     Anonymous | Monday, February 26, 2001 - 07:08 pm
From Maroodi Jeex: Somaliland Alternative Newsletter
Issue number 6 (September/November 1997)
Somali Women and Somali Civil Wars
This piece combines the thoughts of two women on the role of Somali women in conflict creation in recent Somali civil wars. Ed.
The Women Behind the Warriors
By Cynthia Enloe
"....The most serious journalists are telling us now about the clan-based society of Somalia. If indeed clan organization is crucial to the construction of the current conflict (it may not be; two of the rival warlords are from the same clan), then marriage and reproduction must be essential processes in producing loyalties as well as hostilities. And if that is so, then warfare can't be prepared for or perpetuated without women's choice of husbands and sexual activity being of great concern. Some reports add that it is mothers who are responsible for insuring that both boys and girls learn early to identify not just with their extended families but with the genealogies of their fathers (not their mothers), back through many generations.
Many journalists are telling us that Somali masculinity has been molded by legends of warriors, nomads who have protected their clans with military prowess and cunning. But in reality, not all Somalis men are nomadic pastoralists. Men and women living in the southern region around the capital, Mogadishu, are more likely to be settled agriculturalists. Misguided economic policies dating back to the colonial period and maintained through the years of international assistance have eroded the fragile soils of this southern region, turning of agricultural men into searchers for another livelihood. How many of these men have joined the warlords' militias? If one looks at a Somali warring faction and sees not a solid phalanx of descendants of cultural myth, but many displaced farmers, then the supposition about the militarization of Somali masculinity would have to be revised.
The media are filled these days with pictures of teenage Somali boy riding recklessly around town on a armored jeeps popularly called "technicals." Camel boys. They are distinct from the regular members of the warlords' armies. Many of them seem to be wielding their guns in order to obtain food. They are not soldiers, traditional or non-traditional. It would be a mistake to confuse these anarchic boys with the men commanded by ambitious politicians.
But where are the women who taught many of these boys and men to stay loyal to their clans, to resolve conflict in the name of clan solidarity? And where are the camel boys' sisters? The simple answer is that they are refugees, if they are still alive. But women aren't refugees, theybecome refugees. If women as partners in clan marriage, as mothers of children, as teachers of new generations, as farmers in the south and pastoralists in the north, were once critical players in the creation of Somali society, then their roles must have been drastically transformed for that society order to be dismantled through a kind of militarization that didn't sustain the clan building block but instead pulverized them.
Some Somalis, especially urban Somalis, had been challenging the notions of clan loyalty before the present crisis. They had tried to substitute the idea of nationhood, a community transcending clan. Women have had a mixed relationship with nationalism in many countries. It has provided many women with more public roles than marriage and motherhood; it has legitimized many women's escape from familial domination and suffocating domesticity; it has expanded their network of support across region and class. Simultaneously, nationalism, especially in its militarized form, has been wielded to silence women, to keep them from raising awkward complaints about male abuse, to keep them from experimenting with alternative sexual identities, to stop them from forming alliances with feminists in other countries or ethnic groups. We have yet to hear from Somalia's urban nationalist women." ( From The Women's Review of Books, Vol. 10 (5), pp.23(2) /February 1993)
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A Woman's Voice in a Men's Forum
By Fatima Jibrell- February 1997. Newsgroups: soc.culture.somalia
Somalia is a forsaken land whose people are on the brink of annihilation. Somalis are today their own worst enemy. And women, particularly mothers, are the worst adversaries of Somalia. Are we, the women of Somalia, just actors in our country's destructive politics? Women and others have sacrificed the livelihood of Somalia. Every day for the last six years, we sacrificed the elderly, the children, the handicapped and the innocent. Can we really look ourselves honestly and feel proud. Not at all. In this world and the world hereafter we can see shame and disgrace written on the faces of Somali women. To look at ourselves is to look at betrayal, cruelty and failure. What a terrible lot to belong to. How did we lose track of humanity? How did we blindfold our homogeneity and unity? Where did we go wrong in raising our sons? Nobody can answer these questions except the Somali mothers. They must dig for truth within themselves. May Allah give us the courage to face up to who we are.
Let us not pretend innocence. Women must accept their share of violating the God-given rights of others. Since 1991, women have been igniting fires that burn lives still. Women have empowered and encouraged their husbands, their leaders and their militias to victimize their fellow countrymen. Women cry, they grieve, they remain weary - but do not learn the lesson- a lesson that has cost them more than they will ever know.
