Lake and volcano in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda / credit: Wikipedia/Neil Palmer
Rwanda is one of the world’s fastest growing economies and is ranked second in Africa as the easiest place to do business. In addition, this landlocked country boasts the world’s record for female representation in parliament. And it’s the only African country that manufactures “Made in Africa” smartphones.
These milestones make for impressive reading in the Western world, so accustomed to morbid news from the most corrupt region of the world.
This has also led major global brands including the world’s biggest car manufacturer, the world’s biggest nuclear company by foreign orders, a major U.S. multinational telecommunications company plus a retinue of other global corporations to set up shop in a country the size of the U.S. state of Maryland.
In the paternalistic eyes and hearts of foreign development partners in Africa, Rwanda is obsequiously referred to as the “Singapore of Africa,” a moniker that gives the impression that all is hunky-dory in this “land of a thousand hills.”
Rwanda’s economic and social accomplishments—while impressive—mask the underbelly of one of the world’s cruelest states, led by Paul Kagame.
Here, freedom of expression is muzzled. Extrajudicial killings are institutionalized. Show trials are routinely encouraged. Forced disappearances are embraced, while private businesses are forcibly seized by a regime that operates like the Nazi Gestapo.
Despite evidence of Kagame ordering his political opponents to be murdered, arrested, jailed, kidnapped, assassinated and tortured, the international community has continued to turn the other way. Why is that the case in Rwanda, but not in countries like Ethiopia, where U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for a ceasefire to allow for humanitarian aid to flow into the Tigray region?
Rwandan President Paul Kagame / credit: cmonionline
The President and the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) have built and fine-tuned over the decades a totalitarian police state in which criticism of the government, or any semblance of dissent, is criminalized and often results in death for those who dare to speak out, said Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa. He told TF in an email exchange, “There is no independent media, nor independent human rights groups or a political opposition that are allowed the minimum space to operate. The ruling RPF, in essence, has been wholly conflated with the state,” says Smith.
The 1994 genocide killed about 800,000 people drawn mainly from the minority Tutsi community, including moderate Hutus, while the rest of the world silently looked on. But Rwanda has since experienced an economic recovery that has been inextricably linked to Kagame, who officially took power in 2000.
In a controversial 2015 constitutional referendum, Rwandans voted overwhelmingly to allow Kagame, 63, to stand again for office beyond the end of his second term, which ended in 2017. He won elections held the same year with nearly 99 percent of the vote. In theory, he could run twice again, keeping him in power until 2034. His current term ends in 2024.
So why does the Western world play blind and deaf to the excess exhibited by Kagame? In other words, why the complicity in crimes and misdeeds in Rwanda ever since the end of the genocide?
“Rwanda has performed exceedingly well on the economic front. It’s seen as a success story in a continent that is dotted with malfunctioning states,” Lewis Mudge, the Central Africa Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) told TF in a telephone interview. “The international donor community loves a good story and Rwanda serves as an example.”
The United States and the United Kingdom, like other Western governments, did not intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Nonetheless, both U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair later emerged as moralists and humanitarian interventionists, claiming human rights as one of the guiding principles for U.S. and British leadership in the world. This argument has since been used to bomb Yugoslavia, and invade Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
However, a U.S. diplomat quoted in the New York Times in an article aptly titled, “The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman,” explained the reason the West disregarded the atrocities happening in Rwanda. “You put your money in, and you get results out. We needed a success story, and he was it.”
French President Emmanuel Macron / credit: The White House
In late May, French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to Rwanda, formerly a French colony, in a gesture largely aimed at fixing a glacial relationship that had broken down as a result of the latter having backed the former extremist government in Rwanda, including supporting and training its military, which committed genocide.
In addition, France is determined to win back its influence in former French colonies in Africa, including in Rwanda. Some have begun cooperating with other powers, among them China and Turkey, said Arrey E. Ntui, a researcher with the International Crises Group (ICG).
“The French Government is currently not that popular in Africa as a result of its past exploitative history with African states,” said Ntui. “The current leadership in Africa is assertive and takes no prisoners. This calls for France to tread carefully because there are emerging nations that are willing to partner with Africa without a condescending attitude. So it would have been foolhardy, for example, for Macron to censure his Rwandan counterpart on account of real or imagined human rights abuses happening in Rwanda.”
