What has been held at the realm of speculations by many and for certainty by only a few privileged individuals can now be officially confirmed from the horse’s mouth. That Mr Matthew Bryden is guilty as charged. How ironical that his personal admission came through his attempts at denial.
Through an emotional essay, Matthew Bryden of SAHAN RESEARCH and UN Monitoring fame, bared to anyone who cared to know that his activities in Somalia have been more than pervasively subversive against Somalia’s business, political and government elites. Oh, poor Bryden.
As a result of constant pressures coming to him from Farmaajo’s administration, culminating in his guilty verdict by Somali courts, Matthew Bryden couldn’t holdback any more. He succumbed! It came by way of an essay he published on The Elephant, today, 8 November 2021. His mask (identity not Cavid-19) came off.
FGS failures are well known to all who interest Somalia politics, including Farmaajo himself— and includes all of what Mr. Bryden has mentioned in his sour grapes essay. However, where Mr Bryden went wrong is when he allowed himself to be overcome with raw emotions.
But by going after Fahad Yasin, whom he presumes as the author of his personal and his company’s misfortune in Somalia since 2018, and Farmajo’s owner, Matthew Bryden inadvertently dropped all his guards, at a moment of emotional breakdown, to expose the true nature of his activities in the Horn of Africa in general and Somalia in particular.
In his uncontrolled emotional fit against someone who he has taken as his personal and business foe, Matthew Bryden ended up hurting through his ill-will, the majority of Somalia’s political elite who happen to share almost similar personal and political history with Fahad Yasin. Which means, by “spilling the beans” on his foe, Fahad Yasin, Matthew Bryden “spilled the beans” on every of Somalia’s political big wigs and their close allies, burning all his bridges in the process.
Without exception, Matthew Bryden inadvertently dug what he considers as dirt on all of Fahad Yasin’s bird of a feather. Matthew Bryden’s assertions (spooking on) against Fahad Yasin basically touches on and feels like a roll call of the who’s whom of Somalia’s political class.
They include, Ahmed Madobe, Said Deni, Sheikh Sharif, Abdirahman Abdishakur, Ali Haji Warsame, Dahir Mohamud Gelle, Abdikarim Guled, Farah Sheikh, Ahmed Ali Fiqi, Odawaa, Nurdin Dirie, Mohamed Abdirizak, Adan Shirwa Jama, and almost every Somali who was between the ages 17-30 in the 1990s, and the next generation of teenagers in the following decade. As when it comes to Islamists, Somalis are either infected or affected.
Mr Bryden reserved his worst indignation and ridicule for opposition presidential candidates with his praise for the great job Fahad has done to transform NISA.
“Fahad has transformed NISA from a decrepit, thuggish secret police force into a modern, capable intelligence service and the secretive core of Villa Somalia’s power.” This factual assessment of Mr Bryden is the worst indictment, in writing, by a foreigner against president Hasan Sheikh. That he ran and left behind NISA as “decrepit, thuggish secret police force” which Fahad later transformed “into a modern, capable intelligence service.”
Already too battered by Nabad iyo Nolol’s aggressive posture for survival, Mr Bryden’s tantrums-filled essay could turn out to be his most strategic mistake after his mistake to take-on Farmaajo, thinking that he can get away with it as he did get away with his attacks against Hasan Sheikh’s administration. From having Farmaajo as his enemy since proscribing him and his company from Somalia, now, as a direct consequence of his essay, Matthew Bryden unnecessarily made himself the broadest of foes from a pool of Somalia’s potential leaders in the near future.
It’s highly doubtful after this that any of the leading presidential candidates will reverse Farmaajo’s administration’s sanctions against Matthew Bryden and his company, if they ever come to power. It won’t help that Matthew Bryden and his company acted as pro bono consultant for the council of presidential candidates, ASWJ and anti-Farmaajo FMSs. Because he trashed everyone of them with this essay of his, especially the part where he went personal against Fahad Yasin.