Women praised in their beautiful verses, in Buraanbur, those men who raped their neighbors, looted their co-workers and maimed their relatives from other clans. Women honor the engineers of such consequences. Women wear the gold jewels of fallen friends. Adding insult to injury, some women remain dwellers of looted homes and hotels. Such women call their husbands victorious.
Without encouragement, support and approval, wars cannot be fought. But wars are fought: we encourage them, we support them and approve of them. Women: it is time to come to terms with reality. There are no sons born in war, they are only lost. May Allah give us the wisdom to wake up and realize our crimes, crimes that are not forgivable in our religion - Islam.
Come and walk with me through the neighborhoods of any town or village in Somalia. Imagine we are taking a walk along your own avenue- your own neighborhood. Try to remember your own friends there, and try to remember those days when you played hopscotch together. Remember those you shared a piece of candy with, those you covered for when they were punished by teachers or parents for bad behavior. Remember your friends, those you shared beautiful dresses and jewelry with when invited for weddings and ceremonies. Can you remember the secrets your mother gave you? Can you remember the agony, the laughter, the consolation, the help you received from others, when the sack of grain bottomed out. My dear sisters , ask yourselves, where are your dear friends and neighbors with whom you shared your lives with when you were down. Where are those with whom you laughed with when your spirits were high.
How pleasant, how fair, how enjoyable it is for you and I to laugh together or share our pains today - with the killers, looters and rapists who wish us to believe that they are on our side, that they are our protectors. They are, in fact, our clan militia. What a shameful place we occupy. We have betrayed our future, and the future of our children. We remain hostage to the anarchy-loving forces because, unwisely, we choose to.
Where are the peace-loving forces now? Where are the communities who got sick and tired of isolationist clan policies. Do you remain hostage to your clan, or are you ready to liberate yourself and children, your neighborhood and your homestead.
Is clan diversity and co-existence a beautiful dream? Are you nostalgic for it, or is it only deja vue? If your memories are calling you to commission an expedition for peace, may Allah help you. Let us join hands. It is time to reach out for those committed to peace, co-existence and fairness.
It is time to go forward; time to face up the truth. I do not control and cannot know my future. I can only guide it. Let us tear down the walls of separation. Let us share our common destiny, our common children, our common lives. Let us build together the Somalia we destroyed. Let's cultivate together dear Somalia. Let us together protect our coast, our airspace, and our children. Let us together rebuild our shattered livelihoods and future. Let us elect and vote for whose political agenda matches our vision.
Let us shed clan politics and replace it with our common interests. We all know it will work. We all know clan politics doe not and shall never work except for the warlords.
Alternatives
But to change, we must start with ourselves. We must confront the self, heal the self and clean the self within and depart from there in search of way to co-exist. We must embrace the diversity of our clans, the differences among our ethnic groups and regions.
We must heal ourselves from guilt, hate, superiority and inferiority complexes. After dealing with all the hate within, we must seek forgiveness; and we must also forgive. Each and everyone of us must forgive and seek forgiveness by doing the right thing from now on. It is important for the journey of healing to confront our fear, to grieve our losses, and to lament our past. But it is also important to smile, to laugh, and to forgive, because the future is ours, if we have the courage to confront it.
Pass the dheel of Ano (the milk pot) from coast to coast. Paste yourBuraanbur verses to the dheel and let it circulate from the cities to the pastoralists, to the highlands, rivers, and plains. Let it circulate your precious pains, sorrows and laughter to all of us, coming to terms with violence, hate and anger, and replace it with forgiveness and a new beginning
"....This is a heart-warming speech, full of courage and substance. A message for the Somali public, women and men alike. And it should make our day that a Somali woman has at last differed from the blind-folded masses, called a spade a spade, and said what she felt, in her innermost being, without fear of being booed by men.
We need people like Fatima Jibreel to come forward and speak out against the injustice that's Somalia today. These warlords, these thugs and these killers are not an island unto themselves. They have supporters, and as Fatima said, they have mothers. They also have sisters and wives and relations and friends. And they have whole clans or sub-clans behind them. It's, therefore, a high time that people speak up, draw their support from them and clear themselves from their negative influences, before the Lord took the matter out of their hands.
Isn't it written that anyone who helps an evil cause also becomes a part of it? And Allah is the Lord of Retribution.
Allah the Most High says:
"*Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away Before you: travel through the earth, and see the end of those who rejected Truth.* " (Ali Imran:137) (By Safia on SCS Newsgroup)
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