the letter of hussein `aideed to the djabuti govt.

[Ahmad]

asalama `alaykum muslims,

the letter of aideed to djabuiti;

[Your excellency, President Ismael Omar Gelleh,

On behalf of the SNA alliance, the Somali people and on my own behalf I
would like to send you warm greetings. We thank you for sending us a
special delegation which displayed enormous openness and goodwill
during our discussions.

I do not hesitate to state that members of the delegation had
appreciated our views and feelings. They held talks with SNA leaders
and attended a meeting of the Alliance at the Police Academy in
Mogadishu [on 20th July].

Your excellency, the delegation conveyed your warm greetings to me,
other SNA leaders and the Somali people in general. First of all, it
stated the purpose of their visit to Mogadishu, to take me and SNA
delegation with them to the Somali conference taking place in your Arta
town.

We received your delegation with open arms and enthusiasm, and after
the reception we told them that, if our concerns were taken into
account, we were ready to play our role in the efforts being made by
our brothers in Djibouti. We asked them to look with us into matters of
principle upon which we based our refusal to attend the conference. As
you know, the conference has been going on for a long time and it is
coming to an end soon. Therefore will it be possible:

- To change the transitional national charter after it has already been
passed by the conference?

- Given that all delegates attending the conference are our political
rivals, and considering that the conference has already agreed on a
fixed number of delegates and members of parliament, where is our place
in the conference?

- The delegates are either members of the regime of Siyad Bareh,
veterans of the corrupt Somali government of the 1960s, the Manifesto
or Al-Ittihad, all responsible for the destruction of the country. Is
it fair to allow these people to speak on behalf of the Somali people
they had betrayed and are now poised to serve in the government being
planned to be set up?

- You excluded organizations which fought for justice and toppled
Bareh's regime from the conference.

- Why should the Mogadishu status be in doubt, and Baydhabo [central
Somalia] chosen as a capital? Does the granting of a capital status to
Baydhabo not mean renewed fighting in the country and implementation of
UNOSOM-2 policies?

- We have spelt out our position that your government has not been
neutral in the Somali affairs since 1991, when a similar conference was
held in Djibouti.

- Is it possible to postpone the conference to give time to prepare to
attend it?

- Given that the Arta conference is not broad-based, can it really be
called a national Somali conference, and will the people attending it
in a position to implement its outcome?

- As we were having talks with your delegation on 19th July 2000 we
learned from the media that a timetable for the setting up of a Somali
government in Djibouti was out, and this proved to us that the SNA will
not be able to participate in the conference.

After painstaking discussions with your delegation, it finally dawned
on us that:

- The Djibouti government will not undertake changes to the contentious
issues, nor will it adopt a neutral position on Somali political
affairs;

- It was beyond the power of Osman Ahmad Yousouf delegation's to
address the SNA's demands;

- The Djibouti conference was against our declared principles.

For these reasons, the outcome of the Djibouti conference will result
in: renewed fighting throughout Somalia, accelerated foreign
interference in the internal affairs of Somalia, and further delay in
reconciliation.

These are our views of the conference. But I must admit that we held
extensive discussions with your delegation on our multi-faced views. I
must also make it clear to you that we have a lot of respect for the
fraternal people of Djibouti and its government.

I thank you once more for sending to us the delegation, a good move but
made at the wrong time. I would also like to commend you for committing
your time and resources to sending the delegation to meet us. By the
way, we always respect your former president, Hasan Gouled Aptidon. He
is revered Somali elder.

Please accept my warm greetings to you and the fraternal people of
Djibouti.

Peace, Justice, Equality and Progress.
Eng Husayn Muhammad Aydid,
Chairman of the Somali National Alliance.]

displaying a somali spirit, is he not? why can't they just go
there...and dissagree, if they wish? now, when the new "government" is
set up. they will be oppressed with U.N. aid and U.S./NATO approval.
the entire world will accept them as people who opposed peace. in other
words, they will "terrorists" who strife to make "war". while this may
not be all true, it will certainly look like that. yet...another sad
trap for the haber-gidir. ain't that a bitch? yikes!

peace - ahmad!

--
[2.163] And your God is one God! there is no god but He; He is the
Beneficent, the Merciful.

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[carr...@my-deja.com]

National Alliance.]
>
> displaying a somali spirit, is he not? why can't they just go
> there...and dissagree, if they wish? now, when the new "government" is
> set up. they will be oppressed with U.N. aid and U.S./NATO approval.
> the entire world will accept them as people who opposed peace. in
other
> words, they will "terrorists" who strife to make "war". while this may
> not be all true, it will certainly look like that. yet...another sad
> trap for the haber-gidir. ain't that a bitch? yikes!
>
> peace - ahmad!
>
> -

Dear Ahmad,

All Somalis are victims. I don't think anyone in his right mind could
label all Habar Gidir as terrorists. Individuals, such as the warlords
maybe. But that too is tricky.... To paraphrase familiar dictum, One
mans terrorist is another mans Clan freedom fighter.

Is Gen. Morgan a terrorist or Darood fighter.?
Is Jees a terrorist or Ogaden hero.?
What about Igal, Ali Mahdi, Atto, Abdullahi Yussuf, Ghani etc.

You see how it is all murky... That is why I say all Somalis are
victims of circumstance bestowed on them by the courtesy of the late
Dictator, Afweyne. He sure brought out the worst in all Somalis.

The only way out is all forgotten and forgiven.

Don't pay too much attention of the garbage that comes out of Djibouti
and the warlord wannabes.

Did you see how they rebuked the only tested and tried Somali ally,
Egypt, because Omer Gelle wanted them to do so. Icredible, What they
could do for room and board.

Carrabay.

[hotm...@my-deja.com]

"Memory seduces the mind, naively believing as
it does in the notion of the good old days, when in fact
there never have been any such. Still, remembering
Somalis(of whom there may not be many) surely must lament
the loss of their nationhood along with their dignity and,
consequently, their becoming the laughingstock of the
world; for statelessness and anarchy have become the synonym
of the word Somali. Although the modern outlook ranks
statelessness the most primitive state of human
existence, who, one could reasonably ask, says a human
community must exist in a state in order to have happiness
and dignity? Still, the urge to belong to a national
community, to have a state, a flag, a passport and a
comer of the earth remains a universal longing, and
those who lack these are invariably the object of
universal scom. Thus it may be that the yearning for
respect and for collective self-esteem must prompt
members of the Somali elite to remember the past,
the idyllic yesterday when theirs was counted a
nation among the community of nations. To judge, though, by the
mutually brutalizing behavior of this same elite.., voracious
selfishness, unreasoning individualism and unbridled greed
stand in the way of the dream for the restoration of the
national state ever being realized. Practically each and
everyone of the estimated five to seven million
Somalis is, in his inflamed ambition, inflexibly bent
on having the top job in the country, namely the
presidency, and if he cannot have it, he will not
hesitate to visit ruination on everyone, including
immediate members of his own kin. Thus did Siad Barre
used to boast: "When I am finally forced to relinquish
power, there will be no nation left to govern."
In other words, he had decided long beforehand that when
the time of his final removal came, he would ensure the
ruin of it all. How truly and perfectly he lived up to
his word! Thus did General Mohammed F. Aydiid add a new
proverb to Somali lore: "Cadyohow ama ku cunay ama ku ciideeyey," "O,
thou beautiful cut of meat (meaning the national state), either I will
eat you all by myself or I will ensure to soil you in the dirt so that
no other can have you." He died trying to eat it all alone.

The winner hands down, though, of the dubious distinction of unyielding
greed must be the elder Ali Geedi Shadoor, an Abgaal parliamentarian
and a wily deal-maker during the civilian administrations. On the eve
of the 1969 election, General Abshir of the police force and General
Barre of the military were called upon by the Abdirashiid-Igaal
government to detail the police and military units that would oversee
and enforce the rigging of the election. Rather than consent, Abshir
felt honor-bound to refuse. He resigned honorably rather than soil his
hands in the blood of fellow Somalis, since the stealing of the
election must necessarily have involved the violent suppression of the
cheated. Mr. Barre, on the other hand, went along with the shady scheme
with alacrity and enthusiasm.(It may be pointed out in passing that the
participation in this crime catapulted Siad Barre to the seizure and
tenure of absolute power for twenty-two years, while Abshir's honest
conscience and moral probity landed him in solitary confinement for ten
solid years. In this election Shadoor's seat was in jeopardy
because his opponent, belonging to a rival faction of the Abgaal, was
about to garner more votes. Conveniently, Mr. Barre lent a helping hand
by eagerly providing a military unit commanded by Lieutenant Mohammed
Shadoor, the son of the elder Shadoor. The opponent was detained under
trumpedup charges during the election, and so he lost; whereupon the
opponent's close kin felt outraged by the bold-faced fraud and plunged
a knife in the lieutenant's stomach, stabbing him to death. A messenger
was sent post haste to Mogadishu to bring Mr. Shadoor the news of his
son's demise. The messenger arrived with a heavy heart, terrified of
the legendarily irascible old man's reaction upon receipt of the
unwelcome news. "Mr. Shadoor," the bearer of bad tidings is alleged to
have said, "I have good news and I have bad news." "Before telling
either news," Shadoor interrupted itopatiently, "I want to know whether
the seat is secured." "Yes," said the messenger, "The seat is secured.
And that is the good news. "The bad news, though," he continued, "is
that your son has been staWed to death while protecting your seat."
The old man jovially dismissed the trembling messenger with the rider,
"As long as the seat is secure, no problem. I cannot afford to lose the
seat, but I can afford to lose the son, because I can always make
another.", Can anyone imagine what kind of society it is that a father
would casually and gladly sacrifice his son for a seat in parliament!
The insane greed of it all must indeed be sobering to any Somali, if
he/she thinks at all.

