For every western orientalist there is at least a somali who can disagree

[Liqaye]

When will the British stop betraying the Somalis?

 

It seems that the British are back with yet one more aggression against the unity and well being of the Somali nation. Early this year, members of the British Parliament’s Select Committee on International Development visited Hargeisa, the seat currently of the secessionist rebel administration of “Somaliland” and capital during the colonial era of the former British Somaliland Protectorate. The declared, albeit hypocritically, intention of this British Parliamentary delegation was to study the humanitarian and development needs of this relatively peaceful portion of Somalia, to determine how, according to the delegation’s report, the British Government can best realize “…the millennium development goals for the poor people of Somaliland…” On their way home, back from Hargeisa, the British Parliamentarians stopped in Nairobi and told Somalis at the Embakathi Conference that their visit related solely to development, flatly denying any intent on their part to sponsor the extension of recognition by the Government of the United Kingdom to the breakaway territory. This unfortunately was an unabashed falsehood but it served the purpose of allaying the suspicions of the credulous Somalis, if only fleetingly. As before, the Somalis fell for the deceitful words of the delegation largely because the British Government’s envoy to the Embakathi peace conference was playing at that time a very prominent role in fresh IPF-IGAD mediation efforts among Somali faction leaders that they had brought together for a retreat at a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. The “honorable” Parliamentarians have finally revealed their true intention with talks full of misrepresentations that they have delivered in Parliament—which was to lobby on behalf of the secessionists in Hargeisa,. The “honorable” Parliamentarians’ passionate appeal for recognition by the British Government of the treasonous act of secession effected in the northern regions of Somalia, essentially seeks, purposely or unwittingly, to harm the Somali people.

 

The Parliamentarians’ presentations at the House of Commons provide fairly accurate descriptions of the poor conditions of the territory’s economy and the lack of badly needed health, education, water and sanitation services. Also, the Parliamentarians ought to be commended for what they said about how Somalis in the Diaspora are contributing to their country’s reconstruction and the need for expanded international participation in the country’s revival. Needless-to-say, the reports also contain several misrepresentations, largely of political nature, that cry for correction. Among these three in particular stand out:

 

(a) Mr. Worthington alleges that the southerners made a conscious effort in 1988 to commit “genocide against the dominant **** clan…” of the north. The government’s savage reaction to the SNM’s attack on Burao and Hargeisa is indefensible but no one who is truly knowledgeable about Somalia would in all honesty characterize it as a southerner attack on northern Somalis. Mohamed Siyad Barre was a southerner, but the government leadership was quite representative of all Somalis. The military and civilian elite that should be blamed, and possibly ought to be tried, for the military regime’s misrule and, most particularly, for the grisly reprisals that ensued on the SNM’s desperate attacks on Burao and Hargeisa included many northerners too. For instance, out of the 5 members of the ruling Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party’s Political Bureau, 2 were always from the north. Many of the current administrative and political leadership in Hargeisa, indeed including most prominently Mr. Riyale who was in the late 1880s the commanding officer of the feared National Security Service in Berbera where, according to a report by a more knowledgeable African Rights Watch source, massive violations of human rights such as summary killings were perpetrated, are personally responsible for the atrocities committed during 1988-90. In fact, much of the bombing that northerners were subjected to were not carried out by Somalis but were the work of aliens said to have been South African pilots, but who in actual fact were British mercenaries from the former segregationist rebel entity that called itself Rhodesia!

 

 

 

(b) One other utterly false statement included in Mr. Worthington’s report is the claim that “the demand for independence was supported by 90 per cent of the population”. For one thing, nobody knows the actual size of the population in the northern regions of which the rebel entity is comprised. For another, the so-called referendum exercise was not undertaken in Sool and Eastern Sanaag Regions or in the Buhotle district of Togdheer. How can one then speak of a referendum in which 90% voted for one thing or the other? Where has the “honorable” Member of Parliament, who claims to have expert familiarity with the territory’s affairs, been when the inhabitants of those three eastern parts of “Somaliland” refused to participate in the referendum or in the recent so-called Presidential elections that he refers to?

