“Behind every great fortune there is a crime”
                                                              --BALZAC

The gang wars and territorial dispute (Ceel Macaan natural harbour, Global Hotel and Asiley airstrip in this case) had reached such a point that foreign media have been printing box scores each day announcing the previous day’s results. This indicates the number of hits each side had claimed, using all types of weapons, including mortars, customized anti-aircraft guns and long-range artillery guns. Young drug-crazed Mooryaans are killing young drug-crazed Mooryaans, while overlords/warlords are counting the day’s loot in their fortified bomb shelters.

One irony is that the inhabitants loved the massacre, in spite of the fact that many innocent people are dying in cross fire; a visiting journalist has quoted some of the war weary inhabitants in North Mogadishu as saying. “The public’s acceptance of the clan warfare made the massacre possible,” the journalist quoted an elderly woman at the height of the bloodshed, adding that had the masses demonstrated against the feuding warlords, they would have stopped the senseless butchery.

As always indiscriminate shelling of crowded residential areas is the order of the day, which forces the surviving inhabitants to flee to what they perceived to be out of range of artillery guns and mortars, only to be shot by gunmen on rooftops.

It’s the brutal realities of Mogadishu-style urban combat, where one side must win quickly what could deteriorate into a long bloody war. Remember the General Aideed/Ali Mahdi bloody altercation in 1991/93? As usual there is no grand plan, reason, negotiation, or political compromise. The catch phrase is: “We must win against the enemy sub-clan at all costs and by all means.”  Nor was there compassion, feeling, or regrets. Only the strong survive. That strength can come through reputation or complete brutality. “Hard-time” is just what it says. This is an evil in the true sense of the word.

The Thesaurus defines the word Evil as wickedness, malevolencies, sin, iniquity, vice, immorality…. But my own makeshift dictionary also defines evil as purposefully bombing innocent women, children and the elderly. Destroying homes, rape, arson and looting is unequivocally evil in any culture, any race, religion and any geographical local in the world. And it is correct to say that those people who commit such acts are evil in any definition.

It is true that people driven to desperation by hunger, cruelty and unjustified torment will do anything to improve their conditions, and as a result, mercy isn’t considered a job requirement for the gun-toting teenage hustlers. Many of them lost their own parents in the clan warfare, killed in front of their own eyes by marauding gangs of gunmen. And it is hard to blame them for performing evil acts to take vengeance for the killing of their parents. They firmly resolved that anyone getting in their way in the future would have to go down and out. They would show the same merciless their parents had been shown.

Hate is a peculiar emotion. Many people think they hate something, but few of these really understand the true depth of pure hatred. It corrodes every living and thinking organs in your body. Hate, frustration, and eventually revenge killing are some of the spiritual gifts the Devil (if he is still in Somalia), showers on these kids, which the international media dubbed as Gun-boys of Somalia.

A childhood friend of mine sarcastically said that even the devil himself decided to flee Somalia more than a decade ago and sought a refuge somewhere else--probably in Rwanda during the genocide against the Tutsis by the Hutu extremists.

What is putting more fuel into the fire is the ready availabilities of weapons of mass destruction and drugs (Qaad and hash) from neighboring countries. It’s no longer a big deal to purchase all types of weapons at the Bakaaraha and Sinai open-air markets. In one of my earlier Talking Points, I had pointed out that these are supermarkets of weapons, foreign exchange dens, drugs, passports, visas, the latest laptop and PC computers, big screen colour television sets and the latest cell phones. But the sound of gunshots by people testing their purchase is very frightening itself—that’s if you are a newcomer to the city of sorrow and makeshift graves.

As usual the United Nations weapons monitors are still dragging their feet to stop the weapons proliferations into Somalia With full Security Council mandate they are even reluctant to name the arms traffickers or the countries behind the flow of weapons into Somalia.


Now about the two feuding warlords in the latest melee. If the crossing their paths is accidental, their purpose is the same—to possess the real money-spinning natural harbour at Ceel Macaan (El Ma’aan, literally sweet water borehole), the windswept Casiley (Asiley) airstrip and the Global Hotel, which also make huge profits as a camouflage for drug barons, charcoal exporters and arms traffickers who sold guns and heavy artillery pieces to both side in the conflict, and had well-earned reputation of silence. That’s not all, they also issue you a passport and visa in whatever name you wanted to use. No question is asked. Mum is the word!

