Confessions of a Reformed Mooryaan*

“Mankind, even at its most depraved, retains a dogged, enduring nobility.” Leo Tolstoy.
***

Guled (not his real name) ** hangs at a Somali restaurant in a major advanced city in the West. He is in his early forties, short and thin. He has a walrus mustache and a clean-cut soft black hair. When he talks to others, his eyes move around as if he is afraid of an ambush. He talks slowly but confidently. At times, his hands flail like a teacher instructing his pupils, but he seems to be polite and courteous. At the restaurant, the customers come and go, and he greets some of them like he is their buddy, and at times, teases some of them for eating ravenously.

“Slow down, uncle, there is no famine here”, Guled jokes.


“I am harboring an awful secret,” he says matter-of-factly. “Can you believe that none of these men know that I was once a hard-core criminal, a Mooryaan”?

“Hey you pass the hot sauce,” he shouts at a man next to his table.

Guled, indeed, had once a life replete with debauchery and decadence.

He was born in the rural areas of Central Somalia in 1970. He was the only child, and was raised by his single mother. His mother, a homemaker, owned a herd of goats.

“I was a herdsman,” says Guled, “and as a child, I had never been to school”.

Guled herded goats from sunrise to sunset; keeping an eye on them and taking them to the well. By the time he came home in the evenings, he was exhausted. His family lived in huts, with no electricity and no running water.

“I miss the simple life I led as a young man,” he laments.

When Guled was 21 years old, his life took a dramatic turn. He became a gunslinger. He said that he was getting tired of the peripatetic life of a herdsman.

“I was looking ways to get out of the provinces,” Guled added, “and venture into Mogadishu”. To him, Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, was a place full of excitements; cars, tall buildings, good food, wealth, etc.

In the early 1990s, and at the peak of Somalia’s civil war, representatives of Warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid were roving in Central Somalia- near Dhusa Mareb- recruiting young people to join his United Somali Congress (USC) militia. Guled, who had a smattering knowledge of the use of AK-47, was thrilled, and immediately joined the militia. General Aidid was the warlord who became the object of an American hunt during the infamous incident of Black Hawk.

“The movie Black Hawk Down failed to capture how gallantly the Somalis fought, and repelled the American Rangers,” boasts Guled. “I felt proud to be Somali during those historic skirmishes”.

Contrary to popular belief, the Mooryaan do not get salaries from their warlords. They have to fetch for their own food and secure their housing. The gunslingers are, however, expected to avail themselves for battles, or manning the many illegal check points that had proliferated in Mogadishu in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Guled’s typical day, as a bandit, was spending hours chewing Kat, a stimulant drug commonly used in East Africa and Yemen, robbing innocent pedestrians and drivers that came through the various checkpoints he was stationed while in Mogadishu. At times, he joined combat warfare when his group attacked other militia groups to gain territorial edge. In essence, in the streets of Mogadishu, every day was a fight for survival.

Guled said that he had once overheard two Somalis in a restaurant in the West reminiscing about the good old day of Mogadishu. One of the men said that he had missed attending concerts in the Chinese-built Somali National Theatre. “I kept quiet and laughed because I was present when that historic theater was being stripped to the core by Mooryaan while I chewed Kat in one of the corners of the theater,” he said.

Guled’s life in Mogadishu in the 1990s was pregnant with danger. He stated that he was operating in a complicated and callous world. There were at least several times, he claims, that he had come close to losing his life when rival militia groups ambushed his gang.
“If you live by the gun,” Guled says, “you have to be ready to die by the gun.”

One day, something strange happened. Guled, surrounded by a galaxy of bandits, saw a group of Mooryaan trying to rape a Madhiban woman and her young daughter who were trying to cross a check-point. The Madhiban people are a minority clan in Somalia that has been historically discriminated against by other Somalis. The Mooryaan had already robbed the Madhiban family, and on top of that, they wanted to humiliate these poor women by physically assaulting them. Guled recounted, in a painful detail, how he had to intervene, in the nick of time, to save the women by firing shots at the bandits until they dispersed. He rescued the victims, gave them some money, and took them to safety. Guled’s own colleagues hurled curses at him for spoiling the party. Guled, apparently, had committed an egregious act for firing at a bunch of Mooryaan and, hence, endangering the lives of his compatriots, just to save some unrelated women. His Mooryaan companions were flummoxed, and had difficulty understanding Guled’s intrinsic motivation for saving the women. Guled says now that he himself did not know, at the time, what led to his “heroic act” in that memorable day.

In 1996, the murder of General Mohamed Farah Aidid seemed to presage the inevitable demise of Guled’s career as a Mooryaan. Guled admits that Mogadishu became awash with many gunslingers that were competing in a shrinking market. It became like a small pond, he admits, with lots of crocodiles. But his biggest reason of disenchantment with the Mooryaan was when a captain of his gang left one of his wounded colleagues behind. Guled felt powerless and, hence, became bitter. He became convinced that the same fate awaited him if he ever got injured. He never saw his colleague again.

Moreover, Guled’s longtime ambition of being a young man from the provinces determined to make his mark in Mogadishu did not come to fruition. Something started gnawing at him that his life of crime was becoming a dead-end. It was time for him to move on. He said that he was suffering from crisis of confidence, and that he was emotionally and psychologically spent due to the unending battles in the streets of Mogadishu. But he had no serviceable skills that did not entail the commission of crime. Furthermore, he was illiterate. But he became determined to change his life and rehabilitate himself. He left for Ethiopia, a neighboring country, to get away from his wretched environment and the bad company he had kept.

When Guled arrived in the Somali region of Ethiopia, he had no money and no place to stay. He had no choice but to ask strangers to give him food and shelter. A Somali man in the town of Jigjiga befriended him and, perhaps, gave him a lifetime advice. The man encouraged Guled to go to a literacy school and take every opportunity to get better. He took the advice to the heart and enrolled in an evening adult school in Jigjiga. That was the first time in his life, Guled grins with a smirk on his face, that he had started holding a pen, not a gun, and a book. Guled was excited with the beginning of a new chapter in his life.

After two years in Jigjiga, Guled became acclimated with his new life in Ethiopia. He was getting financial assistance from his relatives in Europe and North America, and was still enrolled in the adult literacy program.

One day in early 2000, while walking in a market in Jigjiga, he heard a muffled sound that was coming from a female walking behind him. Someone was calling his name. He looked behind his back and surprisingly saw the young Madhiban woman whom he had rescued in Mogadishu several years earlier. There was a sense of jubilation, Guled said, as the two greeted each other warmly. “Mariam” (not her real name) was shocked to find Guled in Jigjiga and asked him what he was doing there.

“I am in school”, Guled replied.

“What are you studying?”

Guled says that he felt a tinge of embarrassment, and told Mariam that he was actually studying the Somali language.

