Mogadishu elites are bent today on eroding whatever unity is left off of the post-1990 civil war. Whether we are reaching a new tipping point once again over Jubbaland is only a question of when unless Mogadishu changes course. Otherwise, there is likelihood that Jubbaland may jump-off ship to chart its own political course. Puntland may follow suite as Somaliland already did.
The unabated insistence of Mogadishu elites to impose a draconian “my way or the highway,” policy, or a non-negotiable political reengineering, as disguised as the nebulous highly political terminologies of “dowladda ha looga dambeeyo” or the “federal government” has the final say, is certainly producing, as predicted by many analysts, most notably by Dr. Weinstein, devastating “politics of conflict” in the region.
To be sure, there is no constitutional mandate that authorizes the Mogadishu administration to form any of the content and/or form of a pending or an already existing state in the Somali Federal System. The people without any outside manipulation have the say to form their own government. As America’s forefathers would say, it is the yeoman that is the ultimate arbiter of the nature of their local governance.
Somalia has not had a meaningful government for almost a quarter of a century (from 1990 to 2013). There are many socioeconomic factors that led to the demise of the once cohesive Somali state. However, the main and most immediate factor for the state to fail was the massive “clan cleansing” campaign which the militia of the now defunct United Somali Congress (USC) orchestrated inside Mogadishu under the leadership of the late General Farah Aidid (Lidwien Kapteijns, 2013).
The repercussion of the wanton killings of innocent civilians inside Mogadishu resulted in the now famous Darood exodus, , the aftermath of which not only eroded national cohesion but caused the center of governance to collapse in the eventful year of 1991. Prof. Lidwien Kapteijns calls these events major historical “shifts.”
Once the exodus people reached their home base (outlaying regions, especially Jubbaland and Puntland), they recreated permanent, if not complete, civic culture independent of the vagaries of Mogadishu. The Shabelle (Marka and the likes), Bay, and Bakol regions could not likewise recreate their own civic and political culture, only because they have been subjected to what British sociologists called “internal colonialism” by armed groups descending from Galmudug area.
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Somalia: Sliding Back to ‘Political Conflict’- By Faisal Roble – May 29, 13
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