Somalia: A National Reconciliation The Only Way Out (Part II) – OpEd
Installing peace among quarreling family members like the clan quarrels of Somalia is not only difficult but may also instigate a reversal of peace-building processes, many have spent on for long periods, transcending even decades. The most difficult parts include creating stable political institutions and sharing of powers within a polity suspicious of each other, and often exploited for other ends by foreigners who may have their own agendas including international organizations like the UN and its multitude of subordinate organizations and other non-governmental organizations.
The peace processes in Somalia started in 1991 but remain unsettled and uneasy as of the date of this writing, despite the involvement of many parties both multilateral and bilateral and the expenditure of heavy sums collected from both local and many international sources. The clan-based institutions proposed in the last reconciliation process of the years 2001 to 2004 in Kenya, and which ended in the current federal infrastructure, has not so far assured peace in the country.
This brings forward the fact that it may have reached a cul de sac or a dead end and needs to be revisited. The mistrust among the political elite employing their clan affiliations and support remains a dividing paradigm and the country’s unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty has never been more in danger than at present.
The disregard for constitutional limitations and constraints among the political elite have been one of the major obstacles to instilling peace among the populace and hence the lack of trust among them. Trust in the country is and was a rare commodity over the past four decades, and although the people have generally the same ethnic background, political elites drive them apart and segregate them in regional clan enclaves, which they have created on the guidance of foreigners who do not wish the country well.
One can look at the member states of Federal Somalia and even those that do not agree to join them. Puntland was created with the help of Ethiopia and so was Southwest Somalia. Galmudug was created on the behest of Ethiopia and so was Somaliland and Hirshabelle states. Even the Federal Government was created with help of Ethiopia in Kenya, without which the current system would not have been in place. Who are they kidding these Somali politicians – their poor citizenry?
The Federal Government is at loggerheads with Ethiopia, its original sponsor, which now daringly claims to have signed an MoU with one man from one of the regions of the country, who does not have neither the power, legally or otherwise, or the ability to see it through, unless Ethiopia invades Somalia, which is doubtful.
It is where the country needs to work on – implanting trust among the people as they were before the advent of the ongoing competition for power, which seems to be the only reason clan politicians deploy the very social infrastructure which has saved the nation from the chaos of the those past four decades. Clan politics is an easy and less costly way to acquire followers, for people one never heard of and will never know, or never helped and would never help, may die for these politicians, they only heard was from the clan. It is absurd, isn’t it?
The clan infrastructure of the Somali people have always been a social arrangement not only in culture but in politics too, when they had to compete for scarce resources in the semi-arid leopard-colored lands of the Somali, which covers most of the Horn of Africa, some 1.3 million square kilometres, which also owns a similarly large maritime exclusive economic zone of more than a million square kilometres too. It is, indeed, a vast country which carries a huge population of some seventy million, actually the largest tribe, in East Africa, but downplayed by many international reports and statistics.
The clan infrastructure of the Somali is patrilineal and only count their descendants on that basis. Women are not counted and could be married into the clan or outside the clan, but they also play significant roles in the lives of the Somali. Without the mother, one cannot even perceive a Somali society. It is the mothers who bear the children, raise them and make them the society and people they really are.
Somalis always used to compete over water resources and pastures for themselves and for their animals as most of them are nomadic with small percentages involved in other trades such as farming, fishing or artisanal works and commerce. The governing infrastructures introduced by the Europeans have put great limitations and constraints on the Somali as they have divided it into territories under different European controls such as the French, the British and the Italians.
The British took three segments, the Italians a large segment, the French a small part and the rest was given as a gift to the Ethiopians who now control some 467,000 square kilometres of Somali space both in the Somali and the Oromia States of Ethiopia. Parts of the Somali space are currently even administered federally such as Dire Dawa, Ethiopia’s second city. Harar, an ancient capital of Somalis, before Mogadishu, is another federal state of Ethiopia.
The creation of the current Somali state, the merger into one nation of Ex-British Somaliland and the Italian administered UN Trust Territory of Somalia and the creation of a separate Somali state in the form of Djibouti from the Ex-French Somaliland, has created a new phenomenon which many Somalis have not digested but which they have to learn to deal with.
