I have received an email message from two European officials who said they were working at the UN team of arms experts assigned by the UN Security council to work on how best to disarm the Somali militias. The email message told me that the two men approached me because they found my articles very interesting and they thought I could be of good source of information that could be of help. They said that they would be checking into the Intercontinental hotel in Dubai and would be glad to meet me.

Next day, I received another email message informing me of the safe arrival of the team and their contact number. I called the hotel and through an exchange of couple of words , I found myself sitting at the food court of intercontinental hotel Dubai , facing two middle aged Europeans.

My suspicion of why arms experts would jump all the way from New York just to have a chat with me was reduced when the two arms experts told me that they sat at a hotel in Nairobi for weeks , discussing with several Somali people to collect the Somali intellectuals’ point of view of the over all situation in Somalia conflicts , how best to stop the flow of arms to Somalia and disarm the Somali militias.

The two men saw my eye brows were moving up and that gave them a hint that I was not fully relaxed with them. One of them took out his official business card and shoved it to me. It was the UN Security Council personnel card. I sensed that real politics was under my lab.

The two professional men went directly to the topic and told me that they wanted to listen to my view points about how to disarm the Somali militias.

A topic so complex and large to be covered within short time in a luxury hotel.

The strong Nescafe started being effective and it made my head search for a quick report which went on as follows:

“ If one wants to know how to unscramble a complicated and huge machine , one must know how it was first assembled together in the first place otherwise try and error attempt would bring a devastating result.

To come up with an efficient and safe disarming of armed militia in general , one must have a deep knowledge of how and why the militias got the arms in their hands , why and what keeps the arms in their hands ,etc.

In general, the militia hold arms and keep them tightly in their hands for various reasons namely:

v Kicking a despot dictator: a militia leader who is their tribal leader organized them to fight against a government based on injustices to replace it with their tribal government.

v Because the country went into a chaos, it is necessary to take arms to defend their community .

v A tribal business group employed them to defend and protect the business activities of the group.

v The gun became the bread earning means to its holder and his family with no other source of income.

v They are part of an organized militia team for a certain political leader whose political weight is measured by their power and his control on it . since there is no regular salary from the political leader , they must turn to freelance jobs of squeezing money .

Having agreed on these, Somali militia is no exception.

Militias are divided into people having one or two of above reasons in heart.

The second point to be taken into account is that the militias are illiterate, immature young men whose strong belief is the breaching of the tribal militia leaders.

To get the armed militia drop the gun and start living a decent life requires to fill in the gap where these above reasoning logics occupied and that is why you and me are today sitting here and trying to figure out how to fill them.; I took a good sip of the coffee, enjoyed it and reminded my European friends that militias are part and parcel of the Somali society and the aim is not to outwit them and put them into the disadvantage basket.

Having assured the approval on the faces of my listeners , I went on :

Now comes the tough point of getting the militia drop the gun while smiling.

The group of the militias that are strongly obedient to their political leader and whose moral objective is only the political success of the leader can be easily controlled. It takes an agreement with their political leader to ask them to drop the gun and become part of the patriotic citizens. The leader will be able to get them obey him by showing that they are counted. This means that they should get a source of income as a replacement of their discontinued source of income after dropping the gun.

Similar treatment is valid to those militias that were hired by the private business group or the one that is committed to defend his community as they need a convincing guarantee that if they drop the gun , things are going to be better . They would not starve to death or their community will not be harassed.

Since these groups proved to be honest by performing their jobs efficiently. They protected the business interests of their tribal rich men and hence have good ears that hear, thanks to the tribal obsessions. It again takes a commitment with the businessmen and their tribal elders to get them organized and drop the guns for a regular employment that earn them daily wages.

There are those who took the arms under the tribal umbrella but utilized it for their own looting and killing and never cared for the tribal elders or any leader. These are the most dangerous group who see vandalism as a source of enjoyment and fun.

Event though their number is small yet they pose a greater threat to any attempt to arms removal processes in the country.

The best approach to this group is to tempt them with monetary payments to drop the gun and join the society .

The following actions would be the most appropriate steps towards the smooth realization of the objective of disarming and bringing everlasting peace to Somalia without any ill feeling or flash backs:

o Every tribe and region should register the armed militias and their gun records – type of gun , ammunition, date of mfg , name of holder , etc.

o The registered militia will be gathered in a training and orientation camps where uniform dress and training classes will be given for unlimited time period.

o The well disciplined and literate militia from each region will be registered for the training for the emergency police force that is to be deployed in every street that his community live for the first stage. The remaining militia in the camp will given different job oriented, personality development and religious studies courses so that they could be employed in various work fields.

I sensed that my Europeans listeners were in their turn raising eyebrows as a sign of wonder that I am claiming to manage all without foreign hand.

“Of course international community and the UN should play a crucial role. They should support with logistics, financial support and training of the new police force with small number of high level military officials to coordinate with the Somali officials.

in conclusion the following factors play a big role in the disarming of the Somali militias.

Ø Full cooperation from the Somali militia leaders , tribal elders, civil society m unarmed factions and political leaders .

Ø Funds, logistical support and personnel from the international community.

Ø Good heart and genuine desire for everlasting peace and prosperity in Somalia from all concerned.

Well satisfied with the report , my European friends wanted to stop taking notes and then thank me when I told them that the last but not the least factor that can discipline the armed militia and make them drop the gun proudly is the implementation of the love and peace gestures as in every religion.

Awes A.Osman

[email protected]

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