To save Somalia, President Hassan – and federal system – must go, the twin dangers currently threatening the country

By Zakaria Mahmud Haji Abdi
Zakaria is a former Somali lawmaker

The prevailing buzz in the Horn of Africa nowadays is that Ethiopia is going to once again invade Somalia and that friends of Somalia must rush in military support to save it from its arch-foe.

Somalia’s top leaders from the president to prime minister to the defense minister have made urgent trips to the country’s international allies to plead for military assistance in preparation for a possible war.

While it’s always wise to be alert to Ethiopia’s expansionist policies, the assumption that Somalis need foreign troops to help them defend their country from Ethiopia is factually incorrect.

True, Ethiopia’s imperialist policies are a threat to Somalia and that its population is larger than Somalia’s, but Ethiopia has no power to overrun Somalia and colonize it. Ethiopia can try to invade Somalia, but it won’t prevail on the Somali soil.

Somalis had indeed single-handedly crushed Ethiopian soldiers in 2006-9 and forced them to withdraw in the dark of the night at a time when Ethiopia was more powerful and united than it is today.

Somalia just needs unity among its people and a credible and nationalistic leader to beat back its enemies.

But, sadly, these two requisites for success don’t exist under President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who lacks the capacity, vigor, probity, transparency and leadership skills required to run Somalia. His misrule, corruption, nepotism and clannish outlook are more harmful than the danger stemming from Ethiopia.

No international support, debt relief, membership of the UN Security Council or lifting of arms embargo will avail Somalia as along as the problem is the head of the state.

Therefore, President Hassan must go to save Somalia from further disintegration. It’s a national imperative.

The country must get a new, competent leader who can help it navigate domestic and international challenges threatening its existence.

President Hassan has time and time again proved that he can’t haul Somalia out of the decades-old security, political, social and economic mess it’s in. He has neither the credibility needed to bring Somalis together nor the nationalism necessary to inspire the public.

I’m more concerned about the president’s misrule and the effects of the federal system than about the threat from Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is meddling in Somalia’s affairs because Somalia’s successive leaders, including President Hassan, have failed to come up with policies that promote cohesion among its citizens, the anti-dote to any external threat. Divided people are susceptible to foreign interference and unlikely to protect themselves, let alone protect a collective idea, like a nation.

The twin threats of Hassan and federalism

Both President Hassan and the federal system, which was financed and pushed by foreign countries and organizations without input from the wider public, are major threats to the country and we should urgently find ways to do away with them.

Since 2004, when the alien system was announced in Nairobi, Kenya, Somali leaders, who depend on foreign countries for their survival, implemented the deleterious conspiracy across the country, dividing it into six mini-clan states. In the process, they, however, weakened Somalis’ unity and offered its enemies massive opportunities to do whatever they wanted inside the country.

The result is out there for all to see: A failed national government based in Mogadishu and regional administrations, whose chiefs do whatever they want, including barring – if they so wish – the head of state from visiting their areas.

The country is currently so broken that citizens – including millions of refugees in foreign countries – are losing any hope of ever living under a functioning government in their homeland. Worse still, the number of internally displaced persons is increasing by the day, with major cities in the country from Bossaso to Baidoa to Mogadishu hosting millions in squalid camps.

The advent of President Hassan, who advocates federalism and seems to have no vision beyond himself, has worsened an already bad situation. He came to office with no blueprint to save Somalia.

After two years in office, it’s clear that he doesn’t seem bothered by the suffering of Somalis inside and outside the country. He has shown no empathy or sympathy for Somali single mothers raising their children in difficult environments in foreign countries. Nor does he seem pained by the bleak future awaiting millions of Somali children who have no schools to go to or worried about the Somali businesspeople boosting economies of other countries when their investments are badly needed in Somalia.

It’s insanity to expect President Hassan, who runs the whole government as a family enterprise, to formulate any effective policies that can resolve the country’s fundamental problems when he is more preoccupied with the affairs of his family, who is now among the richest in Somalia –a wealth that is not the fruit of clean businesses or hard-work. The first family owns sizable parcels of land in the capital, Mogadishu, where they’ve monopolized certain businesses and built more than a dozen high-rise buildings.

The raging Somalia-Ethiopia tension, which was triggered by Prime Minister Abiy’s illegal deal with a chieftain in Somalia, is just one example of what can happen when a leader of a country fails to proactively resolve its ills.

Failed second term

President Hassan seems to have learnt nothing from his failed first term.

In the two years he has been in the Blue House aka Villa, President Hassan has shown little to indicate that he is competent or cares about Somalia’s well-being or the unity of its people.

He has wasted the country’s little resources on frivolous foreign trips, added it to the East African Community that didn’t even bother to comment on the illegal Abiy-Bihi MOU and signed dozens of controversial and contradictory secret deals with foreign countries – actions that raise genuine questions about the president’s mental acuity and his ability to think critically for the interests of his country.

