Somalia: The end of a nation state

[ADNAAN]

Not a bad article with all its factual errors. I wouldn't go as far as saying this is the end of Somalia, perhaps the country is in a state of comma that God alone knows when it will end. The Nigerian writer failed to mention the only group that might concur with her analysis of the situation. Alshabab, which is a power to reckon with on the ground want to bring about the end of Somalia as a nation state in their attempt 2 restore the khilaafah.

 

 

Somalia: The end of a nation state

 

Written by Emma Okocha

Thursday, 16 April 2009

 

 

While the world as a whole, without distinction of race, creed or religion was sympathetic with our agony and willing to reach across vast distances to assist us, we the Somali people were not ready to help ourselves.

The world has with pain learned that Somali is indeed a difficult patient who refuses to be tested, fed and cured.....The result was a self inflicted social suicide. And after the Americans left, it was this ‘cultural propensity’ that led to an initial instinct among Somalis for revenge’’ —Gassem Mariam, Hostages, as quoted in Me Against My Brother, London: Routledge 2000 Page157

 

"The Republic of Somalia was created in 1960 when the British Somaliland and former Italian Somaliland merged on the eve of Independence. After 1960 under the new political leadership, the ‘Greaterd Somali’ goal became the pre-eminent national agenda.

 

Tragically, it was this national obsession of liberating the Somali lost territories at the expense of everything else that contributed to the actual demise of the very existence of the Somali state.’’ — Prof. Hamdesa Tuso, Institute of Conflict Studies, George Mason University, Virginia.

 

African experts and scholars of Conflict Studies did not see it coming. The contemporary assumptions and the basic pontifications held by these theoreticians, politicians and policy makers closely associated with the administration of a modern state were shattered as a helpless world watches the gradual and steady plummet into chaos, of the state of Somalia.

 

Granted that unlike most other African states, Somalia is endowed with natural attributes which are presumed essential for smooth governance of a modern state: unlike most other African states which were carved out of a plethora of ethnic groups, the Somali population is homogeneous; all speak one mother tongue, Somali. The majority of Somalis adhere to Islam; they all share a common culture and colonial experience and by all accounts there has been less social stratification.

 

They ascribe to some notion of a ‘pastoral ethic of clan socialism.’ Thus, it is safe to argue that the glaring failure in the case of the Somali nation debunks the position attributed to the contemporary school; which proclaims that that the modern nation is bye and large on a safe ride, once the native population is homogeneous.

 

The steep level conflict and the simmering war-lord confrontation in the streets of Mogadishu and beyond was the second stage of a three era war which have decimated generations of the Somali manhood and pulled the nation over the precipice. Indeed, the new political order established in the post colonial Africa with respect to the question of unifying those people and territories partitioned during the European scramble for Africa was sealed by the Organization of African Unity.

 

The OAU adopted the colonial boundaries as legitimate demarcation for the newly independent African states.

Utilizing OAU’s principles of ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘non interference’ in the ‘’internal affairs’ of a member state, Somali neighbours, Ethiopia and Kenya, rebuffed every attempt made by Somalia on its claims to the territories within their respective states.

 

In 1977, General Muhammad Siad Barre with the support and military assistance from the Unit