SOMALIA: AFRICA’S PROBLEM CHILD?
Said S. Samatar
Memory seduces the mind, naively believing as it does in the
notion of the good old days, when in fact there never have been any such. Still,
remembering Somalis (of whom there may not be many) surely must lament the loss
of their nationhood along with their dignity and, consequently, their becoming
the laughingstock of the world; for statelessness and anarchy have become the
synonym of the word Somali. Although the modern outlook ranks statelessness
the most primitive state of human existence, who, one could reasonably ask,
says a human community must exist in a state in order to have happiness an d
dignity? Still, the urge to belong to a national community, to have a state,
a flag, a passport and a corner of the earth remains a universal longing, and
those who lack these are invariably the object of universal scorn. Thus it may
be that the yearning for respect and for collective self-esteem must prompt
members of the Somali elite to remember the past; the idyllic yesterday when
theirs was counted a nation among the community of nations. To judge, though,
by the mutually brutalizing behavior of this same elite in the preceding five
years, voracious selfishness, unreasoning individualism and unbridled greed
stand in the way of the dream for the restoration of the national state ever
being realized. Practically each and everyone of the estimated five to seven
million Somalis is, in his inflamed ambition, inflexibly bent on having the
top job in the country, namely the presidency, and if he cannot have it, he
will not hesitate to visit ruination on everyone, including immediate members
of his own kin. Thus did Siad Barre used to boast: "When I am finally forced
to relinquish power, there will be no nation left to govern." In other
words, he had decided long beforehand that when the time of his final removal
came, he would ensure the ruin of it all. How truly and perfectly he lived up
to his word! Thus did General Mohammed F. Aydiid add a new proverb to Somali
lore: "Cadyohow ama ku cunay ama ku ciideeyey," "O, thou beautiful
cut of meat (meaning the national state), either I will eat you all by myself
or I will ensure to soil you in the dirt so that no other can have you."
He died trying to eat it all alone. The winner hands down, though, of the dubious
distinction of unyielding greed must be the elder Ali Geedi Shadoor, an Abgaal
parliamentarian and a wily deal-maker during the civilian administrations. On
the eve of the 1969 election, General Abshir of the police force and General
Barre of the military were called upon by the Abdirashiid-Igaal government to
detail the police and military units that would oversee and enforce the rigging
of the election. Rather than consent, Abshir felt honor-bound to refuse. He
resigned honorably rather than soil his hands in the blood of fellow Somalis,
since the stealing of the election must necessarily have involved the violent
suppression of the cheated. Mr. Barre, on the other hand, went along with the
shady scheme with alacrity and enthusiasm. (It may be pointed out in passing
that the participation in this crime catapulted Siad Barre to the seizure and
tenure of absolute power for twenty-two years, while Abshir’s honest conscience
and moral probity landed him in solitary confinement for ten solid years. Such
are the baffling ways of the inscrutable Allah!).
In this election Shadoor’s seat was in jeopardy because his opponent, belonging
to a rival faction of the Abgaal, was about to garner more votes. Conveniently,
Mr. Barre lent a helping hand by eagerly providing a military unit commanded
by Lieutenant Mohammed Shaddor, the son of the elder Shadoor. The opponent was
detained under trumped-up charges during the election, an so he lost; whereupon
the opponent’s close kin felt outraged by the bold-faced fraud and plunged
a knife in the lieutenant’s stomach, stabbing him to death. A messenger
was sent post haste to Mogadishu to bring Mr. Shadoor the news of his son’s
demise. The messenger arrived with a heavy heart, terrified of the legendarily
irascible old man’s reaction upon receipt of the unwelcome news. "Mr.
Shadoor," the bearer of bad tidings is alleged to have said, "I have
good news and I have bad news."
"Before telling either news, "Shadoor interrupted impatiently, "I
want to know whether the seat is secured."
"Yes," said the messenger, "The seat is secured. And that is
the good news. "The bad news, though," he continued, "is that
your son has been stabbed to death while protecting your seat." The old
man jovially dismissed the trembling messenger with the rider, "As long
as the seat is secure, no problem. I cannot afford to lose the seat, but I can
afford to lose the son, because I can always make another." Can anyone
imagine what kind of society it is that a father would casually and gladly sacrifice
his son for a seat in parliament! The insane greed of it all must indeed be
sobering to any Somali, if he/she thinks at all.
An Apology to Mesfin Wolde-Mariam
To return to the business of memory, some twenty years ago,
shortly after the Ehio-Somali war over the Ogaadeen, an Ethiopian scholar, Mesfin
Wolde-Mariam, put out a work entitled: Somalia: the Problem Child of Africa.
The title serves to indicate the savagery and incivility of the attack: Somalis
are lambasted as latter-day Hitlerians. Moved equally by an urge to justly set
the record straight and by a nationalistic itch for my then beloved Somalia.
I attempted a counterattack, which was published in a book on African boundary
problems. I chided Mesfin for lapsing into an unedifying name-calling, a deplorable
yelp that was unworthy of his established reputation as a scholar of considerable
erudition, integrity and intellectual reach. The chiding may be worth reproducing:
That the Horn of Africa is in the grip of the deadly dilemma may be gauged from
the fact that Ethiopia’s latest official response to Somali grievance is…a
shrill diatribe in which the Somali are berated among other things, as "tough-minded
criminals" and "obsess[ed] freaks." The alleged author of this
sad tract is none other than Mesfin Wolde-Mariam, a man of considerable intelligence
and erudition who had put out an earlier monograph on the Ethio-Somali conflict
in 1964. Though written from the Ethiopian standpoint at a time when the two
countries had fought a nasty little war and were consequently trading mutual
abuse and insults through the radio and press, the earlier work nevertheless
commends itself for its tone of restraint and even, on occasion, bold and constructive
ideas. One therefore wonders what impelled the previously temperate and reasonable
Mesfin to produce the ranting hysteria of the later pamphlet. Mesfin’s
publication: 1977 (Addis Ababa). The Addis Ababa of that year was not a place
for temperate or cool heads. It was then that a brutal military junta known
as the Dergue, in a bid to foist its legitimacy on Ethiopia, unleashed the notorious
"Red Terror" in which, according to Amnesty International, Ethiopians
perished by the thousands. Although no section of society was spared during
these frenzied massacres, it was the Ethiopian intelligentsia who particularly
suffered, subjected as they were to repeated Stalinist-type purges. It is good
fortune of the Horn that Mesfin survived, even if as a price for his survival
he may have been forced to put his name to a compromising tract.
Twenty years later and the sinking of Somalia into the sand dunes of the Horn.
I write this expressly to apologize to Professor Mesfin whose judgement of the
Somalis as a nation turned out to be remarkably prescient and to the point.
Somalia did indeed prove to be the problem child of Africa. Professor Mesfin
can take little comfort from this, though, for Ethiopia itself today, riven
by ethnic conflict and regional antagonism, seems to be lurching heedlessly
towards Somalia’s fate.
