The Ethiopian occupation had cost us Somalis very dearly. Since the infamous date of Ethiopian invasion of late 2006, 16,000 Somali lives killed, tens of thousands maimed, and more than a million displaced, who now bear the shameful “refugees” in their own country mark! 

Most of the Ethiopian military actions have taken place in Mogadishu, where the Ethiopians have been the object of violent resistance against them; for every mortar fired against them, the Ethiopians answered with ten or more, or with deadlier type of weapons. This went on daily as it still continues, the result of which has been the disastrous record stated above. 

To those who are traders in the stock market of Somali clan politics, those who would always explain their misfortunes on a clan conspiracy against them, this whole deadly fiasco has been the doings of their fellow Somali clan nemesis. The Ethiopians, they would have us believe, have done this on behalf of one Somali clan against another. It would even fit perfectly in their clannish-machination to say the Ethiopians had been tricked into action in Somalia against them by this other clan to do its bidding! 

In the interest of full disclosure, and for lack of any other way to escape from it, here I am reluctantly forced to explain things on clan terms, including naming the clans involved, including my own. 

Ever since the ouster of Mohammed Siyad Barre’s regime from power, the Hawiye clan—generally speaking—has been, for better or worse, in the heart of Somali conflict; this is an undeniable fact! To the extent the Somali government was not continued, from the point where Siyad barre left it off, is squarely on the shoulders of Hawiye resistance leaders, who ejected the Barre’s regime from Mogadishu.  

They were the main inheritors of all the government assets: buildings, banks, factories, hotels, power plants, Schools, universities, oil refineries, military hardware and beyond belief amount, for such a poor country, weapons depots—not to mention Somali assets in foreign lands, such as embassies and houses. 

All they had to do was to have the human will and intent to call on and organize the Somali people for a new type of a minimal administration, one that will stress, above all else, law and order. Instead, they gave us that ogre M.F Aideed, who cashed in all the assets into sheer futility of clan military campaigns. His object of hatred, with which he infected many young and uneducated Hawiye, was another Somali clan, the Darood. People in Mogadishu and in central Somalia, where the Hawiye live, are whipped into a frenzy of killing any Darood in their sights. The intent was no less intensive than the Hutus’ against the Tutsis in the Rwanda atmosphere, which led to genocide! “Darood dil, ama dooni,” (kill Darood, or make sure he is on a boat fleeing) the graffiti on the walls read all over! But, the Darood are no helpless Tutsi here. 

There were years, and wave after wave, of clan military campaigns deep into the South, where especially the Marraihan, a Darood sub-clan lives. There were successes of Aideed campaigns of course, of cities, towns and territories falling into his grip. No sooner, however, his forces took over a territory than they were rolled back into Mogadishu.  

The great untold story is how many Hawiye young men’s lives—under the influence of Qat, hate and other drugs—were thrown away after such madness, whose final result, when all done, has been no one single slice of any Darood sub-clan territory or people subjugated. Nor the bulk of the so-called Darood clan ever saw Hawiye military actions, for the Darood are geographically in every corner of Somalia and in every region of the 5 Somali regions, except in Djibouti, by the original colonial slicing. I challenge anyone to refer to me any article written by a Darood in which he or she claims any great harm done to any sub-clan Darood—forget about to all Darood, an impossible by geography alone—by those Hawiye clannish campaigns. The whole thing was a fair fight between united Hawiye and mostly the Marraihan. The people who mostly suffered from these clan military exercises were the Rahanweyn; they too quickly learned how defend their lands. You would never even hear the Marraihan crying about, for they gave as good as they got, then more!  

When Aideed’s efforts failed, when the juice runout on his megalomaniac designs of snuffing-out the Darood, he had to turn his guns on fellow Hawiye—the Abgal—who caught up to his disastrous and demonic vision.  

All the wealth and opportunities for better Somalia squandered; government buildings, institutions and military garrisons squatted by the Hawiye Bedouins rushed from every corner in countryside where they lived; power lines and historic monuments stripped for their copper. The beautiful Mogadishu, Xamar Cadeey, turned into a one giant city-toilet, where dead corpses rot in its streets, and perpetual gunfire made its official music.  

If M.F Aideed (Mr. Shrek) ever asked me, which would have saved him from so much trouble, I would have told him this secret: there is no such thing as one-Darood. The fact some of the Darood, Colonel Ahmed Omar Jees and his group, were with Aideed in these campaigns did not teach him that. Nor the fact the SSDF of the Majeerteen was the first to standup to fellow Darood president Siyad. It is well know that there is no love-lost between the Majeerteen and the Marraihan, though both descendants of two blood-brothers, mainly on Siyad Barre’s presidency.    

