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Richard Dowden - Africa Blog |
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29 October 2009
This week I went to listen to Somalia’s new Prime Minister, Omar Shamarke, lay out his plans for Somalia. He spoke as if he were ruling the entire country instead of a few square inches of the capital, Mogadishu, thanks to Amison, the African Union Mission to Somalia. Yet he made no mention at all of the 5,000 Burundian and Ugandan troops who put their lives on the line to allow Mr Shamarke to visit Mogadishu occasionally.
Even more worryingly he said that his government had drafted a plan “that will begin the process of restoring peace to Somalia including Puntland and Somaliland.” Puntland and Somaliland – the latter particularly - have been at peace for nearly two decades thanks to setting up their own administrations and getting on with life, unlike southern Somalia which is still embroiled in clan warfare.
Why don’t the international donors who Mr Shamarke begs for money make aid to the “government” in Mogadishu conditional on non-interference in Puntland and Somaliland and tell him that they will only support the reintegration of these two areas into the rest of Somalia with their full democratic agreement.
Even better why don’t the donors give more recognition to Somaliland and Puntland (short of recognising Somaliland as an independent country) and encourage them to work together so that their leaders are recognised as the major representatives of the Somali people. They could then leave the South to sort out its own problems. Why should these warlords be recognised as “the government of Somalia” just because they happen to be fighting in the capital, Mogadishu?
Meanwhile the BBC website which seems to increasingly follow a purely British domestic agenda, now only brings us news of pirates when reporting Somalia. But maybe it should call them coast guards. It has yet to mention that only a couple of years ago in Bossaso on the Red Sea coast, British former Special Forces operatives were training “Somali coast guards” in the use of weapons and fast patrol boats. In support of the warlord, President Abdullahi Yussuf, the British government was keen to help his “government” stop or fine Indonesian, Japanese and Korean trawlers from scooping up all the fish along the Somali coast. The coast guards obviously found more lucrative revenues from visitors along their coastline.
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Been reading your excellent book, AFRICA. I was at school in neighbouring Kenya when you were in Uganda and we cleaned the school for your Idi Amin's visit but he did not turn up! Had my own Last King of Scotland moment working briefly with Gambia's Jammeh - but ended with a 14 day detention and a quick return to cold blighty. I felt exactly how you felt on returning to work in that warehouse in 1972! I love your chapter on Somalia and of course the Samburu who are related to me - I am Borana. I was in Dakar in May, but your peice on Touba was slightly thin - though the honesty and "Mafia" thing is very good indeed. Nabad Galio, or Kwaheri.