The Somaliland Dilema and the Rayaale Factor

[NASSIR]

The Somaliland Dilema and the Rayaale Factor

Faisal A. Roble

February 02, 2007

 

 

The Rayaale factor in Somaliland is more complex than meets the eye. Just as Ali Mazrui’s rhetorical phrase described the Buganda factor in the Ugandan society that “Uganda can not be ruled with or without the Buganda tribe,” politicians in Hargeysa have realized that Somaliland is not attainable with or without Rayaale.

 

Due to the complexity and the unpredictability of Somalia’s clan politics, the ever-shifting clan interest may have prompted a flurry of commentators, most importantly a controversial lead article by the Hargeysa-based Haatuf News paper, to pan damning assessments of Rayaale. By far, Rayaale is belatedly, yet correctly, painted as another proverbial African dictator and corrupt who has taken human rights abuses to new heights. Yet Somaliland can’t live with or without him.

 

Cursed past of the secessionist vanguuard (the SNM)

 

Understanding the Rayaale factor in the affairs of Somaliland would require a quick glance at the background of the most recent history of the main proponent of the secession ideology. The vanguard of pro-secessionist quarters in the north, the Somali National Movement (SNM), passionately argued for some time now that the crimes exacted selectively against some of the northern clans by the Barre regime and his state apparatus were the main causes of their struggle in the 1980s and the ultimate call for a unilaterally ill-advised, clan-inspired call for secession in 1991. (I do not by any degree intend to minimize the carnage that Barre and his dictatorial regime caused in the north).

 

In “Blood and Bone, The Call of Kinship in Somali Society,” I.M. Lewis, who was given an unparallel access to the mind-set and ideology of the formation of the SNM, gives an account of a movement that: 1) was a clan-based; 2) had no modern and central ideology; and (3) failed to unite itself with the rest of the clans in the area. He particularly mentions the SNM’s failed effort to convince the clans in the Buuhoodle district, Sool and Sanaag regions, to join the movement as junior players. One would never know how a successful unity between the SNM and the clans who hail from said districts would have impacted the outcome of secession.

 

Nonetheless, there are a number of critics who maintain that such an alliance would have had more serious impact on the search for secession for the north (Ali Guled and et al). More seriously, one could only surmise that Somaliland, say headed by Mohamed Said Gees, Mahmud Salah Nur "Fagadhe" or Qaybe from Sanaag and Buuhoodle, respectively, would have made the secession agenda more potent, provided that any one of them could rearrange the current equation as did Rayaale

 

Jamac Mohamed Ghalib’s "The Cost of Dictatorship adds a forth point: the SNM failed to seize the moment when the United Somali Congress (USC), a southern based insurgency led by the late Mohamed Farah Aidid, had approached Silanyo through the late Ali Jumale, a prominent H-awiye lawyer, to form a junior partnership with SNM.

 

Missing the opportunity to create and lead a united front against the Barre regime seems threw a permanent curse on the SNM to ever remain or be identified as a one-clan insurgency. Its failure to diversify itself geographically or tribally doomed its entire goal--to liberate its constituents from the rest of Somalia. Thus, the Somali adage of “Alif Alxamdu kaaga xumaada Albaqra ayuu ku dhibaa,” or, when loosely translated, “a missed opportunity in early stages to master the ABC comes back to haunt you in your senior years” fittingly applies to SNM.

 

With such a missed opportunity hanging in the back, the elites of the SNM movement later on opted for a strategy to (a) galvanize the already angry multitude of the northwest clans; (b) organize each diya-paying segment (sub-clan) for money collection and fund-raising and for mobilization, especially from the Diaspora community.

 

By blessing the SNM with manpower and material to carry the insurgency, this strategy at its early stage looked attractive. However in the early years of 1990s and onwards, community relations had gotten strained in the bifurcated sub-clans of the Issaq community and the intra-clan rivalry based on diya paying segment (sub-clan) became virulently violent, ultimately resulting in several serious conflicts, the most memorable of which was the Burao blood path. The lessons gained after the Burao experience, however, was instructive enough that clan solidarity, even within a given tribe that belongs to the same paternal genealogy, was not sustainable.

