A Strategy to Save Somaliland - The Disease & the Cure

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Introduction

The quotation above from a discussion between Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar (Act 4, Scene 3) concerning how to conduct their war with mark Anthony and Octavius is a particularly apt metaphor for the current political situation in Somaliland (SL).  The total and abject failure of the Silanyo government in both domestic and foreign policy has devastated the country to the point that SL’s most valuable resource, which has been and continues to remain the key driver underlying the country’s existence and peaceful progress, is in danger for the first time in its short history.  This core and irreplaceable resource is the boundless hope and optimism of its people and their determination to carve out an independent, peaceful, and dignified existence for themselves and their progeny.

 It is an undeniable fact that the open, indeed flagrant, looting of the public exchequer and national assets, the rampant cronyism and nepotism in public appointments as well as in the grant of government contracts have inevitably jaundiced public opinion and resulted in widespread cynicism regarding the conduct of public officials and politics generally.  The savage and extra-judicial suppression of dissent and of the independent press coupled with the overt and shameless interference in parliamentary deliberations through vote-buying, deliberate disruptions of legislative sessions (sometimes violently) and repeated failed attempts to unseat the Speaker clearly demonstrate the determination of the government to consolidate all political institutions under its aegis.  The carefully crafted policy of the tribalisation of politics during the last five years has not only coarsened political debate and competition, but fragmented opposition and so rendered it amenable to classic ‘divide and rule’ strategies. 

Further evidence of the inexorable trend towards dictatorship is the concentration of political power in the hands of a chosen few, most of which do not hold formal office but are members of the President’s immediate family or close kinship group.  This group of insiders are congregated around the Presidency and are coalesced around the First Lady and the Minister of the Presidency.  Finally, initiation of negotiations with the latest, foreign-sponsored and externally funded ‘government’ in Somalia has degenerated into a relationship of subservience whereby the sale of national assets to foreign buyers by chosen brokers of the Silanyo government is ratified by Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud and his cohorts in Mogadishu, presumably in return for a share in the brokerage fees.

During the past five years, the Silanyo government has been engaged in a sustained campaign of self-enrichment and aggrandizement as it has suppressed dissent and criticism and debased and coarsened political debate through the overt promotion of tribalism and tribal politics.  The opposition parties of WADANI and UCID have been unable to mount a serious challenge to the government because they have not voiced and championed a compelling alternative and truly national, vision for the country.  There are many reasons for this failure of the two opposition parties, but the key factor is undoubtedly the failure of leadership.  UCID is plagued by confusion and disarray with respect to leadership since the mercurial Faisal Ali Warabe, the Party Chairman, continues to conduct policy ‘on the fly’ as he sees fit with little or no coordination with his colleagues; while Jamal Ali Hussein, the Party’s Presidential candidate, is forced to oppose a government that his Party Chairman occasionally supports and makes deals with.  For its part, WADANI suffers from the fact that its leader and Presidential candidate, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Cirro), is focused upon beating off government efforts to unseat him as Speaker of Parliament rather than mounting a compelling, alternative political and economic program and, thus, an effective electoral challenge to the ruling party.

The central mission of government in SL, namely the quest for recognition, has been effectively shelved by the Silanyo government.  Indeed, its foreign policy has been characterised by the deliberate abandonment of this mission, for example by downgrading the relationship with our key ally and principal supporter, Ethiopia, while, conversely, actively courting our principal detractor, Djibouti.  The commendable successes of the previous SL governments in securing support for SL’s cause among African countries, e.g. Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal and Kenya among others, has been ignored and allowed to wither on the vine.  Meanwhile, the much trumpeted policy of engagement with the government in Mogadishu has yielded nothing but humiliation for the Silanyo government and frustration and disillusionment for the public.  At this juncture, when the term of the government has been extended for 18 or 22 months (the length of the extension remains unclear as yet), it is fair to say that public antipathy to it has never been higher and there is a widespread groundswell for change.  This is the “tide” which is referenced in the quotation above and the fact that the opposition parties are unable to give voice to and channel this widespread disaffection is testament to their failure thus far.

The Threat Posed by the Current Government

In 1991, after evicting the military of the Afweyne dictatorship from their country, the people of Somaliland convened a meeting of all the clans and groups living in the country (whether pro or anti the Mogadishu government) in Burao to determine their future.  At this meeting two fundamental and guiding principles were established and agreed upon by all the clans and groups which underpin the country’s recovery of its sovereignty and its development as an oasis of peace, reconciliation and representative governance in the Horn of Africa.  Firstly, it was agreed that SL belongs to all the people which reside within its borders equally and without fear or favour.  In order to give effect to this core principle and since some communities were aligned with the dictatorship while others fought said dictatorship, not to mention that some communities suffered historical and ingrained social and political discrimination, it was agreed that all past wrongs, disputes and animosities were thereby irrevocably forgiven and consigned to the past.  Thus, the people of SL closed the chapter on past wrongs and disputes and commenced the re-birth of their nation with a blank sheet on which to write their future history.

