By Mohamed Obsiye
The Heritage Institute convened in Djibouti between 14 – 18 December 2018 a conference themed debating the impact of the Ethiopian reforms on the Somalis. However, the question of the status of Somaliland came to occupy a central place in the conference. In this piece I want to share my re-flections on a purported dialogue between a few free-floating individuals from Somaliland on the one side, and carefully selected delegates from Somalia’s federal institutions plus a host of disparate Somaliweyn scholars, activists and pundits, on the other. My discussion will be mainly limited to the conference in so far as it pertained to Somaliland and will be focused on (i) Heritage’s proclaimed independence and related to this, (ii) the flaws of its choreographed debate and (iii) will then touch on the role of the intellectuals, in general and Somaliland representatives, in particular, before (iv) I conclude the piece with reflection on the lessons from the conference.
I- The institute
Heritage prides itself on being an independent policy studies think tank. Since it, riding under this flag, charted into the contentious Somaliland-Somalia political issue, I found it difficult to take their claimed independence unanswered or to leave their biased framing of the conference hidden away. I want to bring out the contradictions of its vision and mission statements by showing how its com-mitment to serving the political interest of its country is weighted above anything else. More than that, I suggest that just like the idea of Somaliweyn is Somalia’s driving political ideology, so does Heritage want to colonise Somali political discourses. Such ambition was obvious from the set up of the conference; it was smacking of the Somaliweyn ideals the institute propagates. Of course, nothing was wrong with that, for it is an ideal it stands for, but it is the pretension of being ‘non-partisan’ that smacks of hypocrisy. Indeed, it is difficult to think of this institute without thinking of Somalia’s political revival.
I have noted that Heritage has adopted two strategies to hammer home its political message: one was explicit. It has deployed the contested Somalian moralising discourses reminding us that Soma-lis have suffered, continue to suffer and risk further suffering at this time from the impending changes Ethiopia is pushing through, unless, and this is the implicit message, Somalis band together either to collectively benefit from the changes or at least collectively mitigate their possible negative consequences. Notwithstanding that, the economic behaviour of the Soujou has not much, if anything, to do with that of the Yaakhee. It is extending entrenched ethnicising of politics into eco-nomic domains, thereby willing to recreate Althusserian structural conditions for the revival of So-maliweyn sentiments, which attracted my attention. Knowing fully well that sentiments around the Somali crises quickly slide into sympathy for the suffering of the Somalis across the peninsula, the organisers of this conference have carefully selected the Ethiopian reforms and told us that the only way Somalis can survive vicissitude is through ‘unity’. In using this emotive language, the institute intends to force affinity with the cause of unity. However, for Somalilanders these sentiments do not carry much weight; they believe that their small achievements in the areas of institution building have been made possible by the realisation of the impossibility of an ethnic based grand state.
I want to make two further observations on this moralising discourse: first, one cannot think that Ethiopia embarking on ambitious economic plans would want to undermine the political stability of its neighbours, let alone dominate them. I do not want to discuss the absurdity of ethnicising the impact of Ethiopia’s economic reforms for ethnic Somalis spread across five countries, but suffice it to say that every country’s economic policy is shaped by its comparative advantage and by the very nature of economic opportunities. These expectedly create competition between ally countries (see the Djibouti- Berbera case). In this respect the conference organisers merely wanted to re-connect us with historic misfortunes Somalis suffered at the hands of the Ethiopians. The point I want to make here is that evoking Ethiopia as an existential threat to Somalis in the Horn has for a long time been a rallying point that Somaliweyn protagonists have amused themselves with. In my view the very semantics of the statement is itself questionable, but it is not my wish to discuss at this stage.
A second observation I intend to make regarding the conference’s moralising discourse is that it surely breaks one’s heart to see on television screens the images of starving children and of suffering women (two groups bearing the brunt of the Somali chauvinistic culture) and of mutilated bodies of breadwinners of the streets of Mogadishu. However, such is no apology for unnecessarily invoking the defunct Somaliweyn nationalism, anymore than genocidal crimes in the eighties are sufficient for Somaliland to withdraw from the 1960 union. That said, however, the Somalian leaders, it is true, lose the will to live at the invocation of the genocide; this disposes the nerve ends of the failed unification project. They instead seek comfort in their twisted logic that atrocities have been committed against the people of Somaliland in terms of internecine conflict, thus downplaying the role of the Somalia state orchestrated.
