Why Somaliland has Become a Country with no Living Lighthouse?
Nobody wants the prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.
A prediction does not teach us what must be; it just tells only what might happen next. And this is just a guess — an assumption that can not be reliable at any rate.
Nevertheless predictions give us a code of religious conduct. They show us the fact that special prayers are sometimes performed before a presage and that it is properly right to pray for peace and pardon when there are bad signs in the present time.
Presages are born out of what is actually formed in human minds, specially in times of uncertainty when people feel and fear that what is to come is going to be bad.
Prediction is how we envision the future — what is to come next, whether all that is to come is going to be good or bad. However what in our minds controls our thoughts and actions, and thereby alters the entire course of our lives for better or worse.
Before we try to envision our future let us ask our ourselves, “What do we do right now that aligns with the Somaliland that we want? Where are we not aligned with the vision that can make the Somaliland that we want? How can we stay aligned with the values that can make Somaliland great as we go in the coming years? Where do we want to see Somaliland in the next five years? If we could worry about anything, what would it be? Would Somaliland be recognized? Could we stand our ground even if no country would recognize S/land? Or could it be possible that Somaliland will slowly but surely go the way it went in 1960?”
Those questions address both our current situation and the coming one and help identify the bigger-picture vision we try to envision.
Victory is a succession of presents achieved through thoughts sowed in the human mind and reaped in the fields of action. This means that our thoughts are what we are as a people and all that we are is the result of what is born out of how we always think and act. So our future depends on how we prepare “today” to afford the improvements of tomorrow.
A negative culture is visible across Somaliland country in all walks of life. Today, in Somaliland, what one’s right hand is engaged in most of the time is almost unknown to what his/her left-hand is doing.
Culture, in its traditional and respectable manifestation, has been heavily influenced by greed and the codes it demanded, because certain phases of cultural persecution have passed into history. The grip of spiritual nationalism over individual has even diminished to the extent that insincerity and self-serving lies have become the only guiding principles, particularly among the majority communities that together constitute Somaliland population.
The sense of decency and decorum is suspended for the time being. Only the resolution to believe humbug and reanimate disguising traits such as infidelity, enmity, and intrigues sounds so decided. Most people, regardless of who one is and what public or private position he stands and holds, believe that they can win deceptively what they could not win diligently. Nobody is in the habit of examining his/her manners as if everyone is not seeing clearly, judging candidly, but constantly escaping the need of higher species of self-command, that just consideration of ethics, that knowledge of knowing where one is wrong, that principle of right.
When it comes to complementary skills for the future, Somaliland people talk much and act less. They never try to arrange their ideas for future events. Tomorrow is not in the book of their planning. They are all hypocrites. They never try to find out virtually the problems that practically slow their progress. Never define the cause of what lags them behind. They are not serious and never talk to each other seriously. Even if they talk to one another what they talk about is not what they mean. They do otherwise. They can hide the truth, but cannot resist lies. They respect rhetoric and rumors more than the reality before them — the reality that how they think and act just shows through in how they become.
Tribalism plays the biggest role in the propagation of negative culture. Somaliland people are and evidently have been hostages and victims of tribalism — a national disease which is the visceral philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, the catalyst of arrogance, and the gospel of envy and enmity, from which they only get the inherent vices of sharing equal miseries.
While tribalism is patently the problem that causes tribal conflicts and clashes, yet Somaliland people cling to its ill-effects that keep them bound to a way of life that no longer works and evidently never has. It is the evil Somalis have not yet realized that they can leave along the roadside without becoming less than they are — a useless trait that, if they let it go, free them to move forward into a healthier future.
As they say, “The essence of tribalism is hatred, the essence of politics is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If they are firmly chained together, either politics will advance, in which case tribalism will be altered, or the tribalism will preserve its envy and ills and politics will congeal.”
Frankly speaking the effect of tribalism is even much more powerful than the Islamic religion leave alone politics and its attachments. However fact is Somaliland country cannot be built out whence effects of tribalism firmly grips over every Somaliland citizen.
Sustainability of Somaliland stability is among the issues that worries many people. Peace without justice cannot make stability sustainable. Peace requires prosperity because prosperity offers opportunities to all without discrimination and distinction. If there would not be rule of law equally applicable to all people, Somaliland will be history.
