Friday August 3, 2018
By Geoffrey Clarfield
Opinion: If Canada does not recognize Somaliland, we will be harming our own interest and contributing to conflict in a turbulent part of the world
Abdishakur Mohamed,16, a young author from Somaliland, holds up a copy of his book on July 21, 2018, at an international book fair in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. At the first annual event in 2008, organizers exhibited only a handful of books borrowed from friends and attracted just 200 visitors. Ten years on and literature has taken a prominent place in Somaliland's culture.Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
It starts like this. A
Somali “entrepreneur,” often a former pirate who rose in the ranks of
his “profession,” decides to attack a ship in the Indian Ocean in the
hope that he can get a king’s ransom from the owners, or from the
companies that insure the massive vessels, which carry 90 per cent of
the world’s shipping. The entrepreneur either uses his own money or gets
it from investors. With this money he hires local crews of pirates who
are willing to man the small powerboats used to board the larger ships.
It
can often take up to a year before a deal is struck. And when things go
wrong, captive crews can get killed. In the case of Capt. Phillips,
that marvellous movie starring Tom Hanks and based on a true story, the
U.S. Navy intervened to save the day. Sadly, though, most companies pay
the ransom, as the risks of not doing so are too great. In Somalia, this
kind of crime does pay.
When the ransom is delivered, usually in cash, it is asymmetrically
divided, the lion’s share going to the entrepreneur and the rest to the
hired guns. This system is as transparent as that of the pirates of the
Caribbean of the 18th century, when these kinds of profit-sharing
arrangements were common and agreed to by all and sundry before
attacking English or Spanish ships. It is a relatively democratic and
“fair” system for a society without a duly constituted government.
You
can read all about it in a book by Toronto’s Jay Bahadur, who tells
their story in his tome called, not surprisingly, The Pirates of
Somalia. You can also see a more politically correct version in the film
of the same name, featuring Al Pacino. What the readers of the book and
viewers of the film do not know, nor are they told, is that piracy is
rampant on the east coast of Somalia, where the impotent internationally
recognized “Transitional Federal Government” is supposed to hold
sovereignty but does not. Instead, almost all of eastern and southern
Somalia is run by various warlords who are in a near constant state of
war with one another. (For those interested in the tragic detail of what
goes on there I recommend the book Getting Somalia Wrong, by British
journalist Mary Harper.)But the pirates of Somalia, and the utter failure of the Transitional
Federal Government more generally, is especially interesting in
comparison with another Somalian story. The northern coast, at the Gulf
of Aden, is now governed by the Independent Republic of Somaliland.
There is no piracy, its port of Berbera is thriving, warlords hold no
power, and, miracle of miracles, the people of Somaliland have a
functioning, relatively stable, democratically elected government. A
presidential system has emerged from the grassroots, without
international diplomatic recognition and with only minimal, piecemeal
and grudging support from the “international donor community.” Canada
does not recognize Somaliland, but it does recognize the fictive
Transitional Federal Government of Somalia in the south, even though the
latter cannot even effectively control its own theoretical capital
city, Mogadishu.
In order to better understand how most of Somalia is lawless while
Somaliland is lawful and duly constituted, we must briefly describe the
Somali people and some of their recent history. The Somalis have
inhabited the horn of Africa for thousands of years. They are largely
nomadic, tribally based camel herders, but over the centuries they have
established coastal cities and inland trading entrepôts. In the complex
oral history of their lineages they all descend from one semi-mythical
ancestor named Somal. They speak a Cushitic language, part of the larger
language group of Afro-Asiatic. Cushitic languages include ancient
Egyptian and most of the languages of southern Ethiopia. Cushitic is a
“cousin” of the Semitic language group.
Workers unload NGO food rations at the Somaliland port of Berbera on July 21, 2018. Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
Although the Somali people
see themselves as having one origin, and share the same language,
Islamic faith and much of the same culture, they have never had a
concept of Somali nationhood. Their robust participation in the east
African slave trade during the 19th century and their eventual
colonization by the British and the Italians in the early 20th century
made them aware that they may just be or become one nation, if they
could rid themselves of colonial masters and rule themselves. Ultimately
control of the territory of the Somali speakers came under five
different regimes.
In the north, the British practised their tried and proven indirect
rule among the Isaak tribal confederation on the coast and inland desert
areas of the Gulf of Aden. The main part of southern Somalia was taken
over by the Italians, who treated it like a colony and encouraged
European immigration, like the French in Algeria. This area is the
territory of the largest tribal confederation of the Somali, the Darod.
Then there was the French-dominated port and mini-territory of Djibouti.
Then there was the mixed tribal region but largely Isaak enclave in
eastern Ethiopia. And finally, Kenya’s Darod dominated the northern
frontier of that country.
lamic group al-Shabab, things in
the north went in a different direction entirely.
When the winds of change blew across
Africa in the early 1960s, British and Italian Somalia became two
separate nations. One week later the nominally independent northern
Somaliland joined with the southern part, to form the newly independent
Republic of Somalia with a seat in the United Nations. The first few
years of independence were promising, as they were across the rest of
the myriad of newly declared African states, but soon after the same
problems erupted.
Fishermen’s
boats moor at the Somaliland port of Berbera on July 21, 2018.
