Book Review
In Defence of Somalia
Author: Louis Fitzgibbon
Publishers: Rex Collings Ltd UK price: £6.25
For years the Horn of Africa, one of Africa's most troubled spots, has made headlines in foreign papers and continues to agitate the minds of many who see and understand the plight of a people living in bondage on their own land.
The author of this book is obviously one such person, whose previous book, The Betrayal of the Somalis attempted to put into perspective the case of the people to the world community.
Who are the Somalis? In The Evaded Duty, Fitzgibbon graphically describes them as the "Irish of Africa, in that they are extremely generous yet fierce and war-like simultaneously. Of penetrating gaze and easy manner, they are people to be reckoned with, as history has clearly revealed ... past wrongs are not forgotten, nor is the sense of of unity."
The main problem of the Somalis concerns the west, that part annexed by Ethiopia known as 'Ogaden' from the name of a tribe which inhabits it. This area, Western Somalia to the Somalis, has been the bone of contention for many years between the governments.
The book argues strongly on the atrocious Human Rights record of the Ethiopian Dergue headed by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam who while severely suppressing those he does not see eye to eye with has created an impression in international circles of a regime ready to help returnees and resettlement programmes aimed at attracting more aid.
Fitzgibbon then tackles the duplicity of Western nations in connection with the Ethiopian government and its relations with surrounding countries.
He analyses the debates of the United Nations on the refugee issues and in some detail the shameful hand- ling of a report for presentation at the 38th session of the commission on Human Rights which was part of the UN Economic and Social Council also involved the United Nations Commission for Refugees.
In conclusion, Fitzgibbons contemplated at least three aspects two which the United Nations has evaded its duty in that part of Africa. deliberate mutilation of official record and the failure to address root causes of refugee flow out and into the area.
The next few chapters deal with legality of occupation and an appendices on United Nations' resolutions on the issue and very interesting correspondence dating back to the turn of the century from the British Foreign Office on Abyssinia (Ethiopia). For students of the Somalian and Ethiopian land dispute, this book certainly gives an insight into the intricacies of negotiations and the political manipulations going on inside Mengistu’s regime to frustrate efforts of West Somalia to gain access to their own land.
B.O.