Democracy is not new to Somaliland people. The way Somalis used to live was traditionally democratic and socially egalitarian. For this democracy itself is and evidently has never been a troubling doctrine. The trouble is the way Somaliland citizens understand democracy and use it, that is the problem.
As every law does not become a law unless it is enforced and observed and obeyed as it is, our democracy won’t become true till we understand what it is and observe its essential basic principles. In order for us to become real democrats, we need to improve in how we rule ourselves, reaffirm our presence as hard working people, embrace the rule of law, demonstrate and display trust and transparency, refine our constitution, reform our system, reignite the sparks of intellectuality, and revitalize our ability to remove all that is base out of our political democracy and bring out all that is best to our political system.
Infatuation with a longing for a new status is juvenile; explaining and implementing new ideas is much harder and less glamorous. So is recognition.
Seeking recognition from the world requires a lot of hard work, extraordinary efforts, an act of commitment; a hell of run-in. It requires intensive international approach and objectivity in vision. The question is: How our obsessions with international recognition be realized when we are not reminding ourselves even how to begin lobbying for it?
Today, our society, institutions, political parties, economics, culture and even our religious institutions often work on an authoritarian and arrogant approach. Since Somaliland people have come to tolerate what no other society can tolerate, all these institutions think they have the right to impose anything on the public.
The existing system is more like a maze or a crazy quilt of branches, offices, departments, commissions, institutions, courts, etc. and so forth. Nobody knows or can know what’s going on in all parts of the government at all times. The claim that the government needs every penny—and more!—that it collects as taxes appears comical when you realize how carelessly, indeed frivolously, so many of those pennies are spent. Ridiculous things always happen without anybody noticing — the newly formed Somali Investment Company scandal being a case in point.
If Kulmiye political system has become dysfunctional, when and where the future with beautiful presents could come from? When the party that lost public trust and from which the dignity and decency have gone out, regained the power of this country through irregular election, where the future that will be more or less like the present could come from? Ransack the history of Kulmiye party, and it will be found that Kulmiye was and is just a blend of whoppers and war mongers.
One would infer from above versions that there is a gap between what we do and what Somaliland is to become, what we do on the job, and what gets done.
Instead of talking too much and acting less, we should convert the incident as a stepping stone to introspection and analyze the present situation to see what best can be done to overcome its ill-effects and to proceed in life with better planning. In all cases, we should concentrate on giving the right response to each situation.
When irrational arguments and evil acts are left unquestioned and gain broad acceptance, the gab between sincerity and self-serving lies becomes unbridgeable and failure becomes inevitable.
The biggest compliment is to align what we do with our ideas and actions. That is the biggest and best signifier of closing the gab. The rest is reprehensive.
Where there is honesty, there is healthy mind, where there is healthy mind, there is transparency, where there is transparency, there is trust, where there is trust, there is faith, where there is faith, there is an offer of sincerity, where there is an offer of sincerity, there is a sense of sacrifice, where there is sacrifice, there is success, and where there is success, there is celebration.
To be victorious in bad times is based on the fact that human history is not only of tolerance but also of trials to create common voice and vision, coupled with sacrifice, courage, pressure and persistence. If we people don’t act against bad governance, they shouldn’t have to wait for some grand Utopian future.
Is our land not a land of sages and saints? Is our nation infertile to produce keen leadership? Is arrogance what Somaliland leadership can all in all evoke? Where the care is that leadership is known to inspire? The sheer perfection of its design and dedication? The elegance of its strides? The searing integrity of its elaborate element? The qualities of its nobility, idea of dignity, of non-self-interestedness, of largeness of spirit, and of a rising above spite.
The only way we can grow, is if we change, they only way we can change, is if we learn, the only way we can learn, is if we leave all that useless ills in our culture along the roadside.
The need of the hour is a national pride that will stir up our souls, lift our sights, enlighten our thoughts, and heal the wounds of our division. It is fine when the study of the present leads to a prophecy of the future.
About the Author
Jama Falaag
Email: Jamafalaag@gmmail.com
Hargisa, Somaliland
Disclaimer: Views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author/authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Somaliland Intellectuals Institute (SII), its partners, or sponsors. SII is a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on Somaliland foreign policy and nation's priorities in education, healthcare, economy, energy, and infrastructure.