All because it’ll now be clear to them what Mr Bryden’s work had been in Somalia: spying and profiling Somali business, cultural, politics and government leadership. That what he said about Fahad, he must have said about each one of them before and will say about each one of them if they takeover the reigns of government. They know all too well that yesterday he was on Hassan Sheikh and Tuuryare, today he on Fahad and Farmaajo’s case, and tomorrow he will be on anyone of them who ascends to power! That’s is his job. And he says, “it’s not espionage.”
Excerpts from Mr Bryden’s Essay with analysis:
Anyone directly or indirectly described in the following paragraphs, will he left enraged by Matthew Bryden’s essay as it will confirm to them the dangerous nature of his and his company’s clandestine activities in Somalia. They now know how expensively they have been paying for consultancies on draft statements in English! Like the Somali pride who publicly called out the hunter lad who tried to lay her over a leg of dikdik, when her husband paid 100 camels as dowry, they will now call Mr Bryden out for his over priced draft English statements.
After this essay, a lot of Somali opposition politicians will start asking themselves the right questions: why is Mr Bryden risking so much in Somalia? Why should he be so involved in Somalia? Why is he so adamant in doing business on Somalia? Can’t he go back and find work in his country? Why is he acting more Somali than the Somalis when all he has been doing, which he also did in this essay, is to set Somalis against each other on religious factions and clan lines and setting Somalia against its neighbors?”
- Some of the country’s largest telecoms and financial institutions were found non-compliant with due diligence standards and even minimal anti-money laundering/countering terrorist financing best practices, enabling Al-Shabaab to make routine use of their services – including highly irregular transactions that should have raised red flags. The FGS, for its part, makes little or no effort to enforce its own regulations in this regard. (This affects almost all Somalis and is criminal of Mr Bryden to espouse).
- While Fahad was carving out a career for himself in the aftermath of Al-Itihaad’s 1997 defeat, the movement’s other alumni had divided into two wings: one, asserting that Somalia was not yet ripe for jihad, pursued political and economic interests, while advancing the core tenets of Al-Sahwa’s radical ideology by establishing an underground organisation (tanzim) and by preaching (da’wa). They called themselves Al-I’tisaam. The other faction, unwilling to abandon the path of jihad, sought out foreign fields of battle on which to hone their beliefs and skills. (The first part of this paragraph, Mr Bryden affects the majority of Somalia’s political and business elites)
- Farmaajo was not an Islamist, but from Fahad’s perspective, this rendered his candidate even more useful. During his studies abroad and exposure to members of other Islamist groups, Fahad had apparently internalised a practice more commonly associated with Shi’a Islam: taqqiya – the use of deception and dissimulation in defence of the faith, which Sunni jihadists have pragmatically appropriated in recent decades. Farmaajo’s secular profile, his ultranationalist populism, and his American passport, complemented by an entourage of technocratic cabinet ministers from the diaspora with Western accents and stylish suits, would help to camouflage Fahad’s real ambition: an Islamist coup.”
(Every Islamist will find slighted and exposed by this last paragraph, turning them into Mr Bryden’s enemies the moment they read or hear of his incriminating essay. For example, Said Deni will see himself in this. That, as with Fahad, Nr Bryden is making guilty of “Taqqiya” putting on a deceptive show with his dancing in public, his fake love for music, his pretense to supporting abortion, his anti-islamic clerics posturing and all that just to camouflage his past Jihadi orientation).
- “Bringing Al-Shabaab into government would also solve another wicked problem that many Western governments feel strongly about: AMISOM. Integrating jihadist fighters into the Somali security sector would obviate the need for an international peace enforcement operation. Bilateral train-and- equip missions for Somali security forces might continue far into the future, but the enormous cost and commitment required to sustain the AU mission would finally come to an end.” (If this is the case, why is Mr Bryden jittery about reconciliation with Al Shabaab? For personal economic reasons to sustain his war economy. What’s also clear from here is his loath for AU/AMISOM because of conflict of interest-related business contract issues.)
By: Aydid Guled
Muqdisho-Somalia
