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This
is Mr. Afrah's OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH late
last year. We decided to rerun it in case the President
misread it.
The
Webmaster banadir.com
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 dropping 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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