The Emergence of Mini-Somalilands
Since the collapse of the central state in January 1991, Somalia has fractured
into five mini-lands; the former British Somaliland Protectorate seceded in
1991, and has renamed itself the Republic of Somaliland. No nation, though,
has come forward to recognize the Republic of Somaliland as a separate sovereign
entity. The Machiavellian Mohammed H. I. ‘Igaal has, through bribery, intimidation
and assorted flimflamming, just got himself re-elected president for another
three-year term. But ‘Igaal’s authority barely extends beyond the4
central regions of the new republic where the dominant Isaaq clans have been
engaged in a dreary round of now-fight, now-makeup rigmarole. Here, an observation
I made ten years ago, on the eve of the struggle between the Somali National
Movement and Siad Barre loyalists that was to reduce the cities of Hargeisa
and Burao, may be worth repeating:
Suppose, by some miracle of Allah, a unified
Isaaq movement succeeded in running Siyaad Barre out of town. Suppose, also,
even a greater miracle, the other Somali clan-families agreed that the Isaaq,
on account of the grievous injuries they sustained under Siyaad, should be given
a shot at forming the new government. Suppose these two great miracles occurred.
Which, then, of the four principal Isaaq clan-families—Habar Awal, Habar
Yoonis, Habar Tol Ja’alo and ‘Iidagalle—I hope I do not run foul
of the formidable Arab clansmen for not including them in the Big Four –
will have the presidency? Suppose the other three agreed yet another miracle,
to let the Habar Awal have a shot at it. Then which of the two main branches
of the Habar Awal – the Sa’ad Muuse who, in their urban ease and comfort
in and around Hargeisa until Siyaad destroyed the city, formed the nearest thing
to a Somali nobility—or the lise Muuse, the immediate kin of the ever ambitious
Premier ‘Igaal, by all accounts the wiliest and most devious schemer of
northern Somali politicians…the interested reader should recall the experience
of Mohamed H. Ibrahim ‘Igaal, prime minister for four days (June 26-30)
of then four day independent northern Somalia. Even as shrewd and resourceful
a politician as ‘Igaal could not continue to hold power in the north, partly
because the fervently nationalistic north wanted immediate unity with the south
but also because…he was on the verge of being thrown out of office by segmentary
pressure, by other "big men" who belonged to even bigger clans. So
the Machiavellian ‘Igaal took his revenge on northerners by delivering
the north, lock, stock and barrel, without any constitutional safeguards, to
the south, in order to retain some power—to the north’s ultimate loss
of autonomy, not to mention power.
Now ten years and a civil war later, a great deal of history
has transpired most of it not too happy. To begin with, the miracles are worth
revisiting: Miracle Number One:"Suppose, by
some miracle of Allah, a unified Isaaq movement succeeded in running Siyaad
Barre out town." Fulfilled. Though the Isaaq did not directly run Barre
out of Mogadishu, it was the hemorrhaging done to the regime by SNM fighters
in the north in the spring of 1988 that fatally wounded his power. Miracle Number
Two: "Suppose, also, even a greater miracle, the other Somali clan-families
agreed that the Isaaq, on account of the grievous injuries they sustained under
Siyaad, should be given a shot at forming the new government." The Isaaq
did not manage to get their "shot at forming the new government,"
but they got something better: Their own independence after years of being in
the shadow of the south. And yet, these two miracles have, Somali existence
being the riddle it is, now ramified into two unwelcome non-miracles in a perverse
binary opposition—to wit, non-miracle number one: "the great ironist
in the sky" could not have conceived of a crueler practical joke on the
Isaaq than granting them their independence, for they, like almost all Somali
clans, are blighted beyond redemption by the demon of lineage segmentation,
Somalia’s ever present and unsparing malignant illness. The uninitiated
may turn for a quick summary of this all-encompassing Somali curse in an earlier
piece in the pages of the Horn. Since 1991 under the independent Republic of
Somaliland, the mutual savagery and massacres resulting from the various bouts
between the Gerhajis and Tol Jaclo clans of the Isaaq on the one hand, and between
Awal and Gerhajis on the other, must amount to one of the most heinous astrocities
in Somalia’s altogether heinous civil war. By all reliable—and unreliable—accounts,
nothing comparable in duration and wanton cruelty has ever transpired even in
the worst days of Barre’s rule in and around the town of Burao. 1995 and
1996 were particularly bad years for Gerhajis-Tol-Jacalo mutual internecine
bloodyings. Non-miracle number two: as I write, ‘Igaal is talking about
going to attend the projected Somalia-wide conference to be held in Boossaaso
under Majeerteen tutelage. What might ‘Igaal be up to? To just observe
the meeting, as he claims? To run off from segmentary pressure, as he had done
on the eve of the unification of north and south thirty-seven year ago? Or to
weave in Boossaasso the tapestry that would result in the delivering, once again,
of Somaliland to the south, as he had done in June 30, 1960? All knowledgeable
observers surely know that ‘Igaal is interested in the presidency of the
Somaliland Republic only as a conduit to becoming the president of a re-united
Somalia; for ‘Igaal’s distended ego as the man of the hour and his
estimate of himself as a global figure require a larger canvas than can be offered
by tiny Somaliland Republic, but to re-tract openly from secessionist commitment
would be to open himself up to attacks by Isaaq political enemies. It’d
therefore be interesting from the vantage point of vintage ‘Igaal flimflamming—and
depressing from the view point of Somali welfare—to anticipate what political
alchemy and assorted skullduggery the old wizard will employ in the next couple
of years, on all points of the compass, in order to realize his cherished goal
of becoming president, or prime minister at the very least, of a united Somalia.
For now, though, ‘Igaal’s immediate task of putting his house in order,
first, is cut out for him: to the east where the Daarood clans of the Dhulbahante
and Warsangali hold sway and to the northwest where the Gadabursi and ‘Isse
predominate, ‘Igaal can barely venture into these latter territories of
his republic without the guarantee of safe conduct by the holding clans. Still,
the Somalilanders must deserve a grudging respect for at least maintaining the
semblance, if not the substance, of a state.
Just in from the Somaliland Republic: ‘Igaal is said to have invited back
into the fold Abdirahman Tuur, the man who led Somaliland Republic into secessionist
independence, subsequently lost to ‘Igaal in a power struggle, went over
to ‘Aydiid as soon as he could not make it go in the north; as ‘Aydiid’s
vice president miraculously converted from diehard secessionist to ardent unionist,
was therefore condemned to death in absentia by ‘Igaal for renouncing Somaliland’s
independence, sneaked back (September 1997) into Burao under the protection
of his Gerhajis kinsmen, and dared ‘Igaal to come and catch him If could.
Instead, the devious ‘Igaal asked him over for a warm "let’s-talk-about-it"
khat session. ‘Igaal and Tuur have at this very moment, according to the
late word, embraced and agreed to bury the hatchet. Again, what might ‘Igaal
be up to? To reconcile with his old rival so as to unify his domestic power
base, even possibly to bring in the Ogaadeen and other Daarood clans for good
measure, in order to build a political coalition strong enough to counter-vail
against the Sodere group, who are seen by some as increasingly falling under
the influence of the Majeerteen? (Writing about Somali politics, to speculate
a moment, is like plowing the sea, for writing requires, at a minima, some coherent
pattern in the subject written about, the Somali politics, like Somali character
in general, has no coherence or logical pattern; but only opportunistic contingency;
a century and a half ago Sir Richard Burton, after observing Somali society
for months with his keen eye, concluded as the salient feature of the collective
Somali character: "Constant in nothing but inconstancy!" Thus, a man
like Tuur might have taken a position yesterday, another today that thoroughly
vitiates yesterday’s, and still another position tomorrow that completely
makes mockery of yesterday’s and today’s positions, without ever being
called upon it. There is no accountability in the Somali political mis-process;
only constant inconstancy rules supremely. No wonder the world is, by turns,
disgusted and mystified in dealing with Somalis.)