 

Shifting Strategies And The Search for secession

 

Cognizant of the inherent fragile nature of clan politics, after Hargeysa declared a unilateral secession in 1991, its leaders soon had embraced another theory, a victim’s theory, as the central guide in search for international recognition. It was believed that an argument that centered on the fate of the thousands of victims killed in the Barre years would earn sympathy from peace-loving, mainly western, countries, for the declared secession.

 

Yet, the same leaders recognized the difficulty in securing recognition from the world, let alone from neighboring Ethiopia, for a seceding region that is endorsed by only one-single clan for the sole purpose of addressing clan grievances. Somalia is, if not a land inhabited by one feuding family, a largely homogenous country. The suspicion that the north’s grievances can perhaps be addressed in a different manner than complete secession constantly and unsurprisingly hit in the face the leaders of the breakaway districts.

 

Explaining to neighboring countries - especially to Ethiopia and Kenya, two countries with enough latent but wide spread grievances registered by several groups - the notion of one tribe seceding becomes all the more insurmountable. Thus, in order to sell and get wider endorsement for the secession agenda regionally as well as globally, bringing at least more than one tribe to the secession plate became an inescapable strategic question.

 

Incorporating the Gadabursi clan, who chocked in the past on the very mention of endorsing secession agenda became an unavoidable political reality. Before Rayaale came to power in Hargeysa, bringing the Gadabursi clan to endorse the secession vision was nearly impossible. Even the lone and former SNM member, a rebel without a cause, Abdirahman Aw Ali, nicknamed endearingly, “Tolwaa,” or, “he who does not have a clan to count on,” could not bring his clansmen into the fold of the SNM insurgency then or afterwards.

 

Thus, succeeding to campaign for Rayaale to assume the mental of the secession agenda gave it a multi-clan façade (two clans for secession versus three that oppose). On his part, he has delivered to the secession table one of the most hitherto ardent northern unionists and made them holier than names like Silanyo and Mohamed Hashi Elmi in owning the very secession cause. If the SNM fought and died for what it called Somaliland, the Rayaale factor complicated the political equation, and he currently decides who dines on the largess of this chronically impoverished and unrecognized region of Somalia (Somaliland has a mere $20 million dollar annual budget with a disproportional higher appetite for corruption). Whether this is too of a high price to pay is at the center of the debate.

 

Somaliland: A Hostage To Rayaale

 

Rayaale undeniably changed the landscape of clan balance in the equation of who is pro-or contra-secession. He brings many his clan to the fold of secession, of course with notable exception of names like the Samatar brothers, Dr. Ali Bahar, Nur Hirsi Bahal, to name just a few. But at the same time he is part of the apparatus that is indicted to have butchered the residents of Berbera district. As such, his meteoric rise to the highest office has offended the former SNM leaders and their constituents. Whereas his acceptance of secession diversifies the constituents for the cause, his membership of the notorious NSS, a Gestapo organization, that Barre used to purge his critics weakness the moral basis for secession argument.

 

The Rayaale factor is both an asset as well as a liability in the politics of secession. It gives the secession agenda a multi clan façade (two clans for secession versus three that oppose). In the same vain, Rayaale’s ascent to power has discredited the hitherto morally-based argument of the secessionist vision even within the Somali community.

Although this clear contradiction in the body politic of Somaliland slaps in the face the thousand of victims killed in the north by the Barre regime, it is undeniably arguable that Rayaale expanded the constituent base for secession beyond one clan.

 

Thus, reconciling such internally contradictory phenomenon poses a political conundrum in Somaliland.