Since his inauguration in May 2017, Macron has visited 18 African countries out of 62 states he has so far visited, a sign that he is determined to claw back the influence France once had when it counted 20 countries as its colonies within the African continent.
But should the world expect an insurgency anytime soon in Rwanda?
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, a former presidential contestant who has been jailed for 15 years for daring to challenge Kagame told TF the Kagame government took power after a war and genocide.
“I would say that all these crimes committed in our country have traumatized Rwandans,” Umuhoza said. “Moreover, there is no room for dissenting voices in Rwanda. If one criticizes the government they are immediately labeled as the enemy of the state. Under such circumstances, people live in constant fear of expressing themselves. But this silence worries me a lot because it can lead to implosion in Rwanda one day.”
U.S. National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report published every five years says the world is “at a critical juncture in human history” and warns that a number of countries are at high risk of becoming failed states by 2030—Rwanda being one of them.
Charles Wachira is a foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya, and is formerly an East Africa correspondent with Bloomberg. He covers issues including human rights, business, politics and international relations.
The practice of “thengapalli” has helped one forest in India.
Groups of 4 or 5 women have taken turns carrying wooden sticks to guard their community forest against theft and poaching. This practice has helped the once-devastated forest in the state of Odisha to regenerate.
“Nature is the source of identity, culture, language, tradition and livelihood for an Indigenous community and, thus, they have been protecting it,” said Archana Soreng, an Indigenous activist and researcher from Odisha. “Unlike how the contemporary development framework sees nature as a commercial entity.”
A new report more than 20 Asian Indigenous organizations have authored warns Western conservation models governments and organizations worldwide have adopted threaten the rights of Indigenous communities and local people.
Posang Dolma Sherpa said such spatial targets are simplistic and do not translate into actual progress.
“For many of the Indigenous peoples and local communities already safeguarding the planet’s natural resources and biodiversity without outside help, the catchphrase ‘30 by 30’ belies the many complex considerations required to ensure truly sustainable conservation,” said Sherpa, executive director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples and Research and Development (CIPRED), based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
As an example, she explained that in Nepal, generations of Indigenous customary institutions and self-governance systems that contributed to sustainable management of biodiversity and ecosystem were ignored. Instead, new land and forest management processes were superimposed, causing injustices and marginalization that exacerbated the issues that were meant to be rectified.
“When countries gather in Kunming in April to finalize the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework, it is imperative that the draft targets are modified to explicitly recognize human rights-based approaches to conservation on a global scale,” she added.
Sherpa said this can be done by:
Changing Target 2 in the framework to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous Peoples and local communities and their right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC);
changing Target 3 to include the appropriate territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities, the equitable governance of these territories and resources, and their appropriate legal recognition within the target;
including the “devolution of authority and broad-based alliances with Indigenous peoples and local communities” within the GBF’s enabling conditions, paragraph 17; and
ensuring a due diligence mechanism and an accountability process.
A view in Rachakonda in the Indian state of Telangana / credit: Sravan Kumar on Unsplash
Living In Constant Fear of Evictions
A huge gap exists in the recognition and legal status of tenure rights. Between 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion Indigenous peoples and local communities live in important biodiversity conservation areas globally, but legally own only 10 percent of the lands they customarily manage.
Sherpa said for the GBF to achieve its goals for a better and harmonious future, it must support and initiate drastic transformations that facilitate environmental and social justice. “Failing to uphold international standards of human rights or erect due diligence mechanisms to ensure human rights are being implemented will only enable the continuation of the same processes that are destroying the environment and causing human rights violations at the same time.”
A 2020 map of Indian states and neighboring countries, including Nepal / credit: Maps of India
Already, several communities have lost access to local, ecological and cultural resources, and have undergone trauma due to eviction. In many areas, their rights are still not recognized. Even when legal rights are afforded, such as India’s 2006 Forest Rights Act, many of these rights are subverted. During the 2020 lockdown, land belonging to tribes in the states of Telangana and Odisha were reportedly grabbed under the pretext of afforestation.
Neither the forest departments of the Indian government nor the Odisha state responded to this reporter, as of press time. The Indian Ministry of Tribal Affairs also did not reply.
Prudhviraj Rupavath, researcher with New Delhi-based data research agency Land Conflict Watch, who contributed to the report, said many Indian states have neglected to implement the Forest Rights Act. “Awaiting legal titles for their cultivating land, indigenous people are constantly living with the fear of evictions.” He added that though Indigenous communities help protect and restore forests, Indian state governments are prioritizing displacing people rather than securing tenure rights.