Mariam immediately realized that he was studying literacy because the two were already conversing in Somali, their native language, but instead, she offered gushing praise for Guled’s aptitude for learning. She was going back to where she came from in the West three days later and gave him money. The two exchanged contact information and went their separate ways.
Then, the phone calls between Guled and Mariam ensued. It became apparent that the two were gravitating to one another. After a few months, Guled says that the two fell in love.

Although Guled was called many things in his life, “romantic” was not one of them.
“I have never met a human being who is so caring and non-judgmental than Mariam”, Guled said. “She never said a word to me, or to anyone, that I was once a Mooryaan.”

Guled characterizes Mariam as a woman with sunny disposition who has been bent on promoting him, not demoting him.

But the couple’s courtship set a storm of protest from their respective families. Mariam’s family was concerned that their daughter, a naturalized citizen in a Western country, was being used by someone whom they wryly called “a loser” with no good future in sight. Guled was portrayed by Mariam’s family as a sycophant and an opportunist desperate to get out of Africa, by any means necessary, even if it meant latching himself onto a decent, hard-working single woman.

Guled’s family greeted his future plan of marrying a Madhiban woman with skepticism and hostility. He was urged to marry a woman from his own clan. Guled was not in the mood of listening to anybody whom he felt was intent on sabotaging his burgeoning relationship with Mariam.

“It took a lot of discipline to maintain calm,” states Guled.

Mariam, on her side, saw something in Guled that was promising. She believed that he was a changed man who was trying his best to ameliorate his condition. She sponsored him to join her in the West, and the couple got married. Upon arrival in the West, Mariam told Guled that she would work for their family for the first six months while he studied the local language. Guled did not waste time and started attending an adult school several hours a day. Then, he found a job which entailed to providing services to the public.

Guled and Mariam have been married for nine years and have six children.

“I am a blessed man,” beams Guled. “I am no longer clannish or thuggish”.

Guled’s children are still young and are, of course, oblivious to their father’s dangerous past. “Human beings do have capacity for change, if given an opportunity,” opines Guled. “I can’t stand those who give excuses or wallow in past grievances”.

Guled has given his wife credit for playing a crucial role in his dramatic transformation. He recounts a story he had heard about a young man running late for a job interview. On his way, he saw a woman standing in the street, during morning rush hour, and next to her idle car. The young man became ambivalent about proceeding for his job interview or stopping and helping the stranded woman. He did the latter knowing that he would be late for his appointment. The man changed the tire for the woman and she thanked him and left. The young man arrived for his appointment twenty minutes late, and was ushered in an office to see the personnel manager. He was shocked to see the very woman he had just helped ready to interview him. In short, the man got the job because the manager told him that he was a fine young man “who cared”.

“I feel that my wife gave me a second chance because she pumped vitality into my moribund life,” says Guled.” She has taught me humility, pride, and empathy.”

Notes

**Mooryaan is a Somali word which means an outlaw, a bandit in the service of a Somali warlord or for himself. The word can be singular or plural. The Mooryaan commit an assortment of crimes such as murder, rape, assault, burglary, road-blocking, and abusing drugs.

** This is a true story. The identity and the location of the Reformed Mooryaan are kept confidential.

The Children Are Not OK: Tragedy In Kentucky

There has been a recent spike of violence in the Somali Diaspora against Somali women.

On or about October 19, 2010, a Somali man allegedly killed his wife in Norway and then stuffed her body into the trunk of their car. The man proceeded to use the car for his daily errands, including driving their young sons, ages 5 and 4, to school. Four months later, when the car broke down, the Norwegian police discovered the frozen body of his wife.

In 2009, another Somali man, Mustafa Farah, 51, who was living in the United Kingdom, allegedly strangled his young bride, Naima Mohamed Moalim, 31, only three days after she had arrived from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to join him.

In 2009, In Kansas City, Missouri, Hussein A. Ahmed, 27, was charged with molesting his stepdaughter and then killing his wife, Halimo Ahmed, 49. Mr. Ahmed had married his late brother‘s wife and was raising his nephews and nieces. According to court documents, Ahmed allegedly started molesting his stepdaughter in 2004, when she was 12, and impregnated her by the time she was 14.

Each of these cases will be examined separately in future articles. In this piece, a grim tale of physical and psychological violence in Kentucky will be addressed.
***
It was Friday morning, October 6th, 2006, when Said Biyad, a Somali Bantu immigrant, walked into the Louisville Metro Police headquarters and calmly told homicide detectives, “I just killed my family”.

The family consisted of his estranged wife, Fatuma Amir, 29, and their four children; Sidi, age eight, Fatuma, age seven, Khadija, age four, and Goshany, who was only two years old. The wife survived but the children were found dead, their throats slashed with a hunting knife.

In a taped police interview that would later haunt him, Mr. Biyad, 42, provided a motive for the violence he had inflicted upon his family. He said that his wife had disrespected him. Mr. Biyad would later enter a plea of “not guilty” during his arraignment.

According to Louisville Police, the murders were the results of an argument between Biyad and his wife over the children. Biyad told the police that he had forced his wife to have sex with him, and then he hit her twice with a hammer. When his wife regained consciousness, Biyad approached her with a knife, but she managed to run to one of the bedrooms and lock the door. It was then that Biyad allegedly killed his four children; two were in bed and the other two were in the kitchen. Gail Norris, a deputy coroner with the Jefferson County Medical Examiner’s Office, declared that the Biyad children were stabbed to death and that the older ones showed defensive wounds on their hands and arms.

In broken English, Biyad told the police, “I cried and wash my hands in the kitchen. I said, ‘What am I doing?’ Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know.” He pleaded to the police, “please arrest me…It is not right, I did bad things. It’s not right.”

Louisville detectives initially thought that Biyad was crazy because of his calm admission of a graphic and grisly crime. At times, his account was incoherent due to a language barrier. A detective called dispatch and asked that a police unit go out and check the well-being of Biyad’s family and added “I am here with a guy….He is claiming that he killed his wife and kids, but it might, I think, it’s gonna be a CIT situation”. CIT refers to the police department’s crisis intervention unit which deals with the mentally ill. But when the patrol unit went to Fatuma Amir’s apartment, they found a blood path.

This case has been going on for more than four years. There have been numerous pretrial, competency, and status hearings, and one motion hearing. The trial has been continued numerous times. The latest delay came on January 27, when the trial was pushed back once again—from February 8 to April 18. The reason: Mr. Biyad’s “medical condition”.

Mental Competency

One of the main contentious issues of the Biyad case is his mental competency. Was Said Biyad insane when he allegedly committed such heinous crimes? Is he mentally fit to stand trial?
Biyad’s attorney has attempted to use the insanity defense but the prosecutors have argued otherwise.

So far, there are two conflicting assessments of Mr. Biyad’s mental competency. According to psychologist Greg Perri, Biyad, once a patient at Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center, had shown signs of irrationality and delusion but he later improved. There was a time, according to Dr. Perri, when Biyad refused to cooperate with the staff unless certain visitors, including his wife, were allowed to visit him. There were other times that Biyad said little or kept talking incessantly about issues that were not pertinent to the topic at hand. But as time went by, according to Dr. Perri, Biyad’s symptoms of delusion and irrationality began to fade away. Dr. Perri concluded that Biyad was mentally fit.

