AN ESSAY ON THE STATE, CLANNISM AND NATIONALISM

By Ismail H Warsame

AUTHOR’S CONVICTION ON THE SUBJECT MATTER UNFRONT

“The name Somalia as a united entity is relatively a new term, following the beginning of colonial administrations in the country. Clannism in Somalia isn’t the core problem of state building, but a symptom of system vulnerability in governance in regulatory fashion: For example, the separation of state and clan allegiance in public service in the same manner the Western World managed to do on the separation of the state and the church is the way forward. Here you can keep your clan belonging, but don’t mix it with public service. It would be a violation of the state law if you do it. Therefore, there is a mismanagement and lack of regulations on the clan system in Somalia. Tendency in Somalia’s governance to tyranny and dictatorship is fear of losing state control, on the top of selfish interests on the part of the leaders of the day, clan rivalry and self-preservation. Anti-decentralization or anti-federalism is a paranoid of losing central state power. Under these fears, stakeholders in national matters are unnecessary nuisance to central authorities. Nationalism means distraction from difficult issues of nation-building and necessary national development projects expected of state leaders. Patriotism, promotion of Somalia’s cause and learning Somali history aren’t encouraged. Power-sharing is misused to weaken meritocracy and competence, leading to the consolidation of a client state and patronage in public service. Checks and balance of power between branches of the government is perceived in Somalia as a power struggle and a threat to those in executive positions”.

INTRODUCTION

Writing Talking Truth to Power in Undemocratic and Tribal Context, Articles of Impeachment and HAYAAN, The Long Journey of the Nomad Boy (Safarkii Dheeraa Ee Wiilka Reer Miyi), has convinced me that the subject needs further writing and deeper analysis. Hence the title “Somalia In Search of Statehood, An Essay on the State, Clannism and Nationalism, was conceived. Much has been written on the subject, but these works were either produced by foreign writers with limited understanding of Somali culture (literature and language) or by native minority writers whose motivation was to expose their grievances against majority rule to advocate for minority rights in the country. The first group of writers were not adequately informed, but the 2^nd group couldn’t escape bias in the subject in their exposition. Both couldn’t adequately reflect on the true picture of what went wrong in Somali politics. Foreign anthropologists and historians of I M Lewis type on the subject were influenced by colonial legacy in the country.

There is another group of Somali writers, the diaspora. This group is mostly remnants and survivors of the Somali Civil War. They subliminally believe in strong central government. They interpret devolution of power and federalism as foreign instigations and manufacture with the intention to weak the Somali State. They don’t recognize that federalism is a de facto reality rather than de jure following a vicious Civil War that ended up in clan cleansing in Mogadishu, the Capital City, and elsewhere in the country. They blame Ethiopia for establishing ethnic federalism in that country and managing to replicate it in Somalia, using proxy agents of Somali warlords and politicians. Predominantly, these diaspora writers either had grown up and lived under the iron-fist of the Military Regime of Siyad Barre or had influenced the younger generations in the diaspora. Many of them avoid travel to Somalia and the few who come don’t venture out beyond the Centre of what is wrong now in Somalia, Mogadishu, where law and order is a thing in the distant past and their yardstick to evaluate current situation of Somalia. They have lost sense of reality elsewhere in the country.

But, most dangerous of all are the ignorant masses who see different heads of state and government of the Federal Member States as something strange and symbol of what was wrong in Somalia as they hear or see strong nation-states around Somalia. They don’t recall that Somali State had failed and to put it back together it was needed to restore trust among warring clans via decentralized or autonomous regions, the Federal Member States (FMS). Now FMS isn’t cast on stone – they could change over time in a negotiated fashion as the central authority stands on its feet again and expands its influence throughout the country”. Federalism in Somalia could be a temporary arrangement. But, what isn’t acceptable anymore is return to city-state status in Mogadishu”.