Aside from being an Indigenous activist and researcher, Soreng is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Youth Advisory Group on Climate Change. She said when an Indigenous community is displaced, they lose their identity, culture, language, and traditional knowledge and practices of forest conservation. That makes not only the humans, but the ecosystem, vulnerable to the climate crisis.
Soreng added Indigenous communities have been using twigs to brush teeth, and building dining plates, mats, chairs, and small tables using leaves.
A mountain in Deomali, Barakutni, in the Indian state of Odisha / credit: Mohan Vamsi on Unsplash
Moving Toward Collective Ownership
The increasing focus on commodity-driven development threatens one-quarter of Indigenous peoples’ land, according to the report.
“Due to a systemic lack of formal legal recognition, the lands customarily occupied and owned by Indigenous peoples and local communities are seen as ‘available’ or property of the government,” said Thomas Worsdell, editor of the report.
In India, several large areas are classified as wastelands although they customarily belong to tribal communities. This opens them to environmentally destructive industries and human rights abuses, he said.
“Examples are the coal sector in India and the fossil fuel industry, more broadly, agricultural expansion (e.g., palm oil), mining, renewable energy (hydroelectric dams and wind turbines) and even the carbon offsets market,” Worsdell told Toward Freedom. “These industries are expanding into the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples and local communities who do not have collective ownership.”
These threats on territories are often encouraged and even enabled by the state, he added. In Indonesia, the recent Omnibus bill was enacted to attract business investments, but weakened both environmental and human rights protections.
To prevent these threats, the report states governments should embrace human rights-based strategies, and recognize the land, forest, water, and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Worsdell said supporting Indigenous and local movements is key to creating legal transformations at the national level that support capacity and funds. Capacity in this instance can include trainings, workshops, supporting knowledge sharing, participatory mapping, among other steps to ensure the human rights of Indigenous and local peoples are upheld.
Indigenous and local community organizations are already providing solutions for human rights-based approaches. They have proposed laws and amendments, created the frameworks for nationally recognized Indigenous institutions and agencies, and are conducting research that proves the environmental benefits of human rights-based conservation.
For example, the Tsumba and Nubriba Indigenous groups in Nepal renewed in 2012 the practice of a Shagya (non-violence) customary institution to protect nature, biodiversity and their cultures. This practice involves the establishment of a committee made up of representatives from 10 villages to ensure no killing, hunting, harvesting of wild honey, forest fires, flesh trading, trapping and sale of animals, and trading of domestic animals take place during various timeframes.
Worsdell said, however, this practice lacks legal recognition, which is often the case in many Asian countries, where the legal climate does not favor human rights-based approaches to conservation.
“Governments must first recognize Indigenous identities, bring an immediate end to criminalizing and killing of Indigenous peoples and local communities defending their lands, and put in place a national accountability and reparation mechanism for past and present human rights violations,” Worsdell explained.
He said Indigenous peoples must have a seat at the decision-making table as leaders instead of as symbolic representations. He added governments must endorse and commit to the ‘Land Rights Standard,’ a set of emerging best practices for recognizing Indigenous peoples’ and local communities’ land and resource rights in landscape restoration, management, conservation, climate action, and development projects.
A song created by groups of Indigenous people aptly captures the essence of the report:
“…Nature was taken from Indigenous people again and again, betrayed, they lost their forest wealth. We had knowledge of the forest then, why have we lost the knowledge now. Indigenous people lived with freedom in the forests, today we are oppressed by the ruling class. We used to have everything, Now, why have we lost what was ours…”
Deepa Padmanaban is a Bangalore, India-based freelance journalist, who writes about the environment, conservation and climate change. She can be followed on Twitter at @deepa_padma.
As anger over incoming tax hikes boils over in Kenya, African Stream takes a deep dive into the role the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played in ramming austerity down Africans’ throats. It boils down to neocolonial debt slavery, a system designed to oppress Africans, while oiling the wheels of otherwise faltering Western economies. African Stream’s Kenneth Kaigua breaks down this complex issue.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Grayzone.
Ilhan Omar was greeted with vigorous booing during a July 2 Minneapolis concert featuring Somali singer Suldaan Seeraar in Minneapolis. The booing was so profound and so sustained that it was impossible to mistake it for cheering, or all the thumbs down for thumbs up. It reportedly went on for ten minutes or more, punctuated with, “Get out!” and “Get the f*ck out of here!”
