First published in Standard
By Hassan Omar Hassan
Sunday, February 19, 2012
The United Kingdom will host a conference on Somalia next week on February 23. I have also been invited to the UK to attend a conference on Somalia next month. This conference seeks to bring together "senior level practitioners and policy makers, community representatives, analyst and academics... and draw on expertise from the US and Europe, alongside Somali experts, academics and community leaders based in the UK, Somalia and East Africa". Both the conferences are broadly organised under the auspices of the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Over the last few years, I have been invited to various international initiatives and conferences on Somalia. Internationally, there is broad acknowledgement that fight against terrorism cannot be won only through military means. I am also not in doubt that no solution for Somalia will succeed if the people are not in the centre and in deed own the process. My principle though for participation has been to support any genuine efforts aimed at the resolution of the crisis in Somalia. Human rights actors both locally and internationally are alive to the attendant violations as a consequence or under the guise of combating terrorism directly linked to the Somali crisis. The impact of the crisis to Kenya’s Muslim community and in particular Kenya’s Somali community is evident. The resolution of this crisis has Kenya’s Muslim community as one of the principal beneficiaries.
I am pleased that the international community has been unequivocal about supporting military intervention in Somalia under the command of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). Kenya’s request to join the Amisom was undoubtedly as a consequence of being left with no choice. Military action is costly both in human and a financial sense. Demonstrated zeal to combat terrorism usually attracts the West’s military and financial support. Not this time! Where all major powers have diplomatically or politically supported Kenya’s incursion into Somalia, there has been less zeal to provide more tangible military and financial support. A prolonged incursion has an obvious financial cost which will eventually bite the taxpayers. Such a state of affairs will occasion questions as to the strategy or wit of the military operations.
Most of the present day military engagements were at the onset popular and legitimate. This is in particular reference to Afghanistan and Iraq. As the cost of war soared, casualties increased and no end was in sight, respective populations across a host of Western nations started to ask the hard questions.
What began as popular and legitimate security/military interventions cost politicians their popularity and power, the taxpayers their resources and raised critical questions as to the justifications of the military operations. In my view there were numerous strategic oversights or assumptions on our part. In particular, international support that was not forthcoming as fast as was hoped. We claim to have weakened the Al Shabaab yet need international support to enter Kismayu. We now hope that the partnership between the Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda will attract an international coalition. It is your ‘war’, fight it!
Yet in the alternative, this partnership also ushers the entry of international jihadists who are being left ‘idle’ owing to US pullout in Iraq and the intention to pull out of Afghanistan. This might lead to the increase of violence in Somalia. As the world seeks a solution to Somalia, we must aim at ending the violence, pull out foreign troops and give Somalia back to its people. This will be my message to the conference!
The writer is a lawyer and former commissioner with the KNCHR