Somaliland does not allow pirates to operate off its coast. Mustafa
Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
The political leaders of the Darod and their military supporters took
over the government and created a one-party state where patronage of
family and tribe became the order of the day, thus giving the Darod a
political and economic advantage over the northern Isaak. Then Somalia
went to war with Ethiopia in the hope that it could integrate the
Somali-dominated Ethiopian Ogaden desert and rangeland on its western
border. The Somalis lost that conflict, and the regime then went to war
against the Isaak in the north. The Somalian forces decimated Isaak
towns and cities, driving out thousands of Isaak who became either
fighters or refugees in the 1980s. Thousands of these men and women then
moved to the Gulf Arab states as labourers during the oil boom there.
There they became worldly, wealthy, educated and sophisticated members
of a fast-emerging Somali diaspora.
The fall of the last Somali
dictator shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall led to a civil war in
southern Somalia, and the creation of an alliance between the Isaak
tribal militias in the north and their commercial diaspora abroad. As
the south descended into warlordism, which in turn allowed for the rise
of the al-Qaida-affiliated radical Is
Women wait in line to vote in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, on June 26, 2010. Ali Musa/AFP/Getty Images
Northern, largely Isaak militias managed to regain and retain much of
the territory of former British Somaliland. They had the moral and
financial support of their diaspora and they then managed, without
international aid, to reintegrate most of the Somali refugees who had
been languishing in UN camps in Ethiopia since the 1980s. As women had
often been left behind in the camps to fend for themselves, this
injected a notion of gender balance into what was once a strictly
patriarchal Muslim society. And here is where Somaliland was and is
different.
The elders of the tribes, the dominant lineages of the
Isaak, a growing minority of women and diaspora businessmen realized
that the two options which have been tried in Africa since independence
do not work. The first is the slavish imitation of Western democracies,
carving up the country into electoral zones and hoping for the best.
There’s also the more dictatorial rule of a dominant lineage, backed by
the military, running the state in their own interest and persecuting
anyone else, which is what the Darod did to the Isaak during the 1980s.
Instead, the inhabitants of Somaliland engaged in a drawn-out, nonlinear
process of consultation and state building unlike any other that has
occurred in Africa or in the Islamic world. Although at one point it
descended into what looked like a civil war, the people of Somaliland
now live in a loosely functioning democracy.
Performers
entertain guests at the Hargeisa International Book Fair in Hargeisa,
Somaliland, on July 21, 2018. Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
The ups and downs and the key milestones of this remarkable process
are described in great detail by the British writer Mark Bradbury, an
NGO and relief worker who has lived and worked in Somaliland for many
years. He was not only an observer of this process but a participant, as
Somaliland has almost defined civil society as the flourishing of local
NGO and international NGO partners (this includes women’s groups, which
are thriving).
Somaliland
Foreign Affairs Minister Sa’ad Ali Shire, from left, Vice-President
Abdirahman Abdallahi Saylici and Ambassador to Britain Iqbal Jhazbhay
are seen with other guests at the Hargeisa International Book Fair on
July 21, 2018. Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
In Bradbury’s book, Becoming Somaliland, we read
about how the people of northern Somaliland engaged in the time-honoured
custom of elders and stakeholders conducting near endless consultations
under acacia trees, until they developed inter-clan and inter-lineage
peace treaties and land adjudication which, once hammered out locally,
could then could be replicated at a regional and national level.
A
farmer arrives with his herd of camels to find a buyer at Sayladah
market in Hargeisa, Somaliland, on Oct. 29, 2012. Simon Maina/AFP/Getty
Images
One of the key innovations in the new democratic Somaliland is an
upper parliamentary house of “tribal elders,” which has the clout both
to prevent and adjudicate tribal or clan conflicts — the same kind of
conflicts that drove the south into civil war. Somaliland politicians
are not only focused on the local. In its bid for international
recognition, which has been withheld by the nations of the world, the
Republic of Somaliland has pragmatically offered to recognize the state
of Israel as sign of their goodwill to all and sundry.
A
member of the Somaliland Meat Development Association arranges bar soap
made from camel bone marrow to dry before cutting and packaging them on
Oct. 28, 2012, in Hargeisa. Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images
In 2008,
Bradbury wrote, “Somaliland … is a self-governing territory … (that)
fulfills most international criteria of statehood (including) … a
popularly elected constitutional government that exercises some control
over its borders, manages certain public assets, levies taxes,
interferes in the market, formulates development policies and provides
security for its citizens.”
Somaliland
football coach and player Marwa Mauled Abdi, 24, poses at the football
ground of Ubah fitness centre, the first football field exclusively
opened for women, in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, on March 1,
2018. The photo was taken to celebrate International Women’s Day on
March 8, 2018. Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
Ten years later, Somaliland is still doing well. One thing this new
republic does not allow is for pirates to use its coast on the Gulf of
Aden to weaken and destroy international trade. That should make anyone
stand up and notice. Rather than recognizing the failed state of Somalia
in the south, instead, it would be wise for Canada and NATO countries
to recognize and make Somaliland their strategic ally. The Iranians are
watching this country carefully and they are already abusing its new
democracy by supporting the opposition parties that have fairly arisen
in a flourishing entity, once just another in a long line of failed
African states.
Local residents attend the Hargeisa International Book Fair July 21, 2018. Mustafa Saeed/AFP/Getty Images
If Canada does not recognize democratic
Somaliland, we will be harming our own interest and contributing to
conflict in that already conflict-ridden part of the world. We will also
be seen as royal hypocrites who preach democracy for the developing
world, but when it emerges there without our intervention, ignore it.
It’s time for Ottawa to wake up.
— Geoffrey Clarfield is an anthropologist-at-large.