The long-overdue attempt to instill peace in Somalia has unleashed a humanitarian crisis of Gargantuan proportions, writes Gamal Nkrumah Somalia is unable to reinvent itself. Its fiercely independent nomadic tradition might now be something of a liability. The Somalis today face the worse humanitarian catastrophe with the outbreak of cholera and diarrhoea pandemics in the Somali capital Mogadishu and other areas are experiencing the worst violence in 15 years following the overthrow of the regime of the late Somali military strongman Siad Barre. Fighting erupted in Mogadishu when Ethiopian troops, invited by the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), stormed the city last December and violent conflict has raged in the city of two million ever since. This week, some 100,000 poverty stricken refugees were forced to flee the Somali capital and take refuge in the surrounding countryside. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) warned of the looming humanitarian disaster and said that at least 400 people were feared dead after four days of intense street fighting in Mogadishu. The city had enjoyed relative peace and quiet when the Council of Islamic Courts (CICs) took control of the city last year. The CICs have emerged as the only Somali leaders, since the demise of the notorious dictator Barre, who have refused to take advantage of the divisive dynamics of Somali society that their weaker predecessors so eagerly exploited. The Somali warlords were worse than thuggish clowns, and ruthlessly employed divide and rule tactics to advance their own personal interests. The CICs, in sharp contrast, worked hard to overcome tribal and clan divisions. Somalia's neighbours Ethiopia and Kenya were alarmed at the prospects of the emergence of a Taliban-like state in Somalia. Both countries have large ethnic Somali communities and politically dynamic Muslim minorities -- in the case of Ethiopia, Muslims claim to be in the majority, even though Ethiopian government statistics indicate otherwise. Western powers instinctively sympathised with the Ethiopian and Kenyan governments. They could not understand the power and popular appeal of CICs and were horrified by the strict promulgation and enforcement of Islamic Sharia law by the CICs. Somali women were forced to don the Islamic hijab, even though today, with Ethiopian troops patrolling the streets of the capital, Somali women are urged to take the veil off, which the secular TFG government says is associated with fundamentalism and backwardness. The enemies and detractors of the CICs have habitually underestimated their power and popular appeal. It is under these dire circumstances that the United States-led International Contact Group (ICG) are meeting in Cairo this week to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation in Somalia. However, the prevailing assumption that Somali political chaos is the result of misgovernance is wrong and the Cairo talks are not expected to achieve much. They might prove to be important as forums of networking between certain Somali factions, the Ethiopians and other concerned parties. However, participants at the Cairo talks know that the tottering TFG regime cannot be preserved by brute force. On the face of things, the CICs have little chance of winning the war of resistance against the Ethiopian occupation of the Somali capital. The Somali Prime Minster, Mohamed Ali Gedi, an influential secularist figure and a staunch supporter of Ethiopian military intervention in Somalia, recently revealed that he is also holding separate talks with "moderate Islamist clerics" who eschew violence. Possibly a more potent policy, that is just starting to be articulated, is the possible intervention of higher profile Arab politicians into Somali politics. Egypt, which is not even officially a member of the ICG, is attempting to play a more reconciliatory role in Somali politics. The country hosts thousands of Somali refugees, and has a tradition of being able to leverage political clout over certain segments of a now hopelessly fragmented Somali political establishment. Millions of Somalis reside in the Arabian peninsula -- mainly in oil-rich Gulf Arab states and in neighbouring Yemen which also hosts hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees. These crucial talks that are talking place in Somalia itself, are being conducted between Ethiopian commanders and those described by the Ethiopians as "moderate" clan and tribal elders of the Hawiya tribe, the dominant group in and around the Somali capital, and the country's largest and most influential tribe. Furthermore, the Somalis have never been a people to be taken half-heartedly. Western powers and neighbouring states have always underestimated the resilience of the Somali people. Their reluctance to accept the wishes of the Somali people, and their cynical intervention in domestic Somali politics, ostensibly at the behest of the Somalis, has been a policy of deceit and one that invariably ends in disaster. Somalis may well be fed up with politicians, but that is only half the truth. They have shown tremendous support for the CICs. The Somalis, and especially the Hawiya, have grown more touchy about outside interference in their internal affairs as the years pass. Indeed, the entire Horn of Africa is teetering on the edge of a political abyss. It is a region of puzzlingly different identities. And, few understand this characteristic of the Horn better than the Somali President Abdallah Youssef. The enclave he ruled with an iron grip for years, Puntland, is the very projection that gave its name to the entire Horn of Africa. Ethiopian backing has not improved his public standing. The Ethiopian military presence casts a dark pall over the city while Youssef appears to be desperately holding on to power in the hope of seeing his political rivals, the warlords, lose ground. But his deadliest enemy, Sheikh Dhaher Aweis, reputed to be a particularly militant Islamist, is putting up stiff resistance. The people of the Horn of Africa, in sharp contrast to the peoples of East and Southern Africa, do not display a fawning respect for Western ways. In Somalia you can usually count on people to stand up for their freedom; they do not acknowledge bosses other than their clan leaders who have little sway over the Somalis as a whole. But unfortunately, rather than working to improve the conditions of their people the tribal and clan leaders appear to be fomenting trouble. One dilemma facing Somalia today is that the TFG, propped up by Addis Ababa, is hugely unpopular, especially in Mogadishu and its immediate environs. Ethiopian troops have pounded the Somali capital and this has been followed by an unprecedented event of possibly disastrous long- term consequences. The CICs are leading the underground resistance against the Ethiopian military presence. They have invented an imaginative scheme designed to politically Islamicize Somalia. At first, the Islamists' efforts were clumsy but they began to learn from their mistakes even prior to the Ethiopian invasion. The lure of political Islam is powerful among Somalis who want to forget the tribal and clan divisions of the past. Their leader, Aweis, and arch-enemy of the Ethiopians clearly identified tribal and clan politics as the bane of Somalia. Aweis is right in many respects, and from the point of view of Somali society, wouldn't dislodging the warlords and establishing a stable, honest, united government be a good thing? Why is he necessarily wrong in thinking that an Islamic republic is the best solution for Somalia's political and socio-economic woes? Aweis is not the ogre Washington and Addis Ababa make him out to be. To the contrary, he is a hero to many of his own Hawiya clansmen. Although he has lost authority due to the Ethiopian invasion, Aweis is plotting a political comeback. He has always been taken seriously, whether respectfully or disdainfully, by all Somalis. In sharp contrast Youssef has pinned his hopes on the Americans and Ethiopians. He is also counting on the United Nations and the African Union. Some 1,700 Ugandan troops are already in Somalia supposedly to replace the Ethiopians. But, the Somali warlords are up to their dirty tricks again. The future will be brighter without them, and without foreign troops in Somalia, African or not.
