Hope For Somalia

Rosemary Righter, writing in The Times of London, has a very well researched and written article on the state of Somalia today after the islamists set a land speed record for brisk walks. As she puts it, there is a chance here for the Somalis to avoid anther trip into hell. It remains to be seen if they can grasp the opportunity, but the Ethiopians have done Somalia a great service by routing the islamists.

Somalis, who fought two wars with Ethiopia over the Ogaden desert, will not readily see their old enemy as a saviour. Yet by acting when the UN and the African Union could come up with nothing but paper plans, the Ethiopians have given this wretched failed state a chance. When the Tanzanians invaded Uganda in 1979 to get rid of the murderous Idi Amin, they were piously denounced by the international community. They deserved praise and so do the Ethiopians. Uganda’s troubles did not end then, but it was the start of the road out of Hell. Somalia is an even tougher case, but it has at least been rescued from another plunge into the inferno.

What next? The country has a federal Government only in name, without ministries or offices, let alone an effective military — a Government whose writ ran nowhere a mere fortnight ago, not even, securely, in the little town of Baidoa where it had been holed up since in 2004. Transitional in name and impotent in fact, it has had, until now, no relevance to Somalis. Not least because its ranks include warlords, its brave insistence that “the warlord era is over” will not readily be believed. It has only weeks to introduce some semblance of civil order. The process will be chaotic; the attempt may fail.

Yet this is still the first government since 1987, when tribal armies combined to overthrow the dictator Siad Barre, that, for now at least, does not face an organised military threat. That is important. So is the fact that President Abdullahi Yusuf hails from one of Somalia’s two biggest clans, the more northerly Darod, and Ali Mohamed Ghedi, its convincingly moderate and well-educated Prime Minister, from the other, the Mogadishu-based Hawiye clan. The warlords are at least nominally within the government camp.

There is a great deal of information about the intricacies of Somali politics, which are essentially tribal in nature. There are many challenges for the interim government, but they now have a hope for the future that simply did not exist two weeks ago. The West would do well to help prop this government up long enough for them to realize that hope. This is a chance to repair a failed state. We need to take that chance.