The Rise And Demise Of Somali Nationalism, By Prof Ahmed I Samatar And Prof Abdi I Samatar.

[Music] [Music] Welcome everybody. Um, my name is Anna Lindley and I work in the development studies department here at SOAS. And I am very honored to be stepping in here for my colleague Laura Hammond, our research director at SOAS, who unfortunately, although she helped to set up and create this event, has been called away unavoidably on business. I think she's traveling. Um, and but having been involved in the very, very early days of Kaid and of Somali Week, it has been such a pleasure to see it just grow and grow and grow over the years. Um, so it's a real pleasure to be able to introduce this event and a real honor to be able to welcome our speakers today. So traveling to talk with us here in London over the next two sessions, we have some really leading intellectuals who have and continue to shape ways of thinking um about uh politics, inclusion, progress um within and beyond the Horn of Africa. So hold on to your hats, people. It's going to be an exciting evening. Um, in this first session on the rise and demise of Somali nationalism, we'll be hearing from Professor Ahmed Samatar and um Professor Abdi Samatar. And I know that Chama will be doing the introduction. So it falls to me. So it falls just to me to introduce our noble chair for this evening, Chama Musana. Um, whose many talents um sort of defy definition. They range from kind of the history of mathematics and board games to computational linguistics um through to being a real champion and promoter of education, language, culture and literacy through your directorship of the Haza Cultural Center and and the Haza International Book Fair. So without further ado, over to you Char.

[Applause]

Thank you so much Linda for such a wonderful introduction and uh um it's an it's a long way to the event in this festival. So um I'm I'm happy to be to be here and thank you all for coming and participating in the eighth day of the Somali Week festival, which shows that uh we have no Somali Week festival but Somali 10 days and more festival. So this is the eighth day and uh uh so thank you for coming in this evening for uh two important uh discussion discussions on Somali studies and uh I will be coordinating of course the first one entitled the rise and demise of Somali nationalism based on a new work being published by two distinguished scholars. We will shortly introduce but you know them so it will not be needed for long introductions. Uh my name is Dr. Jama Musa Jama and I'm currently the director of the Hargesa Cultural Center and a fellow of Somaliand Center for African Studies and I'm lecturing at the University of Hargesa at the moment in Somaliand where I'm joining you from. The topic is highly highly highly timely conversation and uh by discussing it in the right time I would say in the right people who are here with me and in the right place, a place so important for African studies and in particularly for Somali studies. I hope also with the right audience. I think we will take advantage for a couple of hours that we will learn much more than what's going on about the Somali nationalism. And this topic is not only timely but it's also a very difficult topic. Uh we hope that by time by the time that we are leaving today here at least we have learned a little bit more to find out the way of the chaos surrounded Somali nationalism. I have not read the paper and the document that the two distinguished authorities will share with us today uh because it's coming up work but it is clear to everyone that uh the initial rise of Somali nationalism in 1960s was followed by radical decline whether it was the internal conflict that erupted immediately after 1960 or what happened afterwards. We will discuss in depth. With this today with Professor Abdi and Ahmed Isma Samatar. The fact that African scholars should still ask should be asking themselves even today, 60 years after 1960 when the year the colonial power departed from the continent. What is wrong with us as a society and what went wrong? Uh this topic that we are talking about may be related in that wider conversation in African scholarship and African uh intellectuals. We have uh um 120 minutes. So two hours of time for this panel. Um I will try to be as brief as possible for the introductions. We will allow for technical just 50 minutes of presentation of the article of the work between the two scholars leaving about 55 minutes of a question and answer which I expect it will be lively as the article is expected to generate a serious intellectual intellectual debate.

Before introducing the our guests, I would like to thank Kite team uh for making this day of academic dialeomi studies as an integral part of the Somali Week festival each year. Thank you Ayan and the Kate board of directors and the programming team who maintained this uh uh ritual conversation. I would like also to thank SOAS for being trusted partner for kite and for Somali Week festival and particularly for this kind of conversation each year hosting us this beautiful place that we used to have for the last few years. Thank you Anna, thank you Laura and the whole entire SOAS team. Uh now allow me to introduce our speakers shortly because of uh they are well known in the subject that we are talking about. Let me start with my right side. Professor Abdi Samatar. Professor Abdi Samatar ended his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and he was an associate professor at the University of Oslo and the University of Minnesota before he becoming a full professor of geography throughout his career. He has also held important academic leadership roles including the chair of the department of geography, environment and society. Professor Abdi has also contributed to the knowledge production of the African continent. What's happening in the African continent where he became initially a senior research researcher at the humanities research council in Pretoria, South Africa before returning to the same university as an associate professor in South Africa and actually he's traveling now all the way from Minnesota stopping here and going to South Africa for his classes. Professor Abdi is also a member of the Pan-African Parliament, parliament and a policy maker and engaged in in in the continent governance with five major books and over 40 academic articles academic work. He has contributed to the knowledge production in African studies and he is an authority in this field. Please join me to welcoming Abdi Samatar to the Somali Week Festival.

[Applause]

We are delighted to have uh you with us professor. Now from my left uh Professor Ahmed Samatar, recently my colleague and friend in many academic and non-academic work in Somaliand, recently president and James Wallace professor of international studies, founding dean of the Kofan Institute for Global Citizenship, editor of Bildhaan, which is here with us today, an international journal of Somali studies. Ahmed Samatar and his PhD in international studies from University of Denver, Colorado where he worked among the other topics in comparative development studies focusing on Africa and global political economy and social and political thought. Uh currently chair of the department of international studies. Professor Ahmed has published five books like Professor Abdi and over 45 relevant articles is available today if you just Google, demonstrating his genuine contribution to the knowledge production in Africa and beyond. He has supervised over 60 thesis doctorates and honorary degrees throughout his academic career and he lectured many universities in all continents. I wouldn't dare to list here which makes a tangible contribution to the knowledge production to the knowledge production. We are honored to have you again professor and please join me in welcoming Professor Ahmed to us.

As you can see, we have a significant body of uh research, leadership and experience in African and Somali studies. And uh the title I have of the article that I have anticipated is still remains the rise and demise of Somali nationalism. And uh my role here is introducing the and chairing the event. So I will leave uh here for the two speakers and I will come back uh for the uh after for the discussion. Just for very technical uh last uh touch if you need need the two gates to are the signs that you see in the back and if you need the toilet will be down and you can follow the sign of that. So please professor.

Thank you. Okay. He's older than me. So he. Okay, I will I I will be passing the microphone to Ahmed but uh with request of we know that it's being recorded the event and it's been registered by Kite but we would appreciate if you leave a part other recording status request of our guests please.

So, uh good evening. Good evening uh Jama, thank you very much. Uh before we move deeper into the conversation, just few items of the process itself between the two of us in terms of the division of labor. First though on behalf of Abdi, I want to thank some uh members of the community here. First and perhaps most important really is Ayan Mahmud Ashur, standing over there. I think all of you know her. Somali woman of distinctive attributes which I think ought to be publicly recognized. First, I have known her now for close to 20 years. Uh she's a woman of enormous imaginative daring. You can't have something like this. No Somali government, no Somali embassy from 1960 to the present or Somali land or other areas of the Somali territories, Djibouti, other place, none have been able to put even two days of these kinds of conversations. Despite all the resources and all the authority and the facilities they have, one woman has done this.

