming his troops at this time in the country’s history and his unwavering sabotage of local efforts in Jubbaland are all the more troubling.
As a recent Garoweonline editorial opined, “Somalia needs a major disarmament and demobilization plan, but instead the country’s new president is asking for more weapons.” Few days after this editorial was posted, about eleven people were killed in Kismayo in a serendipitous conflict that pits Mogadishu against Kismayo.
In December 1992, nearly about twenty years ago, the late General Aidid’s militia murdered about hundred civilians in a witch hunt that Jane Perez of the New York Times documented. Not to go back to those days where mass killings happened with impunity, the AMISOM forces are in a bid to find the culprits responsible for the Kismayo murders of February 23, 2013.
When History should be Lesson for Arms Embargo
This is not the first time Somalis smelled the coffee and felt the danger associated with weapons supplied to their beleaguered nation; they rightfully raised their voices and pleaded with Western nations in the past to exercise caution prior to supplying destructive weapons to Somali leaders.
In the late 1980s, for example, when the government of Siyad Barre was carrying its massive atrocities in Northern Somalia (Somaliland), one of the Somali National Movement’s (SNM) activists (Dr. Hussein Bulhan) wrote an op-ed piece on the New York Times. Under the heading of “No Arms to Somalia,” the activist argued that arms given to the dictatorial regime of the late Siyad Barre would most likely be used against its own civilians.
It so happened that, according to Africa Watch, the Barre regime was at the time “at war with its own people” in the North and eventually killed thousands of innocent civilians with the very weapons the US government and other western countries supplied to the late dictator, Mohamed Siyad Barre.
The critics on the government side at the time called the author of the op-ed piece, “unpatriotic,” and a “Somalia hater.” Many sought to silence him. In hindsight, we now know that the eclipse that blanketed Northern Somalia could have been averted, or its impacts possibly minimized, if the US did not jump the gun so quickly on arming Barre.
More importantly, the very same weapons of destruction that the US gave to Barre fell in the hands of Southern Somalia’s warlords and ended up being the weapons of mass destruction in the “Clan Cleansing in Somalia’s Ruinous Legacy” of the 1990s civil war.
Dr. Lidwien Kapteijin’s new book, “Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991,” is a seminal work in the study and assessment of the effects of the massive carnage bestowed on Somalis in the 1991 civil war.
The existing arms embargo instruments on Somalia, as stipulated under resolutions UN 733 and 751, were imposed in 1992 by the world community mainly to slow down the carnage of the day in Southern Somalia.
Many forces were responsible to bring these instruments to fruition. Unlike the 1980s outcry, the world listened to the 1992 plea and imposed arms embargo on Somalia. The heavy lifting was done by hard working and fast lobbying diaspora groups. But the most influential work was carried out by the late Omar Moalin Hilawle, who served Somalia’s ambassador to the US in the 1960s. Ambassador Omar used his massive connections and relationships to put weighty pressure on Pateros Ghali, the then Egyptian-born UN General Secretary. Also, international aid groups in Kismayo, Bardheere and Baydhabo witnessed real atrocities against civilians and then helped push for embargo.
Prior to the arms embargo, the world watched silently (between 1990 and 1992) when thousands of Somalis, mainly from certain groups, were butchered in the infernos of Mogadishu, Galkayo, Kismayo, Baydhabo, Baardheere, and many other locations in South Somalia.
The 1990s was one of the darkest and most momentous in Somali history; it was a period when Somalia’s civil war was at its zenith, causing massive famine and wanton killings of civilians. It was also a period when the most powerful President and leader of the free world President Clinton did nothing to secure aid for starving Somali indigents? Neither did President Clinton help stave off the killing fields of Somalis in the hands of merciless warlords.
In the following years, America simply did not want to be reminded of Somalia due to its dismal performance in the Somalia political conflict; Somalia affairs got worse after18 rangers were killed and the ensuing humiliation of US power in the hands of Mogadishu-based militia. The Somali question was completely relegated to oblivion following the massive heart attack Les Aspen sustained as a result of stress induced by the Somalia crisis.
Nonetheless, the US government continued its [clandestine] involvement in Somalia’s affairs, only this time through several notorious and murderous war lords. Both cash and weapon cache were freely supplied to warlords through an intricate web of CIA arms shipments to mainly Mogadishu-based warlords. At the height of unholy US-warlord alliance, the White House touted the late Mohamed Dhere of Jowhar as the next President of Somalia. Despite the startling and disquieting deaths and mayhems that befell Somalia, arms kept pouring in.
