The anti-Somaliland narrative

EDITORIAL

In Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster explains the difference between story and plot this way: “The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.” Forster further elaborates that the story tells us what happens next and is what ties the novel together, while the plot deals with causality, a higher level than the story.

If we ignore all the esoteric pro and con legal arguments about Somaliland’s right to be independent, and just analyze the narrative used by Somaliland’s opponents with the aid of Forster’s schema, it becomes quickly apparent that the anti-Somaliland narrative does not work. And the reason it does not work as a story is because the story of Somalia for the last two decades is essentially the same story, a story of endless war, murder and chaos that has made many people numb and uninterested in whatever is happening in Somalia.

By making steady progress, Somaliland, on the other hand, has attracted many people who are curious about its progress and want to know what is going to happen next, whether it will succeed or not.

The anti-Somaliland narrative has failed not only as a story and plot, but also in terms of logic, for it is full of contradictions. To cite just one example, anti-Somaliland propagandists, many of whom are Abdillahi Yusuf’s ardent supporters often criticize Somaliland for taking control of Las Anod on the grounds that the inhabitants of Las Anod are from a different clan than people from Hargeisa and Borama, but these same critics are some of the loudest cheerleaders for Abdillahi Yusuf’s foreign-backed takeover of Mogadishu.

In the final analysis, the anti-Somaliland narrative has failed because the alternative it offers which is today’s Somalia is unattractive to many people. Even Arabs who used to display knee-jerk negative reaction to Somaliland have noticed the difference between Somaliland and Somalia. Fathi al-Daw of Kuwait’s al-Arabi magazine captured that difference beautifully when he wrote: “al-Sumal al-an ashbah bi-fakihah nisfuha al-sufli mactub wa-fasid wa-dhalik ma yujassid mixnat janaralat al-xarb alladhina yataqatalun fi al-janub, amma nisfuha al-culwi fa-salim yughri al-nazir ilayh bi-al-iqtirab minh, wa-hadha waqic al-xal fi al-shamal (The Somali territory is now like a fruit whose lower part is destroyed and decayed and that embodies the dilemma of the warlords who are fighting each other in the south, whereas its upper part is healthy and tempts the onlooker to get close to it, and that is the reality in the north)”.

If Arabs are saying this, you can imagine what others are saying.

Source: Somaliland Times

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