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Raisethefist.com: Can Somalia dare to hope for the future?
Can Somalia dare to hope for the future?
by anonymous Mon Aug 20 02:52:34 PDT 2012
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As Somalia approaches its umpteenth attempt to forge a government that will actually stick, there's a deadening familiarity here: bloodstained warlords reemerging, clan elders manipulating politics, roadblocks going up as militias try to reclaim turf.
And yet a year of relative peace in Mogadishu, long the world capital of chaos, and the recent adoption of a new constitution have raised faint hopes that this latest stab at shedding the "failed state" label might actually work.
But can it?
Rather than optimism, Somalis more often express wistful caution that if only the politicians get it right this time, life might just improve.
"Something good is happening," said Jabril Abdulle, director of a Mogadishu nongovernmental organization, the Center for Research and Dialogue. "I'm scared. Are we going to lose this again?"
Many see it as the last chance.
Come Monday, Somalia is supposed to have a new president. But ordinary Somalis will have no say in the matter. Instead, the president will be chosen by the country's new parliament, which was elected by the clan elders whose warlords have brought anarchy to the country for two decades, in a process critics say was beset by corruption and vote buying.
Neither the Somalis who led the "election" process nor the main international players involved, including the United States, see the country as being ready for real democracy. They fear it might upset the delicate balance of power between the clans and lead to more bloodshed.
But many Somalis say that unless Monday's election produces a different crop of leaders from the transitional figures who have misgoverned Somalia for the last five years, it won't have credibility or legitimacy, nor will it bring the change they crave.
Analysts warn that President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, singled out in a recent U.N. report as one of the worst offenders in a government marked by horrendous corruption, is likely to come out on top.
Even worse, there's a risk that bad losers will take up arms.
"It's reverting back to warlordism. That's what all the Somalis I trust are saying," said one Western security analyst, who couldn't be identified because it would endanger the work of the entity he works for in Somalia. He said most of the Mogadishu district commissioners are warlords. "One of them has a militia of 400 men, and nobody does anything about it."
This week's transition comes a year after the Shabab, the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militia, lost control of the capital, and retreated to its stronghold in the south of the country.
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