AN APLOLOGY TO MESFIN WOLDE-MARIAM:
To return to the business of memory, some twenty years ago, shortly
after the Ethio-Somali war over the Ogaadeen, an Ethiopian scholar,
Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, put out a work entitled: Somalia: the Problem
Child of Africa. The title serves to indicate the savagery and
incivility of the attack: Somalis are lambasted as latter-day
Hitlerians. Moved equally by an urge to justly set the record straight
and by a nationalistic itch for my then beloved Somalia, I attempted a
counterattack, which was published in a book on African boundary
problems. I chided Mesfin for lapsing into an unedifying name-calling,
a deplorable yelp that was unworthy of his established reputation as a
scholar of considerable erudition, integrity and intellectual reach.
The chiding may be worth reproducing:

'That the Horn of Africa is in the grip of a deadly dilemma
may be gauged from the fact that Ethiopia's latest official
response to Somali grievance is...a shrill diatribe in which
the Somali are berated, among other things, as "tough-minded criminals"
and "obsess[Ed] freaks." The alleged author of this sad tract is none
other than Meshm Wolde-Mariam, a man of considerable intelligence and
erudition who had put out an earlier monograph on the Ethio-Somali
conflict in 1964. Though written from the Ethiopian standpoint at a
time when the two countries had fought a nasty little war and were
consequently trading mutual abuse and insults through the radio and
press, the earlier work nevertheless commends itself for its tone of
restraint and even, on occasion, bold and constructive ideas.
One therefore wonders what impelled the previously temperate and
reasonable Mesfin to produce the ranting hysteria of the later
pamphlet. Mesfin's lapse is possibly explained by the pamphlet's date
and place of publication: 1977(Addis Ababa). The Addis Ababa of that
year was not a place for temperate or cool heads. It was then that a
brutal military junta known as the Dergue, in a bid to foist its
legitimacy on Ethiopia, unleashed the notorious "Red Terror" in which,
according to Amnesty International, Ethiopians perished by the
thousands. Although no section of society was spared during these
frenzied massacres, it was the Ethiopian intelligentsia who
particularly suffered, subjected as they were to repeated Stalinist-
type purges. It is the good fortune of the Horn that Meson survived,
even if as a price for his survival he may have been forced
to put his name to a compromising tract'

Twenty years later and the sinking of Somalia into the sand
dunes of the Horn, I write this expressly to apologize to
Professor Mesfin whose judgement of the Somalis as a nation
turned out to be remarkably prescient and to the point.
Somalia did indeed prove to be the problem child of Africa.
Professor Mesfin can take little comfort from this, though,
for Ethiopia itself today, riven by ethnic conflict and
regional antagonisr4 seems to be lurching heedlessly
towards Somalia's fate.

THE EMERGENCE OF MINI-SOMALILANDS
Since the collapse of the central state in January, 1991, Somalia has
fractured into five mini-lands; the former British Somaliland
Protectorate seceded in 1991, and has renamed itself the Republic of
Somaliland. No nation, though, has come forward to recognize the
Republic of Somaliland as a separate sovereign entity. The
Machiavellian Mohammed H. I. 'Igaal has, through bribery, intimidation
and assorted flimflammig, just got himself re-elected president for
another three-year term. But 'Igaal's authority barely extends beyond
the central regions of the new republic where the dominant Issaaqq
clans have been engaged in a dreary round of now-fight, now-makeup
rigmarole. Here, an observation I made ten years ago, on the eve of the
struggle between the Somali ational Movement and Siad Barre loyalists
that was to reduce the cities of Hargeisa and Burao, may be worth
repeating: Suppose, by some miracle of Allah, a unified Issaaqq
movement succeeded in running Siyaad Barre out of town. Suppose, also,
even a greater miracle, the other Somali clan-families agreed that the
Issaaqq, on account of the grievous injuries they sustained under
Siyaad, should be given a shot at forming the new government.
Suppose these two great miracles occurred. Which, then, of the four
principal Issaaqq clan-families--Habar Awal, Habar Yoonis, Habar Tol
Ja'alo and 'Iidagalle--l hope I do not run foul of the formidable Arab
clansmen for not including them in the Big Four--will have the
presidency? Suppose the other three agreed, yet another miracle, to let
the Habar Awal have a shot at it. Then which of the two main branches
of the Habar Awal--the Sa'ad Muuse who, in their urban ease and comfort
in and around Hargeisa until Siyaad destroyed the city, formed the
nearest thing to a Somali nobility-or the Iise Muuse, the immediate kin
of the ever ambitious Premier 'Igaal, by all accounts the wiliest and
most devious schemer of northern Somali politicians...the interested
reader should recall the experience of Mohamed H. Ibrahim 'Igaal, prime
minister for four days(June 26-30) of the then four day independent
northern Somalia. Even as shrewd and resourceful a politician as 'Igaal
could not continue to hold power in the north, partly because the
fervently nationalistic north wanted immediate unity with the south but
also because...he was on the verge of being thrown out of office by
segmentary pressure, by other "big men" who belonged to even bigger
clans. So the Machiavellian 'Igaal took his revenge on
northerners by delivering the north, lock, stock and barrel, without
any constitutional safeguards, to the south, in order to retain some
power--to the north's ultimate loss of autonomy, not to mention power.
Now ten years and a civil war later, a great deal of history has
transpired, most of it not too happy. To begin with, the miracles are
worth revisiting:

Miracle Number One: "Suppose, by some miracle of Allah, a unified
Issaaqq movement succeeded in running Siyaad Barre out of town.
" Fulfilled. Though the Issaaqq did not directly run Barre
out of Mogadishu, it was the hemorrhaging done to the regime by SNM
fighters in the north in the spring of 1988 that fatally wounded his
power. Miracle Number Two: "Suppose, also, even a greater miracle, the
other Somali clan families agreed that the Issaaqq, on account of the
grievous injuries they sustained under Siyaad, should be given a shot
at forming the new government." The Issaaqq did not manage to get their
"shot at form the new government," but they got something better: their
own independence after years of being in the shadow of the south. And
yet, these two miracles have, Somali existence being the riddle it is,
now ramified into two unwelcome non-miracles in a perverse binary
opposition--to wit, non-miracle number one: "the great ironist in the
sky" could not have conceived of a crueler practical joke on the
Issaaqq than granting them their independence, for they, like almost
all Somali clans, are blighted beyond redemption by the demon of
lineage segmentation, Somalia's ever present and unsparing malignant
illness. The uninitiated may turn for a quick summary of this
all-encompassing Somali curse in an earlier piece in the pages of the
Horn. Since 1991 under the independent Republic of Somaliland, the
mutual savagery and massacres resulting from the various bouts between
the Gerhajis and Tol Jaclo clans of the Issaaqq on the one hand, and
between Awal and Gerhajis on the other, must amount to one of the most
heinous atrocities in Somalia's altogether heinous civil war. By all
reliable--and unreliable-- accounts, nothing comparable in duration and
wanton cruelty has ever transpired even in the worst days of Barre's
rule in and around the town of Burao. 1995 and 1996 were particularly
bad years for Gerhajis-Tol-Jacalo mutual internecine bloodyings. Non-
miracle number two: as I write, 'Igaal is talking about going to attend
the projected Somalia-wide conference to be held in Boossaaso
under MMajeerteen tutelage. What might 'Igaal be up to? To just observe
the meeting, as he claims? To run off from segmentary pressure, as he
had done on the eve of the unification of north and south thirty-seven
years ago? Or to weave in Bossaasso the tapestry that would result in
the delivering, once again, of Somaliland to the south, as he had done
in June 30, 1960? All knowledgeable observers surely know that 'Igaal
is interested in the presidency of the Somalil-and Republic only as a
conduit to becoming the president of a re-united Somalia; for 'Igaal's
distended ego as the man of the hour and his estimate of himself as a
global figure require a larger canvas than can be offered by tiny
Somaliland Republic, but to re-tract openly from secessionist
commitment would be to open himself up to attacks by Issaaqq political
enemies. It'd therefore be interesting from the vantage point of
vintage 'Igaal flimflamming--and depressing from the view point of
Somali welfare--to anticipate what political alchemy and assorted
skullduggery the old wizard will employ in the next couple of years, on
all points of the compass, in order to realize his cherished goal of
becoming president, or prime minister at the very least, of a united
Somalia. For now, though, 'Igaal's immediate task of putting his
house in order, first, is cut out for him: to the east where the
DDaarood clans of the Dhulbahante and Warsangali hold sway and to the
northwest where the Gadabursi and 'Isse predominate, 'Igaal can barely
venture into these latter territories of his republic without the
guarantee of safe conduct by the holding clans. Still, the
Somalilanders must deserve a grudging respect for at least maintaining
the semblance, if not the substance, of a state. Just in from the
Somaliland Republic: 'Igaal is said to have invited back into the fold
Abdirahman Tuur, the man who led Somaliland Republic into secessionist
independence, subsequently lost to 'Igaal in a power struggle, went
over to 'Aydiid as soon as he could not make it go in the north;
as 'Aydiid's vice president miraculously converted from diehard
secessionist to ardent unionist, was therefore condemned to death in
absentia by 'Igaal for renouncing Somaliland's independence, sneaked
back (September 1997) into Burao under the protection of his Gerhajis
kinsmen, and dared 'Igaal to come and catch him if he could. Instead,
the devious 'Igaal asked him over for a warm "let's-talk-about-it" khat
session. 'Igaal and Tuur have at this very moment, according to the
late word, embraced and agreed to bury the hatchet. Again, what
might 'Igaal be up to? To reconcile with his old rival so as
to unify his domestic power base, even possibly to bring in
the Ogaadeen and other DDaarood clans for good measure, in order to
build a political coalition strong enough to counter-vail
against the Sodere group, who are seen by some as increasingly
falling under the influence of the Majeerteen?(Writing about Somali
politics, to speculate a moment, is like plowing the sea, for
writing requires, at a minima, some coherent pattern in the
subject written about, and Somali politics, like Somali character in
general, has no coherence or logical pattern; but only
opportunistic contingency; a century and a half ago Sir Richard Burton,
after observing Somali society for months with his
keen eye, concluded as the salient feature of the collective
Somali character: "Constant in nothing but inconstancy!" Thus, a man
like Tuur might have taken a position yesterday, another today that
thoroughly vitiates yesterday's, and still another position tomorrow
that completely makes mockery of yesterday's and today's positions,
without ever being called upon it. There is no accountability in the
Somali political mix-process; only constant inconstancy rules
supremely. No wonder the world is, by sums, disgusted and mystified in
dealing with Somalis.) Meanwhile southern Somalia, the former Italian
Somaliland, has fragmented into four mini-clan zones. Kisimayu and
adjacent lands in the farthest south is variously contested by the
Ogaadeen, the MMareehaan and a confederacy of Harti clans,
principally MMajeerteen. General Morgan, the erstwhile butcher
of Hargeisa, holds court here as the head honcho. Farther north in the
upper half of the south, mainly the town of Baidoa and surrounding
farmlands, the Rahanwayn confederacy of clans continue to prosecute
their faction fights. Since the ejection of Aydiid's militia last year,
nobody knows who the head honcho here is. Mogadishu, the capital and
central Somalia where the HHawiye clans predominate, has been the scene
of the bloodiest intra-HHawiye butchery. War lords Aydiid, Oman Ato and
Ali Mabdi have been struggling for power, in the process drenching
the land in bloodshed, and unleashing a scale of hooliganism
and free-lance violence unparalleled anywhere else in Somalia.