Meanwhile southern Somalia, the former Italian Somaliland, has fragmented into
four min-clan zones. Kisimayu and adjacent lands in the farthest south variously
contested by Ogaadeen, the Mareehaan and a confederacy of Harti clans, principally
Majeerteen. General Morgan, the erstwhile butcher of Hargeisa, holds court here
as the head honcho. Farther north in the upper half of the south, mainly the
town of Baidoa and surrounding farmlands, the Rahanwayn confederacy of clans
continue to prosecute their faction fights. Since the ejection of Aydiid’s
militia last year, nobody knows who the head honcho here is.
Mogadishu, the capital and central Somalia where the Hawiye clans predominate,
has been the scene of the bloodiest intra-Hawiye butchery. War lords Aydiid,
Oman Ato and Ali Mahdi have been struggling for power, in the process drenching
the land in bloodshed, and unleashing a scale of hooliganism and free-lance
violence unparalleled anywhere else in Somalia. When the old war horse General
Aydiid was fatally cut down by resisting Abgaal, and was retired from the cares
of this world presumably to meet his maker in the summer of 1996, the son Hussein
Aydiid also rose, as leader of his father'’ faction, picking up where the
old man had left off, by carrying out lethal feuds variously with Oman Ato,
leader of the other faction of the Habar Gidir, with Ali Mahdi of the Abgaal,
another Hawiye sub-clan. Lately the Abgaal have fallen on one another in a power
struggle between Ali Mahdi and one Sheikh Ali Dhere, the latter alternating
between a politician and a man of religion, and in either hat addicted to slicing
off human limbs. In short, the richest part of Somalia has been laid waste by
an assortment of intra-Hawiye feuds. It may be said in passing that the latest
intra-Abgaal killings claimed the life of one Bionda, a refined intellectual
with an urbane demeanor—or so he struck me when I chanced on him in Washington
(1990?) and dined with him at a little Somali eating place with the mildly ironic
name of "Somali Delights." Why did he return to and sojourn for so
long in a hellish city suddenly plunged into a gangster kingdom of mooryaans
(terrorist thugs).
The remaining portion of southern Somalia is the northeast with the town of
Bossaasso as the urban center on the eastern coast of the Indian Ocean. There
occurred one markedly bloody eruption here in the early 1990s when Somali Muslim
fundamentalists invaded it in a bold bid to wrest control from local elders
and establish a theocracy there. War lord Abdullahi Yusuf, a leathery survivor
of innumerable gun battles and therefore not particularly noted for mildness
of character, unleashed his militia on the wadaads (men of religion) in a fearful
massacre, driving the mullahs out into the wilderness and mercilessly hunting
them down in their mountain hideouts. Inexplicably, the mullahs’ desperate
pleas for divine intervention in the face of Abdullahi’s fury was roundly
ignored by the Almighty who indifferently looked the other way as the self-styled
holy men were systematically obliterated. Which proves what is already known:
that Allah’s ways are as mysterious as they are bafflingly inscrutable.
For the rest the Majeerteen have so far managed to keep their hilly desert patrimony
peaceable. Majeerteennia seems for the most part to have been spared the apocalypse
that has descended ion the rest of southern Somalia, and the traffic of people
including expatriates—commerce and ideas flows freely and uninterruptedly
without fear of molestation. To judge by the reports of foreign correspondents,
Bossaasso has evolved into an oasis of tranquility wherein it has attracted
the migration of capital and talent from all over Somalia and from as far away
as Kenya. Therefore the international press is gone gaga with praise for Bossaasso,
a recent Washington Post article blandly calling it a "port in a storm."
The fact that the Majeerteen succeeded in saving themselves from the wanton
destruction in the rest of the country should not be read as getting them off
the hook for Somalia’s troubles. As I will argue in an ensuing section,
while members of all clans share the blame for the country’s slide into
anarchy, the Majeerteen can justly be singled out as the principal culprits.
A Leelkase Captain Ahab
As product of the literary imagination, Captain Agab is the major protagonist
in Melville’s novel Moby Dick, the classic work often cited as ushering
in the coming of age of American literature. At once diabolical and ambition-crazed,
he is the poetic archetypal figure representing Western Europe’s lust for
power, glory and gain—in short for conquest. He is descended, fictionally
and spiritually from the incomparable Dr. Faust as well, the literary creation
of the German playwright, Goethe. In a memorable scene in Goethe’s play,
Dr. Faust makes a historic bargain with Lucifer, dean of the satanic host, in
which he offers his soul to the devil in return for the devil’s grant to
him of mastery over the world. Hence, the famous scriptural cautionary tale,
"for what will it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose
his soul," does not resonate with Dr. Faust. He would gladly relinquish
his soul to hell for the conquest of the globe.
Dr. Faust and Captain Ahab are one and the same in spirit and imagery portraying
the satanic side of the West that catapulted Europeans not only into a 500-year
global hegemony enslaving, colonizing and ruthlessly exploiting the nations
of Africa and Asia but also installing their absolute open season on the world,
pillaging, raping and ravishing everywhere they went, leaving it desolate and
devastated.
Unlike the physically wholesome Dr. Faust, Ahab is a cripple with a wooden leg,
withered arm and a host of other assaults on his body sustained in the course
of lifetime of pursuing the elusive white whale through the high seas. His body
may be battered but his spirit is indomitable. It was therefore a matter of
unforgettable astonishment to encounter a latter-day Captain Ahab in Seattle,
Washington, April 5, 1994. His real name is Abdusamad ‘Ilmi Hashi, ethnically
a Leelkase and therefore my own kinsman. Let me say at the outset that the likening
of Adusamad to Captain Ahab in the ensuing remarks in only metaphorical and
that there is no intention to call my kinsman a devil. If anything he struck
me, when in his best mood, as a gentleman’s gentleman; still, he did radiate
a lot of Ahab-like characteristics which call for comment. In the crazy crisscrossing
quilt of ethnicities, in Mohamuud S, Togane’s words, "this devil’s
concoction of clans," that make up Somali society, the Leelkase are composed
of a small clan of mullahs (my kinsmen are likely to disown me for saying this)
constituting a sub-lineage of the Daarood clan-family. There are tantalizing
bits and pieces of evidence that suggest the Leelkase to have been almost completely
wiped out in a massacre that occurred in some ancient, prehistoric time. For
example, there are hills of human skeletons in eastern Somalia that are called
"Lafa-Tanade," or the "Bones of the Tanade," – Tanade
being another name for the Leelkase. Who massacred them and why will probably
never be known. In order to survive, the solitary remnants of the Leelkase then
turned to religion, permanently leaving the struggle for material power and
influence to larger clans. To paraphrase Professor I. M. Lewis, where Somalis
fail to acquire o "Qur’anic centers throughout Somalia teaching the
diin, or religion, solemnizing marriages and receiving, in return, gifts (siyaaro)
of livestock and tokens of honor from the host clans. It appears that in their
role as wadaads (men of religion) and fiqihs (scholars of sacred law) the Leelkase
prospered and multiplied in numbers; for by the middle of the century they took
to trusting more to the sword than to the diin. They got into various and sundry
feuds to the east with ‘Umar Mohamuud Majeerteen and to the west with the
Habar Gidir Hawiye. It was in a particularly lethal feud with the ‘Umar
Mohamuud in 1964-5 that Abdusamad, my Captain Ahab, enters into history as a
legendary warrior, leading a Leelkase militia to fight off the powerful ‘Umar
Mohamuud to a standstill (this is the Leelkase version; the ‘Umar Mohamuud
claim they stopped short of finishing off the Leelkase for fear of divine retribution).
