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Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Convention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
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.
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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
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