What is required to get AMISOM out of Somalia? Does that question sound strange to you? But, why do you contemplate keeping these foreign troops in a sovereign country for more than a short period of time?
Who is keeping them in the country, is it us or them, who is responsible for keeping them here? Why do you unknowingly compel our East African queens to seek alternative love and marriage against their inner cultural feelings? The answer to these questions is fundamentally very simple.
Stop fighting among themselves. If you do, AMISOM have no reason to stay in Somalia. Period. They will get out within days, which means we were keeping them here in the first place and that is because of our own stupidity to figure out that simple solution to most of our existential threats.
Alshabab and other extremist elements hold the primary responsibility to keep AMISOM here. They say they are fighting for AMISOM expulsion, but their actions keep AMISOM needed in Mogadishu. Is that difficult to figure out? Likewise, AMISOM is very much interested in insuring and helping Alshabab keep fighting to justify their stay in Somalia.
It is simple business consideration. It is an unofficial, mutually beneficial and transactional business. How else would you describe this undeclared mutual business relationship? Freeze this undocumented business contract and AMISOM would find its troops outside the gate. Once that happens, there will be no need for their presence within the borders of Somalia.
You would say, it is easier said than done. Ask Alshabab to stop the urban warfare and bomb blasts in towns and see what would happen to AMISOM and Ethiopian presence in parts of the country. If you don’t want these foreign troops out, then carry on what you have been doing. The status quo pays you and AMISOM handsomely.
Then why do you hypocritically blame and complain about the presence of foreign soldiers in the country to falsely justify your unpatriotic and distorted political position and wrong-headed course of action.
By Ismail Haji Warsame
Former Chief of Staff
Puntland State of Somalia