But Dr. Wayne Herner, a psychologist with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, had a

different assessment of Biyad. He saw signs of schizophrenia in Biyad. Dr. Herner argued that Biyad was delusional and barely scored above what is generally considered to be mentally disabled on a competency test. “He is a very disturbed individual,” said Dr. Herner. “I didn’t see any evidence that would lead me to believe he can make rational decisions.”

Among Biyad’s delusions are his belief that he is a multimillionaire and a man “with celebrity status” who is being chased by four men who want to kill him. Biyad also claimed, according to Dr. Herner’s court testimony, that his own attorney was a policeman who wanted to trick him. Another time, Biyad claimed that Arabs were trying to track him and kill him.

Judge James Shake has been assigned to hear his case and will issue a verdict. The Judge has already ruled twice that the defendant was competent to stand trial. That means Biyad knows the nature and object of the court proceedings and the potential penalties he faces if found guilty. Biyad has opted for a bench trial, which means Judge Shake will serve as both judge and jury.

Videotaped Statements

Another pertinent issue about the Biyad case is his initial interview with the police which was taped and presented to the court as evidence. Biyad’s lawyer filed a motion to suppress his client’s recorded confessions, and brought up the issue of the defendant’s limited knowledge of English, but to no avail.

To the government, Biyad‘s crime is an open and shut case; the defendant murdered his own children, raped his wife, and then assaulted her with a blunt object. Moreover, Biyad himself admitted the crime. While the government plans to present other evidence, Biyad’s own statements, which are damning and incriminating, will play a crucial role in his fate.

Death Penalty
The prosecutors of the Biyad case are asking for the death penalty if the defendant is found guilty. The charges against Biyad are murder, attempted murder, rape and assault. Not every murder case in Kentucky is eligible for the death penalty. It is only murders with aggravating circumstances that the death penalty is applied. In Biyad’s case, there are potentially two aggravating circumstances: the use of a weapon that could be hazardous to more than one person and the intentional murder of more than one person.

The United States is only one of several developed countries that have capital punishment (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea being the others). The American public has constantly supported capital punishment. In a poll by Gallop conducted in October 2009, 65 percent of Americans supported the death penalty for individuals convicted of murder, while 31 percent were against it, and 5 percent did not have an opinion.
In the State of Kentucky, there are already 39 inmates on the death row. About 30 of them are
Whites, 8 are Black, and 1 is Hispanic.

For Biyad’s case, the issue of death penalty and his mental competency, once again, will surface, if he is found guilty. Prosecutors offered Biyad a plea; plead guilty to murder and serve life without the possibility of parole. But Biyad rejected the offer.

Politics

To what extent does politics play in the Biyad case?

Judge Shake is an elected and experienced judicial officer. He was, until a year ago, the Chief Circuit Court of Jefferson County. He is very popular among Louisville lawyers who practice in the Jefferson County Courts. In a poll done by the Louisville Bar Association in May 2009, Judge Shake received the highest approval rating from lawyers—97 percent. It was, however, two points lower than the ranking he got in 2006. “I don’t know of an elected official who wouldn’t be thrilled with that kind of approval rating,” he told the Louisville Courier_Journal.

The role politics plays in judicial trials is often difficult to gauge. Judges like Shake, however, hold elected office. Two years ago, Shake narrowly lost a bid to become Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. His current position is up for re-election in 2014.

Remembering the Kids

The Somalis in Louisville and residents of that city were appalled by the killings of the Biyad children. Fatuma Amir, their mother, according to a community member and a friend of her family, was inconsolable.

Fatuma and her children had been living in Louisville since 2005 after she apparently left her husband under cloudy circumstances. She and Biyad came to the United States as refugees in 2004 and were settled in Portland, Oregon.

Said Biyad and his wife had a volatile relationship, and there is a case in Oregon of domestic violence referral. One day, according to public records, the couple had a verbal argument and the police were eventually called in and Fatuma was taken to the emergency room for drinking Bleach. It is not clear whether Said Biyad forced his wife to drink Bleach or what the circumstance was that led to her consumption of the chemical. Fatuma Amir decided to leave Oregon, along with her children, and settled in Louisville. Biyad stayed behind in Portland.

According to court documents, Biyad told the Louisville police that his wife had invited him several weeks before the murders to come to Kentucky so they could reconcile. Fatuma Amir was living in Iroquois Homes, a dangerous public housing project, in which many crimes take place. Iroquois Homes was once featured in the popular crime show, “The First 48 Hours”. The reconciliation apparently did not work as Biyad complained that he was treated with disrespect by his wife. There were instances where he was forced to sleep away from the apartment. The cause of the murders precipitated a deluge of rumors and gossip in the Somali community. The tricky thing about the couple’s union is parsing facts from fiction. According to court transcripts, the couple had disagreements about their children. Moreover, Biyad told the police that his wife had threatened to lock him up.

Goshany was a toddler and stayed home, and Khadija attended a preschool program at Dawson Orman Educational Center. Sidi and Fatuma were students at Stonestreet Elementary School. According to the school principal, Carol Bartlett, Sidi and Fatuma were “sweet, loving, precious children” and that they would be missed. When asked about the children’s academic performance, the principal said, “I could not have gone to another country and done as well as they did”.

Christopher 2X (that is his real name) is a well-known community activist in Louisville and is the Founder of FIGHT CRIME AGAINST CHILDREN Partnership. He has been concerned about the loss of the Biyad children and the lack of remorse on the part of Biyad. To Christopher, Biyad had confessed the crime to the police but now he is singing a different tune. Christopher 2X pointed out a statement made by Biyad in court denying the killings. Biyad, in that hearing, was flanked by two court interpreters, but he spoke in plain English and stated that he did not kill his children and that someone else committed the crime. “I loved my children,” Biyad added.

There was once an American Social Worker in California with long and varied experience in working with different refugee communities. She had travelled extensively in the world and found the Somalis to be highly unique. “What amazes me about Somalis,” she once told this writer, “is how every time I meet them, the first question they ask me is ‘how are the children’”. Unfortunately, for the Biyad family, the children are anything but all right.

TFG Leaders Abroad: Who Is Watching the House?

“What is the difference between a vulture and a TFG President?
A TFG President gets Frequent-Flier Mileage”. An Old ‘Amended’ Lawyer Joke
***
In the late 1970s, I was an independent student in Cairo preparing for the General Certificate Examination (GCE). I had a great deal of discretionary time and was fortunate enough to have landed a job with the Somali Airlines office in Egypt. One day, the prominent Somali radio broadcaster Yassin Haji Ismail, came to our office along with another man. I asked Mr. Ismail where he was headed. He told me that he and his colleague were the nucleus of a Somali delegation going to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, to attend a conference. I curiously asked him when such a gathering was supposed to commence. “Actually, the conference ended yesterday but we are going there any way,” replied Mr. Ismail. I was baffled by his nonchalant answer but kept quiet because, by this time, I had a fair idea what these government delegations were all about. I saw many government ministers going through Cairo at the time and doing anything but diligently representing their country. I knew of some ministers who were especially fond of belly dancers as well as Cairo’s burgeoning night life.

