Category: Britain

INDIRECT RULE OR CONTAINMENT OF SOMALIA


October 5, 2019


The international community, including her neighbours consider Somalia dangerous, not because of the extremists she produces, foreign radicals she hosts or sending huge refugees to the Western World. These can be easily defeated or managed as they aren’t more difficult than those in Syria or Iraq. Somalia is regarded dangerous because of the characters of her people. From her colonial rulers and observers to the present Somali Partners’ Forum, the conclusion is keeping Somalia under indirect rule or containment, taking clue from past colonial anthropologists, explorers, travelers, administrators and leaders of colonial powers of Great Britain, Italy and France as well as historically hostile neighbors of Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and even Tanzania, which has no borders with Somalia, and lately Djibouti, exploiting the spoils of collapsing Somali Central Government.


As the Somali Central Government had failed in 1991, the International Community had set up the Somali Aid Coordinating Body, the SACB, to direct and manage the problems of  Somalia, basically taking over the sovereignty of the Somali State. As the Transitional Federal Government of the Somali Republic, TFG, was elected in 2004, the Somali Coordinating and Monitoring Committee, CMC, was created immediately to hang on to Somali sovereignty and not letting it go. That is why the TFG couldn’t operate. Somali Partners’ Forum is the similar grouping as SACB with just different friendly name, doing the same function of indirect rule of Somalia.


The common character of these groups, specifically designed to handle Somalia, is their lack of accoubtability. They aren’t accountable to anyone. They have no common address. Their membership is difficult to know as International NGOs and foreign security services often take part in their activities. They often issue no-reply statements. They always take advantage of high turn-over of naive and inexperienced Somali leaders. The problem is that Somalia, in her desperate humanitarian, governance and security situations, needs the individual countries and organizations that make up such Western oranizations as they need or interested in Somalia too.


In my personal capacity as representative of Puntland Government then, I had to reject the decisions and letters from SACB at the time, reiterating the fact that Puntland was not signatory to 1993 Addis Ababa Treaty on creating the SACB, its Code of Conduct and Policy Paper On Working With Responsible Somali Authorities. In 1993, only Somaliland existed. The rest of these “Responsible Authorities” were traditional leaders, local NGOs and other civil societies, if any.

The reasoning behind the mindset of these foreign organizations is based on historical writings of Richard Burton, Sir Richard Ellot, Enrico Cerrulli,  I.M. Lewis, Gerald Hanley and others, descriping Somalis as proud, firecely independent, extremely intelligent and violent by nature. If not contained and marginalized, they would move beyond their native borders to own up entire East Africa first, after which they could surprise the rest of the world. Their danger lies in the fact that they consider themselves more equal than the white European people. To paraphrase one British colonial administrator of East Africa, the white man couldn’t accept a black man, who thinks he is superior than the European man. They should be contained within the borders of Jubaland. Take a listen to Sir Richard Eliot:


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A NATION IN TURBULENT TRANSITION

Garowe May 17, 2019

You may not be aware of the fact the name, Somalia, didn’t exist in the sense of a united central entity as a country, but as ethnic group among East African peoples before 18-19th century European colonial powers of Italy, Great Britain, France, Portugal, and Turkish Ottoman Empire from Egypt. Most historically known self-governing entities in Southern and Northeastern parts of what is presently known as “Somalia” didn’t have the notion of Somalia as a country. Colonial Italy led the way in the creation of the concept of Somalia as a country for its own colonial objectives and administrative-political expediency for a united colony.

These powerful nomads in the Northeastern, Northwestern and Central parts of “Somalia” had had no sense of a country beyond their grazing localities and water wells. The Southernmost agriculturalists of Bantu extraction had had no specific identities other than they were remnants of perished local slave-owning sultanates and chieftains with occasional visits, rule or influence from Arabs looking for slaves and fortune in East Africa, usually coming from the sea and Zanzibar.

The concept of Greater Somalia didn’t exist before Somali Youth League (SYL) political campaigns for independence from as recently as the year of 1943. Even the notion and the term of “Greater Somalia” (Somaliweyn) was conceived and coined by former British Foreign Secretary, Bevin, before Britain abandoned the initiative and had decided to transfer the Somali territory known as the ” Haud and Reserve Area” to Ethiopia in 1954. At the time, Ethiopia was demanding from Britain to agreeing swallowing Hargeisa and Zeila as part of Haud and Reserve Area as well.

The struggle waged by the Head of the Darwish Movement of Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan against British Colonial Administration and Emperial Ethiopia was a mixture of Islamic extremism, nationalisn and bad approach to self-government blind-sighted by fight for local control over grazing Somali nomads. The British wanted cheap meat for its military garrison in Aden, South Yemen. The Sayyid wanted loyal clans for supply of fighting men for religio-nationalistic wars. He also wanted to model after Sheikh Ahmed Gurey in his attempt to conquer Abbysinia. Darwish Movement was in-transition to statehood. It never had a chance to succeed. Bad approach to self-government was the root cause of its failure.

Enter the era of independence in 1960 from colonial administrations of Italy and Britain. The colonial masters had left a country in-transition to statehood. They left behind a Somali political elite of their design with very limited preparation, education and skills to run a modern government and poor state with no infrastructure or institutions to talk about. Despite all these, Somalis did well in the first few years after securing the national independence with fledgling democratic culture and successful presidential, parliament and municipal elections that was the envy of black Africa at time. The native political and business elite, who had little training by colonial powers, were in-transition themselves to learn the art of government and statecraft. Yesterday’s nomads poured into over-crowded urban cities, specially Mogadishu and Hargeisa, with no social and labor skills. They too were in-transition to become, as least, normal citizens of a new country called the Somali Republic. The new Somali Government was now in-transition to become as viable as any government on earth.

The Government of the Somali Republic didn’t survive long as it had suffered from military coup of 1969 led by General Mohamed Siyad Barre. That Military Government lasted in office for twenty-one years long in-transition to multi-party democratic elections and people’s self-rule. It never fulfilled the promise to transition to democracy.

The Ogaden war of 1977 -78, rebellion against the dictatorship, people’s uprising and vicious Civil War that followed had cut short the long military reign of the General and his Client-Military Administration.

The world came to learn the phrase “Failed State” of Somalia, total collapse of public institutions and breakdown of law and order. Upheaval, uprooting of people, mass displacement of residents from cities and towns followed in-transition to peace and normalcy.

National Reconciliation Conferences had finally produced “Transitional Governments” from the year of 2000. These Somalia’s transitional governments are, however, still in-transition to multi-party democratic self-government – back to square one in-transition.

The Federal Regional State governments are too in-transition to full-fledged federal states, some of them are still needed to satisfy the basic requirements of the Transitional Federal Constitution for their legal formation and very existence. The entire country and its state institutions are in-transition, some of the goals and objectives of which will not happen in my life. But, as long as things are in-transition, there are always opportunities to move Somalia forward. Be hopeful.

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