Somali refugees from Mogadishu find sanctuary in Somaliland

[Jacaylbaro]

When Somalia’s last dictator, Siad Barre, launched a brutal counter-insurgency against rebels in the north-west of the country in the late 1980s, the fight led not only to that region’s declaration of independence as Somaliland in 1991, but also to the fall of Somalia’s last functioning central government. Mohamed Omer Warsama, a nurse and humanitarian aid worker from Somaliland, explains what it was like to survive Barre’s counter-insurgency and to live with the unresolved question of Somaliland’s independenc

 

Being a Somali has special meaning to me because blood is thicker than water – it is my nationality. I am a native of Somalia’s north-west, the former British colony now known as independent Somaliland. To be a Somalilander, as well as a Somali, is an unavoidable political truth. My clan and sub-clan, who come from the north-west along the Djibouti border, where we rely on camel herding and sorghum farming, have a cultural code to protect themselves from others. But personally, I rely on myself.

 

Somaliland’s battle for independence in the late 1980s was a nightmare. Sometimes I had to wake myself up as if from a dream, even though I was already awake. After the government bombed Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, I was caught on the road between Hargeisa and the north-west town of Boroma where I worked. Fighting broke out while I was travelling through. I remember there was a tank and bullets fired in my direction, and I had to crawl for cover.

 

Eventually I made it home safely, but I cannot forget that violence. Somalia’s civil war had begun in my home region. By 1991 Somaliland’s clans, including my own, made a pact not to fight with each other and this enabled them to declare independence from the rest of Somalia, which had fallen into an even crueller civil conflict.

 

Our clans, the Gadabursi (also known as the Samaron), the Issa and the Isaak, each with their own sub-groups, finally decided to create Somalia’s first elected parliament. These days, although the Somaliland government functions, there is still hunger and suffering.

 

I was born in 1964 in Zaila, a village on the Aden Gulf coast close to Djibouti, and I was raised in Boon Village in the Awdal region. In childhood my family was very poor. I was one of 10 children. We were displaced from the Rular area near Bonn village during the civil turmoil of 1969.

 

As a young child I had to leave my family and cross the border from Somalia to Djibouti alone because my father couldn’t help us. So I was living on the street in Djibouti for three years. Finally, I met a special man who took me back to Somalia and literally changed my life. He helped me begin school in 1972.

 

After my graduation from the Nursing Institute in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1987, I came back to Somalia to be the best man at my friend’s wedding, and I met my first wife there. She was one of the bridesmaids.

 

I returned to Somaliland and began working at the Boroma Hospital, which soon became home to the well-known Italian nun and aid worker, Annalena Tonelli.

 

Working in Boroma Hospital was the most remarkable time I have ever had. Serving in the vital tuberculosis clinic, which grew with the fundraising help of Ms Tonelli, I felt that I was truly able to help people. That was the time when Somaliland declared independence and the federal government was thrown out. Many refugees [mostly people from the north-western clans] flooded into Somaliland from the parts of Somalia that were at war.

 

In 2003, just as I had taken a trip out of town, gunmen entered our clinic and shot Ms Tonelli to death. They were allegedly paid by al-Qaida, but perhaps they came from another side. My colleagues renamed the clinic in her honour and put up a marble pillar to mark the place where she died. Although she began as a Catholic missionary, she had great respect for Islam and our culture and had simply wanted to help.

 

Since finishing at the Boroma Hospital, I began working with international agencies like Unicef, and began developing my own non-governmental aid agency based in Boroma. Working with the UN agencies and Somali local organisations has been a good experience for me, although there have been some critical obstacles such as transparency and overcoming the difficulties of fundraising.

 

In 2007 I had the rare opportunity to serve Unicef and the UN Development Programme as a researcher on child rights both in Somaliland and Somalia’s north-east. Talking to people from many different clans on both sides of the divide not only required me to risk driving through an area that was an active frontline along Somaliland’s shared border with Somalia proper, but also allowed me to see the debate from different sides.

 

While political actors argue about statehood and alliances, most regular people on both sides of the divide simply need income, healthcare and safety, and in that way they continue to be similar. While political leaders speak about the divisions between our clans, I found that on the ground in north-eastern Somalia, the people I worked with did not have strong feelings about me being an outsider. For most, the conflict is abstract.

 

My personal view on Somaliland’s attempt to become fully independent is complicated. There are many opposing views among the government and the people. But after the terrible events in Somaliland during the time of the dictator Siad Barre, many Somalis here believe in separation. Regardless, I think there will need to be not only a political agreement to stop fighting in the south, but also a north-south settlement to finally bring peace to Somaliland.

 

According to my ideas and experience, we Somalis are one people. We have the same language, religion and nationality. However, geopolitical considerations like former colonialism, foreign aid and new trends in the international Islamic community have caused divisions in our political ideas.

 

The Somaliland people, like other Somalis, have long had their own traditional government – councils of elders, religious leaders and women leaders – who work together separately from the state. The traditional leaders have done much to secure peace in Somaliland and could do the same for the rest of Somalia, but it depends on the politics of each sub-region and the leaders of state government heeding their advice.

 

I believe the political and religious questions are very different and should be kept separate. Solving the conflict between the new Ethiopia-backed Somalia government and Islamic radicals of the Al-Ittihad and Shabab in the south of Somalia is very hard because all sides are fighting for power. There must be a way to halt the fighting and find a way for them to reconcile what is best for people from all sides.

 

Life in Somaliland today is insecure. Job opportunities are very slim or non-existent, so life is very difficult. Without a lasting political solution on independence there will be very little foreign investment here. I worry about my kids' future. The situation has to change soon.

 

 

• Mohamed Omer Warsama was talking to Daniel J Gerstle.

 

 

 

Source Guardian Weekly.co.uk