It was already embarrassing that Somalia had missed that Yugoslav conference but at least Mr. Ismail’s delegation was small and much less cumbersome.

In the span of one week in January 2011, the TFG President, Sheikh Sharif, Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed “Farmajo”, Speaker of the House Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, and several other ministers were out of Somalia at the same time. I kept wondering what was left of what was only last week characterized by the UN Special Envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Mahiga, as a “lean” and “technocratic” cabinet. These leaders’ trips covered at least four of the five continents. All these leaders, obviously, would justify their official visits, but I wonder who was actually watching the house during their absence.

President Sheikh Sharif, the Interior Minister, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and a number of parliamentarians arrived in Djibouti on January 16th. The presidential visit was described as a series of consultations with leaders of the host country as well as participating in the launching of police training for 500 Somali recruits that is currently being offered by AMISOM. Then on January 18th, Sheikh Sharif and his entourage left for Egypt to attend an Arab League conference that was supposed to discuss, among other things, the recent upheavals in Tunisia.

That same week, the Speaker of the parliament also attended a conference in the UAE for Muslim parliamentarians.

Perhaps, the most embarrassing conference was the one that took place in Oslo, Norway. Three separate Somali delegations went to that country to participate in a conference that was supposed to tackle Somalia’s security and humanitarian issues. First, the Somali Ambassador to EU and Italy, Nur Adde, and Mogadishu Mayor, Mohamoud Ahmed Nur “Tarzan”, came together; Then the TFG Foreign Minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar, came with his delegation, and finally Deputy Minister in the TFG Prime Minister’s Office, Sahro Mohamed Ali Samatar, came with her own delegation. The conference was organized by the Nordic Union of Somali Peace and Development organizations. All the guests were speaking on behalf of the TFG but each delegation was surprised to see the other. The Norwegian government officials must have been confused by the presence of these Somali officials in their midst.

Can anyone blame the TFG leaders for escaping the claustrophobic environment of Villa Somalia?

At least one TFG Minister, Dr. Abdinur Mohamed, was in Pakistan meeting with Somali students. The Education minister is an old buddy of mine and we both graduated from the same university in Ohio. Although I haven’t seen or talked to Dr. Abdinur since 1986, I wasn’t surprised that his mission to Pakistan seemed productive. Abdinur is a hardworking man with exceptional leadership qualities.

Prime Minister Farmajo went to the U.N, gave a speech there, had a break to visit his family in Buffalo, NY, and then left for Italy to attend a conference there.

Are all of these conferences important enough for such high-ranking Somali officials to attend?
For instance, the Arab League conference in Egypt was attended by a handful of head of states. Many countries were represented by foreign ministers.

I guess there are more questions than answers regarding this phenomenon of frequent-flier mileages.

Sheikh Sharif has more frequent-flier mileage in his two-year tenure as TFG President than Siad Barre had in 21 years of ruling Somalia. But then, Barre did not have to worry about a radical group gunning for him every time he left Villa Somalia. Barre rarely attended UN sessions, OAU gatherings, or Arab League conferences during his tenure.

I hope the TFG leaders will stay in Villa Somalia for the remaining seven months of their term and start working on some of the pressing issues that need to be tackled before launching another flurry of air travel; prompting screams of what Italians would say, “Chi sta badando la casa?” (Who is making sure that the house [is being watched]?).

What Do Somali Men Want?

In early January of this year, about 5,000 red-winged birds fell from the sky over a mile of land near Beebe, Arkansas (USA). The incident generated an intense speculation as to what led to the demise of these birds. Was it a disease that killed the birds? Were they poisoned? It became apparent, though not conclusively, that there was an odd explanation for the puzzle; noise. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Spokesman Keith Stephens stated that the birds, most likely, perished as a result of booming noise which could have startled them from their roost and caused them to die from stress.

In my informal talks with Somali men, the issue they complain the most has been what they call ‘too much noise’ emanating from their women. “Our women are boisterous” (Qaylo badan) some of the men quipped. The good news is that no Somali man is in imminent danger of perishing due to the alleged frothing and yelling of Somali women.

This article is in response to my colleague Fathia Absie’s well-articulated and thought-provoking piece, “Enchanting and Reminiscing” that appeared in Wardheernews.com in December 2010. Ms. Absie, in a trip to Ottawa, had the opportunity to get together with ten smart, hard-working, and sensitive women. Among the issues that the group informally discussed was the absence of men in these women’s lives, and to the surprise of Ms. Absie, the women were not married. When she inquired about the absence of men in their lives, the women gave her a litany of legitimate grievances; from dashed hopes, shirking responsibilities, unmet expectations to tendencies to marry young women in Africa. I wanted to know what some of the Somali men were actually complaining about regarding Somali women. I am not here to speak on behalf of Somali men but instead I would like to share with the readers some of the issues that Somali men were talking about.

Four issues have transformed the relationship between Somali men and women. They are, a) modernization, b) civil war, c) exposure to Western societies, and d) the rise of religiosity. The Somali civil war had incalculable psychological effect on many Somalis because it led to traumatic events such as experiencing violence, displacement, and undue trauma. The war disrupted not only the economic power of the country but also the family unit as it led to separation of spouses, loss of spouses, and chronic unemployment.

The arrival of Somali families into Western communities as refugees undermined the traditional role of men being providers to their families. For instance, the American welfare system is set up in a way that empowers women, in the name of protecting the children, but at the same time it indirectly makes husbands irrelevant. The welfare checks are given to the wives and, if husbands want to leave the household, then the better. Why there are so many single mothers on public assistance is a question that can partially be attributed to the diminishing role of husbands and lack of employment opportunities.

Then, there is the element of the rise of religiosity among many Somalis. Many Somali males, unfortunately, have abused the practice of polygamy. Many men have taken multiple wives when they are not in a financial position to even take care of one soul. In certain cases, the wife and the children are sent away to Cairo or Damascus and the husband stays behind in Europe or North America to foot the bill. There was a case of one man who took his family to Cairo, but instead of returning to the USA directly, he stopped by in Syria and got married. Furthermore, the man ceased sending money to his family in Egypt until the wife’s family had to send her, and her children, one-way tickets back to the States. Upon her return, the woman found out that her husband was furious and that he started the process of divorcing her because she had “disobeyed” him and left her “post” without his permission.
***
At the risk of oversimplification, Somali men want what Somali women crave for; Love, trust, respect, and emotional support. In addition, Somali men may want to be recognized as the head of their families. Men feel that their role as the sole breadwinner has eroded and, with that, they lost respect from their women. Contrary to popular books that men and women are entirely different (i.e. John Gray’s famous book, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus), the two sexes, though they may differ in gender, are not from different species. Dr. Christopher Balzina, in his book, The Secret Lives of Men, reiterates that when all is said and done, men, like all humans, want love and emotional closeness. In a Gallup poll commissioned in 2001 by Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project in Piscataway, New Jersey, the majority of the respondents said that they wanted a “psychological companion- someone who shares their aspirations and fits into their life in a spiritual way”. According to the head of the project, “they [respondents] are not just looking for someone to chan ge diapers and do dishes. They want a soul mate”.

