What has happened there is a serious crisis of national proportion and it should be dealt as such. Crises happen. They happen to organizations, governmental or othersectors. They happen in people’s personal lives as well as in their professional lives.

Crises by nature bring change, some times big changes. They can change the entire course of ones life or one’s organizations future for good or for bad. That is said, how we behave in a crisis and how we manage crisis, is the deal. There is a right way and a wrong way to address crises. If we don’t behave in a way which addresses the crises in the right way and in timely fashion then we are doomed to escalate the crises in to an undesirable level.

We believe Somaliland authorities (as usual) both the government and the Military failed to address the death of the chief of staff and the operations officer who were murdered by an ex-militia person recruited in to the national Army by Siilanyo’s administration as news media reported widely. Some websites said that the perpetrator belongs to the same sub-clan which the President and the powerful Minister of the Presidency belong. Our point is not whether the murderer belongs to one sub-clan or the other or who ever; our point is how the government and the Military behaved and how they managed the crises. How they managed was insufficient and wrong. Let us take the behavior part

1-The president was supposed to address the nation because what has happened and the sensitivities it carries is not trivial in any measure. A chief of staff and an operations officer was murdered by a guy of the Presidents clan, Instead The President was busy in his personal family affairs

2-The killed officers did not belong to the area the incident has happened. Their bodies were not supposed to be dumped there. Their bodies were supposed to be transported to their families. The government and the Military failed this too. We are saying this because, how the solder from the Western Rregions of the state feel when he saw what has happened and how his officers were treated in their death! Put your self in his shoes.

Conclusion:

a) Bring back the bodies of the Murdered Officers to their families, and to their home towns

b) Apologize to the nation and to the families of the murdered officers

c) Crises by nature bring change, some times big changes. They can change the entire course of one’s organization’s future Change in government and the Military in Somaliland must come as part of remedying the crises in the Military discipline and the Military cohesion as well as the government itself as a whole.

If nothing of the above happens and if business as usual wins the day then the ONLY glue that keeps the state together which is the national army will loosen and disintegrate, God forbid. Peace and prayers

Ibrahim M Mead

Political analyst

Ottawa, Canada