By Dr. Mohamed-Rashiid Sh. Hassan – Part IV

In the second anniversary of the coup, Barre made a long speech whose contents were even more rhetorical. He appealed to people to forget clan differences and unify their efforts to build one nation committed to the principles of socialism Hantiwadag. By evoking nationalism (waddaniyad), revolution (Kacaan) and socialism (Hantiwadag), the regime believed they could undermine or even eradicate clannishness and create a new society.

In 1970 thousands of people throughout the country were mobilized for demonstration an effigy – a coffin supposedly representing the deceased body of tribalism – was given a mass burial. The country was set in hysterical national emotional conditioning. In believing that clan difference would be eradicated in this way; and a new society with a socialist outlook would be created. It is worth to mention that in the later years of his rule Siyad Barre himself went to the graves and exhumed the clannism (qabyaalad) which he forcefully demanded from the Somali people to bury it in the earlier years of his rule.

Since the earliest formation of political parties in 1950s, there were two sides in Somali political spectrum, the conservative and the liberal left. In Somaliland for instance, the SNL/USP represented the liberal left, the NUF the conservative. In Somalia before union, the SYL represented conservative while the 1958 breakaway party from the SYL, the Greater Somali league (GSL) represented the liberal left. The Union of the two countries brought together each side to join its counterpart, creating major blocks in Somali politics with different ideologies and political orientations:

·         Democratic Union (SDU) which grew out from Greater Somali League (GSL) founded by Haji Mohamed Hussein (a well known left-wing politician and President of the Somali Youth League (SYL) (1948 – 1952)

·         Radical elements from the main political parties of Somaliland, the Somali National League/ United Somali party (SNL/USP).

·         Politicians, individual activists some with trade union backgrounds, who had spent some time in the Arab world, particularly in Yemen and Egypt while these countries experiencing their own revolutions or upheavals, inspired by the radical Arab nationalism spearheaded by the late Egyptian president, Jamal Abdi Naser.

·         Poets, artists and play writers, such as Abdillahi Sultan "Tima’de", Abdillahi Qarshe, Barqad ’As, and Abdi Mohamoud Amin.

After 1970, more educated group joined the platform including graduates from American universities who lived in the United States at the time of the African-American civil right movements, or from Western European universities, Arab countries and the then Soviet Union where they had been exposed to whole range of radical ideas and politics including Arab socialism, Nasirism Euro-communism of Antonio Gramsci persuasion, and Troskism, Maoist and Soviet brands of Marxist-Leninism.

All these groups had one thing in common, they all believed in a socialist society, but since they had different political ideologies and different political experience, they also had different interpretations of socialism. Under military rule they were unable to provide an alternative socialist agenda and they lost their international connections, because the military rejected any other form of socialism outside their own ideological framework. Either your socialist views must coincide with the socialist views of the military junta or you were considered a dangerous anti-military and anti-revolutionary.

The existence of diverse groups having diverse ideologies and political outlooks demonstrated that Somali political and social landscape could accommodate other ideologies and systems of beliefs like any other societies, contrary to the general belief that Somali society is inherently clan-ridden or a clan based society that can hardly move away from the confines of clannish normative value levels. During the earlier years of the military regime these groups provided the ideological intellect, skills and know-how for policy formulations, advice on the organizational apparatus of the state. They and the military had several objectives in common:

1. To shift the state ethics, functions and practices away from clan considerations and of clan balancing and employ people on the basis of their qualifications and skills regardless of which clan they belonged.

2. To built a strong central government with socialist principles.

3. To seek international solidarity with socialist countries.

After three decades, it is interesting to note today that different groups with completely different belief systems and ideologies have appeared in the Somali political space who all claims their agenda is to build a Islamic society but having different interpretation of what this Islamic society means. These include Wahabists or Salafists, Takfiir wal Hijrah, Islaah, Itihaad, Islamic courts, al-Shabaab, Hisbul Islam, and Ahlu Sunah wal Jama’a.

To achieve any meaningful remedy for Somali problems today one has to understand the sociological and anthropological complexity of how these things were evolving in the last three decades.

To be continued…..

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