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Somalia meets
all the tests for a failed state - and then some: Bloodshed
has been the norm in the country for a decade or more |
NORMAN
WEBSTER, Freelance
The vibes from Somalia are not good, but
then that's nothing new. Since the collapse
of the dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre
in 1991, the lives of Somalis have been a
tale of almost unmitigated disaster - war,
famine, rape, civil collapse, drought,
floods and that age-old desert brutality,
poisoned waterholes.
The country meets all the tests for a failed
state, and then some. In biblical times,
this might have been known as "the sweet
aromatic coast," for its frankincence and
myrrh, but it's been pretty well downhill
ever since.
Half a century ago, an American journalist
named Smith Kempstone reported: "The Somalis
enjoy camel rustling, fighting for water or
grazing lands and castrating Ethiopians with
sharpened sticks." Not a lot has changed
since he visited the Horn of Africa.
The Ethiopians, in fact, are at the centre
of current unhappiness. It is thanks to
their armed forces that one Somali faction
currently holds the capital, Mogadishu, and
is able to make a pretense of governing the
entire country.
But the Christian-led Ethiopians are
withdrawing, in hopes an African
peacekeeping force will take over. This is
far from a done deal. Analysts worry that
Islamic extremists - led by the recently
deposed fundamentalists, the Council of
Islamic Courts - might turn the country into
another Iraq or Afghanistan.
Bloodshed has been the norm in Somalia for a
decade and a half. Perhaps a million of the
country's 10 million people died in clan
warfare that spared no one and so startles
Westerners.
In their book Insurgents, Terrorists and
Militias, Richard H. Shultz, Jr. and Andrea
J. Dew quote the stark Somali proverb:
Me and my clan against the world;
Me and my family against my clan;
Me and my brother against my family;
Me against my brother.
Not exactly a formula for civil society.
Combine it with brutal tactics, unrelenting
vendettas, power-hungry leaders, corruption
and an open arms bazaar, and you have some
idea why things are such a mess. The film
Black Hawk Down, about the American disaster
in Mogadishu in 1993, gave the barest taste.
I visited Somalia in 1979, covering the
aftermath of President Barre's disastrous
war to wrest the Ogaden Desert from his
sworn enemies. Barre had counted on help
from the Americans, but they stood back and
let the dictator take a licking from the
Ethiopians and their Russian and Cuban
allies.
The results were cruel and unhappy. The
victors were engaged in full-scale ethnic
cleansing of the Ogaden. Nomadic Somalis -
one million of them - were being driven out
by napalm bombardments, executions, torture,
the torching of villages, slaughtering of
camels and poisoning of waterholes. The
tales they told in the refugee camps were
harrowing.
Perhaps more questionable was the charge
thrown by the secretary-general of the
Western Somali Liberation Front. It seemed
the hated Cuban troops, missing the bright
lights of Havana, were wont to have, er,
unnatural relations with donkeys. He
chuckled.
Mogadishu itself was peaceful at the time,
its graceful buildings not yet destroyed.
Barre and his men ran a very taut ship.
Portraits of the buck-toothed dictator gazed
down on the citizenry, and opponents tended
to meet sticky ends.
Bureaucrats had perfected the 10-second
attention span. People surged through the
open doors of offices, and an official would
actually stop his pen in the midst of a
signature to discuss a new matter. Thus,
nothing was ever completed.
Diplomats and ex-pats spent morose hours at
the Beach Club on the Indian Ocean. Some
were clearly approaching the edge of madness
- they were drinking gin and Fanta orange.
The Somalis, devout Muslims, mostly avoided
alcohol. They had their own calming agent -
qat, a green leaf, which, when chewed,
produces a mild narcotic. This helps the
common man in several countries of east
Africa and Arabia forget the desperation of
his lot.
Qat chewers can be recognized by their
distended cheeks, vacant eyes and green
smiles. (They tend to smile a lot.) In
retrospect, the Council of Islamic Courts
might have made its biggest mistake when,
Taliban-like, it tried to ban the chewing of
qat; you can push a man just so far.
A word to the wise. If by chance or
misfortune you should find yourself some day
looking for transport in Mogadishu, check
out the driver. If he has a wide green grin
and what looks like a billiard ball in his
cheek - reconsider.
Norman Webster is a former editor of The
Gazette.
The Gazette (Montreal)
February 4, 2007 |
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