President’s “Contested History” puts his Nation at Peril
Ironically, some of yesteryear’s warlords or their lieutenants are today advising the government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the new President of Somalia. Unlike his predecessors, this President flirts with a dangerous revisionist approach to Somali history. He often likes to say that “someone’s warlord is another person’s liberator.” Prior to this comment, which he made at a recent speech, he earlier told his political base that “someone’s looter/killer is another person’s hero.” The question is whether he is being a media pundit or a President in a nation with a “contested history.” The only way to resolve Somalia’s “contest history,” one may surmise, is through a robust truth commission set up for war crimes and “clan cleansing.”
Taken all these choreographed stamp speeches and his endorsement of one of the most notorious warlords as the governor of Galmudug, Qaybdiid, over the good-natured ailing Alim, it is obvious that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s presidency and his political stance among Somalis is disappointedly deteriorating fast.
As the following assessment charges, Hassan’s leadership is equated to a presidency that is organizing a “clan-based army.” This is how a recent editorial piece put the matter:
“Somalia is awash with all types and sizes of weapons, with the vast majority of weapons in public hands. Somalia needs a major disarmament and demobilization plan, but instead the country’s new president is asking for more weapons for the so-called ‘Somali National Forces’ – a shameful umbrella name used by the Somali Federal Government (FG) whilst fully cognizant that the composition of SNF troops is dominated (approximately 85%) by a single clan in Somalia, to which President Hassan belongs”
The renewed role of some former warlords in the affairs of Somalia, especially their involvement in the reestablishment of what so far remains to be a “single clan” army creates a level of legitimate and credible apprehension in some circles in Somalia. To that end, the February 21issue of the Daily Nation quoted a press release by a Somali diaspora group led by Ahmed Awad Ahara, a member of Somalia’s Parliament, to have said that while they “welcomed the US and Britain’s support for Somalia,” they call for “former militias disarmed.”
Lack of National Unanimity
There is no unanimity regarding the crusade on which the current President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, seeks to lift arms embargo on his nation.
Those who support the lift argue the following:
* The Federal government of Somali needs arms for its national army to fight against Al-Shabab so as to be able to safeguard the security gains so far registered under the auspicies of AMISOM forces.
* It needs modern weaponry to secure its borders as well as its coastal lines.
However, those who are skeptical about the government’s search for rearming itself posit the following existential arguments:
* The current forces which the government wants to arm are not a volunteer-based national army, but simply a rag-tag clan militia, whose commanders could unleash atrocities again, this time under the rubric of “war on terror.”
* There is a genuine fear that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a president who is not committed to federalism, may use new weapons purchased in the open markets to sabotage the emerging bottom up governance which the residents of Jubbaland/Kismayo had so carefully organized.
* Puntland, one of the most stable regions in the country and a region governed from within for the last 14 years as well as a cosigner of Garowo 1 and Garowo 2 accords, decisive agreements leading to the adoption of the Somali Federal Constitution on August 22, 2012, opposes the lifting of the arms embargo and has reportedly forwarded its concerns to the UN General Secretary Bani K-moon.
* Somaliland, the oldest and safest region in the entire country, also opposes the lifting of arms embargo mainly because it views southern Somalia as being less stable and a dangerous group to arm.
* The emergent region of Khatumo state, which is deadlocked in a bloody political and military conflict with Somaliland authorities, is also apprehensive of arms pouring into the region at this juncture.
* Somalia’s indigent groups (Woman groups, the youth, journalists and most of the country’s civil societies) are opposed to the rush to rearm Somalia.
Somalia is not yet at peace with itself; therefore arming the government in Mogadishu at this juncture, which could pass weapons to any number of players in the conflict, is a risky and dangerous political move for Washington and the United Nations.
The President himself admitted at his speech in Chatham House that Somalis are already over-armed where “each household owns a minimum of three guns.” Given that the overwhelming majority of these arms are in the hands of groups who live in the greater region of southern Somalia (south of Galkayo that houses groups such as Al-Shabab, Mogadishu-based warlords and their militia, HisbulIslam, AlaSuna WalJama…..), Somalia does not need new arms. Rather, it desperately needs a programmatic disarmament coupled with careful reestablishment of an inclusive national army, an efficient police force, and rapid coast guards.
It is not much to ask to delay the lifting of the arms embargo on the troubled state of Somalia.
Faisal A. Roble
Email:faisalroble19_at_gmail.com
Received on Wed Feb 27 2013 - 11:22:35 EST
