Another October and another dictator

[Akash]

October, it seems is a curse on the Somali people. It was October 21, 1969 when General Mohammed Siyad Barre came to power in a military coup. Exploiting the political situation ushered in by the assassination of the elected civilian President at the time, Abdul Rashid Ali Sharmarke, and the grave economic circumstances that prevailed, Siyad Barre projected himself as the savior. People relieved a sigh, women ululated, the elders praised and the Ulema prayed for Barre and the military junta for success and smooth ride.

 

For 21 years, Somali people sang and chanted the Name of October like prayer psalms. They sang the praises of October, the month of plenty and prosperity, even though millions of them slept on empty bellies every night.

 

After 21 long years of brutal dictatorship, of material and moral destruction of the whole country, particularly the main towns of today’s Somaliland, and the creation of the largest number of refugees in Africa at the time, Siyad Barre fled the country in 1991 before advancing clan militias.

 

Somaliland, the former British Protectorate, which bore the brunt of Barre’s ruthless genocides and scorched earth policy, had wisely walked out of the failed union, restored its sovereignty and chartered itself a new course of nation building. Somaliland today enjoys a thriving democracy, an elected president and municipal councils and a tryst with time to elect its first parliament in March 2005.

 

In all these years, however, Somaliland has repeatedly appealed to the international community to recognize its sovereignty and reward it for its achievements vis-à-vis the chaos in the south.

 

The international community, however, decided to build false hopes on Somalia despite the prolonged state of lawless and bloodshed.

 

Being privy to the political and tribal mechanisms of the people in the South more than anyone else, Somaliland just waited with great patience for the fig leaf to fall. They knew the day would come when the world would see the ugly reality of the warlords.

 

Today, after 12 lean years and after two years of peace talks on which the people of Somalia attached great hopes and aspirations, the international community had woken up to the consequences of its utter failure to heeding the advise of Somaliland – that they should not have put the destiny of the war-weary and exhausted Somali people in the hands of a gang of warlords.

 

With the election of Abdillahi Yusuf today, a brutal dictator and a ruthless political opportunist, Somalia has once again slipped into a new era of darkness and hopelessness – the beginning of a saga of another October and another dictator with an international blessing.