LET SOMALIS BE THANKFUL TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE HELPED THEM

[fagash_killer]

Let Somalis be Thankful to People
Who Have Helped Them
Mohamed I. Farah (Raghe)
August 23, 2007


Somalia achieved independence in 1960,and in 1991 it ceased to exist as a nation state. Since then the Somali people have experienced much tribulations and miseries in their lives, some of which have been of their own making, while others have been thrust upon them. The world’s reactions to Somali miseries have ranged from offering a helping hand to causing them to suffer more miseries, and to sitting in the face, while watching Somalis suffer with a measure of amusement. Far from showing a sign of abating, the suffering of the Somali people continues to impact on their lives today. Not a day goes by without reading a heart rendering news about Somalis who got killed somewhere, or drowning in high seas, in a futile bid to escape from their homes, for what they consider would be a haven of peace and tranquillity. At their destinations, that haven of peace for many remains a figment of their imaginations
Kenya and Ethiopia
In 1991 at the height of the Somali exodus, Kenya became the first country to offer solace to Somali refugees at Utange, at the coast of Mombassa. Today sixteen years later, every time there is a flare up between different factions in Somalia, Somalis have to run to Kenya to gain sanctuary. Another country that, from time to time, has offered an alternative home for escaping Somalis is Ethiopia.

Both countries are poor and have limited resources to enable them to accommodate such large-scale numbers of refugees in their country. However in spite of their resource constraints, these countries have offered to share what little resource they have with Somali refugees. Both have acted as a point of exit for individuals leaving to a third country of resettlement in Europe or America. Hence it is correct to assume that more than 90% of Somalis who live abroad today, they have Kenya or Ethiopia to thank for giving them a home, while waiting as their papers were getting processed. The population of people coming from Somalia today is a permanent presence in both Kenyan and Ethiopian cities. In Kenya particularly, the refugees of yesterday, today they are business people whose prosperity is beyond anyone’s wild imagination.

In this island of peace, tranquillity and prosperity in the ocean of suffering, have the Somali people ever posed to think and then thanked the people of Kenya and Ethiopia for helping them in their moment of need? The answer unfortunately is “No.” They have done little precious to show any sense of appreciation. Instead one wonders why some pseudo Somali politicians have remained hostile to Kenyan Government and its people. Let no one have any kind of wrong impression that because one of the Kenyan provinces is inhabited by Somalis therefore, Somalis by right of association with that province, they have a right there. It is well for such people to bear in mind that until they enter into a contract with the Kenyan state they have no moral, juridical or political ground to claim any right whatsoever in Kenya. One might wish to say “Forget about such rights, what about Somali nationalism?” The answer is “What about it?” Somali nationalism, which at its height in the decades of the 60s was irredentist by nature, had been articulated by a state that ceased to exist in 1991.

Inside Somalia the rule of dictatorship precluded the development of any sense of nationalism from taking place among Somalis by closing down all forms of institutional avenues necessary for generating such values. And with this cataclysmic political phase in the life history of the Somali people went away the prospect of anyone developing a sense of nationalism.

The clan wars that followed the destruction of the state hammered the last nail in the coffin of Somali nationalism. This is the reason why they make a mockery of themselves when some politicians want to use it as a source of mobilisation to realise their narrow based political agenda. Nationalism, especially in its irredentist form can only be useful if the subjects to be mobilised have a feeling that they have nothing to loose and everything to gain by responding to mobilisation that appeal to their sense of identity. Hence it was quite possible in this case to mobilise the Somali Kenyans in the decades of the 60s by appealing to the cultural affinity they shared with other Somalis in Somalia. However if applied today, the same strategy will not have a similar result.

Today there are many Kenyan Somalis with high education, which was not the case in the past. They form part and parcel of the Kenyan civil servants, they serve as Kenyan diplomat abroad, and many are in the Kenyan army as well as in the police force. The former head of the Kenyan army is a Somali; the present Police Commissioner is a Somali. Many Kenyan Somalis have prospered in business. In brief, many Kenyan Somalis form an important part of a vibrant and dynamic upper and middle social class in Kenya. As a privileged social class they will fight anyone to maintain their status quo.

Not all Countries
Not all countries have however been as willing as Kenya and Ethiopia to offer a helping hand to Somalis. Far from being enthusiastic in offering a helping hand the governments of Yemen and Saudi Arabia, both being Arab and Muslim countries, have had a dismal record to show in their dealings with Somalis. They are the only countries where Somalis have had to face death in the hands of the government agencies. In the case of Yemen its police force in Aden had fired shots at Somali demonstrators in front of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in 2005 and killed several demonstrating Somalis. Somali women have been constantly harassed by police in Sana, in plain view of their husbands, who received the beatings of their lives by showing signs of protest.

