Re: The Independent State of Somaliland

I salute all of you in the name of Winam Republic!

Did you know that there is an independent state in the horn of Africa, in the greater Somalia region? Read on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070513/
wl_africa_afp/somaliasomalilandunrestethiopia_070513073744

Known as the Democratic Republic of Somaliland, this is an independent state that seceded from Somali Republic in 1991. It is a peaceful and largely prosperous state compared to its larger neighbor, Somali Republic.

Although the Democratic Republic of Somaliland has been denied recognition by the international community, it continues to survive. Its leaders have vowed to soldier on with or without international recognition and its 3.5 million citizens are going on with their lives.

Check the website of the Democratic Republic of Somaliland here for more details:

http://www.somalilandgov.com

What lessons can we learn from the emergence of Somaliland as a state? I believe that the lessons are many. One of them is that new states can emerge in Africa and provide people with viable alternative paths to a better life. Somaliland?s clearest lesson is that Africans do not have to suffer and die in modern, unworkable, incoherent states in Africa; they can form new ones; better ones.

We learn from the Somalia saga that sometimes there is no point of living with people who don't like you. Sometimes it doesn't pay trying to impose ideals and values on people who don't like such ideals and values. Sometimes it pays to just move on.

When people show you over and over again that they have little regards for honesty, justice, fair play, that what they value more are corruption, tribalism, thievery, conmanship, and violence, why waste time with them? Especially when you consider that you never asked to live with them in the first place? That you were forced by colonial powers to live with them?

Some of you may have read newspaper reports where Simeon Nyachae advices Kisiis not to vote for Raila because Luos refused to vote for him when he ran for the presidency in 2002. Just imagine the hypocrisy! Here is a man who never supported Jaramogi for the presidency in 1992, and Raila in 1997, having the audacity, the nerve, to complain how Luos never supported him for the presidency!

This is the kind of dishonesty we have been dealing with in Kenya for the last forty years, and will continue to deal with for many, many years to come if we don't get out of Kenya soon.

I believe that Kenya will never be a democracy. In fact, I would like to make a prediction now and you can check with me in five years time. I want to predict that a big civil war will break out in Kenya five years from now. The signs of a civil war are already there. Ethnic chauvinism, tribal violence and land clashes, blatant and naked nepotism, endemic corruption, elite arrogance, deepening poverty and joblessness, lies and dishonesty, indifference to the plight of others, widening gap between the rich and the poor, and so on are hall-marks of an impending civil war.

I would like to urge Luos to get out of Kenya as soon as possible. May be thing might change if Raila is elected president. Raila's government might introduce a majimbo system, stabilize things, and help stave off the inevitably looming civil war. But if things stand the way they are, you better run. Run away as soon as possible and as fast as you can. Kenya will soon be exploding. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

I truly believe that Winam can successfully emerge out of Kenya and go on to become an extremely viable, stable, prosperous, and democratic state. That is something to think about as we read about the Democratic Republic of Somaliland.

Meshack Owino.