ONE SOMALILAND

[SOO MAAL]

ONE SOMALILAND

 

 

By: Sir Gerald Reece

The Late Governor General of the ex-British Somaliland Protectorate from 1948 to-1953

 

Though some of the Somali people are at present governed by Ethiopia and others by Kenya , there is only one Somaliland and Somali nation.

 

In 1952 Lord Rennell wrote this:

 

"For a brief period during the war nearly the whole of Somaliland was under British Administration. . . If we had been interested enough - and Heaven knows there was nothing to interest us except to see justice done to the people - (and if the world had been sensible enough) all the Somalis. .might have remained under one administration - ours or the United Nations. or someone else's - until they had learnt to govern themselves. But the world was not sensible enough and we were not interested enough. and so the only large part of Africa which is radically homogeneous has again been split up. . ."

 

Only about two-thirds of the Somali people now live in the Somali Republic . Of the others. some , who belong mostly to Oga den tribes. are in territory that was occupied about seventy years ago by the Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia . and others. who are partly Oga den (or Da rod ) and partly Ha wia tribespeople . in the desert country north of the Kenya Highlands. It is unfortunate that all these people cannot now be united under the government of the Somali Republic . but Ethiopia and Kenya are adamant in their determination not to yield even the smallest portion of the territories concerned. Their attitude is scarcely consistent with the constant demands made by the

 

Organisation of African Unity for the handing back to their original owners of African lands that were occupied by the Portuguese in the past, but colonialism and imperialism seem be tolerated by the O.A.U. provided that European nations are not involved. Indeed every African member state, except Somalia and perhaps Morocco , has a vested interest in maintaining the old "colonial" frontiers.

 

However, since the departure of the British and Italians from the Somalilands there has been a remarkable feeling of unity amongst all the people and a definite upsurge of nationalism. Though tribalism is by no means extinct, a universal awareness of pride derives from their connection with Mogadiscio and with a republic that is gradually taking its place in the affairs of the whole continent and setting a fine - and almost unique example of a successful African democracy.

 

This is all the easier to understand when it is realised that, regardless of artificial frontiers, the Somali nation lives in enclave surrounded by people whose characters and way of life are different - sometimes very different - from their own. Writing about that portion of Somaliland known as the Oga den which is governed by Ethiopia, John Drysdale (in "The Somali Dispute", 1964) records that "Somali resistance to Ethiopian culture equals their resistance to Ethiopian nationality", and further that "the million or so Somalis who inhabit the lowland areas the east and south-east of the Ethiopian massif seem to be almost completely untouched by Ethiopian attempts at absorption.

 

In the desert north-east of Kenya proper much the same situation exists. Little is known about the early history of this territory, and indeed not much interest has ever been taken in Negley Farson wrote in "Last Chance in Africa " that "there one half of Kenya about which the other half knows nothing, and seems to care even less. This is Kenya 's Northern Frontier District."

 

We do know, however, that Somali settlement in this area dates back at least to the 17th century, and though no one knows who originally occupied what is still called in Kenya "the N.F.D." the earliest known inhabitants were certainly Somali and Galla people. The Somalis thus have a historical title to occupancy of the area, and the fact that many of those who now live there derive from later waves of Somali migration in no way invalidates their title.

 

The traveller making his way north-eastwards from Nairobi therefore finds that when he has crossed the Tana River , though it is still called Kenya , it is an entirely different world. He has left the Christian or pagan Bantu agriculturalists and the Nilotic pastoralists and is amongst Hamitic nomads who are all Muslims following the Sunni rite. These Somalis live in almost exactly the same way as those in what was formerly British Somaliland , and they share substantially the same creed, the same culture and the same traditions.

 

 

Speaking at Mogadishu on 16th August, 1962 , President AdanAbdulla said that - "We are proud to be exercising the same democratic ideals as we inherited from our forefathers. It is this factor, among others, that gives us, the Somali people, the irresistible urge to live with each other and to look after each other, irrespective of the artificial boundaries that divide us. It is not surprising therefore that Somalis, not only in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, but in French Somaliland and in Ethiopia have a longing in their hearts to be reunited." Indeed the desire of the majority of the nomadic tribesmen of the N.F.D. to secede from Kenya and to form a union with Somalia was recorded by an impartial British Commission at the end of 1962, but nothing was done about it.