Kenya and Ethiopia profit off Somalia’s misery militarily, diplomatically and economically. Let’s stop their exploitations.

By Saadiq Hurre

Hurre is a human development expert.

Supporters of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and some Europeans have recently eulogized Ethiopia’s former Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin who was reportedly killed in a shootout about 40 days after forces from his tribe attacked a federal army base and killed soldiers and looted weapons, setting off a war that is still raging in that country’s northern region of Tigray.

Alex de Waal, the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, remembered Seyoum as “a man who exemplified the country’s tradition of enlightened and progressive patriotism.”

“Under Seyoum’s guiding hand,” Waal said, “Ethiopia became admired as Africa’s biggest contributor to peace and security, a reliable contributor of high-quality troops to peacekeeping operations, and a partner in conflict resolution.”

But few in the world know that Seyoum was a dark-hearted liar who manipulated the international community and who hated Somalia so much so that he did everything in his capacity as Ethiopia’s top diplomat to try to dismember it into clan-based fiefdoms and to disparage Somalis on international stages.

For Mesfin and his TPLF-ruled Ethiopia, Somalia was a useful project that could help Addis Ababa’s bid to present itself to the West as the only reliable partner in the Horn of Africa region. The civil war in Somalia during Seyoum’s time was no more than a convenient topic to raise with world leaders in private discussions and international conferences.

Milking the Somali misery was Seyoum’s strong suit. On Oct. 5, 1992, he delivered his maiden speech at the UN General Assembly, focusing for eight minutes on Somalia, whose seat was empty.

Seizing the opportunity, he — just after 3 minutes and eight seconds into his nearly 51-minute address — began to speak on behalf of Somalia, harping on the need to resolve differences among warring Somali factions, to provide humanitarian assistance to suffering civilians and to stop foreign ships from dumping industrial waste in Somalia’s territorial waters or plundering its marine resources.

But when he finally got to the real concern behind his seemingly innocuous call for support for Somalia, it was clear that the Somalia Ethiopia wanted to see in reality was not a functioning one, but a cash cow.

“We call on these quarters to desist from attempts to polarize the region of the Horn and instead work with us in partnership in our effort to restore durable peace and stability in Somalia,” Seyoum said.

Seyoum’s speech followed a script that Kenya and Ethiopia — both of whom occupy Somali territories — always utilized on the international stage, as a matter of course, to exploit Somalis’ sufferings, which they viewed as an opening to gain military, economic and diplomatic aid from the international community. These two nations largely deploy lies and disinformation to dupe the world into acquiescing to their surreptitious objective of undermining Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Nairobi and Addis Ababa, which have a mutual defense pact since 1963 to contain Somalia, know that they would lose the West’s support if it learned the truth in Somalia and about Somalis, hence their distortions and falsehoods, whose consequences for ordinary Somalis are devastating: Deaths, destructions, endless humanitarian crises and prolonged instability.

In their diabolical strategy to kneecap the Somali nation, these two countries colluded with corrupt, Nairobi-based international NGOs and UN agencies — whose sole purpose was to loot the aid money meant for poor Somalis — to classify Somalia as an unsafe zone and with think tanks, whose so-called researches misinformed the world by focusing obsessively on Somali clans rather than diving deeper into the real political and economic causes as well as the foreign interference that had led to the nation’s implosion.

You do rarely see the two countries’ media writing anything positive about Somalia or highlighting Somalis’ resilience and entrepreneurship. Kenya’s intelligence-penetrated and anti-Somali media has never provided decent coverage for how Somalis — mainly Kenyan Somalis and Somali investors from Europe and Northern America — have helped turn Eastleigh estate, a once shantytown in eastern Nairobi where pungent smell of urine attacked residents’ nostrils, into a modern city that contributes tens of millions of dollars to Kenya’s economy.

That’s not unexpected.

Ethiopia and Kenya – and to some extent Djibouti — have never in good faith worked hard to stabilize Somalia. Instead, they worked hard to destabilize, nay, cantonize it. Finding a lasting solution for Somalia was like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs for the three countries. They armed warlords who for more than a decade wreaked havoc in southern regions, especially in the capital city of Mogadishu. Ethiopia, in particular, flagrantly and frequently violated Somalia’s territorial integrity and did business with a rebellious administration in the northwestern region, where it still keeps a separate ambassador. It also abetted the establishment of a self-governing administration in the northeastern region, which was the actualizer of the ill-advised federal system in the country.

Nairobi and Addis Ababa’s age-old animosity was always marked by a strong desire to see Somalia mutilated into several weak states that are under their tutelage. They viewed the return of a united and peaceful Somalia as a threat to their claim over the Somali lands now under their occupation. They, therefore, resorted to smear campaigns against the ethnic, religious and linguistic harmony among Somalis.

