Cross-posted at Poets and Policymakers…

Maps: A novel by Nurrudin Farah begins with a quote by Charles Dickens: “No children for me. Give me grown-ups.” Farah indeed depicts his main character, Askar, as a precocious child beyond his years and the novel tracks his struggles in identity from birth to near adulthood. Misra accompanies Askar, an ethnic Somali born in the Ogaden (eastern Ethiopia) on most of this developmental journey. She is his Ethiopian adopted mother and soul mate – an identity that engenders conflict given that the novel takes place in the late 1970s.

In the summer of 1977, the power of nationalism propelled Somalia and Ethiopia into the Ogaden War. By this point, Ethiopia had lost control of the Ogaden to an insurgency and there was clear evidence that the Somalis were supporting the rebel movements. This assistance, once the war began, climbed to upwards of 75,000 Somali troops supported by tanks. Somalis overwhelmingly supported this invasion of eastern Ethiopia.

Calculating the worth of their two alliances, the Soviet Union broke off relations with Somalia in the fall of 1977 and upped their arms sales to the Ethiopians. Ultimately the Ethiopians pushed the Somali forces to withdraw completely from the Ogaden. In the end, over 25,000 Somalis died in the war, as well as thousands of Ethiopians. The failed campaign fought in the name of Somali nationalism also brought humiliation to the Siad Barre regime as roughly 700,000 refugees from the Ogaden flooded across the border into Somalia – creating a humanitarian crisis.

In the novel, Askar is sent to Mogadishu from a small village in the Ogaden at the height of the war to stay with a well-educated uncle and aunt. Misra stays behind, only to be accused within a year of betraying the village to the Ethiopian army, elements of which carry out a brutal massacre of many of her fellow villagers. She ultimately flees and finds her way to Mogadishu a decade later. Before her sudden arrival, Askar and his new family are informed of the alleged betrayal. And, thus, Askar is forced to manage his loyalties and love to Somalia with his intense connection to the woman that raised him.

Askar’s fascination with maps provides a way for him and the author to explore the character’s identity through the ravages of Ogaden War, as well as the colonial past that set the boundaries and the ever-present national aspirations of the Somali people. The basic question asked repeatedly by Misra and Askar is: who are my people? And what are my responsibilities to them, especially in the face of multiple loyalties? The novel reveals that the answers for people with complex relationships are never as clear as the boundaries fought over by the belligerents.

These painful questions likely endure for the people of the Ogaden as a low-level insurgency continues against the Ethiopian government, which now blames the Eritrean government of providing support to the rebels. In addition, immediate irredentist claims on the Ogaden by some members of the Islamic Courts Union that took power in Mogadishu in 2006 helped provoke Ethiopia to invade Somalia later that year. The Ethiopians quickly removed the Islamists from power – but in the process ushered in three chaotic years of displacement and bloodshed in Somalia.

Like Dickens, Farah undoubtedly would also prefer grown-ups rather than children to demonstrate the horrors of his age. Yet in choosing children, he faces the cruel realities directly. In Somalia today, in fact, the United Nations reports about half of Somalia’s population of seven million is in a state of humanitarian emergency. And, half of those are children. An official stated last month:“There is no child in central south Somalia who knows what it is to live in peace. And to now try to recover from that as communities and society, of course, will take at least a generation.”

Farah also in the midst of the darkness though offers hope through the story of Askar as well as many of his other characters. For those who may hear Somalia and just shake their heads to forget or to despair of the situation, here is a great excerpt from an interview in 2007 in which he explains his motivations and intentions of his fiction:

NURUDDIN FARAH: …I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it, and the reason is because nothing good comes out of a country until the artists of that country turn to writing about it in a truthful way.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean, this is the role of an artist, the role of a writer.

NURUDDIN FARAH: This is the role of the artist, the role of the artist who also is, well, shall we say, probably courageous, probably mad, probably terribly ambitious writer, who wants to say, “This is what Somalia is like, and this is what I’m going to write.”