[Applause]

It's an enormous feat of accomplishment that ought to be recognized and go into record all the time. That's what I mean by imaginative, daring. Second attribute of Ayan, hard work, tirelessness. I've watched her these last 15 years when I first met her and it is almost as if every year she's born again, born again and and going at it. So that level of energy and tirelessness is really quite uncommon. The third attribute of Ayan is that she has what I will call leaderly talents. That's to say she has capacities in terms of leadership that are very, very rare among the Somali people as I have come to know them in the last 40, 50 years. And then finally, there are more to it, but I won't go further than this. I have also known to be extremely resilient and patient, summer. Yeah. And those two are similar, but they are also different. Uh resilience and patience in a society that is terribly cursed by extraordinary sexism and male chauvinism. Somali society, one of its deepest problems is the relationship between men and women in terms of male chauvinism and sexist attitudes, crude sexist attitudes and she has resisted that and liberated herself. So this is a lesson for young Somali women who are uh in in the audience, dare to liberate. So much for I could say more, but I'll leave it at that. I want to also express our gratitude on behalf of Abdi, Dr. and Anna Lindley, whom I met through the scholarship when she was I think just finishing the PhD at the University of Oxford or just about finished the PhD and in fact in Bildhaan we published some of her early works. But uh she has been instrumental uh in helping us get this wonderful facility. So Anna, thank you very much. Uh but but so also as an institution, this is my I think either the third or the fourth time I've been here. Two of them or three of them in this very room years ago. Uh when the goose and was here as a professor, I am Louis was at the LSE and we were young growing up kind of assistant professors and arguing with the big you know kahunas in Somali studies. Uh so a very wonderful uh place and I'm grateful on behalf of Abdi for the institution to has offered up this facility and of course more than any other thing, you the audience. This is a Friday night. It's a time to put the tools down and begin to relax and for you to have decided that you want to spend your Friday evening to help us present this case uh is something that is noteworthy and we are very grateful. Grateful particularly when the topic is also perhaps one of the most perplexing developmental challenges in contemporary Africa.

Now uh a few brief remarks on scholarship and history and then I'll hand it over Abdi. We have divided the labor process. He's going to present the historical part and I will then con living in the world today which is now this hour and beyond into the future. So means of self-understanding. The third point I want to make is that the past. Yeah. The past speaks to the prevailing challenge of any society. Yeah. Yeah. The past speaks to the prevailing challenge. And if the Somali people want to understand themselves, they can't run away because there is no other place to go except first to dig the historical process and then link it uh to the to the present moment. Fourth point about scholarship and history is that ideas are usually powerful, most powerful during times of extraordinary rapid change and severe bewilderments. And there is nothing more bewildering and rapid change than what has been happening to the Somalis particularly in the last uh 35, 40 years if not a little longer. Let me then just conclude before I hand to Abdi. Two towering figures in the world of scholarship. Unfortunately, they are not Somali, but they belong to us too because scholarship is a universal citizenship. And one of them is a man who spent a lot of time in uh in the House of Commons long time ago but from Ireland I think originally and his name was Edmund Burke. And Burke says to us and I quote, "People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." Yeah. Ancestors, ancestors mean in the sense of what you have inherited from the world. People will not look forward. You can't build a future. He says in that sense, yeah, who never look back to their ancestors and a great deal of what Abdi would say speaks to to that even though it is much more perhaps contemporary. The second person is a Spanish philosopher who taught for a long time in one of the major universities in the United States at Harvard, philosopher. His name was George Santayana. And in this wonderful volume called The Life of Reason, he teaches us and he says and I quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. They kept repeating the mistakes." He says, "So I will stop here." Abdi therefore will take it from here and give us some compressed sense of the historical process and when he is done I will come back and then see if I can pick up the Leninist question about okay, this is what happened, what's to be done now. Over to you Abdi.

[Applause]

Thank you. Thank you all for coming. I won't repeat what Ahmed said about Ayan, but when I was growing up in a small village called Kabil in Northwest Somalia. I'm not Somali land. He's the Somali lander. I'm the Somali.

[Applause]

You know, people can be dis can disagree intellectually but still remain to be brothers and fellow citizens. We don't have to kill one another. Okay. And so when I was growing up in that village, as kids, you know, we were always hungry. When you are growing up in your late early years and then teens, you know, you want to eat all the time and there wasn't enough food all the time as in most parts of the country. And so we used to go to the dry river where there was sort of a wild fruits called gub or a gub. And so we'll we'll eat that go. But there was one tree which was taller than all the trees in the village and in the district for that matter. It was called wormal laier. Wormalier in English will mean sort of a javelin throwing. So the adults used to come to this place and to see who was the best javelin thrower if they can throw that javelin over the tree. In that sense, Ayan is warm thanks all among us and so we are exceptionally grateful to you. So let me move into the subject and I will be relatively brief. Most of the stuff will be on slides, you can partly read if you want to. How do people become a nation? Ayalada somebody say we are a nation, but how did we become one? Okay. There were no nation states in Africa. There were no nation states in the world at certain point and this have to be constructed. Okay. So for Somalis, tradition and language are the core ideas to the making of a nation. Tonight, I'm going to say yes, but no, they are not. If you go to Kenya, if you go to South Africa, people speak different languages and they have different cultures and so they happen to be a nation nonetheless. And so it's not culture and language. And you can look at the history of Europe and see the same thing. So it's not something peculiarly African. No, it's not. But scholars have thought about this idea and said differently. Two people I would like to quote very briefly tonight is Gellner, who says that nationalism invents nations. So it's not something that sits out there and you just be if you may. Okay. They invent like the locomotive was invented in what's now Great Britain. There was no locomotive before. There was no Great Britain before. So it had to be invented. And then Benedict Anderson, probably the leading scholar on nationalism, wrote a very famous book, probably the best cited book in the social sciences today. And he's not with us any longer. And he says that nations, nationalism invents nations. It's imagined community. So strangers actually can come together and create a nation. So you don't have to have the same culture. You don't have to have the same language. You don't have to have the same food types. You don't have to look like one another, but you can create a nation. Okay? And so in that regard then, how have people thought about Europe and the Americas as the inventors of nations, modern nation states versus the rest of the world, particularly Africa and Asia. So here in Europe, here in the United Kingdom, there's a group that rose to prominence called the bourgeoisie. Before the bourgeoisie, there was no United Kingdom. Okay? And there was no British citizenship period. And so these folks imagined and created new institutions and new communities in the form of political bonds, political ties. Okay. While in the Americas, there were Germans in North America, there were Dutch, New Amsterdam was New York, there were French, there were Spaniards, and so on and so forth. And so they didn't share culture. They didn't say a language, but a new group rose up in the Americas. White settlers, they were. And spearheaded a new identity in the form of common citizenship, chasing the king here out, if you like, popular sovereignty, democracy in that sense. Okay? And national flags. There were none before. Okay? You may want to remember somebody by the name Muhammad Awal Liban who invented the Somali flag. There was no Somali flag. He invented it. And now, as you will see in some of the pre-presentations I'll make, young kids in Mogadishu and young kids in Hargesa in the old days before the renegades ran away. Right?

[Laughter]

