While the United Kingdom has stood aside during the two-decade calamity in Somalia, hoping time and circumstances would teach Somalis how to live on their own, only frustration and futile years of diplomacy resulted.
Strategies aimed at maintaining neutrality and aloofness have faded out in a broad daylight. Depressed by the outcome of objectivity, therefore, Britain is bound to prove its diplomatic and cultural relevance with Somalia by holding a conference on Somalia on February 23rd 2012. However, based on what we have experienced over the last two months, this conference is really controversial and unpopular to the average Somalis.
On February 8, 2012, Chatham House, a London-based research institution, tested waters just to make sure the steps ahead are carried out consummately. And so doing, a handful of Somali born Britons as well as high ranking members of government were invited. Awfully though, those under examination (Somalis) showed deeper differences on the current political settings in Somalia, and waves of skepticism and discrepancies set in.
This was the first sign of failure. In fact nothing should surprise Britain because it has already been dealing with divided leadership. Despite that, Britain may want to make sure that qualitative decisions are made on this critical issue.
Elsewhere, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, appeared more determined and even unswerving about this conference. He rallied across countries and everybody heard him loud and clear: this time Somalia should get a hard look. But conversely, the more he talked about it, the more dust of unpopularity he casted on himself in the end—a recipe for early failure.
But the fact that Somalia completely collapsed 22 years ago and failed to recover help Britain to take any bold measure it could, regardless of probability of success.
Committed and optimistic, Britain is urgently calling for everyone around (those with interests in Somalia) to attend the conference. Perhaps the British ruling elite have seen a heavenly role in resolving the issues of this chaos-driven country, a move that can resonate with the most God-fearing ambassadors attending the conference.
On paper, this looks like an inclusive and participatory political move but, in detail, it won’t change a dime. Besides, there are basic questions that the average Somali is asking. Why is Britain so interested in Somalia after 20-plus years of mayhem? Did Britain get its own interests under attack? And more importantly, how sincere is Britain about resolving Somalia crisis?
Some people have argued that by inviting diplomats from 50 countries is a sign of an imminent moral shift and unconventional warfare that England is engaging in with partners of its making.
It is time to show countries like Turkey, Egypt, China, and the United States their innocence and, more importantly, to checkmate them. And if this is true, then the U.S. Foreign Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Mon, the highest ranking officials in attendance, may probably be attending a show whose actor is about to die before the movie ends.
In my view, nothing has changed in British books. Already struggling with a weaker economy and the aftermath of world’s longest campaigns—Afghan and Iraq wars—, Britain may still have to baite its time and maintain a lip service to a meaningful change in Somalia’s political realm.
But time has come and put Britain on defense. It has to act faster and keep its citizens secure, at least mentally, from the growing dangers of piracy and Al-Shabab. In other words, British interests were never at risk and to the extent that it just came at the forefront of resolving the issues of this ravaged country is to get its own gain in the process.
That is why Prime Minister, David Cameron, looked obsessed with Somalia in his speech to the Lords on November 14, 2011. “…Somalia is a failed state that directly threatens British interests”, he said.
Al-Shabab alone seems to have screwed up Britain by recruiting young British citizens. A recent research by Royal United Services, an independent think tank, revealed that 14% of the foreigners fighting for Al-Shabab are British born. “…young British minds poised by radicalism, mass migration, and vital trade routes disrupted”, Mr. Cameron testified.
Worse still, in London, the number of Al-Shabab sympathizers has swelled many times since 2001. And if this trend continues, Britain might be half-radicalized in a short span of time.
However anything that Britain does must seem civilized and just. If it has to do dirty, it must do so clandestinely. Anything opposite will put it on the offensive mode, forcing it to modify the way it plays out its cards. That is why many are persuaded that Britain is preaching with its hands in a velvet glove. Outwardly, it is claiming itself as a liberator; inwardly, it is redressing its strategic interests in Somalia no matter the cost.
That is why Hon William Hague has tirelessly courted our attention last week. He even risked himself by landing in Mogadishu, a place he never wanted to be.
If Britain, at some point, is prepared to make its hands dirty by messing up with Somalis, it is going to be an unrecoverable disaster which will really play into the hands Al-Shabab. It will simply create more enemies than friends. That is why America was put under spell in 1992 with its Operation Restore Hope expedition in Somalia.
Quite frankly, there is already a digested rumor across the nation that Somalia will run into a protectorate status, and this argument is soar among many in the educated class. Abdi Dirshe, the President of the Somali Canadian Diaspora Alliance, has argued in his article entitled, The London Conference:
An Act of False Generosity, that Britain is taking the clock back to the colonial era and will miserably lose the game. But in my view this is a pedestrian reading of the moment. British cannot afford such a campaign and therefore won’t try it.
On the other hand, however, there is a sizeable number of Somalis who believe that this conference will bear fruit. And the bottom line of this argument is that Britain and others were long supporters of Somalia and, this time around, are stead-fasting their position of support by aligning their strategic interests with that of Somalia. But such position is also deemed both pedestrian and old school. More so because this was a politicized support and can take in another direction and form.
Taken as a whole, the London conference is no more than a day’s picnic. The invited powers cannot resolve the indulging differences between Somalis themselves. Nor can they have the license to police Somalia internationally. The idea here is simple: Somalis won’t trust an imposed resolution over them. And that is why this conference will fail.
But there are possibilities that those with the social intelligence could be willing to pass some hard facts to others who are seeking a window through such reality. And as Britain is believed to possess cultural and social intelligence advantages of some sort over other countries, including the United States, it has more to trade in.
Bashir Ashkir Muuse
Bashir Ashkir Muuse is a lecturer at East Africa University, Garowe Campus
Email: bashirash2011@gmail.com
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
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