Oct
9, 2008 (QOL) By Bashir Goth Oct 5, 2008
As the piracy of the Somali coast took a new and dangerous
turn with the hijacking of a ship carrying T-72 Tanks, rocket-propelled
grenades and other ammunition destined for Southern Sudan,
a Kenyan lawyer had the audacity to call neighboring Kenya
and Ethiopia to annex the hapless country and divide it
between them as a final solution for the Somali problem.
In his opinion article carried by Kenya’s Daily Nation,
Mr. Donald Kipkorir, who is an advocate of the Kenyan High
Court, argued annexing Somalia was the strategic interest
for Kenya, viewing it as the only way to stop Kenya’s
tourism industry from teetering towards destruction.
But what Mr.Kipkorir sees as a strategic interest is a
strategic miscalculation for disaster which will not only
bring the destruction of Kenya and Ethiopia but will usher
in an era of balkanization in the entire region of the Horn
of Africa.
Mr.Kipkorir forgets that Kenya and Ethiopia are tribal
mine fields that are waiting to be triggered and his call
for the annexation of Somalia is only what it needs to start
genocides in Kenya and Ethiopia. One has to remember the
recent election crisis in Kenya and how the country stood
on the brink of ethnic fragmentation. Kenya has more than
42 ethnic groups, speaking more than 62 languages and adhering
to various religious affiliations while Ethiopia has about
118 ethnic groups with almost similar number of languages
and different religions. The summer 2008 ethnic strife resulting
from the Presidential election crisis had exposed the fragility
of the Kenyan peace and stability and the degree of hatred
and hostility among the Kenyan tribes. The scenes of machete-wielding
mobs slaughtering their neighbors and looting shops reminded
the world of the horrors of Ruwanda. These were just symbolic
of how ugly a tribal strife can turn in Kenya if something
disturbs the elusive patchwork of loose tribal confederation
called Kenya.
Mr.Kipkorir also seems to have forgotten that despite its
current problems, Somalia is the only homogenous country
in Africa. Somalis are one ethnic group who speak the same
language and adhere to the same religion. They may look
divisive and anarchic in their internal skirmishes on the
country’s meager resources but they have history of
quickly clinging together when they face a common foreign
threat.
Remember Mr.Kipkorir, it is these people that you call
rag-tag army of semi naked men that stood against the British
and Italian armies for 20 years in one of the longest drawn
out African rebellions against foreign occupation. It was
the dervish movement led by the Somali hero Mohammed Abdulla
Hassan, known in history as the Mad Mulla, the derogative
name given to him by the British, that the Royal army failed
to defeat until it used military aircraft against them in
the first aerial bombardment ever used by a European power
in Africa, even before the Italian air bombardment of Libya.
It was the same rag-tag Bedouin army led by another Somali
hero Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (c1507-1543) , who conquered
much of Ethiopia; prompting vanquished Ethiopian emperor
Lebna Dengel (reigned 1508–40) to appeal to Portugal
for help. By then, the Imam, known as Gran or Guray, left-handed,
marched all the way to the province of Tigray where he defeated
an Ethiopian army that confronted him there, and on reaching
Axum destroyed the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in which
the Ethiopian emperors were coronated for centuries WardheerNews.
It is the same rag-tag army of semi naked men that forced
the American army to flee from Mogadishu after the Black
Hawk Down battle. Despite its gruesome history which we
Somalis are not proud of, it showed the grit and the mettle
of the Somali people when they are forced into a corner.
Now, Mr.Kipkorir if you really want to invite these modern
Mongols to Kenya to turn Nairobi into ruins, then you better
know what you are calling for. Invading Somalia will not
be a piece of cake as you tried to portray it and the Somali
legislatures in Nairobi will not be easy to walk over. The
moment the first Kenyan bullet is shot inside Somalia, Nairobi
will explode and the Kenyan patchwork will fall apart. And
God knows how many Kenyan mini-states will emerge from the
ashes. And this is not a thing that I wish for my Kenyan
brothers. I am proud of what they have achieved until now
because unlike Mr. Kipkorir, I pride myself in the progress
made by any African country, let alone my neighbors.