It is this spirit of national unity, the creation of the SL tribe which transcends clan divisions, if you will, which the overt tribalism of the politics of the Silanyo government has betrayed, and with it the underlying ethos of nation itself.  All nations are composed of different, and often competing, communities; however no nation can endure without a unifying ethos underlying its creation and very existence.  In its doomed efforts to secure its power through a cynical policy of ‘divide and rule’ which plays clans and sub-clans against each other, the Silanyo government betrayed SL’s founding ethos and reverted to the discredited and bankrupt politics of the Afweyne dictatorship.  It is worth remembering that Silanyo himself was the longest serving minister of that defunct dictatorship, so perhaps it should not be a surprise that he has employed its political tactics.  However, he and his cohorts would be wise to remember the ignominious end to that exercise of Machiavellian political skulduggery.

The second principle agreed and established at the Burao Conference in 1991 was that of representative government through the development of a home-grown democratic system of governance which incorporated local tradition and culture.  In this context, it is important to point out that traditional Somali social and political society is very egalitarian and practises a form of direct participatory democracy that has been characterised by the pre-eminent Western scholar of Somali culture and history (the late Ioan Lewis of SOAS) as “democratic to the point of anarchy”.  Thus, SL developed a government composed of three branches – a bicameral legislature with an elected parliament (lower chamber) and a Guurti (upper chamber) composed of traditional elders drawn from all the clans and other social groups; an executive composed of an elected President who then forms a government of ministers and other officials; and a judiciary which interprets and gives effect to the laws passed by the legislature.  This structure was promulgated in the constitution which was ratified by a massive affirmative vote of 97% in 2001.

It is true that the judiciary has always been the weakest branch of government in SL, principally due to limited funding and a lack of professionalism among the judicial cadre and, for this reason, the judiciary has historically been largely subservient to the executive.  However, the legislature has been a very different story and the parliament, particularly, has always demonstrated its independence from the executive, even when the ruling party has held a majority of the seats.  This independence, and willingness to oppose government policies when it deems fit, has been the one of the strongest features of SL’s thriving, hybrid democracy.  It is this independence that the Silanyo government has repeatedly sought to suborn through vote-buying and, most egregiously, through blatant attempts to unseat the sitting Speaker through unconstitutional means.  The latest attempt in September 2015 resulted in violent altercations in the parliament which included the Speaker and Deputy Speaker coming to blows.

The result of this sorry state of affairs has been the demoralisation of the public and its disillusionment with politics and the political class.  On the economic and social front, the entrepreneurial spirit of the people coupled with the sustained growth of remittances from the large diaspora community in Europe, North America and Arabia has resulted in the expansion of educational, communications, health and commercial services.  The government has contributed little to the expansion of this social infrastructure, but has benefited considerably through greatly increased tax revenues which it uses to stifle dissent and criticism (through a much enhanced security apparatus funded largely by the Western Powers in the name of combating ‘terrorism’) and to buy political support.  However, the lack of effective economic and social planning has resulted in ever increasing numbers of secondary school and university graduates with no opportunities for gainful employment that seek a better life abroad at the merciless hands of human traffickers.  Thus, along with their contemporaries in Eritrea, many of the ‘cream’ of Somaliland’s younger generation are joining the exodus from the Horn of Africa to Europe and Arabia with countless numbers perishing on the journey as they fall victim to modern day slave merchants, now euphemistically dubbed ‘human traffickers’.

Towards Forging a New Political Order

In view of the failure of the two opposition parties to mobilise and channel the widespread disaffection of the people to the creeping dictatorship of the Silanyo government, it is necessary to develop alternative avenues of political dissent and resistance to its debasement of politics.  It is clear that the only effective way to mobilise and channel the widespread public antipathy is through a mass movement along the lines of the anti-regime alliances that sprouted in North Africa during the ‘Arab Spring’  some 4/5 years ago and the colour-coded, peaceful ‘revolutions’ in Eastern Europe a little earlier.  Such a mass movement must be driven and lead by the educated youth, genuine clan elders (as opposed to the plethora of bought madax daqameed which have been contemptuously, and aptly, named ‘pre-paid’ by the ordinary public), business and social leaders.  The opposition parties will have the choice of joining in this people-driven, mass movement or be consigned to irrelevance.  The central plank of this opposition movement will be a demand to return to the founding tenets and principles of the re-establishment of SL in 1991, namely:

·         The centrality of the national ethos as opposed to the tribal one promulgated and practised by the Silanyo regime.  SL belongs to all of its people and the clan affiliation (or lack thereof) of any individual or group is irrelevant to their rights and obligations to and from the state.

·         Open and transparent government with all public officials accountable to the people as set out in the constitution.  All three branches of government, especially the executive, must understand that they are public servants, i.e. they work for the people and serve at their pleasure.

·         Establishment and institution of an independent and effective Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) that has powers of subpoena, prosecution and censure.

·         Complete restructuring of the Independent Election Commission insulating it from political interference and empowering it to hold elections on their due dates unless overruled by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature.

·         Restoration of the quest for international recognition as they key foreign policy objective and the establishment of a Council of Wise Men & Experts to develop a clear and coherent strategy to achieve same.

