WARSAME DIGITAL MEDIA (WDM)
Critical Analysis | Political Satire | Truth-Telling Without Apology
By Ismail H. Warsame
A specter is haunting Somali social media—the specter of the Kacaan. With predictable regularity, a chorus of digital nostalgics emerges, peddling a rose-tinted fantasy of the late General Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime. They flood our feeds with curated black-and-white images: pristine Mogadishu streets, orderly school parades, and polished military boots. It is a carefully constructed gallery, designed to suggest that discipline and progress once defined our nation. But a photograph cannot scream; it cannot capture the sound of firing squads or the silence of mass graves.
This is not mere nostalgia. It is a calculated act of historical erasure, weaponized for the digital age.
The Dictator’s Digital Resurrection
These online tabliiq sheikhs of the Kacaan preach with a zealot’s fervor, eulogizing a “golden age” they never knew. In their sermons, there is no room for the dark underbelly of that so-called revolution: a state that institutionalized terror, criminalized free thought, and orchestrated the persecution of targeted clans under the hollow banner of “unity.”
Their memory is impeccably selective. They glorify the concrete of new buildings but ignore the blood soaked into the soil of Labaatan Jirow’s torture chambers. They celebrate a unified Somalia while forgetting the poets it silenced and the intellectuals it forced into endless exile.
It brings to mind a grim irony: looking at the dystopian control of North Korea and seeing not a warning, but an aspiration.
From Kacaan to Kleptocracy: A False and Dangerous Dichotomy
Let us be honest: this nostalgia flourishes in the fetid swamp of our present despair. It is a direct reaction to the breathtaking corruption, staggering incompetence, and theatrical absurdity of Somalia’s current political elite.
A generation scrolls through TikTok and sees a government that cannot deliver electricity, jobs, or basic dignity. They watch ministers charter private jets while soldiers—their fathers and brothers—die on unpaid frontlines. They are subjected to a democracy of deception.
Is it any wonder that a whisper gains volume: “At least under Siad Barre, there was order”?
This is the modern rebranding of tyranny. It no longer needs to march in with tanks; it can simply trend with a hashtag.
The Cruelty of Selective Memory
To romanticize the Kacaan is to perform a profound act of betrayal against its victims. It is to dance on the unmarked graves of the disappeared, to mock the families for whom the pain is not a historical footnote but a living, breathing inheritance of loss.
We have reached a tragic nadir: the chasm between the brutal order of the past and the humiliating chaos of the present has narrowed so much that we are left debating which form of suffering was more dignified—the sharp crack of the whip, or the slow, grinding humiliation of failure.
The Digital Vanguard of a Dead Regime
They are the new commissars, these digital comrades. Their weapons are not Kalashnikovs but keyboards; their battlefields are Twitter threads and Facebook posts, adorned with hashtags like #KacaanForever and #SomaliUnity. They speak the language of restoration, promising a return to a past that never existed.
The ultimate irony is lost on them: the very platform they use to deify a dictator would have been their death warrant during the regime they so ardently admire.
WDM Verdict: Reject the Seduction of the Strongman
Let us be unequivocal: the kleptocrats in tailored suits offer no salvation from the ghosts in military uniforms. Both are parasites on the nation’s soul, differing only in their methods of extraction.
But the cure for corruption is not the cudgel of authoritarianism; it is the relentless light of accountability. The antidote to chaos is not a single strongman, but a strong, civically engaged citizenry.
Somalia does not need another Siad Barre. It needs a generation that has learned the lessons of history—one that rejects both the prison of tyranny and the swamp of thievery.
WDM Conclusion:
When a people begin to look fondly upon their former jailers,it is a damning indictment of their current leaders. Yet, we must remember: the road to hell is paved with sanitized memories and the seductive, dangerous lie that a single pair of boots can clean a nation’s wounds.
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