Somalis: Be Responsible!

Abdulaziz Mohammed
Wednesday, June 25, 2008

 

To legitimize or excuse an individual or group action, no matter how wrong or criminal, is human nature. Even a murderer will explain his or her dastardly deeds by blaming it on past circumstances, an abuse in his or her childhood for instance, if not proclaim the “devil” made him or her do it. After all, a human being, even the most evil one, has to satisfy his or her conscience for some accountability!

 

After almost 2 decades of inexcusable violence, let alone explainable, exhausted beyond replenishment is the Somali people’s threshold for more of the same. Please forgive me if I, as a Somali, do not buy this one: Liberation or reliberation, as some would phrase it, of Somalia! Yet, I begrudgingly take note of their clever by half use of the “Ethiopian card.” After all, the long-standing bogeyman, the everlasting nemesis if you will, of Somalis are in Mogadishu with troops and tanks! I hesitatingly give them, our own (Somali) false saviors, half a point for that.

 

However, I know them better. I knew they were up to no-good from the beginning when they brought down the Somali government, however brutal that government might have been. For 15 years afterwards, long before any Ethiopian sat foot on Somali soil, they confirmed my knowledge of them, that they know or understand nothing but violence!

 

Personally, I find it laughable by the inference in the claim, of fighting Ethiopian occupation, the rest of Somalis beyond in and around Mogadishu is docile, Ethiopian—of all people—occupation lovers. Once again though, I am afraid they the Somali violent, for violent sake, will proof me right when their Ethiopian excuse removed. When Ethiopians leave and others of the United Nations troops come to replace them, will they my dear Somali violent then lay down their guns? I predict, with 99.9% likelihood, they will NOT!

 

Also, have they, who are active in or supporters of the So-called “reliberation” of Somalia from occupation, even thought ahead of what will result if they succeed? Say, they bring the TFG down and drive their Ethiopian ally in humiliation back to where it came from. Then what? Take it from me when I tell you such victory will be short lived. Why? Well, this Ethiopian government and its US ally will arm to-the-teeth their Somali, would-be former TFG and warlords ally. Then we will have states, US especially, sponsored new insurgency on the block. Undoubtedly, this will entail only onething:  more Somali needless deaths or sufferings.

 

It should be clear by now to any reasonable Somali that we Somalis destroyed our country, Somalia. It is us Somalis who are responsible for the millions of our own who perished and the millions more driven out of their homes to a miserable refugee status in and out of Somalia. No amount of escape-goatting others for it will ever replace that fact!  

 

If anything, therefore, Somalia and the Somali people are in much greater need to be free from fellow Somalis who hold them hostage with constant, lethal violence. Have we come to devalue a Somali life so much that we no longer even consider factoring it in our actions?  

 

In the lives of human beings, individually, nationally and even internationally, there are times when it is better to kill or die for a good cause. This has been how people freed themselves from tyranny; this has been how some bought their survival against an aggressor bent on killing or humiliating them. I ask: what has been the cause so dear or legitimate that we had to destroy our home Somalia, that we snuffed-out millions of Somali lives, that millions more scattered all over the world? What have we for so long been fighting or dying for?

 

When are we going to give genuine peace a chance, even for a little while? When are we going to assume our responsibilities?

---

Abdulaziz Mohammed

[email protected]