In order to join this movement, the two opposition parties will have to agree to the formation of a national unity government (NUG) in which they will share power in order to present a unified front to contest the elections on behalf of the people.  This will mean, perforce, that they will have to agree upon a program to put the above principles into effect and return the government of SL to its people.  This program must be developed in an open and transparent manner and articulated clearly and widely to provide the people with an explicit checklist of actions with which to hold the NUG to account.   A second plank of this program for the NUG will be the establishment of an independent committee of experts to review the murky deals the Silanyo government has entered into with foreign interests and the Mogadishu ‘government’ with respect to the national assets of SL, e.g. oil concessions, Berbera Port and the Berbera Fuel Storage Depot.  Any such agreements that are found to be against the national interest, or structured for the personal benefit of any special interests shall be either abrogated or cancelled or re-negotiated by the NUG.  Another key plank of the program shall be the promulgation of a Code of Ethics that shall bind all public officials and against which they may be prosecuted.  The fourth plank of the program needs to be the complete overhaul of the judicial branch of government and the allocation of sufficient resources to ensure its independence, impartiality and professional standards.

Conclusion

The central thesis of this paper is that the Silanyo government presents a clear and present danger to the continued existence of SL as an independent, democratic country and, therefore, that its defeat at the upcoming presidential elections is the principal and overriding national duty of all SL patriots and those sympathetic to its cause.  Some extreme conspiracy theorists assert that since Mr. Silanyo had publicly admitted his prior allegiance to the Somaliweyn cause (i.e. the re-establishment of the erstwhile Republic of Somalia) during the election campaign in 2010, that the dismantling of SL from within had always been the central mission of his presidency.  While this interpretation of Silanyo’s presidency is too fanciful to contemplate seriously, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that another five years of the creeping dictatorship characterised by rampant corruption and nepotism and buttressed by savage and severe repression and intolerance of dissent and criticism of this deeply unpopular government will destroy the dream of SL and compromise its democracy and its institutions beyond repair.

In view of this existential threat to the continued progress of the country, and indeed to its very existence, and bearing in mind the clear inability of the two opposition parties to mobilise and channel the widespread public disaffection with this regime, we have sought to propose a practical strategy to mount an effective campaign to defeat the government emphatically at the next presidential elections and so deliver the government of SL back to its people.  Since the threat to the nation posed by the Silanyo regime is mortal, and its political modus operandi is the politics of clan-driven ‘divide and rule’, it is necessary to base the opposition campaign firmly on the unifying national ethos.  Where the regime seeks support on the basis of rewarding loyal so-called clan leaders while punishing (or excluding from government largesse and patronage) disloyal ones, the national opposition campaign will seek support through appeal to SL’s founding national ethos and the vision of clean government, national development and social justice. 

The national opposition campaign will embrace peaceful protest, civil disobedience and mass mobilisation.  The opposition parties, and particularly their leaders, will have to subsume their personal ambitions to the national imperative to save SL and deliver it from the evident peril presented by the Silanyo clique.  Should these parties and leaders not rise to this challenge, they will suffer the same ignominious fate as the government and lose their political legitimacy.  In the 1980s, Somaliland had to be liberated from the oppressive rule of the Afweyne dictatorship through a ten year war of liberation that included calculated genocide by the oppressors.  Now, nearly a quarter century after recovering its sovereignty, the country must once again be liberated; this time from a creeping and corrupt domestic dictatorship that will inevitably deliver it back into the arms of Mogadishu and the bankrupt Somaliweyn ideology that enslaved it in the past.  This is the mission before us.

Ahmed M.I. Egal

23 September 2015

Nationalism, Consent & the State in Somalia

Introduction

Since the collapse of the Siyad Barre military dictatorship in January 1991, the southern part of the erstwhile Somali Republic (i.e. the ex-Italian Somalia) has become the living definition of a ‘failed state’ with the exception of the north-eastern part of the territory which has forged a functioning, clan-based government as the autonomous region of Puntland.  By contrast, the ex-British Protectorate of Somaliland, having recovered the sovereignty and statehood it hastily, but voluntarily, ceded in 1960 in order to unite with ex-Italian Somalia to the south, has managed to establish the only functioning multi-party democracy in the Horn of Africa with a written constitution, separation of powers between the executive, a bicameral legislature and judiciary. 

It is the position of this paper that the glaringly different outcomes to the collapse of the Siyad Barre dictatorship in the two segments of the erstwhile Somali Republic are rooted in the different experiences of colonial rule, the different perceptions of the nature of the state and consent thereto, and also to different impacts and importance of Somali nationalism and its attendant dream of Greater Somalia (Somaliweyn in Somali) in the two territories.  This analysis focuses upon Somaliweyn as the underlying ethos that gave birth to the ill-fated union between the ex-British Protectorate of Somaliland (present day Somaliland) and the ex-Italian Colony of Somalia (or, to give it it’s legal name at that time, the UN Trust Territory of Somalia which was administered by Italy under a UN Mandate) and argues that a critical, and perhaps determining, cause of the opposite responses to the collapse of the state between the two territories is the former’s emphatic rejection of Somaliweyn in preference for alternative formulations of nationalism, and the latter’s continued fealty to this failed dream. 

Of course, the eight hundred pound gorilla in this room is the role, machinations and preferences of regional and international powers in response to the collapse of the erstwhile Somali Republic.  However, this paper is focused upon the internal drivers, i.e. the specifically Somali components, of Somaliland and Somalia that has resulted in their markedly different responses to the collapse of the military dictatorship in the erstwhile Somali Republic and to the efforts to re-establish the state in their respective countries.  Hence, the role and machinations of the regional and international powers are not examined here in detail.