Whatever the true version of events, the Leelkase came out of this feud with
renewed confidence in their capacity to defend themselves by the sword. Abdusamad
apparently played a major part in the Leelkase holding their own. And so it
was he who, shortly after this feud, triumphantly boasted in a poetic couplet:
Allow iyo aayadii ka baxnoo
Afdiinlann ku aarsanaynaa
We, the Leelkase have ceased and desisted from out vain pleas to Allah for protection,
Instead we now employ the gun to avenge our dead!
Those who served with him describe him as a warrior’s warrior whose tactical
maneuvers in the field can only be matched by his death-defying bravery: he
was left for dead at least once, his entire body is polka-dotted with bullet
marks, his right leg blown off by a bazooka blast and his arm withered like
a stunted branch. One should imagine that a man with so many assaults on his
body would permanently quit warring. Not Abdusamad. When clannish violence broke
out in earnest in the collapse of the state in early 1991, he was at the head
of a Leelkase militia dueling it out with Habar Gidir militia. The Leelkase
claim (a claim which is more of a boast than substance) that they have single-handedly
driven the Habar Gidir from their grazing grounds in Mudugh province into Benaadir
province where the latter under General Aydiid have wreaked havoc, variously,
on the Abgaal, Hawaadle, Mururdade and Rahanwayn.
Again Abdusamad was hit; this time in the head with one eye shot off and the
forehead re-arranged form the effect of flying shrapnel. How he ended up in
Seattle remains a mystery, but there he remains a mystery, but there he was
all right that morning when I arrived at the shiny lecture hall of Seattle Pacific
University to deliver a talk to rosy-cheeked American students. The gist of
my lecture was to try to put a semblance of logic on the Somali muddle to a
mildly bemused roomful of Americans, wondering why their boy got killed in a
distant and savage place called Somalia. The audience’s questions during
discussion bore a striking resemblance to Chancellor Bismarck’s near the
end of the nineteenth century: when asked to provide fresh troops for the conquest
of New Guinea, the Iron Chancellor replied with characteristic bluntness, "New
Guinea head hunters are not worthy of the healthy bones of one Prussian grenadier!"
Was Somalia worth the healthy bones of one American Ranger?
After the lecture Abdusamad was introduced by three other Leelkases as the "General."
This withered shade? I reflected. We drove to a five-star hotel in downtown
Seattle. The car parked, we got out and when he attempted to walk, he wheezed
and rattled and shuffled, dragging the wooden leg after the other. I began to
see that half his body was made up of wooden supports, the original organs having
been blasted off by steel. Our waitress was a luscious blonde with radiant skin
and sumptuous eyes whose comings and goings coupled with imagination served
to whet the appetite. The lunch (which one of the Leelkases paid for) was not,
as it turned out, the point of our gathering; it was in fact a ruse designed
to rough me up by Captain Ahab aka Abdusamad. As soon as we were seated, he
rounded on me with the one working eye sparkling. Said he,
"Are you a man with xiniinyoo (balls?)." More disoriented than annoyed
by the forwardness of his manners, I said, "Pardon me?!" He learned
the tone of irritation in those two words, for he stammered and said with less
force:
"We Leelkases have proven our fighting capabilities in the recent explosion
of clan warfare that followed Siad Barre’s fall. We do not initiate fights,
but when fights are forced upon us, we punish mightily; every clan that picked
up a quarrel with us came to regret it. We vanquished."
He rattled off a series of clan names, and tapped vigorously on the wooden leg
with the edge of his palm, and by God, it was hollowed out and had the resonating
acoustics of a durbaan, or drum! Did he do this for effect to freak me out?"
I said, "Enough. I do not want to hear the gory details of one bloody tribal
skirmish after another."
He said, "Do you know the new names of the Leelkase, as a result of our
prowess in the recent feuds?"
I said I did not.
He said, "One name is gaas-dhagoole," which may be translated as the
"deaf legion."
I said, "why gaas-dhagoole?"
He said, "Because once the Leelkase take up the field, they become deaf
as to the rumble of shells. When in action we become deaf and mute to death.
We defy death, knowing this mortal body can go but once." This reminded
me of Julius Caesar’s legendary cogitation on life and death: "Cowards
die many times but the valiant never taste of death but once." By all the
stars, when Caesar made those words famous he had just vanquished the Iberian
peninsula and Gaul, the name then for the territories now making up France,
Switzerland, half of Germany and all the lands adjacent to the English Channel,
thus making possible the conquest of Britain by the lame emperor Claudius. In
other words, Caesar would die in the forging of empires, reducing cities and
compelling nations to bow before him; whereas my kinsman would glorify death
in a senseless, soap-opera-like, endless and purposeless cycle of tribal violence.
"Really?" I said, incredulously.
"When we take to the field," the shade continued, "we would not
abandon it, come what may. We’d die to the last man."
"In that case," I said, "count me out."
"Are you a coward?"
"Pardon me!"
One of the others interrupted with some gratuitous remark designed to provide
comic relief. Captain Ahab started off again, "Do you know what the other
name is?"
I said, "Indulge me."
He said, "Darbe-Daarood," which translates, "the Daarood Wall."
"Because," he said, squinting the one serviceable eye, "when
the Daarood were in desperate trouble on all sides in the recent wars, it was
we who stood between them and other clans." "Ask the Warsangali [another
Daarood sub-clan]," he continued, "to confirm the truth of what I
am saying. It was they who dubbed us, ‘the Daarood Wall,’ in grateful
recognition of our defending role."
The luscious white chick returned to clear the table; kids (white and black)
toyed on the electronic Star Wars box. The Jacuzzi fountains made plangent caressing
sounds. The people, the streets, the cars, the lights – the city hummed
outside. And here we were four Leelkases engaged in a cosmological clan discourse.
This was surreal, I thought.
Captain Ahab continued to harass me. Said he, "We are as good in peace
as in war. Because we are men of religion, we deal honestly with others. We
do not double-talk. Our word is as good as faith itself." Ahab paused,
wheezing; then began again, "We’d prefer to have our necks cut off
than break our word. That is why," the serviceable eye glistened, "we
are universally trusted by all other clans. There is a great future for us in
Somalia as power brokers, if not power holders in the country."
"A great future for us in Somalia!" I could hardly believe I heard
what I had heard. "Maledetto te, pazzo," I cussed in Italian under
my breath.
"Now, as for you," the shade opened up again, "We need you. Are
you going to play an honorable role in this future? Are you going to lend us
your academic thing and international contacts? Are you going to join us?"
He gave me a look that froze me, making me feel creepy all over. The man had
me, emotionally speaking, on the run. "Are you going to be part of us,
or simply satisfied to fatten off American food stamps?"
"The sucker," I cussed again. "Does he think I am on the dole?"
