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Mr.
President, I take this opportunity to remind you that it is
unfair, unethical and outright ridiculous to blame innocent
people for a crime committed by few others.
Of course
I am well aware that the old adage: "Damned if you do and
damned if you don't" magnifies your paranoia, forcing you
to attack a dying Somalia. (It has been in an intensive care
since 1991) As a senior Somali citizen on self-imposed exile
in Canada, my advice is: DON'T.
Attacking
Somalia on a mere tip-off by Ethiopia, Somalia's arch enemy
in the Horn of Africa so that your B52s could level against
a country that's reeling from a decade of self-destruction
perpetrated by people with guns, defies human imagination.
"What's
the point of dropping bombs on us? We've been fighting each
other here for so long there's nothing left to destroy," Naema
Ibrahim, an impoverished Somali mother quoted by a visiting
BBC reporter in Mogadishu last week. She complained that after
cutting off her lifeline, the Hawaala, remittance from her
brother abroad, she is now so desperate that she doesn't care
about your B52s droppingg their "Smart Bombs" on her and her
emaciated children!
Mr. President,
many of my countrymen believe that you are out for revenge
for the 18 U.S. soldiers killed in Mogadishu at the height
of your father's disastrous Operation Restore Hope in 1993.
Are there
terrorist bases in Somalia to train members of Osama bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda network? That requires basic intelligence work. Played
right it could lay the groundwork to clear the atmosphere
of suspicion and speculations.
For more than
thirty years the Somali people have been living under the
shadow of the gun - military dictator and a succession of
ruthless warlords until their country was completely destroyed
beyond recognition. It is like twisting and turning a Rubik's
Cube: when one part of the pattern worked, the flip side didn't.
Rounding
the circle is the Arta Group who flunked what they pledged
to deliver under oath more than a year ago and the circle
of violence and mayhem continues unabated. People with guns
still continue to carve the country into little clan fiefdoms.
An area that was safe on Tuesday should be avoided on Wednesday.
Boys as young as 12 and 14 carry AK-47 assault rifles and
shoot at anything that moved, to prove their manhood. But
to call Somalia a haven for international terrorism is the
understatement of the year. No international terrorist will
survive in a country where even street beggars carry guns.
He will be gambling with his life. The truth is that a foreign
terrorist in Somalia would stand out like Count Dracula on
a chicken farm. We have said more than once that we have to
worry about our own home-grown terrorists and are ready to
give a honorary citizenship to anyone who would help us eliminate
them once and for all.
Mr. President,
I know you would not take my word for it, but that's the truth,
nothing but the truth. It is too hard to justify giving haven
to international terrorism when neighbours scrambled and prayed
for food. The ordinary Somalis deserve to be understood. They
do not want you to destroy their country, but to help them
rebuild it after a decade of doom, death and destruction.
The overwhelming majority of the Somali people are not the
enemy of the American people, despite Washington's distorted
foreign policy and double standard. Somalia was a business
friendly country until people with guns gang-raped her. I
urge you to weed out the lies, the misrepresentation, the
speculations and the excuses, and instead seriously focus
on the reality on the ground.
Mr. President,
it is best to know well one's enemy before jumping the gun
or dropping the so-called "Smart Bombs" on innocent people.
M.M.
Afrah © 2001
Email: afrah95@hotmail.com
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Mr. Afrah is an outspoken Author/Journalist and a member of
the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) and the
New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He
contributes hard-hitting articles to Canadian and international
newspapers and magazines on the Somalia situation "through
the eyes of a man who covered the country for more than two
decades".
Many
of us remember his critical articles in his weekly English
language HEEGAN newspaper, despite a mandatory self-censorship
introduced by Guddiga Baarista Hisbiga Xisbiga Hantiwadaagga
Somaaliyeed in 1984 and the dreaded NSS. I am very proud to
know that Mr. Afrah openly defied the draconian censorship
laws and went ahead to write what he thought was wrong in
the country. He received several death threats from the warlords
and was briefly held hostage by gunmen in 1993. But he remained
defiant and continued to send his stories of carnage and destruction
to Reuters news agency. He still is!
info@banadir.com
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