How Long Can We Remain in This Prison?

by Abdinoor Mohamed
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

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From the bottom to the top political and intellectual spheres, things seem to have been turned upside down, lacking any setting of logical order. Incoherent and rather disoriented, the community structures survival mechanisms have deteriorated over the past 20 years of war and terror across the country. The breakdown of law and order did not only dismantle the institutional set up of the nation but also have greatly affected the customary rules and laws that had linked the people in different aspects of social and cultural entities. The war has tremendously spoiled the entire ethics, practices, behaviour, ways of thinking, codes of conduct and the long-standing heritage of people’s traditions. One area most damaged by the war is The Spirit of Neighbourhood which has been the core of Somalia’s identity as a nation since times immemorial but later on died behind the ramparts of tribal conflicts.

With a culture deeply rooted in profound Islamic teachings (relaxed though) the spirit of neighbourhood has been a shining spot in the heart of the Somali culture almost the same as it is enshrined in the teachings of the Koran and the Hadith. But that spirit has eroded and now people trust or help each other only by way of clan or tribe though they live side by side in the same neighbourhood.

First it was the war that swept people into different enclaves within a city or town since the only way they could get protection was to flee to where their clan predominantly resides. As the warlords split into splinter factions, the divisions among the people increased enormously high with invisible walls of hatred and distrust building up between them on daily basis. We have seen people living side-by-side but attached to different warlords in terms of survival and security, not sharing any common interest as to how they should improve the life of their settlement. They could not even agree to contribute or share the costs of fixing one lamp in a street running through their area to avoid any danger that might creep in the dark. We have seen people who were not able to mix with others or establish links with other people outside the zoo of their tribal warlord. The more these warlords multiplied the more serious the bonds of neighbourhood were broken.

Apart from that, this fragmentation made Somalis soft victims for greedy entrepreneurs who demanded unaffordable cash for petty services by taking advantage of people’s inability to get together and discuss the interests of their neighbourhood. People who are affected by the tribal virus are known to be close to each other physically but far away from each other mentally and psychologically. They are like the two horns of a bull staring at each other in close proximity but unable to reach each other. The paradox is: How can we speak of nationhood when neighbourhood is killed? Islam could have been a solution to this complex question but unfortunately it has been used as cover up to grab power by extremists and moderate propagandists who differ only in the MEANS of attaining their political objective but remain the same in all other aspects.

Any Somali who matures to a stage where he should break chains with tribalism, bubbles off into a religious domain. But he will have no option other than one of the Islamic factions. Then he or she would follow a certain interpretation of Islam, Islah, Ittihad, Hisbul Islam, Ansaar. Takfiir, Shabaab, shaabbul mujaahiddiin and he will be instructed not to open up to others belonging to a different sect. Just like the days before he mutated to a religious man, he finds himself cut off from the rest of the society as he is confined in a narrow space of sectarian ideology. Does it pay to defect from one camp to another while at both camps you are a prisoner without a number? When shall we free ourselves? Not longer, I guess, than we restore the spirit of neighbourhood, seeing Somalia as one, and taking the divine indivisible religion of Islam as a whole. We must work on this otherwise we shall remain homeless, wandering around the globe and branded as the African gypsy in the west.

Abdi-Noor Mohamed
Writer and Film maker
University of Växjo
Sweden
[email protected]
www.authorsden.com/abdihajimohamed

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