The Historical Background

The Somali people inhabit the land of the Horn of Africa (HOA) stretching from the coastline of the Red Sea as far north as Djibouti to the Indian Ocean as far south as the Northern Frontier District (NFD) of Kenya. Inland, the Somali inhabited territory stretches from Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia to Garissa in northern Kenya. The Somali people share a common language, culture, religion and ethnicity. While there are sedentary agriculturalists in the fertile region around the Juba and Shebelle rivers in the south, Somalis are principally pastoral nomads constantly migrating with their herds of livestock (primarily sheep, goats and camels, but also cattle) in a constant search for pasturage and water. The independent, self-reliant and sometimes fierce culture bred by nomadic life and the tough environment of their land is thus the dominant culture.

This unity of language, culture and ethnicity combined with the arbitrary (at least from a Somali perspective) division of the Somali people and lands among different colonial powers combined to give a unique character to Somali nationalism – namely the wish to unite all Somali people and lands in one, independent nation-state. This feature of Somali nationalism has been much discussed and analysed by both Somali and foreign scholars under the hubris “Somali Irredentism”. When Somali nationalism began to develop in the 1950s as a distinct political movement, motivated by the desire for independence from colonialism and self-rule, the idea of uniting all the Somali peoples in one unitary state was an integral feature of this nationalism. In fact, ‘Greater Somalia’, as it came to be known, was achieved only once in the modern era, briefly in 1941/2 when Britain defeated the Italians in east Africa and the NFD, the Italian colony, the Haud & Reserved Areas (i.e. the eastern, largely Somali-populated province of Ethiopia) and the British Protectorate were under the control of Britain. At the end of the 1940s, Aneurin Bevan, who was the Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary in the government of Anthony Eden and the eminence grise of the Labour Party at that time, proposed uniting the Somali territories into one political entity under British colonial sovereignty. This was vehemently opposed by Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, the French (who wished to retain their dominion over Djibouti) and the Italians who had not relinquished their colonial aspirations with respect to their ex-colony in the south.

The subsequent British government of Harold Macmillan was not beholden to this idea, and the Haud & Reserved Areas (later popularized as the Ogaden) was ceded to Haile Selassie’s imperial Ethiopia in 1948 in recognition of his support for the Allies during World War II despite overwhelming support among the local population for union with the Somaliland Protectorate. Equally, the NFD was ceded to Kenya upon independence in 1962, in direct contravention of Britain’s pledge to the nationalist leaders of British Somaliland Protectorate to abide by a plebiscite which evidenced overwhelming support for union with the Somali Republic by the people of the territory. It is safe to assume that British desire not to endanger British interests and settlers amidst the bitter atmosphere of the post-Mau Mau period after independence underpinned the realpolitik calculus that lead to this volte face.

On June 26^th 1960 the British Somaliland Protectorate was granted independence from Britain and four days later, on 1^st July 1960 the United Nations Trust Territory of Somalia was granted independence and Somaliland and Somalia united to form the Somali Republic on the same date.  The first union government included four Cabinet Ministers from Somaliland in a government headed by a President (a titular Head of State) and a Prime Minister (the Head of Government). The two legislatures were united on an ‘as is’ basis, thus Somaliland’s legislative assembly of 33 seats united with Somalia’s 90 seat legislature to form a new 123 seat National Parliament.  It is important to point out here that the distribution of seats in the new National Parliament did not reflect the population distribution between the components of the new Republic but reflected the nationalist driven rush to union.  The Act of Union and a new Union Constitution were to be ratified by a simple majority of the popular vote through a referendum within two years. In point of fact, the Union Constitution (and the Act of Union which it promulgated) was ratified by over two thirds the votes cast in the ex-UN Trust Territory, while it was overwhelmingly rejected by a similar margin in the ex-British Protectorate, with crucial legal and constitutional ramifications for the recovery of sovereignty by Somaliland some 31 years later.

The Somali Republic’s flirtation with multiparty, parliamentary democracy lasted for some nine years, from 1^st July1960 until 21^st October 1969, when a group of army officers lead by Col. Salad Gabayreh and supported by the Soviet Union seized power in a bloodless coup d’état. While Somali democracy was by no means perfect and suffered from many flaws, not least in the inequality in representation between the ex-British Somaliland Protectorate and the ex-UN Trust Territory of Somalia, it functioned and brought about two changes of government in 1964 and 1967 and one change of President in 1967 through constitutional means. For all of its faults, (e.g. vote buying and a preponderance of a large number of small, clan-based parties during elections which would promptly merge with the winning national party once one had emerged) Somali multiparty, parliamentary democracy was the only such system that was functioning in Africa during this time. This experiment in grafting the European parliamentary model onto an indigenous, clan based, pastoralist body politic came to an abrupt end in October 1969 when the Republic succumbed to a savage, totalitarian dictatorship initially disguised behind a flimsy veil of Soviet style “Scientific Socialism”.