Perhaps, Dr. Laura Schlesinger, an American psychologist and a talk show host, has been a vocal critic of the disintegration of families. In her controversial book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands (2004), Dr. Laura, as she is commonly referred to, lashes at women who fail to grasp the essence of men. To her, there is no complexity involved in what is generically called “men”. She says, “Your basic male is a decent creature with simple desires: to be his wife’s hero, to be his wife’s dream lover, to be the protector and provider for his family, to be respected, admired, and appreciated. Men live to make their women happy”. Dr. Laura advises women not to harangue or mother their husbands because “if a man can’t find peace in his own home, where he should be able to feel relaxed, accepted, loved, and content, he brings hate coming home”. In other words, the more a woman avoids “tearing down a husband’s necessary sense of strength and importance” the better she gets a harmonious marriage. Women have the real power in marriage and can make their husbands happy or miserable depending on the way they dispense-or deprive-what men simply want; acceptance, approval and appreciation.

Many men would find Dr. Laura Schlesinger’s caricature of men as too simplistic. But one writer took upon herself to train her American husband who was annoying her by his disorganization and the way he hovered around her talking about various topics while she cooked, leaving dirty socks and used tissues on the floor, and constantly losing his keys. Amy Sutherland’s piece “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage” in The New York Times (June 26, 2006) –later published as a book-was an attempt to improve her relationship with her husband. “I wanted-needed- to nudge him closer to perfect, to make him into a mate who might annoy me a little less, who wouldn’t keep me waiting at restaurants, a mate who would be easier to love”, she said. The writer was writing a book about the techniques animal trainers use to make, for instance, dolphins flip or elephants paint. It is a simple strategy: you reward good behavior and ignore the bad one, and the writer found out that “the same goes for the American husband”. Ms. Sutherland realized that animals do tricks not because trainers nag at them but because they are rewarded. Trainers use what is called “less reinforcing syndrome” (L.R.S). When, for example, a dolphin does something wrong, the trainer does not respond in any way; avoids eye contact, and then goes back to work. The idea is, according to Sutherland, “any response, positive or negative, fuels a behavior. If a behavior provokes no response, it typically dies away”.

The techniques helped Ms. Sutherland improve her marriage. If her husband lost his keys and bugged her about finding them, she would simply ignore and would keep doing what she was doing. Instead of allowing her husband to crowd her in the kitchen when she was cooking, she would either ask him to help her cut some of the vegetables or give him a bowl of snack far away from the kitchen so he could munch. But who said men are simple creatures. One day, Ms. Sutherland came home after a visit from her dentist. She was edgy and kept complaining incessantly about her excruciating pain, but her husband was calm and listened to her without uttering a word. Then she realized that her husband was giving her L.R.S silence and was, in fact, training “the American wife”.
***
Somali men have mostly complained about the following issues;

1. Yelling. There is a perception among some of the Somali men that Somali women shout a lot. Of course, Somali men have difficulty asking why women yell at them in the first place.

2. Lack of respect. Somali men also mention that they do not get much respect from their

women. The men want to be recognized and treated as the head of their household. In the West, that has been an issue for many women. Some women want that responsibility for themselves whereas others want to equally share responsibilities by having collective leadership.

3. Weddings. I have heard numerous men complain about their women going to weddings. Most of the complaints are about the frequency of these weddings and the lateness they are concluded. But one man told me that he hated his wife going to weddings because “she always dresses nicely for weddings and never for me”.

4. Police. Some women are fast to call on the authorities or throw their husbands out of their homes over arguments. It is great that women have the law on their side but some women go overboard and abuse the system. What is odd is that 90% of the times, the women take back their husbands. I saw a Somali man who was brought to court on domestic violence charge but it turned out that his wife was upset because she thought the man was headed to Africa, not to visit his mother, but to get married.

5. Home Meal Cooking. Some men have brought the issue of home meal cooking because apparently they neither get it nor do they know themselves how to cook. What is strange is that many Somali men are spending a great deal of money dining out without the company of their families, day in and day out. One Somali restaurant owner bragged that most of his patrons were, in fact, married men.

6. Lack of Quality Time for Couples. Some men told me that their wives were so busy with the children and household chores that they were too exhausted to spend quality time with them. One man who went to Africa and got married to a ‘young’ girl allegedly claimed that his wife had lost interest in intimacy.

Some Somali women have given up on Somali men. One woman told me a crude joke;
“What is the difference between Somali men and U.S. Savings Bonds?”
“The bonds mature!”

But there are others who still have faith in Somali men despite the disappointments. A female friend aptly summarized the whole issue of Somali men’s complaints as the following,”; Men want to lead us without being the breadwinners; they want us to respect them and be “Raalliyooyin” (proper traditional wives) yet they do not show us any respect; they do not want to help us with the household chores, and men want their children to listen to them when they do not spend time with them; they have all the time for their friends discussing politics at cafes and no time whatsoever for their wives and children”.

Somalia's Islamic Groups: Assets or Liabilities?

“When an elephant is down, even the frog will kick him.” An Indian Proverb.
***
In Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s Wars, there is a story cursorily mentioned about a group of Somali militants who were planning to disrupt Obama’s inauguration through use of explosives. There was “a credible intelligence” about the plot to the extent that the White House had “a contingency plans to cancel the inauguration”. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, is quoted as saying, “We might have to shut this down. We would have to be prepared for that”.

There is no explanation in the book as to why Somali militants would attack the inauguration proceedings of the incoming American president especially when they had not been able to dislodge a weak TFG entity in their very own capital of Mogadishu? There has never been an incident in American in which a presidential inauguration was disrupted. Nevertheless, the people in the White House were not taking a chance about the impending Somali terrorist attack. No one should be surprised when it comes to the chronic failures of America’s intelligence community. It was only a month ago when a story was uncovered about a petty shopkeeper in Quetta, Pakistan, who had deceived the CIA, the Pentagon, Britain’s MI6, and the Afghan government by posing himself as a top Taliban leader. The man was given thousands of dollars and he even met Afghan president Hamid Karzai. The latest episode of intelligence meltdown is the Wikileaks conundrum. An army private, Bradley Manning, who was stationed in Iraq, found, downloaded, and copied hundred thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and gave them to Wikileak group. It is mind-boggling that a petty soldier such as Manning had access to such classified information and would cause diplomatic nightmare for the USA across the globe. To add insult to injury, the United States government spends $53 billion dollars a year on intelligence. Someone must have fed these poor American intelligence officers the wrong information about the alleged Somali militants’ long arm reach.

