December
6, 2002
An
advice to the Somali Conference
Foreign nationals, concerned governments and the
Somalis must have learned lessons from the previously
failed fourteen reconciliation conferences. The
last one held at the Djibouti town of Arte, produced
results that many Somalis rejected and it never
solved the national crisis, lawlessness and disintegration.
This
conference, under the auspices of IGAD Technical
Committee (ITC) comprised of Kenyans, Ethiopians,
and Djiboutians plus the powerful European Union
representative and the invisible US observer, was
expected to be different in terms of procedures
to be followed, the criteria for participation and
over all rules of the proceedings. It should have
drawn valuable lessons from all the failures before
it. It should have avoided the fundamental distortion
of representation and the near total domination
of foreign individuals in all aspects of the conference.
Among the many mistakes and shortcomings in the
previous conferences, it was the mishandling of
the selection of conference delegates and lack of
proper procedures that dealt the death blow to their
deliberations.
In
order any Somali conference to succeed and to have
meaningful results for the intended people, certain
basic principles must be up held and respected at
all times and in all circumstances. These principles
must include the sovereign rights of the Somali
people to choose their own representatives. Basic
and universally accepted procedures of conflict
analysis and resolution must be established and
strictly followed.
In
this Somali conference at Eldoret, the IGAD technical
committee and the paymasters of this meeting, namely
EU and US point persons, decided to conduct it in
an unprecedented social club or an open theater
like way.
Participation
is free for all: Militia leaders; NGO’s; Clan
leaders; political aspirants from the Diaspora,
Women, Youth, dozens of foreign and national persons
posing as advisers often undoing agreements and
creating doubts, powerful and behind the scenes
Al Islah and Al Ittihad leaders; Somali, UN and
foreign observers, large contingent of foreign intelligence;
Local, National and International media, and many
more are active participants of this meeting. Above
all, the flow of huge sums of money from foreign
and Somali sources, buying political support and
favors, guarantee a constant shift of the political
positions of the Somali groups and leaders.
Decisions
reached in the morning get changed in the evening,
simply because of the concentric circles of interest
groups, money and lobby. The motto here seems to
be " more is better". We have to ask ourselves,
is this a social gathering or a serious business
for creating governance structures and leadership
for a nation that failed to exist 12 years ago?
We
all know conflicts are negotiated, mediated, compromised
and resolved in a controlled and strictly regulated
setting and among actual leaders who are part to
a conflict. There is no conflict without protagonists.
In Somalia the protagonists are clear and visible.
But the nations, who have the financial, political
and other means to bring together the warring leaders
want other ways to achieve a result they could like,
which may or may not be what the Somalis want. By
creating concentric circles of interest groups of
their choice around any reconciliation meeting and
by nominating a controlling quorum of the delegates
in the conference, they hope to cook the final results.
The warring leaders resist attempts to get around
them. In this game of political maneuvering, the
ten million Somali population falls prey for 12
years. The region is seriously affected by the fall
out. Terrorism and refugee problems became worldwide
issues.
In
conclusion, this game of hide and seek must stop!
Somali leaders who have the actual power to stabilize
the situation, and create law and order in this
bleeding nation, must be made to compromise and
agree on a democratic solution to the conflict in
a regulated and strictly controlled setting. Cajoling
and coercing reluctant leaders is justifiable part
and parcel of the mediation process. Cut the phones;
cut the flow of money; stop the multiplicity ideas;
eliminate the multiple players, the interest groups
and their lobby; and control the media and foreign
interference. Following this route is not empowering
civil war criminals. In fact, it is committing them
to a democratic process that is actually the beginning
of the end of their grip to power and probably the
best hope to indite them in the future. Convening
a meeting of a representative body to ratify agreements
can only come when leaders are committed to specific
governance structures, fair constituencies representation
and modalities of selection. Basic geographical
location, traditional democracy and available precedence
can be used as a guide to selecting a representative
body. Amb. Robert Okley, ex-US Special Envoy to
Somalia, 1992-93, tried this constructive approach
then, but met with a stiff international and local
resistance that led to the numerous disasters that
followed. Wasting meager international aid resources
on grand scale futile schemes, raising and dashing
hopes of the Somali people characterized the previous
conferences and obviously this meeting is following
the same path or even worse. Some thing must change
here in this conference and sooner not later.
Dahir
Mirreh Jibreel
Social
Studies Teacher at Edison High School, Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Now
at Eldoret
E-mail:
geelliq1@yahoo.com
Telephone:
0722-660033