In public, President Hassan likes to depict Ethiopia as the only enemy trying to destroy the country. Yet, he doesn’t talk of the damage he himself has done to Somalia.

The president blithely ignores the threat coming from the United Arab Emirates, which has created its own militiamen in major regions of the country to head off the emergence of any strong national force. Nor does he mention other countries assiduously undermining Somalia’s peace or those interfering with its internal politics to tear up the fabric of its society. The result? The country is a cash cow for non-Somalis and foreign troops, while Somali citizens and their army are wallowing in misery and lawlessness.

President Hassan’s mishandling of the country’s domestic and foreign affairs has given rise to the current grim reality in which inhabitants of regions outside the capital have little trust in the national government.

His cowardly response to the Abiy-Bihi deal has laid bare his chaotic leadership, shortsightedness and deficiency of nationalism.

To President Hassan, the source of the diplomatic row with Ethiopia is Prime Minister Abiy, not Muse Bihi, the treasonous chief of Hargeisa. Driven by clannish considerations, the president has conveniently turned his focus from Bihi, whose administration Abiy took advantage of, to Addis Ababa.

Yes, Ethiopia poses an existential threat to Somalia and the Somali public should be sensitized about its expansionist policies.

But, President Hassan’s anti-Ethiopian campaign would be meaningless as long as he secretly deals with Bihi, who should have been ostracized and charged with treason, and advocates federalism in Somalia, an idea solely meant to balkanize the country into fiefdoms.

If President Hassan cares about Somalia’s unity, which he doesn’t seem to, he would have done everything to abolish the federal system that eroded – without a foreign invasion – the country’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and unity.

The ongoing diplomatic row between Ethiopia and Somalia, which is threatening to morph into a military confrontation, was primarily a conflict between the treasonous elites in Hargeisa and the Somali Republic before it became a dispute between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa.

Had Hassan done the rightful thing on Day One and delegitimized Bihi’s administration in Hargeisa the tension wouldn’t have reached this stage. Sadly, President Hassan has – since he came to office – lent legitimacy to the secessionists in Hargeisa. (Read: Irrism). The Bihi-Abiy deal was signed a day after President Hassan met Bihi in Djibouti, underscoring his gullibility and how liable he’s to manipulations.

Failing the nation

President Hassan was never a farsighted leader nor a true-blue nationalist.

When the Las Anod war erupted last year, for example, he waited several months before he finally adopted a wishy-washy position that didn’t deliver a full-throated support to the unionists who were fighting Bihi’s militiamen. He also failed to publicly endorse other unionist voices in the north, especially in Awdal region and inside the Isaaq community.

Letting down the country is, it appears, President Hassan’s constant feature.

Since Jan. 1, when Ethiopia’s Abiy signed the ludicrous deal with Bihi that allows his country to set up a naval base in Somalia and seize 20 kilometers of coastal land on a 50-year lease, President Hassan took almost no actual steps to force Ethiopia to walk back the MOU. He imposed no painful consequences on Ethiopia to compel it to respect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Ethiopian Airlines and Ethiopia’s drug, qat, that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of Somalis still come to Somalia. His foreign minister has recently met his Ethiopian counterpart in Turkey, even when Addis Ababa still refuses to recognize Somalia’s sovereignty or respect its territorial integrity.

The president shamelessly continues to act as if Ethiopia has not violated the country’s sovereignty or disrespected him personally, even when Ethiopian security agents humiliated him by blocking him from attending the recent African Union summit in Addis Ababa. A president who willingly accepts humiliation cannot be trusted to earn respect for his country.

As if that was not enough, the president has antagonized regional chiefs from Garowe to Baidoa to Kismayo in his selfish attempt to install spaniels in their place who can help him consolidate his clan agenda and boost his 2027 reelection bid. President Hassan also has gone so low that he exploited the Somalia-Ethiopia crisis to push through controversial constitutional amendments, showing how unserious he’s about his anti-Ethiopian rhetoric.

Because of President Hassan’s many failures on the national stage, the national government now has no allies in any other region outside Mogadishu at a time when the country is facing a real risk of invasion from Ethiopia.

I, therefore, call on Somali lawmakers to swing into action and save the country from President Hassan and his disastrous policies – and the earlier they do that, the better. The country can’t afford another two more years of failures. President Hassan will hardly correct course and end the endemic corruption sucking the life out of Somalia.

President Hassan’s mismanagement, which is shaping up as the worst since 1960, shouldn’t be allowed to further destroy the country. His stay in office only benefits the enemies of Somalia. He has already emasculated the country’s army in his failed war against al Shabab, sown discord among its citizens and failed to stand up to its external enemies.

President Hassan is an unmitigated danger and he and the federal system must go.