Is General Samater the only living symbol for one of the darkest histories of Somalia?

by Aden Mohamed
Monday, March 22, 2010

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As all Somalis surely remember, General Mohamed Ali Samater was once the highest ranked Somali military officer, Prime Minister and Defence Minister during the military dictatorship era in Somalia. He was a member of the so called “Supreme Revolutionary Council” which was the policy and decision making body of the military regime.

General Samater and many other well known highly ranked military officers (some of whom have since passed on) were at one time members of the brutal and totalitarian club dubbed “The Supreme Revolutionary Council”. It was within the ambits of this “soldiers’ criminal caucus” that brutal decisions against the Somali people were made and passed on to heartless executers at the middle and lower levels of the military hierarchy. In that sense, General Samater was part of that chain of unfortunate events which culminated into the present day disastrous Somali nationhood.

Anybody who denies that fact is perhaps considering this issue from a utopian perspective, an idealistic view which I do not subscribe to. Due to such denials of reality, engagements are mostly dominated by emotive simplifications of issues rather than sincere and rational thinking as far as this important fact of Somali history is concerned.

Having said this, General Samater is accused of a crime he perhaps committed within the “caucus”. Juristically speaking though, proof of culpability as far as that alleged crime is concerned is the preserve of the court process and therefore, I will leave that judgement to the Jurists.

My concern is in considering our darkest histories with honesty. Was General Samater singly responsible for what happened to our innocent people in the past? I know juristically everybody is responsible for their own actions but in all honesty, when we think about what happened to us we must admit that General Samater was not sitting alone in a dark room while making such brutal decisions. Many questions arise:

·        Who else was there?
·        Are they alive?
·        If so, where are they?
·        Are those who are rightly struggling for justice also hunting other criminals of the Supreme Revolutionary Council and their executors?
·        Or is General Samater a soft target according to the Somali way of doing things?

Many Somalis including myself are asking these questions outside the juristic saga of General Samater in the United States. It cannot be that the victims of the Somali military dictatorship are selective in their legitimate struggle against the perpetrators.

Many of the military and secret service officers who committed real crimes against humanity in Somalia are living among their clans and moving unencumbered from one part of the world to another without any fear. They are moving freely and enjoying life as normal in Mogadishu, Kismayu, Bossasso, Beltweyen, Lansanod, Burao, Hargeisa and Borama among other places.

Besides that, in Mogadishu nearly 30 warlords and thousands of murders and rapists are living freely in the ex-Somalia capital. Many of those warlords are TFG parliamentarians or military officers and they travel as diplomats to different parts of the world.

If it happiness that a warlord is taken to custody for alleged committed crimes in Somalia Like it happened to Abdi Qediid in Sweden, the question is not what crime he committed but which clan accused him.

In that sense I can fully understand the campaigners who are supporting Mr Samater and his family although I found the speeches made many of the campaigners at the campaign site in USA as tasteless and unfair against the victims of the Military dictatorship not Samater alone

Because those people who committed proven crime against humanity have no identity other than their savage ideologies, ethnic manipulation or radical religious principals which always lead to unimaginable human suffering the world over. These perpetrators must be equally challenged and treated.

Based on this analogy, if the victims’ struggle for justice is driven by principles similar to those of the perpetrators, then the conflict becomes “perpetrator” against “potential perpetrator” and therefore, has nothing to do with the struggle for justice.

All in all, it goes without saying that criminal decisions like torture, jailing of political opponents and bombing of civilian towns have been made collectively behind closed doors and many highly ranked military offices have taken part in one way or another and they are out there.

I fully support the campaign against all war criminals in Somalia, be the Military regime, the warlords, and the present religious fanatics.

but if Mr Samater and his family are going to be made responsible for all crimes in Somalia ( because the family is also directly affected) by this struggle for justice and the rest of the war criminals enjoy immunity by their clans than Samater is obviously a soft target.

Let us put all the names of Somali war criminals in the list so that this process will be recognised as real and honest struggle for justices against all Somali Military regime war criminals as well as the present Somali war criminals.

Aden Mohamed
E-mail: [email protected]

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