Feeding its chagrin and remaining true to its political agenda, the institute lured a few self-appointed individuals from Somaliland and lavishly allocated them plentiful of platform time. It is the vertically choreographed platform, whereby Somaliland was discursively presented as a provin-cial entity that reveals the institute’s political agenda. It is the throwing together of academics, polit-ical careerists, activists and pundits that earned the conference all the hallmarks of what Somalis aptly have called a ‘fadhi-ku-dirir’ past-time. The Heritage director could not hide his political alle-giance when he shared his private thoughts of his misconstrued pre-colonial Somali history. It is against this backdrop I want to suggest that the presence of the individuals bearing the Somaliland badge were merely meant to blur the political boundaries between Somaliland and Somalia and to mock the more serious political talks.
II- Its message
That runaway Somaliland has been driven into a dead end and has no running left was the kernel of the conference’s message. I found it misleading for Heritage to pedal this defeatist message. Setting a scene for this, the moderator, in one of the sessions, was heard arguing that the international community, the African union and the rest of the world are not interested in entertaining what So-maliweyn participants implicitly alluded to as ‘the wild wishes of a renegade region in Somalia’ [sic]. In my view it is only up to a point true that, for Somaliland, recognition has become like tar-geting a moving object, but it is not up to the so-called international community to convince Soma-lilanders drop their struggle for joining the community of nations; it certainly is only a minor setback in comparison to Somalia’s wild goose chase. Somalians have changed their power sharing formula to the infamous four point five; they have adopted a neo-tribal federal system, which now hangs like an albatross around their constitution’s neck and; behind the scenes are willing to relocate the capital to lure runaway Somaliland back into the fold and yet, are nowhere near to realising their project. Indeed they forfeited the possibility of re-establishing a sustainable state for their externally imposed federal system which only the more serious Somalians regard as a new spectre that haunts their country.
Conveniently neglecting the South Sudan and Eritrean case, yet willing to evoke the remote West-ern Sahara case, the moderator wanted to compare apples with pears and sat back in his seat think-ing that he had convinced us of the hopelessness of Somaliland’s case. He was joined in spelling out this defeatist strategy by a colleague by the name of Farah Abdulqadir, whose patronising attitude was visible in his carefully choreographed claim that Somaliland’s politicians’ public rhetoric is different to their all yielding position in private. Farah wanted to convince us of the misguided assertion that democratically elected Somaliland leaders were pedalling a different mandate in the talks, but fell short of following his assertion to its logical conclusion. That is, if elected leaders could not deviate from the popular mandate, how could what self-styled individuals had to say make any significance. How much more patronising can it get?
What the conference has again highlighted is that Somalians miss no opportunity to debate every problem, but choose not to face the very one that keeps them in the abyss: Somaliweyn nationalism, an ideal propped up with the status of a dogma and worshiped. The overwhelming majority of So-malilanders would have this false consciousness disappear from Somali discourses; it is an empty signifier, probably even a dangerous one that has dogged political stability in the region and with that, economic progress.
III- Its messengers
Heritage draws support from a large pool of scholars, polemicists, activists, pundits and politicians, who all share one fundamental principle: the restoration of Somali unity. It this particular conference it has brought together about 150 intellectuals from around the globe, who sadly failed to question Somalia’s state ideology and were happy with the status quo of pursuing the illusive unity. However, a few of them gave the impression they wanted to question the message; they rightly wanted to bring back some sense of justice, suggesting that the failure is on all sides. But these in-dividuals too struggled to break free from the script, from their frustration with the impracticality of the great Somalia ideals and suggested the lost pride is hiding in re-unification.
Now the question is: is the institute trying to win the admiration of potential messengers from the other side of the fence? The sighting on the scene of a few Somaliland influential individuals raised this question. Their presence was unthoughtful to say the least, for, the conference was far more po-litical than scholarly and since talking to Somalia is the business of mandated officials, engaging in the talks outside of the state institutions was only a way of devaluing the talks. Academics can sure-ly contribute to policy agendas and formulate a framework for formal talks but their involvement has no meaning unless certain minimum requirements are met, especially academic honesty. In the same way as serious political dialogue needs agreed definition of the terms of the talks, academic debates require of the absolute neutrality of convener.
