Arrested majority or minority in the Northern regions of Somalia (Somaliland): Which way forward?

Deeq Yusuf
September 01,2005

At a recent conference in London at the conference hall of the Department for International Development, a British-English participant asked me upon recognising my physical features as a Somali whether it was true that some part of the Somali nation were considering to secede from proper Somalia. I answered the question with a question and asked him instead: is it possible to divide Northern England from Southern England? He simply said ‘'no, impossible''. I then told him that his answer to my question answers his first question. Simply put: Just like what the great Somali nationalist Michael Mariano told the British colonisers in the early part of the last century when they were demarcating the artificial border between Somali clans: ‘'The Somali people are one and the same yet you are trying to divide two brothers with these lines, I assure you that nothing will stop them coming together''

It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the secessionist myth is failing. Their prospects of further dividing up the Somali nation who are themselves unfortunate victims of the colonisation processes in Africa by the European colonial powers and the Abyssinian are as negligible today as they were fifteen years ago when they hijacked the realm of power in some parts of Northern Somalia following the vacuum of power created after the collapse of the Somali central government in 1991. The British author Salman Rush die once said: ‘To be Somali is to be a people united by one language and divided by maps''. Although this statement is true and a perfect reflection, I would go further and add the Somali are all blood related and pure homogenous group sharing all known social relationships. A unique statement to best reflect the plight of the Somali people can be adopted from Abdullahi Sadi's political essay (1990) “The development of the Ogadenia struggle and the socio-political injustices in Ethiopia'' wherein he quotes Makhtal Dhahir's declaration in 1963 as the leader of the Ogaden Liberation Front, almost three years after the glorified birth of the Somali nation in 1960 as a stepping stone for the eventual reunification of the other remaining parts of the Somali nation under the colonial oppression:

‘'The wind of liberation blowing over Africa during the past few years has, alas, touched only one part of the Somali territory and the rest of our territories, despite the struggle of its people, which has been going on for at least eighty years, is still subject to the unjust criteria of a by-gone age. The Somali people appear to be the victim of a vast international plot to deprive it of such fundamental rights as the rights to freedom, independence and self-determination. How could we agree to let our country and people, in 1963, be split up on the basis of agreements made, at our expense and without our consent by foreign powers?? How could we agree to allow the fate of our brothers and our sons to continue to be ruled by these agreements, not merely unjust but illegal agreement which repudiate our history, our tradition and our culture, and place our people, for ever, under military occupation?? We demand that the world take cognisance of injustice inflicted upon us, we demand that Ethiopian domination of our country should cease in order that the shedding of blood may end, and peace be restored.''

Compare this with a recent statement by the so-called Minister of Foreign affairs of the secessionist camp in the former British Somaliland when she declared the following statement in a classic confusion of cause and effect:

“The people of the former British Protectorate of Somaliland are unanimous in their genuine desire to secede from southern Somalia. They have exercised this through a nation-wide referendum''

With such unguarded, false and selfish statement, she is trying to wipe out hard-earned achievements to undo the gross injustices inflicted on the entire Somali nation by centuries of colonial oppression. – achievements that took centuries of struggle and evolution to accomplish. The secessionists will rejoice if at all they win their agenda, because they could have forced the entire Somali nation into forsaking these values. The achievements of heroes like the great Awadalite freedom fighter Ahmed Gurey, father of the modern Somali nationalism and leader of the Dervishes movement Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, the head of the Salihiya School of Islamic jurisprudence Sheikh Ismail Sheikh Ishaq, the numerous freedom fighters like Ina Sultan Timo-cadde, Faarah Oomaar, Sheikh Bashir, Balayo cas, Michael Mariano, Sultan Ali Shire and many others from the Northern Somalia will vanish from the face of the earth.

This is a very dangerous paradigm to ignore and the trouble with this kind of destructive reasoning is that if you consistently deflect your mind from its bias towards the truth you can damage it irrevocably. When potential poisonous and subversive ideas emerge one stamps on them so ruthlessly that after a while they cease to come at all. Today, the opinions of the likes of Adna and Awil seem to have a psychological importance that renders accurate information and history irrelevant and obscurely threatening. Having said that, people have a right to their views, but some ideas are more valuable than others. In a world where we are facing more dangers, we need clear minds that are not clutered by dogmatic adherence to beliefs that are often indistinguishable from prejudices and psychoses.

Tyranny as Hegel stated is found typically in primitive and pre-modernistic entities as they are infected with dark superstitions and irrational beliefs. Fifteen years on, all of the secessionists' major predictions have turned out to be wrong. They said that their Southern Somali brothers were massing troops to destroy ‘'Somaliland'' (a camouflage for blatant tribalism), the local economy could provide utopian paradise that we all cherish, freedom and democracy, peace and love, and you name it. As a matter of fact, the opposite has happened. Their agenda and brief history has proven to be completely barren as an instrument of social understanding or prediction. It's just that their usefulness has been confined entirely to providing a set of slogans and conspiracy theories that are supposed to justify and glorify secessionism and the dictatorship that inevitably goes with it. Presently, criticism is the most dangerous commodity in the secessionist-controlled localities.