Ilhan smiled, gesturing at the crowd to tamp it down, as though the adulation was just too much. Her husband, Tim Mynett, stood at her side looking awkward and confused, then someone who seemed to be a concert manager gestured at the crowd more emphatically to tamp it down. Some say the booing went on even longer while Ilhan went through the process of presenting Suldaan Seeraar with some sort of award.
The singer shifted uneasily from one leg to another, seeming startled and unsure what to do, then reached out to gesture at the crowd, also asking them to tone down their gestures of disapproval. This seemed to be more than he had bargained for when he agreed to share the stage with the congresswoman.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was booed last night by thousands of the Minneapolis Somali community last night at a Somalia Independence Day celebration concert.
Seeraar is extremely popular in the Somali community and was playing to a packed house; he’s unaccustomed to boos. This was his first concert in North America and he’s likely unfamiliar with Ilhan’s record in the House and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights, where she serves as vice chair. (Karen Bass currently chairs the subcommittee, and vice chairs the National Endowment for Democracy, the regime change wing of the U.S. government, and is all but certain to become the next mayor of Los Angeles come November.)
Ilhan, an African immigrant and the only Black person on the subcommittee besides Bass, is a shoe-in to become chair if Democrats hold onto the house, unlikely as that may seem.
Many Africans shudder at the thought, however –– not only in Somalia, her country of origin, and the rest of the Horn of Africa, but also in the African Great Lakes Region and in diasporas from both regions.
When I organized a Twitter space discussion with Somali American activists on Ilhan’s record, I heard an outpouring of anger not only over her perceived neglect of her district, where violent crime is surging, but also over her role in the removal of Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and her support for a candidate affiliated with her personal clan. This was but one of examples of the congresswoman’s role in advancing U.S. meddling in the Horn of Africa.
Ilhan Omar Meets with Kagame and Tedros As They Plot Against Ethiopia
In Rwanda on a private visit, Congresswoman Mrs @IlhanMN stopped by our offices today, for a presentation of the Foundation and other programmes, initiated by Our Chairperson @FirstLadyRwanda. pic.twitter.com/HNQBffJDy1
David Himbara, a former economic advisor to Kagame, and Tom Zoellner, author of Rusesabagina’s biography, slammed Ilhan in a Minnesota Post op-ed, writing that her relationship with Kagame threatened “to throw her entire stance on the U.S. criminal justice system into a light of hypocrisy.”
On April 7 of this year, the congresswoman met with former TPLF Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to “discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access.”
Yesterday, we met with @DrTedros to discuss global health security challenges, including the status of the global COVID response, the global hunger crisis, and ways to improve digital technology to broaden healthcare access. pic.twitter.com/VfifvVrcSL
Tedros has relentlessly abused his global platform as Director of the World Health Organization, in violation of UN rules about political neutrality, to advocate for Tigray— home of the TPLF — as though it were the only Ethiopian region suffering the consequences of the war. He never mentions the immeasurable suffering caused by TPLF invasions of Amhara and Afar Regions, both of which I traveled through in April and May.
On several occasions, Ilhan has asked the State Department for “legal determinations” as to whether the Ethiopian government is guilty of atrocities. Meaning, in fact, illegal determinations, because the assumption she has advanced is that the U.S. has the right to rule that international crimes — most of all genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — have been committed and action must be taken, as in Libya and Syria. According to international law codified in the UN Charter, only the UN Security Council can do that.
On December 21, 2021, while questioning Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee, Ilhan requested an illegal “legal determination” regarding Ethiopian atrocities, called for an arms embargo on Ethiopia, which would make it unable to defend itself, and proposed a “carrot and stick approach” to bringing Somalia to heel.
Ilhan Omar Backs Cold War-Style Measure to Bully African Nations Into Submission
The House passed H.R. 7311 roughly two months after 17 African countries either voted to abstain or did not vote on a UN resolution condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, and Eritrea dared to vote no. The African states voting no comprised just over half of the 35 UN member nations that opposed the measure.
House Resolution 6600, a harshly punitive bill that would sanction Ethiopia and Eritrea, is now pending in the House Foreign Relations Committee. According to Ilhan’s constituents, she has not spoken out against it, although she did make a splash by voting against the embargo on Russian oil.
