19 May 2007 04:23 SOMALIA WATCH |
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Opinions expressed in this column are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of SW.
SOMALIA: Who Needs a Unitary Central Government?
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By Ali A. Fatah
Somalia has captured the headlines for years now. This is largely due to the political breakdown of the Somali State that led to U.S. intervention during the waning days of former President George Bush administration. It may well be propitious that the country is in the news once again, when the son of the former president-President George W. Bush, is in power in Washington. Still, it is the opportune time to give fresh, realistic analysis and offer some solutions to the current impasse.
The Somali crisis is the result of political miscalculations and colossal failure on the part of the postcolonial elite of the country to fully appreciate the realities of the society that they hoped to lead. Since the time of independence in 1960, the Horn of Africa country had been reflexively called an ideal nation state, owing to the presence of a number of attributes unique in sub-Sahara Africa: a common language, common religion-Islam, related ethnicity, etc.-all factors that are useful to the process of building a modern nation-state. But a close examination of the social and cultural reality, as it exists on the ground, reveals quite a different story. It is a story, which is not fully grasped by many among the Somali elite (and non-Somalis), and one that needs to be weighed and understood in its proper social context if peace and true reconciliation is to take hold in the strife-ridden land. The fact is, the above copious shared attributes notwithstanding, Somali nationalism did not survive national independence. The use of a new form of clanism by the ruling urban elite to advance their sectarian political and economic interests (under the guise of safeguarding the national unity) undermined the tools for social organization upon which Somalis relied for centuries to minimize the effects of all kinds of conflicts within the society: 1) the traditional law or xeer system promulgated by the sovereign clans, and 2) the Islamic-basis for public morality. Thus Somalia had embarked on its own forty-year journey in the wilderness where corruption and nepotism were exchanged as currency by members of the ruling elite in their feeding frenzy at the public trough. A despoiled form of the clan system - I call it "neo-clanism" - in which unmerited national resources were shared amongst members of highly connected clans, while the rest were victimized was all but normalized. Still, for a generation, since de-colonization, the Somali people hoped against hope that the governing elite would somehow see the errors of their ways and take corrective actions without avail. Only after successive, earth-shattering tragedies did they realize that the system was indeed broken beyond repair.
False Starts, Missed Opportunities
Without the aid of institutional anchors for democratic governance at the national level, the urban elite who were, at the time of independence, largely untutored in the art of national politics and the requisite skill to craft workable public policy hastened to organize a hodgepodge state apparatus. By any objective measure, the resultant state was underdeveloped in terms of socio-political and economic infrastructure. Its cadre of leaders were ill-prepared to lead the emerging nation successfully, thus the country quickly became a notorious geopolitical playground for cold war adversaries. That act of dereliction of duty on the part of a plurality of ruling elite effectively derailed national aspirations and thus set the stage for the first of many national tragedies to befall Somalia. The second tragedy occurred nine years after de-colonization, when, on October 1969, the elected civilian government was over-thrown by revolutionary military regime following the assassination of the elected president Abdirashid Ali Shermarke. Far from spearheading an ordinary escapade in the life of the infant nation, the coup leaders unleashed a scourge-earth campaign to strip the society of all its socio-cultural and religious values in favor of an alien, godless communist construct (that was devised to address social questions from another time and place).
To add insult to injury, the regime preached communalism, but continued to allow the widespread practice of neo-clanism to permeate all aspects of societal life. While Somalis recognized at the time that the prevailing system was fraught with social inequities and string pulling, for the next eight years (1969-1977) they lacked common ground for devising a plan to successfully dislodge a ruling military dictatorship that was armed to the hilt. Nor was there a viable alternative political platform around which the country could rally, if and when the inept, criminal regime was removed. By then, the depth of inter-clan mistrust was so deep ingrained, that armed opposition groups recruited soldiers for militias exclusively from their respective clans. As different clans developed mutually exclusive agendas, it was not surprising that the few programmatic achievements by the Mohamed Siad Barre regime began to fall by the way side as relics of the hated central government. The ruling junta's policy of targeting certain clans for reprisals predictably further alienated many clan communities from the regime and from each other. Within less than 10 years of the military dictatorship, it was apparent to most that the Somali national government in Mogadishu was teetering on the brink from its own inherent imbalance. However, the moment of truth did not arrive for the ruling elite until the society as whole was subjected to a needless, humiliating defeat they wrought at the hands of Somalia's erstwhile enemies: the Ethiopians-in the 1977-1978 Ogaden debacle. From this point forward, things went quickly down hill for the country. Throughout the early 1980s, in a futile effort to cling to power, the military dictatorship hounded specific Somali clans with cruel persecution. To many Somalis and outside observers it was clear that the country was coming apart at the seams. So, when during the fall of the dictatorship in 1990-91, tens of thousands of civilians were massacred in Mogadishu and in parts of the north, by the so-called opposition parties for no other reason than their clan origin, the reality of the Somalia's rancorous inter-clan relations had intervened to puke holes at the simulated, sinister apparatus of the central government.
