A tarnished silver lining

A generation of stateless Somalis is coming of age, caught in the crossfire between rival religious identities, frets Gamal Nkrumah

A year ago, nobody foresaw the seismic events that were to engulf Somalia in recent months. Over the past few months, fighting has erupted between the militant Islamist group Al-Shabab, the most radical and influential of Somalia's insurgents and the traditional Sufi-oriented Ahl Al-Sunna Wal-Jamaa. Still, these nagging problems should not overshadow the dramatic progress that Islamist groups have made on the political scene in Somalia in recent years. Today, Somalia's militant Islamists are marching in ever larger numbers into the political forefront and battlefields across the sprawling country and taking a sledgehammer to the remaining pockets of resistance among the country's secularist elite. So much so that the Somali government has had to summon up the image of Islamism, nominating a former Islamic Court cleric to the presidency.Most of the hoopla about the beleaguered Somali President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed has been about what he is (a moderate Islamist), rather than what he would do -- save Somalia from the abyss. His Islamist credentials are not as irrelevant as they might sound by his critics. By becoming president of Somalia, his supporters hoped to dispel many of the myths built up about the Islamic Courts movement and the supposedly secularist nature of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia.

The immediate focus, which has dominated the headlines this week, has been the acknowledgement of the Somali insurgent militant Islamist groups of their alignment with Al-Qaeda. Worse, Somali nationals and émigrés have been involved in numerous acts of terrorism around the world. At the moment, a United States naturalised citizen of Somali origin stands trial in Pakistan for inciting terrorism. Another Somali attempted to assassinate the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. "Yemen, like Somalia, has been recognised to be one of the areas we've got to not only keep an eye on but we've got to do more," ominously preached British Prime Gordon Minister Brown. Brown's statements, made after a Nigerian national tried to bomb an American jetliner en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, highlighted the close connections between Somalia and its neighbour across the Gulf of Aden, Yemen. Indeed, Yemen has long been identified as the source of much of the weapons fuelling the Somali civil war. Yet there are also longer-term challenges worth stressing if only because they have been so ignored by the international community. It seems to happen every time. The moment Somalis come close to settling scores, destiny steps in to put the peace process in cold storage. A combination of the demography and underdevelopment of the country, the illiteracy and abject poverty of its 15 million inhabitants, and the growing number of internally displaced people have taken their toll on this once proud nation. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) figures, life expectancy in Somalia has plummeted to 44 years for males and 46 years for females, one of the lowest life expectancy figures in the world. Maternal mortality is 1,400 for every 100,000, and under-five- years-old mortality rates have dropped to an unprecedented 144 per 1,000. Meanwhile, 71 per cent of the population does not have sustainable access to potable water.The international panic sown by the global financial crisis has meant that remittances from Somalis living in the diaspora -- predominantly North America, Europe and the oil-rich Arab Gulf countries -- has fallen by some 25 per cent from an all time high of $1 billion last year.It is against this bleak backdrop that the militant Islamist groups have surged ahead in a bid to wrest power from the pro- Western government of the country that currently barely controls certain districts of the Somali capital Mogadishu. 2010 not only marks 18 years of statelessness for Somalia but heralds the first generation of Somali children who will come of age without a government.However, in Somalia there is always a silver lining. Or at least, the dull leaden one of torrential summer rains that have caused extensive flooding in the southern reaches of the country. According to the vice- chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation (EHRO), the death toll from factional fighting in Mogadishu dropped to 1,739 in 2009 from 7,574 in 2008, the year Ethiopian forces backed by Somali government troops battled with Islamic Courts militias. The death toll was even higher in 2007 -- 8,636. Such statistics, however, offer cold comfort and little solace for the long-suffering millions of Somalis caught in the crossfire of Islamist protagonists. According to their detractors, Al-Shabab have instituted a virtual reign of terror in the huge swathe of territory they now control. They hold sway over much of the countryside in southern and central Somalia. This week witnessed fierce fighting between Ahl Al-Sunna and Al-Shabab for the control of the strategic central Somali town of Dhusamareb, the provincial capital of Galgadud Region, 500km north of Mogadishu. Al-Shabab claim to have overrun Dhusamareb, but Ahl-Al-Sunna Wal Jamaa insist that they still are in control of town, the birthplace of Al-Shabab's founder Sheikh Haj Aden Ayrow. "Al-Shabab fighters attacked Dhusamareb, but we have repelled their forces. The town is still in our hands," Sheikh Abdallah Abdel-Rahman Youssef, a spokesman for Ahl Al-Sunna Wal-Jamaa told reporters covering the battle scenes. The leaders of Al-Shabab are quick to judge and are notorious for their short tempers. The aboveboard spokesman of Al-Shabab Sheikh Ali Mohamed Raghe Dhere pointedly urged Somalis not to listen to the pro-Transitional Federal Government Radio Mogadishu. "This is against the religion," he thundered at a recent Friday sermon, adding ominously that anyone caught listening to the broadcasts of pro- government Radio Mogadishu would be ruthlessly dealt with. Al-Shabab's most favoured punishment is public beheading. "Our fighters are trained in the country and they are ready to employ their guerrilla warfare tactics and uphold their oath of driving the enemy of Allah out of the country," Sheikh Dhere added. Another prominent Al-Shabab leader Sheikh Fouad Mohamed Khalaf denied rumours that Somalia's Islamists are at each other's throats. Factional fighting among Somalia's Islamists groups has claimed many lives, recent reports suggest. However, Al-Shabab insists that it is not at political loggerheads with its ideological twin organisation Hizbul-Islam. "The reports that say that we are divided are false and we are engaged in an alliance with Hizbul- Islam to accomplish our mission of deposing the government and backers of the AU and the UN," Khalaf explained to his followers in December.The Somali President Sheikh Sherif Sheikh Ahmed, on the other hand, is a soft- spoken cleric-turned-politician. Meanwhile, his temperament, always his weak point, has been found wanting. The man who once embraced theocratic culture warriors is now the chief campaigner against the imposition of a dogmatic theocracy in Somalia. Somalia's African neighbours -- most notably Ethiopia and Kenya with large ethnic Somali minorities -- and the international community are heartened by his ingenious capacity to combine Islamic principles with moderation. They see his gut reaction over Al-Shabab as the appropriate one.