Samatar's Master Piece

[African]

I.M. Lewis's Retired Ideas and Somalia

 

Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar

Department of Geography

University of Minnesota

 

Dr. I. M. Lewis's recent (January 18, 2001) diatribe against the United Nations (UN), David Stephen, its special representative to Somalia, and Djibouti is another unfortunate signal of a retired anthropologist who is unable to comprehend that the Somali world is beyond his grasp. His praise for the European Union (EU) is self-congratulatory note: he concocted an EU funded conference that failed to attract Somali attention and support. As the Somali saying goes " Nin is amaaney wa ri is nuugtay."

 

He criticizes the United Nations for not heeding what most Somalis are saying and want. This statement is identical to one made over a year ago by a former colonial officer regarding the Djibouti initiative. Lewis pronounces that "All those who have the interest of the Somali people at heart. should endeavor to understand how much progress in Somaliland and Puntland has been achieved." He adds "As every Somali knows Mr. Abdulqasim's government is indeed so unwelcome in Mogadishu ." [The fact is that tens of thousand of Mogadishu resident came out to receive Abdulqasim when he arrived at Mogadishu airport, contrary to Lewis's illusions].

Further "Whatever the Italian foreign office may image, in the wider Somali view." Careful reading of these statements indicates that Lewis either represents Somalis or knows all of us well or is in such an intimate touch with the Somali public that he can make such unsubstantiated declarations.

Only an arrogant and unreconstructed old fashioned anthropologist would be

blind enough to assume that he could speak for the native in 2001.

 

This brief note engages Lewis's three main declarations and not many of the

other more trivial statements in his texts. First, he claims that "social service provision and of representative government, though by no means perfect, far exceed what was achieved under the repressive dictatorship of General Mohamed Siyad Barre (in which the leaders of the Arta faction served) and are to some extend superior even to that of earlier civilian regimes (which I knew very well)." Lewis should realize that many of those who run the so-called "Balayo-lands" served Siyaads' regime. If people are guilty by association, then Lewis must be culpable of the crimes committed by colonial foot soldiers. This is not in defense of anyone in Transitional National Government (TNG) who has committed crimes before and after 1991, but to show the flaw in Lewis's logic. I can speak directly to the quality of services former civilian governments provided. I was a schoolboy in Somalia under the civilian governments maligned by the British colonial anthropologist. The educational services those governments delivered with meager resources were, almost, second to none. I wish the sectarian entrepreneurs in Hargeisa and Garowe could match health, education, post, public works, etc., of yesteryears. I still have in my possession post delivered letters to my school dormitories in Gabileh Intermediate and Amoud Secondary schools. No such services exist today in the north and northeast.

The trouble with Lewis and his acolytes is that they are so ungrounded in

the reality of these two regions. Ironically, Egal is doing a better job today in Hargeisa than he did in Mogadishu as Somalia's Prime Minister, if one is to believe Lewis's claims! To think of the leaders of Hargeisa and Garowe as representative democrats shows how far removed the retired professor is from Somali plight.

 

Second, Lewis accuses the UN of imposing the Djibouti conference and its

outcome on the Somali people ". Whatever may have been acceptable in the

colonial period, it is not the business, of any UN official, to make Judgements which, in effect, dictate to Somalis how they should identify or govern themselves." Unless Lewis is a Somali citizen, I wonder what we should make of his agenda for us? He certainly has the right to criticizes the government of Djibouti for feeling our pain and organizing the peace conference but it is illegitimate and smacks of colonial smugness to be told that the UN did Arta for us. Lewis's democratic heroes in Hargeisa and Garowe had every opportunity to attend the conference and partake in the democratic debate, but declined to participate because they were not given the power to craft the conference agenda and veto its outcome. I wonder what Lewis makes of the large number of people from the northeast and west that participated in the conference? The professor of anthropology apparently knows better!

 

Third, the old anthropologist attempts to discredit the Arta conference by claiming that "the Arta process in Djibouti embraced a wide range of participants including a number of notorious warlords and even 'street boys' recruited from Djibouti town to swell the numbers. Many genuine leaders and representatives, including those in Somaliland and Puntland as well as the principal despotic warlords in Mogadishu chose to boycott. " Lewis fails to grasp that the process was open to all key organs of Somali civil society and their leaders. It was not the Djibouti government that selected the participants, but the communities they represented. The government's meager resources were stretched to their limits to accommodate the vast number of people who came to participate in the onference. Consequently, the Djibouti government had no need to invent phantom ghosts to pad the register. The purpose of letting all key (willing and able) actors participate in the deliberations in Arta was to make the project as inclusive as possible and bring communities and contestants together. Lewis is apparently uninitiated in the area of conflict resolution. He needs to update his scholarship on this front if he expects to be taken seriously. It will serve him well to read works that deal with the South African negotiations, but I am afraid

this might be a tall order for an anthropologist marooned to the days of "British Somaliland."

 

Finally, Lewis failed the Somali people for forty plus years when he was an active academic. Although Somalia provided him scholarly raw material and

earned him a good living, his legacy for our country and people is sterile and retired ideas. We wish him well in his retirement and urge him to find something else to occupy his remaining years. Somalia does not need more exhausted ideas and advice as it has enough of its own.