So but culture and language was not the driving force either in the Americas or in Europe for that matter. Okay. So something was happening beyond this. What about Africa and Asia? Most scholars in the western world who write about nationalism said very little about culture per se. Okay. But culture played a significant role in Africa and in Asia largely because these folks in Africa and Asia were dominated by Europeans. India was the jewel of the crown in the British Empire, if you like. So was America to some degree. Okay. So the main distinguishing feature between the Asians and the Africans and their imperial powers was their culture and language, of course, but also the power relationships and the domination that existed between them. So you put these two things together and it became like gunpowder for the Africans and the Asians. But the question therefore becomes, what role then in that culture in that societies do culture and language play, particularly culture, what role does it play? And so some folks will say, well, it's the thing. We're going to argue and we argue in this article that the role culture and language among other things play is contingent, not necessary. There are two relationships in the social science, necessary relationships and contingent relationships. If you want to be a professor, there must be a student. If you want to be a doctor, there must be a patient. If you want to be a wife, there must be a husband. If you want to be a master, there must be a subject. These are necessary relationships. One cannot exist without the other. Okay? And so what we say, this is contingent relationship, not necessary relationship in the making of nationalism and ultimately the nation state. So what we will suggest here is that the liberation movements in Africa and in Asia downplayed the cultural differences between the communities there that were part of a colony. There was no country before the colony. There was no India before the colony. There was the Mughal Empire. There was the Safavid Empire. There was the Ottoman Empire in the Muslim world. Okay. So but they downplayed that differences because the colonialists were using that and as an instrument to divide them. Okay. So that's the antithesis to that. And so in the African world, two kinds of groups will emerge abstractly for the time being. And one was what we call those national liberation fronts which were sort of a civic in orientation. And then there were those national liberation movements that were sectarian. So let me give you an example of this. The Inkatha Freedom Party of South Africa, Jacob, not Jacob Zuma, the Zulus, if you like. Although the majority of the Zulus actually voted for the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party under apartheid wanted to help the apartheidists create a South Africa that was a concoction of separate entities, cultural entities which will become a federal system like the ones the Somalis have, the 4.5. That's what they were getting at. Okay. There was Tshombe in Congo who was working with the Belgians in what's now the DRC and then in the Somali case, there was Hissein in the south of the country after the Second World War, particularly the 1950s. So the cultural role of culture in liberation and the post-colonial, and I will move here very fast. It's contingent as we said, okay? And consequently, if the liberation movements are civic in orientation, ethnicity, language become secondary. If the liberation movement is sectarian, ethnicity and language become central. Okay. So let's go to the Somali case with that framework in mind. Okay. Somalis inherited of Somali culture which was quote unquote all similar. They inherited that commonality. Okay. Unlike anywhere else in Africa. The Somali land, as I call it, was almost the size of contemporary South Africa today. So it was huge, as I will show it in a minute. But Somali Somalist literature, the literature on Somalia, particularly certainly in the English language, suggests that the Somali Republic was destroyed by traditional tribalism and I underscore traditional here, traditional tribalism. The question therefore for us in this article is, if that's the case, if that's tribalism, traditional tribalism, then why not Kenya? Kenya is more ethnically diverse, Tanzania is more ethnically diverse, South Africa is more ethnically diverse, Ethiopia is more ethnically diverse. Why didn't it happen there? Okay. So our thesis is that it's not cultural differences or linguistic differences, but it is the poor quality of political leadership in the post-colony that either builds countries to prosper or pushes them towards their demise. That's our thesis in the article. And here is what I will do very quickly. So what was the Somali culture that people inherited? Common language across the territory. Poetry is a key decentralized patriarchal system. Okay. And Islam came later on. That was the culture we are talking about. Okay. But there are two features in that culture that we would like to extract. One is the way in which that culture in an ecosystem, an environment that was sort of a quite precarious to this day, okay, people adapt to that. So a Somali child, for instance, came to know more than 300 different plant species, their danger, our value for people and beasts to subsist in that challenging environment, an important factor. Second is a code of conduct. And this I will come back to it later on at the end, code of conduct. You don't eat filth because you are hungry. It's a character code of conduct that can that land that tradition. This is what it looked like before the colonies came. Okay. The contrast is not quite good here, but you can see the map, right? Then there was the colonial encounter and I'm rushing through here quickly. The Ethiopians are coming, the British are coming, the Italians are coming, the French are coming. Nowhere else in Africa did these kind of divisions will take place along these lines. Nowhere else. This is what that land became. Here there were no borders. Okay. Here there are the French Somali land, Ethiopian Somali land, British Somali land, Italian Somali land, the Northern Province which was also British. Five different colonies became what was the land of the Somali before. So how did the Somali people as culture, not as a nation, react to this? How did they react to this imposition, if you like? And the first call, FA may like this. And the first call came from Jigjiga, not from not from Hargesa, not from Wer, not from Djibouti. And here's how a Somali poet at the tail end of the previous century, that's the 1800s, said, "The British, the Ethiopians, the Italians are squabbling. The country is snatched and divided by whoever is strong." Quoted in the pre-professor say Samatar in his 1982 book. That call, that plea from Jigjiga caught the ear of somebody who will become Sayyid Muhammad Abdallah Hassan. And the first war of liberation takes place in Jigjiga, not in Mogadishu, in Jigjiga, not in Djibouti, in Jigjiga, and not in Hargesa. Okay. And Muhammad Abdallah Hassan uses two variables to mobilize the population. Imagining a new society that did not exist before as an entity. Okay. One was of course Islam. Powerful religious man. He was an intellect. Even more importantly was his poetry. Nobody like him. Okay. At that point in time. So here's what he says. In the name of God, if you follow me, in the name of God, he didn't say in the name of Somali. Okay? In the name of God, he says, if you follow me with the help of God, I will deliver you from the Amhara, not from the British. Because the first war of liberation takes place in Jigjiga. Then there's a long resistance, the longest liberation war in Africa at that point in time from 19 from 1899 to 1920, 21 years until Muhammad Abdallah Hassan perished in E from malaria. Okay. He was defeated in the battlefield, but his spirit to the last day was not broken. Okay. His ideas, therefore, this is what his accomplishment. Remember, we are talking about imagined communities. His ideas were not a Somali Republic. It was not a Somali nation in the form of a state. It was Somalis free from foreign domination. Period. Okay. He wasn't thinking about nationalism yet. But he begins to sort of sow the seeds of what will become the nationalist movement. What did the colonialists then do? They used two groups of Somali, if you like, to manipulate them so that their authority as a colonizing powers would be legitimated. Pay attention to this because it's with us to this day. And the first group was the so-called traditional leaders, qabail, if you like it. Okay. I'm an MPF in Mogadishu and boy do I know this, okay? And Ahmed can speak about her, okay? Traditional leaders became paid agents of the colonial state, the cog in the colonial wheel, if you like. And the second group was a small in number, where some religious leaders became court judges, school teachers to give the colonial project a sort of, if you like, a cultural and Islamic hue to legitimate it. Okay. But with the perishing of Muhammad Abdallah Hassan for almost 20 years, two decades from 1920 to 19, almost to 1940, there was doldrums in the Somali world. There was no movement, resistance to the colonial project. Maybe in the form of silent resistance, but not certainly organized manner in that sense. But it was the Second World War that will create, if you like, the piston that will crack the Somali culture and begin to think of it, think of themselves as a nation, imagining, okay? It didn't exist before. And so it's after, during the war, as the Italian Somaliland was captured by the British, as British Somaliland was captured by the Italians, before the British came, those movements generated resistance in ways that Muhammad Abdallah Hassan and his colleagues did not think about at that point in time. So people will come together from all of the Somali colonies, for five colonies, to begin to agitate and they are looking at what's happening in the rest of the world. It's at this point that the birth of what's called Somali nationalism takes root. It's right here. Okay. Consequently, Mogadishu will become the hub because of the United Nations. So people will come from Diridawa and Jigjiga. There was SNF in Dawa. There were SNF in Jigjiga. There was SNL in Wer, there was SNL in Hargesa and in Bau and so on and so forth. NUSF, USP. Okay, I'm moving fast. I see. Okay. So two political factions after SNF and all of this thing happens in the 1950s. A section that is sectarian in orientation and says I want to be close to the British. I want to be close to the Italians and I want to be this and this and that. Self-gratifying for themselves and then dividing the nation as the British and the Italians and everybody else did. Okay. And then there is a civic group that says we are all together here and we want to imagine a new way of being Somali, a national Somali. But the Italians tried to create tribal provinces, just like they have tribal provinces in Somalia today. Okay. Abdallah writes about that at the United Nations. Okay. Liberation comes. This is what the map becomes. Think about the Somali Republic. The constitution says the first article of the Republican Constitution in 1966 says the following: Somalia is an independent and fully sovereign state. It's a representative democratic and unitary state. The Somali people are one and indivisible. So unlike Muhammad Abdallah Hassan which sort of germinated the seeds at the beginning, here we are talking about a national state, common citizenship and so on and so forth, what the American sort of liberation movement did, what the bourgeoisie did here. Okay. So a new imagination is coming to bear. Okay. Think about what this little boy is thinking about in Mogadishu even today. This is a very recent picture. What is he imagining? Who does he belong to? He doesn't have a tribal flag. He doesn't have a religious flag. He has a flag with a five-pointed star. Okay. Muhammad Awal Liban, the inventor. Okay. Then democracy happens in Somalia. And there are seven benchmarks and I will conclude in a minute. Yeah. Five minutes. That's great. Okay. You can read this. But there are two parts to this. When the country became a republic there and there was a new constitution, British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland come together. There was no negotiation, there was no hustling, there was no haggling. I want this, put this one in the constitution for me. It was everybody was willing to go along. They were new imagination. Okay. Unlike what's happening in the south today. Unlike what's happening in the north today. Okay. But it's really the middle of that period in the 1960s with the local government elections of 1963 and then the presidential elections of 1967 and then the parliamentary elections of 1969. That's when the fracturing begins to take place. The two factions of the elite that we were talking about begins to take place and then I have a document produced in 1969, early in 1969, from the Somali government where all quote unquote tribal leaders who were brought from all over the country. Okay. And they were told by the government, do our bidding in your communities, let your communities come together, your clans come together and vote as one for us. This is really the beginning of of the germination of the 4.5 formula was in 1969. Okay. Take note. And then of course, political tribalism begins to mushroom. Corruption begins to rupture which ultimately and unfortunately led to the demise and the killing of our president, Mr. Sharmarke, in 1969. The military takes over. You know that story, many of you. The turning point was really the Somali-Ethiopian war, tyranny and tribalization of the military itself. Muhammad Siyad Barre, the commanding general, told us in an interview in in Minneapolis about I don't know, 2004 or thereabouts. That's exactly what happened. He said the tribalization of the military and then counter forces who were tribalistic in nature, SNM, sort of SSDF, USC, they all begin to mushroom. It wasn't people who were saying we want to go and kill the Majerans. We want to go and kill the Islams. We want to go and kill this and that. Okay. It was cooked from the top, not from the bottom. So if it was cultural, it should have emanated from here. Okay. That's where the leadership question takes place. And then the of course, the demise we are aware of. So the engineering of the calamity from the top started in the demise of Hargesa. The killing of Hargesa and Burao, well, that's where it's where it began. Okay. The military disintegrates, of course, regimes collapse and the country falls apart. All of a sudden, we are in a new territory altogether. We are not in the territory where we were before the Brits and the Italians and everybody came. This is a new territory. Okay? And then the ARS crystallizes this, the ARS which we all celebrate and they did some good stuff, but it crystallizes the tribalization of culture and the politicization of the tribe, if you like. That's the grammar that now runs the show in Hargesa, that runs the show in Mogadishu and anywhere in between. Okay. So, how does this idea of 4.5 and this is my last sentence. How this idea of sort of a tribalized political organizations, how does it work? I'm a member of parliament. I'm giving you two examples that I have seen with my own eyes, present in parliament itself. Okay? And that's to say parliament, parliament has committees. The British parliament has committees. So if I want to be a parliamentary committee member of a parliamentary committee, I have to fit into the 4.5. Whatever has in terms of qualifications and wisdom are irrelevant. That's how the parliament works today. Totally irrelevant. You belong. If you are outside that, out, even if she's the most qualified person in the place.