That said, one point I want to make clear here is that the Somaliland-Somalia question, which even-tually will boil down to a question of a two-state-solution, can only be settled through meaningful dialogue. We know both sides are too weak to impose their will on the other, but strong enough to frustrate the political gains of the other. So why all these polemics? Somaliland’s main contention is that it should engage in the talks as a parallel entity, while Somalia insists in doing this from a ver-tical position. These disagreements sit at the heart of the impasse. Somalia does not want to com-promise an inch on this bottom line, but expects Somaliland to give up all conditions, and has for close to three decades been pursuing the illusive ideal of Somaliweyn. The fact that it has failed to earn a de facto legitimacy over the territory it purports to govern is misleadingly reformulated in terms of the absence of the mediating role of Somaliland. Somalians read too much into the de jure status they enjoy and mistaking this status will compel Somaliland into the fold of the calamitous union.
Trusting the talks to Turkey, a newcomer on the international scene, was the first mistake on the part of Somaliland, but more importantly, the talks came way too early. They came at a time when Somalia is still entangled in its internal affairs and Somaliland is busy with consolidating its state apparatus. Surely in the absence of serious political talks between the two sides, these polemical perspectives simply remain the pass-time of commentators of all political persuasions. For Somali-ans, though, the state failure is considered as a test of resilience and its favourite slogan of Somali ‘unity’ is seen as the only way of bridging the tribal schism. Such a stance is to many in Somaliland a way of obscuring what is at stake: building a viable nation state. A key theme emerging from the conference was that Somali intellectuals spend their time kicking the can down the road. The pro-spect of their country finding lasting peace has been sourced out to the ‘international community’; ‘a dangerous reference point for the naive’ Wedgwood (2002). That is, there is the ingrained expec-tation that it is for the international community to help their country to emerge out of the political misery.
Somalilanders in the mix put forth three ill-advised suggestions. The first was a call for the resump-tion of the talks. Oddly enough at least four of the attendees from both sides had intimate knowledge of the stalled talks, with two of them being the very individuals ipso facto advocating the return to the negotiation table without asking why the talks stalled in the first place. To sum it up, the conference revealed that the Somalian elite is not ready, not even willing, to revisit its all too familiar script that the illusive unity is the remedy of all ills. A second outcome was a call for rec-onciliation between the two sides, whilst the third one, was the tabling of a half-baked ‘association-al state’ model being presented as a stepping stone for gradual re-unification.
Clearly, the ‘self-styled’ Somalilanders (I say self-styled because the conference was smacking of Somalia’s state representatives) in the conference sold short what Somaliland has painstakingly been building over 27 years and inadvertently suggested its position has shifted to discussing vacuous constructs of any shape other than a two-state solution. In doing so, they nonchalantly underes-timated Somaliland’s emphatic resolution not to compromise on its rightful struggle to gain a de jure status; they forgot that Somalilanders are wary of a demonic repetition of the 1960 blunder. Ironically, they forgot that Djibouti, the host country, survived because it refused the Somaliweyn dogma they were giving a second thought to. In any case, the model presented in the conference did not survive the first strike: ‘it was not meant to be a magic bullet’.
IV- Its legacy
In conclusion, I submit that contrary to the misrepresentations, no amount of moralising about the Somali crises, or of conflating current regional economic reforms with historic state building failures of the Somalis and no amount of ethnicising the economic behaviour of Somalis, will wipe out the Somali state crises. The fault line dividing Somaliland and Somalia is one of statehood; it is not necessarily about whether there is a grand state comprising their two Somali territories isolated from the three other Somali territories (one may wonder on what grounds?), but whether a stable state in either of the entities can uberhaupt be a possibility. Both are dogged by petty tribal politics, whilst Somalia struggles with the additional problem of ethnic nationalism. Bringing them back together will not resolve their crises.
I would suggest that any institution daring to convene a scholarly debate on a subject pertaining to Somali politics, loaded and toxic as it is, should meet the minimum standard of scholarly independence. In its conference, Heritage showed how it is far removed from such standards. Avoiding the relevant historical dimensions of Somali state building and failing to highlight critical questioning of the axiomatic oddity of the failed union, the institute has en-tertained us with Somaliland’s shortcomings and with constructed risk emanating from Ethiopia, to make a case for its favourite prospective script of re-unification. I have to say that in the absence of authenticity, such manipulative polemical forums will only remain a favourite pass-time for the non-serious pundits. However, to this I should add that I congratulate Somaliweyn representatives in the conference for not giving up on their hegemonic ambitions and Heritage on expediting a new hunting ground in Somaliland, whilst daring to assimilate unsuspecting aspiring scholars from a place they call the northern regions of their ‘country’ [sic]. Bravo! Somalilanders, should emulate such tenacity!
Mohamed Obsiye, Ph.D
Email: mobsiye78@hotmail.com