Yet, such has been the case of Somalis for the last two decades. The country has become the boogeyman for all sorts of characters. It wasn’t very long ago when Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh told a visiting American delegation, “If you don’t help, this country [Yemen] will become worse than Somalia”. It takes the head of one failed state to recognize another failed-state.

Somalia has not made things any easier for itself. The country has made conflict an art form; no effective central government for the past 20 years, experienced tortuous civil war, sustained forced and voluntary mass exodus, watched part of its territory secede, tarred by brutal religious extremism, invaded by a neighboring country all the way to its capital, and still dabbles with rampant international piracy?

Why is the conflict in Somalia dragging for so long? What are the factors that make peace in Somalia difficult to attain? Why did all the twenty attempts of reconciliation conferences fail? Is Somalia a terror-riddled country? What are the Islamic Groups that are contending for power? Why has the United States’ role in Somalia been pockmarked with failures? What needs to be done to save Somalia from itself? These are questions that the three books discussed here have raised. The focus in this article will be on the Islamic groups that comprise the lion’s share of these books.
***

Books Discussed In This Article
Afyare Abdi Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam, and Peacebuilding, London: Pluto Press, 2010.
Shaul Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2011. Bronwyn Bruton, Somalia: A New Approach. New York, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 52, 2010.
***
Afyare’s book, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration, is unique because the author provides a new perspective on the Somali quagmire. He brings the Islamists’ viewpoint in the current state of affairs. In the book’s introduction, Afyare makes no qualms whatsoever of placing himself in the research that he has done. He was influenced by two heavyweights in Somalia’s cultural and religious spheres; Poet Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame ‘Hadrawi’ (Habar Jeclo), and Sheikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan (Hawadle). Hadrawi was, and still is, a cultural icon whose resistance to Siad Barre’s regime landed him in prison. Afyare was influenced by Hadrawi’s poems and the poet’s deep commitments to peace, justice, equality, non-violence, and the preservation of the Somali people’s culture. Hadrawi has blamed what he calls “Western colonialism” for causing “all the social ills” that Somalis are suffering from today.

As for Afyare’s religious influence, it was that of late Sheikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan whose name is not as well-known as Hadrawi’s but whom still had immense influence over many Islamists. Sheikh M. Moalim Hassan was undoubtedly the father of Islamic revivalism in Southern Somalia. He was pivotal in planting the seeds for Somalia’s religio-political movement, before he got arrested in 1975 and then languished in prison for many years thereafter. Afyare, though not a student of Sheikh Mohamed Moallin in the 1970s, was indirectly influenced by the Sheikh through the latter’s disciples.

For starters, Sheikh Mohamed Moalin was a graduate student at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in the 1960s when president Jamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt was cracking down the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon). When Sheikh Moalim returned to Somalia, he began his famous Tafseer sessions in Abdulkhadir Mosque, better known as Maqaam, in Mogadishu. His students were mostly young and impressionable youth who imbibed his new approach of presenting Islam as a way of life. The predominant mode of thinking at the time was the traditional way Somalis view religion; as a sphere for wadaads (clerics) who do marriages, divorces, healings, etc. Sheikh Moalim was instrumental in showing his students the relevance of Islam as a spiritual, political, social, and economic force. That in itself was quite revolutionary.

The million dollar question is what the fate of the Islamic revivalism would have been had Sheikh Mohamed Moallim not been arrested in 1975 at the time when the young Islamists’ student movement, al- “Al-Ahli”, was gaining momentum The movement was led by Abdulkhadir Sheik Mohamoud (Lel-Kase). Within three years of the Sheikh’s incarceration, the young Islamic movement splintered into two groups. (Afyare is wrong when he says that the two groups were Jama’a Islamiya and Islah). In actuality, the two groups were ‘Takfir Wal-Hijra’, led by Abdulkhadir Sheikh Mohamoud, who at the time was in exile in Makkah, and Jama’ Islamiyah. Mohamoud Isse (Abgaal) was the leader of the Jama’ movement, and it attracted many followers and harnessed new allies. The Wuhdatul Shabab group from the North merged with Jama’ Islamiyah and the union morphed into what became the largest Islamic group in Somalia. The name of the organization became Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI) under the leadership of Sheikh Ali Ismail Warsame (Habar Jeclo).

Afyare’s discussion of the Islamic movements is refreshing and perhaps it is arguably the best part of the book. But his treatment of these groups with kid-gloves exposes the very problem of the researcher being a part of the research. In his book, Afyare argues that Islamists have a national agenda and that they should be included in the peace process. While there is nothing wrong with that view, there is nowhere in the book when one will encounter any kind of critical portrait of the Islamists; past and present. If you want to know how AIAI managed in the Northeast between March 1991 and June 1992, or Luuq afterwards, or how the Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam have been running the areas they control in Somali South, then you will be disappointed. In passing, Afyare states that AIAI was well-loved by the populace in the Northeast until a certain figure named Abdullahi Yusuf (Majertein) organized a revolt against them by portraying the militants as Hawiye invaders. Afyare’s one-sided analysis of the Islamists, as choir boys, raises questions of his impartiality as a scholar. Here are some of the issues that Afyare discusses that are worth-mentioning;