Let us now analyse the secessionist so-called Foreign affairs minister false statement from an Islamic perspective. Allah in his divine wisdom states in his Book, the Holy Koran:

‘'The case of an evil word is like that of an evil tree, which is uprooted from the earth and has no stability'' (14:27). Meaning that human nature rejects it and it cannot be established by reason, or law of nature or human conscience. It has no more stability that an idle tale.

And indeed, the secessionist agenda is an idle tale. For the selfish tribalist, it is a “one key fits all locks'' philosophy. They speak powerfully to unrealisable utopian dreams. For most patriotic Somali nationals, their agenda is the greatest fantasy of the twentieth century, not because it offers a better life but because it appeals to apparently ineradicable spiritual cravings. Simply put, secessionism in Northern Somalia performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of religious character but it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.

The vehicle of modernity for transforming pre-modern superstitious realm into a national order of individual freedom has been the modern nation-state (Somali Democratic Republic). The state is perceived to be the instrument for actualising the ethical ideals of modernity, an instrument whereby a collectivity of individual wills can guarantee each individual's freedom of conscience and thought at the same time as each individual can possess rights and freedoms only if he or she is a member of a state. Paradoxically, the supreme authority for protecting those rights is vested in the state, since the only way an individual can possess freedom in the modern world is if he or she is a member of a state. More to the point, the modern era began with the creation of separate, independent sovereign states, each of them organised around a particular nation like the Somali nation, with its own language, religion and culture, maintaining a government that was legitimated as expressing the national will, or national interests.

Perhaps a Socratic approach is very relevant here. Socrates made it his life's work to compel people .to question their most fundamental assumptions. True knowledge was acquired only after an agonising struggle that involved your whole self. The people who conversed with Socrates usually thought they knew what they were talking about, but by the end of the conversation he had exposed the flaws at the heart of each firmly held opinion. Perhaps the secessionist in the former British Somaliland could greatly benefit from this dialectical process.

The best of Allah's creation, the prophet of Allah (PBUH) has warned the Muslim Ummah against disunity by saying: “Choose unity over disunity, as unity is mercy and disunity is hell.'' On a similar note Allah (SW) stated in his Holy Book: ‘‘do not deliver short, and do not go about creating disorder in the land (26:184). This means that you should not go about in the land with an evil intent, to commit and spread corruption, attack innocent people, commit theft or robbery or to pick pockets or to acquire the property of other people through unlawful means. How does one justify the current unwarranted aggression by the secessionists in Sool, Sanaag and Ayn regions? How about the first onslaught on peaceful Borama, Berbera, Hargeisa and Burao from the early to mid-90s?

In another verse, Allah warns: “do not give that which is defective in exchange for that which is good (4:3); that is to say, spreading mischief, corruption and confusion is unlawful, embezzlement is unlawful, so the sale of defective articles representing them as being in good condition, and the exchange of defective articles or ideas in return for good ones, imposing war over peace (unity over disunity), is also unlawful. In all these verses, God Almighty has set forth all dishonest practices in such a comprehensive way that no type of dishonesty has been omitted. In his divine wisdom, he has not merely forbidden theft, corruption, mischief etc, lest a stupid person should consider that all other improper methods of acquiring power, privilege or property are permitted.

Where do we go from here? In line with Allah's (SW) instruction, the Muslims have been directed to seek appropriateness and adhere to the middle, as it is said: “Thus have we made you the people of the middle' (2:144), meaning that the Muslims have been directed to keep to the middle. Thus blessed are those who proceed along the middle. Let us join in our efforts to educate and enlighten this group of our population who are trying to lead the masses astray through a process of persuasion and proximity. Just as what Michael Mariana said more than seventy years ago, how can we accept a line of demarcation between the blood brothers of Las-Anood and Garowe, Las-qoray and Bosaaso, Odweine and Gaashamo, Burco and Baydhabo, Aware and Salaxley, Mogadishu and Hargeisa??. The nomads had for centuries defied and continue to defy these artificial lines between the Somali people. Accepting them at this age and time will not only be an offence to intelligence and the Somali essence, but it will be a major recipe for mutually assured destruction (MAD) on the entire Somali nation. There are many traditional Somali approaches to resolve grievances and we must fully utilise these venues otherwise history will not forgive us if we do not stop the secessionists now.

Allah Knows best

Deeq Yusuf MA, MA, BA (Hons)
London UK
Kuseeyman11@hotmail.com

 

Related Article from this Author:
The Refugee experience and their coping Strategies. Deeq Yusuf
IS ISAAQLAND (SOMALILAND) COMPATIBLE WITH MODERNITY? Deeq Yusuf