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Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Abdi Ismail Samatar
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Extract

One of the casualties of the gruesome nightmare that is gripping Somalia has been the capacity to think historically and systematically about the nature of the malady, and to find practical ways of controlling the present in order to build a more sustainable future. As explained by Ahmed Samatar: ‘the fullness of understanding a given situation is [not] coterminous with the immediate and experiential.Rather, any visible elements of a particular reality are usually signals that other more discrete factors could be at work’. For far too long, those opposed to Siyad Barre's régime refused to go beyond the General and his constellation of clients to identify ‘the enemy’. Their unwillingness to engage in any hard-headed analysis and their hostility to critical scholarship has undoubtedly helped to condemn the very people they ‘wanted’ to liberate.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 625 - 641
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Samatar, Ahmed I., ‘The Curse of Allah: civic disembowelment and the collapse of the state in Somalia’, Conference on the Somali Challenge: Peace, Resources and Reconstruction,Geneva,10–14 July 1992.Google Scholar

2 See the reports by Perlez, Jane in The New York Times, July 1992 onwards.Google Scholar

3 Samatar, Said S., Somalia: a nation in turmoil (London, 08 1991), a Minority Rights Report, p. 10.Google Scholar

4 Lewis, I. M., ‘Segmentary Nationalism and the Challenge of the Somali State, May 1992.Google Scholar

5 Cf.Burton, Richard, First Footsteps in East Africa (1856, London 1966 edn).Google Scholar

6 Said Samatar, op. cit. p. 9. See also, Laitin, David D. and Samatar, Said S., Somalia: a nation in search of a state (Boulder and London, 1987), ch. 2.Google Scholar

7 Such an approach recalls the literature on ‘modernisation’ which associated industrialisation and capitalist development with the West and, particularly, the Protestant ethic. East Asia could not have been foreseen by the proponents of that discourse. Cf.Wade, Robert, Governing the Market: economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization (Princeton, 1991).Google Scholar

8 Laitin and Samatar, op. cit. p. 29.

9 See, for example, Thompson, E. P., The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (New York, 1978);Google ScholarGiddens, Anthony, Central Problems in Social Theory: action, structure and contradictions in social analysis (London, 1979);Google Scholar and Cloke, Paul, Philo, Chris, and Sadler, David, Approaching Human Geography: an introduction to contemporary debates (New York, 1991), particularly ch. 4.Google Scholar

10 Lewis, I. M., ‘The Ogaden and the Fragility of Somali Segmentary Nationalism’, in African Affairs (London), 88, 353, 10 1989, p. 574.Google Scholar For a sharply contrasting analysis, see Vail, Leroy (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London and Berkeley, 1989).Google Scholar

11 Said Samatar, op. cit. p. 13. We need to note that the destruction of livestock and water wells, and the subjugation of the people of the northeast, was overseen by none other than General Morgan, a ‘son’ of that same soil.

12 Samatar, Ahmed I., ‘Under Siege: blood, power, and the Somali state’, in Hizkas, Asfa (ed.), Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Horn of Africa (Washington, DC, 1993), p. 9.Google Scholar

13 Samatar, Abdi I., The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Madison, 1989),Google Scholar and ‘Social Classes and Economic Restructuring in Pastoral Africa: Somali notes’, in African Studies Review (Atlanta), 35, 1, 1992, pp. 101–27.Google Scholar

14 Cf.Sayer, Andrew, Methods in Social Science: a realist approach (London, 1984).Google Scholar

15 See Samatar, Abdi, ‘Social Classes and Economic Restructuring in Pastoral Africa’, pp. 105–8.Google Scholar

16 Kapteijns, Ledwein, ‘, Women and the Crisis of Communal Identity’, in Samatar, Ahmed I., Kapteijns, , and Samatar, Abdi I. (eds), The Somali Crucible: class, gender and clan (forthcoming).Google Scholar

17 Pankhurst, Richard, ‘The Trade of the Gulf of Aden Ports of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in Journal of Ethiopian Studies (Addis Ababa), 3, I, 1965, pp. 36–83.Google Scholar

18 This section heavily draws from ch. 4 of my book, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia.Google Scholar

19 Lewis, I. M., ‘The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 10, 3, 10 1972, p. 386.Google Scholar

20 Cf. the prophetic verses, narrated in 1972, by the poet and social critic, Mohamed Warsame Hadrawi, ‘Hal Laqaley Raqdeeda Lagu So Qamamoo’. This song depicts the nation as a slaughtered she-camel, with the vultures each grabbing a piece of the carcass in the confusion.Google Scholar

21 Rajagopal, B. and Carroll, A. J., The Case for the Independent Statehood of Somaliland (Washington, DC), dated 27 05 1992.Google Scholar

22 Samatar, and Laitin, , op. cit. p. 155. For a contrasting view of clanism, see Vail (ed.), op. cit.Google Scholar

23 Quoted in Ahmed Samatar, ‘Under Siege’, p. 1.

24 Cf.Poulantzas, Nicos, Fascism and Dictatorship: the Third International and the problem of fascism (London, 1979).Google Scholar See also, Mamdani, Mahmoud, Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda (Nairobi, 1983).Google Scholar