When the old war horse General Aydiid was fatally cut down by
resisting Abgeal, and was retired from the cares of this world
presumably to meet his maker in the summer of 1996, the son
Hussein Aydiid also rose, as leader of his father's faction,
picking up where the old man had left off, by carrying out
lethal feuds variously with Oman Ato, leader of the other
faction of the Habar Gidir, with Ali Mahdi of the Abgaal,
another HHawiye sub-clan. Lately the Abgaal have fallen on
one another in a power struggle between Ali Mahdi and one
Sheikh Ali Dhere, the latter alternating between a politician
and a man of religion, and in either hat addicted to slicing
off human limbs. In short, the richest part of Somalia has
been laid waste by an assortment of intra-HHawiye feuds.

It may be said in passing that the latest intra-Abgaal
killings claimed the life of one Bionda, a refined intellectual with an
urbane demeanor--or so he struck me when I chanced
on him in Washington (1990?) and dined with him at a little
Somali eating place with the mildly ironic name of "Somali Delights."

Why did he return to and sojourn for so long in a hellish
city suddenly plunged into a gangster kingdom of
mooryaans(terrorist thugs).

The remaining portion of southern Somalia is the northeast
with the town of Boossaasso as the urban center on the
eastern coast of the Indian Ocean. There occurred one
markedly bloody eruption here in the early 1990s when
Somali Muslim fundamentalists invaded it in a bold bid
to wrest control from local elders and establish a theocracy there.

War lord Abdullahi Yusuf, a leathery survivor of innumerable
gun battles and therefore not particularly noted for mildness
of character, unleashed his militia on the wadaads(men of religion) in
a fearful massacre, driving the mullahs out into the wilderness and
mercilessly hunting them down in their mountain hideouts.

Inexplicably, the mullahs' desperate pleas for divine
intervention in the face of Abdullahi's fury was roundly
ignored by the Almighty who indifferently looked the other
way as the self-styled holy men were systematically obliterated.
Which proves what is already known: that Allah's ways are as
mysterious as they are bafflingly inscrutable
For the rest the MMajeerteen have so far
managed to keep their hilly desert patrimony peaceable.
MMajeerteennia seems for the most part to have been spared
the apocalypse that has descended on the rest of southern
Somalia, and the traffic of people--including
expatriates-commerce and ideas flows freely and uninterruptedly without
fear of molestation. To judge by the reports of foreign correspondents,
Boossaasso has evolved into an oasis of
tranquility wherein it has attracted the migration of
capital and talent from all over Somalia and from as
far away as Kenya. Therefore the international press is
gone gage with praise for Boossaasso, a recent Washington
Post article blandly calling it a "port in a storm."

The fact that the MMajeerteen succeeded in saving themselves
from the wanton destruction in the rest of the country should
not be read as getting them off the hook for Somalia's troubles.
As I will argue in an ensuing section, while members of all
clans share the blame for the country's slide into anarchy,
the Majeerteen can justly be singled out as the principal culprits.

A LEELKASE CAPTAIN AHAB:

As product of the literary imagination, Captain Ahab
is the major protagonist in Melville's novel Moby Dick,
the classic work often cited as ushering in the coming
of age of American literature. At once diabolical and
ambition-crazed, he is the poetic archetypal figure
representing Western Europe's lust for power, glory and
gain and short for conquest. He is descended, fictionally
and spiritually from the incomparable Dr. Faust as well,
the literary creation of the German playwright, Goethe.

In a memorable scene in Goethe's play, Dr. Faust makes a
historic bargain with Lucifer, dean of the satanic host,
in which he offers his soul to the devil in return for
the devil's grant to him of mastery over the world.

Hence, the famous scriptural cautionary tale,
"for what will it profit a man if he shall gain
the whole world but lose his soul," does not resonate
with Dr. Faust. He would gladly relinquish his soul to
hell for the conquest of the globe.

Dr. Faust and Captain Ahab are one and the same in
spirit and imagery portraying the satanic side of the
West that catapulted Europeans not only into a 500-year
global hegemony enslaving, colonizing and ruthlessly
exploiting the nations of Africa and Asia but also installing
their absolute open season on the world, pillaging, raping
and ravishing everywhere they went, leaving it desolate and
devastated.

Unlike the physically wholesome Dr. Faust, Ahab is a crippled
with a wooden leg, a withered arm and a host of other assaults
on his body sustained in the course of life-time of pursuing
the elusive white whale through the high seas.

His body may be battered but his spirit is indomitable.
It was therefore a matter of unforgettable astonishment
to encounter a latter-day Captain Ahab in(name of city withheld),
April 5, 1994.

His real name is(name withheld), ethnically a Leelkase and
therefore my own kinsman. Let me say at the outset that the
likening of(name withheld) to Captain Ahab in the ensuing
remarks is only metaphorical and that there is no intention
to call my kinsman a devil. If anything he struck me, when
in his best mood, as a gentleman's gentleman; still, he
did radiate a lot of Ahab-like characteristics which call
for comment.

In the crazy crisscrossing quilt of ethnicities, in
Mohamaud S. Togane's words, "this devil's concoction of
clans," that make up Somali society, the Leelkase are
composed of a small clan of mullahs(my kinsmen are likely
to disown me for saying this) constituting a sub-lineage
of the DDaarood clan-family.

There are tantalizing bits and pieces of evidence that suggest
the LeeLkase to have been almost completely wiped out in a
massacre that occurred in some ancient, prehistoric time.

For example, there are hills of human skeletons in eastern
Somalia that are called "Lafa-Tanade," or the "Bones of the
Tanade, "-Tanade being another name for the Leelkase.

Who massacred them and why will probably never be known.
In order to survive, the solitary remnants of the Leelkase
then turned to religion, permanently leaving the struggle
for material power and influence to larger clans.
To paraphrase Professor I. M. Lewis, where Somalis fail
to acquire power in the physical world, they seek it in
the spiritual.

Another name for the Leelkase is Xer, literally "Qur'anic disciples."
They often specialized in setting up catechistic Qur'anic centers
throughout Somalia teaching the diin, or religion, solemnizing
marriages and receiving, in return, gifts (siyaaro) of livestock
and tokens of honor from the host clans.

It appears that in their role as wadaads(men of religion) and
fiqihs(scholars of sacred law) the Leelkase prospered and multiplied
in numbers; for by the middle of the century they took to trusting
more to the sword than to the diin. They got into various and sundry
feuds to the east with 'Umar Mohamuud MMajeerteen and to the west with
the Habar Gidir HHawiye.

