Somaliland: Of Titans and Trolls
During the last two weeks we have lost two titans of
African politics: the first, and somewhat lesser giant,
was Ambassador Axmed Maxamed Adan (Qaybe) of Somaliland,
and the second, was the inesti mable Madiba – Nelson
Mandela of South Africa. Clearly, Mandela was a figure
of global renown that is known and loved the world over
as an icon of the struggle for the liberation of South
Africa from the tyranny of colonialism and apartheid,
while Qaybe is known, but loved no less, by the
Somali-speaking people of the Horn of Africa. I have
chosen to join these men in tribute because they were
both stalw arts and leaders of their respective countries
struggle for independence and self-government, as well
as exemplary public servants that chose the path of
principle and integrity over expedience and pers onal
aggrandisement. Each of these men, in their own ways and
in the context of their respective cou ntries and
struggles, presents an example of the highest standards
of political integrity and public service to which one
may aspire, and this places them in glaring contrast to
the charlatans, arrivistes, tribal plutocrats and
money-grubbing kleptocrats that masquerade as African
political leaders, i.e. the trolls of the continent’s
politics.
Some may object to the coupling of Mandela with Qaybe
and we must not apologise for insisting that the true
measure of a political leader is not the extent of his
fame, but the record of his career and the legacy of his
public life. Certainly, Qaybe is the lesser known of the
two and it is certainly true that Qaybe is not the
epochal figure in Somali political history that Mandela
is in South African history. Nevertheless, to borrow a
phrase from Martin Luther King, with respect to the
content of their charac ters these men were both giants
of the independence and governance of their respective
countries. At critical times in the history of their
respective countries, both of these men refused to
succumb to facile parochialism and chose the path of
principle, peace and national reconciliation over
personal aggrandisement through conflict. This is the
true measure of character and personal integrity, and
the cult of celebrity is irrelevant to its
determination. It is worth remembering that many of
those consecr ating Mandela with the most lavish praise
and tributes, particularly in the West, are the very
same pol iticians that denounced him as a dangerous
terrorist when he was imprisoned by the apartheid
racists at Robbens Island, and also denounced him when,
as the first democratically elected President of Sou th
Africa, he embraced liberation struggles of other
peoples and clasped their leaders, like Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat, to his breast.
If Qaybe and Mandela represent the titans of African
politics, then it is a sad fact that their opposites,
the crooks, kleptocrats and charlatans, are represented
among African leaders in far greater number. Indeed, the
defining struggle in African post-independence politics
has been that of the ordinary peo ple for assertion of
their sovereignty against the autocracy and tyranny of
their rulers, be they milit ary dictatorships or
‘civilian’ strongmen. Unfortunately, in this category of
autocratic charlatans we must include the current
President of Somaliland – Ahmed Mohamoud (Silanyo).
However, in fairness, we can only consider Silanyo an
autocrat-aspirant since the firmness of his grip on
absolute power in Somaliland is not yet proven, and he
has yet to demonstrate the political acumen to ensure
the perpe tuation of his rule either in person,
dynastically or through proxy. Developments over the
coming year and a half leading to the next Presidential
elections will determine whether Silanyo graduates as a
bo na fide civilian dictator or whether the people of
Somaliland will subvert his mission and ensure the
su rvival of their successful experiment in
representative government and political freedom.
The Silanyo government’s bent towards autocratic rule
unfettered by constitutional safeguards and t he rule of
law was first evidenced almost immediately after coming
to power in 2010, by its savage rep ression of press
freedoms and the expression of dissent from any quarter.
This clear policy of repressi on of political dissent,
imprisonment of journalists that do not tow the
government line and heavy han ded treatment of civil
society activists has been augmented in recent months by
a shadowy camp aign of assassination attempts and
targeted violence against prominent political opponents
and critical jou rnalists in which elements of the
security services seem implicated. This campaign, and
the seeming im potence of the security services to
apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators, has generated
an in evitable backlash with a senior ruling party
official targeted in a tit-for-tat assassination attempt, whi ch mercifully failed. This not to say that
the government is behind this campaign of targeted
violence against its political opponents, but it is
certainly true that the cavalier attitude of the security servic es to the apprehension and prosecution of
the perpetrators has engendered a climate of impunity
wh ich has contributed to its growth.