Somali Nationalism & the Failure of Somaliweyn

The colonial experience of the various Somali populated territories of the HOA has been markedly different depending upon the foreign power which ruled over the different territories.  In British Somaliland and the NFD of Kenya, the British colonial policy of 'indirect rule' ensured that the local socio-political structures were largely undisturbed and that the daily lives of the people were minimally affected by the colonial experience.  By contrast, the Italian and French colonial policies of metropolitan rule and colonial settlement in Italian and French Somaliland respectively, resulted in the imposition of a colonial political administration complete with tax-levying powers, a civil service and the police and security apparatus necessary to enforce metropolitan rule in these territories, accompanied by an influx of Italian immigrants in the former and of French Foreign Legionnaires in the latter.  Thus, in these two territories a colonial administration that directly impacted the daily lives of the local population through civil administration, tax collection and policing was instituted which largely eclipsed the informal, open and democratic socio-political structure of traditional, Somali pastoral society that has been so ably documented by Ioan M. Lewis in his seminal book, “A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics Among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa”.  Ethiopian rule in the Somali-populated eastern province of that country comprised yet another category of colonial rule, given both the long history of conflict between the people of that territory and the Amharic rulers of Ethiopia, and the necessarily autocratic nature of monarchical rule.  Thus, the Somali people of that region were subject to military rule and occupation.

Given this differing experience of colonial rule, it is not surprising that the emergence of nationalism not only took different formulations, but also arose at different times in the various Somali territories of the HOA.  Thus, nationalist political parties first emerged in Italian and French Somaliland in the late 1940s/early 1950s, whereas such parties emerged in the mid/late 1950s in British Somaliland and the NFD, and were never permitted in the Ethiopian ruled territory.  Further, in Italian and French Somaliland the focus of these nationalist parties was independence from the colonial masters and control over the state apparatus, whereas in British Somaliland, the NFD and the Somali province of Ethiopia the principal rallying point was the irredentist dream of Somaliweyn that would unite all the Somali-populated territories in one unitary state.  This is not to say that Greater Somalia was missing from the programs of the nationalist parties of Italian and French Somaliland, but to point to the lesser, secondary priority the irredentist impetus had in the aspirations of the nationalist parties in these territories.  This difference in outlook is clearly evidenced by the differing attitudes of the nationalist parties of British and Italian Somaliland to their union in 1960.  Whereas the people of British Somaliland viewed the union as only the first step towards realisation of the dream of Greater Somalia, and were thus initially unconcerned with the terms of union which they viewed as temporary, the people of Italian Somaliland viewed the union much more objectively and maturely as the creation of a new state in which they had to secure the most advantageous terms possible.

Much academic analysis of Somali nationalism focuses upon the pastoral culture of Somali society which did not historically have a central, political authority that can be identified as a state or state apparatus, and goes on to extrapolate that the irredentist nationalism that emerged among Somali people after the end of World War II was largely a creation of the educated, political elite.  This narrative holds that educated, political elites of the various Somali territories, inspired by historical, Somali heroes such as Ahmed Gurey (or 'Gran') and Mohamed Abdulle Hassan (the 'Mad Mullah') as well as by the anti-colonial fervour sweeping the continent, adopted a pan-Somali nationalism as an integral part of their rationale for independence and de-colonisation in order to inflame the passions of their people and so secure their emotional commitment to the elite’s quest for independence and state power.  This superficial perspective of Somali nationalism completely ignores the central socio-political feature of Somali nationalism which derives from the ethno-linguistic, cultural and religious homogeneity of the Somali people – namely the fission-fusion paradox that lies at the heart of Somali clan structure.

In fact, at the heart of Somali clan structure is the belief that all Somali people share a common lineage which dates back to the group of Arab religious Sheikhs that brought Islam to the Horn of Africa in the late 7^th/early 8^th centuries and took wives among the local tribes that they had converted.  Thus, while clan competition within Somali society can be very fierce, as evidenced by clan/sub-clan wars over pasturage and water resources over the years, it is the norm for Somalis of different clans to unite to protect their collective, pan-Somali interests against non-Somali groups.  Thus, in the 16^th century, the charismatic warrior and religious leader, Ahmed Gurey (i.e. Ahmed the Left-Handed), was able to unite all the Somali clans behind a successful military campaign against the Christian, Abyssinian Empire that was saved only by the intervention of an expeditionary force lead by Cristóvão da Gama sent by the Portuguese Emperor.  The fission-fusion paradox contained within Somali clan structure does not impact the open, egalitarian nature of traditional pastoral culture, since the basic unit of socio-political organisation, i.e. the clan/sub-clan, operates on the basis of open discussion and consensual decision-making.  In the modern era, while the clans and sub-clans within the erstwhile Republic competed strenuously for political office, trade and other economic opportunities, they were fiercely united in pursuit of union with their brethren in the NFD, the Haud & Reserved Area and in Djibouti.  This deeply felt pan-Somali impetus was no construct of political elites, but is instead an integral and indivisible feature of Somali identity itself.

Certainly, it is true that the efforts of civilian governments of the erstwhile Republic to deliver the 'missing territories' of the NFD, the Somali province of Ethiopia and Djibouti during the period 1960-1967 through a policy of belligerence towards its neighbours and creation of a strong army, proved unsuccessful.  It is also true that Siyad Barre's ill-conceived gamble in 1977/78 to ‘recover’ the Haud & Reserved Area (i.e. the present 5^th province of Ethiopia) proved disastrous, not only for the survival of his regime, but also for the Republic itself, since the seeds of its collapse (and the subsequent wars and anarchy into which the country plunged thereafter) can be traced directly to this failure of leadership.  The only period in the post-independence history of the Somali Republic when the Somali inhabitants of the ‘missing’ territories of the NFD and the Haud & Reserved Area secured some tangible benefits from the efforts of a Somali government was during the brief period of détente between the Republic and Ethiopia and Kenya during 1967-1969 which was initiated by Premier Egal[1].  During this period the borders between Somalia and its neighbours were opened so nomads could travel freely in search of water and pasturage; draconian security measures in the two territories were lifted by both Kenya and Ethiopia; political prisoners were released by all sides and assets seized by all three governments from the others’ citizens were returned; and hostile propaganda directed at each other was stopped.  However, it is a fact that the emotional appeal of Somali nationalism, i.e. the hold of the common Somali social, cultural and religious identity in the national psyche and self-perception of Somali people throughout the HOA region, remains as potent and compelling as ever. 

