Kenya: innocent bystander or invested stakeholder?
By Fuad Abdirahman
In February 2021, Somalia will go to the polls to elect a new president. About half a dozen political heavyweights, including the incumbent Mohamed Farmaajo, as well as former presidents, have thrown their hats in the ring to compete for the votes of 329 members of parliament for the top seat.
MPs electing the president come to the parliament through a clan-based power sharing model known as 4.5 – a power-sharing arrangement that incorporates the four largest clans, while the rest of the minority clans share the point five, or half representation collectively – with the MPs selected by delegates chosen by clan elders. The system was billed as a bridging model to enable debate and initiate discussion about an election model in which Somalia’s extensive clan network would receive fair representation during the 1997 Cairo Accords and the Arta Conference in 2000, and was therefore envisioned as a stopgap measure. Yet, 20 years later, the model is still being utilized.
The context of this unusual model is that since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, Somalia, which is home to powerful clan militias which toppled the Bare regime, has been up for grabs for every kind of mercenary and foreign power with vested interests, a state of affairs which has set and reset the nation’s trajectory every so often.
Ethiopia
One country notorious for meddling in the affairs of Somalia is Ethiopia – a nation considered as hostile by the average Somali. Somalia invaded Ethiopia in 1977, a war it was on the verge of winning and was only driven back after Cuban and the USSR forces joined the war to fight alongside Ethiopia, saving it from certain defeat. Since then, the policy of Ethiopia towards Somalia has been to avoid direct confrontation through orchestrating and maintaining a weak Somalia state architecture – one incapable of advancing its interests abroad.
In 2006 Ethiopia invaded Somalia and toppled the Islamic Courts Union – a legal and political organisation formed to address lawlessness in Somalia following the fall of the Barre regime in the 1991 – that had been expanding its rule all over Somalia. The Union was finally defeated at great human cost in a bloody conflict reportedly financed by the United States. Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the head of the Union, become president three years later.
Ethiopia, keen on influencing the affairs of Somalia, dispatched Colonel Gebregziabher Alemseged, who led the Ethiopian occupation in 2006, to ‘oversee’ Somalia the resulting transitional government, which meant dictating terms to regional fiefdoms at the behest of the Ethiopian government. Col. Alemseged played a huge role in planting Ahmed Madobe, a warlord and Al-Shabaab defector, as the leader of Jubaland, including initiating the process of establishing the state of Jubaland without involving the federal government of Sharif Sheikh.
Ethiopia has traditionally leveraged its military might to influence the selection of Members of Parliament, who eventually vote for the President. Through intimidating regional leaders into sending legislators amenable to the Ethiopian cause, they have regularly pushed their agenda through. In 2019, Ethiopia tricked Mukhatar Rubow, who was a leading presidential candidate, into their camo for ‘talks’. Moments later he was flown to Mogadishu and placed under house arrest.
Kenya
Kenya, the East African powerhouse, has traditionally been friendly to Somalia, a stance aided by its non-intrusive policy to Somalia affairs. This changed in 2011 when the country embarked on a military operation in Somalia said to be at the invitation of the Somalia government, ‘in the interests of Somalia.’
Since then, the Kenyan military has been fingered in the illegal but highly lucrative charcoal and sugar business, as reported in several UN reports. Despite occupying an independent republic, Kenya has also become increasingly interfered in internal Somalia affairs, including the Jubaland election, whose sham election in 2019 of Ahmed Madobe it covertly influenced.
Gulf nations
The most sophisticated influence comes from the Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Eternally deep-pocketed because of their vast oil resources, these countries leverage their financial might to push for their interests in Somalia, with each player financing preferred candidates.
During the last election in 2017, Emirates supposedly financed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s reelection bid while Qatar financed Farmaajo’s election campaign. Farmaajo won, in part because of the role and influence of Intelligence chief Fahad Yasin. Members of parliament were reportedly bribed with an average of $450,000 (Sh45 million), and as high as $800,000 (Sh80 million). The bid price can only appreciate in 2021.
Meanwhile, the rest of the international community – a euphemism for Western powers – resorts to their well-rehearsed templates of sanctions and defunding to pressure politicians into toeing their line. In other instances, they simply pin the labels of ‘terrorist’ on whomever they do not like. 2021 is not going to be any different. (