Why Was Ilhan Omar Booed at Suldaan Seeraar’s Minneapolis Concert?
This writer joined a July 6 Twitter space opened by Somali American community organizer Abdirahman Warsame; 294 Somali Americans and a few Somalis — despite the distant time zone — joined the space. Many of the Somali Americans participating were from Ilhan’s Minneapolis district, and some of the younger ones had attended the concert.
Abdirahman told me that activists with the #NoMore Global Movement for Solidarity in the Horn of Africa had planned to get a few front row seats at the Suldaan Seeraar concert to boo Ilhan and that once they started, it was like a match in a haystack.
Everyone in the Twitter space was furious because Ilhan did her best to help the U.S. displace President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, whom they described as a decent, responsible, corruption-fighting anti-imperialist.
Farmaajo had joined Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in signing the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, which ended the long-running war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and promised a new day of regional cooperation between the three largest nations in the Horn of Africa. It said:
“Considering that the peoples of Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea share close ties of geography, history, culture and religion as well as common interests, the three countries shall build close political, economic, social, cultural and security ties. The three governments hereby establish a Joint High-Level Committee to coordinate their efforts in the framework of this Joint Declaration.”
That, however, was more peace and independence than the U.S. government could tolerate, as many on the Twitter space angrily confirmed. Now, with Farmaajo out of office, the alliance is considerably weakened. The peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea still stands, although the U.S.-backed TPLF keeps skirmishing with its troops on their common border, and Eritrea is helping Ethiopia in its civil war with the TPLF in Welkait.
Ilhan put an enormous effort into getting rid of Farmaajo in a parliamentary election, which many in this Twitter space said was actually clan-based and manipulated by bribery.
Last year, on December, she quote-tweeteda State Department threat to take action if Somalia did not hold elections immediately, stating: “Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It’s time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible.” Her comment was widely republished to make the case against Farmaajo in the U.S. press.
Farmaajo is a year past his mandate. It's time for him to step aside, and for long overdue elections to proceed as soon as possible. https://t.co/f08bSjOJrm
Both the president and the parliament were at that time in office past their constitutional terms. That made Farmaajo interim president, but the states of Puntland and Jubaland refused to recognize his authority. Elections had been repeatedly planned but postponed due to disagreements between parties and lack of election infrastructure. In addition, the Islamist Al-Shabaab was continuing to oppose the existence of a secular Somali state, and the U.S. was still bombing on occasion.
According to those in the Twitter space, Farmaajo had been fighting to establish a direct, one-person-one-vote electoral process to replace the corrupt system of parliamentary election. They said he would have won in a landslide had he succeeded.
As soon as Farmaajo was defeated on May 15 — even before the formal transfer of power — Biden announced a plan to reintroduce troops to Somalia. The New York Times reported the news without raising an eyebrow, but the fury expressed in the 194 reader comments was palpable.
Most commenters were Americans outraged that the U.S. would be introducing more troops anywhere after the Afghanistan debacle, but they also included this response by a Somali American (edited very slightly for punctuation and grammar):
Somalia’s federal government just re-elected former president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud less than 48 hrs ago.
The former president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, who was previously a U.S. citizen and resident of Buffalo, NY, has lost the election due to parliamentary bribery, corruption, and foreign nations’ interfering, spending millions of dollars to overthrow Farmaajo. Those nations included Kenya, U.A.E., & others.
It’s not surprising news to witness the Biden administration seeking to have U.S. military presence in Somalia, since Hassan Sheikh’s election because President Farmaajo would’ve opposed it. Furthermore, this move will only increase security risks and destabilize the Horn of Africa. Sending U.S. military troops now to Somalia is unnecessary, and those troops will be viewed as enemies to the nation and its serenity.
The Somalia army has been fighting Al-Shabaab and all terrorist activities within the region. The army are well trained by the U.S., Turkey, Eritrea, and so on, but the Somalia government is faced with an arms embargo which limits its abilities and its operations. If President Biden wanted to offer solutions or a hand, then the approach would’ve been totally different than resending American troops back into a hostile situation. Former U.S. President Trump’s hands-off position in foreign affairs was exceptionally appreciated.
Also as soon as Farmaajo was gone, and even before the formal transition of power, an oil and gas extraction contract with a U.S. corporation that Farmaajo had blocked was back in play.