He must have noticed my angry scowl, for at this he began to let up, warming
up to me and judging it necessary to inform me, "The Fiqih Ismaa’iil
[my own sub-branch of the Leelkase] have always demonstrated qualities of leadership
in the clan." What was he buttering up to me for? There was no way of knowing,
because he broke off and went into a trance (he was also suffering from Khat
withdrawals), spewing out a stream of primeval monologue, half poetry, half
singsong, mumbling the words:
"Alla waan kawoonayoo, alla hawa na haysa, ee."
"Alas, ambition stirs in us, ambition – ambition we seek."
Back in my hotel room, I transcribed the outlines of the visit into my diary.
Then I was assailed with one impulse and two thoughts. First, the impulse: this
wraith of a man whose broken frame is pitted through and through with mark of
steel, only the one eye remaining whole of his entire body, and yet so animated,
so lively, so resilient, his spirit so indomitable. The Somali civil war was
not overabundant with examples of valiance in its purest essence, but this one
was courage personified. I was awed! To paraphrase Mark Anthony on the slain
Brutus, "All the elements unite to say this was truly a man."
But my awe, even admiration was thoroughly dissipated by my growing scorn for
his mad ambition. I learned by and by that he came to the U.S. on a refugee
asylum program, that he was resettled in Seattle to start up a new life, that
his needs in shelter, food and medication were met by American generosity, the
cost of his upkeep being split between the state of Washington and the Federal
Government. As such, one should suppose that with this largesse, he’d settle
and end out his remaining days in peace and tranquility, living off America’s
kindness, gazing blissfully on the busty, leggy blondes that populate the swank
avenues of Seattle. No, his heart was not in these but in "ambition"
and thoughts of "a great future" in Somalia! What a mad son of a gun!
If the whole world were offered to him on a silver platter, what good would
this do him, given that he is so wasted? How could he, in the broken condition
of his body, savor the ease, the comfort and delights of power, to say nothing
of coping with its cares – this apparition of re-arranged wood and mended
skeleton?
As to the first thought that assailed: it was stirred by the specter’s
question, "Are you going to join us?" This resonated with me because
it brought to mind one Abdirahman Hajji Hirsi, a first cousin, a medical doctor
by vocation and a multi-sided genius who commanded mastery – I mean absolute
mastery – over five languages – Arabic, English, French, Italian and
Russian, in addition to his native Somali. When Somalia erupted, he moved to
Kisimayu to serve as the only doctor in a children’s hospital housing several
hundred orphans. The Belgian paratroopers who manned Kisimayu and its environs
had no end of praise for this doctor’s, as one of the paratroopers put
it, "integrity, hard work and dedication to his lowly orphanage."
Well, one evening a gunman showed up at the orphanage premises and asked Dr.
Hirsi to hand over to him the entire store of medicine in the orphanage. The
doctor balked, whereupon he was shot at blank range. He died instantly. This
incident in turn brought to mind a similar murder-by-shooting of another doctor,
one Dr. Mohammed Warsame, who, after being hounded by the pleas of Roman Catholic
nuns to help bind the wounds of his people, had reluctantly returned to Mogadishu
to care for a large orphanage. General Aydiid ordered him killed for reasons
of clan considerations in the fall of 1992. In the entire world, even in benighted
Africa, a doctor’s person is considered sacrosanct and treated as such.
In the entire world, that is, except in mad Somalia. Dr. Hirsi, by reason of
his medical skills and genius of mind, would, by international standards, have
rated as worth more than the entire lot of the Leelkase put together. Yet, like
so many others, he died senselessly and in vain and, from what I have been able
to piece together, at the hands of another Leelkase. No, Captain, I’d rather
not join you!
The other thought that crossed my mind was even more frightening; to wit, if
the Leelkase, largely a clan of mullahs with no material or numerical significance
(I dare say my kinsmen are likely to disown me for saying this) are so inflamed
and obsessed with brokering power in Somalia, if not seizing it, what about
the much larger clans with many more resources in men and material? What heights
of lust for power and gain must consume their souls? Then I understood why Somalia
collapsed. This is a nation of greed and ambition gone mad.
Why not Aydiid
Drafted while General Aydiid was still alive, this section can now only be addressed
to his shadow which, no doubt, still stalks what is left of Somalia’s soul
and surely haunts the dusty streets of south Mogadishu. A case can be made that
Aydiid was the right man to take over turbulent Somalia at that critical juncture
of Siad Barre’s fall. Here is the bill of particulars that constitutes
Aydiid’s case: first, he resisted Barre’s dictatorship; whether his
resistance was motivated by personal frustration for failing to receive his
fair share of the loot of the Somali treasury as some claim, is beside the point.
The fact is that he opposed Mr. Barre, a most dangerous undertaking and was
consequently flung in prison where he languished for more than four years along
with other fallen officers. The strictures of solitary confinement must have
proved too much for the formerly roving nomad, for all accounts say that the
incarceration traumatized the general, driving him to bouts of dementia and
hysteria by turns. In one deranged outburst, he was seen nibbling on a bar of
washing soap like a delicious piece of cake. Unquestionably, the man suffered
badly.
It may be objected that he suffered all right, but he did so for greed and ambition,
the twin curses of nearly all so-called Somali "big men" and that
his conspiracies caused him to run foul of his old patron saint, Siad Barre,
who, no longer being able to abide Aydiid’s incessant plotting, finally
had had enough and proceeded to consign him to the tender environs of confinement.
To fault Aydiid thus is to indulge in selective judgement. What Somali leader-type
was ever punished for purely altruistic interest in behalf of Somalia, except
perhaps that mild-mannered mystic, General Mohammed Abshir?
Second, Aydiid roughed up the Daarood, a most salutary undertaking. After years
of dominating the political scene, the Daarood had grown arrogant and it was
time to put the fear of God into them. Aydiid’s savaging of them had done
just that. But his tragedy was that he did not stop there; imbued with a congenital
bloody nature, he went on to bloody the Hawiye, his own kin, even more savagely.
Aydiid in fact brutalized all and everyone who crossed his path. What his mind
was too simple to understand was that brute force alone seldom provides the
answer to all human problems, least of all political problems; that in the pursuit
of power, force can be useful only as an extension of diplomacy. Even so, the
Daarood must have been sobered to respectful attention by Aydiid’s clobbering.
Third, Aydiid inherited almost the entire armory of the national military, including
state-of-the-art weaponry, and therefore was the only warlord possessing enough
fire power to break the back of the Somalis and to bend them to his will. Just
take a look at the other warlords—they are either weaklings or unacceptable.
Abdullahi Yusuf, the only other warlord with as forceful a personality, and
as ruthless and blood-thirsty as Aydiid, would have been too far away from the
center of action too, and in any case unacceptable as the author of the infamous
"Letter of Death;" Oman Ato is a spoiled civilian boy grown rich from
the loot of the national physical plant; Ali Mahdi is too weak and feckless
to rule unruly Somalis, Clearly Aydiid was the man of the hour.
Somali heads needed bending if the anarchy and bloodbath that ensued were to
be avoided. If Aydiid seized power, he’d probably have imposed a brutal
regime that would have made Siad Barre’s look like a sunny outing, but
it is a proven law of human society that tyranny with stability is infinitely
superior to liberty with anarchy. Nothing grows in anarchy, least of all a nation’s
soul. Fourth, Aydiid fought and sacrificed for the pursuit of power more than
the rest of the lot put together. His passion was power and nothing else mattered
to him, for in his personal conduct and private life, he was the most temperate
of Somalis. While those others who could afford vice lapsed into sickening heights
of debauchery, he neither smoked, nor drank, nor drugged; he did not even chew
khat, an incredible abstention for an urban Somali of means. His only pleasure
vice was women, and in this he exhibited a marked bias for Majeerteen women,
whatever Freud would have made of this.
