By Aden Ismail
The Horn of Africa has rarely or never experienced peace for nearly a millennium. The two rivals in this long and turbulent period are Ethiopian Imperialism and Somali Resistism with the intermittent involvement of outsiders. Being the first Africans to embrace spiritual enlightenment with the advent of Christianity in 4th century, the Auximites and later Abyssinians in the present-day Ethiopian Highlands crowned themselves the ‘chosen’ gospel spreaders of Africa embarking on a Christianization mission to convert their neighbouring African tribes. Among the people they constantly clashed with were the Hamitic nomadic Somali tribe who until around the 7th century when Islam arrived, had only practised traditional African customs. Heavily reliant on their nomadic warlike tendencies to resist Christian penetration and foreign meddling.
Originating from Arabia whose inhabitants were nomadic in pre-Islamic times, the Islamic religion has a lot of resonance with the nomadic cultures all over. The most likely reason it has won near-unanimous conversion in such peoples from Arabia itself, Anatolian Turkic, South and Central Asian communities, North and West African desert tribes and in this case, Somali nomads. Collectively, these societies form the bedrock of today’s Islamic world.
On its arrival, Islam has added an ideological dimension to the Horn of Africa conflicts. If previously it was ‘spiritually enlightened versus the primitives’ it suddenly became ‘the cross versus the crescent’ involving powerful external forces backing their respective protégés thus setting the region in a trajectory of proxy theatre. Regional contours have been graced by conquests, crushing defeats, beheadings of Sultans and Emperors, and advances and retreats with outside godfathers supervising the theatrics from afar, sometimes joining on the side of their respective allies. Such were the affairs until the late 19th century when European colonialists arrived.
The Era of Radical Nationalism
In the preceding five centuries before European advent, Somalis effectively utilized the power of spears to escape the suffocating grip of nature and for that reason, had massively expanded their territories through decisive wars of expansionism. By the time Europeans were arriving, they had cemented firm control over an area encompassing present-day Somalia and Djibouti Republics, a third of Ethiopia, and almost two-thirds of Kenya together with Africa’s longest coastline measuring about 3,400 km.
Sharing everything in common from religion, language, culture and physique, and inhabiting such expansive territories, they transformed into a potent African force in the Eastern part of the continent, something the Europeans saw as a potential threat to block their colonial enterprises in a strategically important region. At that point, Somali territories were sliced: France took Djibouti, Britain Somalia’s North and Kenya’s Northeastern and Western Somali were given to refashioned Christian Highlanders who became the Ethiopian Empire.
It is the devotion to the duty of stitching back together what the white man has torn apart that came to be known as Somali Nationalism. A mission whose initial stage was a wide social movement guided by the sentiments of one-ness and racial uniformity. Later when this role was taken up by the parent state, Somalia, which was conferred by the society the responsibility of advancing it, it became an official policy of Mogadishu much to the dismay of its neighbours who branded the mission as irredentist claim spawning the term Somali Irredentism.
At the national level, Somali nationalist agitations were devoid of any rational thinking or pragmatic considerations and were driven by impulsive policies. Eventually, this left them beaten and bruised after pitting against the combined force of three well-established orders – European Colonialism, Cold War Unipolarity and Post-Colonial Nation-State Africa. Understanding the militant nature of Somali Nationalism requires delving into the complex tapestries of the Somali psyche and the society’s exposure to the outside world.
A society that throughout their existence relied on spears and daggers one time guarding against Ethiopian Highlanders, another clearing their way to migrate and goring each other in an endless tragedy of tribal feuding. Through centuries of conquests, driving terror into the hearts of biddable African tribes, mainly Bantu and Galla, and forcibly evicting them to make a home for themselves. A solid race hardened by the iron fist of a cruel nature that handed them droughts and diseases to make the entire self-being of a Somali a surviving resistant rock. Not-so-gentle, abhorring meekness and associating it with the inferiority of spirit. Poetical geniuses and formidable hauteurs viewing themselves as second to one, not even the white man. Except for the few coastal dwellers, least exposed to the outside world, the only people they had known in great detail were the Arabs who brought Islam, themselves a difficult desert race.
When Europeans came, they were greeted by daring and poetic warriors with sharp spears in every corner of the Somali Peninsula. A towering figure of resistance was the charismatic and proto-nationalist Sayid Muhammad Abdulle Hassan, the leader of the Dervish Movement (1900-1921) who led two decades of unrelenting three frontal wars against the British, Italians and the Ethiopian Empire. Exhausted and the war consuming its best men, Britain finally deployed its air force in 1921 for a three-week intensive Aerial campaign aimed at ending the resistance. This campaign allegedly marked the first aerial bombardments on African soil.
After independence, Somali policymakers may have elegantly donned suits, sat in clean Chambers and spoken of the language of a white man they secretly hated, but in their thinking, most of them remained the original nomads who only replaced clan elders to lead the society. Generals and security officers may have neatly dressed and received modern training and up-to-date machines of war, but in their mindset, they were pure and trigger-happy nomadic warriors yearning to step onto a battlefield.