The July 6 Twitter space on the booing of Ilhan Omar contained similarly angry commentary by Somali Americans about her imperialist foreign policy positions. After the discussion, several participants sent over the following pointed statements:
Deeqa, @Deeqa_lulu
I am a Somali woman and I think I would have obtained my rights and my future would have been better in Somalia if I had the opportunity to vote for President Farmaajo, but we didn’t have the one-person-one-vote system that he was trying to put in place. Ilhan Omar is originally from Somalia and she has a daughter my age who can vote for her own president in America. She says she believes in democratic principles and she’s a member of the Democratic Party, but she didn’t support a very important right for me, the right to vote in a one-person-one-vote election.
Is this about the Democratic Party or about U.S. foreign policy toward Somalia? Either way, I feel bad and frustrated that she hasn’t changed that. Why would I expect Joe Biden to understand my problem if Ilhan Omar doesn’t? I contacted my family in America and told them not to give their votes to the Democratic Party or to Ilhan. Our 2022 election here in Somalia was eye opener for us about the Democratic Party policy toward Somalia.
We want to vote here in Somalia. That’s one of my biggest dreams now. –Deeqa
Mohammed Caanogeel, @MCaanogeel1
Ilhan Omar is being used by the Democratic Party, whose foreign policy has been aggressive and counterproductive towards Somalia.
She got booed at the concert for two reasons:
Domestically, she promised the East African community help with gun violence and drugs in our community and she hasn’t helped us with that at all.
Internationally, she undermined our sitting Somali president, President Farmaajo, by tweeting and making speeches that he was no longer the president of Somalia even though the constitution of Somalia gave him legitimacy to continue until another president took over. She was helping the U.S. government undermine this president who had captured the hearts and minds of all Somali people.
Farmaajo enjoyed 90% popularity for good governance. This president introduced reforms into the economy to win debt relief from the IMF and World Bank, but Ilhan voted against debt relief here in the United States.
Farmaajo asked the U.S. to lift the arms embargo so that our army could fight the Al-Shabaab fundamentalists, but Ilhan refused to vote for that.
President Farmaajo was loved for his stability, transparency, and fairness. He made us proud by building the military and making our intelligence one of the top 10 in Africa. He built institutions back after 30 years of war, invited foreign embassies into Somalia, and established embassies abroad.
He became such a role model president that the Somali people bought him a home, library, and offices for future campaigns. Even poor people loved Farmaajo so much that they gave to this fund drive for him.
Ilhan joined U.S. policymakers in rejecting all his good deeds, rejecting what the Somali people wanted, rejecting one-man-one-vote, and instead threatened to cut off aid. She and the rest of the U.S. government seek only the worst for Somalia. As we write to each other, the U.S. military has overtaken Berbera Airport and brought a warship to Berbera shores. -Mohammed Caanogeel
Ilhan Ignores the Boos in a Safe Blue District
After the booing episode, Fox gleefully hosted Ilhan Omar’s Republican challenger Cecily Davis to mouth meaningless platitudes about how her opponent is “out of touch with her constituents,” claiming “they are ready for change and are seeking someone who represents their conservative values.”
Davis appeared to be completely ignorant about why an audience of Somali Americans might boo their Somali American representative. The same was true of other right-wing outlets who framed the booing as confirmation that Ilhan’s woke identity offends her own community and that their candidate was therefore a serious contender.
Shukri Abdirahman, a conservative Republican who previously ran to unseat Ilhan, also highlighted the congresswoman’s “woke” positions on social issues as a source of local resentment, but also made sure to point to Ilhan “becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation.”
🧵 Understanding The Booing
Ilhan Omar getting booed and being told to get the f*ck out by our Somali community is not just a revolt against Ilhan selling her soul to the devil and becoming an election-meddling dictator in the foreign affairs of Somalia – a sovereign nation. 1/3
— Shukri Abdirahman (@ShuForCongress) July 5, 2022
Abdirahman Warsame (no relation to Shukri) told me that some culturally conservative Somalis had told him they were uncomfortable with Ilhan’s defense of abortion and LGBT rights, but no one expressed that discomfort in the Twitter space.
Minnesota’s 5th District is the bluest in the state, so the incumbent merely has to win the August primary to win the election, and she is expected to, though perhaps not by the margin she’d like. However, the House is all but certainly turning red, so the next chair and vice chair of the House Foreign Relations Subcommittee will in all likelihood be someone other than Ilhan Omar.
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.