The Triumph of Indigenous Politics & the Re-Birth of Somaliland

The success of Somaliland in establishing a functioning state built upon a representative system of government is due to several factors which derive from the fact that the traditional political structures have remained largely undisturbed and have, therefore, retained their primacy in political discourse and action.   During the colonial era, Britain was only too happy to govern the territory with a light hand through indigenous political structures since this provided the most cost-effective approach to achieve its principal aim of suzerainty over the Somaliland coast.  After independence and union with the ex-UN Trust Territory, Somaliland was largely ignored by the central government as power coalesced around Mogadishu and the southern part of the new country received the lion’s share of investment in physical and social infrastructure as well as development projects. The preponderance of southern representation in both government and the civil service ensured that northern interests and needs were ignored in the main, while integration of Somaliland into central state structures through grass-root organisations at local, neighbourhood and district level never took place.  Thus, by all significant indicators of physical and social infrastructure, e.g. schools, clinics, hospitals, roads, industrial plants, electricity, water & telephone penetration etc., Somaliland was very much a backwater neglected by central government in Mogadishu.

After the 1969 coup, Somaliland’s marginalisation became even more pronounced, as the coup was led by southern officers and had deposed the Republic’s first and only northern Prime Minister.  During the early 1970s, as the military regime consolidated its grip over the country and instituted its new ideology of ‘Scientific Socialism’, it faced resistance to the widespread nationalisation of private property, omnipresent and draconian security apparatus and denigration of religious faith by the fiercely independent pastoralists of Somaliland which even the British had not sought to subdue.  Thus, the territory graduated from being a backwater in national development to effectively become an internal ‘colony’ administered by a military governor appointed from Mogadishu.  By 1977, when the military regime embarked upon the ill-advised war to wrest the Haud & Reserved Area from a weakened and divided Ethiopia, Somaliland was, in effect, governed as an occupied territory subject to a harsh regime of military rule.  Ironically, the war with Ethiopia brought some respite from the iron rule of Mogadishu due to widespread nationalist fervour and mass support for the war in the territory, despite the fact that it suffered the worst consequences in the form of aerial bombardment of primary water wells as well as the northern capital, Hargeisa, by the Ethiopian Air Force.  In addition, the ignominious and disorderly retreat of the Somali army from captured Ethiopian territory at the end of the war resulted in the widespread loss of livestock to the Somaliland pastoralists as their herds were seized to feed the retreating soldiers.

However, the fact which changed the ethos of Somali Nationalism and Somali politics forever was the response of the Siyad Barre junta to the consequences of the failure of their gambit to seize the Haud & Reserved Area from Ethiopia.  On one hand, the regime was faced with the prospect of thousands of heavily armed, battle-hardened and embittered northern soldiers returning to an already restive Somaliland; on the other, the equally embittered Somali population of eastern Ethiopia, which had been urged to revolt and join the invading, Somali troops in expelling Ethiopian forces from their territory, were now forced to flee with the retreating Somali Armed Forces.  The regime’s solution to these two problems was startling both in its simplicity and in its diabolical duplicity.  The Ogaden people of eastern Ethiopia were to be transplanted into Somaliland as the loyal, local ruling class while the indigenous people were to be savagely subjugated to accept the new power dispensation. This policy required that the returning northern troops be disarmed and their command structure be dismantled.  Accordingly, GHQ in Mogadishu ordered that retreating Somali forces stop at the border and await further orders, while a commission of senior officers from GHQ, led by Major-General Ali Samatar (Chief of Staff of the Army), toured the camps and held summary military tribunals in which northern officers were tried and convicted of war crimes and executed.  At this time, throughout Somaliland local families were being evicted from their homes and farms for ‘anti-revolutionary’ activities and the said homes and farms were being granted to Ogaden refugees fleeing across the border.

Thus, was the nationalist dream of Somaliweyn turned into a nightmare that consumed its most fervent acolytes.  Having understood the regime’s game plan, and what it had in store for them, the northern officers and many of their soldiers decided to take their fate into their hands and they fled back across the border into Ethiopia and asked their erstwhile enemies for sanctuary and safe haven, which was generously granted them by their Ethiopian counter-parts in a spirit of mutual respect and martial camaraderie.  These Somaliland forces set up military camps inside Ethiopia and they would later form the military wing of the Somali National Movement (SNM) – the opposition movement of Somaliland that would eventually evict the Siyad Barre regime from Somaliland and so lead to its collapse.  Somaliweyn, both as the expression of Somali Nationalism and also as the political ambition to which the Somali people of the HOA adhered, was truly dead and buried.  In the ex-UN Trust Territory, during the latter half of the 1980s, the regime had grown increasingly brutal and ethnocentric as it began to lose its grip on power first in Somaliland, then increasingly in the south.  By 1991, when its troops were evicted from Somaliland, the regime had resorted to a policy of nightly extra-judicial killings of key leaders and civilian massacres of the majority Hawiyeh clan in Benadir Region around Mogadishu.  This resulted in the frenzy of tribal massacres and widespread ethnic cleansing throughout the country in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the regime, as the Hawiyeh exacted revenge upon their erstwhile Darod rulers.  The irredentist-driven nightmare that befell Somaliland had come to Somalia.

