The Horn of Africa as Common Homeland: The State and Self-Determination in the Era of Heightened Globalization

9. Unification and Nation-Building: Somalia’s Sacred Mission

155 9 Unification and Nation-Building: Somalia’s Sacred Mission INTRODUCTION Until the disintegration of state and society in the 1990s indicated the opposite, Somalia’s homogeneity appeared to render its nation-building prospects one of the least challenging in Africa. Why then did Africa’s most homogeneous nation fail so tragically? Inferring that Somalia’s socalled homogeneity was more apparent than real, some commentators are now suggesting that its nation-building challenges were comparable with those of other African states. Such writers cite language differences, differing myths of descent coupled with dissimilar lifestyles, and the existence of racially distinct subordinate groups to make their case. I will briefly discuss these social fault lines and how they remained troublesome despite the external projection of total homogeneity. DIALECT, DESCENT, AND POWER The biggest fault line concerns the division of Somali society into two grand coalitions of clan families, the Saab and Samaale. Speaking different versions of the Somali language and living differing lifestyles set these two groups apart. Members of the Saab branch are the more sedentary agro-pastoralists of the south, namely, the Digile and Mirifle, who speak the Mai version of Somali. Members of the Samaale branch are strictly pastoralists and speak the Maha (or Mahaatiri) version. And these are further divided into the Irrir (made up of Isaaq, Dir, and Hawiya subdivisions ) and the Darood (comprising the Majerteen, Marehan, Dhulbahante , and other smaller groups). Assertions that members of both branches are united in tracing their descent to the Quraishy Arab tribe of the Prophet Mohammed used to be common in the literature (for example Laitin 1977: 50). However, some Somali scholars now dismiss this assertion by stating that “the Arabic factors…were more influential among the nomadic groups of northern Somalia” who are “belligerent, less law abiding, arrogant, destructive and look down on any profession except herding” (Mukhtar 1995: 17). The distribution of power and the elevation of Maha to the status of state language in due course came to widen the gulf separating these two branches. Let us first look at the issue of language. United Somalia faced the unique challenge of dealing with the complications resulting from inheriting two colonial languages, English and Italian. This by itself would have necessitated alphabetizing and using the Somali language for education and administration. Emulating neighbouring Ethiopia would have provided an additional motivation for adopting such policy. Successive civilian administrations, however, were unable to determine whether Arabic, Latin, or a home-grown alphabet called Osmaniya was most appropriate for the Somali language. This wrangling was still going on when Siad Barre came to power in October 1969 by staging a coup d’état. Hence, it was his regime that imposed the Maha version of Somali as the state’s official language, with the Latin alphabet. This might not have perhaps mattered much had it not coincided with the growing political marginalization of the Maai speakers. As commonly happened in the rest of Africa, the Maai speakers stood a better chance to inherit the post-colonial state due to their sustained contact (in this case) with the Italian colonialists. This prospect, however, started dimming first when the British Military Administration (bma) favoured the mostly Darod and Hawiya-based Somali Youth League (syl) by giving civilian and military posts to its members. When the Italians tried to revive their earlier close relations with the southerners and to support them after replacing the bma in 1950, they were effectively deterred by syl opposition (Maxted 2000: 163). Regardless, the Italians were able to fairly apportion National Assembly seats during the run-up to independence and unification with the former British Somaliland. Seats were “proportionately divided among the three major southern clans: thirty Reewin, thirty Hawiye, and thirty Darood, irrespective of party affiliation ” (Mukhtar 1997: 52). This started to change after unification, however , for a couple of reasons. First, unification augmented the demographic proportion of the Hawiyya and Darood, thus enabling them to increase their share of power. Second, whatever was left over was reserved mostly for the northern Isaaqs to appease them away from the separatist tendency that had surfaced among them immediately after unification. Since The Horn of Africa as Common Homeland 156 they were highly under-represented in civilian and military posts, the southerners were completely absent from the junta that took power in 1969. Consequently, the combination of speaking a...