 

 

 

© Mr. Worthington claims that in his several trips to the territory he has “met absolutely no one who believes that an enduring state will emerge from the peace talks,” implying that none in the northern Somali regions would want to participate in these “hopeless” talks. Well, he is dead wrong again. Many northerners are already at Embakathi and many more would have gladly attended the conference had invitations been extended to them. The absence of northern clan elders from Nairobi is not due to their unwillingness to attend the conference but it is due to IGAD secretariat’s refusal to invite them. Another reason is the secessionist clique, which has made criminal for anybody from the north to attend the conference and instructed airlines not to carry northerners to the venue of the peace talks. Events that have recently occurred in the north oblige us to be more careful. They afford us interesting, albeit disparaging, comment on the democratic governance in the north that the “honorable” members of the British Parliament speak of so much. To cite but a few of such incidents that strongly contradict the “honorable” Parliamentarians are: (i) The incarceration of Boqor Osman Mohamoud, AKA Buur Madow, for disagreeing with aspects of the “government’s policies”; (ii) The so-called government’s inexplicable refusal to allow traditional leaders of northern clans to oblige a request from southern Somali elders to mediate in clan conflicts raging in the south, as honor, traditional culture and Islam all require them to do; and finally, (iii) Refusing Sultan Mohamed Suldaan Abdulqadir, the traditional leader of one of the most important clans in the north, from going to Islam’s two Holy Sanctuaries for pilgrimage as member of this year’s official Somali delegation, composed mostly of traditional elders, that the Transitional National Government has nominated for this rare honor.

 

 

 

(d) One of the “honorable” Parliamentarians, whose sense of judgment was evidently impaired by his enthusiasm for Somaliland, made an outrageously unfair statement. He said he expected things in Somaliland to be “…unstable, insecure and chaotic, where the atmosphere was volatile…. However, although all those epithets apply, I think, to neighboring Somalia, none of them applies to the Somaliland that we saw”. The “honorable” Parliamentarian erred because he has unjustly condemned other parts of Somalia that he has not visited and about which he, therefore, is not qualified to opine. Otherwise he would have known that what he said about Somaliland is true also of much of the country.

 

 

 

Immaterial of whether Britain recognizes Somaliland or not, the reports of the Parliamentary delegation will be seen by the Somalis as one more mean spirited British attack against them. Happily for the Somalis and also for the future of Anglo-Somali relations, it appears that members of this Parliamentary delegation have not convinced the British Government with their strong appeals for the recognition of Somaliland. The response of the Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Penn, to these presentations might have saved the situation. After carefully weighing the arguments presented in favor of recognition for the breakaway territory, the Secretary responded with a much more perceptive analysis of the situation and in the end wisely counseled caution because “the people in the rest of Somalia have just as much need of peace and stability, and just as much of a right to a better life, as the people of Somaliland. It is indeed very clear from this exchange why the Secretary of State is a minister and these Parliamentarians are not!

 

 

 

Be that as it may, the British indeed seem to harbor inexplicable hostility toward the Somali people. In fact one can trace the roots of the current Somali crisis to their origins in less than honest protection treaties that the British had signed in the 1880s with unsuspecting elders of Somali clans. The treaties were simply unfavorable to the Somalis. The Somali elders who were not schooled in the intrigues of European diplomacy could not comprehend the political implications of the treaties, which were hidden from them in European diplomatic lingo with which they were not familiar. They, therefore, unknowingly signed away their sovereignty. Because of their truly inauspicious founding on treaties that the British apparently never intended to honor, Anglo-Somali relations never bode well for the Somalis. As it turned out, British enterprise in the Horn of Africa, which began with these infamous treaties, has been persistently harmful to the Somalis. This chapter of modern Somali history makes a dreary narrative of cruel British guile and repeated machinations against Somali interests, flagrantly violating in spirit and letter the treaties on which Anglo-Somali relations were based. A few of the many incidents of betrayal that the Somalis suffered at the hands of the British will suffice to clearly illustrate this point:

