March 22, 2007=
Editorial - Somalia is dead thanks to Hawiye savagery
By Bashir Goth
They did it again, the Hawiye clans. But this time even the gruesome loving Al Jazeera TV shied away from showing the grisly pictures of barbaric mobs dragging, beating and burning dead bodies of Somali and Ethiopian soldiers in the streets of Mogadishu. This is a horrific action that is beyond belief. We were disgusted and condemned it with the strongest words when the Hawiye did this abominable action to the American soldiers for the first time in 1993 and we abhor it and condemn it now with the strongest of words.

The Hawiye clans were fighting among themselves over the last 16 years; gangs against gangs, warlord against warlord, Islamists against warlords. The streets of Mogadishu were littered with dead bodies, but never were these bodies maimed, dragged or burned for the simple reason that they belonged to Hawiye. But anytime the Hawiye clashed with members of other Somali clans let alone foreign forces, they never failed to show their savagery and barbarism. They did it when General Aideed’s militia first entered Mogadishu at the collapse of Siyad Barre government. The Hawiye mobs killed indiscriminately every Darood person they found in Mogadishu. They raped even elderly women and they showed no mercy to the innocent, the poor and the weak. They did it again when they occupied Baidoa and turned it into the city of death. This doesn’t mean that other clans didn’t commit atrocities; they did but the Hawiye’s disrespect for the dead is unprecedented and goes against the values of the Somali people. They even had gone beyond the immediate when they exhumed the skeletons of Italian colonial era cemetery and scattered the remains around.

This latest episode, however, will give the Hawiye what they deserve. Mogadishu will no longer be the capital of Somalia because after this gruesome crime there will be Somalia at all. It does not only justify Somaliland’s cause for independence beyond doubt, but it also dashes the last hope of resuscitating former Italian Somalia as a unified country. Who can stop the Darood clans in the state of Puntland and the Digil and Mirifle in the fertile central regions to declare their secession as well? There is no reason why anyone should risk the dead bodies of their sons being desecrated in the streets of Mogadishu.

It was in the conference of Buroa in May 1991 when Somaliland decided to walk away from the Somali unity that Sheikh Abdillahi Sheikh Ali Jowar from the Awdal delegation, said his famous words:

“We have struggled many years for the reunification of the Somali people in the Horn of Africa and the result has been disaster and misery. As we reclaim our sovereignty today we have one thing to say to the Somali nation: May God Almighty bless everyone in wherever they reside; May those in Ethiopia prosper in their homeland, those in Kenya prosper in their homeland, those in Djibouti prosper in their homeland, those in Southern Somalia prosper in their homeland and we in Somaliland prosper in our homeland.”

And as the truth of this wisdom is clearer today than anytime before, we may extend Sheikh Abdillahi’s magnanimous words a little further and tell the Hawiye, “annihilate each other and rot in Mogadishu and in your Hawiyeland” for the Somali people have had enough and can no longer tolerate to let you denigrate the name Somali by your horrendous savagery. As Somalia splits into separate, independent states, you would be left with no choice but to commit your crimes in the name of Hawiye only. Awdalnews Network