In the various confrontations, alternately, with the Daarood, the Abgaal, the
Murusade, the Hawaadle, and most brazenly, with the Americans—Aydiid showed
surpassing military resourcefulness and incomparable personal courage. He was
indeed a brilliant combat man. But therein lay his strength as well as his tragedy.
Militarily, Aydiid was on the order of genius but politically; he was on the
scale of jackass. Autistic of mind and congested of spirit, he could not perceive
the subtle complexity and clumsiness and maddening craziness of human existence;
he tried to solve political obstacles requiring political solutions with a hammer.
He forgot—or never learned—that the use of force in governance is
to achieve a political objective, and that arms avail nothing in themselves,
especially when counter-balanced against other arms. This was fatally brought
home to him when the Abgaal, who had been repeatedly harried by him, finally
resolved to fight back. Still, Aydiid’s valor was supreme, in marked contrast
to the cowardly Barre who panicked and fled at the first sign of trouble. By
contrast, Aydiid would be mortally wounded in action while charging at the head
of his men.
In short, Aydiid was, tragically for Somalia, what the Somalis call a macangag,
which may be translated as "asininely stubborn." Here, a vignette
related by the Somali/Canadian poet Mohamuud S. Togane serves to illustrate
the point: according to Togane, when a couple of years back, Aydiid the father
invited Aydiid the son to Mogadishu to start him up as his viceroy, the young
Aydiid’s mother begged him not to return to Somalia and revisit anew on
that unhappy country his father’s brutal ravishings. She is reported to
have added: "Your father’s macangagness is such that if he takes a
fancy to anything, he must have it or he would wreak havoc on all and everything
that is even remotely related to the object of his desire." "Once,"
the lady is reported to have explained, "he took a liking to my shawl,
and commenced to grab on its hem. No pushing, shoving or pleading could break
his grip. I had to reach for a knife and cut up the shawl in half in order to
break loose from him." Unless this be apocryphal, the American Rangers
can appreciate posthumously what they were up against in Aydiid.
A fearful macangag indeed. The most revealing vignette of Aydiid’s character
occurred in 1992. At the height of the famine that killed by starvation upwards
of three hundred thousand Somalis, General Aydiid, in a bid to project an image
of himself as a statesman, invited the international press corps (who were then
descending on Somalia like a cloud of migrant bees) for a sumptuous dinner.
The journalists all fell on the succulent dishes like so many flies—all,
that is, but one, a Quaker who, given the sensitive conscience of Quaker spiritual
tradition, refused to eat. Feeling that his generosity had been insulted, the
irascible general came down hard on the balking journalist and cajoled him to
eat. But the pressman would not budge on the grounds that he could not eat in
good conscience while hundreds of thousands starved in nearby Baidoa. Rather
jolted by the response, Aydiid defensively insisted that his responsibility
was solely to his own Habar Gidir kin. To which the journalist shot back, "I
thought you wished to be president of all Somalis!" The General had nothing
to say, the only time, ever, he is known to have been left speechless.
If the above is Aydiid, why would I wish him so ardently on Somalia? Partly
on the reasoning that a jackal nation deserves a jackal leader. The wildly fractious
Somalia of the 1990s needed a human pit bull to bury its teeth in every Somali
neck in order to terrorize them into submission. Partly also because I feel
a twinge of remorse over the fact that I had a hand in Aydiid’s being cheated
out of his prize. The story of my close call with the General had been too widely
covered by press and TV to require a full-blown recounting. Briefly, I accompanied,
as an interpreter and field expert, an ABC TV crew led by Nightline’s legendary
anchorman, Ted Koppel, to cover the landing of the American marines. Five days
later the General ordered me out of town under threat of death. Why he declared
war on me remains something of a puzzle to this day, for up to that point I
was thoroughly of goodwill towards him and in fact was rooting for him. I was
seduced by his dash, pluck and portly flamboyance, his impeccable suits and
flashy teeth, even his cold, reptilian eyes.
Having no understanding of his motive for ejecting me, I can only resort to
conjecturing: did he conceive that I was part of another Machiavellian Daarood
plot to snatch power from his grasp? Did he, unable to appreciate the separation
of press and government, believe that I was the advance man for another American
scheme designed to foist a U.S.-favored Somali clique on power? Whatever his
motivation, instead of attempting to coopt me as a service intellectual (and
I might have obliged), he chose to create a state of war. But war can be fought
on different fronts, and my front lay in the direction of information-processing.
Upon return to U.S., I at once commenced to launch a spirited, sustained denunciatory
campaign against him, blasting him, in reasoned terms I hope, in virtually every
major American newspaper and magazine as well as on the principal TV networks.
I also went frequently to Washington to speak at State Department policy briefings
on Somalia and to lobby key congressional committees where I did my best to
paint an unflattering picture of him. To suggest that the result was electrifying
would be to draw attention to my own inflated ego. But if Thomas Jefferson was
right in opining that the "pen is mightier than the sword" in a literate
society, I believe I am entitled to claim a small part in the turning of American
public opinion against him.
The Majeerteen Embarrassment
A poet is by definition a prophet, too. More to point the gabayaa, or singer
of verse, is in Somali tradition believed to possess a figurative third eye,
the prophetic eye that avails him of the powers of clairvoyance. Consequently,
we thought we were on to something when the late Khaliif Sheikh Mohamuud, indisputably
the greatest Somali poet in the 1970s decade, prophesied in his remarkable Hurgumo,
or Festering Wound, these noble lines:
1. Hadalka hayga moodina inaan maarawaa nahaye
2. Sidaan maanta nahay yaan la oran laga mil roonaaye,
3. Mar un baannu mowjada xirmiyo maayad soo kicine,
4. Nabsigaas mugdiga gudahayaan mar un hellaynayye,
5. Caruurahaan maryaadahaya iyo dumarkan mowleyey,
6. Mar un baa marwada Maxamad qabo noqon mataalkoode,
7. Mar un baa mid lagu meelmariyo maahir nookicine,
8. Mar un baa rag wada miigan iyo miidi soo bixine,
9. Mar un baa malkada Caabud-waaq miigu soo dagine.
1. Let no man presume that I sing out of despair on account of the devastation
visited upon my Majeerteen kin,
2. Let no man say, because of our sorrowful state today, that we Majeerteen
have been trounced for good,
3. The day will come when we shall surge forth like a thunderous hurricane,
4. The nocturnal visitor of fortune shall yet smile upon us,
5. The weeping children and widowed matrons, whose husbands have been wantonly
slaughtered,
6. The time will come when Mohamad’s wife will likewise be deprived,
7. The time will come when a great hero shall arise amongst us and shall redeem
us,
8. Then there will sally forth men of honor and valor for our salvation,
9. Then the Mig fighters will descend on the Mareehaan village of Caabud-waaq.
Some exegesis of a couple of lines in the extract which is of interest for this
discussion: the poem which, like many a good poem is about a great many things,
was composed as a weeping jeremiad over the sustained harrying and persecution
of the Majeerteen during Mohammed Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, especially
after the Majeerteen-inspired-failed-coup attempt (April, 1978) against Barre.
