A Failed State?

A semi-arid country with hardly any arable land faces the challenge of feeding its population of 9.1 million, a third of which depends on food aid. With a birth rate of 43.7 births/1000 population and a death rate of a staggering 15.5 deaths/1000, famine and diseases are the least of the problems of Somalia.

The country has lacked an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. After the failure of the fourteenth transitional government, the state’s situation has deteriorated into the world’s worst humanitarian and security crisis. Insecurity, violence and desperate poverty have been the norm. Within the complex web of problems in Somalia is that of Piracy. Various international organizations such as the World Food Programme and International Maritime Organisation have shown concern over this issue. In 2009 US President Barack Obama said that Somali piracy has to be brought under control and has prompted Nato to take the lead in anti-piracy operations.

However, what is new is that this issue has once again gotten the world concerned over the goings on of this collapsed state. The Somalis have learnt to live under the circumstances where risk of death and bloodshed are unexceptional hazards. Losing faith in the government, the Somali diaspora have helped create informal sector businesses and a fairly well maintained private sector leading to a growing economy. The brave country has a GDP per capita of $333 which is greater than that of Ethopia and Tanzania. However, about 40% of the population thrives on less than US $1 a day.

Piracy, however is a symptom of a much bigger problem. The core of the crisis is the dire need of a political settlement. Somalia, is a clan based society. The warring clans fiefdoms have greatly divided the country. A strong administrative system is required for the reconciliation of these warring militias. The rising Islamists stood in the way of the establishment of a central government since 2006. The Islamist insurgents fought against the government winning control of most of Southern Somalia by late 2008.

The absence of a long-standing government led to the rise of piracy as the only means of survival for the population which has seen a civil war for the past 20 years, combats with grinding poverty and hunger, shifting alliances, and international intervention with a steady supply of unemployed young men and cheap weapons.

While the internationally recognized government of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad struggles to gain control of is own capital city of Mogadishu, political stability remains a distant dream. In 2009, the Al-Shabab (maning ‘the youth’ in Arabic), drove Hizbul Islam out of the Southern port of the city and has declared its open alliance to Al-Qaeda emerging as the most powerful Islamic insurgent group in the region.

What Somalia needs is to end this internal warfare for which it requires international alliance which can be sought from nearby countries like Eritrea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for training and equipping the country’s security forces.

An intriguing question is: Will Somalia see the return of UN peacekeeping forces in order to quell the chaos and lawlessness? This refreshes the memory of the 1993 peacekeeping mission when the bodies of the US soldiers were stripped naked and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. What is expected of a peacekeeping mission is that the Al-Shabab will simply scatter and resurface once the peacekeepers run out of funds and leave forcing the region to become even more chaotic and dangerous.

This week Somalia’s 19th Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke resigned as the government’s failure to put an end to Islamist insurgency and the death of thousands of civilians continues. The outside world has for too long seen Somalia as a threat to its own security as a major exporter of terror. The piracy issue appears to have a silver lining as it may lead to a greater, and more serious engagement of the world with Somalia’s political and developmental problems, perhaps encouraging involvement in ending its chronic instability.

Samana Ali
FY-K

Pakistan and Conspiracy Theories

We, as a nation, are obsessed with conspiracy theories. It’s become our national pastime. It’s fashionable to attribute everything from the floods to the cricket scandal to a global conspiracy against Pakistan.

It’s suprising to see the number of ‘educated’ individuals of the bourgeois who think that the world as we know it is run by a group of Zionist Jews who sit in a secret room deep in the Pentagon and conspire against Pakistan. There, this cabal wearing black robes and holding bloody daggers thinks of ways to undermine our nation. They used HAARP to cause the floods. And Photoshop to incriminate our cricketers. And don’t forget how the lasers they had hidden in the Margalla hills shot down the Air Blue jet.

9/11 must have been a conspiracy  and the suicide attacks that bleed Pakistan continously could never have been done by the Taliban. It must be a Zionist-Hindu-American-Blackwater-Xe conspiracy. Haven’t you heard that the bombers were actually Sikh RAW agents in disguise? It’s all India’s doing. They are the ones causing agitation in Balochistan. They are the ones who fight us with ‘water terrosism’, whatever that is. Pakistan is under developed because of the Illuminati and Freemasons. Not because of years of military dictatorship that left only one viable instituition in the country: the army.

Democracy is an evil, ‘Western’, ‘forgein’ concept. And how can it work in a country where the ‘masses’ are illiterate? And since politics is dirty and democracy clearly isn’t for us, let’s have ‘enlightened despotism’. We are an idiotic nation that needs a dashing ruler on horseback (and in his khaki uniform). Oh and give him a big stick to keep us in line.

This is the kind of garbage that is floated about in our drawing rooms and by our civil society.

But why are we so vulnerable to these ‘theories’? Conspiracy theories offer an easy way out. They seem to reduce the complex, chaotic social earthquakes of our world  into a managable, nay, fantastic framework that is as spectacular as it is sinister.

These theories speak of a deep insecurity. They speak of a deep-seated desire to know that social ripples are not random but are systematic, thought-out, long-term strategies by a cabal of men. Psychologists attribute this belief to a need by some to know that man isn’t adrift but part of a scheme. This belief further implies that the evil group can be defeated (or joined).

Conspiracy theories are an easy way out. Unfortunately, we are at a stage where there are no shortcuts, no ‘quick-fixes’. Instead of looking outward, it’s time for us to look in and see what we have become. It’s easy to place the blame on outside forces and that is exactly what we are guilty of doing.

Enough of this nonsense! Enough of this intolerance! Enough of this myopia! Instead of sipping coffee and bemoaning the state of the our ‘becharay’ proletariat, Pakistan’s ‘educated’ class would do well to get up and help Pakistan achieve it’s rightful place among the civilised nations of the world.

This requires constructive critisism, not blatant pessimism. It requires us to use our common sense. It requires tolerance of those who are different in religion, ethnicity and political ideology. It requires us to actually listen to the other person’s point of view before agreeing or disagreeing. How someone who does not know and practice this can claim to be ‘educated’ is beyond me. But Pakistan is full to the seams with such educated illiterates.

Although it’s now clichéd, Kennedy was right on the mark when he said that ‘ask not what your country can do for you, ask what YOU can do for your country’.

Pakistan Zindabad!

M. S. Najam FY-W