Heckuva Job Ould Abdallah

Blogging from the United Nations, Inner City Press keeps tabs on the UNPOS (piece of....) envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah

UN's Envoy to Somalia Denies He's a Target and that War Crimes Are on Both Sides

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 -- More than a week after the Al Shabaab insurgents ordered out from the parts of Somalia that they control some segments of the UN system, notably UN envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah and the UN Development Program, the UN still refuses to speak or apparently even to think about why it became a target.

Inner City Press asked Ould Abdallah to respond to accusations that he has, in essence, taken sides in a civil war, and made himself a target. Ould Abdallah responded by asking, "You support the Islamists?" Video here, from Minute 12:06.

Inner City Press responded that it was asking for his and the UN's response to the statements of one of the parties in Somalia. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has said, through her spokesman Rupert Colville, that "both sides were reported to have used torture and to have fired mortars indiscriminately into areas populated or frequented by civilians... The High Commissioner believed that some of these acts might amount to war crimes."

Inner City Press asked Ould Abdallah if he acknowledged that the forces of the Transitional Federal Government which he supports, and also of the AMISON African Union, have at time fired mortars into civilian areas. "I don't like to introduce AMISOM as a part of a problem," Ould Abdallah said. Video here, from Minute 16:06.

But isn't it the UN's role to speak out against the killing of civilians by either side? Rather than answer the questions about his neutrality, and relatedly about the efficacy of his diplomacy, Ould Abdallah joked that he is neutral because when he arrived in Somalia he said he would not engage in local politics, would not engage in business and would not get married in Somalia.

But refusing to speak up about, and in fact covering up, killing of civilians by one or more of the armed forces in Somalia shows a lack of neutrality. And Ould Abdallah's still unexplained role in the joint Law of the Sea Continental Shelf filing of the Kenyan Government and the TFG, funded by oil-exploring country Norway, constitutes business in the view of some.

Ould Abdallah told Inner City Press, next time we go to meet with the Islamists we will take you.

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When asked about the looting of his Office in Baidoa, in connection with al Shabaab ordering him and UNDP to get out, Ould Abdallah said it was mere theft of private property with, as a "bandage," statements against him. This is called, by some, being in denial.

Also in denial is the UNDP, which on July 28 told Inner City Press that "UNDP programmes and operations continue uninterrupted in Somalia." But it was looted [sic] and ordered out of the former TFG capital, Baidoa.

Ould Abdallah is a funny man. Wednesday he drew laughter when he called Somali piracy a form of hedge fund. But he did not state what if anything he has done about the problem on non-Somalis engaging in illegal fishing off the coast, or dumping toxic waste on the shore.

This was by his count his fourth or fifth briefing of the Security Council and the press in the past 20 months. The situation is hardly better. Perhaps the bombast, the willful blindness and yes, the lack of neutrality, are part of the problem.

Of course they are. Ould Abdallah is operating on a very specific mandate, tasked with trying to shape not only an illusory government, but public perception of the situation in Somalia and its contexts. There never was even the pretense of objectivity. He's an envoy, and an envoy is essentially a messenger or representative for a higher authority.

The Reuters UN correspondant wrote a more amenable piece on Ould Abdallah that found him regurgitating the green zone suggestion, which has been proffered on a number of occasions in the past, by a cast of characters, and predated the envoy's arrival.

He said it was time for the United Nations Somalia operations to move its headquarters from Nairobi to the Somali capital Mogadishu to show solidarity with the Somali people.

"We should build a 'green zone' in Mogadishu, like there is in Iraq," the envoy said, referring to the heavily fortified zone where the U.S. military and others have had their headquarters.

Just goes to show how detached from reality Ould Abdallah has become.

In a rebuttal to a silly white propaganda opinion piece from Ould Abdallah earlier this month, A Somali Perspective: In Response to Ahmedou W. Abdalla, the ARS' Secretary for Foreign Affairs writes:

Ahmedou W. Abdalla paints the picture that what is happening in Somalia is ”not a civil war but a coup” by foreign fighters bent on overthrowing “the legitimate government” of Somalia and that the world must come to its rescue.

Abdalla fails to understand the difference between a revolt by the armed forces of a State against the government of the day and a national group with a mission to resurrect from the ashes of a civil war a Somali State.

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In various statements as well as in this article, Ahmedou Abdalla tries to sell the fiction of the existence of a legitimate government in Somalia. The question that begs an answer is: which government are we talking about? And where is this government? This so-called government was formed in exile in Djibouti. Its “members” were handpicked by foreigners including Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. Ahmedou W. Abdalla was omnipresent at all times, stage managing the circus. Can we really call a government that which hides behind the cocktails of AMISOM and Ethiopian troops; with virtually no constituents and territorial control and holed up in Villa; that which cannot protect itself let alone provide security and essential services for its own citizens and with literally no State institutions.

The 550 member “parliament” created in Djibouti with Ahmedou W. Abdalla’s blessing is in such disarray that it cannot convene for lack of a quorum. This “parliament” ceased to exist for all practical purposes. That is the government that Ahmedou W. Abdalla espouses. It surely is a figment in the imagination of its foreign sponsors.

A legitimate government in Somalia? Every government must derive its legitimacy from the popular support of the majority of its own people and not from foreign powers or individuals. Governments that have a popular mandate from their own people are legitimate; but those which are formed in foreign capitals with no mandate from their own people are illegitimate. The same must apply to Somalia. No government formed by Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, without the support and consent of the Somali people and which requires foreign forces to keep it on life support can be considered legitimate.

The campaign by foreigners to confer legitimacy on this so-called government of Somalia is calculated to mislead the international community, misrepresent and distort the facts on the ground. At the end of the day, the UN and its Special Envoy must realize that any government created outside Somalia is not and cannot be representative of the Somali people whether the UN recognizes it or not.

and

The international community can play a constructive role in the search for durable and sustainable peace in Somalia. The international community must listen to the real voices of the Somali people and not to self-seeking individuals and hostile foreign powers with an agenda to dismember and destabilize Somalia.

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Let the international community understand this fact: there can never be a foreign led military solution to the Somali conflict.

The alternative is to look straight in the mirror, disregard the rosy fictions of Ahmedou W. Abdalla, the ambitions of Ethiopia and other border States and encourage a truly Somali owned national dialogue without interference from outside. This is the only sensible way to peace in Somalia.

To move in this direction, the international community can show some goodwill by taking a first important step and recognize that Ahmedou W. Abdalla has failed in Somalia. He has aligned himself with one small faction; his bias is manifest in his actions. He never tried to reach out in a serious manner to other Somali stakeholders; his reports are biased and is accountable only to himself. He behaves as if he was the King of Somalia. He is not a credible broker any more. He is an obstacle to peace in Somalia. It is time for him to go. He must be replaced in the interest of peace in Somalia.

The problem is, Ould Abdallah's mandate was set by very influential foreign powers, to which he is ultimately accountable. Not somalia or somalis. That should be very clear by now. As Professor Michael Weinstein lucidly explained four months ago,

One could waste one’s breath hectoring the donor powers over their lack of resolve, their hypocrisy, and their obsessions with piracy and terrorism that afflict them with tunnel vision and spin them into political fantasy, but they are simply pursuing their own perceived interests at the expense of other actors.

If one views his mission in terms of ensuring that [1] the western press stick to propagating a particular "political fantasy" and [2] the Islamic revolution disintegrates into a conflict that pits Islamist factions against each other, then, from the POV of his bosses, Ould Abdallah is indeed doing, as one might say, a heckuva job.