Targeted violence against specific individuals is
foreign to the culture and history of Somaliland where
politically inspired violence has traditionally taken
the form of inter and intra-clan warfare. This wave of
targeted assassinations whereby individual politicians
or journalists are targeted for extermination is totally
new to Somaliland political and social life and is very
worrying indeed. Even more ominous is the attitude of
the security services, in particular the
Minister of
Interior who is, after all, the highest law enforcement
official in the country. It is absolutely incredible,
not to mention criminal, that he woul d personally
release the perpetrator of an assassination attempt upon
an opposition MP (before he w as brought before a court)
on the basis, that ‘this matter is best resolved through
traditional channel s between the clans of the victim and
the perpetrator’ – to use a French phrase
“incroyable mais vrai s!” (incredible but true!). Has the Minister
not sworn to uphold the law? Is there no constitution
whi ch delineates his powers and which requires him to
uphold the law of the land, or can he choose when to do
so and when not to? It is also true that this
perpetrator was not apprehended by the sec urity
services, but was forced to turn himself in after he was
identified by the victim and by bystanders w ho witnessed
the crime. Other perpetrators of targeted violence
against journalists and civil society activists have
been reported as wearing the uniforms of security
service personnel and none of them have been
apprehended, despite a wealth of witness and victim
evidence.
This culture of lawlessness and executive autocracy has
generated opposition from civil society as wel l as the
opposition parties. In particular, a group of senior
politicians, including many who were either allies of Silanyo during his years as an opposition party leader
and others who were senior ministers in his first
government in 2010, got together to form the grandiosely
named Committee for National Con sultations & Guidance (CNCG)
in July 2013. Rather than ameliorate the government’s
increasing auto cracy and crackdown on all forms of what
it perceived as dissent, including quite benign
criticism in the press and from civil society activists,
the establishment of the CNCG created panic within the
governm ent and various ministers took it upon themselves
to declare the organisation illegal and even treaso nous.
The national conference planned by the CNCG to discuss
government policies and its perceived failures and
mistakes was declared by senior ministers as also
illegal and treasonous and they swore to prevent it
being held at all. These ludicrous statements are in
direct contravention of Article 22.1 of the Somaliland
Constitution which enshrines the right of citizens to
participate in political, economic, social and cultural
affairs in accordance with the law. The only constraint
on this freedom of participat ion imposed by the law is
with respect to political parties which are limited to
the three national parti es which emerged from the local
and regional elections. However, the CNCG is not a
political party, nor does it seek to be. Rather it is a
non-partisan, political organisation established to
initiate and conduct a national dialogue on policy and
the direction the country is taking. As such, it is
neither illegal nor tre asonous, despite the panicked and
intemperate bluster and threats of the government and
its spokes people.
The government’s strong-arm tactics reached the peak of
illegality and autocratic over-reach recent ly when two
leaders of the opposition parties (UCID and WADDANI)
were prevented from visiting the town of Gabiley which
is about 90km from Hargeisa. The purported reason for
this incomprehensible restriction of these citizens’
right to free movement (enshrined in Article 23 of the
Constitution) was that they had not advised the local
authorities of their trip in advance. This is the most
amazing exa mple of official claptrap since it is not
incumbent upon citizens, whether they are leaders of
political parties, vegetable sellers or ordinary people
proceeding about their business, to advise local
authori ties of their movements. Or is the government now
requiring citizens to seek ‘visas’ to travel from one
town to another, and if they are, by what authority or
law do they presume to constrain the rights granted the
people under the Constitution? It is nearly always a
potent sign of the demise of a govern ment when those
that are elected to uphold and defend the freedoms and
rights of the people presu me to deny them these very
same freedoms and rights.
In conclusion, it is incumbent upon the people of
Somaliland, and particularly its youth, to defend the
freedoms and rights that were won after a long decade of
war that devastated the country, decima ted the people
and forced hundreds of thousands into exile. A
generation of Somalilanders have grow n up under this
hard won freedom and representative government, while
countless thousands perish ed in the genocide perpetrated
by the Afweyne dictatorship in its futile attempt to
maintain the ens lavement of the people. It is
inconceivable that the brave people of this unique
little country that def eated one of the largest armies
in black Africa, and fashioned itself into a beacon of
hope, represent ative governance and gritty self-reliance
in the Horn of Africa will yield to the autocracy,
arrogance and denial of rights that the Silanyo
government seeks to impose. The fatal shortcoming of all
trolls, and political trolls are no exception, is that
they cannot see beyond their stunted vision of
aggrandise ment and self-interest, just as the true
greatness of giants is their ability to see and
articulate a gra nd vision of justice and collective
progress. Mr. Silanyo and his acolytes would do well to
study the hi story and character of their people before
their mendacity, subterfuge and misgovernment place th em
on the wrong side of history and condemn them to the
dustbin. We shall see, but I am pessimistic that they
will learn the lesson of history.
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