Contrary to your argument Mr.Kipkorir, Somalia was not
a lawless state until 1960 and if you are not aware, Somalia
was the first country in Africa where an elected civilian
president was replaced in a democratic election in 1967.
Aden Abdulla Othman was the first African President to hand
over the reins of power to his successor Abdirashid Ali
Sharmarke when Kenya was languishing under one-man rule.
Somalia was not a haven for terrorists and pirates as you
tried to paint it but as you know Somalia had the strongest
and best disciplined army in the 70s. It was Somalia that
negotiated a peace deal between the neighboring countries
of Nyerere’s Tanzania and Idi Amin’s Uganda.
You must know Mr.Kipkorir that with the exception of Mogadishu
every other town in the Somali region whether it is in Somaliland,
Puntland, Baidoa or even Kismayo at the border of Kenya
have better degree of security than your cosmopolitan Nairobi.
In Hargeisa for example like any other town of former Somalia,
women sell gold in the open market and leave it without
any guard at times of prayer without anyone stealing it,
while in Nairobi people are killed for the watches they
wear and the mobile phones they carry in bright day light.
It is true that we have problems in our country and that
due to a strange amalgam of tribal and alien ideological
factors, Somalis cannot make reconciliation among themselves
but by the same token one cannot deny the ingenuity of the
Somali people in creating business and managing to prosper
amid calamity. The bustling business the Somali community
has established in Nairobi’s Eastleigh area is something
that should invoke a sense of pride in you as an African
and not enrage you. It may also be worth mentioning that
over the past difficult 18 years, the Somali people have
founded more airlines than they ever had, created more schools
and universities that any African country has and built
some of the most beautiful hotels and bungalows in the peaceful
parts of the country.
As an imminent lawyer, you should have known better Mr.Kipkorir
than taking America’s annexation of Texas from Mexico
in 1845 as a legal precedent to support your alleged invasion
and annexation of Somalia. You know that the 19th century
was a time for international robbery. Although slavery was
in its dying days, European powers were dividing Africa
as booty among themselves in the Scramble for Africa conference
of Berlin in 1884. It is therefore a pity that a man of
law, a son of Africa in the 21st century and an heir of
Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau warriors, a semi-naked men
like us, had to call for the colonization of Africans by
Africans in the 21st century.
I hope you are aware Mr.Kipkorir that if your wish were
ever realized, you would be the first to suffer and that
you would not be writing such insidious articles in ritzy
hotels in Nairobi but will be biting your fingers in a feeding
center in the African bush, probably feasting on dates donated
by the Arabs whom you pride yourself in their enmity, ignoring
that you owe so many things to them even your Swahili language.
I hope you could handle that because the semi-naked Somalis
have handled it for so many years.
How shameful, Mr.Kipkorir, that in your desperate attempt
to give your loyalties to the West, you had to belittle
your country by describing it as an ally of the West and
therefore a natural enemy of the Arabs. “The truth
of the matter is that as a Western ally, Kenya is an existential
enemy of the Arab countries, Sudan included,” you
said, forgetting that 11 out of 53 African countries are
Arabs and that the West will not blink an eye to sacrifice
the whole of Kenya including its safari tourism for the
Arab oil.
Mr.Kipkorir, it would have more becoming of you as an African
intellectual to call for united Horn of African countries
where the brotherly countries of the region can share their
resources and face the challenges of globalization, rising
oil prices and crumbling financial markets as a common front
instead of calling for the colonization of Africans by Africans.
This is exactly what Djibouti, that little African country
that you tried to trash in your article, is doing by attracting
hitherto unprecedented international investment for one
of the dream projects of Africa; which is to link Africa
to Arabia with a bridge across the red sea. This is what
I call strategic thinking my African brother and not mobilizing
your forces to blunder your suffering African neighbors.
I am not sure whether you are intentionally trying to reopen
the old wounds of the division of the Somali people by the
colonial powers and test the resolve of the Somali people
to reviving their dream of greater Somalia, but if that
is your intention then rest assured brother that unlike
you Somalis know that in the 21st century they would be
in a better shape to have greater Africa than greater Somalia.Bashir
Goth
Email: bsogoth@yahoo. com
Qorahay Online
|