 

Moreover, Hargeysa today is not that much different from the days of Barre. The very notion of Rayaale as the head of Hargeysa, not to mention all the well documented attacks and violations he has so far committed against innocent civilians (like the human rights case of Zamzam Duale, the wanton arrests of journalists, the killing Khadar Dhabar, an innocent man from the minority clans and the failure to prosecute those who murdered him) eroded any sense of morality in Hargaysa. Hargyasa, it may seem, is trying to have its cake and eat it.

 

To add insult to an injury, during his relatively short reign in Somaliland, Rayaale has reinstituted everything (from run-away corruption to human rights abuse, to placing his old NSS comrades in sensitive positions Link ) that Hargeysa loathed about the Barre regime. Yet, time and again, he has proven to be untouchable and he outfoxed the old guard of the SNM.

 

With all this baggage, Rayaale can not easily be discarded, or even held responsible, for the crimes committed against humanity in the past or present as charged in a report Rakiya Omar authored for Africa Watch in the late 1980s. Rather, he would stay exactly where he is at least for now and continue dragging and destroying with impunity the entire effort mounted by the secessionists, because touching him would amount to pushing his clan to the unionist side.

 

Leaders in Hargeysa are well aware of the infamous overnight switch of Rayaale’s clan from the unionist camp and their willingness to do the same complete reversal of political migration in the event that anyone threatens their now powerful “son.” Despite the inflammatory and condescending bravados that one often hears from hardliners (a case in point is the recent statement by Kahin, an SNM hardliner, that he will chase Rayal out of the state house by whipping him with his cane – in somali, Dhangad baan kaga saari madaxtooyada), Rayal has crafted his political niche that is totally untouchable. In the words of one commentator who requested to remain anonymous, “Rayaale has Hargaysa and Rer-Sheikh Isaxaaq exactly where he wanted them to be.”

 

On his part, Rayaale is the first from his clan who effected global change on his clan’s political outlook and caused them migrate, of course there are notable exceptions, from their long held unionist ideology to a more vocal secessionist advocacy. Thus helping rearrange the clan balance where now two clans (Issaq and Gadabursi) support secession and three (Dolbahante, Warsangeli and Issa) oppose it is not a small feat. In political parlance, Rayaale has delivered to the secession camp.

 

As a well placed resident of Hargaysa told me recently, when it come to the Rayaale factor in the politics of Somaliland, he said “haddaan hadalno waa noo hadal baas, haddaan aamusnona waa afsalax ku dhagayagii,” that is to say, as they say in English, “if we do we are damned, and if we don’t we are damned too.”

 

Rayal has permanently dented the moral basis of the secessionist cause. To bank again on Mazrui’s rhetorical saying, Somaliland can not live with or without and that is its dilemma.

 

Faisal A. Roble

E-Mail:fabroble@aol.com

 

 

Wardheer News

[Waaheen]

This is an excellent analysis of the dilema that the pro secession groups face. It seems that our fellow compatriots who are for secession will pay any price to attain their goal of seceding from the rest of Somalia. There are many ways that our grievances can be addressed without breaking up the country. Civil war and massacres of civilians by corrupt governments happened in a lot of places in the African continent or elsewhere. A good example from our neighborhood could be Rwanda, Burundi and even countries such as Senegal or Liberia in the western part of Africa. But none opted to breakup the country once those who were responsible for the atrocities were defeated or chased out of office. The most important thing is to learn from your past experience and put a system in place so that it will never happen again. I believe that is what South Africa and Rwanda did and we need to learn from them.

 

I also believe that a serious debate should start on the destiny of Somaliland among those who are for secession and those who are against it. Each side should bring to the table why they think their plan is better for the northern people as whole and solve this issue once for all. Thanks Brother for posting this piece.

 

Waaheen

[SomaliThinker]

A serious Debate should be held between unionist and people who view somaliland to be free nation. I agree with you there Waaheen, but to take this article stand point that this awful leader in somaliland is the factor stoping somaliland for not being independent nation is weak in my view. The key test to see if what the author belives to be true is the poltical factors on the ground with this president and see if what the author belives plays out after he loss in the next presdiental election, if he runs.