It is possible that the way I see Somalia is not the way that some other Somalis or some other foreigners who do not know Somalia may see it that way. But I have continually seen Somalia as a country full of hope, and yet that are being held back from, you know, accomplishing that hope, that dream.

To end, such words remind me of those arguing for constructive disengagement from Somalia by the international community. The idea is to free Somalis as much as possible from the distortions and obstacles inherent in foreign interference. It would only be then, they argue, that Somalis could face other challenges like that of clan politics and local and national governance openly and honestly. Unfortunately, for many reasons (some good and some bad), the international community remains stuck in the failed status quo of Somalia which supposedly keeps the country from falling further into the abyss, but also prevents Somalis from fully seizing control of their futures.

Variations of this predicament exist in Afghanistan and Sudan. Looking forward to another post, Niloufer and I hope to write more on the topic soon.

It’s not just Sudan…more on China in Africa: The New York Times highlights political implications of a Chinese scholarship program for Namibia’s elite; China and Senegal hope to enhance military cooperation; and at the Globalist, two authors convincingly argue that “China is currently pursuing oil resources in unstable countries without regard for the political risk entailed. While that might play well in the short- to medium-term, it could cost China dearly down the line.”

It’s not just China increasing influence in Africa: Saudi Arabia held the first meeting of the Saudi-East Africa Forum in Addis Ababa this week. Representatives from seven East African countries attended: Ethiopia, Djibouti, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Rwanda.  A Saudi minister stated, “Saudi Arabia is committed to combating hunger, to provide support for the host country but also to generate exports. We are not to impose our needs above the needs of local population.” Sudan did not participate in the forum; however, the Saudi Development Fund announced this week that it was donating 15 million dollars for development and rehabilitation in Darfur.  The money will go to the “model villages” that the Arab League has pushed as an effort to help IDPs in Darfur return to normal lives.

Whither Yemen? Thats the title of a good blog summarizing the current challenges facing Yemen’s leadership.  It concludes that “the period ahead for Yemen is likely to be, to paraphrase Hobbes, ‘nasty and brutish.’” Another blog challenges the notion that Saudi Arabia’s recent intervention in Yemen’s conflict with the Houthi rebels could be good for the US because it will lead to the further militarization of the Gulf and a strong Sunni and Gulf alliance against Iranian encroachment throughout the Arab world. Ian Bremmer at Foreign Policy tends to agree that greater militarization and more proxy wars are usually not constructive anywhere and argues that a failed state next to the world’s largest oil exporter is reason enough for Americans to care about the conflict.

Updates on Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt: The Sahel Blog tries to get a handle on what’s happening in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and how it relates to the never-ending conflict in Somalia.  Meanwhile, the War and Peace blog reflects on the significance of the killing of a Somali judge, who “devoted his life not only to the rule of law but to the pursuit of justice according to the sometimes conflicting state, Islamic, and Somali customary law systems in an incredibly volatile political environment.”  And finally a former professor of mine, Jon Alterman, explains how “Gamal Mubarak has cast himself as an executive and not a dictator” and made the necessary connections with the security and intelligence bosses to secure power once Hosni hands him the reins of Egypt.

Sarah Palin versus the White House on Settlement Expansion: The White House stood up forcefully this week to further settlement expansions in the West Bank, while Sarah Palin ringingly and shockingly endorsed Israelis rights to build as many settlements as they wish anywhere (!) because – in her unbelievable words – “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.”

Other Tidbits: Rob Crilly quickly notes steep decline of Darfur coverage and asks, “How do we keep people interested in just another African disaster?”  From an organization concerned about those displaced in Darfur and other conflicts, Refugees International is taking the lead on “climate displacement” but tells us that “under international refugee law there can be no “climate refugees.” Therefore, they call for negotiation of “the international legal ramifications of the various scenarios” at the upcoming Copenhagen talks in December.

