Bartamaha (Ohio):-  A significant shift in U.S. policy on Somalia is not sitting well with some local Somalis. Now, a U.S. State Department official is in Columbus to dispel misconceptions and answer questions about the policy change and other concerns.

Robert Patterson of the U.S. State Department’s Somalia Diaspora Outreach section is hopping from meeting to meeting with Somali leaders and others.

“We’re at a critical juncture,” said Patterson, who is touring Somali communities across the United States. “We want Somalia to succeed. We want a recognized Somalia that is at peace.”

In October, Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson announced that the U.S. government would engage groups beyond the transitional government in Somalia. That includes governments in the semi-autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland as well as groups opposed to al-Shabab, the Islamist insurgency group.

“We’ll deal with anyone except terrorists,” said J. Peter Pham, senior vice president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, a New York-based research group.

“We will talk to who we need to talk to about how to achieve what the U.S. needs in the region, which is security and stability,” said Pham, an expert on African security issues.

Abdulkadir Ali was one of a number of local Somali leaders who met with Patterson yesterday.

Ali said he supports the new U.S. policy on its face but not if it ends up fueling more division in Somalia. He wants more explanation from the U.S. as to how it would work.

He fears that “every warlord will raise a flag and say, ‘I’m a government,’” said Ali, a community leader who recently announced his candidacy for the Somali presidency. Members of the country’s parliament elect the president.

“I believe in a single Somalia,” said Ali, a member of Darod clan who once chaired the Somali American Chamber of Commerce and now leads a youth job-training agency.

But Pham said those who fear the new policy – namely those of the Hawiye clan – want the transitional government to maintain power. President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed is a member of the Hawiye, whose members, Pham says, are the majority in Columbus.

“The country has already been balkanized,” Pham said.

But Abdinur Mohamud, a local leader who has been asked to join the new prime minister’s cabinet, said it is simply a debate between those who want a centralized government and those seeking a federal system.

“It’s the reality of the situation. It’s not based on clan interests,” said Mohamud, who recently was asked to become the Somali minister of education, culture and higher education. He is now a consultant for the Ohio Department of Education.

Patterson already has visited Somali communities in Maine, northern Virginia, Houston and Seattle, and plans to visit the communities in San Diego and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, home to the country’s largest Somali population.

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Source:- Dispatchpolitics.

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