The Failure of The Daraawiish State

[Som@li]

1 INTRODUCTION

 

Sayid Maxamed, who was the Somali nationalist hero and father of modern Somali nationalism, inspired at the end of the nineteenth century was realized, partly, with the creation of the Somali state half a century later. He envisaged the Somali state as being a unified political unit and nurturing a political ideology surmounting clanism. Both attributes were part of the modern Somali nationalism when it reawakened in early 1940s.

 

The Daraawiish structure can be considered a state as the three salient features of state are defined as territory, population living in that defined territory and a government who is sovereign to rule the country and the people. Though fluid, all these characteristics can be found in the Daraawiish. This became clear when Italy and Britain, signed a treaty (the Ilig Treaty) with the Daraawiish on 5th March 1895. The treaty stipulated that the Mullah should rule the territory between the ********** Sultanate in the north and the Sultanate of Hobyo (Obbia) in northeastern Somaliland. The agreement also granted the Daraawiish watering and grazing rights for their livestock within British Somaliland.[ii]

 

Daraawiish nationalism endured in a period when Somali society was widely dispersed and lacked the necessary organisations to form a single political unit, and at a time when colonial powers such as Britain, Italy, and France were expanding their hegemony over the country. As the clan was and still is the most important political unit in the traditional system, Somalis rejected the replacement of their traditional system with that of a state system as offered to them by Sayid Maxamed. Somalis preferred to live in clanism rather than a system that they did not know. I will discuss in this paper the conflict of the Daraawiish state and Somali clans.

The Failure of The Daraawiish State

[Chimera]

This became clear when Italy and Britain, signed a treaty (the Ilig Treaty) with the Daraawiish on 5th March 1895.

 

there were no such treaties signed untill May 1905 before that the British undertook four disastrous campaigns against the Sayyid and there was no such thing as British or Italian Somaliland untill 1921 and 1927. Those treaties he did sign were intended to buy time as he was purchasing during this so-called time of peace more weapons than before aswell as recruiting more men for battle. He made alliances with the Ottomans and Germans and drove the British to humiliating small pockets of coastland

[Allamagan]

What a great character great mujahid and the greatest poet of all time he was. May Allah rest him in peace. In 21 loooong yrs he was resisting and teaaching lessons the mighty and brutal british colonial and their somali collabrotors before the british in their final desprate maddness cowardly deployed their royal air force, the first ever aerial bombardment tookplace in Africa. A true patriot.

 

Their failure came when many close allies (sub-clans) took side with the foes and the Drawish were sandwiched between the Italian and the british.

 

 

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