Okay. Outside that.

Non-Somalis.

[Laughter]

So that that's one way it works. In other words, we don't share anything anymore. Everything is about dividing. What the nationalist movement did was bringing people together. Here it's dividing it. Okay. And then the other way is employment in government, in Mogadishu, in Galkayo, in Kismayo, in Baidoa, in Beledweyne, in Johar, anywhere else. And consequently, if you want to go and get employed in a government office, you have to have an Abaan, somebody who is your tribe who will take you by the hand and say, this is our, he should get our share, she should get our share. So the state itself becomes the victim. The state itself becomes the victim. And here we have ghettos. We don't have a nation anymore. We have ghettos. So the unmaking of the rise of the Somali nation, that's what we are talking about, the demise, the final state, the nation is almost dead. It's not dead, it's almost dead, whether it's in Hargesa or it's in Mogadishu. Okay? And so the question becomes, how can we both as scholars but also as citizens, how can we rejuvenate something that respects all of us? Ahmed may have something to say about that.

Thank you. Very good. Uh, thank you Abdi. Uh, just one quick announcement. If you are interested in following these things, academic things like this, uh, this is essay which is now done and ready to go, follows another one which we wrote maybe Jama has mentioned this about two years back. And the argument in that one was at the heart of the Somali demise, it's not just nationalism. It's a whole society really that has broken up into fragments. It's the loss of trust. A mutual trust, and you can't build anything. You can't build a household if there is no trust, let alone a large society of 20 million people. Uh, now this paper then is part of a book or series of essays that we hope uh will uh will come out in the near future. In that trust question, and you can, I brought some copies if you're interested in this. Uh, we examined four institutions: culture, religion, politics, and public institutions. And the argument is that in all four, the the actors in the drama, in culture, the actors in religion, were the actors in politics, the political class, and then the public institutions, the administrative structure of the state. All of them, trust has evaporated. So none of them really works in a way that will build those societies. Uh, for the first time in a long time, I'm going to read what we have written in very, and it's barely three, four pages, so we should be able to finish this quickly. So please, uh, maybe pay attention. Uh, the conclusion of the of the essay, it's a long essay, is that wretchedness and an effort to assuage it is the permanent drama that preoccupies most Somalis. I don't care where you are in among the Somali community since the destruction of the Somali institutions that Abdi has spoken about, the Somali demos has all the characteristics of in itself. Yeah, that Hegelian Marxist in itself, but hardly any necessary awakening for itself. In itself, like, can it speak for itself? It is already four decades since the fatal, the fatal decline and consequent evisceration of the dictatorship. In the moral of the repressive misrule of Muhammad Siyad Barre's regime, the elite has cooked depraved Somali habits grounded in personal self-aggrandizing and instrumentalist calculations were part of the spirit that Abdi's evidence speaks to, rather than seize opportunities to hold together in a mutually benefiting manner and the pursuit of their own interest, legitimate interest and the imperatives of national unity, institutional integrity and socioeconomic well-being. The Somali elites in all places, yeah, have transformed themselves into potentially what we call diseased political souls. The condition includes constant scheming to create discord. Thus exploiting one another's vulnerability has become the defining feature of the elite in the defunct republic. In such, if such is the main dialectic of experience, this question then arises. Can Somalis reinvent a common fidelity to a resurrective political community? Any genuine effort towards that goal would have to take intelligent cognizance of the unavoidable transition from from this moment to some other place. The transition, and no one speaks better to that than when a great social scientist who for some time was I think the director of the London School of Economics, German professor by the name of Ralf Dahrendorf, he offers a sober reflection on the making of a society and he writes and I quote, "The clock of transition, the clock of transition runs at three paces, three paces. The hour of the lawyer is the shortest. Legal challenges may be enacted in months. You can go to parliament and say, okay, we change this, vote, done. The the second one of the transition is the hour of the economist, and it's longer, a little bit longer. Why? Because dismantling and establishing functioning markets would sometimes take years. But the longest one, and this is the big one for us, I think, as Somalis, the longest one is the hour of the citizen, he says, that is to say, transforming ingrained habits, mental attitudes and cultural codes, value systems, pervasive discourses. This, he says, Dahrendorf, may take the hour of the citizen may take decades and presents the greatest challenge." End of quote. Now Somalis now then locked into this kind of a critical crisis. The question then is, is there any way in which they can pick up the pieces? If not this generation, the generations to come, pick up the pieces so that they're able to create an an agreement easily understood by the larger society, even in the face of various historical depredations. Our argument therefore is, and this is the concluding segment of the paper, is that of Somalia, three Somali words, and they are not just words, they are really concepts. Yeah. All concepts are words, but not all concepts, not all words are concepts. Yeah. All concepts are words. Yeah. Whether it's Somali or English or German or you know, Russian or so Arabic, all concepts are words, but not all words are concepts. The difference is that concepts, even though they are words, are pregnant with meaning, big time meaning. So three Somali concepts would have to be, because there are some places where they are useful, they have to be played down. Whether you are in Hargesa or or in Mogadishu, you have to break it down. What are those three? Aniga, me, anal, you can oversee the boundaries. Yeah. Others. Those three concepts would have to be dealt with, and they would have to be tamed and played as low and as infrequent as possible. I don't care whether you, I saw it in Hargesa and can write books on this and that. Those three will have to be dealt with. You're building economy and things like that. Yeah. It's just the language and this minimum consciousness would have to be dealt with. What, what's the change if this project is to create just civil discourses? Yeah. What would have to be done and some kind of a strong national solidarity? Let me just explain that a little bit. Yeah. As I said before, me first, it is most innocent. It's a legitimate up to a certain point, legitimate way to bring attention to oneself. In the Hegelian sense, anger can be invoked to get recognition of the individual as a citizen. In contemporary Somali society, however, the term has become emptied of its benign expression of selfhood. On the contrary, Aniga is now predominantly deployed to aggressively express a mixture of hard-edged egotistical self-promotion, particularly among men, greed, and public public destruction. In short, the customary wall separating anger as an appropriate term for marking rightful individualism. Yeah. From envy and shamelessness and narcissism. Yeah. This has that that boundary has now collapsed. Further, in the current milieu, the unfiltered ego is so rampant that it is full play preempts any serious conversation about civic connections. Aniga. If Aniga, if Aniga foregrounds the degenerative world of a fallen Somali individual, Aniga conveys the same impulse through group exclusiveness. Here there is a merging of self-seeking singularity and situational instrumentalist fraternity. Not even sisterhood, fraternity. Yeah. This is drastically different from the traditional folding of the individual into established kinship to kinship groups, different than that and that network. The first is a small-minded calculation seeking immediate advantage, temporarily linked to a group alliance for specific purposes. The latter, toll is locked into durable practices of cultural identity, social and social ethics governing the census communist.