For the first time in forty years, since independence, Somalis have grudgingly come to the realization that the only durable, sane institution in the society was that of the clan and its traditions. For, more than a cultural organization, Somali clans have similar systems of governance the rules and the rationales of which all Somalis understood and could relate to without being short-changed. This is important in that there is little doubt now, among Somalis of all stripes that the centralizing policies of the postcolonial elite had failed miserably to consider the interests and wishes of the different clans and distinct communities in the society. In so doing, the elite turned a national dream into a cruel hoax. Impressed and influenced by European forms of nationalism, these Somali politicians and intellectuals thought they too could construct a modern state without paying serious attention to not only the differences, but also the important cultural nuances and socio-economic and political needs of the disparate clans and distinct communities. Moreover, the land-based sociological and historical realities of clan politics were not sufficiently considered as the necessary building blocks for a modern Somali state. The mechanisms for peacemaking and peacekeeping known to Somalis in precolonial times were somehow ignored or forgotten. The repressive and authoritarian nature of the inherited colonial state was believed to be sufficient to deter disruptive forces within the society. The crash of the state in the waning days of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre underscored the fragility of the Somali State and the historical amnesia of the ruling elite.
Eleven years since the collapse of the postcolonial state, Somalis are groping for political solutions. Unhinged warlords are still vying for the helm with the remnants of the political class of the past corrupt regimes. The aim of these factions of the same clique is to turn back the clock to the time when the central government's reason for existing was to benefit rapacious ruling clan(s) of the day, and those who performed supportive roles. After all they have done in recent history, their way of thinking has not changed; they are baffled as to why they cannot return to business as usual. For the nation as a whole, everything has changed irreversibly. This is the state of affairs in the country and the state of mind of the self-styled political class who are presumed by the uninitiated to get the nation out of its present dire predicament.
Back to Reality
How can Somalis get out of their present political morass? Well, the answer lies in the political interests and judgements of the competing clans and communities in the country and in the role and place of external agents in the crisis. In order to bring the contending parties together, there must develop among all Somalis the attitude and feeling that peace can come only when the clans and communities that make the building blocks of a New Somalia are accorded their dues. What are these dues? They consist of full regional autonomy, the right to self-development and genuine self-expression without the intrusive presence of a central government. This is why a constitutional framework that assures these rights and opportunities is needed to ensure the separation of authority between the autonomous regions and their community-based political entities on the one hand, and a reconstituted weak federal government at national level, on the other. Without such an arrangement, permanent socio-political separation at the regional level is going to be seen by many clans and distinct communities as both unavoidable and necessary. Although some Somalis may pooh-pooh the idea of studying and appreciating the Swiss model of the Canton, the fact remains that Somalis are not ethnically or culturally homogeneous. And would thereby benefit a great deal from such an arrangement. The truth is the clans and the ethnic communities have not yet attained together higher levels of material development to blur the primordial boundaries separating one from the other. Political engineering and effective and responsible economic planning could set the stage for such an eventuality. Somali politicians know that the present state of political vertigo results from a culmination of decades-long stroking and abuse of the natural fissures between the clans by platitude-mouthing, undemocratic government officials and faction leaders. As a significant step toward reconciliation, therefore, Somalis must return to the source of their political tradition and wisdom.
Long before the colonial powers imposed an alien, centrally controlled and highly
stratified state apparatus as the nucleus for a new social order, Somalis lived in the
Horn of Africa region as fully autonomous, yet interactive clans and ethnic communities.
They did so according to codified traditional laws or xeers that afforded them varying
degrees of democratic self-government. By contrast, the administrative state introduced by
the colonial regimes-a perverse version of which guided successive Somali governments
(both civilian and military)-was marked by querulous impulses. It operated under the
subterranean current of inter-clan rivalry predicated on an equal competition for the
woefully limited resources that were available to successive Somali governments united by
common inaptitude in managing the national economy. It was a system designed with high of
tolerance for corruption. In it, the urban elite from among an unholy clan alliances
competed openly to perpetrate not so deceptive scams as they pursued political and
economic power at the expense of an increasingly weary populous, with impunity. In the
process, they created and indulged in a culture ready-made for perennial losers.