 

 

 

(1) In a series of treaties they signed with the traditional leaders of Somali clans during 1884-1886, the British promised to protect the territories belonging to these clans from external aggression in exchange for the privilege, solely granted to British citizens, of freely carrying on trade in the respective territories of the contracting clans. Additionally, the Somali clans also pledged not to ever offer their territories for occupation, or protection, to any other power. The trusting and politically rather naïve Somalis were by and large faithful to the terms of the contractual agreements they had entered into with the British authorities who, unhappily for the Somalis, acted with cavalier disregard for what they had promised the Somalis. With characteristic duplicity, the British secretly agreed, through a series of bilateral agreements with France, Italy and Ethiopia during 1888-1897, to illegally cede portions of the territories they had covenanted with the Somali clans to protect. This cruel British perfidy became known to the Somalis when work on the demarcation lines separating the five colonial territories to which the land of the Somalis was divided, was begun on the ground in the 1930s;

 

(2) During the 2nd World War, all of the Somali territories, with the exception of the French enclave known as French Somaliland came under the control of British Military Administration. The Somalis, seeing in the rule of the British Military Administration a golden opportunity for them to get back together the dismembered Somali people and their land, began to vigorously agitate for national reunification. The British, however, lulled the Somalis to sleep with the Bevin Plan, which they put forth in 1946 with less than sincere effort and subsequently abandoned, to the Somalis’ utmost disappointment. Instead of making amends for the damage that their secret agreements with other powers caused the treaties they had entered into with the Somalis, the British simply ignored the Somalis’ call for national reunification and once more gave installments of Somali territory to Ethiopia in 1942, 1948 and 1954;

 

(3) When the Somalis of the Northern Frontiers District demanded union with the Somali Republic in the early 1960s, the British once more cruelly pretended to be paying attention to the Somalis’ cry for justice. The then Colonial Secretary appointed an independent commission that was asked to determine the wishes of the people in the NFD by conducting a plebiscite in the territory, to see if the Somali inhabitants of the NFD desired to be reunited with their kith and kin in the Somali Republic or preferred to remain in the future independent Republic of Kenya. The inhabitants of the NFD voted with an overwhelmingly majority of 86% in favor of cession from Kenya. Astonishingly, however, the British Government acted with an utterly cruel disregard for the result of the plebiscite and simply decreed that the NFD would remain in Kenya.

 

 

 

In case this is of comfort to them, the Somalis should know that they are not the first, or the only people, to have been hurt by Britain’s diplomatic double-dealing. In all likelihood though, the Somalis, because of their lack of familiarity with diplomatic trickery, suffered from British perfidy more than any other nation on earth. At a time when truthfulness was considered the cornerstone of successful diplomatic relations, a British statesman, whose name eludes me now, made a remark that shocked most of his contemporaries, possibly signaling the dawning of a new era in diplomatic history, an era in which hardnosed realism and struggle for power would replace the idealistic notions of truthfulness and morality in international relations. When he was possibly confronted with proof of British dishonesty toward one ally or the other, this British politician instantly shot back with the famous rejoinder that Britain had ‘permanent interests and no permanent friends’. This politician’s remark, in effect admitting that deception figured in Britain’s diplomatic practice, reinforced other European powers’ conviction that the British could not be trusted, and earned the United Kingdom the unflattering nickname of ‘The Perfidious Albion’. According to this British politician credited with coining the above quote, the benefits accruing to Great Britain from her relations with other countries, rather than devotion to the observation of any general rule of morality, would determine how friendly or unfriendly Britain was to be to any particular country. If that is the case, why has Britain’s attitude to the Somalis been so consistently hostile? What have the Somalis done to deserve Britain’s eternal enmity? What is the pleasure that the British get from purposely hurting the Somalis?

 

 

 

Dr. Ali A. Hersi

 

Nairobi, Kenya.

 

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I.M LEWIS will be dead one day and his "definitive" books on somali culture forgotten but somalia will survive, survive him and his nonsense"