Yeah. The census communist of the people of the place. An arrangement easily understood by the larger society, even in the face of various depredations of history. The cultural and political ruin that has resulted from the accumulated impact of aniga yaaga is further compounded by yet another schismatic concept, immediately suggestive of distancing. Othering sets a boundary between those who belong and those deemed as the other.

When I was a deputy member of parliament before Abdi arrived in Mogadishu, I had a long conversation with a group of people. Everybody who is not in the, the so-called big four, when you talk and said, why are these people? Yeah. So the concept did not convey only animosity towards those who were deemed outsiders, but it closes them in a different kind of identity politics. Yeah. But the current use of the concept is also laden with outright antipathy, and the primary aim of contemporary usage, however, is to intentionally harden the borderline between the group that is in and others who are outside. This is full of what I would call in the article, incendiary pathological permutations. A condition in which positive nationalism because not only Ethiopians, Kenyans, others in the neighboring area. Yeah.

So, we, the concept means therefore we. And contrary to the caustic propensities of aniga anaga, ina is a deeply endowed concept in Somali cultural practice, which would rekindle civic hearts and minds for redemptive ethos and action, different than aniga. Something that will overshadow that and drive the historical process into a different direction. And here it is very simple. If you think about Somali language, ina, which means we. Ina, that's the key. At least that's our argument. And it is best in naga. Yeah. Means Somalia's supreme national poet, Abdihan, a man from, we are very proud of him. Yeah. Repeatedly accentuated the lasting value of. He's talking to all Somalis, Ethiopians, Kenyans, others in the neighboring area. Yeah. So, we, the concept means therefore we. And contrary to the caustic propensities of aniga anaga, ina is a deeply inclusive and integral concept. It invokes and then interlaces those enabling attributes: equality, justice, civic bonding, and imaginative excellence. The confluence of these features, propagated by competent cadre of men and women, different than the people who are now at any kind of leadership in the country, whether it's in business or religion or in politics or other areas, tradition could offer a new covenant for restocking moral citizenship and efficacious public institutions.

As a matter of fact, the campaign for decolonization, which we tell in this earlier chapter, Abd has touched some of that today. The early years of the military regime, the military regime was us, not poisonous from day one. The first few years, maybe the first five, six, seven years, had some very serious, glorious things about it. The early years of the military regime. Yeah. And the first republic, 1966-67, Somalia created an enviable and unenviable reputation for dignified national purpose, civic solidarity, and optimism towards the future. Just listen to Timad, who was from Kabil. As we have already narrated, since those Hian years, a great political derruption, break, derruption, important concept has taken place. Few Somalis of age are totally innocent with regard to the fall from grace and the continuing collective economy. Such state of affairs has not escaped the notice of other fellow Africans. Quote, "Somalis have become the shame of Africa." End of quote. So sorrowfully proclaimed by President Museveni of Uganda over two decades ago, when he addressed a conference of Somalis in Eldoret in Kenya in 2003. Somalis have become the shame of Africa. To climb out of this abyss, then, concluding point now requires a collective and emphatic feat, even greater than the exertions towards decolonization. Thus, to summon the spirit and practical work inherent in the call for ina is a long overdue. And in this essay, this is what we are underscoring.

The concluding point then is to refer to one of the major scholars of the 19th century, whose work is extremely pertinent to this question now, for the Somali, Ernest Renan, the French writer and scholar and essayist. And he says this in a book, a big article, and then became part of a book called "What's a Nation?" He says this, Renan, and I quote: "The cult of ancestors is the most legitimate of all. Our ancestors have made us who we are. A heroic past, great men and women, glory. This is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea. To have common glories of the past, a common will in the present, to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more. These are the essential preconditions for being a people. A nation, therefore, is a vast solidarity. Renan continues, 'A vast solidarity constituted by the sentiments of sacrifices one has made and those one is yet prepared to make.' If he concludes, it presupposes a past. That's the nation. It is, however, summarized in the present by a tangible fact, that is consent, that clearly expressed desire to continue a common life." End of quote.