In 2006 Saudi Arabia carried a judicial murders of several Somali youth on the pretext that they were robbers. In fact those killed had already served terms in jail and did not deserve such ending. Somalia, being a Muslim country and a member of the Arab League, deserved a far better treatment from those countries than what they have so far received. For many years now Saudi Arabia has placed embargo on the Somali livestock- the major source of income for Somalis- on a spurious claim that they were diseased. Saudi Arabia would not remove the embargo even when WHO had proved that those livestock were clean. Elsewhere in the Arab Emirates although the government there has not been as harsh against Somalis as Saudi Arabia’s government, yet Somalis would have been indebted to the United Arab Emirates if for once they ceased to import charcoals and species of wildlife from Somalia. If the export of charcoal should continue to go on at the speed with which it is carried, the Somali landscape is soon bound to end up looking like the moon’s surface.

International Civil Society
In this moment of confusion and sufferings in the history of the Somalis people, they should be able to identify their friends from those who are not. Somalis should be wary of those who sit in the fence and claim that they are there to help them. By what miracle they could achieve their claim while sitting in the fence is a mind-boggling phenomenon. In this case I have in mind the legions of so-called international civil societies sitting in posh offices in Nairobi. The institution of international civil society is a conceptual child of the World Bank and the past US governments, which stated that the African people whose governments have failed them would stand to benefit from the presence of the international civil society in their countries.

It is strange that the World Bank should blame African governments for failing to deliver when they are the cause for much of those failures. Take the Somali government for example. In the 1980s, the International Monetary Funds IMF forced its Structural Adjustment Policies on Somalia. Structural Adjustment measures called for monetary devaluations, deregulations, privatisations and reduction of subsidies. In Somalia such measures, in causing the prices of foodstuffs to rise, had affected people with low income as well as the salaried people most acutely. In the ensuing situation where inflation galloped at a high speed, the ability of the poor people to live within an affordable means was highly compromised. This raised the level of corruption to a new height, and in the process caused opposition to rise against the government. From this brief account it is clear what role the IMF had played in the destruction of the Somali state.
In Somalia, there are hundreds of international civil societies whose focus of activities range from providing water to education, to agricultural and medical services. A survey I did in 1996 showed that there were more than fifty such water organisations that carry their operation in Somalia. In the same survey an equal number carry their operation in the medical sector. It stands to reason therefore that Somalia would have been awash in water, and its people would have portrayed the perfect image of a healthy society, if those organisations have actually done half of what they have said they were there to do. They could do none of the things they claimed to be doing because much of the investment went into propping up an ostentatious way of life for those managing such organisations in Nairobi.

It is a height of naivety to think and hope that someone will come and help Somalis get their act together. Those from whom Somalis expect help are the very people who throw the spanner in the works. From Somali problems, others find opportunities to live well in Kenya and elsewhere. Without problems in Somalia many of them would have no reason to further stay in their posts. Subsequently many would have ended up as jobless people in their own countries, from where getting another job would have become a dream to them, since a great number of them are not well qualified in anything. Given this background we have pseudo journalists from whose pens flows stories of intractable conflicts, of insecure food agencies that conjure up images of famines in Somalia, of bogus human right organisations that apportion blame to everyone, of mediocre researchers whose descriptive forms of research either say nothing new, or come up with results that are value loaded. Such value-loaded work of research that is made to look as if it is free of biases has dangerous consequences for peace and stability in Somalia, and must therefore be approached with caution. Somalis must refuse to entertain the use of the phrase “Somali Bantu” meant to define a group of people in Somalia. If a form of group identity is derived from how such group perceives itself or how others perceive it, in Somalia there can never be such a group as “Somali Bantu.” No one in Somalia refers to such group as “Somali Bantu” and neither do they refer to themselves as such. Its use is common mainly among members of international civil society. Even this writer has once been guilty of using it before discarding it away. While every little failure is magnified a thousand times, the good is swept under the carpet.


Conclusion

To avoid getting accused of giving a sweeping statement, and also for the sake of keeping the record straight, I wish to state here that there are some organisations that have done well in their duties in Somalia. To many people it would come as a surprise to know that such organisations were none secular in their orientation. Perhaps it is worth mentioning one of them here by name. This organisation was called Somali Mennonites. It had run excellent schools in Mogadishu, Johar and Mahadai Wein before this organisation was closed down by the state in the early 70s. Many of the current Somali intellectual luminaries had gained their formative educations from one of those institutions. Unless Somalis are a nation of masochists and therefore enjoy the friendship of people who torment them, otherwise there is a need to be judicious in judging their friends from those who are not. To those who have done Somalis an iota of good, Somalis should be thankful to them with all their heart. Remember, those who are incapable of appreciating the good in others can’t appreciate the good in themselves.

Mohamed I. Farah
E-Mail:Mohfara2005@yahoo.com