 

Professor Abdi Ismail Samatar

[African]

In Response to Prof Abdi I. Samatar's

I.M. Lewis's Retired Ideas and Somalia

By Ali A.Jama - Director - Somalia Watch Organization - Feb 3, 2001

 

Somalia Watch published Professor Lewis's article - UN Paperclips for Somalia - which professor Samatar has labeled as a 'diatribe against (UN) David Stephen and Djibouti.' The message in Prof Lewis's article and the reaction of our good Professor in Minnesota typifies the current debate on whole Somali issue. In my mind, the two great professors represent two schools of thinking about the Somali issue - the old centralized governance school of thinking represented by Prof Samatar and federalist school represented here by Prof Lewis. In my opinion, Prof Lewis made his point clearly - the joint UN and Djibouti actions in creating the Arta Faction may only have the net result of destabilizing the peaceful areas of the country. Is this a diatribe? It is, according to Prof Samatar!

The Prof from Minnesota has not presented any good arguments why he disagrees with Lewis except to suggest that 'the Somali world is beyond his (Lewis's) grasp'. I wonder if there is any scholar, dead or living, who can challenge Prof Lewis's work on the Somali Nation. Samatar's response gives one the impression that he is street fighter intent to badmouth and give Lewis a bloody nose.

I have some other problems of my own with Prof Samatar's following statements:

1. "Balayo-lands" and "sectarian entrepreneurs in Hargeisa and Garowe"

In refuting Prof Lewis's thesis Prof Samatar has resorted to the use of inappropriate and vulgar language when he referred to Somaliland and Puntland as "Balayo-lands" and its leadership as "sectarian entrepreneurs in Hargeisa and Garowe". This is an affront to the sentiments of so many Somali men and women who worked very hard and succeeded to set up functioning administrations in the most participative manner possible at a very difficult time. It took years of consultative processes to create the administrations in the North of the country. If the Prof from Minnesota truly cares about Somalia shouldn't he be paying homage to these men and women who have made these administrations a reality? It is the work of these selfless individuals that created Puntland in 1998, - the first Somali State that made its objective the re-constitution of the Somali State and declared the sanctity of the Somali Nation. I hope he will agree with me that these are noble goals.

These statements are also, in my opinion, not worthy of someone claiming to be in an academic environment - a Prof in a university, where decency, good language and above all accepting different points of view are the hallmark

2. " To think of the leaders of Hargeisa and Garowe as representative democrats shows how far removed the retired professor is from Somali plight"

In addition to Prof Samatar's wonderful desire at badmouthing, there is much intellectual bankruptcy in the premises of his discourse. He seems to have a distorted notion of the term democracy. The people in Somaliland and Puntland have spoken in democratic forums, and as a result set up the Somaliland and Puntland administrations. I thought that was what democracy was all about!!. Why does the Prof from Minnesota think that there was more 'democratic weight' in the Arta (Dj) Tent than the SL/PL founding, grassroots conferences in Buro, Borama and Garowe?

The group he loves to hate in Hargeisa and Garowe has been elected by their respective people. The premises of Djibouti Conference was to ignore all existing governance structures in the country. That was the big mistake, I believe. The logical thing to do would have been to build on the existing governance structures in the country, instead of trying hard to discredit and destroy what the North has achieved. The leaders in the North, understandably, rejected Arta as it would probably have meant the end of their administrations. There could have been other reasons not known to the general public. This is what Pres Abdullahi Yusuf of PL told a group of community elders in Garowe in Jan 2001:

"Carta la iskuma raacin oo waxa Carta ay dhashay waa uun koox cusub . Ismaaciil Cumar Geelle wuxuu qabay, kuna shaqeeyey anigana uu toos iigu sheegay in ciddii dagaalkii sokeeye ku adkaatay ay iyadu iska leedahay Madaxnimada Soomaaliya oo muran la'aan ah."

Translated into English would approximately be , " ..there was no agreement in Arta .. the net result of Arta Process is the creation of another Faction. (Pres) Ismail Omar Geelle was working on the basis , and personally informed me, that the Somali Leadership shall be assumed by the winners of the civil war.."

The good Prof from Minnesota owes to his professional ethics as writer and educator to check the facts first before giving blanket condemnation to the leaders in North. When faced with the situation described above, I think anybody with a bit of brain would reject the Arta Process.

3. "Large number of people from the north east and west that participated in the conference.."

Here Prof Samatar is guilty of fabricating self-serving disinformation about the extent of the involvement of Northern States in the Arta Process. Sure, there were individuals from SL and PL in Arta, but were these individuals representing anybody? And, in number how did they compare with the founding populace of SL/PL?

4. " … uninitiated in the area of conflict resolution….."

Here, I do not understand the logic of the Prof from Minnesota. If he is accusing Prof. Lewis of ignorance on the modern conflict resolution techniques, why is he an apologist for Arta Process, which was based on the premises of ignoring the achievements of the last ten years in Somalia, represented, among other things, by the creation of Puntland and Somaliland states. Let me be clear here, I do not support the secession of any part of the country. But New Somalia has been slowly but surely taking shape, almost unnoticed, in the country in the last ten years. I thought Prof. Lewis described these new structures well, and it is unfair to fault him for describing the present realities in the country.

The good Prof from Minnesota may want to bury his head in the sand but when he wakes up, if he does, what he called "Balayo-Lands" may still be there, and may be more of them. A federal system consisting of bunch of 'Barwaaqo-Lands' may not be a bad idea after all!

 

Ali A. Jama

Director - Somalia Watch Organization

 

_________________________________________________

Prof: Lewis's article

http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivedec00/010120201.htm

[Gabbal]

African's official entrance to politics section of SOL huh? Soo dhawow