Pan-Somali Council For Peace and Democracy

Title:

ISRAACA Policy Statement on Warlords & Warlordism

<img align=right src="sawir/logo.gif" id=right border=0>Preamble In almost all the contributions made on the subject, there was widespread consensus on the fact that the warlords are responsible for the disintegration of the Somali nation. Despite the international calls for peace and stability, the warlords have chosen to divide the Somali people along clan lines and continued mobilizing their armed militias in the destruction and confiscation of both public and private property. They have rendered havoc on all the national resources, such as agriculture, livestock, fish, and charcoal. They have shown no respect for human rights, and the people continue to suffer in pain and desperation. They have imposed anarchy on the country, and there is no peace, no schools, no health services, etc., and none of all that makes a prosperous community. Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the country to refugee camps to seek resettlement overseas. Later contributions made on the subject invited the organization to document the crimes committed against the Somali people. The UIUS was alerted to the lack of a popular organization that could formulate a strategy to overcome the warlords and mobilize and lead the people to national unity, and subsequently restore the dignity of the Somali people. The UIUS calls on the Somali people not to rally behind any warlord, and invites them to take their destiny into their own hands. WARLORDS AND WARLORDISM The discussion on warlords can be summed up under four broad categories: 1) definition of WHO is a warlord, 2) an analysis of HOW they came about and WHY they came to exist 3) What they have meant for Somalia's disintegration and/or what role they might play in achieving or preventing a peaceful settlement? 4) What should UIUS policy on warlords be? I) DEFINITION OF WARLORD: By and large, members agree on who is a warlord. Some members proffered the formal definition lifted from Webster�s Dictionary: "A warlord is a military leader who seized power over civilians in a limited area." And then, there were the informal definitions: "Warlords are not modernizes with a new political order in mind, rather, they are an opportunistic class of men who rise in a country previously ruled by a government that lost legitimacy and a disciplined army." Some members have emphasized the ruthlessness and brutality of warlords in their definitions: "Someone who killed hundreds or thousands of Somalis because they are either of a different tribe/clan or of a different political persuasion, [b) someone who wants to get to power by any means including deception and demagoguery, killing and maiming, and the creation of hatred among different clans." The definitions, however, were carried a bit further by the identification of two groups of warlords: 1) Remnants of the Somali military elite who, following Barre's ouster, formed an alliance of sorts through various acronyms. 2) The other group of warlords is part of the civilian political elite of the 1960s. 3) Although they may not or may not constitute a third group, some members have spoken of the influence of what has been referred to as "business warlords." These are generally civilians and they operate primarily in the vicinity of Mogadishu. II) WHY DO WE HAVE WARLORDS? There are several levels of analysis here as well. Most members who wrote on this issue acknowledged the role of Gen. Barre's corrupt and despotic leadership in destroying the trust between various clans. Beyond that, however, members pointed to the deliberate exploitation of clan sentiment to conceal or divert attention from the criminal deeds of some military officers. Others pointed to the general corruption of Somalia�s political culture, precipitated by Barre's wicked political tactics, the ineptitude and/or political cowardice of intellectuals and educated elite who could have forestalled much of what went on in Somalia during and after Barre's tenure, but did not. One member, for example, blamed "the tendency by many of the so-called intellectuals flocking sheepishly behind one warlord or another to justify his criminal actions in different guises but mainly due to narrow personal interest and clan jingoism." Others mentioned the inability or unwillingness of the military and civilian leaders to come to some accommodation and compromise following Barre's ouster in order to save the country from further political trauma. Part of the reason for this unwillingness to compromise was the "rationalization of the need to avenge prior acts of slight against ones group" (to "even a score"), or the "claim to an entitlement to what others have." Another reason warlords sprouted in the political vacuum created by Barre's ouster was the competition for foreign recognition and the expected economic and military assistance to follow it. This, in part, contributed to a power struggle that produced the proliferation of warlords was seen. Some UIUS members place some of the blame for the emergence of Somali warlords on the political blunders by the Manifesto group, which, it is argued, failed to gauge accurately the level of national cohesion (or lack thereof) following two decades of Barre's abusive reign. III) WHAT HAVE THE WARLORDS MEANT FOR SOMALIA? In the analysis of this subject, the answer to this question was generally indirect and implied in most members� responses. But some of the more direct observations on this question included the following: i) That the inter-clan animus was exacerbated by the murderous rampages of warlords who owed both their political and military power to the polarization of latent clan rivalries. ii) The Balkanization of Somalia into autonomous administrative zones/territories (Somaliland, Puntland, Jubaland, etc) is a direct consequence of the work of warlords. iii) The failure of numerous previous peace and reconciliation efforts, beginning with the Djibouti conference of 1991, stems from the unscrupulous devotion to selfish and narrow personal or clan interest by warlords at the expense of national Somali interests. IV. UIUS APPROACH TO WARLORDS Few members addressed this aspect of the subject directly. Nonetheless, two main suggestions could be discerned from the discussions: 1) That UIUS should view ALL warlords in the same light i.e., as men who have collective responsibility for Somalia�s destruction, and the cold-blooded murder of thousands of her citizens. 2) Perhaps a fewer group of members argued that the warlords are qualitatively different in several respects: (a) Some simply committed far more heinous crimes than others and therefore distinctions ought to be made along those lines, and (b) some are more amenable to compromise and reconciliation than others and that any uniform policy would, therefore, inherently be unfair. (c) A third differentiating factor is that some warlords emerged out of the necessity to defend their communities as opposed to those who were defined by their aggression and their inclination to grab land from noncombatants in other communities. ===================================== V. UIUS Approach to Warlords. It is necessary to disengage the concepts of Warlords (a sociopolitical entity) from the concept of crimes against humanity (a legal entity). 1. There are criminals against the nation and humanity that are warlords and there are criminals against the nation and humanity that are ex-warlords, regular clan-citizens or even refugees and expatriates. We at UIUS take an unambiguously clear stand on this issue: Those who have committed crimes against humanity must be brought to a court of law and be made to pay for their crimes. We at UIUS therefore appeal to the international community to assist our dispossessed nation in: a) Documenting the information on all crimes against humanity committed in the Somali territory while the memory of such crimes is still fresh in the minds of the victims and witnesses. b) Preserve and safe guard such information until such a time as either the international community or the Somali State is in a position to persecute such criminals. We believe these actions are moral (and legal?) obligation on all humanity. We also believe that such international assistance will save lives now 2. As for a decisive participation of warlords (sociopolitical entity), to the peaceful reconstitution of the nation, UIUS believes, responsibility lies squarely on the Somali people to decide.

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Added on:

03/20/2004

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Pan-Somali Council for Peace and Democracy

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israac.org

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