A Comprehensive History of Somalia
Adan Makina
June 14, 2012
A small body
of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter
the course of history-Mahatma Gandhi
When
Ismail Ali Ismail started writing his newly published book that synchronously
details the history of
Unlike litigious historical chronicles penned down by past
and present opinionated foreign or Somali writers, Ismail’s penmanship will
remain evident in its nature of journalism and scholarly research for quite
some time. His energy to write has been fuelled by a passion to expose the
truth about a people and a nation whose history has become negligible.
What makes the book most attractive is the
magnificence and eloquence of language and its cheerfulness and eagerness to marvelously
calibrate undiagnosed historical phantasms. Like a camel herder traversing a
desert storm in search of sustenance, the author perilously struggled to
scramble through bookshelves and internet sites with the sole aim of unearthing
and putting together a historical exegesis of profound importance to anyone
interested in deciphering the circumstances surrounding Somalia ’s exhaustive
political entanglement. Voluminous and over four-hundred pages, Governance:
The Scourge and Hope of Somalia, has a lot to tell the reader from the
beginning chapter to the end. It is a
well researched book that has been written with good intentions. Almost every
chapter begins with an ayah (verse) from the Holy Qur’an followed by
eye-catching remarks by distinguished historical figures espousing unblemished
character, dignity, and great wisdom. In giving a broader meaning to the term clash
of civilizations, the author explains how the struggle between Islam and
Christianity affected the people of the Horn of Africa.
The might of Somali pastoral democracy and Somali past history
stretch back several millenniums as opposed to the unfounded and untested lexicon
of exaggerations that populate imperial libraries. The author illuminates the
might of former sultans whose tutelage, according to territorial and
ethnographic location, varied in the manner of their sovereignty and
hierarchical applications across the expansive Somali peninsula.
The
author uses numerous scholarly references to disentangle causes of past Somali
obduracy and other malevolent historical dynamics that accelerated the
rupturing of the once homogeneous Somali pastoral society. It is quite painful
and mind-blowing for modern Somalis to experience the worst form of divisions,
tribalism, and shocking forms of slaughter using all avenues of destruction
including the application of modern war machinery while during the Somali Youth
League (SYL) era there was little or no resistance among the few concerned
nationalists whose unity rested on getting rid of the shackles of colonialism. Somalis
are volatile, violent, and virulent when fighting among themselves and
peaceful, graceful, and generous, when dealing with foreigners sharing equal
thoughts and processes.
Somali volatility preceded the colonial administrations of
The first chapter of the book scrutinizes the near century
of colonial governance where Somalia
was divided along colonial powers England
and Italy leading to the
pitiless British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland
mandates that resulted in the partition of Somali territories the same time
leaders of the mighty African continent were engaged in struggles for
self-determination. In making comparative investigations of the two distinct
administrations, the author pinpoints the lugubrious nature of the Italian
colonial administration and the noninterference of the British in the Somali
social makeup. The Italians callously manipulated Somali sovereignty by imposing
a variety of restrictions that were meant to dismantle existing Somali social
structure.
Thus, the very authoritarian
fabrics of Rome transcended the borders of Italy finally
arriving as anarchical condiments in areas of the mighty African continent
where Italian totalitarianism reigned supreme. Italy ’s
loss of Libya and Eritrea culminated in Italian ersatz imperialism
to grab the agriculturally fertile southern Somalia
territories straddling the meandering Juba and Shebelle
rivers. Despite pilfering Somali natural and human resources for close to a century,
colonial powers Britain and Italy did
little to diffuse to the Somalis the virtues of democratic organization,
authority and control, and the principle and conduct of governance. Naturally,
Somalis are an egalitarian society and it is incomprehensible for the British
and Italians to abandon Somalia
without injecting an iota of reliable governance.
Perhaps, what southern Somalis
inherited from the Italians is nothing but pasta di semola di grano duro and
pasta di soia. And as for the northern Somalis, what they inherited from
the British is nothing but the leaves of Camellia sinensis, otherwise
known as tea that was introduced in East Africa by British barons who oversaw
the cultivation of vast tracts of land around the White Highlands-land that
straddles the lush green Rift Valley in Kenya . The Rift Valley originates
in Jordan and ends in the
lower Zambezi Valley Mozambique
in southern Africa .
Somali stiff resistance to colonialism paved the way for
self-determination and complete independence for the northern British Somaliland
and the southern Italian Somaliland territories
that had been separated for quite some time. The proclamation of independence
on the 1st of July, 1960 heralded an era of unification a
nd the intermingling
of two homogeneously related communities but ideologically clothed in contorted
English and Italian administrative styles. The sudden separation from British
and Italian apathy led the two Somalis to chart a new avenue for a honeymoon
that would last less than a decade. Unfortunately, Africa’s first democratic
government headquartered in Mogadishu-“the seat of the Shah”-crumbled after a
coup d’état orchestrated by a group of military officers took the nation by
surprise at a time when military leadership was a political fashion in Africa
and some parts of Asia.
There is a lot to learn from Ismail’s penmanship. The book
is comprehensive in context as it dwells into the historical aspects of the collapse
of the military junta in 1991 consequently plunging Somalia into myriads of
problems that include foreign interference in the form of humanitarian
missions, warlord supremacy, extremism and religious anarchy, tribal
hostilities, maritime depletion, armed insurrections, prolonged droughts and
environmental degradation, political obscurantism in almost every conceivable
canton, piracy, assassinations, and the meteoric rise of Islamists.
If you are writing a paper for your college on Somalia or if you are in the process of
preparing a thesis or dissertation that is exclusive to Somalia , the book, Governance:
The Scourge and Hope of Somalia, is one important document you would want
to consult and reference before embarking on your erudite and scholarly journey
to academic success. Adding it to your exotic library for future use could be
an added advantage.
Adan Makina
WardheerNews
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