Architects of the “Building Blocks Approach” Aim to Finally
Finish-off
Special Editorial
Hiiraan Online
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
This Editorial is in response to an article " Anarchy-Cursed Nation Looks to Bottom-Up Rule " posted on New York Time by Gettleman, Jeffrey
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As the ineptness of clan inspired leadership leads to more internal disputes and warring factions, and as many reconciliation conferences fail for lack of principled leadership due in part to the shifting political actors and clan interests, the international community has been searching for a new strategy to finally resolve the prolonged Somali conflict. Of course there are no shortages of ideas in the international community and the one school of thought that has been gaining traction lately is the so called “Building Block’s Approach”. The architects of this ominous model appear to have taken lessons from the
The gist of the argument in the Building Blocks Approach is that a Somali state with a unitary central government can not be reconstituted and sustained through a top down approach as is currently pursued by the UN and the international community and must be replaced with a bottom-up approach focusing solely on grassroots community development. Developing social and governance structures at the grassroots level, they argue, will in the end help the reconstitution of the Somali state. Furthermore the protagonists of the model began an all out offensive to sell their untested idea in the corridors of power where the international community convenes and in the international media. They argue that the international community must give up imposing on the Somali people an untenable national government, parliament and charter. These institutions, they believe, disregard critical local and regional clan structures and therefore lack necessary grassroots support. The bottom up approach, the argument goes, will strengthen local governance mechanisms, maintain communal law and order, and establish strong regional leadership that in the long run will muster the necessary energy to reconstitute the
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to untangle the imprecise logic of the proponents of this model in that, if thirty percent of the Somali people today (those twenty years of age and younger) do not know the value and importance of a Somali state and could care the least about its reconstitution today, why would they want a Somali state decades later when they become the majority and their numbers reach eighty percent or more!
The building block’s approach as is currently proposed will in effect pick the baton from where the
At a time when the global community is coming much closer and Europe is coming together as a single entity with one currency, why propose a small nation such as
In retrospect, it is no secret that the plight of the Somali people is worsening on a daily basis and the current conditions prevailing there are unacceptable and insufficient for human survival. It is also a fact that current Somali leadership both in government and opposition do not show the will nor the capacity to envision a peaceful unitary Somali state, safeguarding its sovereignty and coexisting peacefully with its neighbors and the larger global community.
The response to these realities, however, is not to hastily break up
The proponents of the building blocks approach be they secessionists, dominant clan advocates, and regionalists, paid international lobbyists, impressionable foreign journalists or otherwise confused Somali citizens all want the world to believe that the inhabitants of Kismayo, Merca, Baidoa, Mogadishu, Beledweyn, Bosasso, and many others if left to their own devices would be able to resolve their inter clan conflicts and would have the potential to innovate viable regional administrations!
What a fallacy and a distorted logic at that! If the claim is true, what is preventing these locales to self govern themselves peacefully now!
Illustrating the point further, imagine that there are several autonomous Bantustan states sprouting all over
Make no mistake, that there is a silent one dimensional war of ideas taking place that is purportedly deciding the future of
The time is right and the world is eager to hear from intellectual Somalis who can collaborate beyond personal and clan interest and who can show the will and capacity to put forth a national agenda that can safe all of
Dividing
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References:
Bryden, Matt. New Hope for Somalia
Dinar, Ali B. Ali.
Gettleman, Jeffrey. A new approach to bringing order in
Memo from