These particular individuals from the same sub-clan would not have dreamed of meeting, let alone come into conflict, or even cross paths. It was improbable at best. But in a harsh and cruel environment where killing fellow countrymen, women, children and the elderly meant survival and survival was all that mattered, everyone that could do so pursued that goal unhesitatingly. So everything was possible.

Al Capone, the notorious Mafia gangsters of the crime-ridden Chicago of the twenties and thirties, would have been proud of these gun-crazy kids and their warlords. Like Al Capone and his henchmen, they too strongly believe that even if killing hundreds or even thousands of unarmed civilians means survival, then it is justified. The end justifies the means.

The people of my age group are reeling with shock and awe. Of course elders from both sides tried hard to mediate the two feuding sides in vain. Obviously, their brains are seething with anger and frustration. Their pride as senior citizens and advice dispensers had suffered a moral blow, and eventually found themselves sitting on the fence, watching the butchery, helplessly, as if it was a football tournament at the now derelict Mogadishu Stadium.

In Somalia nothing comes easily, and when it comes it vanishes in thin air. An example is the numerous ceasefire that fell apart only hours after they were signed by the feuding clans, and I would not be surprised if the latest one falls apart before you could utter the word Nabad.

A little spark could easily ignite a renewed bloody fighting akin to Dante’s Purgatory.

The childhood friend of mine, mentioned above, who is now in his seventies, and exhibits no sign of slowing down, told me by phone that trying to talk to these merchants of death is like “Hal bacaad ku maal” (Roughly translated: Milking a she-camel on a sand dune). “It seems they’ve all gone bananas,” he whispered over the phone. Probably he was using the satellite phone belonging to one of the bloodthirsty warlords.

For a while there, things looked promising for the otherwise law-abiding, long suffering citizens. The facilitators at the Mbagathi peace talks recently announced that there would be a government in Somalia in July (Kowda Luulyo?), but now with these latest outbreak of fighting in the capital and in the Gedo region, it looks like you’ll have to wait for a few more years before you’ll see a stable, all-inclusive government in the country.

It will take a lot of guts and charisma to return Somalia to its previous shape.

Personally, I can wait. I have, after all, been waiting for any good government to see the light of day for over 13 years. I can wait in my adopted country, where people don’t shoot at each other over a piece of unproductive land, tiny hamlet or a cargo of the narcotic Qaad and cigarettes; because to change a government in my adopted country, people go to the ballot box and not the bullet.                 

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                             AFRICA’S FIRST FEMALE WARLORD

There are instant warlords, wannabe warlords, interim warlords, phony warlords and “veteran” warlords in Somalia. But this new phenomenon may sound strange for those of you in the Diaspora, sitting safely in front of your computers, trying to besiege the keyboards, or watching the shocking images of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Garaib detention center on the family TV set, but the first woman warlord (or baroness in the old British tradition) made her debut in North Mogadishu at the height of the recent blood-path, making her Africa’s first female warlord, or should I say perhaps the entire world.

In a country where men think they have the exclusive right to monopolize the job of warlordism or political bigwigs, it’s hard for a young woman who promoted herself from a simple housewife to the job of war baroness and at the same time keep low profile in a man’s world, wouldn’t hesitate to use her own heavily armed goons to make her presence felt. And with a lot of cash and huge deadly arsenal at her disposal, it worked for her, and no question is asked. Just as in the Sicilian Mafia structure, she has her own heavily armed bodyguards, Capo regime and an enforcer. An equal opportunity craft and talent, you might say. And in order to show who is the boss (Capo famiglia, in the Mafia lingo), the new warlord, Oops, the new war baroness gives orders to her male minions for the first time in her life. In her fortified bunker she had little to worry about in the way of rebellion from her underlings.  She never had it so good.

Still no one in the world believes that a young Somali housewife can play that role and join the warlords’ exclusive club without fanfare or trumpets blasting. But it’s true.

It is a scathing indictment of our old country and society.

Welcome to my world of equal opportunity!