Upon evicting the regime’s forces from Somaliland, the SNM was faced with the prospect of ruling the country they had just liberated and it is to their enduring credit that the guerrilla movement understood that they needed to establish legitimacy in order to secure the political consent of the people.  Equally, the elders of the clans that comprised the bulk of the soldiers, membership and leadership of the SNM prevailed upon the guerrilla movement leadership to cede to them the political initiative to form a government.  These elders called for and convened a national conference in Burao in May 1991 which comprised all the clans of Somaliland at which it was decided to recover the sovereignty of Somaliland that was ceded to the Somali Republic in 1960.  The Burao Conference was also important for establishing, as the defining creed of Somaliland’s national re-establishment, that all wrongs committed by any clan against another prior to the said conference thereby be irrevocably and unconditionally forgiven.  In short, the people of Somaliland granted each other unconditional and irrevocable pardon for all sins and grievances of the past.  This fact is absolutely fundamental to understanding Somaliland’s success in achieving reconciliation and peace among its people and thereby establishing a stable, representative government.  The country contained clans that had supported the dictatorship and there were many among the dissident clans that had collaborated with the regime, as well as many among the pro-regime clans that supported the guerrillas.

This traditional reconciliation process whereby representatives of all the clans, as well as other civil society leaders, including intellectuals, religious leaders, women’s’ groups, businessmen, poets and artists, was central and fundamental to the re-establishment of the state and formation of a representative government by securing the political consent of the people.  By contrast, the people of the ex-UN Trust Territory have never held their own national reconciliation conferences.  Instead, their country was carved into separate fiefdoms ruled over by clan and criminal warlords immediately after the collapse of the dictatorship, and the numerous ‘national conferences’ convened in their name subsequently by external forces and powers comprised unrepresentative and unaccountable forums whereby competing foreign powers facilitated the ascendancy of a favoured warlord or faction to the putative ‘Presidency’, up to and including the current incumbent, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud.  The only genuine, indigenous, grass-root driven governmental authority that Somalia has enjoyed since the collapse of the dictatorship was the brief period of Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) rule in 2006.  After the extremist wing of the UIC took control of the organisation and foolishly decided to pick a fight with Ethiopia, even before they had secured undisputed control over the entire country, the writing was on the wall.  With the full support, if not the active urging, of the US, Ethiopia decided to respond to UIC/Al-Shabaab’s provocations by invading Somalia and deposing the Islamist regime.

Towards a Post-Colonial Pan-Somali Ethos & Re-establishing the State in Somalia

The starting point to developing a post-colonial Pan-Somali ethos is to accept the political reality that Greater Somalia will never come into existence as it was originally envisaged as a nation-state uniting all the Somali people of the HOA.  That possibility died with the decolonisation of the continent and the emergence of the OAU in the early 1960s, and all the efforts of successive governments of the erstwhile Republic, and the deep and heartfelt longings for Somaliweyn among the Somali people of HOA that they stoked, were doomed to failure.  Further, the Siyad Barre dictatorship poisoned that dream by deliberately and cynically using it to divide, oppress and decimate the Somali people in order to maintain its grip on power.  Thus, the dream that was meant to liberate and realise the political identity of the Somali people was distorted and perverted to divide, oppress, dispossess and massacre them.  In this context, it is important to point out that in 1977 the majority Somali population of Djibouti overwhelmingly chose independent statehood over union with the Republic of Somalia when they secured their freedom from French colonialism.  The reason for this was that they had learnt the lesson of the experience of British Somaliland, and had no wish to surrender their sovereignty for the suzerainty of Mogadishu.

The poisoned political dream of Somaliweyn must be replaced with a new ethos of representative government rooted in Somali culture and historical experience, individual liberty and collective endeavour.  What all Somalis share, and which cannot be denied or taken away by any power, is an ethno-linguistic, cultural identity and common history which is evidenced by a tremendously rich heritage of poetry, dance, music, folklore and oral tradition.  Somalis must accept the African political reality of acceptance of the colonial political boundaries, thus the division of the Somali people of the HOA among five nation-states, i.e. Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya.  However, as a people divided among these five states, Somalis must promote and champion open borders, customs union and free trade on the economic front, and regional autonomy, representative government and individual liberty on the political front within the HOA region.  It must be an axiom of a new Pan-Somali ethos that minority Somali communities in Kenya and Ethiopia achieve their civil and human rights within their home countries as Kenyans and Ethiopians.  This requires, perforce, that minority communities within majority Somali countries also realise their civil and human rights as citizens of Somaliland, Somalia and Djibouti respectively.

