By Mukhtar M. Omer
As soon as what looked like the “United Somali Congress (USC)” took over Kiev and the BBC reported that the corrupt but elected ‘dictator’ Victor Yanukovich was on the run, I felt Ukraine was starting to parody Somalia. It could not be different, what with the site of the revolution, Maidan square, sounding like a namesake of the Madina sheep-market where in 1991 rowdy Hawiye youth triumphantly ransacked Darood mansions which were as opulent as the US$ 3 million house the ousted President of Ukraine left behind. USC revolutionaries vanquished Darood oligarchs. Ukrainian-speaking oligarchs joined hands with the new rulers just the same way the longest serving Minister in the Siyad Bare government turned into an advisor of the Madina “Right Sector” and “Svoboda” overnight. Right-wing they are called in Ukraine. In Somalia, they are neither left nor right; they are “tol-wing”.
The fallen dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre cursed his ousters not from the breezy Villa Somalia but from Buur Dhuubo, a barren village he called home. Yanukovich re-appeared in a small town in Russia, Rosto-on-Don, claiming to be the legal President of a country whose capital city he fled. So providentially spared death Saddam-style, both men’s foolhardy bravado owed more to a plea for one more gasp than to the promise or prospect of more Presidential life.Continued
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