It was in a particularly lethal feud with the 'Umar Mohamuud in
1964-5 that(name with held), my Captain Ahab, enters into history
as a legendary warrior, leading a Leelkase militia to fight off the
powerful 'Umar Mohamuud to a standstill(this is the Leelkase version;
the 'Umar
Mohamund claim they stopped short of finishing off the Leelkase for
fear of divine retribution).

Whatever the true version of events, the Leelkase came out
of this feud with renewed confidence in their capacity to
defend themselves by the sword. Ahab apparently played
a major part in the Leelkase holding their own.

And so it was he who, shortly after this feud,
triumphantly boasted in a poetic couplet:

"Allow iyo aayadii ka baxnoo Afdiinlaarl ku aarsarayraa"

(We, the Leelkase have ceased and desisted from our vain
pleas to Allah for protection, Instead we now employ the
gun to avenge our dead!)

Those who served with him describe him as a warrior's
warrior whose tactical maneuvers in the field can only
be matched by his death-defying bravery: he was left for
dead at least once, his entire body is polka-dotted with
bullet marks, his right leg blown off by a bazooka blast
and his arm withered like a stunted branch.

One should imagine that a man with so many assaults on
his body would permanently quit warring. Not so (name withheld)

When clannish violence broke out in earnest in the collapse of
the state in early 1991, he was at the head of a Leelkase militia
dueling it out with Habar Gidir militia.

The Leelkase claim(a claim which is more of a boast
than substance) that they have single-handedly driven
the Habar Gidir from their grazing grounds in Mudugh
province into Benaadir province where the latter under
General Aydiid have wreaked havoc, variously, on the
Abgaal, Hawaadle, Murursade and Rahanwayn.

Again (name withheld) was hit, this time in the head with one
eye shot off and the forehead re-arranged from the effect of
flying shrapnel. How he ended up in(name of the city withheld)
remains a mystery, but there he was all right that morning when
I arrived at the shiny lecture hall of (name withheld) University
to deliver a talk to rossy-cheeked American students.

The gist of my lecture was to try to put a semblance of
logic on the Somali muddle to a mildly bemused roomful
of Americans, wondering why their boys got killed in a
distant and savage place called Somalia.

The audience's questions during discussion bore a striking
resemblance to Chancellor Bismarck's near the end of the
nineteenth century: when asked to provide fresh troops for
the conquest of New Guinea, the Iron Chancellor replied with
characteristic bluntness, "New Guinea head-hunters are not
worth of the healthy bones of one Prussian grenadier!"

Was Somalia worth the healthy bones of one American Ranger?

After the lecture (name withheld) was introduced by three
Other Leelkases as the "General." The General?
This withered shade? I reflected. We drove to a five-star
hotel in downtown (city name withheld).

The car parked, we got out and when he attempted to walk, he
wheezed and rattled and shuffled, dragging the wooden leg
after the other. I began to see that half his body was made
up of wooden supports, the original organs having been blasted
off by steel. Our waitress was a luscious blonde with radiant
skin and sumptuous eyes whose comings and goings coupled with
imagination served to whet the appetite.

The lunch(which one of the Leelkases paid for) was not, as it
turned out, the point of our gathering; it was in fact a ruse
designed to rough me up by Captain Ahab aka (name with held).

As soon as we were seated, he rounded on me with the one
working eye sparkling.

Said he, "Are you a man with xiniinyoo (balls?)."

More disoriented than annoyed by the forwardness
of his manners, I said,

"Pardon me!"

He learned the tone of irritation in those two words,
for he stammered and said with less force:

"We Leelkases have proven our fighting capabilities in
the recent explosion of clan warfare that followed Siad
Barre's fall. We do not initiate fights, but when fights
are forced upon us, we punish mightily; every clan that
picked up a quarrel with us came to regret it.

We vanquished--" he rattled off series of clan names, and
tapped vigorously on the wooden leg with the edge of his
palm, and by God, it was hollowed out and had the resonating
acoustics of a durbaan, or drum!

Did he do this for effect to freak me out?"

I said, "Enough. I do not want to hear the gory
details of one bloody tribal skirmish after another."

He said, "Do you know the new names of the Leelkase,
as a result of our prowess in the recent feuds?"

I said I did not.

He said, "One name is gaas-dhagoole," which
may be translated as the "deaf legion."

I said, "Why gaas-dhagoole?"

He said, "Because once the Leelkase take up the
field, they become deaf as to the rumble of shells.
When in action we become deaf and mute to death.
We defy death, knowing this mortal body can go but once."

This reminded me of Julius Caesar's legendary cogitations
on life and death: "Cowards die many times but the valiant
never taste of death but once." By all the stars, when
Caesar made those words famous he had just vanquished
the Iberian peninsula and Gaul, the name then for the
territories now making up France, Switzerland, half of
Germany and all the lands adjacent to the English
Channel, thus making possible the conquest of Britain
by the lame emperor Claudius.

In other words, Caesar would die in the forging of
empires, reducing cities and compelling nations to
bow before him; whereas my kinsman would glorify
death in a senseless, soap-opera-like, endless and
purposeless cycle of tribal violence.

"Really?" I said, incredulously.

"When we take to the field," the shade continued,
"we would not abandon it, come what may. We'd die
to the last man."

"In that case," I said, "count me out."

"Are you a coward?"

"Pardon me!"

One of the others interrupted with some gratuitous
remark designed to provide comic relief.

Captain Ahab started off again,

"Do you know what the other name is?

I said, "Indulge me."

He said, "Darbe-DDaarood," which translates,
"the DDaarood Wall."

"Because," he said, squinting the one serviceable eye,
"when the DDaarood were in desperate trouble on all sides
in the recent wars, it was we who stood between them and
other clans."

"Ask the Warsangali[another DDaarood sub-clan]," he continued,
"to confirm the truth of what I am saying. It was they who dubbed
us, 'the DDaarood Wall,' in grateful recognition of our defending
role."

The luscious white chick returned to clear the
table; kids(white and black) toyed on the electronic
Star Wars box. The jacuzzi fountains made plangent
caressing sounds. The people, the streets, the cars,
he lights--the city hummed outside. And here we were
four Leelkases engaged in a cosmological clan discourse.

This was surreal, I thought.

Captain Ahab continued to harass me. Said he,

"We are as good in peace as in war. Because we
are men of religion, we deal honestly with others.
We do not double-talk. Our word is as good as faith
itself." Ahab paused, wheezing; then began again,

"We'd prefer to have our necks cut off than break
our word. That is why," the serviceable eye glistened,
"we are universally trusted by all other clans.
There is a great future for us in Somalia as power
brokers, if not power holders in the country."

" A great future for us in Somalia!" I could hardly believe
I heard what I had heard.

"Maledetto te, pazzo," I cussed in Italian under my breath.

"Now, as for you," the shade opened up again,
"We need you. Are you going to play an honorable
role in this future? Are you going to lend us your
academic thing and international contacts?
Are you going to join us?" He gave me a look that
froze me, making me feel creepy all over.

The man had me, emotionally speaking, on the
run.

"Are you going to be part of us, or simply
satisfied to fatten off American food stamps?"

"The sucker," I cussed again. "Does he think I am
on the dole?" He must have noticed my angry scowl,
for at this he began to let up, warming up to me and
judging it necessary to inform me,

"The Fiqih Isma'ill[my own sub-branch of the Leelkase]
have always demonstrated qualities of leadership in the
clan.

"What was he buttering up to me for? There was no way
of knowing, because he broke off and went into a
trance(he was also suffering from Khat withdrawals),
spewing out a stream of primeval monologue, half-poetry,
half singsong, mumbling the words:

"Alla waan hawoonayoo, alla hawa na haysa, ee."

"Alas, ambition stirs in us, ambition--ambition we seek."

Back in my hotel room, I transcribed the outlines of
the visit into my diary. Then I was assailed with one
impulse and two thoughts.

First, the impulse: this wraith of a man whose broken
frame is pitted through and through with the mark of
steel, only the one eye remaining whole of his entire
body, and yet so animated, so lively, so resilient,
his spirit so indomitable.

The Somali civil war was not overabundant with examples
of valiance in its purest essence, but this one was
courage personified. I was awed!

To paraphrase Mark Anthony on the slain
Brutus, "All the elements unite to say this
was truly a man."

But my awe, even admiration was thoroughly
dissipated by my growing scorn for his mad ambition.

I learned by and by that he came to the U.S.
on a refugee asylum program, that he was resettled
in..(name of city withheld) to start up a new life,
that his needs in shelter, food and medication were
met by American generosity, the cost of his upkeep
being split between the state of..(State name withheld)
and the Federal Government.

As such, one should suppose that with this largesse,
he'd settle and end out his remaining days in peace
and tranquility, living off America's kindness, gazing
blissfully on the busty, leggy blondes that populate
the swank avenues of..(city name withheld).

No, his heart was not in these but in "ambition" and
thoughts of "a great future" in Somalia!

What a mad son of a gun!

