Hiiraan Online

Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar
Saturday, August 22, 2009

 This article explores the reasons behind the massacre of 7/11. It articulates the hopes, dreams and also the nightmares of the people of Somaliland. Neither Ali Marshal nor Somaliland’s 7/11 victims will die in vain. Their blood will feed the tree of liberty and democracy. Freedom will win in spite of the forces of the extreme right of dictatorship, darkness and extremism.

I dedicate this article to the loving memory of the 4 victims of the Somaliland’s 7/11 whose murder will unite a nation to defeat lawlessness

Cali Maxamuud Nuur AKA Cali Bagaashle (Businessman)
Daauud Xaashi Jaamac  (Engineer)
Mawliid Xasan Omar (Businessman)
Cali Aw Omar Barre(Educator)

And in loving Memory of Ali Gulaid (Marshal)

His untimely sacrifice will teach the nation about sacrifice, decisiveness, discipline and commitment to the people’s cause of justice, transparency and honesty

Midnight Forever Part I: Grief

July 12, of 2007:  The words are blurry.  I focus. The letters move on their own. I feel wetness on my face and on my shirt. Arrows of sorrow and pain pierce through my heart.  My breathing misses a step then another.  Things around me look different. Darkness closes in.

Ali Aw Omar.  I remember his last words to me at the Ambassador Hotel in Hargaysa, Somaliland.  “This book, my present to you, delivered me from a state of utter ignorance. I pray it does the same for you.  Look here for example, read this aloud if you have not forgotten your Arabic”. He challenged in the way only an old friend can.  I noticed he was talking a bit louder.  I made a mental note to check his hearing later. I accepted the book with the gravity it was offered. It is a book of Hadith (oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the prophet Mohammed, upon him be peace and blessings ). playfully I declared: It is an old book, old man. And it was. Yellow with age,  over used, lovingly kept.  I read the passage in Arabic taking up his challenge. 

 Narrated Anas: Allah's Apostle said, "Help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or he is an oppressed one. People asked, "O Allah's Apostle! It is all right to help him if he is oppressed, but how should we help him if he is an oppressor?" The Prophet said, "By preventing him from oppressing others."  

July 12, 2009. Sheikh Abdullahi Sh. Ali Jowhar walked into the make shift morgue in Borama.  The body parts of four men viciously murdered the day before were laid out for identification. This was no ordinary serial murder. The brutalized bodies spoke aloud of a dark tribal ritual murder ceremony only one step removed from frank cannibalism.  The dead bore silent witness to the brutality of man to his brother.

There was something familiar about the head among reassembled body parts.  The nose broken and twisted around before death looked both grotesque and familiar. The mouth was frozen in horror. The high forehead was serene as ever; shinning dark spot in the middle; the sign of prostration and submission to Allah (SWT) in Salaat (prayers). The marks on the torso left behind by a blunt knife stabbed and twisted around in the innards of the still living victim left no doubt about a tribal ritual signature intended for the living.  The Sheikh moved on to the next body.   But there was a foreboding sense, a subconscious alarm. The Sheikh looked back again. A face; a name, a pattern recognized! Ali Aw Omer. He is Ali Aw Omar; the Sheikh confirmed “Ina Lilahi wa inaa elayhi Rajucuun” (Verily, unto God do we belong and, unto Him we shall return Quran “The Lion 2:156)

2:155 (Asad) And most certainly shall We try you by means of danger, and hunger, and loss of worldly goods, of lives and of [labour's] fruits. But give glad tidings unto those who are patient in adversity  2:156 who, when calamity befalls them, say, "Verily, unto God do we belong and, verily, unto Him we shall return." Quran “the Lion”

7/11, 2009 was a day like any other. Ali woke up fresh and immediately made a decision that will cost him his life that very night. He decided to delay his trip to Borama and to go shopping for that particular dress his daughter wanted now that he has few dollars to spare.  That is all it took. But then again no one who knew Ali will be surprised that this was his last decision in this world.

I still can see in my mind’s eye Ali Aw Omar, a single father at the time, riding by me on his motorcycle with his daughter holding onto his back in the streets of Djibouti. She was the jewel of his eyes.  In a world where childcare is traditionally left to women Ali will be remembered as the prototype of the emerging role of the new caring father; definitely a welcome evolution in this ultra conservative patriarchal society.  He remarried and became the doting father of 7 more children.  He ensured that all of his children (sons and daughters) attended school and excelled in it in spite of the modesty of his means.  His oldest daughter has just joined nursing school. He inherited this deep capacity to nurture from his mother Mumina (of the Bahgobo tribe of the Jibri-Abokor people of the Isaak tribe). And he inherited the hands on attitude to parenting from his father Aw Omer Barre  (of Bahabar Abdalle of the Makaahil people of the Samoroon tribe.) This was Ali Aw Omar and it is important to remember his tribal lineage because the end of his life is so intractably tied up with this prehistoric curiosity.

 The delay in travel timing  from Hargaysa to Borama to the evening of July 11, 2009;  meant Ali Aw Omar  entered the vortex of a chain of events that will lead him to the devil’s den and that will end in his torture  and death that shook his nation and that may lead to its death as well.   

On the road that Ali traveled later that day and unbeknownst to him, Tribal Murder Warriors gathered under dying trees surrounding by dying animals, having come from homes where the monsters of hunger and starvation hunted the weak, the young and the old.  It is a particularly dry season in this semi dessert but among the warriors gathered on this particular road  on this particular day there was thirst only for one thing;  human blood.

 “Shaitiin” (Demons) set loose from their chains in fires of hell stirred the bitterness of collective tribal memory in the cold hearts of these men, as they schemed the murder of any one from the “other group” who travelled that route on that fateful day. Yes, yes there was some dispute over a parcel of land between few neighboring families. But that was nothing more than a pretext, and a flimsy one at that. It sure was not the cause of the horror that was to unfold.  It could have been anything; a dispute between a student and a teacher over grades in school, an ordinary traffic violation, a mundane crime, anything at all.  The real cause is that injustice and corruption has so weakened the newly born state of Somaliland and a budding dictator has chosen solidifying his hold on power on the basis of tribal allegiances, and at the expense of law and order and good governance. In these dire circumstances the tribal monster is rearing its ugly head and getting ready to consume the nation in a frenzy of primitive tribal blood orgies of mutual self annihilation.

Read Part II