Hiiraan Online

Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar
Saturday, August 22, 2009

“Face Mecca and profess Islam, before I kill you”

The Tribal Murderer kills on behalf of his tribe. His action is both sanctioned and despised by the tribe.  The contradiction inherent in this role gives it a massive destructive potency. It is essential to differentiate the role of the tribal murderer from that of the tribal warrior for there is hope in this distinction. The tribal warrior travels in the day time; he fights his wars in the battle field. He gains stature by his gallantry, his strict observation of the rules of war, his temperance and even his kindness towards non combatants. He is revered in public and loved in private by the members of his tribe.   On the other hand the tribal murderer is by definition a psychopath and a vulture. He is the embodiment of cowardice. He never confronts an armed enemy. He sneaks behind the unarmed, the traveler, and the one peacefully tilling his land. Death and dismemberment is a trade he perfects and prefers. He is revered in secret,  feared in secret and denounced in public by the members of his tribe. He and his progeny often become outcasts of society for which they played this dirty role as the tribal murderer succeeds in disgusting his own tribe’s men and everyone else. This is because there is something intrinsically offensive about the murder of innocent men in all human societies and the tribe even though a most primitive social organization shares in this disgust.  And there is even more revulsion about torturing a human being or any sentient being to death. Yet these are the trademarks and the essential tools of the tribal murderer. 

 For the warriors who sat under the shade-less trees the names, the nature, the history, the personality, the holiness or lack of it of those who were to  be murdered did not matter in the least. There were only few essential criteria that the victims-to-be had to satisfy 1) they should be warm blooded male homo sapiens 2) they should belong to the neighboring tribe “the other”3) They should be unarmed, unaware and vulnerable.  The tribal murder warrior does not discriminate. He would accept any unarmed victim.

The act of tribal murder has to be specific, in stark contrast to the randomness of how its victim is selected.  The method and mechanism of death of these random victims were  meticulously and carefully planned by the tribal murderer. The death of the victim must be slow and gruesome. The body must show publicly demonstrable evidence of pain and dehumanization to teach the living “other” a lesson that “you must not mess with us”- the lions in this jungle.  This explains why the body of Ali Aw Omar’s body was found in such a state of gruesome mutilation. The killing process has to showcase the “manliness” of the warrior’s tribe. In the strange world of the tribal feuds this dictum dictates the harvesting of the testicles of the victim.  It is reported to me that Ali’s testicles were “taken” as he watched.  

The tribal murder is the most primitive version of psych-ops. It could aptly be described as a form of psychological terrorism in a backward tribal setting. The death of “the other” in this most gruesome manner unleashes the vilest of the hidden demons in the psyche of the collective and it triggers a catastrophic chain of events that leads to genocide of a group against the other.  In the dirty tribal wars that ensue there are no winners. From the times of posterity tribal wars has always been a lose-lose proposition. That is why tribal society everywhere is in decline, or has become extinct or is about to become extinct.

One must understand clearly and with no ambiguity that this whole shocking process is not personal at all. The warriors, who hunted, captured and tortured Ali Aw Omar to death had nothing against him in person. Their roads never crossed. Strangely enough the warrior appeared willing to help Ali achieve Janna (heaven) in the next world; One of the murderers is reported to have asked Ali “Face Mecca and profess Islam, before I kill you”. In the irrational and schizophrenic mind of the tribal warrior, there is no contradiction between torturing Ali Aw Omar, murdering him and “taking away his testicles” and the warrior’s firm belief that he has nothing against Ali Aw Omar the person.

This is how genocide starts and works. The human, the person, is taken out of the equation and replaced with a mental image of the horribly caricatured “other”.  Later on the virus of violence spreads with hyper-inflated waves of hatred with the power of many tsunamis.  Killing and torturing the dehumanized “other” become as easy as walking and talking. This is how Auschwitz and Rwanda came about.   This is the explanation of the mass graves (the legacy of Siyaad Barre) that keep cropping up in Hargaysa every now and then.

And so on that fateful shocking and ugly day Ali Aw Omar and 3 of his fellow citizens were caught up in the dragnet of the tribal vengeful murdering warriors. We remember.  We will not forgot. They are:

Cali Maxamuud Nuur AKA Cali bagaashle (Businessman)
Daauud Xaashi Jaamac  (Engineer)
Mawliid Xasan cumar (Businessman)
Cali Aw Cuamar Barre(Educator)

They died a painful, horrifying death. I will spare you the details of their horrible death but one small fact needs to be mentioned. One man escaped the mayhem and reported on the manner of their death. In an interview with the BBC Somali services he reported of one particular exchange that he overheard and that could summarize the horror of that day. The man who escaped reported that he heard one of the victims beg for mercy “Men of Islam, my religion; kill me but shoot me with a bullet; are we not Moslems all?” The heartless leader responded with “cut out that tongue that dares to speak” and the tongue was cut off.

And there he was; butchered by evil. The light of death shining from his black eyes, a stone’s throw from Kalabaydh the small town where he grew up working in his brother tea shop.  I mourn for Ali Aw Omar and I mourn for my people.  