1. Afyare’s discussion of Islah organization is an attempt to rewrite history. Islah is the branch of the International Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia. There are two types of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Somalia; the local Ikhwan and the International Ikhwan. While to the layperson all Islamists are “Ikhwan”, these groups in fact come in incalculable varieties and see themselves as distinct ideological groupings. The Islah organization is the branch of Muslim Brotherhood that is a member of the International Muslim Brothers which is based in Cairo. Islah was founded in Saudi Arabia in 1978 by five Somali immigrants/students in the Kingdom. They were Sheikh Mohamed Garyare (Sheekhaal), Ali Sheikh Ahmed (Sheekhaal), Mohamed Yusuf Hassan (Sheekhaal), Abdalla M. Abdalla (Reer Aw-Hassan), and Ahmed Rashid “Hanafi” (Hawadle). The local Ikhwan group is the Tajamuc which at times is referred as “Ala Sheikh” as of Sheikh Mohamed Moallin Hassan. The two groups have a common ideology but, for a while, they also had a common antipathy to one another. Many years ago, one of the founders of Islah told me a preposterous story that Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, who at the time was a political prisoner, was in fact a paid informant for Siad Barre’s government. These days the two groups have established a modicum of cooperation. The Islah group is not a mass movement and the Tajamuc followers are numerically insignificant. The Tajamuc members are likely to align themselves with various Islamic groups but the Islah, which not long ago, was officially known as “Al-Harakah al-Islamiyyah” (The Islamic Movement) has generally eschewed in entangling with political alliances. What Afyare does not challenge is the notion that there was an organized International Brotherhood (Islah) presence in Somalia before the 80s. There was none. The difference between Sheikh Mohamed Moallin and Sheikh Mohamed Garyare was the fact that Sheikh Moallin was very involved, on the grass-roots level, with the youth; both guiding them and critiquing them. Sheikh Garyare, a highly-respected religious figure, was more or less a loner who did not hold religious circles like Sheikh Moallin and Sheikh Ibrahim Suuley (Dir). The Islah group, however, has been very active in the relief and educational sectors and was instrumental in founding and running Mogadishu University campuses, both in the capital and in Bossasso. The movement is seen by some as an elitist group. According to a Crisis Group Report, “Somalia’s Islamists”, _“Al-Islah organization is dominated by highly educated urban elite whose professional, middle class status and expatriate experiences are alien to most Somalis.” Other than succeeding in recruiting former TFG president, Abdiqassim Salat Hassan, the Islah can now boast of having several cabinet ministers in Farmajo’s TFG government. Islah is a moderate Islamic group compared to the Jihadist groups like AIAI, al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam. But its secretive nature and ties to an 82-year old anti-democratic International organization might be problematic. (For two contrasting views on The Muslim Brothers see, The Muslim Brotherhood: Burden of Tradition, by Alison Pargeter and, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, by Lorenzo Vidino. Ms. Pargeter, the optimist of the two writers, urges the West to engage in a dialogue with this major movement whereas Vidino of the Rand Corporation sees the Brotherhood as wolves in sheep’s cloths because the movement shares ideas with the very militant groups such as al-Qaeda that the West is fighting against). Given the high level educational background of Islah leaders, the movement has yet to share with the Somali populace what its national program is. It is easy to say, “Islam is the Solution”; a true and noble proclamation. But that slogan does not help one to run a country. In fact, all the Islamic groups in Somalia lack a national program to lead the country out of its abyss. After all, according to Afyare, the Islamists would inevitably rule Somalia.

2. Afyare also sees the now defunct Al-Ittihad Al-Islami as a major Islamic movement that was very popular when it briefly controlled Luuq and Bossasso before the group was defeated by Somali militias such as Somali National Front (Marehan) and Somali Salvation Democratic Front (Majertein), respectively. He argues that the AIAI brought safety and corruption-less rule. There is an anecdote of a young witness testifying in court. The judge asks him what would happen to him if he lied. The Witness says,”Yes, I will go to hell”. Then the Judge asks, “What else?” The witness gets irritated and screams, “Isn’t that enough?!” The question for Afyare is; “What else”? What else did the Islamists do in Luuq and Bossasso other than bring law and order? Perhaps, repression, intolerance, and blatant invasion of people’s privacy. In other words, they brought a world where fear and humiliation became the norm and not the exception. Joseph Stalin ran a complex super power regime by imposing discipline and order but he killed millions and led by reign of terror. The AIAI was welcomed by the Northeastern people with open arms and without residual animosity or ill-feelings regarding their clan makeup. But it did not take long before the AIAI alienated the very people that had received them. It is amazing how many Muslims initially welcome Islamic groups without prejudice and how many of these groups fail to capitalize on the goodwill because they lack the basic political awareness to function properly. The Salafis and the Ikhwan unfortunately share this phenomenon. For instance, Hamas which is a Muslim Brotherhood entity that controls the lives of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza without any challenge from other Palestinian groups yet it has shown the world how a repressive one-party regime truly works. Yes, there is an economic blockade on Gaza but the militant group missed an opportunity of sharing power with other segments of the society by suppressing freedom of speech and gathering. The Sudanese Brothers under Hassan Turabi did the same after 1989. In fairness, in 1997 the AIAI leaders realized their own disastrous actions and opted for disbanding their organization.

3. Afyare ably identifies the important roles of clan identity and Islamic identity among the Somalis. Islam serves Somalis as a unifying force and a rallying point when there is an external threat. Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan used Islam to fight against British colonialists, and even the leaders of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) used Islamic slogans against the invading Ethiopians. The problem is that clan identity and Islamic identity can be fluid and at times it might be difficult to an Islamist, or unpredictable, as which one will emerge the most dominant. During the AIAI battle with Mohamed Farah Aidid, the leaders of that multi-clan organization were reported being divided along clan lines. One former AIAI leader told me some time ago while I was doing research on the Islamic movements, about this paradoxical dichotomy. “Some Hawiye members of the AIAI did not want to fight against Aidid at the Arare Bridge standoff near Kismayo,” said this Islamist who himself is Hawiye with a PhD in Islamic Studies. The AIAI leadership sent an all-Hawiye delegation to Aidid to negotiate with him so the warlord would not attack the armed militia. A member of that delegation told me that Aidid received them well but rejected the AIAI’s offer to withdraw. Aidid told them he wanted to crush Darod forces which were holed in Kismayo and that the AIAI fighters were standing in the way of him accomplishing his goal. He asked the Ittihad militia to lay their arms and go unharmed. It is interesting to note here that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the current leader of Hizbul Islam, was part of that AIAI delegation but, in fairness, he was not one of those in favor of accommodating Aidid. To go back to the point of reconciling clan identity and Islamic identity, there is a general perception, or misperception, of Islamisits being a Hawiye phenomenon. Afyare himself states that “the overwhelming majority of Islamists are from the Hawiye sub-clans…While the Islamic identity cuts across all Somali clans, the Hawiye clans’ dominant position within the Islamic movements disproportionally affects Somali politics. Many Somali clans have opposed the domineering Hawiye for the last two decades.”

Overall, Afyare’s book is an important addition to Somali studies. The author has good ideas about conflict resolution and provides practical recommendations that students of Somalia and the country’s leaders will find valuable. Afyare’s discussion on why Somalia’s peace conferences failed is ground-breaking as he identifies key variables that led to the demise of these gatherings.
***
Shaul Shay’s Somalia between Jihad and Restoration was first published in 2008, but the first paperback edition, has just come out recently. It is ironic that Shay, an Israeli ‘scholar’ who heads the Israel Defense Forces History Department and is a Fellow Researcher at International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, has written a polemic. Unlike Afyare’s scholarly book, Shay’s book is a travesty and is replete with so many factual mistakes that would make students of Somalia cringe with indignation. It is obvious that Shay is not interested in Somalia as a complex country but sees the country in the narrow prism of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Shay sees Somalia as a country riddled with Islamic terrorists who are a threat to neighbors and to the West. He likes what he sees in Somaliland in terms of its political and economic developments and argues that it should serve as a model for the lawless South and its Islamic radicals. Shay’s other recommendations are; the strengthening of the TFG, the formation of a national army, sealing the country’s borders “at sea, in the air and on land…in order to prevent the infiltration of Islamic Jihad entities, and to thwart the smuggling of combat means to subversive factors…”. Moreover, Shay urges that the world should recognize Puntland and Somaliland as independent states.

