Someone has to announce the rebirth of Somalia and not wait on the African Union to don’t ask, don’t tell.
With the 20 year goings-on in the far-off country and the recent fall of Kismayo, it is all but wrapped up to tread the road of peace and security. But is it?
The trailing weeks churning into months, will tell it all, as to whether we have finally seen the back of the dreaded al-Shabaab Islamists, who have left their bloody footsteps on the sands of Somalian time.
It has not been an easy try for Amisom, a patchwork of troopers worked out from armies which for the past years, treaded the dense jungle and brown sandy roads in search of the dodgy trickish Al-Shabaab whose guiding principle had been – we don’t have anywhere to keep prisoners and that the only good prisoner is a dead one.
Al-Shabaab has kept strictly to this as an A-B-C and to ensure a quick strike of the perceived enemy had been used to quick elimination tactics of suicide bombers.
Few years back, going to Somalia was like to many, as if buying a one way ticket to one’s end.
Few days ago, colleague Hassan Nuir with whom I studied in Moscow, made a midnight call to tell me in an excited tone, ”Free at last.”
He rambled on how he can go to disco from dusk to dawn, talk to strangers without quivering, shake hands with all and sundry and accept a fag from someone he hardly knows.
Such is now the relaxed atmosphere. Shaken by the description, I asked whether it was for real in a disbelieving tone, casting thoughts some years back on a stop-over at Mogadishu’s crampy airport, when the city was choked by war and transit passengers were huffing and puffing for the connecting flights to take off.
Whatever it is, Somalia’s entrance into the new world has been swift and baffling. The democratic checklist has been something like a seven day wonder.
Once struggling overseas, Somali youngsters, some arriving on budgeted flights with tickets on credit are coming daily to try their luck in the El Dorado.
They are testing whether the old Somali proverb still holds sway …what’s there in it for me.
So far, few have been disappointed. Some have squeezed their way into Parliament and within days have transformed to legislators in smart single-breasted suits, wearing tinted glasses and state-of-the-art designer smart phones.
Those not-so-quick-witted are in bustling business, opening up MacDonalds-type restaurants, coffee malls and supermarkets.
One has even ventured into the queer business of manufacturing toothpicks from thorns plucked from jungle and lime trees, shaping them in the brand name…if it does not prick, it’s not genuine’. Such is the market of sorts in nowadays Mogadishu.
But many analysts say, all players must be careful for the gleen not to rub off, as quickly as it has appeared. They caution that much will depend on how the new administration manages the level of corruption now prevalent with the misuse of donor funds in the formative years to put the country on its feet.
All have to undergo some political therapy. The guns of war may be silent but their echoing sounds will still be within their hearts. Like the Somalian who was granted asylum in the US and for the first two to three weeks could not sleep.
Tormented by it all, he told his host – I can’t sleep without hearing gunfire. Well, replied the host, just tune your TV to a western movie and you’d get all the gun sounds that you need.
But serious questions loom in the background such as would usually come when the dust is settled, peace has come and people forget too early. How long would the foreign troops stay? Excited politicians for want of something worthwhile to tackle would turn themselves into the whipping horse for their campaigns. That they gave their lives for others to live, would be quickly forgotten.
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