If the whole world were offered to him on a silver
platter, what good would this do him, given that he
is so wasted? How could he, in the broken condition
of his body, savor the ease, the comfort and delights
of power, to say nothing of coping with its cares--this
apparition of re-arranged wood and mended skeleton?

As to the first thought that assailed: it was stirred by
the specter's question,

"Are you going to join us?"

This resonated with me because it brought to
mind one Abdirahman Hajji Hirsi, a first cousin,
a medical doctor by vocation and a multi-sided
genius who commanded mastery--I mean absolute
mastery--over five languages--Arabic, English,
French, Italian and Russian, in addition to his
native Somali.

When Somalia erupted, he moved to Kisimayu to save
as the only doctor in a children's hospital housing
several hundred orphans. The Belgian paratroopers who
manned Kisimayu and its environs had no end of praise
for this doctor's, as one of the paratroopers put it,
"integrity, hard work and dedication to his lowly orphanage."

Well, one evening a gunman showed up at the
orphanage premises and asked Dr. Hirsi to hand
over to him the entire store of medicine in the orphanage.

The doctor balked, whereupon he was shot at blank range.
He died instantly. This incident in turn brought to
mind a similar murder-by-shooting of another doctor,
one Dr. Mohammed Warsame, who, after being hounded by
the pleas of Roman Catholic nuns to help bind the wounds
of his people, had reluctantly returned to Mogadishu
to care for a large orphanage. General Aydiid ordered
him killed for reasons of clan considerations in the
fall of 1992.

In the entire world, even in benighted Africa, a
doctor's person is considered sacrosanct and treated
as such. In the entire world, that is, except in mad
Somalia.

Dr. Hirsi, by reason of his medical skills and genius
of mind, would, by international standards, have rated
as worth more than the entire lot of the Leelkase put
together.

Yet, like so many others, he died senselessly and in vain
and, from what I have been able to piece together, at the
hands of another Leelkase.

No, Captain, I'd rather not join you!

The other thought that crossed my mind was
frightening; to wit, if the Leelkase, largely
a clan of mullahs with no material or numerical
significance(I daresay my kinsmen are likely to
disown me for saying this) are so inflamed and
obsessed with brokering power in Somalia, if not
seizing it, what about the much larger clans with
many more resources in men and material?

What heights of lust for power and gain must
consume their souls?

Then I understood why Somalia collapsed. This is a
nation of greed and ambition gone mad.

WHY NOT AYDIID:

Drafted while general Aydiid was still alive, this
section can now only be addressed to his shadow which,
no doubt, still stalks what is left of Somalia's soul
and surely haunts the dusty streets of south Mogadishu.

A case can be made that Aydiid was the right man to
take over turbulent Somalia at that critical juncture
of Siad Barre's fall. Here is the bill of particulars
that constitutes Aydiid's case: first, he resisted Barre's
dictatorship; whether his resistance was motivated by personal
frustration for failing to receive his fair share of the loot
of the Somali treasury, as some claim, is beside the point.

The fact is that he opposed Mr. Barre, a most dangerous
undertaking and was consequently flung in prison where
he languished for more than four years along with other
fallen officers. The strictures of solitary confinement
must have proved too much for the formerly roving nomad,
for all accounts say that the incarceration traumatized
the general, driving him to bouts of dementia and hysteria
by turns. In one deranged outburst, he was seen nibbling
on a bar of washing soap like a delicious piece of cake.

Unquestionably, the man suffered badly.
It may be objected that he suffered all right,
but he did so for greed and ambition, the twin
curses of nearly all so called Somali "big men" and
that his conspiracies caused him to run foul of his
old patron saint, Siad Barre, who, no longer being
able to abide Aydiid's incessant plotting, finally
had had enough and proceeded to consign him to the
tender environs of confinement.

To fault Aydiid thus is to indulge in selective judgement.

What Somali leader-type was ever punished for purely altruistic
interest in behalf of Somalia, except perhaps that
mild mannered mystic, General Mohammed Abshir?

Second, Aydiid roughed up the DDaarood, a most salutary under arcing.
After years of dominating the political scene, the DDaarood had grown
arrogant and it was time to put the fear of God into them.

Aydiid's savaging of them had done just that. But his
tragedy was that he did not stop there; imbued with a
congenial bloody nature, he went on to bloody the HHawiye,
his own kin, even more savagely. Aydiid in fact brutalized
all and everyone who crossed his path.

Aydiid in fact brutalized all and
everyone who crossed his path. What his mind was too
simple to understand was that brute force alone seldom
provides the answer to all human problems, least of all
politica1 problems; that in the pursuit of power, force can
be useful only as an extension of diplomacy. Even so, the
DDaarood must have been sobered to respectful attention
by Aydiid's clobbering.

Third, Aydiid inherited almost the entire
armory of the national military, including state-of-the-art
weaponry, and therefore was the only warlord possessing
enough fire power to break the back of the Somalis and to
bend them to his will. Just take a look at the other warlords--they are
either weaklings or unacceptable. Abdullahi Yusuf, the
only other warlord with as forceful a personality, and as ruthless and
blood-thirsty, as Aydiid, would have been too far away in
the northeast; Morgan would have been too far away from the
center of action too, and in any case unacceptable as the author of the
infamous "Letter of Death;" Oman Ato is a spoiled civilian boy grown
rich from the loot of the national physical plant; Ali Mahdi is too
weak and feckless to rule unruly Somalis. Clearly Aydiid was the man of
the hour.

Somali heads needed bending if the anarchy and
bloodbath that ensued were to be avoided.
If Aydiid seized power, he'd probably have imposed
a brutal regime that would have made Siad Barre's
look like a sunny outing, but it is a proven
law of human society that tyranny with stability
is infinitely superior to liberty with anarchy.
Nothing grows in anarchy, least of all a nation's soul.

Fourth, Aydiid fought and sacrificed for the pursuit of power
more than the rest of the lot put together. His passion was power and
nothing else mattered to him, for in his personal conduct and private
life, he was the most temperate of Somalis.

While those others who could afford vice lapsed into sickening
heights of debauchery, he neither smoked, nor drank, nor drugged; he
did not even chew khat, an incredible abstention for an urban Somali of
means. His only pleasure vice was women, and in this
he exhibited a marked bias for Majeerteen women, whatever
Freud would have made of this.

In the various confrontations, alternately, with the
darood, the Abgaal, the Murursade, the Haweadle, and, most
brazenly, with the Americans--Aydiid showed surpassing military
resourcefulness and incomparable personal courage. He was indeed a
brilliant combat man. But therein lay his strength as well as his
tragedy.

Militarily, Aydiid was on the order of genius
but, politically, he was on the scale of jackass.
Autistic of mind and congested of spirit, he could
not perceive the subtle complexity and clumsiness
and maddening craziness of human existence; he tried
to solve political obstacles requiring political
solutions with a hammer. He forgot nor never
learned--that the use of force in governance is
to achieve a political objective, and that arms
avail nothing in themselves, especially when
counter-balanced against other arms.

This was fatally brought home to him when the
Abgaal, who had been repeatedly harried by him,
finally resolved to fight back. Still, Aydiid's
valor was supreme, in marked contrast to the
cowardly Barre who panicked and fled at the first
sign of trouble. By contrast, Aydiid would be
mortally wounded in action while charging at
the head of his men.

In short, Aydiid was, tragically for Somalia, what the Somalis call a
macangag, which may be translated as "asininity stubborn." Here, a
vignette related by the Somali/Canadian poet Mohamuud S. Togane serves
to illustrate the point: according to Togane, when a couple of years
back Aydiid the father invited Aydiid the son to Mogadishu to start him
up as his vicaoy, the young Aydiid's mother begged him not to return
to Somalia and revisit anew on that unhappy country his father's brutal
ravishing. She is reported to have added: "Your father's macangagness
is such that if he takes a fancy to anything, he must have it or
he would wreak havoc on all and everything that is even remotely
related to the object of his desire." "Once," the lady is reported to
have explained, "he took a liking to my shawl, and commenced to
grab on its hem. No pushing, shoving or pleading could break his grip.
I had to reach for a knife and cut up the shawl in half in order to
break loose from him."9 Unless this be apocryphal, the American Rangers
can appreciate posthumously what they were up against in Aydiid.

A fearful macangag indeed. The most revealing
vignette of Aydiid's character occurred in 1992.
At the height of the famine that killed by starvation
upwards of three hundred thousand Somalis, General
Aydiid, in a bid to project an image of himself as
a statesman, invited the international press
corps(who were then descending on Somalia like a
cloud of migrant bees) for a sumptuous dinner.
The journalists all fell on the succulent dishes
like so many flies--all, that is, but one, a Quaker
who, given the sensitive conscience of Quaker spiritual
tradition, refused to eat. Feeling that his generosity
had been insulted, the irascible general came down hard
on the balking journalist and cajoled him to eat.
But the press man would not budge on the grounds that
he could not eat in good conscience while hundreds of
thousands starved in nearby Baidoa. Rather jolted by the
response, Aydiid defensively insisted that his responsibility
was solely to his own Habar Gidir kin. To which the journalist
shot back, "I thought you wished to be president of all Somalis" The
General had nothing to say, the only time, ever, his known to have been
left speechless.