Now, after decades of pernicious and petty-mindedness that has resulted in the harrowing political decomposition among Somalis, what is commendable to have and right for us to undertake the essence of a viable society and practices is going to be the agenda for the future. This is a tall order for Somali people. It is more so for Somalis, particularly at this age, to win a different future. I conclude then, Somalis must defulgarize, underscore that word, defulgarize Somali culture itself. Yeah. Defulgarize it. Yeah. So that they are able to think anew in ways that are not inhibited by the burdens of a past that has been too onerous. Such monumental toil begins with genuine embrace of aniga, the common denominator of private and public idiom and interactions. Yeah. Inaga ina is a gateway to clearing the burdensome debris left by the catastrophe, engender a deep sense of abolition, and ushering new possibilities for social flourishing. Imaginative excellence, my friends, hard work, and hope reinforce each other. Thank you very much. Yes. So, we have uh 40 minutes exactly, um instead of 50 as we planned to have as a Q&A. So, be prepared for your hands up. Uh, but I want to abuse the microphone and take advantage to ask, to react on, and then ask a question that could be for both. Um, we started with the imagined community, and sometimes I think, and then this is what I was understanding from some parts of the presentation, even imagined the stories and build imagined. So if we really want a common, um, imagined community, imagined society, imagined nation, probably we need also to reflect it down and common shared and agreed imaginary stories. We might disagree on details. We may disagree on the issue of the union in the case of Somaliland and Somalia. We might disagree in detail. So one thing that came to my mind immediately is to reflect on if we are imagining this, if the shared stories also, you know, agreed on on topic. So my question is, if we started the idea of Somali nationalism prior to the colonial power and the beautiful big map that has been presented, why for some reason then we reduce it all the thing between Hargeisa and Mogadishu? And if you see your conversation, if examples that you are taking, is this not happening neither Hargeisa nor Mogadishu? So for me, if we were talking about Somali nationalism, where is Djibouti? Somali Djibouti people, where are the Jiga people to talk about Somali nationalism? And most importantly, where, where is Kenyan? So is there a kind of intellectual, vile intellectual fear to touch about beyond these two big parties of the Somali people? Or if the paper decided specifically to focus on, and then why in that case call to Somali national? I'm not calling Somalia and Somali. That's my question. And then what you answer, I will hand up your hand and... I thought maybe we collect few more, but let me take a step. The idea of imagined, the idea of imagined as the last two or three statements Ahmed made at the conclusion of the paper is that the national question does not emanate from the grassroots. I mean, that's the beginning of what I started with. It doesn't start from the grassroots. It's conjured, cultivated, invented, and then constructed by the elite. But that elite, there are two ways to think about the elite. One is to think of the elite as folks who are engaged in a zero-sum game. Zero-sum game. Let them go to hell. Okay? Or are they engaged in a positive-sum game? So whether it's in Hargeisa or in Mogadishu, the republic we were talking about, okay, because the national project led to the creation of the republic, the other three were still missing, okay? And so the question becomes, what screwed that royally? What screwed that? Was it the folks from Gibil and Hargeisa and Erigavo and Jalaqsi and Beledweyne and Burao and Kismayo who said, let's tear each other apart? Let me just answer that question very briefly. I did a bit of work in Johar just before the collapse in 1990, the spring of 1990. And then I did an earlier work when I was doing my PhD in Gabil, outside Gabil, talking to a farmer in Johar and a farmer in Gabil. It's the same question, and they virtually gave me the same answer, although they didn't know of one another. And they said, "Yeah, literally, I'll translate," said, "The folks, the big stomach folks in Mogadishu." And they were big stomachs, I'm telling you. With tiny legs, okay? They cooked the filth in Mogadishu and in Hargeisa. Okay? Primarily, they were talking about Mogadishu because Hargeisa was already devastated by that time. Okay? And then after they sort of indulging themselves, and that's why they become wanzies. Okay? Then they throw the leftover poison to us, and then through that, we get sick. So the imagined is the elite. Okay? If you go to Hargeisa, and I haven't been to Hargeisa because these two of them will put me in prison. Okay? You see, already it's, they have gerrymandered the thing. Two of them against me, right? This is the good old ways Somalis talk so generously. Is that whether it's in Hargeisa or in Mogadishu, the same types of folks are ensuring to, are making sure that ordinary people cannot talk about their common issues. If you go to Hargeisa, people want clean water. If you go to Mogadishu, they want the same thing. If you go to Hargeisa or Zeila or Borama or Las Anod, they want schools for the children. Okay? And that little boy in the streets of Hamar Weyne that was holding the flag, that is the image he wants to see reality across the landscape. And so if the elites want to use ordinary people as slaves, okay, and because ordinary people have been so devastated over the last 40 years through lack of education, through sectarianism, through the lack of ideas that will inspire them, inspire them. Okay? They have become the victims, and so has the state. So I still want the answer beyond Hargeisa. Okay. Okay. Good. And very important question. And I said, I think in an interview with some of the Somaliland journalists maybe five, six years ago, and it's been circulating recently. They went to the archives and brought it back. I don't know why, but it's circulating with relative to this question that Jama has posed. And I think there are two points to this. I was chairing, in fact, the group that were bent on replacing Sharif Ahmed as president of Somalia. I was chairing that group. Hassan Sheikh was my deputy. Yeah. And I remember saying to them in the conversation, they were about what they call the eight big kind of a group. Hassan, Farajo, myself, people like that, Bad, people like that. And I remember saying to them that when Hassan won the elections, we pulled our votes together so that Hassan will get the vote. After he became the, Hassan was the one with the largest vote, and he was my deputy. And I remember taking him out of the part of the school of school of taking folks from northern Kenya. Where are you folks from Djibouti? The Djiboutians were very quick in putting their own flag immediately, quickly, as in the late 1970s. And the same thing for the Son Vive folks, where are they? So my perspective on this, and I don't think Abd and I are different on this, is that the guilt is shared by all. It is shared by all. To this day, I remember when I was a member of parliament, I was one of the people I was chairing, in fact, the group that were bent on replacing Sharif Ahmed as president of Somalia. I was chairing that group. Hassan Sheikh was my deputy. Yeah. And I remember saying to them in the conversation, they were about what they call the eight big kind of a group. Hassan, Farajo, myself, people like that, Bad, people like that. And I remember saying to them that when Hassan won the elections, we pulled our votes together so that Hassan will get the vote. After he became the, Hassan was the one with the largest vote, and he was my deputy. And I remember taking him out of the part of the school of school, taking him out of the conference out at the back. We went to the back, that's just all of us. And I told him, and I said, "Listen, don't be a coward. Don't be a coward." Yeah. Oh my God. And then he said, "Oh, good. No, no, I won't. As soon as I get warm, we'll meet." So, we met. I'll make this quickly. Myself, all the other three are dead now. Dr. General Jama, and so, fourth person, Smile. These four of us, big names at that time in Mogadishu. They were bigger than I was, even though I was running for the office. As some of them were my teachers. We went to see him, Hassan. He's barely three or four days in office. We went to Villa Somali. We met him. We wrote one page note to him in Somali and in English, and then orally to deliver that. And what we suggested was, in order to get to this most important issue, nothing was most important than the fate of Somaliland. And that's why I went there to run for office, to hold this before it gets too late. And we said to him, "Hassan, list, and we'll bring you a list of seven or eight people that you can choose from, and the four of us will not be included. We will get that for you so that there's no self-interest." Second, I have that document. Create a panel group, maybe about 14, 13, 14, divided halfway between Somalilanders, people from the north, and the old southern part of the republic. Those two groups, and in fact, who are committed to the national union, but they are open-minded enough to listen to the story that is bubbling up in the north. Yeah. And they become somewhat judicious people to understand this and then bring it up. And he said, "Okay, I'll do it." He said, "President." Second time now. Never did. Never did. My point is on this issue, God has not given them the special instruction that they should be the ones who would always have to think about national union. Where are the others? And where is the elite in Mogadishu? And what is the reason why I left Mogadishu? Because there was nobody to talk to about these issues. Nobody. Okay. And I resigned. But there's a problem for Somalilanders too. And this is my final point on the question. And that is, right, two things. Two issues. And they carry those issues. It's like a big rock. They can't get up. One, a certain, I think, really bothersome of othering. The Somalis from the south, I said myself. So I feel part of the guilt. That's a problem because the people are not the elite, as Abdi has said so clearly. The people are the elite. They cry for this. The regular people. Yeah. A second issue for Somalilanders is that even though I agree with them that they should not be the sole people saddled