A Nation With Pre-tuned Audience

[SOO MAAL]

A Nation With Pre-tuned Audience

By Mohamed-Khadar S. Farah

June 17,2005

 

There is a plethora of articles and websites in the internet all concerning Somali matters. These websites are busting in the seems, loaded with articles that are tailored for particular group of people. Every site has its own clients and posts fine-tuned news aimed at advancing the agenda and philosophy of one of the many competing tribal sects in Somalia. They are shy of speaking their conscience. Their contents are predictable and there is no uncertainty in what to expect from each one if you know who runs them.

 

These sites produce results that is antipodal to what the internet has brought to most of the communities in the world. The net has defied all geo-political boundaries and ushered an era where spatial, racial, temporal and social divisions gave way to global socio-economic integration. But for the Somalis it has brought more hate and division along clan and regional lines. It is seldom to see an article with a grand theory that is void from the lethal venom of local hostilities.

 

But there is one thing I am glad of which is most of the users of those sites are people who live outside Somalia and Somaliland. And most of the articles they write in English and hence not accessible to the majority of Somalis in the domestic towns and villages of Somalia.

 

I like to participate in cyber debates and contribute articles to local papers, but after spending a relatively long time in Somaliland, I have decided not to. What I have unfortunately learned is that I belong to a nation where people are pre-tuned, tribally-steered, regionally-programmed and intellectually confined.

 

A nation that is under siege by the spell of evil influence. If you are not writing what is expected of you as a priori by your pre-tuned bunch that surround you either physically or influentially, then you must be silent. This reminds me one of the sayings of Ludwig Wittgenstein where he said “ whereof one can not speak, thereof one must be silentâ€.

 

To me it seems that Somalis every where has no hope. They are stuck. And very few are making fortunes in the status quoi of Somalia-- be it Somaliland, Somalia or Puntland. These powerful few batten in extreme comfort, whereas the rest are on the edge of subsistence. I suspect that all those who are critical are not clean hearted as well, but are willing to take their turn of pillaging the public.

 

Change in direction, change of thinking, change of leadership and change, change, change is the only thing that changes a society. But where every one is afraid of change and wants to be inert there will come no change. And that is exactly where Somalis stand today. No one wants to change his believe or change his policy or changes his tribe. And the last thing is the mother of all, you can not change your tribe and every thing hinges on tribe, then every thing remains stuck.

 

I wish, we could come up of new formulation of mobility. Something that is less harmful than the inert clan allegiance that forms and shapes our thinking whose style always comes across our way of writing articles. I wish I could have experimented how it feels to be Habar_X one day and Habar_Y the other day, the D ir, the D arood, H awiye and so on. You can not say that is bad, because we do not have any one to ask how it feels. It's like a death, what a comparison!. We all fear about death, but do not know if it is sweet, for you, we have never seen some one who have tasted it. But it is like death again that we can not do it.

 

The educated Somali class is wretched and crippled. For us education is a temporary dye but the true color is our clan that we Pledge allegiance. The Aqils, Sultans and local warlords have sway over them. Their role is minimal and its unlikely that they make a posative contribution, they do harm than help. The evil monster in them takes control, and greed is always there. Cheap!

 

This is sad. I have seen an incredible lunacy in Somaliland. Religion is lip-service. It does not bind no more than few matters such as marriages, funeral services, inheritance and the likes. Prayers and fasting do not bind from committing the most grave acts against humanity and religion. I am sure, that other regions are either the same or worse.

 

You can not teach, you can not preach. Your value and the weight of your words hinges on the judgment of this pre-tuned audience. Even my current writing is an exercise in futility. The situation of Somalis including myself is like a fly that is trapped in a bottle. But unlike the fly, we know that we are in a bottle and we are satisfied to be in the bottle.

 

People in Somaliland prefer to stay in their bottle and are seeking a recognition in the bottle. People in Puntland want to be in their own bottle. So are the southerners. So let us wait till the day we run out of oxygen and die for our self-inflicted wounds.

 

Mohamed-Khadar S. Farah

 

Hargeysa,

 

E-mail: mfarah43@hotmail.com