The problem for Somalis is that after all that has happened in the recent past, there is
no sign that the fraudulent practices of pillaging national resources and burying the
evidence will abate anytime soon. As in the past, corruption remains the means by which
high officials of unpopular regimes, their retinue and the warlords waiting in the dark
alleys seek to amass ill-gotten wealth and grease the palms of desperate clan members on
countless dusty street. It is widely understood by all that high position in a Somali
government is a license for officials to line their pockets, whether they embezzle,
panhandle, borrow or print money. To be sure, there are some who managed to resist the
temptation to enrich themselves through illicit means, but they are a distinct minority
(that is often removed from the levers of power). So to the average Somali the role of the
national government would for the foreseeable future be intractably laced with
malfeasance. Not only that, it is for many clans synonymous with images ranging from
outright discrimination to attempts at wholesale destruction of their communities.
To end the present era of heightened antagonism and mutual suspicion, therefore, the indigenous governance that, for hundreds of years, accorded the various clan communities equilibrium in their social relations must be consulted. A sundry group of craven politicians and other offbeat personalities must not be allowed to reestablish the status quo ante, which the recently ousted Prime Minister of the so-called Transitional National Government in Mogadishu once called "the milching camel of the elite". Furthermore, if Somalia is to be on the path of reconciliation and peaceful development, then no representative of a particular clan should be allowed to assume dictatorial powers over others, under any guise. No government should be able to arrogate to itself the privilege to arbitrarily set numerical quotas for officials to serve the nation at any capacity. Rather, clans and ethnic communities who enjoy territorial autonomy enshrined in a constitution built on the most excellent age-old, Somali traditions and the best of modern constitutional engineering must decide on these matters together. A reexamination of the precolonial, colonial and post-colonial eras should make all Somalis and their well-wishers abroad strive for the correction of past mistakes and the strengthening of accomplishments. This means that differential rates of modernization and economic development caused by colonial and neo-colonial policies now need to be addressed at the local and regional levels. This is the only way to end the illusion by some that the colonial capital of Somalia confers privileges to its current occupants and those outside its vicinity as lesser political creatures.
Besides the need to revisit the old political culture, there is the equally important and more urgent need to address the requirements of what professor Sulayman Nyang calls the politics of the belly. This means that each clan and ethnic community deserves to define its political and economic needs, which cannot be subordinated to those of others. The attempt to impose a central government at the behest of a small clan that stands accused of innumerable atrocities during the savage civil war of the 1990's is nothing short of courting disaster, on two counts. First, as a nation of clans, any central government in the Somali peninsula that is not organized by bona fide representatives of all the clans and identifiable communities will of necessity lose credibility and fail. Secondly, such an act carries with it the real possibility of resumption, on a large scale, of hostilities between clan communities, and with it the cycle of famine and human misery.
Regions Must Control Their Destinies
The bottom line of the current Somali imbroglio is the competition for meager available resources: which clan (or a limited consortium of clans) will control those resources, and which clans will beg for crumbs off the table. From the first decade of independence in the 1960s Somalia was dubbed "the graveyard of foreign aid" by agents of international donors. The unfortunate description was not far off the mark as evidenced by the then prevailing corrupting style of governance, which ultimately ruined the economy and destroyed the scant infrastructure assets that the postcolonial rulers inherited from the colonial powers. The civil war and the destruction it visited upon Somali society have affected not only the Somalis in the country, but also Somalis abroad. Never in the history of the Somali people has so much been done to so many by so few. The political elite should take note of this fact and make changes in their thinking and attitudes. The same is true for intellectual elite in North America and elsewhere in the Diaspora. It is particularly sad that the most ardent vocal calls for "Somali unity" at all costs are belied by promiscuous support for certain political actors in the country who may be pointlessly pursuing a campaign aimed at achieving clan hegemony.
Somalia as the homeland of all Somalis is not a country without means. While chaos still reigns in a couple of regions, conditions in others seem to be stabilizing. Somaliland and Puntland in the North, and Hiran and Bay & Bakol in the South (by no means paragons of democracy) have registered some measures of success in stabilizing their respective regions against enormous odds. They are trying to develop their social services infrastructure incrementally, while at the same time setting the stage for the pursuit of free and unfettered trade in the hope spurring genuine economic development, albeit from threshold levels. This is more than can be said for the so-called TNG group in Mogadishu, which is busy "fund-raising" from or, as some say, panhandling oil-rich Arab regimes that support the cause of a unitary state in Somalia to the exclusion of all other options. The road to peace and reconciliation, therefore, lies in the recognition and appreciation of these different political experiments going on in the disintegrated Somali State. The Somali political elite and the international community must work together to lay the foundations for a New Somalia. This Somalia must consist of free regional governments that are united by a weak federal government that performs limited functions of mutual interest to the regions including foreign affairs, national defense and also functions a final arbiter of the centrality of the rule of law in the society. Without such a new dispensation the quest for peace and reconciliation in the Somali peninsula will of necessity remain a futile exercise for many years to come. ©
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The writer is based in Washington, DC
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Amakhiri@aol.com