That campaign got a boost in 1995, when three professors, two senior lecturers from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an expert on international law wrote a 97-page report titled “A study of Decentralized Political Structures for Somalia: A Menu of Options” in which they proposed the application of one of four forms of governance: Confederation, federation, decentralized unitary state and consociationalism — all models for nations with major ethnic, religious or linguistic divisions, not for Somalia, whose citizens share language and religion — and indeed are one big tribe called Somali. The report, commissioned by the European Union with the assistance of the United Nations Development Office for Somalia, was, for a good measure, translated — irrelevant as it was to Somalia’s context — into Somali.

Almost seven years later, the international community — without any public participation — rammed a federal system down Somalis’ throats during an internationally funded peace conference for Somali warlords in Nairobi between Oct. 15, 2002 and Oct. 10, 2004.

The narrative that painted Somalia as a threat — even when it laid in ruins — won Nairobi and Addis Ababa an international sympathy and funding and, most importantly, allowed them to evade justice for the crimes — invasions, looting, massacres, rapes and environmental destructions — they committed in Somalia.

Sadly, the US government, always a victim of Ethiopia’s and Kenya’s anti-Somali propagandas, robotically imbibed late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s preposterous claim in 1997 that Somalia, which at the time had no functioning government or army, posed “the greatest long-term security threat to Ethiopia and to the stability of the region.” Meles repeated this recurrent theme in 2005, eventually convincing Washington to support Addis Ababa’s disastrous invasion in late 2006 under the pretext of ousting the Union of Islamic Courts, an ill equipped, ill-trained and largely moderate grouping that restored peace to Mogadishu for the first time in 15 years after defeating US-backed predatory warlords.

Curiously, the new Biden administration appears set to continue the misguided policy of its predecessors that treated Somalia as a threat to the US. The White House earlier this month falsely said Somalia posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

We all lose when Somalis’ hunger for stability and peace is sacrificed on the altar of security expedients, such as the war on terror, which, in effect, is being politicized to frustrate the country’s recovery. The US ought to be compassionate, humane and help end — not perpetuate — the decades-long suffering of Somalis.

It’s high time that Washington changed its unhelpful policies in Somalia and saw through Somali enemies’ lies, hype and spin. For goodness’ sake, a superpower doesn’t allow itself to be fooled so easily and so repeatedly by puny countries, like Kenya and Ethiopia that can’t even feed their own populations.

On Aug. 7, 2006, just months before the Ethiopian invasion, Seyoum misleadingly told an unnamed US Embassy’s charge d’affaires in Addis Ababa, Congressman Donald Payne and House International Relations Committee staff Ted Dagne during a dinner meeting in Addis Ababa, that Somalia’s citizens “want Ethiopian” troops in their country, and only the Union of Islamic Courts and their leaders in Mogadishu opposed Ethiopian participation in a potential peace support operation.

Seyoum cited an assessment mission to Somalia organized by the African Union, IGAD, UN, and the League of Arab States and a previous assessment conducted in late 2004 that, according to him, reached the same conclusion.

The fact was, the Ethiopian delegation that was a part of that mission excused itself from the Mogadishu leg of the mission’s trip out of security concern after receiving intelligence reports that said Ethiopians were unwelcome. Somalis have never “insisted,” as Seyoum falsely claimed, Ethiopian troop’s inclusion in any peace mission in their country because Somalis hate Ethiopians, a reality that was last year admitted by Ethiopia’s reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

“All the neighbors hate us, saying it’s you,” Abiy said in a rare candid moment, giving Somalia and South Sudan as an example.

During their bloody occupation, between late 2006 and early 2009, Ethiopian troops caused one of the largest humanitarian crises in Mogadishu, killing tens of thousands of civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians from their homes, a tragedy that was well-documented by Human Rights Watch and others.

Although gallant Somalis eventually forced Ethiopian forces to withdraw in the dead of night, the TPLF-led Ethiopia and its ally, Kenya, haven’t ceased their evil missions of spreading disinformation and propaganda against Somalis. They continued — and still continue — to portray Somalis as aggressors rather than the victims they’re.

In 2006, Kenya’s former Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told a US delegation that his country “had no choice” but to intervene in Somalia’s southern regions. “The threat is there,” Wetangula told the US delegation led by Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, “We can see it, we can feel it,”

Wetangula, while asking for a US assistance, touted Kenya’s “Jubaland” initiative as “the best solution” to combat al-Shabab militants in the Lower Juba region and support the weak Somali government in Mogadishu. Wetangula hid from Carson Nairobi’s real intention of invading Somalia to create a buffer zone there.

“[It] was a TFG (Transitional Federal Government of Somalia) initiative and there would not be a single Kenyan boot on the ground in Somalia,” Wetangula wrongly told Carson and his team that included National Security Council Senior Director for African Affairs Michelle Gavin, US Ambassador to the African Union Michael Battle and John Yates, counselor for Somalia affairs at the US Embassy in Nairobi.