They, the Darood, have the curse of being too many and far-removed from each other to ever unite under one tent, as Hawiye did in that short period. That is why you will never hear with the Darood such things as the Hawiye’s “Golaha Dhaqanka iyo Midnimada Beesha Hawiye” (GDMBH). This is the stuff of minorities, akin to that of NAACP (an African-American), LULAC (Hispanic-American), and AJC (Jewish-American); organizations legitimately formed to combat discrimination against minorities by the majority. So, what is the GDMBH of the Hawiye for or all about? 

The current president of the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), who is the father of all violent-resistance against Mohammed Siyad Barre, is Abdullahi Yussuf. Oh, no, he is another “Darood” president! The Darood haters would now, in their incoherent and emotionally-driven reasoning, blame the Ethiopian invasion and its subsequent murderous acts on Darood. Abdullahi Yussuf must be the deadly puppet (Ethiopians) master, who has pulled its strings into action against the Hawiye. Why? Because he is Darood, and he must be taking revenge on the Hawiye for their (dhaggar) crimes against the Darood. Many articles, recently published on Somali websites, clearly by Hawiye authors, said so as much.  

Yet, it turns out this president does not even have the power to keep his long-time friend Mohammed Dheere—ironically of Hawiye—from being fired of his gubernatorial job. Neither does this president have the power to fire the prime minster he appointed, nor the reinstatement of cabinet allies resigned. The power, my dear reader, rests with the “parliament” and the “charter” of the TFG. The same parliament and its constitution which authorized and sustained the Ethiopian invasion! The same parliament which elected Abdullahi Yussuf!  

Should we not put the blame where it belongs? Yes, Abdullahi Yussuf is part of the same TFG system, and for that he, as a person, is to blame proportionally. But, to say this is a Darood thing to kill Hawiye or keep them from power is “bull shit,” excuse my language.  

If the people who were firing at the Ethiopian soldiers in Mogadishu were of Darood, would the Ethiopians have even hesitated to fire back with the same? Absolutely not! Better yet, would the Ethiopians have gone into Somalia in the first place, had it not been for the Somali disaster, of many proportions and faces, wrought by this generation of Hawiye leaders? 

So, enough is enough with the revisionist history of late to put a light of “holy and gallant nationalist resistors against the invading infidels” on current Hawiye leaders. When in fact they are the cause of everything went wrong with Somalia and Somalis, including the looming, if not imminent, breakup of Somalia. It is even worse for Somalis, if you include the fact they brought to the Somalis the Devilish religion of Wahabism. Now, beyond country and community or nation, worldly things, the soul of the Somalis, for their hereafter (Akhiro), are firmly put in jeopardy for decades to come.  

Thanks to the current Hawiye leaders, who now will save us Somalis from crazed Satan’s wadaado: employers of suicide bombings, stoners to death of little girls, floggers of grownup men, and forbidders of listening to Somali music or performing Somali cultural dances? No one corner in Somalia or the horn of Africa will be safe from this fire.  

Instead of blaming Darood, for your identity and inadequacy crisis, you should be thankful, if nothing else, for their saint progenitor along with Sheikh Isaq bin Ahmed and Sheikh Yussuf Al-Kownyn for bringing God’s religion to you; otherwise, and most likely, you would still be pagans worshipping your fire or sun-god (waaq) at worst, or you will all be wearing the cross at best. That said, I am in no way against wearing the cross for those who wear it, it is simply not for me or the Somalis; each to his or her own! You should also be thankful, for you do not know how lucky you are, for what the Darood is absolutely incapable of: Ever uniting. If they ever did, I am certain it would be for sinister purposes, because such power must absolutely be corruptive and at the expense of many Somali lives. May God forbid it!      

Truth be told, I am of Darood, but there is nothing I would love more than to see Hawiye or anyone, other than Darood, to rule Somalia and all Somalis—as long as ruling is the objective. For ruling, even by the most repressive dictators, requires law and order. Ruling and chaos, you cannot have both; only one or the other. My only one exception is not to be ever ruled by wadaado of Wahabi persuasion. I rather die!   

In my conclusion, this I am directly appealing to Abdullahi Yussuf, since I am Darood and clearly he is a long removed uncle of mine. You see, I am not of the Majeerteen sub-clan of Darood; I am of Absame, which would proudly unite me with the Majeerteen under Kablalax bin Abdulrahman (Sheikh Al-Shuikh) bin Ismail Al-Jabarti, Al-Aqeeli, [you all should be jealous of this]. So, dear uncle, I want you to resign and retire back to Puntland, the house of Majeerteen. Put that house in better order than has been reported lately. Get rid of the pirates too, while you at it.  

Dearest uncle, Mr. Abdullahi Yussuf, please give our Hawiye brothers another chance to redeem themselves; hand the presidency back to them. Let us all Somalis hope this time they will do better for all our sakes! If they do, then we, all Somalis, will be better off for it; there will be a better future to look forward to, and never to look back on the past.  

If they do not, and fictionalization along wadaad ideology and clan politics get hold of them once again, then they would have shown the final proof of having “brains for birds.” That is all.

   

Hassan Ahmed Zaylai 

haahzay@hotmail.com 

 

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