with the responsibility of trying to keep up the flame of national unity, they should still play their role in this Maryland. Yeah. From Abdiman. Yeah. Muhammad Abdiman Ahmed Ali, all the way to my friend Abdiman. I'm sorry for those of you who are not speaking Somali, but I'll translate. Yeah. Who liberate themselves from this cave. Yeah. Darkness while protecting the welfare of the Somaliland people and their rightful cause. But at the same time, they are big enough to entertain the idea of revisiting the condition of the Somali people. I've spent many hours in Hargeisa every year, as my witness. Those are the two issues for them. But I want to repeat, Somalilanders are not the only ones who have been assigned the responsibility of revival of the Somali national project. And I think the big failure is on the south to a great extent, but equally important in Djibouti, in NFD, and in Zone 5. Well, I would have loved to be there today asking the question. So I don't want to abuse the microphone. Please hold on. Please hold on. I want to see the hands up. I will take three questions. Please questions, because if we don't have much time, number one, number two, number three. Two of them. Good. Yeah. Number one. Number two. Number three. Yeah. I follow territory. Territory of Djibouti is Somali. And the second question is, and the brothers remember the last time Mr. and dual polit and dual politics and monopolitics, which is the we and... Yeah, we do P and monopoly, monopoly and you, the is monopoly in Somaliland. Just to carry on on that conversation, why don't you and your brothers and help your kingship in Ethiopia, while other people are making empty lands as districts, and while Aub that used to govern from Aw Barre to Aisha is it still hasn't got anything? Thank you. Good. Number two, the question there, yes. My question is, yeah, my question is for you, Professor Ahmed. Um, the tribal political fragmentation is everywhere across the Somali-speaking communities. And I'm from Somaliland, and I can relate to so many of the points that you made. As a Somaliland, as a woman from Somaliland, um, we are always, in my opinion, treated as a second-class citizen in Somaliland because we are not part of the decision-making. I was supporting your political party, Hilah, and I thought it was one of the few political parties that could represent me. So my question for you is, how can we build a system which in Somaliland that favors and also include Somali women in Somaliland to be part of their system? Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. [Applause] My name is Dr. Surah Kasim Muhammad. It's such a pleasure to hear from the professors um on such an important topic. I'm really interested in the place that we began our conversation. I can try a little bit louder, but I'll try not to. Um, I'll try to begin the question where we, where you begin your talk, which is the question of the role of scholarship. As a researcher myself, I think a lot about the role of the Somali past in the mechanics of conflict and armed conflict, particularly. Sometimes I come to the conclusion that our problem is not actually not understanding our past, but too much past, a surfeit of memory, a surfeit of competing dialectics that become the terrain of contest upon which we wage other forms of war. So I wonder, as scholars, what you want us to do with the past, how you think that we should shape it, and what our role is. I feel that in many cases, the academy is not a particularly strong, doesn't give us a particularly strong set of tools in order to develop something like a Somali nationalism. So what's our role with history? [Applause] Go, go, go, go. The answer is will be also short. Yes. Okay. The map, I think I responded to that early on, so I won't belabor that. But this question of why don't you go to your part of the territories and help your people in Aw Barre? Okay. I'm going to be professorial in responding to this question. Okay. The assumption is that we are all equal. Yes, as human beings, we have been created or evolved, whatever you want to believe. Okay? So, everybody's an individual. Okay? So, the assumption the question makes is there is one way to think about your people. Who the hell are my people is the question. Okay? Is it my mother and father? Well, they so happen to come from two different genealogical groups. So, who the hell am I biologically? Who am I? My mother? Am I my father? So the poverty of that way of thinking about the identity of the human being is absolutely backward and irrelevant to challenging the quantity of the human being. Is absolutely backward and irrelevant to challenging the questions that are of concern to us. So, who am I? Am I from Gibil? Yes, I am from Gibil. Okay. But I'm also from Kismayo because I have a common agenda with the people of Kismayo, and I want to make sure that both the folks that he's talking about in Aw Barre or wherever else in the Somali region, okay, and the people of Kismayo, we did a survey in 2005, okay? We went to Garowe, we went to Kismayo, we went to Mogadishu. I couldn't go to Hargeisa because, you know, guys know, okay, right at the airport. I love the people of Hargeisa. I mean, I'm serious. I love them just like my kids. I love them. But so, and so we ask the question, ordinary people, not the politicians. So we said, if you are ill, seriously ill, I have two doctors that can treat you. One is a heart surgeon, or she's a heart surgeon. Which one do you want to treat you? Your kind, quote unquote? We don't want that. We want skilled people who can help us solve our problems. And therefore, the problems of the people of Kismayo, the people of Aw Barre, the people of Erigavo, the people of Erigavo, and the people of Galao, common people's problems are identical. And so that becomes the common base. We deal with the problems ordinary people are facing, and we build on the basis of that rather than think that's exactly what Ahmed is talking about. Nobody's talking about in so that's the first thing. This question about scholarship that the doctor talks about, I will disagree with you, my dear sister. And that's, in fact, the point Ahmed is is that we don't understand our past. We think we do. And then we were told to ask to write an essay when I was in high school in Amud, Somali National Public School, boarding school. Okay. And that question, we were the essay we were supposed to write was that little knowledge is dangerous. Write an essay on this. And so we wrote a two-page essay by hand in those days. And maybe we should be writing that essay, Somalis collectively. Okay. What do you know about your past besides being okay? Then you will figure out that we need to reinvent the past, not as we thought of it, but actually as what it was. If you want to start that, read my first book from 1989, which is primarily about the region they are calling Somaliland. [Applause] Okay, I will pass Ahmed to answer to that question. I think, and also maybe go back to Dr. comments. There are three points quickly that were raised by the questions. The midwa, the first question is gentleman sitting across the table, important question. And why don't you go to your part of the territories? He doesn't know. The campaign for Hilah began in Jigjiga, in Jigjiga. From then, let's make it blunt, that's what he means, with the help of this local community, they're including the leadership in the area. And I drove for the first time in my life. I have never been to that region from Jigjiga, then to Haro, and to I mean, there, all the way to Aw Barre at the end, and then crossing the border. And I was telling them about the possibility of an organization that is going to address the needs of that particular community in coalition with others in Somaliland, because the concern was over Somaliland, and that's where I am born. That's where my primary identity comes from. Somaliland. I went through that. Nobody has ever done that to this day. Campaign. I don't know where my brother was at that time. We had over 2,000 people crowding the biggest hall they can find in Aw Barre. Yeah. And all of them were primarily that that community. What I said in the campaign in Borama, in that big, big day of reckoning, I had no speech. He went off. I told them, sorry about this. I told the audience, would probably 100% were some folks kinship, not tribe, kinship, not clan. I told them, I said, "Some of you will remember that. Yeah. Vote for, and then we can make your legitimate concerns in front of the Somali people and in Hargeisa." I don't know what else I could do. Build a party, organize them, give them a message, so simple and so succinct. Just vote, and then we will have a place to bargain for. Yeah. Some of them did. Out of 190,000 people, 190,000 people, my brother, in the, and only 85,000 of them voted. The other 100,000 phantom. But it's a debate and responsibility. Still debate. I feel the same thing as he says, and it's the same concern. I for people in, I went to with other candidates, candidates. Yeah. Maybe 9:00, 4:00. I had, we had a big office with eight people working there at the heart of Las Anod. And I was walking through the streets of talking to the community. The responsibilities are everywhere, not just one community. The game is over on that issue. Second point about very important point about women's role, seriously important. At one level, in Muqdisho, if there are multiple contradictions in Somali society, maybe, and certainly in in in Somaliland, I have been there now for the last 12 years. I have watched it very, very closely. It is absolutely disgusting the place of women in Somaliland politics, society. 