“tribal war is not about politics….. tribal warfare is about revenge. Tribes don’t fight for principles. They fight to get even.”  “Tribal wars are therefore particularly and intentionally full of atrocities. Victims of tribal wars may be skinned or burned alive. Their dead bodies maybe mutilated and displayed. The aim of tribal revenge is not to achieve balance, but to attain vindication and total submission or extermination of the other. A tribe that fails the bloody test of revenge takes the risk of finding its resources, land and homes plundered, women carried off and men bullied.” July 2005 Abdishakur Jowhar’s  “Essentials of Tribal Psychology

I wrote these words four year ago. I did not know then that I will witness them so vividly, so personally.

Ali Aw Omar: Memories of my Generation

July 12, 2009. I hold on to the book of Hadith. I opened the same passage again that I read with Ali Aw Omar two years before.  This time my head hung low in grief, I read the passage again with eyes unseeing flooded with the gravity of the loss. 

Narrated Anas: Allah's Apostle said, "Help your brother…

I knew immediately why Ali selected the particular Hadith for my attention.  Lifelong bonds of friendship ensured shared experiences and shared memories.  Now that he has gone, in these memories, shared no more, I exist. I must remember to pass them on, to those who will come, for to bear witness is a responsibility.

Ali and I have been together in the social justice movement in Somalia since the early seventies when we both joined forces with other members of our generation to confront the military dictator of our time Mohamed Siyad Barre. We were on the side of the progressive left of the political spectrum.  Che Chevera of Cuba, Franz Fanon of Algeria, Amílcar Lopes Cabral of Guinea Bissau and Joe Slovo of South Africa were our heroes. We were the post independence generation of Africa. We were fed up with tin pot military dictators and military coup d’états that devastated the continent of Africa like pestilence and plague.

That was the turbulent seventies for my generation. We came to maturity in that decade and were immediately confronted with a nation in a crisis. We met head on a military dictatorship that was systematically destroying a nation.  Ours was a political revolt, student movement, popular campaigns. We were determined to stand up to be counted. But we were crushed by the regime. To be brutally honest we failed miserably in the task we set up for ourselves. Our defeat and the victory of the short sighted selfish right set the stage for Somalia to become the prototypal land of  statelessness , starving masses, well fed  pirates, warlords and of course their social counterpart marauding ferocious machete wielding  tribes. 

Many of us ended as refugees in the four corners of the world.  Few of the more dedicated, hardy, heroic types remained in the country and refused to go. Ali Aw Omar was one of the latter. He stayed with the people. He shared their lot, their wars, their peace, their hunger, their pain and their prosperity.  I envied him then for his bravery. I think he knew of my envy, it was never mentioned. He was just too refined.

I sought refuge in the west and quickly got lost in its decadent capitalistic ways. I conformed to the locally prevalent creed of democracy, equality and free fair elections as the gentlest means of human progress.   Ali Aw Omar having stayed home was caught up in the wave of Islamism that has swept over the new generations in Somalia. He also conformed to the locally prevailing political mood of a resurgent Islamic exuberance.  He found safety in the Quran and sustenance in Hadith and Sunnah.

Ali and I witnessed the death of the ideology that dominated our childhood days as well as the death of the nation in whose bosom we grew. Like orphans in a ruthless world we had to evolve, adapt and improvise with all haste to survive.  Like a football on the playground of fate, we were kicked around, cast, molded and ripened by the force of circumstances and times.  At the end of it all here we were Ali, a Sheikh, and a pious man in Somaliland preaching to save my soul for the next world, I a Psychiatrist from Canada trying to understand my old friend in this present world. 

By sharing with me this particular Hadith, with its beautifully written message of justice and our role in bringing it about, Ali Aw Omar peeled away the residue of time and space to reveal that we both remained true to our commitment to the timeless cause of human equality, fraternity and peace despite the differences in languages and terminologies we acquired over our lifetimes.  

It is important that we draw the right conclusions from this national tragedy. What we are witnessing is not merely the murder of Ali Aw Omar, it is much broader and much deeper; it is nothing less than the last gasp of the Somaliland state which will surely collapse and die unless its heroic masses comes to its aid.

The central pillar of any society is law and order. The state has the obligation of protecting its citizens. The current administration failed the people of Somaliland.   What has killed Ali Aw Omar is lawlessness, injustice, corruption, weakened judiciary and the mother of them all the muzzling of the free press. These have, unfortunately, all become the official trademark of those in power in Somaliland today. 

Even worse it is clear that those who committed this most heinous act remain free and at large because the current administration of Rayaale has reached a cynical calculation that allowing the murderers to remain free is in the regime’s best political and electoral interest.  What the leadership has not yet grasped is this: every single day these criminals remain free, rubbing their dirty nose on the face of the national psyche, bears witness to the moral bankruptcy and practical impotence of the regime.  Every single day the murderers so openly challenge the state and get away with it constitutes one more nail in the coffin of Rayaale’s administration.  It is time to change course, time to dismantle the politics of divide and rule, time to come together and find justice for Ali Aw Omar and for Somaliland. 

But there is urgency in the matter, in these most dreadful of times.  And I must now address those in my tribe who has become possessed by the demons of vengeance, who dream of basking in its blooded glory, I say to you give me few moments of your precious time, for I too belong to the tribe and I too feel the pain.

Part III: the conclusion is coming next Saturday August 29, 2009.  Stay tuned..