Somali physician calls on leaders in Diaspora to return home and work for reconciliation

On the Hiiraan Online website, Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar, a Somali physician living in Toronto, predicts that Ethiopia's intervention in Somalia will result in a war of insurgency that will only please al Qaeda while making "sacrificial lambs" of both Ethiopian and Somali youths. Somalis should not wait on anyone else to head off this tragedy, he argues. Rather, Somali leaders in the diaspora must seize the opportunity to return home and work for national reconciliation.

Some quotes (but please take the trouble to read the whole article):

"Somalia’s Diaspora leadership has a rare opportunity to make a difference. They have gone out far and wide to over to 15 different foreign countries in artificially baked dead-end Somali reconciliation conferences. Now they need to go to the one place where they have a reasonable chance at long last of making a real difference for Somalis- Somalia. These reconciliation professionals need to go to Mogadishu. They need go to Baidoba. And they need to do so now.

"The situation is ripe for Somalis to reconcile by themselves, in their own country with the help of their own people. No more Yemenis. No more Sudanese. No more Kenyans, Libyans, Egyptians. No more IGAD nonsense. No more holding Somali “unity” conferences in posh hotels. Few brave good Somalis are needed now to provide a face saving formula for both Zenawi and Aweys and to provide some space for rational dialogue for Somalis every where."