Waq-al-Waq has “the scariest thing you will read today”: that Yemeni are now asking al-Qaeda to teach in their schools because of a lack of teachers.

… if al-Qaeda in Yemen ever turned itself into a positive organization, by which I mean an organization that could be for something instead of only against things, if it could provide services and be a force for good in people’s daily lives in Yemen then its growth potential would be nearly unlimited. I have always added the caveat to that statement that there was no evidence to support the idea that AQAP was looking to go that way, and this is a pretty flimsy piece of evidence but it is still evidence. Whether it is a one-off item or a precursor is impossible for me to know, even with my magic 8-ball.

The always insightful Hannah Allam based in Cairo and Baghdad has a great piece on Beyonce versus the world famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.

In the Darfur file, Ethiopia announced that it would send 5 long-awaited attack helicopters to Darfur.  This is good for the UNAMID force and helps Ethiopia’s already stellar image in the eyes of the West.  Such moves are one reason why the international community, as the Sahel Blog explains, ignores the repressive politics at home.

Bec Hamilton writes about Save Darfur’s partnership with the State Department this week to launch AskUS — a web 2.0 initiative to connect the Obama administration with citizen activists.  Jerry Fowler asked a number of incisive questions to the US Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration.

Finally, Khalid Nur responding to a post by Alex de Waal at Making Sense of Darfur provides a good summary of the coverage of the Mbeki report in the Sudanese press.  His analysis matches up with my own scouring of the Sudanese newspapers everyday:

Thumbing through the papers this is what I find. On 25 October Sadiq al-Riziqi who is the owner of Al-Intibaha the most strident paper against the SPLA and the Darfurians, rejected the Panel and especially the hybrid courts proposal. Al-Riziqi is exceptionally well informed about the goings on in the inner circles but he has his own views too. For the ordinary citizens of Sudan, al-Riziqi’s rejection is a good endorsement! But read the same paper three days later and we see a columnist hinting that if the procedures in the hybrid courts are correctly done then the NCP will accept.

This is pretty much the double line taken by other well-known columnists too. Ahmad Al-Sharif (Al-Watan) lambasts Mbeki’s report as targeting national sovereignty and going beyond its mandate by putting into question the competence of the Sudanese judiciary. Kamil Idriss (formerly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation) in Al-Sudani, says that the idea of hybrid courts strike to the heart of the credibility of the Sudanese judiciary and is a humiliation. But read carefully what others are writing. One government spokesman, writing in Al-Ahdaf on 1 November, says that ICC Prosecutor’s welcome of the Panel’s proposal for hybrid courts should be bracketed: any mechanism set up in the wake of the AU decision will proceed without reference to the ICC. That is a way of setting the Mbeki recommendations apart from the joined-up three pillar process that the ICC is helping to set up in Kenya. In the Kenyan case, the ICC is joined at the hip to the hybrid courts and so also to the local courts, but this isn’t the case for the Darfur proposal. And most interesting, the leading Islamist Tayib Zain Al-Abdeen, writing in Al-Sahafa on 2 November advised the NCP to accept the hybrid courts proposal, saying that its own failure to prosecute anybody gives it no credibility to object, and it also cannot accuse the African Union of being a colonial conspirator.

One of the best commentaries was done by Khalid al-Tijani, for Al-Sahafa. He put his finger on the government’s basic dilemma. On the one hand, Khartoum cannot reject the Mbeki Report because any such action will threaten the cohesive African stance supporting Khartoum’s position on the ICC, while on the other hand the acceptance of the report would equally conflict with the latter’s principled rejection of the intervention of the ICC. This puts the front men for the government policy in an awkward situation and luckily the two men in question, Ghazi Salah Al-Din and Ali Osman Muhammed Taha are able to exercise self-restraint and avoid either outright acceptance or outright rejection, playing the game of watering down the recommendations in the implementation stage.