He is the Mohammed referred to in line 6, whose wife is promised a terrible
fate for Barre’s brutalization of the Majeerteen. Despite the then inhuman
cruelties visited upon the Majeerteen for resisting Mr. Barre’s tyranny,
the poet envisions a time" when a great hero shall arise "amongst
us" to "save us." Then the jubilee (time of peace and prosperity)
itself will be ushered in when "men of honor and valor shall come forward
to bring our salvation." In short, the poet envisions a coming millennium
under a Majeerteen guidance. Who are the "us" in the poem that are
promised salvation from the ashes of present hardship to a redeeming future?
Clearly, at the immediate level, the poet prophesies salvation for his kinsmen,
the Majeerteen clan. But at a more poetically profound level, the "us"
refers to the entire body politic of the Somali nation laid waste by oppression
but now to be redeemed, presumably under Majeerteen tutelage.
It is now 20 years since the poet prophesied salvation for Somalia under Majeerteen
midwifery: Siad Barre’s dictator ship had vanished; Barre himself has given
up the ghost in an ignominious exile among Nigerian Hausa; Somalia has sunk
into civil war and misery, and there is no sign of the Majeerteen either saving
themselves or their nation. Khaliif would no doubt be turning in his grave with
bitterness and embarrassed disappointment!
But why, among all the "devil’s concoction of clans" that make
up the Somali polity, should the Majeerteen be selectively targeted for blame
and name-calling in the general collapse of the land? Principally for two reasons.
First, thee Majeerteen, of all Somali clans, have a history of government with
a ruling elite, structured bureaucracy and economic stratification along with
the skills of statecraft. In precolonial times the only states worthy of the
name in the Somali peninsula had been the Majeerteen Sultanate of Boqor, or
king, ‘Ismaan Mohamuud in the Baargaal-Bossaasso region on the extreme
eastern coast and the kingdom of Obbia (Hobyo) belonging to ‘Ismaan’s
nephew, the dour Yuusuf Ali Keenadiid. These were both highly centralized states
with all the organs and accoutrements of an integrated modern state—a hereditary
nobility, titled aristocrats, a functioning bureaucracy, a flag, an army and
a not insignificant network of foreign relations with embassies abroad. Nowhere
else in Somalia did anything even remotely comparable ever arise, except perhaps
the Ujuuraan on the Shabeelle valley and Adal on the northwestern coast, both
states having reached the apogee of power in the sixteenth century. In modern
times the Majeerteen stand alone, absolutely alone, in having created a centralized
state. This means that the Majeerteen clan in general, and the Majeerteen elite
in particular, have a seasoned, unique experience in the nature and processes
of statecraft that no other Somali group possesses.
Second, when independence came in 1960 the Majeerteen, owing to their superior
skill in governance, merchant capital, education and urban experience, easily
began to dominate power and privilege in the new state. As a result, in the
eight plus years between independence and Barre’s coup in October 1969,
the Majeerteen towered supremely over all other clans in dominating the national
life. Majeerteen merchants grew rich (by Somali standards) and prosperous while
Majeerteen politicians acquired a commanding mastery over the reins of political
power. (Here a caveat: Majeerteen ascendancy stemmed more form political astuteness
than from coercion, managing as they did to forge alliances alternately with
the elite of the Hawiye, Isaaq and Rahanwayn, thus ensuring their preponderance
during civilian administrations).
Over-enthused with an understandable sense of self-importance, the Majeerteen
began to become intoxicated (in Somali, "waa qooqeen") with their
success, flaunting their power and prestige openly, perhaps too openly, to the
anguished envy and hatred of other clans. Thus did the Majeerteen coin a new
proverb, boasting of their numerical superiority over all other clans: "Intii
madax madaw iyo Majeerteen baa siman"; thus did Yaasiin Nuur Hasan Bidde,
the new aristocratic minister of the Interior during Abdirashiid’s presidency,
brag: "I have just turned thirty-three years, and I have managed to stash
away thirty-three million shillings"—then equivalent to $5.5m. Presumably
Yaasiin boasted so in order to rub it in the face of rival clans, and the lean
and hungry among the latter no doubt responded with a mouth-watering envy.
The political process was so fatally abused beyond redemption during the Majeerteen-Isaaq
alliance of President Abdirashiid Ali Sharmaarke and Premier Mohammed H.I. Igaal.
The personally honest but low-of-IQ Abdirashiid and the high-of-IQ but personally
irredeemably venal Igaal, between them, presided over the most corrupt and predatory
administration in the annals, up to then, of African governments. (Nigeria,
it appears now, holds the dubious distinction of topping the list of the most
corrupt nations in the world). It was during Abdirashiid’s and Igaal’s
administration that the mass of Somalis became irrevocably alienated from the
political system. In particular, the election of 1969 that enshrined Abdirashiid
and Igaal in power was so outrageously and blatantly rigged that it thoroughly
degraded the Somali body politic, inspiring a deep sense of betrayal in the
public. Consequently, when Barre seized power in October 1969, the coup was
welcomed with widespread jubilation and thanksgiving with masses of people wildly
dancing and celebrating joyously in the streets. In the event, this was to be
short-lived, but for the time being few Somalis, other than their cronies, shed
a tear for the fall of premier Igaal and president Rashiid, the latter being
assassinated a week or so before the coup, thus being spared the ignominy of
a long-term jail, as Igaal was to suffer. In fact it could be argued, convincingly
in my view, that the outrages and venality of the administration of Abdirashiid
and Igaal did much to pave the way for Siad Barre’s coup.
If they fared better than any other clan during the civilian administrations,
fairness would require to point out that the Majeerteen, especially the ‘Umar
Mohamuud sublineage, suffered far more inhuman cruelties than any other ethnicity
except perhaps the Isaaq. And if the ancient Greeks believed that excessive
arrogance leads to destruction, they also believed in the possibility of redemption
under suffering specially that pain and suffering lead to wisdom, and therefore
possess a therapeutic quality. It was reasonable to expect therefore that the
combination of experience in governing, erstwhile preeminence and subsequent
debasement under Barre’s persecution should have produced wise political
leadership from amongst the Majeerteen after the general collapse—Majeerteen
heroes, as the poet anticipated, ready, able and willing to serve the nation.
Alas, it did not. Instead, the world watched the humiliating spectacle of the
Majeerteen falling on one another into internecine bickering and base political
squabbling, failing utterly to establish an orderly administration in their
corner of the country. And yet, to free ourselves from bias masquerading as
political discourse, the Majeerteen did supremely triumph in preserving the
peace and some measure of prosperity in their areas, a great achievement considering
the curse of violence and vendetta that seem to prevail in other clan territories.
(Here it should be mentioned the Gadabursi have also admirably established security
to life and limb in their northwestern side in and around the town of Boorama,
though they did have one scary eruption last summer. Even though a significant
number of Gadabursi are pastoralists, a large number are sedentary; now a settled
culture possesses remarkable advantages over a pastoral one: pastoralism spawns
egalitarian anarchy, the principal Somali curse, whereas sedentarization breeds
social hierarchy—of ugaases (princes), and ‘ulamaa (spiritual leaders)
an urban society accustomed to ease and comfort and therefore not too eager
to ruin it in violence, a civic culture that inculcates the virtues of neighborliness,
deference to others and respect for order and power. The Gadabursi are just
about the only Somalis, other than the Benaadiri and certain urbanized sections
of the Majeerteen and Isaaq, that possess these civil virtues. No wonder therefore
that the Gadabursi not only spared themselves the catastrophe that engulfed
the rest of Somalia but no starvation –large or small –has ever touched
man and beast in Gadabursi country! Should not the Gadabursi take quiet pride
from this? They should, and to personalize it, I do, too. As a Somali observer,
who prides himself, somewhat self-servingly, in being a detached truth-teller,
I say two cheers to the Gadabursi.) Bossaasso, the capital of Majeerteenia,
today remains not only the envy of other clans in peacefulness and tranquility
but also the astonished admiration of the international community, a "port
in a storm," as the Washington Post gushingly intoned.
