What Somalia Teaches Us About the World

(Somalia, January 25, 2008 Ceegaag Online)  

omali proverb says, "Your cousin begrudges your success, but also dislikes your failure." Another tells us, "A man and his wife are neither at war nor at peace." A third advises, "How you are doesn't matter, what does is how you are seen."

As we meditate on these proverbs, we smile with wry assent - they reveal the ever-present truth of our existence, providing the base line from which all our more unilateral moments proceed. At bottom, there is a doubleness to our lives that we can never overcome, at least as long as we dwell on earth. We are, as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, "unsociable social beings." We cannot get along without each other, yet we cannot abide each other. We are blessed and cursed with central nervous systems that are open to receive the world outside us, yet enclosed upon themselves, leaving each of us alone with our desires and fears.

Doubleness shoots through our personal, intimate and communal lives; we forget that at the cost of our sanity. The danger of forgetfulness is nowhere more evident than in the political dimension of life. Politics is a perpetually changing mixture of public function and private interest. The social side of government provides the services of security, administration of public goods and mobilization of collective will; its unsociable side is domination, predation and corruption.

Political communities vary over time in their balance of public function and private interest. When the members of a political community identify with and trust one another, and when they are organized in such a way that their sense of identity translates into collective action, public function predominates over private interest; when identity, trust and organization break down, private or sectoral interest takes over.

It is by dint of circumstance, not cultural essence, that Somalis now find themselves at an extremity unmatched anywhere else in the world at which private and sectoral interest have eclipsed public function to the point that their political community has disintegrated. It is a libel, frequently repeated, that Somalis are different from other peoples - in fact, they are human-all-too-human, like everyone else. We tend to forget that when race riots erupted in the United States, neighborhood militias mobilized spontaneously to defend life and property. The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina, when militias formed in the white New Orleans suburbs to fend off the flood of black "internally displaced persons."Identity and trust had dissolved;only the organized state remained to restore order, albeit fitfully and tardily. Had the chaotic situation persisted, warlords would have emerged.

The two most dire mistakes that can be made in politics are utopianism - to believe that public function can permanently triumph over private interest - and cynicism - to believe that private interest always overwhelms public function. Applied to Somalia today, utopianism is expressed as the dream of a pure Shari'a state that will eliminate discord, and cynicism is articulated in the judgment that Somalia's current devolution is proof that its future is fragmentation hardened into cantonization.

We should not forget that in the spring and summer of 2006, Somalia experienced a genuine revolution that held the promise of an integrated political community and that was later crushed by an Ethiopian military intervention condoned - at the very least - by the United States.

As is the case with all revolutions, the Courts movement was a mixed and diverse
affair. Cynics and skeptics noted that it was dominated by the Hawiye clan family and jumped to the conclusion that it was a cover for a Hawiye power play. They reduced its successes to a simple wish of Somalis for sheer order. They pointed to the political immaturity of the Courts' leadership, its lack of coordination, the excesses of some of its elements in applying Shari'a law and of other of its elements in reviving irredentist aims. The last indictment was the most crucial - the more militant faction of the Courts movement forgot the Somali proverb, "Don't let go of the berries in your hand to reach for the ones in the tree."

Admitting the partial truth of the Courts' critics, it cannot be gainsaid that the popular appeal of the Courts movement went well beyond the promise of order. At the height of its confidence, the movement embraced environmentalism, public health and anti-discrimination among clans. Its rapid spread was not due to military might, but to the impetus of popular support. Only when Ethiopian forces moved in to protect the Transitional Federal Government and after the United Nations Security Council authorized a foreign "peacekeeping" force did the militant factions in the Courts movement gain supremacy.

The Courts' attempted reforms were firmly rooted in a humane understanding of Islam that accorded with traditional Somali culture - the Quranic proclamation that human beings are "co-directors in the earth" and are responsible for creating a just and merciful community. This humane disposition offered the promise of an Islamic political formula consistent with modernity, yet rooted in revealed religion. One did not have to be a Muslim to be moved by the life-affirming creativity of the side of the Courts movement that was shown as it ascended.

The failure of the Courts movement as a result of internal excess and external repression has effaced the memory of its integrative potential.Indeed, foreign journalists, commentators and analysts systematically discounted the integrative tendencies of the Courts at the moment when they were most obvious - perhaps the possibility of a humane Islamic (not Islamist) politics was too inconvenient to acknowledge.

