By Ali Osman Samatar
Soon after the collapse of the Dictatorial Military regime in Somalia, Somali people went through a historical anarchic and painful agony which was lead by clan based warlords mainly in the south of Somalia. That period was terminated by so-called Islamic courts that managed a miracle and brought back a remarkable peaceful environment for the people in the major Somali terrible city Mogadishu. However, weeks after the Warlords were expelled from the ex-Somali capital, the Islamists started a holly war against peaceful towns and villages in the South and that reminded me General Adiided’s disastrous crusade operations in many towns in South Somalia like Baidao the city of death. Apart from defeating the warlords in Mogadishu, it is all know to us that the Islmaists couldn’t even manage to establish at least a functioning administration in Mogadishu. They only opened the Airport and the Seaport of Mogadishu in order to cover their financial needs for a holly war from Somalia.
Apparently, as we could all remember very well today, the major propaganda subject of the Islamists in Mogadishu was only Ethiopia and not our national problems which needed a quick dialogue and internal political reconciliations. A literally over estimated primitive Islamists groups around the Self declared Sheikh Mr Hassan Dahir Aweis and Mr Indhacade who were backed by outside financiers and radical Islamic ideologists became active part of internationally operating religious fanatics. This is why they attacked within a short time relatively peaceful regions in Somalia like Lower Juba, Middel Shebelle, Bay, Bakool, Hiiraan, Mudug, and Gelgudud.
Parallel to all their cynic Military operations, Islamists in Mogadishu expelled women the bread winners for hundreds of thousands of futureless Somali generations from the streets of all the regions which they occupied by force. They prohibited Somali music and move business in Mogadishu. Based on that, Islamist put our nation on the best truck of the road to the prehistory of mankind. In addition to that, the Islamists were about to revitalise a dirty and bloody Darrod, Hawieye, Rahanween warlords driven internal civil war and a horrifying political clan games in Somalia. Following that, the joint TFG and Ethiopian military operation in South Somalia is a logical consequence of the declaration of a whole war by the Islamists against the TFG and Ethiopia in Baidao. It was the Islamists who sent exclusively teenager militia to the frontline war in Baidao and Buurhakabo against a regular army like the Ethiopian army is today.
Many Somalis are telling us in writings and Radio interviews that Ethiopia is our historical enemy and some of those figures saying irresponsibly Ethiopian is our natural enemy just like the Islamists used to propagate from Mogadishu during their good old days. That is not true and that reflects only psychological childhood trauma and undigested political mass manipulation which has its deep roots in the colonial era and in the dictatorial regimes of Somalia and Ethiopia. The people who are suffering that kind of manipulation are two groups in Somalia. One group is the intellectual and frustrated opportunistic Diaspora Somalis group and the other group is the brutal illiterate new political actors in Somalia who did not catch the fact that the vast majority of our people see no difference between the Islamists, warlords and Ethiopia for the last 16 years.
Moreover, the first group is unable to realise that the Somalis among themselves have experienced and went through a brutally era and that is why they will never and no longer believe that Ethiopia is their natural enemy. Apart from that, today Somalis in Hargeisa and Bossaso have relatively good relationship with Ethiopians while in Awdal region of Somalia the people use Ethiopian money (Bir) as a major currency before the US and the strong Euro. The road between Burao and Lassanod is populated with Ethiopian Immigrants on their deadly overseas trip to Yemen. The Somalis alongside these two rival towns provide the immigrants from Ethiopia water/food and never consider them as their enemy.
Furthermore and just as to give an example, in Hiiraan, Bay, Bakool, Gedo or Banaadir the warlordism divided our people in those regions into bloody pro and contra Ethiopian’s involvements in Somalia. That means the picture that the Somalis had collectively from Ethiopia previously or during the 60th as well as the Said Barre Dictatorship period is not the same as the picture many Somalis have from Ethiopia today due to the Somalis made and executed agony and refugee life of our people in and outside their country. The strong military intervention of Ethiopia guided by the TFG political actors opened us an opportunity to reorganise the country and the return of our lost nation to the International community arena. This intervention can possibly lead us to the rebirth of our nation if the clan radicals and Islamists in Mogadishu again did not mist it up as usual through the remobilisation of women, armed teenager Hooligans and occupiers of ex-state buildings and private properties in the streets of Mogadishu. Propagandists will not agree with me this but Ethiopia cannot occupy Somalia because that is far beyond their capacity but may be they can help us get out of our home made disaster. Ethiopians are our natural neighbour but not our natural enemy and that vision is the only vision which offers our two nations the better future. That is the better and realistic vision.
Ali Osman Samater.
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