Al-Shabaab militants attacked the Qahira Hotel in Beledweyne, Somalia, where government officials and local elders were meeting.
All of a sudden, Somalia faces an existential crisis: Al-Shabaab are within six kilometres of Mogadishu and are encircling the city.
From the north, there is fighting at the Ministry of Defence and to the south the fighting is near the Turkish military encampment. Somali National Army are said to be deserting in droves, police and prisons officers are being sent to the front and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is apparently playing hide-and-seek with assassins.
I’m piecing together all this from social media, especially from Mohamed Warsama, former Nation editor and now prolific blogger and Somalia observer.
For the longest, it appears that President Mohamud has been selling snake oil by the bucket, how he had crushed Al-Shabaab and how Mogadishu is now as safe a city as any in the region.
There have even been exhibitions and trade promotions, announcing that Somalia is open for business. There is a bit of exaggeration, apparently.
To the contrary, Al-Shabaab has been re-arming, retraining and restructuring and it even has bigger, deadlier ambitions.
It is positioned to take and occupy territory and its intentions appear nothing short of ruling Somalia and quite soon.
Were it not so tragic, the news from Somalia would have been quite comical. Somalia is an old civilisation, one wonders why violent drama appears to be what they have settled on as the best approach to government, while at the same time dreaming of a great kingdom, stretching from Southern Yemen and down to our very own fair shores.
But they are a fiery race, quick to anger and fast with the fists. Warsama reported a fight between military trainees during a football match.
Both teams, the full 24, needed hospital treatment and two were admitted. The army and NISA, the intelligence agency, exchanged fire, leaving three dead. There always seems to be combat the Mogadishu way.
There is also a discernible frustration with the theatrics of Mr Mohamud. While the enemy was within AK range of the capital, he not only deployed what little forces he has left some 220km away and took a big stick, in what Warsama describes as “the stuff of magic” and journeyed to the front to take charge of the fighting in Adan Yabal.
Perhaps he sees himself as a great wizard-warrior from Abgaal. A fierce Al-Shabaab attack forced him to evacuate to Moqokori which was also attacked and he had to flee. If the head of state is spending a part of his day fleeing from the adversary, who is winning the war?
In the meantime, his critics claim that as President Mohamud is running the war in the field, back home his clansmen are singing traditional songs in praise of Al-Shabaab.
Somali leaders have spent some time in gleaming palaces in Turkey, the Gulf, Ethiopia, Egypt and many other countries, playing complicated diplomatic games, sometimes playing one regional power against another – as was the case of Egypt and Ethiopia – and for a time they may have felt like real players on the global stage.
But while they were away playing big power games, back home Al-Shabaab was doing press ups and brushing up on war. I don’t claim to know much about Somalia.
But I wish Somali elites could find a formula for stabilising their country and serving their long-suffering people. However, after 30 years, one does run out of optimism.
So what would Somalia under a Taliban-style militant group mean for neighbours, especially Kenya, and the rest of East Africa? Somalia is an aggressive state not just to Kenya, but to Ethiopia as well. Under Al-Shabaab it would be aggression on steroids.
We would probably see an attempt to dismember Kenya and Ethiopia for the purposes of recreating some mythical entity or other. Internally, the terror group would probably be more efficient at administration than the corrupt elites, but likely to mete out more brutality and repression on the population.
The militants might achieve, through sheer terror, the unification of Somalia as one nation for the first time in 30 odd years which is more of an indictment of the Somali elite than credit to the terror group.
East Africans, who have a lot to lose if Somalia collapses, are wishing President Mohamud all the best and hoping that he mobilise the millions of Somalis around the world to solve the current crisis and restore stability and prosperity to Somalia.
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I sure do hope that Will Durant’s line is ringing in the ears of the culture warriors of America today: “A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Even as Americans negotiate amongst themselves the things they need to change to bring back the golden age, as President Donald Trump calls it, they should also agree on the things they should keep to assure its return and continuation.
One such thing is American educational institutions and traditions of scholarship which are the envy of the whole world. Around those, they must circle the wagons.
