Somalia's Farmaajo, a human trafficker pretending to be president
Farmaajo's transfer of Somalis to fight and die on foreign soil and on behalf of a foreign dictator is a betrayal of his oath. The fact that he would in effect traffic young Somalis for his own profit, however, crosses the line between poor leadership and human trafficking.
Both Farmaajo's government, for its part, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Ethiopian government denied the presence of Somali forces in Tigray.
The parents began gathering in Mogadishu’s streets on Jan. 20. Soon, reports began spreading in about similar protests in other towns and cities across the country.
The spark was an acknowledgment made by Abdisalan Yusuf Guled, the former deputy head of Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency, on Jan. 18 that 370 Somali soldiers had died fighting in the Ethiopian province of Tigray.
Every time the international community lets Farmaajo empower himself at the expense of Somali law, Somalia suffers and regional instability increases. Rather than fund Farmaajo so lavishly, it is time to sanction him and treat him for what he is.
If the Biden administration truly wants to restore the credibility of American diplomacy, then the best way forward in the Horn of Africa would be to stop turning a blind eye toward Farmaajo’s abuses and instead treat Farmaajo for what he has become: a human trafficker pretending to be president.
The United States and the broader international community have spent billions of dollars in order to pull Somalia back from the brink. However, Somali officials had lost, wasted, or embezzled the funds.
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