Issue No. 735

Waare's Honest Speech – Will Anyone Listen?
 

Over the weekend in Garowe, the Puntland Development and Research Centre (PDRC), a Somali research and advocacy organisation in Puntland, convened its annual conference to discuss peace and security dynamics in the Horn of Africa. One of the most interesting speeches was delivered by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)'s deputy executive director and former president of Hirshabelle Mohammed Abdi Waare. He was among a handful of prominent Somali intellectuals and former leaders invited to the conference.

Waare's speech was unscripted and digressive but attracted plenty of attention for his refreshing honesty. In the first part of his speech, Waare launched a scathing attack on Somalia's political elite for squandering opportunities to make progress on good governance and institution-building and the escalating tensions between Mogadishu and the Federal Member State's leadership. "The current situation is extremely dire. To be honest, I fear for this country," he said. With the African Union still remaining absent from any serious intervention or commentary in the escalating tensions between Cairo, Mogadishu, and Addis, Waare's speech was a marked change from the inactivity of Africa's key multilaterals.

Before Waare spoke, Prof Abdirahman Baadiyow rose to the rostrum to provide a rosy picture of the situation. Baadiyow, a close ally of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM), lauded the constitution review process-- which, of course, he chaired-- and the reforms to modernise the electoral system--designed to consolidate the power of the Islamist right. Baadiyow is an Islamist ideologue and senior figure within the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Al-Islah movement, who writes about the need for an Islamic order and injecting Islamic moral values into Somali politics.

Waare's critique of Baadiyow was equally devastating. The call for Islamic values, he said, was misleading and insufficient to explain the current rot. It was not the lack of Islamic values that explains Somali political dysfunction, but the abundance of faux Islamism or, as he put it, the 'immorality' of failing to match values with action. He noted that traditional Islamic values like honesty, integrity, respect for public resources, and inclusivity were universal and not exclusively Islamic values. He also cited an unnamed study of ethical values, which showed that Malaysia is the closest any Muslim state has come to respecting those values. Waare said the top 30 states that conformed to or respected those values were majority Christian states in Scandinavia, Europe and North America. The irony he pointed out is that some Christian countries `were more respectful or conformed to traditional 'Islamic' values than many Muslim states.

Waare, a liberal US-educated Somali, is speaking for many increasingly disillusioned with Mogadishu's lurch to the Islamist right and the hyper-nationalism that has gripped the capital since January 2024 after Ethiopia signed a sea access deal with Somaliland. On Egypt and Somalia, Waare departed from Mogadishu's oft-repeated line that Cairo was an ally and an instrument to preserve Somalia's sovereignty against Ethiopian meddling. Egypt, he said, was an opportunistic power advancing its own national interest and not a closer 'brother' or ally than Ethiopia. He continued that the North African state had demonstrated little interest in helping Somalia in the last 30 years, and its renewed interest is motivated primarily by concerns over the Nile water basin and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute with Addis. "Where was Egypt during the last 30 years when Somalia was struggling with all sorts of problems?" He warned Somalis against becoming entangled in a regional proxy war between Ethiopia and Egypt.
 
The warning on Egypt will likely fall on deaf ears. In actual fact, just as Waare was making his speech, an Egyptian cargo ship was docked at the Port of Mogadishu, carrying a large consignment of lethal weapons from Cairo. Widely circulating social media footage showed trucks towing artillery pieces and carrying munition boxes leaving the port.

Despite the latest injection of lethal aid, Egypt continues to overhype its intervention and capacity in Somalia. The North African state is a diminished power hemmed in by multiple crises, particularly the destabilisation of the Red Sea and the growing conflagration in the Middle East. While it is almost certainly unable to play an effective and constructive military role in Somalia, its capacity to play the 'spoiler' role is self-evident. A proliferation of lethal weapons in a context where the state is weak further adds to the glut in the grey arms market and could foment armed violence between clans and regions if the weapons go unchecked. A week earlier, Ethiopia is also reported to have sent an unspecified quantity of weapons and ammunition to Puntland. Federal officials have responded angrily to the reported delivery of arms to Puntland, overlooking their own role in August's Abduwaaq arms scandal. 
 
Waare is no longer a Somali official, and the original decision to back his candidature for the IGAD post was primarily motivated by HSM's desire to neuter or defang possible critics. An Abgaal intellectual with roots in the Shabelle, Waare's views carry some weight within the Hawiye clan but also remain influential at the national level. Mogadishu cannot easily cast off his opinion, as it has sought to do so with other critics. The former Hirshabelle president helped facilitate IGAD Executive Director Workneh Gebeyehu's recent visit to Mogadishu after months of somewhat fraught relations between the body and the federal government. An IGAD Climate Change Centre of Excellence is also slated to be built in Somalia's capital, a project that will attract both attention and funding. Consequently, Mogadishu will likely calculate that it cannot afford to upset the balance, even if it may be frustrated by Waare's stinging critiques of the government's Islamist tendencies and foreign policy choices.

By the Somali Wire team