From: Eri News (er_news@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 13 2010 - 16:14:41 EDT
Istanbul conference: a new Somalia policy?
todayszaman.com 12 May 2010
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-209959-100-istanbul-conference-a-new-somalia-policy.html
The upcoming high-profile International Conference on Somalia, to be co-hosted by the United Nations and the government of Turkey on May 22 in stanbul, signals a turning point for Somalia and Western policy since the failed 2006 Ethiopian occupation.
For a number of reasons it seems clear that the US and EU powers have sobered up and concluded the irrationality of continuing to rely upon a nonexistent and reactionary Ethiopian-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of the Republic of Somalia policy whose glaring failures are self-evident for all to see.
The so-called TFG/moderate faction headed by Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has turned out to be nothing more than a miserable assortment of the old, recycled, corrupt, incompetent and isolated warlord gangs of yesterday.
There is no difference whatsoever between the Sharif Sheikh Ahmed TFG and the previous clannish war criminal Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Under Sharif's guiding direction, the Uganda-Burundi AMISOM mercenaries made sure to daily bombard and massacre well over 3,000 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, in Mogadishu in 2009 alone.
AMISOM crimes bstacle to peace talksThe ongoing crimes against humanity being perpetrated against innocents in Mogadishu and Southern Somalia by the US and EU-backed Uganda-Burundi AMISOM mercenaries shame all civilized peoples of this world. To knowingly allow the genocide of a whole people is astounding.
As even the Ugandan war criminal dictator Yoweri Museveni said speaking in a recent BBC interview regarding the bloody atrocities his regime is committing daily inside Somalia: AMISOM is paid by Somali blood.
So, after two years of the bloodbath, the only difference made in the Djibouti Agreement charade of 2008 was that a few more warlords and mercenaries under religious garb were made to join the same old Ethiopian and AMISOM bandwagon of death.
The intention of AMISOM to massacre as many Somali civilians in Mogadishu as possible in order to coerce the acceptance of foreign occupation is sickening. Whether they are TFG-Ethiopian warlords or Ambassador Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah's so-called moderate Islamists, the Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaaca gang, these mercenaries have only succeeded in enriching Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi and his criminal partner Ismail Omar Gelle of Djibouti. Therefore, it is well and good that US and EU officials acknowledge where their monies have been wasted these past four years. In any event, for the Somali people, they will not accept the stooges by any stretch of the imagination.
The reality that remains is that Western powers will not secure victory or the abundant natural resources of the land by depriving the Southern Somalis of the right to self-determination. If yesterday the gamble was that Sharif Sheikh Ahmed would consolidate the Ethiopian agenda of dividing and weakening the popular resistance movements in Southern and Central Somalia, his failure today to even lead Ambassador Ould-Abdallah's handpicked clique is evidence for the pressing urgency to reassess the futility of imposing TFG/foreign occupation on a resistant populace.
Conclusion After almost a decade and a half of war and disastrous foreign interventions, what is clear is that no one will impose their will on the Somali people.
The Somali resistance movement has always called for genuine intra-Somali reconciliation among the clans and a credible power-sharing settlement in a neutral venue. The record shows that the Union of Islamic Courts did indeed settle the clan conflicts of Southern Somalia. The problem has been the Western powers' refusal to accept a credible Somali government that is free of Ethiopian control.
Accusing anyone who differs with the Ethiopian script of having a so-called Shabaab agenda is bankrupt: There has never been any support whatsoever for any foreign Al-Qaeda or Shabaab transnational jihad agenda among the Somali people and the nationalist forces in the resistance.
Therefore, it is quite laughable that the so-called Shabaab card is used by certain pro-Ethiopian lobbyists, namely Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Ambassador Ould-Abdallah, as a convenient cover for their failures, none more so than the failure to engage in serious diplomatic and political dialogue with Somalis today.
Sheikh Hasan Dahir Aweys, leader of Hizbul Islam, has said numerous times about resolving the Somali conflict: Let the Somali people decide their future without foreign meddling.
Accordingly, the question for the international community (as it was in the 2006 Khartoum talks between the Union of Islamic Courts and the TFG): Will the stanbul conference, this time around, herald a new start for both the West and a genuine Somalia peace process, or be yet another foreign charade/policy disaster?
12 May 2010, Wednesday DR. M. OMAR HASHI TODAYSZAMAN
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