If the above is Aydiid, why would I wish him so ardently on
Somalia? Partly on the reasoning that a jackal nation deserves
jackal leader. The wildly fractious Somalia of the 1990s needed
a human pit bull to bury its teeth in every Somali neck in order to
terrorize them into submission. Partly also because I feel a twinge of
remorse over the fact that I had a hand in Aydiid's being cheated out
of his prize. The story of my close call with the General has been too
widely covered by press and TV to require a full-blown recounting.
Briefly, I accompanied, as an interpreter and field expert, an ABC TV
crew led by Nightline's legendary anchor man, Ted Koppel, to cover the
landing of the American marines.

Five days later the General ordered me out of town under threat of
death. Why he declared war on me remains something of a puzzle to this
day, for up to that point I was thoroughly of goodwill towards him and
in fact was rooting for him. I was seduced by his dash, pluck and
portly flamboyance, his impeccable suits and flashy teeth, even his
cold, reptilian eyes.

Having no understanding of his motive for ejecting me, I can only
resort to conjecturing: did he conceive that I was part of another
Machiavellian Daarod plot to snatch power from his grasp? Did he,
unable to appreciate the separation of press and government, believe
that I was the advance man for another American scheme designed
to foist a U.S.-favored Somali clique on power?

Whatever his motivation, instead of attempting to coopt me as a service
intellectual(and I might have obliged), he chose to create a state of
war.

But war can be fought on different fronts, and my front lay in the
direction of information-processing. Upon return to the U.S., I at once
commenced to launch a sprinted, sustained denunciatory campaign against
him, blasting him, in reasoned terms I hope, in virtually every major
American newspaper and magazine as well as on the principal TV
networks. I also went frequently to Washington to speak at State
Department policy briefings on Somalia and to lobby key congressional
committees where I did my best to paint an unflattering picture of him.
To suggest that the result was electrifying would be to draw attention
to my own inflated ego. But if Thomas Jefferson was right in opining
that the 'pen is mightier than the sword" in a literate society, I
believe I am entitled to claim a small part in the turning of American
public opinion against him.
http://somalinet.com/forum/forumfind.cgi?
hit=http://somalinet.com/forum/messages/1

[hotm...@my-deja.com]

> The fact is that he opposed Mr. Barre, a most dangerous undertaking
> and was consequently flung in prison where he languished for more
> than four years along with other fallen officers. The strictures of
> solitary confinement must have proved too much for the formerly
> roving nomad, for all accounts say that the incarceration traumatized
> the general, driving him to bouts of dementia and hysteria by turns.
> In one deranged outburst, he was seen nibbling on a bar of washing

> soap like a delicious piece of cake. LOL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

> Second, Aydiid roughed up the DDaarood, a most salutary under arcing.
> After years of dominating the political scene, the DDaarood had grown

> arrogant and it was time to put the fear of God into them. LOL
AHAHAHAHAH

> Fourth, Aydiid fought and sacrificed for the pursuit of power
> more than the rest of the lot put together. His passion was power and
> nothing else mattered to him, for in his personal conduct and private
> life, he was the most temperate of Somalis. While those others who
> could afford vice lapsed into sickening heights of debauchery, he
> neither smoked, nor drank, nor drugged; he did not even chew khat, an
> incredible abstention for an urban Somali of means. His only pleasure
> vice was women, and in this he exhibited a marked bias for Majeerteen

> women, whatever Freud would have made of this. LOL AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

> Militarily, Aydiid was on the order of genius but, politically, he
> was on the scale of jackass. Autistic of mind and congested of
> spirit, he could not perceive the subtle complexity and clumsiness
> and maddening craziness of human existence; he tried to solve
> political obstacles requiring political solutions with a hammer. He
> forgot nor never learned--that the use of force in governance is
> to achieve a political objective, and that arms avail nothing in

> themselves, especially when counter-balanced against other arms. LOL
AHAHAHAHAHAHHHA

> In short, Aydiid was, tragically for Somalia, what the Somalis call a
> macangag, which may be translated as "asininity stubborn." Here, a
> vignette related by the Somali/Canadian poet Mohamuud S. Togane serves
> to illustrate the point: according to Togane, when a couple of years
> back Aydiid the father invited Aydiid the son to Mogadishu to start
> him up as his vicaoy, the young Aydiid's mother begged him not to
> return to Somalia and revisit anew on that unhappy country his
> father's brutal ravishing. She is reported to have added: "Your
> father's macangagness is such that if he takes a fancy to anything,
> he must have it or he would wreak havoc on all and everything that is
> even remotely related to the object of his desire." "Once," the lady
> is reported to have explained, "he took a liking to my shawl, and
> commenced to grab on its hem. No pushing, shoving or pleading could
> break his grip. I had to reach for a knife and cut up the shawl in

> half in order to break loose from him. LOL AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

THE MAJEERTEEN EMBARRASSMENT

A poet is by definition a prophet, too. More to point the gabayaa, or
singer
of verse, is in Somali tradition believed to possess
a figurative third eye, the prophetic eye that avails
him of the powers of clairvoyance. Consequently, we
thought we were on to something when the late Khaliif
Sheikh Mohamuud, indisputably the greatest Somali
poet in the 1970s decade, prophesied in his remarkable
Hurgumo, or Festering Wound, these noble lines:

1. Hadalka hayga moodina inuan mearawaa nahaye.
2. Sidaan maunta nahayyaan la van laga mil roonaaye,.
3. Mar un bannnu mowjada xirmiyo manyad soo kicine,.
4. Nabsigaas mugdiga gadahayaan mar un helaynaaye,.
5. Caraurahaun marynadahaya iyo dumarkan mowleyey,.
6. Mar un baa marwada Maxamad qabo no-tan mataalkoode,.
7. Mar un baa mid lagu meelmariyo maahir nookicine,.
8. Mar un baa rag wada miigan iyo miidi soo bixine,.
9. Mar un baa malkada Caubud-waaq miigu soo dagine.

1. Let no man presume that I sing out
of despair on account of the devastation
visited upon my Majeerteen kin

2. Let no man say, because of our
sorrowful state today, that we Majeerteen
have been trounced for good,.

3. The day will come when we shall
surge forth like a thunderous hurricane

4. The nocturnal visitor of
fortune shall yet smile upon us

5. The weeping children and widowed
matrons, whose husbands have been
wantonly slaughtered,

6. The time will come when Mohamad's wife will
likewise be deprived,

7. The time will come when a great
hero shall arise amongst us and shall
redeem us,

8. Then there will sally forth men
of honor and valor for our salvation,

9. Then the Mig fighters will descend
on the Mareehaan village of Caabud-waaq

Some exegesis of a couple of lines in the
extract which is of interest for this discussion:
the poem which, like many a good poem is about
a great many things, was composed as a weeping
jeremiad over the sustained harrying and persecution
of the Mmajeerteen during Mohammed Siad Barre's military
dictatorship, especially after the Majeerteen-inspiredfai1ed-coup
attempt (April, 1978) against Barre. He is the Mohammed
referred to in line 6, whose wife is promised a terrible
fate for Barre's brutalization of the Majeerteen.

Despite the then inhuman cruelties visited upon the
Majeerteen for resisting Mr. Barre's tyranny, the
poet envisions a time "when a great hero shall
arise "amongst us" to "save us."

Then the jubilee(time of peace and prosperity) itself
will be ushered in when "men of honor and valor shall
come forward to bring our salvation."

In short, the poet envisions a coming millennium
under a MMajeerteen guidance. Who are the "us" in
the poem that are promised salvation from the
ashes of present hardship to a redeeming future?

Clearly, at the immediate level, the poet prophesies
salvation for his kinsmen, the Majeerteen clan.
But at a more poetically profound level, the "us" refers to the entire
body politic of the Somali nation laid
waste by oppression but now to be redeemed, presumably
under MMajeerteen tutelage.

It is now 20 years since the poet prophesied salvation
for Somalia under MMajeerteen midwifery: Siad Barre's
dictatorship has vanished; Barre himself has given up
the ghost in an ignominious exile among Nigerian Hausa;
Somalia has sunk into civil war and misery, and there
is no sign of the MMajeerteen either saving themselves
or their nation. Khaliif would no doubt be turning in
his grave with bitterness and embarrassed disappointment!

But why, among all the "devil's concoction of clans" that make up the
Somali polity, should the MMajeerteen be selectively targeted for blame
and
name-calling in the general collapse
of the land? Principally for two reasons.

First, the MMajeerteen, of all Somali clans, have a
history of government with a ruling elite, structured
bureaucracy and economic stratification along with the
skills of statecraft. In pre-colonial times the only
states worthy of the name in the Somali peninsula had
been the MMajeerteen Sultanate of Boqor, or king,
'Ismaan Mohamuud in the Baargaal-Boossaasso region on
the extreme eastem coast and the kingdom of Obbia (Hobyo)
belonging to 'Ismaan's nephew, the dour Yuusuf Ali Keenadiid.

These were both highly centralized states with all the
organs and accoutrements of an integrated modem state-a
hereditary nobility, titled aristocrats, a functioning
bureaucracy, a flag, an army and a not insignificant
network of foreign relations with embassies abroad.