In short, a new Pan-Somali ethos must embrace the both the political realities of the HOA region of which the Somali people are inhabitants, and also reach for the growth and developmental possibilities of that region for the benefit of all of its inhabitants, while securing and developing the rich cultural and historical legacy of their unique identity.  This new ethos must abandon the exclusivity of the Somaliweyn dream and embrace a vision of the future which firmly places the Somali people at the vanguard of an inclusive, economically and developmentally progressive, politically open and representative HOA region which incorporates cultural diversity and personal freedom.  This coupling of representative domestic political systems with regional economic integration has been shown to provide not only the most optimal path for economic growth and development, but also offers the best safeguard against autocratic rule and dictatorship in many parts of the world, notably Europe, Asia and South America as well as in parts of Africa.

The implications of the above with respect to re-establishing the state in Somalia are clear and basic.  Firstly, the emphasis upon forming so-called governments needs to be replaced with efforts to identify, debate and agree upon the terms under which the people of that country agree to live together.  The question of how and why the people of Somalia agree to share a nation-state has not been visited since independence in 1960, when the raison d’etre of that country was to secure independence from the colonial power and create Somaliweyn.  Clearly, this can no longer be the organising principle of the state, so a replacement ethos or ‘Xeer’ (the pastoral, Somali equivalent of the ‘social contract’) needs to be articulated.  This will require much discussion, debate and soul searching as it did for the clans in Somaliland.  Equally, this is not a static, one-time only exercise, but a dynamic, evolving discussion that each generation undertakes and resolves for itself, but it is absolutely essential to commence the process if the new state to be established in Somalia is to command and secure the consent of its citizens.  This process has to be driven by the people of Somalia, although others may support and facilitate the process, they can neither impose it nor guide it. 

The bitterness of inter- and intra-clan feuding during the last twenty three years, not to mention the fact that anarchy has been ingrained in the body politic as several generations of Somali youth have grown up knowing nothing else, will inevitably complicate this process.  However, there is no alternative to this fundamental cornerstone of nation-building if Somalia is to escape its present misery and political stasis.  A strong positive support for the process exists in the fatigue of the people with the barrenness of the current situation and the prospect of a seemingly unending future of besiegement by foreign armies and religious nihilists. The alternative to such genuine process of national reconciliation and state formation is for Somalia to be balkanised into powerless Statelets, or Bantustans, under the aegis of regional or international powers.  To some extent, this situation is emerging already with regional ‘governments’ beholden to Ethiopia or Kenya established along their respective borders, i.e. Galmudug and Jubbaland respectively.  This situation cannot be permitted to pertain as it is inherently unstable politically, it does not promote representative political structures and it acts as a deterrent to economic growth and development.  Further, while such regional statelets may seem to serve the interest of their regional patrons in the short term, in the long term, they will only serve to provide political ammunition to the religious nihilists and other reactionary and backward looking forces.  Thus, they are a recipe for continued instability and violence in the region.

Conclusion

The first practical conclusion that can be drawn from recent Somali history is that the combination of indirect rule under the British colonial administration and the marginalisation of Somaliland within the Somali Republic from 1960 until 1991 had unintended positive consequences that enabled the country to emerge from the collapse of the Republic without disintegrating into anarchy.  Conversely, the deeper penetration of modernist socio-political structures and corresponding degradation of traditional authority systems in Somalia have worked to ensure that traditional conflict resolution mechanisms have not emerged to ameliorate the anarchy that has bedevilled that country since 1991, with the exception of seven or eight months of UIC rule in 2006 mentioned earlier.  In addition, the close involvement of foreign powers, particularly the nomenclature of the international aid and development bureaucracy, in the attempts to establish a government for Somalia has been counter-productive by denying political space for grass-root reconciliation efforts to emerge and develop.

The second conclusion is that the central rationale underlying the creation of the Somali Republic, indeed it’s very raison d’etre, has ceased to have political primacy or moral authority.  This is, of course, the dream of Somaliweyn that underpinned Somali Nationalism and which was turned into the dictatorship’s instrument of subjugation.  Somaliland has accepted this harsh reality and has succeeded in forging a new creed or social contract which underpins their state and forms the foundation of its constitution.  Somalia, on the other hand, has been unable to develop such an alternative national ethos and continues to maintain formal allegiance to the destructive ideology of Somaliweyn, even as reality forces it to acknowledge the fact that the NFD and 5^th Province of Ethiopia are irrevocably Kenyan and Ethiopian respectively, while Djibouti’s existence as an independent state is equally beyond discussion.  Thus, successive Mogadishu ‘governments’ are forced to contort themselves into the contradictory positions that Somaliland cannot recover its sovereignty because of adherence to Somaliweyn, while Djibouti, the NFD and the 5^th Province of Ethiopia cannot be claimed in denial of Somaliweyn. 

The third, and final, conclusion is the obvious fact that Somaliland succeeded and Somalia has failed thus far in establishing legitimate government because the former secured the political consent of its people to the new political system, while the latter has not been able to commence the internal process necessary to secure said consent.  This fact is not just related to the different perceptions of nationalism and the raison d’etre of the state, but also to the roots of political consent and what it means to be Somali in the 21^st century.  It is our contention that in this important aspect, Somaliland points to the future while Somalia remains a victim of its past.  The international community should draw the inevitable conclusions and engage with Somaliland as an independent country in order to secure its collaboration to resolve the Somalia crisis.  The present policy of holding Somaliland’s success hostage to Somalia’s foreign-sponsored failure serves no one, neither Somaliland, nor Somalia or the international community.

June 2014

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[1] In the interest of full disclosure, the late Premier Egal (who was also President of Somaliland from 1993 until his death in 2003) was the father of the author.