82 members of parliament, one. Yeah. Somali culture as a whole is extremely chauvinistic. Yeah. And sexist in a way that really makes you sick inside. In Somaliland, it is acute on top of that. Extremely acute. What what can be done? One of the reasons why we created was exactly to make that case public and debate it and push it through. And if we were elected in that election, yeah, the revisiting of the rights of Somaliland, Somaliland women in Somaliland. But that did not take place. You just keep, you know, carrying that boulder. You know that story of Sisyphus. Yeah. The myth of Sisyphus. You keep the boulder up. And then you pick it up again. The next group. The labor of Sisyphus is part of the curse of human historical living. But that issue is a final one. The academic question, and I agree with, I think sometimes young people, uh, the utility of scholarship, but that's all after just the utility. How do you use scholarship to live a life worth and better than the one you live? Double master, if it's real, and you have gone, you walk through fire, that's what it is. You walk through fire. I mean, scholarship is like walking through fire, and a long process of building. And I, if you're talking about uses of scholarship in this context, which is an important question, three things I would suggest. One, or the first, and that is the enlargement of the mind. The key to what we have become is what we went through, the experience of scholarship, the enlargement of the mind, civilized life. That's the basis for for it. Tell me. Yeah. That's why education and health are the two important things in the development of a society. If you have healthy people and who are educated, they can create miracles. I have never seen people in the world who are so sick at the large level and bad health. Yeah. And who are so ignorant, and they are top of the world. Never. But you can, I can give you examples if we had the time of people, very little natural resources. The Japanese are an example of this. They have no natural fishing and rice growing and few things like that. And they had the atomic bomb on them. The only country that will suffer this. And within less than 40 years, like this, they rose up and began to dominate the world. Japanese enlightenment of the mind. Two specific things. You learn some specific things. One, you know, learn about culture in a serious fashion, and then you'll find out what of it is beautiful and worth preserving for the journey of the future, and what of it needs to be. You, you, you leave that behind. Culture, knowledge about the culture that includes religion, that includes tradition, other things. You think you are Muslim, but they don't know. [Applause] Muslim, and then you begin to debate. And they culture the economy. Yeah. How it works and what it is. So, what that's a complicated, but it's not all sad, indecipherable to understand economic reality and economic life. Like India, you need to penetrate into that, particularly how to work and understand building a viable economy for a developing society at the margins of the international system or politics to a certain extent is about culture and politics. And politics. We are illiterate about this. Yeah. What is this politics? And I have spoken about this in other forums. And then the final, final point, which is increasingly beginning to press hard on the Somali territory, the whole of the Horn of Africa, that's the environment. The degradation of the environment may be the single biggest war that is going to engulf the Somalis. I mean, you can see the signs of this now, of its enormous catastrophe at the level of environmental decay and destruction. And the final point is organize. Organize. How to organize things. Organize. Organize. With that, and then there might be possible to break through into a new thinking and a new world. We will do another round. One more question. One more question. We will be doing what? We had uh, one more question. Three questions to take it. Please. Thank you so much for being here. It's honestly an honor to be in front of the both of you. I've read a lot of your work. Um, we've touched on the role of Somali women in moving forward. And I know that you've mentioned Somali women in Somaliland specifically, um, after the building of SIL, Somali women were very quickly forgotten about, despite the fact that they've put in so much effort, not just their dhab as was mentioned, but also their lives. Um, what would you say, because Somalia, we're everywhere now, what is the role of Somali women in the diaspora and Somali women back home in rebuilding, building, and what is their place like actively? What can we do? What are some, uh, uh, what can you, what do you suggest? My question is for Dr. Abdi, and it's very short. If you are invited to come back to Somaliland with welcome, without unconditional, would you come back? The second one question, that's enough. Okay. That's a big question, and I would love to. Yeah. So here, I'm sorry, James Frisia, I've got a question actually for both of you, if you don't mind. Um, it strikes me that you do have a bit of a common analysis in your criticism of elites, uh, and the anger concepts you've been developing. So my question is this, what positive trends do you see? I mean, you've painted a pretty bleak picture there. What positive trends do you see? And what role do you see for diaspora? Overlaps a bit with other questions, particularly youth in the diaspora, where I see now a shunning of any, any talk of clans on the one hand, and on the other hand, some people who really emphasize the clans, who have WhatsApps, who who talk violently about clans. Yeah. Good. So please, one minute to answer the questions. All right. And thank you. John, quickly. And thank you. I, you know, a different kind of a time and place to continue this debate. It's endless. Even if we solve these problems, there will be new problems. That's the nature of the human condition. But these are excellent questions. Diaspora role of Somali women in the diaspora, right? Uh, let me make it with enormous respect and care, but at the same time, a bit of bluntness. Romal, whether they are Somalilanders or from the rest of the old republic, other places. Yeah. [Music] Or it is an intentional project, and in some cases, it is, or it is an accidental history in monopolizing power by men, by men. It is very clear. The first, and thank you quickly. Thank you. I think, you know, a different kind of a time and place to continue this debate. It's endless. Or even if we solve these problems, there will be new problems. That's the nature of the human condition. But these are excellent questions. Diaspora role of Somali women in the diaspora, right? Uh, let me make it with enormous respect and care, but at the same time, a bit of bluntness. Romal, whether they have Somalilanders or from the rest of the old republic. But other places, women, or it is an intentional project, and in some cases, it is, or it is an accidental history in monopolizing power by men, by men. It is very clear. You would have to organize yourselves. Particularly young educated women like you, who are sitting around here. Organize yourselves. Yeah. And liberate yourselves from the shackles of theological and cultural traps. When you do that, and you move in that step, then you become engaged as citizens of a community. Yeah. And participate in the debates, and participate in the leadership, and on and on and on. I have to say this, this was Jama is witness to this. This we were tried to do at. It was the only organization among all the parties. Yeah. Including the current one sitting. Yeah. That had a vice party leader as a young woman, barely 30 years old, educated in Malaysia. Moni is her name. So the mother and people were wondering, what is this? Is trying to create the power is in your hands to a certain extent. You can fight with the men in that sense and push them back, as others have done in other parts of human history. And then secondly, you can get men who would be comrades in arms on this, and then reconstruct the project. That's what does. And Arlington, the role of the diaspora, which is a very big and important question, or it needs a seminar on its own. And the diaspora Somalis who belong to what I are defining as the disease that's killing the Somali people, their role is they don't have any role except redemption. That would be their role. Yeah. But those who are thinking about, or at least have open-mindedness about the some project of rebuilding of that part of the world, there's plenty for them to do. They would have more resources than the Somalis back home. We know that. Yeah. They would have more education than the Somali back home. We know that. Yeah. They would have greater experience of cosmopolitanism than those who are marooned in the Horn of Africa and in the Somali territories. So they can use all of this in many ways to help, health, you know, kind of ignite this new historical process. Yeah. That's what I will suggest. And then, in the end, like the woman, they will have to organize themselves. I don't know of any diasporic organization at all. Not just in the UK, in America, in Canada, large number of Somali, in Europe, in East Africa, I in some parts of East Asia, like Malaysia. I don't know of any Somali diasporic organization, seriously visible, whether they are young or old, that have a sense of national consciousness and in the process are activating themselves to push that into some agenda. I don't know of any, including here in the UK. Thank you so much, Abdi. Please direct answer to. I won't take the woman's question since he has answered everything except the question directly. You are invited to Somaliland. So, would you come on one condition? When it's liberated? What does that mean? What does liberation mean? Liberation means that Somalis in the old republic, we can disagree, but as Ahmed said, we, even if we are going to become 10 nations, we have to come to that on the basis of a conversation that's civil and peaceful. But let me tell you one thing, many of you may not know, the salary that I get from the Somali parliament, a substantial proportion of it goes to students in Somaliland, pay their fees, 50% women, 50% boys, and 50% girls. And also in the south. So when there's that kind of conversation, I don't have any animosity. I want Somalis to succeed. I speak for, quote unquote, the north when I'm in Mogadishu. Okay. So that's, so it's my home. The country is my home. Finally, the last question. Positive trends in the elite. I will slightly add a bit to Ahmed's answer on that. Somali educated classes, even in Europe and America, when they go back to Somalia, particularly when they go back to Mogadishu, they succumb to the same disease. So they have not been inoculated from that political tribalism that has destroyed the country. So it lives right here amidst you. So change your mindset and organize on the basis of commonalities. We can all be better off. Somalis seem to think about in the form of a zero-sum game. What happened to a positive-sum game? Okay. Finally, the last word. Yeah. Just want to take this minute for all of you for your patience, perseverance, to Ayan for her generosity of sort of dealing with a former Somalilander and then bringing him amongst your midst. But bless you all. We are grateful for your patience and respect and decency. May Allah bless you all. [Music]