Nowhere else in Somalia did anything even remotely
comparable ever arise, except perhaps the Ujuuraan
on the Shabeelle valley and Adal on the northwestern
coast, both states having reached the apogee of power
in the sixteenth century. In modern times the MMajeerteen
stand alone, absolutely alone, in having created a
centralized state. This means that the MMajeerteen clan
in general, and the MMajeerteen elite in particular,
have a seasoned, unique experience in the nature and
processes of statecraft that no other Somali group possesses.

Second, when independence came in 1960 the MMajeerteen,
owing to their superior skill in governance, merchant
capital, education and urban experience, easily began
to dominate power and privilege in the new state.

As a result, in the eight plus years between independence
and Barre's coup in October, 1969, the MMajeerteen towered
supremely over all other clans in dominating the national life.

MMajeerteen merchants grew rich (by Somali standards) and
prosperous while MMajeerteen politicians acquired a
commanding mastery over the reins of political power.
(Here a caveat: MMajeerteen ascendancy stemmed more from
political astuteness than from coercion, managing as they
did to forge alliances alternately with the elite of the
HHawiye, Issaaqq and Rahanwayn, thus ensuring their preponderance
during civilian administrations).

Over-enthused with an understandable sense of
self-importance, the MMajeerteen began to become
intoxicated (in Somali, "waa qooqeen") with their
success, flaunting their power and prestige openly,
perhaps too openly, to the anguished envy and hatred
of other clans. Thus did the MMajeerteen coin a new
proverb, boasting of their numerical superiority over
all other clans: "Intii madax macaw iyo MMajeerteen baa siman"; thus
did
Yaasiin Nunr Hasan Bidde, the new aristocratic
minister of the Interior during Abdirashiid's presidency,
brag: "I have just turned thirty three years, and I have
managed to stash away thirty-three million shillings"-then equivalent
to $5.5m. Presumably Yaasiin boasted so in order
to rub it in the face of rival clans, and the lean and hungry
among the latter no doubt responded with a mouth-watering envy.

The political process was so fatally abused beyond
redemption during the MMajeerteen-Issaaq alliance of
president Abdirashiid Ali Sharmaarke and premier
Mohammed H. I. Igaal. The personally honest but
low-of-IQ Abdirashiid and the high-of-IQ but
personally *irredeemably venal Igaal between them,
presided over the most corrupt and predatory
administration in the annals, up to then, of A
African governments. (Nigeria, it appears now, holds
the dubious distinction of topping the list of the
most corrupt nations in the world).

It was during Abdirashiid's and Igaal's administration
that the mass of Somalis became irrevocably alienated
from the political system. In particular, the election
of 1969 that enshrined Abdirashiid and Igaal in power
was so outrageously and blatantly rigged that it thoroughly
degraded the Somali body politic, inspiring a deep
sense of betrayal in the public. Consequently, when
Barre seized power in October 1969, the coup was welcomed
with widespread jubilation and thanksgiving with masses
of people wildly dancing and celebrating joyously in the streets.

In the event, this was to be short-lived, but for
the time being few Somalis, other than their cronies,
shed a tear for the fall of premier Igeal and president
Rashiid, the latter being assassinated a week or so
before the coup, thus being spared the ignominy of
a long-term jail, as Igaal was to suffer.

In fact it could be argued, convincingly in my
view, that the outrages and venality of the administration
of Abdirashud and Igaal did much to pave the way
for Siad Barre's coup.

If they fared better than any other clan during
the civilian administrations, fairness would
require to point out that the MMajeerteen, especially
the 'Umar Mohamuud sub-lineage, suffered far more
inhuman cruelties than any other ethnicity except
perhaps the Issaaqq. And if the ancient Greeks believed
that excessive arrogance leads to destruction, they
also believed in the possibility of redemption under
suffering, specially that pain and suffering lead to
wisdom, and therefore possess a therapeutic quality.

It was reasonable to expect therefore that the
combination of experience in governing, erstwhile
preeminence and subsequent debasement under Barre's
persecution should have produced wise political
leadership from amongst the MMajeerteen after the
general collapse--MMajeerteen heroes, as the poet
anticipated, ready, able and willing to serve the nation.

Alas, it did not. Instead, the world watched the
humiliating spectacle of the MMajeerteen falling on
one another into internecine bickering and base
political squabbling, failing utterly to establish
an orderly administration in their corner of the country.

And yet, to free ourselves from bias masquerading as
political discourse, the MMajeerteen did supremely
triumph in preserving the peace and some measure of
prosperity in their areas, a great achievement considering
the curse of violence and vendetta that seem to prevail
in other clan territories. (Here it should be mentioned
the Gadabursi have also admirably established security
to life and limb in their northwestern side in and
around the town of Boorama, though they did have
one scary eruption last summer.

Even though a significant number of Gadabursi
are pastoralists, a large number are sedentary;
now a settled culture possesses remarkable advantages
over a pastoral one: pastoralism spawns egalitarian
anarchy, the principal Somali curse, whereas
sedentarization breeds social hierarchy--of ugaases(princes),
and 'ulamaa(spiritual leaders), an urban society
accustomed to ease and comfort and therefore not too
eager to ruin it in violence, a civic culture that
inculcates the virtues of neighborliness, deference
to others and respect for order and power.

The Gadabursi are just about the only Somalis,
other than the Benaadiri and certain urbanized
sections of the MMajeerteen and Issaaqq, that possess
these civil virtues. No wonder therefore that the
Gadabursi not only spared themselves the catastrophe
that engulfed the rest of Somalia but no
starvation--large or small--has ever touched man
and beast in Gadabursi country! Should not the Gadabursi
take quiet pride from this?

They should, and, to personalize it, I do, too.
As a Somali observer who prides himself, somewhat
self-servingly, in being a detached truth-teller,
I say two cheers to the Gadabursi.)

Boossaasso, the capital of MMajeerteenia, today
remains not only the envy of other clans in peacefulness
and tranquility but also the astonished admiration of
the international community, a "port in a storm," as
the Washington Post gushingly intoned.

Surely the MMajeerteen deserve great credit for
maintaining the peace in their mountainous patrimony.
Their example of peace and relative prosperity has
even set the standard for the Internet banter and
chitchat amongst Somalis in Europe and north America.

Thus when Mohammed Abshir recently stated on the
BBC something to the effect that "we in the northeast
argue heatedly, but we do not shoot one anther," his
words have drawn vigorous exchange among Somali Internet
users with some being bitterly envious over Abshir's claim
that the MMMajeerteen argue over issues to a solution like
civilized men; but do not "shoot" one another as other clans are
addicted to doing.

In other words, whereas previously clans used to boast
of their fighting capacity to inflict violence on others,
now the MMajeerteen have set the standard that the only
thing worthy of boasting does not lie in one's capacity
"to shoot but in one's patience and prudence to talk" in order to solve
political problems peacefully!
That in itself is no small achievement.
Still, if the truism is true, "to whom much is given,
much is required of them; Somalia calls on them to
play their historic role in reconstruct) the country.

To be sure, the MMajeerteen could justly retort:
"Easier said than done. How do you propose to bring
other clans onboard, clans that find it more profitable
to shoot for biliqaysi (looting), like the Hab Gidir,
rather than talk?" The answer would be obvious:
what the MMajeerteen need to do--and so far have
dismally failed to do--is to get their house in
order first, by establishing a constitutional
provincial administration in their region.

Possessing as they do a large pool c political talent
and material wherewithal, they ought to have constructed,
a well-oiled, efficient administration with modest but
respectable state, organs--a provisional head of region,
police, school, medical and municipal services, etc.

If they had done so successfully for all the world
to see, this surely should have aroused the envy of
other clans and inspired them into setting up their
own mini-states. These mini-states could in turn be joined
together into some sort of mutually agreed federal arrangement.

There is, however, no sign of their doing this.
It appears that, politically, the MMajeerteen are
just as fecklessly unimaginative and as crippled
by the same Somali sickness that paralyzes other
clans: lineage segmentation: the Majeerteen are
segmented along three principal sub-lineages--the
'Ismaan Mohamuud, 'Isse Mohamund and 'Umar Mohamuud.
Abdullahi Yuusuf, the flamboyant war lord, who bragged
lately that the liver newly transplanted into him from
an Indian youth has given him a renewed vigor and vitality,
is from the 'Umar Mohamuud; Abshir belongs to the 'Isse, while
a certain Abdullahi Keang-Congo(the name is colorful enough)--a
prince(now king.?) directly descended from Boqor 'Ismaan
and very much in the running--hails from the 'Ismaan Mohamuad.

The three have been locked up in a cloak-and-dagger
power struggle that prevents them from forming a
provincial administration. Of the three Abshir is
manifestly the most deserving: a deeply religious
man of a mystical turn of mind and hence blessed by
an unblemished personal integrity (remember then
General Abshir, commander of the police force, instead
of obliging 'Igaal and 'Abdirashiid to steal the 1969
election, chose--some say unwisely--to retire from
government, thereby leaving himself to the tender mercy
of wolves, most especially to the untender mercy of the
jackal that went by the name of Mohammed Siad Barre.

Remember also when the DDaarood counterattacked in
Kisimayo in 1992, capturing a large number of 封封封
militia, it was Abshir who, at great danger to his
person, stood between them and DDaarood militias anxious
to offer a pay-back-time to the captives for the horrors
they had earlier suffered at their hands.

