The other side of the story
Hussein Salad
h.salad@vivatelecoms.com
OPINION
“It sounds so simple, it sounds silly, but it really is: You don’t make peace with your friends, you make peace with your enemies, and the only way you end a conflict is to accept that premise.” You don’t make peace with your fiends but with your enemy (Mac Maharaj, ANC, South Africa)
Lonely in your opinion, as you might seem to be sometimes, can itself be a blessing. That is, if you keep that opinion by yourself. So you are not pigeonholed to this or to that category. It is tranquility that is difficult to create and maintain. Dream, you can always do and live, in a world of imagination and beautiful philosophy filled with wisdom of respect and tolerance. But that is utopia that can only exist in life after this, I believe. Blame, you can also put on others cause it is free and simple to criticize and sometimes to vilify others. We all have abundant of criticism and we are never short of distributing it.
No matter how you distance yourself from the muddle, it magnets you as you are part of the unwell body of Somalia.
In a country that has been in ruins more than two decades a drama has been played ever since. The genre was always the same, only the theme has been changing color. The actors were different but the show is always monologue and the epilogue is also the same. Here it is: -We are the victims and God is our side. -They, the other side, know they are wrong but that is how they are. They are evil. We, always, operated on Gods side and they always sided with the enemy of Allah. The funny thing is, we never ask: “They” who? We never ask: “We” who? Who is “We”? We are always deceived a “We”and “They” that malevolently discriminates others and creates an illusion of common identity that is dynamic by nature. No permanent base or defined frame within which you can operate. It always changes as an amoeba movement.
Neither do we have the will nor the courage to listen the other side of the story.
Is it possible, my opponent is right and I wrong? If we could only sit down and listen to each other with open minded without prejudice, most of our malady would have been cured internally.
Today my salvo is to the Somali Federal Government and the way it handled the simple issue of Jubaland. As honest Somali scholars put it, it is very simple issue that could be handled wisely. In the first place why do you make it an issue? It was not an issue. Let the people organize themselves and build what ever they can and bring them under the Somali federal government. If there is an open dispute between the folks be the judge without orchestrating new rivals that do not exit.
As that was not enough, the whole matter was put in international domain, where both friends and foes got a saying and opinion. This was and still is national matter that should never be in international realm. The whole Somali problem started exactly the same. What was national issue was proliferated to international arena. As the interest will naturally differ among players, the stakeholders have now become many and so is the solution, Cleaning your laundry in the open will not only reveal your weak points as a nation it increases both the time and the effort to shore up a satisfactory solution for your internal problems.
Is there a solution? You might ask. Of course there is one to every problem but the contrasting question is: is there a resolve, decency and honesty to listen the other side of the story with open-minded and fairness to solve once and for all Jubaland question?
The endorsement of your opponent is more important than just getting the applause of you your friends. You don’t make peace with your friends but your adversaries
Similarly, you might ask what next if all attempts fail? I don’t know, and I don’t want to speculate but be prepared for the worst.
I am really worried. If this relatively easy issue has taken this dimension, what will happen when we deal with much more complex and divisive issues?
Hussein Salad
/Stockholm, Sweden
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