THE NATURE OF SOMALI STATE AND GOVERNANCE

The state and Somalia itself are nothing more than a collection of confederal clans and sub-clans. This state as a central entity is a legacy and by-product left behind by colonial powers of Europe, namely Italy, Britain and France –Britain being the biggest offender among them and share-holder, occupying 2/5th of Somali territory. As mostly nomadic as they were, they were hard to be governed and less technology the colonial administrators possessed, the less cultural impact and subjugation they had on the nomads, with limited success on the docile farming communities of southernmost Somalia. Nevertheless, they left the country in a seemingly free country, although they had secured in their place loyal a bureaucracy behind. The vision of Somali Youth League (SYL) was effectively undermined by neo-colonialism methods of cultural domination among the bureaucracy left behind. Education sector barely met the needs of literacy for a backward country with a small population of 100% illiterate. Soon a few Somali graduates from educational institutions other than Italian found themselves unable to adjust and fit into the Italian-made bureaucracy as they return home. Prime Minister Abdirisaq Haji Hussein’s famous joke, “from Sagaara Doox to PhD”, adequately explains the educational gap and scale of ignorance that existed. The colonial statecraft imported continued to function, initially with the assistance of colonial expatriates as technical experts. Nothing changed in country’s governance, and eventually even the bureaucracy inherited from foreign powers was overthrown in a coup by the country’s security forces, recruited under the supervision of various foreign powers (Italy, Soviet Union, Britain, Egypt, and Iraq, among others). The leaders of the military coup were even more confused than the politicians they replaced with different military training acquired from numerous different foreign countries with competing ideological and economic interests in Somalia. The entire country continued to be in a state of permanent confusion. Corruption and cronyism became the modus operandi in the poorest country in the world, with unexploited natural resources believed to be in abundance. Ideological fight within each sector spared no one. Religious sectarianism funded and promoted by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, Egypt and even Iran, spread like wildfire. Everything dear to Somali culture and fine traditions had been suffering from lack of protection. Vulnerable portions of the society like children, women and minorities were targeted by unscrupulous entities, groups, individuals of both local and foreign origins. The country was invaded by International NGOs, using local agents, which they called non-state actors (NSA), to fill in the power vacuum, and turned them into human intelligence gathering centers. The military coup of 1991 made the situation even worse, introducing mass arrests, torture chambers and indoctrination centers. As a result, unruly clannish rebellions against the regime succeeded in toppling the junta with no replacement in its place other than mobs and mob culture, especially South-central Somalia.

Since Somalia is still searching for legitimate and responsible authorities, it is unable to come up with innovative ideas on governance of its own other than federalism or confederalism. However, there is still an uphill battle facing the new governance system. Why confederalism? Here is why:

Terms or names like Hawiye, Digil, Mirifle, Raxanweyn, Isaak, JareerWeyn, Dir, and even the country’s name Somalia, have no common ancestral relations as individual groups. Each of these names are political and social constructs for reasons beyond the scope of this short article. Paradoxically, these confederal tribes are now resisting to apply the term to the collective name of “Somalia”. Whom are they kidding?

Now, two junior researchers from ill-gotten and privately misappropriated SIMAD College in Mogadishu, illegally acquired, owned and operated by former Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, AbdiNor Dahir and Ali Yassin Sheikh Ali, have just used their first professional work to denounce federalism as inapplicable to Somali governance, fraudulently disregarding the fact that Somalia is a confederation of tribes, and thus ignoring this fundamental truth in Somali governance that lie in the state failure and entire predicament of Somalia as a country and nation-state.
These junior researchers from SIMAD even dared to call Puntland and Somaliland as children born out-of-wedlock in the federation in the sense that they were established before Galmudugh and Hirshabelle Federal Member States. Abdinor Dahir and Ali Yassin Sheikh Ali, in a pseudo-research paper called Federalism in Post-Conflict Somalia, have come up with half-truths: https://doi.org/10.1080/13597566.2021.1998005

Nowadays, since most Hawiye scholars try not to come out openly against federalism due to the fact that it was enshrined in the Provisional Federal Constitution, and that their Hawiye constituencies are now parts of the federation, they find the term “Decentralization” fashionable as way of resisting federalism, confederalism or anything outside “city-state”.

SOMALI NATIONALISM

In Somali politics, the term and spirit of nationalism was used as a rallying cry for the struggle for national independence from colonial powers of Europe and Ethiopia. Somali politicians had had no vision or strategy beyond attainment of freedom and unification of all parts of the country under colonial rule. There were no friends of Somalia cultivated among powerful nations to help in the fight for unification. This is where former Somali leaders abysmally failed the nation. This is where lack of formal schooling, ignorance and nomadic pride as deadly combinations had been proven fatal in the case of Somalia, unfortunately.