The threat posed by Islamists in Somalia is mounting as encapsulated in this week's assassination of AU peacekeepers, but Somali policymakers are bent on breaking the vicious circle of militancy and war, writes Gamal Nkrumah Tearing up the tribal rules contravenes tradition in Somali political lore. However, Islam today holds sway. While religion is a defining characteristic of the Somali national identity, the particular strand of Islam reasserting itself in Somali politics is the more militant brand. While Somalia's neighbours and their Western benefactors acknowledge the trend towards militancy, they cannot contemplate a militant at the helm in Somalia. The Somali political establishment is split into camps of appeasers and tough-talkers over the country's future. The receding tide of Ethiopian military and political intervention in domestic Somali affairs has exposed cracks in the ranks of the Islamists of Somalia. Compromise will not be easy. It never was here. Clashes erupted on Wednesday in and around the Presidential Palace in the Somali capital Mogadishu. Scores were injured in the fierce fighting. The trickiest issue facing Somali policymakers concerns the position of the militant Islamist militias of the Shabab (Youth), loosely affiliated groups ranging from bands of highly organised armed groups to lawless brigands. The Shabab insist that bandits and pirates are not part of their movement. Their chances of hanging on as a political force in the country are substantial. They try to cling to whatever turf they command. They are understandably loathe to do so without a greater share in the decision- making process. Barring some dark manoeuvre by the seething and unstoppable youth, Somalia will succumb to the sweep of the Shabab. This moment comes as much through perspiration as through inspiration. Somali President Sheikh Sherif Ahmed, sworn in as Somali president on 31 January 2009, is known for being a moderate Islamist. A month on the picture is mixed. He is widely lauded for his circumspection. However, there is much speculation in Somalia about why he, in particular, was chosen for the top job in Somalia. Some Somalis believe that Western powers were behind the move to catapult the new president to power. President Ahmed's detractors have made perfunctory attempts to justify the assassination in cold blood of six African Union peacekeepers in a bomb blast at the AU base in Mogadishu -- all Burundi nationals. More than 20 AU peacekeepers were wounded in the suicide attack. Mortar shells also blasted Bakara Market in the heart of the Somali capital. The AU maintains a 3,400-strong peacekeeping force in Somalia composed entirely of Burundi and Ugandan troops. New Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdel-Rashid Ali Sharmarke, son of the former Somali president assassinated in 1969, announced the formation of a bloated 36-member cabinet under the terms of the United Nations-facilitated government of national unity, an expansion of the secularist Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2008 to include the Islamist Alliance for the Re- Liberation of Somalia (ARS). Sharmarke's predecessor Nour Hassan Hussein was known as a secularist technocrat whose political dispute with ex- president Abdallah Youssef led eventually to the political demise of the two men. The bloodless episode has its cheering aspects, though, as far as the Islamists are concerned. At last the Somali public has seen some accountability. The president and his prime ministers were summarily dismissed by parliamentarians that the Islamists themselves do not recognise. Little is known of the precise political orientation of the new Somali prime minister. What is certain is that he, too, is a technocrat who worked with the UNDP in war-torn Darfur, in neighbouring Sudan. Sharmarke's experience in Darfur is his claim to fame and it is hoped that this experience will help him as far his premiership in Somalia is concerned. The 36-member cabinet reflects a wide range of ideological strands and political opinions. The new Somali president has displayed an admirable sense of forbearance. When attacked upon his return by the hot-headed Shabab, he did not retaliate. He said that he refused to indulge in senseless vengeance because of his grave concern about civilian casualties. Sharmarke, who holds dual Canadian and Somali citizenship, and whose family lives in the US state of Virginia, is not particularly welcomed by hardline Islamists who have by and large refused to take part in the government and have taken up arms against the TFG. Nevertheless, Sharmarke was endorsed by 414-to-nine votes in the Somali parliament convened in neighbouring Djibouti. "I will form a government of national unity that will give top priority to peace and security," Sharmarke told the Somali parliamentarians who endorsed him. The attack by the Islamists on the African peacekeepers was considered a personal affront to the Sharmarke administration's authority. As far as Al-Shabab are concerned the president and prime minister are both fronts for Western meddling in Somali affairs, the only difference being one wears religious garb and the other a pin- striped suit. In whatever attire, Shabab view both as a hindrance to their vision of promulgating Sharia law. Ethiopia, which withdrew its forces from Somalia in December, has reserved the right to hound Islamists who threaten Ethiopia's territorial integrity and interests in Somalia. "We reserve our right of hot pursuit, but we have no intention of going back to Somalia and trying to restabilise the country," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is determined to defend its political hegemony in the Horn of Africa. Yet rarely has such an aim been so self- defeating. The hard truth, for Ethiopians and others, is that pleas for a military carte blanche from the West in any confrontation with Somalia's Islamists are unlikely to be heeded. Washington is much more comfortable with Ethiopia fighting a proxy war in Somalia on its behalf, but Ethiopia is clearly up to the mark. Somalis should take no comfort from this. From the Islamist perspective, it looks like Somalia now has a government subservient to the West. For the West to impose a president and prime minister on Somalia mocks the Muslim nation's sovereignty. Somalia's new president might be tempted to buttress his power by cajoling spineless and venal politicians. Most of all, he needs to spend the next few months showing that he understands, and can connect with, ordinary Somalis. Sound policy starts with a sense of proportion. He will probably move to institute some form of Sharia law to placate the masses. As to patience, President Ahmed has plenty of patience and piety. That could also help heal the wounds of Somalia. The new Somali cabinet was described as a "healthy combination of experience and youth," by the United Nations Secretary-General Special Representative to Somalia Ahmed Ould Abdallah. Yet, it includes no Shabab. Another politically unknown figure is the new Somali foreign minister, Oxford University graduate Mohamed Abdallah Omar. The suave secularist is regarded with suspicion from other cabinet ministers who espouse more pronounced Islamist tendencies. The new cabinet also includes, for the first time, three women. The cabinet offers some proof of the realisation among the members of the Somali political establishment of the importance of a focus on gender in development. The Shabab vow to boot out the AU peacekeeping troops better known by their acronym AMISOM. Prime Minister Sharmarke is also expected to relocate to Mogadishu from Djibouti where Somali parliamentarians currently convene their sessions. The Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia is for the moment a powerful force to reckon with. However, its inclusion in the TFG is not enough to secure lasting peace. This scenario has been a paradox of the past dozen or so years of fizzling Somali peace endeavour.
