An unresolved crisis in Somalia: Sada Farah

I simply stated, "Actually I'm from Somalia, but whatever you want to call it."

Will my country ever come to symbolize anything other than that event? Although my family left for Canada before the civil war started, I had always hoped that someday a legitimate government would run the country and it would become stable and united again.

This past week, government soldiers went to the Bakara market and, at gunpoint, they began to help themselves to sacks of grain. Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants.

The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire. This type of anarchic violence is sadly typical for the city of Mogadishu.

What good is a government that has no control over a city, let alone a whole country? By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia's perpetual cycles of war.

But now its leaders say that unless they get more help from the international community, this transitional government will fall just like the 13 governments that came before it.

This looming failure has made many people question the installation of the TFG by force. In December 2006, Ethiopian troops, aided by American intelligence, ousted the Islamist administration that briefly controlled Mogadishu, bringing the transitional government to the city for the first time. The Transitional Federal Government was neither supported by the majority of the Somali population, nor elected into office.

The Bush administration said it was concerned about terrorists using Somalia as a refuge. This concern was expressed by the administration many times since the 2001 terrorist attacks, mainly because of the possibility of failed states becoming training grounds for terrorist organizations.

After 17 years of civil war, Somalia's violence seems to be driven not mainly by clan hatred, ideology or religiosity, but rather by survival. Government troops readily admit to robbing civilians, because they have not been paid for months and must eat.

While the government says that it cannot pay soldiers, and has only $18 million a year to run a failed state with 9 million residents, its honesty is highly contested.

To get clan support and the support of militias, transitional leaders have cut deals with warlords like Mohammed Dheere, now Mogadishu's mayor, and Abdi Qeybdid, now the police chief. These are the same men whom the CIA paid in 2006 to fight the Islamists.

This strategy has backfired on the TFG and the United States, because of lack of support from the population. This strategy of hiring killers to stop violence seems to be completely absurd; these men have a legacy of terrorizing civilians.

So the question remains, what does Somalia need to get out of this cycle of failed governments and endless violence and suffering? War, drought, displacement, high food prices and the exodus of aid workers, many of the elements that lined up in the early 1990s to create a famine, are lining up again.

Less than a third of the promised African Union soldiers have arrived, the United Nations has shied away from sending peacekeepers and even the Ethiopians are taking a back seat, often leaving the government's defense to teenage Somalis with old rusty guns who are overwhelmed.

How has a country that has had little foreign aid and no government for more than a decade, actually survived? The answer lies within the hearts of the Somali people. Somalis living in the Diaspora have sent millions of dollars back home to relatives, and have kept the economy from complete collapse under anarchic conditions.

One important thing to note is that over the 17 years of civil war, the Somali people have had no legitimate political option to support. The options were either a foreign imposed government consisting of warlords, or insurgent Islamist groups that brought radical ideology to moderate Islamic people.

What is needed is more active participation from the Somali civil society both in the country and in the Diaspora to create an environment conducive to investment which includes political and social stability as well as security.

This type of thinking seems to be the only possible answer at this point to the crisis in Somalia. Foreign imposed governments do not work, as we have seen throughout the world, and the Somali warlords cannot be expected to work towards peace, therefore it is the responsibility of the intellects, educators and business people abroad to reconstruct their country to be something that they can be proud of once again.