Surely the Majeerteen deserves great credit for maintaining the peace in their
mountainous patrimony. Their example of peace and relative prosperity has even
set the standard for the Internet banter and chitchat amongst Somalis in Europe
and North America. Thus when Mohammed Abshir recently stated on the BBC something
to the effect that "we in the northeast argue heatedly, but we do not shoot
one anther," his words have drawn vigorous exchange among Somali Internet
users with some being bitterly envious over Abshir’s claim that the Majeerteen
argue over issues to a solution like civilized men; but do not "shoot"
one another as other clans are addicted to doing. In other words, whereas previously
clans used to boast of their fighting capacity to inflict violence on others,
now the Majeerteen have set the standard that the only thing worthy of boasting
does not lie in one’s capacity "to shoot but in one’s patience
and prudence to talk" in order to solve political problems peacefully!
That in itself is no small achievement.
Still, if the truism is true, "to whom much is given, much is required,"
the Majeerteen should have done better, for much is required of them; Somalia
calls on them to play their historic role in reconstructing the country. To
be sure, the Majeerteen could justly retort: "Easier said than done. How
do you propose to bring other clans onboard, clans that find it more profitable
to shoot for biliqaysi (looting), like the Habar Gidir, rather than talk?"
The answer would be obvious: what the Majeerteen need to do – and so far
have dismally failed to do—is to get their house in order first, by establishing
a constitutional provincial administration in their region. Possessing as they
do a large pool of political talent and material wherewithal, they ought to
have constructed a well-oiled, efficient administration with modest but respectable
state organs—a provisional head of region, police, school, medical and
municipal services, etc. If they had done successfully for all the world to
see, this surely should have aroused the envy of other clans and inspired them
into setting up their own mini-states. These mini-states could in turn be joined
together into some sort of mutually agreed federal arrangement.
There is, however, no sign of their doing this. It appears that, politically,
the Majeerteen are just as fecklessly unimaginative and as crippled by the same
Somali sickness that paralyzes other clans: lineage segmentation: the Majeerteen
are segmented along three principal sublineages—the ‘Ismaan Mohamuud,
‘Isse Mohamuud and ‘Umar Mohamuud. Abdullahi Yuusuf, the flamboyant
war lord, who bragged lately that the liver newly transplanted into him from
an Indian youth has given him a renewed vigor and vitality, is from the ‘Umar
Mohamuud; Abshir belongs to the ‘Isse, while a certain Abdullahi Keang-Congo
(the name is colorful enough) – a prince (now king?) directly descended
from Boqor ‘Ismaan and very much in the running—hails from the ‘Ismaan
Mohamuud. The three have been locked up in a cloak-and-dagger power struggle
that prevents them from forming a provincial administration. Of the three Abshir
is manifestly the most deserving: a deeply religious man of a mystical turn
of mind and hence blessed by an unblemished personal integrity (remember then
General Abshir, commander of the police force, instead of obliging ‘Igaal
and ‘Abdirashiid to steal the 1969 election, chose—some say unwisely—to
retire from government, thereby leaving himself to the tender mercy of wolves,
most especially to the untender mercy of the jackal that went by the name of
Mohammed Siad Barre. Remember also when the Daarood counterattacked in Kisimayo
in 1992, capturing a large number of Hawiye militia, it was Abshir who, at great
danger to his person, stood between them and Daarood militias anxious to offer
a pay-back-time to the captives for the horrors they had earlier suffered at
their hands. It was Abshir who flew them out of Kisimayo to safety in Kenya
and Mogadishu). Patriotic to a fault genuinely interested in the welfare of
the Somali people and with a great international name recognition, Abshir must
be the logical choice to lead the northeast. But these qualities, which would
have been a great asset for leadership in a sane people, are in fact a singular
liability among demented Somalis. Most Majeerteen, and most Daarood for that
matter, obsessively fear that if they entrust their interest and welfare to
Abshir, he might, in his eagerness for the nation, give away too much to other
clans, and hence endanger their future. Once bitten, twice shy, so many Daarood
feel. Instead, a large number of Majeerteen want Abdullahi for the same reason
the Americans wanted Richard Nixon for president during the height of the Viet
Nam and Cold War. A prickly British scholar with an earthy humor explained Nixon’s
overwhelming victory over the pacifist Senator George McGovern in the crucial
1972 election thus: "Granted Nixon is a bastard," quipped the Englishman,
"but you need a bastard in dealing with the Russians." A not insignificant
number of Daarood feel they need a bastard in dealing with the Aydiid types
in the south—which bastard Abdullahi Yuusuf is! (Might this remark of mine
bring down on me the furious wrath of Mr. Yusuf someday? So often it is that
my written words have caused me vexatious trouble. Yet a writer must write his
reasoned opinion regardless of consequences, if he deserves the name at all.
Actually, the word bastard in this context, far from being an insult, is a term
of affectionate endearment. I am obliged to explain all this because most Somalis,
given their bigoted propensity and sensitivity to imagined slight, to say nothing
of their limited grasp of English, are likely to misread Somali meaning into
an English idiom.) As a result, vacillation between Abshir, who is the more
deserving, and Abdullahi, who is considered a better defender of Daarood interests
in a future negotiation with other clans, has paralyzed the Majeerteen into
political inaction since 1992. In a search for a way to circumvent this deadlock,
the Majeerteen two summers ago invited the internationally respected (but not
given the honor due to him at home), former prime minister Mr. Abdirizak’s
H. Hussein, in hopes that the three rivals would step down in favor of him and
that Abdirizak’s prestige would be enough to stymie political squabbling.
Disappointingly, this has not happened. After six months of heroic effort, this
tired, penniless and unwell man (who once ran the only Somali administration
deserving the name) gave up in disgust and returned to lonely exile in cold
America. His experience proves that when, in the end, it comes to political
vision, the Majeerteen are as bleakly barren of it as other Somali clans blinded
by unyielding greed, short-sighted selfishness and the mindless propensity for
bililiqaysi, which translates as atavistic criminal looting, which re-appears
among Somalis every sadex-guura, or third cycle. Given their historic place
in Somali history, surely the Majeerteen could have done better by themselves
and by the country.
Last word to the Majeerteen: where is the miid (penetrating foresight) that
the dead poet so soulfully sang about and so passionately yearned for? Or might
this be a case of: "Aw Muuse gabayguu marshaa/meesha soo gelaye!"
Every reflective, thoughtful Majeerteen should appreciate, to their challenge,
the evocative allusions, indeed the powerful literary-historical land mines
that lie hidden beneath the surface of that solitary versicle.
Please Note that this article was written
before the cuurent Puntland State of Somalia was established.
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Copyright © Mudug Online 2001
