<\/a><\/p>\nAnother issue is Sharif Hassan\u2019s plan to sell the land of the Lower Shebelle. Recently, a group of Indian experts from the United Arab Emirates visited Baraawe in the Lower Shebelle to check the port for future development and to explore whether there is oil in the region. Another privately owned company, Somali Fruits, is sponsoring a trip for Sharif Hassan to go to Germany in an attempt to export Somali bananas from the SW. While encouraging investment in the region is a noble idea and badly needed, there is no mechanism to investigate the validity and effectiveness of these projects. Numerous calls by concerned SW residents to Sharif Hassan to establish “Xafiiska Hanti Dhawrka” (Bureau of Safeguarding National Resources) have gone unanswered.<\/p>\n
A major concern for some SW residents is the fear that Sharif Hassan is indirectly facilitating the introduction of Shiism in the region. Sharif Hassan has received 200 scholarships from Iran for Somali youths to study there. Most of these scholarships have already been granted to Sharif Hassan\u2019s relatives and members of his clan, the Asharaf. While the Asharaf in Somalia are Sunnis, the group has historically claimed to be descendants of the family of Prophet Mohamed. One similarity between the Shiites and the Asharaf is their unbridled devotion to “Ah-lul Bayt” ([Mohamed]\u2019s family). Some Somali religious scholars have been vociferously lashing out at Iranian charities in Somalia because they fear the spread of Shiism in an overwhelming Sunni country. Recently, Somali clerics noticed the emergence of a small number of Somali Shiites in the nation.<\/p>\n
An issue that angered many residents of the SW is the presence of the abhorred checkpoints in the region. These checkpoints, still run by armed militias, collect exorbitant taxes from residents and extort bribes from motorists. Unfortunately, instead of getting rid of these roadblocks, Sharif Hassan\u2019s administration has introduced an additional 40 checkpoints in the region. Two of these checkpoints are near Afgooye and are controlled by Mursal, Sharif Hassan\u2019s nephew, through his representative, a man named Daahir Sharif. According to several ministers, two of these checkpoints are falsely run in the name of “Iskaashatada Gaadiidka” (The Transportation Co-op). There is no group in the SW by the name of “Iskaashatada Gaadiidka.” The net daily income from these two roadblocks is 35 million Somali shillings ($1590 USD) and is directly deposited in Mursal\u2019s personal account.<\/p>\n
The absence of police force and security services, coupled with the presence of a sizable fighters of Al-Shabaab, has exacerbated the lack of safety in the state. There are still territories in the region that are controlled by Al-Shabaab. The terror group has historically flourished in areas such as the SW where injustice, marginalization, and bad governing are prevalent.<\/p>\n
Now that the Somali president has cancelled the one-man, one-vote election in 2016, Sharif Hassan is likely to amass more wealth as a war chest to be a contender for the federal presidency or to act as a power broker. Next year, instead of people electing candidates directly, the regional state representatives will probably do the selection, a process conducive to bribery and corruption. Sharif Hassan is presiding over a region which has a lot of potential but he is not interested in providing an effective and productive leadership. In a way, he is standing on the ashes, however, the saga of the SW and its leader will continue.<\/p>\n
Hassan M Abukar
\nEmail:abukar60@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
August 11, 2015 By: Hassan M. Abukar Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, the President of the Interim South-West Administration (ISWA) in Somalia, is deliberately stemming the natural growth of the nascent federated state by employing “qaraabaysi” (nepotism), patronage, and misuse of public funds. After two decades of civil war, followed by years of Al-Shabaab domination, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Sharif-Hassan-300x226.jpg?fit=300%2C226","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89N1L-5GU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}