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by Abdi Farah Laqan
Sunday, April 12, 2009
In March of 1967, the entire student body of Ber Intermediate School went on a two-day strike. Instead of attending classes, the students set out on an 18-mile march to the provincial capital of Burao. The protest was triggered by the undesirable outcome of a sham referendum conducted by France in which the people of French Somaliland (now Djibouti) were ostensibly to determine whether to be independent or remain a French colony for another ten years.
Even though I was only a teenager at the time, and too young to grasp all that was happening, I’ll never forget the strong nationalistic emotions that the rigged referendum and the ensuing demonstration stirred in me. It didn’t matter to me that I had never been to Djibouti or known a single person living there. All that mattered to me that day was that Djibouti was a Somali territory, and it was deprived of its natural right to be free.
I reminisce about this long-gone episode in the history of Djibouti because it is in direct contrast to the state of mind of the Somali society today, a state of mind that is totally devoid of any sense of nationhood. Instead of national aspirations, most Somalis are nowadays preoccupied with meaningless head counts, like how many members clan A has in the parliament or how many ministers clan B has in the cabinet. No one, it appears, is conscious of the fact that neither the so-called parliament nor the purported cabinet has a nation to rule. It is almost non-existent, broken up into feuding clan enclaves.
Granted, clan affiliation has always been a fact of life in Somalia; and sure, it has always been an impediment to modernity and advancement, but I have never imagined it would rise to the level that it could actually destroy the State of Somalia.
For the last 18 years (and counting), Somalia has been in an anarchic state. Inter-clan warfare, foreign invasions, warlordship, and an indifferent international community all conspired to render the country ungovernable. All aspects of statehood have vanished, replaced by highly unstable, clan-driven fiefdoms, whose primary purpose is to prey on the Somali people, already battered by wars, famine, and disease.
But the most disheartening of all is the seemingly total disappearance of the concept of nationhood itself among a wide spectrum of Somali social classes. From the illiterate camel herdsman in the remotest Haud area, to the Ivy-league educated professional in North America, the thinking is basically the same: stand by your clansman regardless of his qualifications, competency, or moral aptitude. The only thing that counts, and overrides everything else, is genealogical proximity. God help us!
I don’t fault the camel herdsman for believing in, and trusting, the sanctity of clanship because (a) he was raised to think that way and (b) his survival and the survival of his herd may one day depend on the solidarity with his clan. Moreover, he is not exposed to other concepts to make him question the long-term viability of clanship. So it is only natural that he would stick with what he knows.
What I can’t understand are the motives of a highly educated class of Somalis – mostly in the Diaspora – who should know better than to peddle a narrow, clan-oriented agenda that further weakens Somali nationhood. It is truly sad to see the best minds among us – those of us who were supposed to lead the masses out of the darkness – engaged in the most divisive and destructive clan politics ever practiced in Somalia.
The demise of Somali nationalism is evident in the emergence of multiple mini-states, each one of them being the creation of a dominant clan in a geographical area. To survive, these clan fiefdoms stumble over each other to be in the good graces of Somalia’s arch enemy – Ethiopia. This suits Ethiopia well because it dovetails with its long-sought goal to keep Somalia weak and divided. Tragically, that opportunity has been handed to Ethiopia on a silver platter by none other than Somalis, who carry out all kinds of atrocities against their follow Somalis on the behest of Ethiopia. By exploiting clan divisions among the Somali people, Ethiopia has succeeded in making Somali nationalism subordinate to clan loyalties, thus minimizing “Somaliness” among the Somali people. For Ethiopia to manipulate Somalia so mercilessly shows how far Somalia has fallen from its dominant position in East Africa. How sad!
With all this going on, I still have some optimism that there are some Somalis out there who may have similar nationalistic memories as those I experienced back in 1967. Perhaps we all feel overwhelmed by the suffocating clannish culture currently prevalent in all regions of the country, as well as in the Somali diaspora, but I would urge all not to give in to the forces of darkness and division. We must somehow pull together and rise up to save the country before it ceases to exit. No one should take lightly the fact that the country could be gobbled up piecemeal by neighboring states, or made uninhabitable by toxic waste dumping.
Oh, by the way, after that sham referendum in Djibouti, the French learned two things: (a) the intensity of Somali nationalism and (b) the divisive powers of tribalism. They decided not to go through the force of Somali nationalism again, so they renamed the country after two local tribes. What used to be French Somaliland became The Territory of Afars and Issas. The word “Somali” was completely wiped out from the lexicon of the colonial office in Djibouti.
For the sake of our nation, let us rekindle that sense of nationalism for which Somalis were once famous.
Abdi Farah Laqan
Connecticut, USA
abdiaguard-ar@yahoo,com