Somalis rarely favoured diplomacy and it was not until an overwhelming military force of the Soviet Union, Cuban and Yemen allies together with diplomatic pressures of the African community of nations came to the aid of Ethiopia to repel the Somali army which, with stunning speed overrun the Ethiopian forces during the 1977 Ogaden War, that reality hit the Somalis.
Another important radicalising factor was Arab Nationalism. Concurrent with the repulsing back of Somali nationalists in the late 1940s after a lull period following the defeat of the Dervish, the formation of a Jewish State was announced in 1948 sending shockwaves across the Arab World.
For two reasons, this presented a great opportunity for Somali nationalists. Bound by religious ties and centuries of social relations, they calculated that allying with more numerous, influential and powerful external allies would provide a common vehicle to ride on. A convenient route for realizing Somali nationalist aspirations.
But another compelling reason was the Western factor. If Arabs chastised the West and especially Britain for creating Israel in their midst, London earned an irreconcilable enmity from Somalis for sharpening the knife to slice their territories and worse still, allying with a natural enemy – Ethiopian Highlanders – and handing them over the second biggest slice of the Somali cake. As the West and specifically Britain assumed the common enemy, a similar fate was attached to Palestine and lost Somali territories. It is for this reason that to date, Somalis remain the only staunchly pro-Palestine group in the greater African race.
As Arab nationalism got more dramatic with the toppling of monarchs and the coming to power of radical nationalist regimes in the decade following when infant Israel humiliatingly defeated Arab armies in 1948, Somalia even hugged the Arabs more tightly. Like Sayid in the 1920s, the second figure who radicalized Somali nationalists was Gamal Abdel Naser of Egypt whose country had historical ties with Somalis and wielded so much influence in Somalia. Charismatic and radical Arab nationalist, Gamal to this date commands an unrivalled popularity of any foreign leader in Somali society because his nationalist axiom “What is taken by force can only be restored by force” greatly appeals to Somali nationalists.
With Mogadishu’s accession to the Arab League in 1976, ideological appeal, resources and moral support from Arabs played a critical role in the decision to invade Ethiopia in 1977 to take back the Ogaden region. Flourishing democracy, wars and tensions with neighbours, dictatorship, switching sides with the Cold War giants, rebel movements and tyrannical oppression, radical Nationalism finally led to the collapse of the Somali Nation in 1991.
Winds of change and clouds of Pragmatism
Given Somalia was a centre of social gravity housing the bulk of the Somali population, the ensuing refugee crisis after the fall of the Somali Nation revealed to the world a different face of Somali society. If previously they were known to be difficult people who did terrible things in warfare, they came with a new face of skillful entrepreneurs, machines of money-making and aggressive businesspeople willing to penetrate the remotest part of the world to seek opportunities. They proved to be a people of extremes; efficient fighters in wartime and uncontested builders in peacetime. Persistent in their pursuit of a better life contesting and winning elections in the highest global institutions from the US Congress to European Parliaments to the International Court of Justice. Refugee crises have also exposed Somalis to quality education, giving rise to a well-informed generation.
For the next two decades after the collapse of the Somali nation, the leadership in Mogadishu alternated between the remnants of a former dictatorial regime, military renegades and Islamist rebel leaders. From 2012, the mantle of leadership passed to dovish academics and industrious bureaucrats flanked by technocrats making the country leapfrog into a record pace of recovery.
This new generation of leaders understood one sacrosanct rule which is ‘non-confrontational, stable and united Somalia’ and have separately pursued to make peace with neighbours. In his first term in office, the current Somalia president pursued rapprochement with Ethiopia and Kenya despite rocky relations with Nairobi occasioned by the maritime dispute. He especially saw Kenya as a gateway into the interior African continent where vastly enterprising Somalis could benefit. His successor and the former immediate president himself sought reconciliation with Ethiopia and going by its current behaviours, Addis remains the sole regional troublemaker, a title Somalia held for a long time.
The transition from the old order has seen Somalia register miraculous success in a short duration. In a decade, Mogadishu achieved a debt write-off of $4.5 billion accumulated over 60 years of independence. Political parties started coming back to the scene after 50 years since the dictatorial regime banned them. Institutions-building gained primacy over destroying them both at the federal and the regional level and democracy and liberty became an unchallenged norm. Wealthy Somali businesspeople are returning from the West and the Arab world investing in multi-billion projects not only in Somalia but also in the regional capitals. Through investments, private sectors such as transport, telecommunications and hospitality are growing at an unimaginable pace. Just last year, a deep-sea port solely funded by businessmen became operational, making Somalia the newest candidate in the competition to connect African trade and open up the landlocked interior.
Read the full article: Crossroads: Somali Nationalism and Destiny at a Delicate Equilibrium
Aden Ismail
Email: [email protected]
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