It was Abshir who flew them out of Kisimayo to
safety in Kenya and Mogadishu). Patriotic to a
fault, genuinely interested in the welfare of
the Somali people and with a great international
name recognition, Abshir must be the logical choice
to lead the northeast. But these qualities, which
would have been a great asset for leadership in a
sane people, are in fact a singular liability among
demented Somalis. Most MMajeerteen, and most DDaarood
for that matter, obsessively fear that if they entrust
their interest and welfare to Abshir, he might, in his
eagerness for the nation, give away too much to other
clans, and hence endanger their future. Once bitten,
twice shy, so many DDaarood feel. Instead, a large
number of MMajeerteen want Abdullahi for the same
reason the Americans wanted Richard Nixon for
president during the height of the Viet Nam and Cold War.
A prickly British scholar with an earthy humor
explained Nixon's overwhelming victory over the
pacifist Senator George McGovern in the crucial
1972 election thus: "Granted Nixon is a bastard,"
quipped the Englishman, "but you need a bastard
in dealing with the Russians."'
A not insignificant number of DDaarood feel
they need a bastard in dealing with the Aydiid
types in the south--which bastard Abdullahi
Yuusuf is!(Might this remark of mine bring down
on me the furious wrath of Mr. Yusuf someday?
So often it is that my written words have caused
me vexatious trouble. Yet a writer must write his
reasoned opinion regardless of consequences, if
he deserves the name at all.
Actually, the word bastard in this context, far
from being an insult, is a term of affectionate
endearment I am obliged to explain all this because
most Somalis, given their bigoted propensity and
sensitivity to imagined slight, to say nothing of
their limited grasp of English, are likely to misread
Somali meaning into an English idiom.) As a result,
vacillation between Abshir, who is the more deserving,
and Abdullahi, who is considered a better defender of
DDaarood interests in a future negotiation with other
clans, has paralyzed the MMajeerteen into political
inaction since 1992.
In a search for a way to circumvent this deadlock,
the MMajeerteen two summers ago invited the internationally
respected(but not given the honor due to him at home),
former prime minister Mr. Abdirizak H. Hussein, in hopes
that the three rivals would step down in favor of him
and that Abdirizak's prestige would be enough to stymie
political squabbling. Disappointingly, this has not happened.
After six months of heroic effort, this tired,
penniless and unwell man (who once ran the only
Somali administration deserving the name) gave up
in disgust returned to lonely exile in cold America
His experience proves that when, in the end, it comes
to political vision, the MMajeerteen are as bleakly barren
of it as other Somali clans blinded by unyielding greed,
short-sighted selfishness and the mindless propensity for
bililiqaysi, which translates as atavistic criminal looting,
which reappears among Somalis every sadex-guura, or third cycle.

Given their historic place in Somali history, surely
the MMajeerteen could have done better by themselves
and by the country

Last word to the MMajeerteen where is the
miid(penetrating foresight)that the dead poet
so soulfully sang about, and so passionately
yearned for? Or might this be a case of:

"Aw Muuse gabayguu marshaa /meesha soo gelaye!"

Every reflective, thoughtful MMajeerteen should appreciate,
to their challenge, the evocative allusions, indeed the
powerful literary-historical land mines that lie hidden
beneath the surface of that solitary versicle"

[Ahmad]

asalama `alaykum muslims,

> All Somalis are victims. I don't think anyone in his right mind could
> label all Habar Gidir as terrorists. Individuals, such as the warlords
> maybe. But that too is tricky.... To paraphrase familiar dictum, One
> mans terrorist is another mans Clan freedom fighter.

that is not the point. as i posted an article, not all habargedir(who
live the bakaara area) are agreeing with caydiid. however, somalis have
a concept where people label worlords to their 'respective' clans. this
bothers me...because it's not really a fact thing. HAHAHAHAHAA! and
yes, i agree...one's terrorist is another's HERO. however, i was
talking about what the world community would see...and what the united
new government could do. this is as sad as PALESTINIANS -- who are
oppressed for fending themselves...and yet are called "terrorists"
because they wanna fight for themselves. do you see what i mean?

> Is Gen. Morgan a terrorist or Darood fighter.?
> Is Jees a terrorist or Ogaden hero.?
> What about Igal, Ali Mahdi, Atto, Abdullahi Yussuf, Ghani etc.

actually, as far as i'm concerned, ALL of the warlords...are terrorists
who should never see the day light of ANY day ever again. they are all
responsible for numerious murderers of my people...which they could ALL
avoid if they took the time and honesty to do so. wheather they have a
pre-fix before their names...or they are 'acting' presidents, they are
all terrorists. any somali man who killed another man is a terrorist in
my book -- who should be hanged for that. BUT, when the push comes to
shove, i guess all somalis are then terrorists...since even those who
were killed were simply tryin to kill themselves...only got the
unfortunate to be killed first.

> You see how it is all murky... That is why I say all Somalis are
> victims of circumstance bestowed on them by the courtesy of the late
> Dictator, Afweyne. He sure brought out the worst in all Somalis.

not true, carabey. i blame ALOT for afweyene, but never the distruction
of somalis. somalis brought all this to themselves. when they kicked
him out, they could all sit and negotiate and do their thing right.
but, NOOOO. u.s.c. started slaughtering "daaroodow daarood ma tahay" --
and the daarood themselves said; "ah, they wanna slaughter mareehaan.
LET them..." so, as you can see, they did this ALL by themselves. siyad
barre was not a tribist. he was a selfish man...who took care anyone
who got in his way, INCLUDING his own sons and his own cousins and
their sons. he was a true tyrant in his best, but he was a TRUE
somali...when the push came to shove. he cared all somalis the same,
and he wanted to rule them ALL the same. the only down-side of him was
that...he felt he had the "holy" right to be the president of eternity
in somalia. anyone who dissagreed with him in this...was taken care of,
REGARDLESS of their clan or who they were. so, lets not blame siad
barre for our own weaknesses, shall we? it's about time that somalis
put the blame RIGHT where it belongs; OURSELVES!

> The only way out is all forgotten and forgiven.

forget? HELL no! forgive? here! here! i do not wish to forget...nor
should i ever advocate to forget. i say LET us mourn it...and let us
dwell over it...for all to come. however, let us forgive OURSELVES and
let us see what we can be as a future somalis. somehow, when you
forget, the PAIN never goes away -- and it haunts your society...and it
bounds to be repeated over and over. this is the mistake the americans
had made with racism. now look at them where they are in 21st century.
still to this day, the majority of the blacks and whites...hate each
other. always strifing to make the other look bad, etc etc etc. the
crimes of hate are still going...and never more popular. innocent
people are persecuted for their race...while others are bad-mouthed for
the same, etc etc etc. i think we should not forget -- and NEVER
forget, but forgive. to forgive...is the ONLY option we have as somalis
at this point and time.

> Don't pay too much attention of the garbage that comes out of Djibouti
> and the warlord wannabes.

i agree. however, for the first time in over ten years, somalis are
coming together -- without warlords. it's our women...who are making
buraanbur and it's our most famous poets(such as YAM YAM) who are there
supporting it. as hard as it is for me to accept this ridiculeous
thing, i have no choice but to accept it. i love my country and i love
my people -- for better or worse, i always have to support their
majority decision. and god willing, we will learn a lesson or two from
choosing wreckful paths to peace...and/or waying a wrong path to it.

> Did you see how they rebuked the only tested and tried Somali ally,
> Egypt, because Omer Gelle wanted them to do so. Icredible, What they
> could do for room and board.

i agree! egypt has been a TRUE and honest friend to somalia ever since
its independence. all the things we enjoyed in somalia...such as
education...were mostly provided to us by egypt. it's a bitch that
somalis are now spitting on the face of egypt. and it's shame, but i
have faith in egyptians. thinking about this, the way egypt always held
out for us, maybe that old tale is true that we came from egypt in the
begining? hahaha! oyyy!

[Mohamed]

<carr...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:8m52dm$nd5$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...

Dear Brother Carrabay

>
> All Somalis are victims. I don't think anyone in his right mind could
> label all Habar Gidir as terrorists.

i do agree with you 100%. as long they(we) have Culimo,waxgarad, Nabaddoon
and some mooryaans, and these Moryaans we can label Terrorists,
besides we could label the moryaan leader
not "mybe" as you stated, but true Gang leader.
yes no?

Individuals, such as the warlords
> maybe. But that too is tricky.... To paraphrase familiar dictum, One
> mans terrorist is another mans Clan freedom fighter.
>

> Is Gen. Morgan a terrorist or Darood fighter.?
> Is Jees a terrorist or Ogaden hero.?
> What about Igal, Ali Mahdi, Atto, Abdullahi Yussuf, Ghani etc.

Being same clan member with one of the above named gang leaders.
As far as I was concerned i never assumed him to be my clan leader
let alone to be clan freedom fighter. Just a warlord or better say, gang
leader.
If by any means all my clan members or some of them collaborate with him to
To commit any kind of terrorist activity against another Somalis, I have no
fear to call
Them terrorists.

And for Arta Conference
To borrow Chinua achebe's Things Fall apart." A toad doesn't run in the
daytime for nothing"". There must be reason for it.
So, What is your reasoning to label this peace initiative as garbage?.

MohamedY