Recognition of the Courts' life-affirming side does not imply the judgment that the cynics were perverse, but only that they neglected half the story - the part that revealed that Somalis are not inherently contentious and clan-bound, that they are capable of attempting to forge a political community when they are presented with an attractive political formula that resonates with their received culture and is based in grassroots self-help; that they have the potential to create a more favorable balance of public function and private interest.

The tragedy of contemporary Somalia is that the most promising formula for a political community has been shattered. When Somalia devolved after 1990 and became stateless, people turned to the mosques and created autochthonous institutions that became the springboard for the Courts revolution. Where can they turn now? Where is the focal point for popular impetus? What will bring people out of the self-destructive self-protection that marks the demoralized phase of the human condition - the "fretful and grudging" disposition that the Quran so aptly names and attributes to anxiety.

It is disquieting to read all the plans for reorganizing Somalia that pour out from the pens of Somali intellectuals and Western experts. Many of them are intelligent and insightful, and some of them are well-intentioned, but none of them factor in the Somalis as a people capable of exerting collective will. All the plans see-saw between top-down and bottom-up approaches, and centralist, federalist, confederalist and cantonalist structural formulas. All the plans are elitist, guided by an engineering mentality; none of them is organic, inspired by awakening popular sentiment. This is not to cast blame; putting the cart before the horse is a symptom of demoralization, an indication of a political post-traumatic stress disorder and perhaps it makes the best of a bad situation. The problem is that the wide diversity of plans ends up mirroring the divisions of a devolved political community rather than overcoming them. State structure
is not the fundamental issue; mobilization of popular will is what is wanting and wanted.

An outsider has no business telling people how to organize their lives - it is rude, arrogant and patronizing to do so, and it would behoove Western governments, international organizations and assorted "experts" to own up to that. An outsider can, however, legitimately respond to questions that insiders ask him. Somalis continually query: Why do the great powers seem to aid and abet our suffering? Why do they treat us like stepchildren? Why do they turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by their proxies?

The simple, honest and brutal answer is that they do not find it in their perceived interest to give full-hearted and appropriate help and encouragement. It is not that they are in conspiracy to hold Somalia back, but that Somalia is just a piece in the mosaic of their foreign policies that has no value in and for itself, but is one element of a regional strategy that is based on what regional actors can bring to the table. From the viewpoint of the great powers, Ethiopia is the linch-pin state, Djibouti gets their foot into the door, Eritrea is a North Korea without nuclear weapons and Somalia is too disorganized to take seriously, except as a possible staging base for "terrorists" and, secondarily, as a potential source of raw materials and as another foothold for power in the Middle East. Their utopia, sketched in the strategic plan for the U.S. military's Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa, is a harmonized region following the dictates of Western policy. Short of that impossible dream, they will settle for an uneasy alliance with Ethiopia and a dependent Djibouti. One can question the wisdom of this policy all that one wishes,but it remains the perceived interest of the major international actors.

The annoying - to understate the sentiment - aspect of the international powers'behavior is its hypocrisy: they talk the humanitarian and democratic talk, but they do not walk the walk. It is understandable that Somalis try to hold them to their words, but that has little or no effect.

What Somalia teaches us about the world is that one has to bring something to the table to count. Ethiopia brings its sheer size and military force, Djibouti brings its location and receptivity, and Eritrea brings its track record of determined resistance. At present, Somalia brings little or nothing.

The most important asset that Somalia could bring to the table in the future would be an effective political organization based on an integrated political community supported by popular will. The key is popular impetus crystallized around an attractive political formula. The watchword is self-organization that does not provoke destructive external intervention. No doubt, that will be difficult to achieve, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

It is to the credit of Somalia's new transitional prime minister, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, that he realizes the necessity of overcoming internal divisions and seems to value public function over private interest. He lacks his own power base, but could conceivably build one by virtue of his positive vision of a process beginning with local reconciliation that expands to include the political opposition to the T.F.G. and culminates in the supersession of clan representation by trans-clan political parties. It remains to be seen whether he can become an inspirational leader who mobilizes popular sentiment. If he does, movement toward integration might proceed more rapidly than one would think on the basis of current conditions.

Over the years following the fall of Siad Barre's dictatorship, Somalis have learned self-help the hard way. The Courts revolution showed that they could apply that virtue to the fundamental problem of political community. There is room for a second chance.

Note: I am greatly indebted to Ahmed Egal for providing me with his translations
of Somali proverbs, which have enhanced my insight into the human condition and
its fundamental doubleness.

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Contributed by: Michael A. Weinstein, Senior Conflict Analyst, PINR

Source: Garowe Online

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