Wetangula said the Jubaland operation would be carried out by “roughly two thousand Somali forces” who were trained by Kenya. “Kenya had carefully coordinated every aspect of it with the TFG,”  Wetengula again falsely claimed.

As we know, Somalia’s then-President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed vehemently protested Kenya’s invasion and denied having any prior information about its aggression.

Since its independence in 1960 and even before that, Somalis have fought foreign conspiracies against them and their lands. British colonialists gave Somali territories to Ethiopia and Kenya, while Djibouti was encouraged to become an independent state. The borders between Somalia and Kenya and between Somalia and Ethiopia are still officially undemarcated. Somalia, which didn’t renounce its occupied lands in Kenya and Ethiopia, went to war with Ethiopia in 1977 to try to retake the Ogaden, or the Western Somali region.

But after three decades of foreign interference, civil war, famines and foreign-backed terrorism, it seems, the lady luck has started to smile on Somalis, at long last.Their country is on the cusp of once again taking its rightful place among the community of nations.

Regionally, the murderous TPLF, which in 1998 proposed the atomization of Somalia into six mini-states, is gone for good and in came — in its place — a friendly Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who is more interested in mending fences and refreshingly in a united Somalia. Also, barely anyone nowadays buys lies about Somalia from Kenya’s corrupt officials.

Internationally, Somalia has gotten a new friend, Turkey, whose leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan exposed scaremongers’ lie that Somalia was a no-go zone when he — along with his his wife, Emine, and members of his Cabinet — visited Mogadishu during the height of the famine in 2011. The US and Europeans are no longer credulous. After realizing that they have for decades been lied to, they and many other international and UN organizations moved their officies from Nairobi to Mogadishu to get closer to the proud nation that’s being unfairly vilified by its jealous neighbors.

But all that is not a reason to let down our guard. The campaign to demonize Somalis is still well and kicking. The old habits of Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Djibouti are unlikely to fade away anytime soon. Just recently a senior Somali diplomat told me that British authorities informed him that one of Ethiopia’s top foreign policy priorities was to disparage the Somali people as individuals incapable of self-governance and who’re inherently violent and that Ethiopia and others in the region are doing the world a favor by containing Somalis from spreading terrorism to the world.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Seyoum denigrated Somalia as a state that had “ceased to exist.” He added: “Law and order, peace, stability and basic infrastructure necessary for the life of a functioning society is virtually nonexistent.”

“It is lamentable,” he said, “that Somalia is bleeding by the actions of its own sons.” While insinuating that Somalis are good at destroying their country, Seyoum didn’t mention his country’s nefarious role in arming warlords that toppled Somalia’s last central government in 1991.

The Somali government must launch well-thought-out counternarrative campaigns to debunk Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s falsehoods about us. The world must hear that Somalis are peace-loving, trustworthy, friendly and productive people who are surrounded by hostile neighbors eager to pit one against the other to disintegrate their country.

Restoring Somalia’s good image in the world is key to our recovery. We’ve to make every effort to tell our story. We’re victims of our neighbors, not aggressors as Addis Ababa and Nairobi are making the world believe. Our neighbors are, in fact, the biggest impediment to our attempt to stand on our feet to become an economically independent and globally useful nation.

As US President Bill Clinton said on Oct. 7. 1993, the task of reclaiming our nation falls primarily on us alone.

“It is not our job to rebuild Somalia’s society or even to create a political process that can allow Somalia’s clans to live and work in peace,” Clinton said. “The Somalis must do that for themselves.”

Wendy Sherman, former US Under Secretary of State, echoed Clinton’s words, when it asked us on June 3, 2014 if we wanted “to exist as disparate clans isolated from the world and in conflict with one another, or as a united country with all the attributes, benefits, and responsibilities that such unity brings.

“None of us,” Sherman said, “can make that choice for Somalia. But Somalis should know if they choose to continue to come together, they will have enthusiastic and substantial international support.”

We cannot win the hearts and minds of the international community when our neighbors are spreading malicious propagandas against us or conspiring to undermine our unity. So let’s counter these spiteful campaigns that depict us as failures and dismantle and defeat foreign-funded domestic networks that are undermining our national security and unity, like al Shabab and unpatriotic politicians. We have to draw up a national blueprint, or vision, for a post-war Somalia to develop our country and revive our battered institutions. Our government must also deepen cooperation with genuine international partners who want us to emerge from our sorry state of affairs.

These goals can only be realized when we elect good leaders and patriotic lawmakers and appoint competent individuals to key government offices. Only then can we be able to successfully rebuild a dignified, respected, strong, prosperous and, even, industrialized Somalia.