It has not been an easy process with Djibouti staying out of the Somali orbit, although in real terms, it operates much like another Somali state, away from the Federal Republic of Somalia. There is, indeed, another minority group, the Afar - another Cushitic people, with similar culture and looks like the Somali, who live in Djibouti, which justify its separation from the rest of Somalia.
Somalis, like any family, share a lot and maintain bonds through many processes like marriages, travels, trading, helping each other in times of disasters, both natural and man-made. They mourn together if one passes away irrespective of the clan and all of those who are around would attend to the funeral services of the deceased. Marriages also attract all clans and they would participate in all festivities both marriages and otherwise together. All joyous occasions and sad moments are shared.
With respect to politics and governance, Somalis are grouped into clans, which could be kinships or Diya-paying groups. Diya-paying groups help each other in paying compensation to injured parties be it real death or just bodily harm or even verbal abuse. In the past, there were the traditional laws, which defined every aspect of the lives of the Somali, be it death, wars, marriages, injuries, competition over water, fishing, farming, and grazing, and the sharing of these livelihoods.
The governance and the laws imported from other countries including those from Europe and the Arab world mostly have disrupted those processes. As Muslims, Somalis have adjusted their traditional laws to those of the Islamic law discarding those of their ancient ancestors, which could not comply with their belief system.
They have not been able, however, to adjust to the European laws which came about a century or a little more ago and bearing new values which are alien to the Somali. It is these new laws and rules which Somalis have abused and which have disrupted the innocent lives of many.
Most of these laws are secular and appeal to values that are not in line with the Somali social and political infrastructures and most of the conflicts that the country has been facing since the collapse of the state were in this respect. It is more important, perhaps, to note here, that most of the conflicts are due to governance, for the Somali society is an egalitarian society.
No Somali is above another Somali and hence no clan is above another clan. Somalis are a proud people. In the past this was so but many things have changed and the parameters which brought the laws of the ancient Diya-paying groups are no longer in place. There are, indeed, few clans which Somalis discriminated against in the past, but that is dying away, although, such stratification still exists and did not fully die away.
The majority of the population, however, believe in the equality of all, and it should have been easy for them to live together like they always did and shared both pains and joys together like they always did in the past and like they do even today. It is perhaps the change in livelihoods that has changed for the people in governance, and they have increased in numbers, as the governance infrastructures now employ many.
Governments are a source of income and hence wealth. The tax collections and foreign assistance, borrowings in the name of the government, and hence on behalf of the people without seeking their consent, have been the main impediments to normal life processes in the country.
In the past, a person in the governance infrastructure was generally an independent person, and mostly uncompensated for his works. Few of the clans provided substantial herds of livestock or a major productive farm or another source of living for a head of a clan or sub-clan. But generally, chiefs and head of clans also lived with their own means.
Paying them now from the taxes collected from the population or from other sources, seems to be the main cause of the country’s clan warfare and involvement of foreigners in the affairs of the nation. Many of the politicians seem to be abusing the trust of the populations i.e., the clans that put them in the positions in which they find themselves.
In the past, Somalis would admit when they were wrong and would not lie to protect the name of the clan. They would not defend the actions of a corrupt person and they would not just kill in the name of the clan. They were, indeed, a proud people who would protect the name of the clan and the people. It was the source of their strength and it is why many an enemy avoided their territory and they could control and even expand the vast space in which they live, until the nineteenth century, when the Europeans showed up in the region and put everything upside down, dividing the country into regions alien to each other.
Today, Somalis do everything their ancestors did not and would not do. They bow to others for a fistful of dollars mostly from dubious NGOs, multilateral organizations, and the pirate Arabs of the Gulf, who use their newfound wealth to disturb the peace of many a nation that fed them in the past. One can look at what they did to Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and of course, at what they are doing to Somalia today. Their paycheck diplomacy has nearly destroyed the country and look where the ex-leaders of Somalia are finding homes instead of their country. Where is the ancient Somali pride in this?
How can Somalis recover from the current horrific situation in which they find themselves? It is a major question and perhaps the only question. We do believe there is a way out and it is a new national reconciliation. But before then, perhaps, every Somali should look into and reset himself/herself, in a way to emulate his heroic great ancestor who may have contributed to the wellbeing of the nation or even his clan for better and not for worse. Follow on the next article for propositions in this respect.