Shay’s book is a collection of materials that he had written about radical Islamic groups such Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. He has failed to even update the paperback edition which still has outdated information. Professor Saadia Touval was the first Israeli scholar who wrote his Ph.D thesis on Somalia which was later published as a book, Somali Nationalism: International Politics and the drive for Unity in the Horn of Africa (Harvard, 1963). That book is still used by students of Somalia even after four decades of its initial publication. Unfortunately, Shaul Shay’s prosaic and pedestrian book will, at best, be forgotten, because it is does not contribute towards understanding Somalia.

***
Bronwyn Bruton’s report, Somalia: A New Approach, is short, concise, well-written and well-argued. Bruton addresses the United States policy to Somalia; what went wrong and how to deal with the current realities. She and Afyare are cognizant of America’s past fumbles regarding Somalia; from neglecting the country several years after Black Hawk Down incident, the arming of Mogadishu warlords in the name of War on Terror; the indirect undermining of the Union of Islamic Courts, the backing of Ethiopia’s invasion and Bush Administration’s single focus on hunting down three al-Qaeda leaders. Bruton recommends what she calls a “Constructive Disengagement’ strategy. This paradoxical oxymoron of a phrase is not what it seems. Bruton recommends that America not waste resources in the weak TFG entity because it is futile. She wants the United States to combat terrorism while at the same time promoting stability and development. It is better for Washington, she argues, not to pick a winner among warring factions vying for power in the country. Instead, if an Islamist authority emerges as the winner, the USA should accept said entity as long as this group a) does not impede humanitarian and relief aid, and b) does not pursue international Jihadi agenda. Meanwhile, the United States should hunt down al-Qaeda and other terrorists in Somalia by whatever means is necessary (drones, cruise missiles, occasional ground military operations by Special Forces, etc). Bruton contends that al-Shabab is “an alliance of convenience and its hold over territory is weaker than it appears”. Therefore, “Under the right conditions, it will fragment”. What is good for Washington may not be good for Mogadishu. When all is said and done, it is obvious that “Constructive Disengagement” is another attempt to meddle in the affairs of Somalia by exploiting what Bruton calls “fissures” among factions and by attacking at will whomever Washington deems as being ‘dangerous’.
***
In a nutshell, Somalia’s Islamic groups can be seen as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you have the jihadist groups like al-Shabab which enjoy some support among war-weary people in the South who crave for order in an anarchic environment. On the other hand, there are other “less-Jihadist” groups like al-Ictissam (successor of now defunct AIAI), Islah, the Tajamuc, and the Ahlu Sunnah Wal-Jama (ASWJ). The latter is a Sufi-inspired and Ethiopian financed group, and is mostly concentrated in Central Somalia. The militia is a new phenomenon (a fighting Tariqa group with military hardware from Addis Ababa). With the exception of ASWJ, the afore-mentioned groups are not pacifists by nature but they have either opted for a non-violent approach or they are too weak to make a military difference. So far, Islamic groups have done well in the areas of relief and humanitarian aid. These groups have also been crucial in opening and operating schools, and the Islah group, in particular, has done admirable work in the field of higher education. The political development and maturity of these groups leave a lot to be desired. Unfortunately Somalia does not have Islamists with the caliber of, for instance, Turkey’s Justice and Development (AK) Party; an Islamic group that can negotiate easily between Islamic activism and political leadership in a democratic society. If the Islamic alternative is another reincarnation of the Union of Islamic Courts in Somali South, then the country is doomed to experience a perpetual civil war, coupled with constant military intervention from Ethiopia. Yes, it is true that Mogadishu experienced relative peace and order during the six months in 2006 when the city was under the UIC control. But what else? Imposition of an Islamic penal code in a country that has been devastated by war and hunger, intolerance, perpetual marginalization of women, aggressive rhetoric and pronouncements, kidnapping of journalists, assassinating aid workers, censorship, declaring Jihad on Ethiopia before the latter even invaded the country, and most of all seeing a dangerous group like Al-Shabab flourish under the watchful eyes of UIC leaders. Alas, Aden Hashi Ayro (Ayr) was the military commander of the UIC and we all know what happened after the collapse of the UIC; he became the al-Shabab leader. It is time that we refrain from wallowing in nostalgia and stop romanticizing about the UIC’s brief and repressive regime. Just because the UIC was better than Mogadishu warlords does not mean that it was a model entity that should be replicated. Somalis have already seen what many of these groups are capable of; from regulating personal conduct to the core (beards for men, no bras for women, no sports or entertainment, etc) to hiding behind slogans that throb with emptiness. The question that begs itself is; “what else can these groups offer?”

Mogadishu: Whose City is it Anyway?

Several weeks ago, there was a duel on the airwaves between Sheikh Ciise Ahmed Dalabey (Chairman of Guurtida Beelaha Hawiye) and Sheikh Foad Shongolo, one of the top leaders of al-Shabab group. Mr. Dalabeey (Abgaal) started it when he gave a rousing speech before his supporters and demanded, among other things, that the Darod take their ‘man’ (then TFG Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke) from Mogadishu because the capital belonged to the Hawiye. I will summarize key points of Mr. Dalabeey’s speech, which he addressed larger and smaller clans under the 4.5 formula (Hawiye, Darod, Dir, Digil/Mirefle, and the “0.5” smaller clans) as following;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl5ayzCTo5U

On the Darod: The HARTI group, and especially the Majertein, are asked to take their ‘man’, Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, away from Mogadishu and to their land –Puntland-because Omar Abdirashid has fleeced the wealth of the nation, failed to defend the land, and remained mum about the continuing deportations of many Somalis by the administration of Puntland. It is unacceptable that Omar Abdirashid would rule the Hawiye in their own land while President Farole of Puntland is forcefully deporting Somalis.

On the Digil and Mirefle: The Digil and Mirefle, and especially the Mirefle, are asked to remove Sheikh Sharif Hassan Sheikh Ahmed from Mogadishu because this politician has been nothing but a nuisance; a figure who relishes on conflicts. He should be brought to court and asked how he had managed the treasury of the country for the year and half that he was the Finance Minister. Our request, if not implemented, will be followed by use of force.

On Dir: The Dir from the North have established their own administration in Hargeisa and the Hawiye will work with them and support them. We will welcome their support too. The Northern Dir people are better off leaving Mogadishu and joining their brethren in Somaliland. The Dir of the South, and especially the Biimaal, would get their rights. The Hawiye inhabit between Hobyo and Kismayo. In many parts of Somalia, we are the majority but there are areas we co-habit with other groups.

On 0.5: There is nothing good to say about the 0.5. These are smaller groups and those who live with us would be respected.

On TFG President: We want the president to implement Islamic courts, create a national army that is run by professional and honest Hawiye officers, and protect Hawiye port, airport, and properties. The Hawiye businessmen have been robbed and they should get their businesses back. In fact, we have all been robbed.

On Al-Shabab Group: The Al-Shabab group should cease the fighting in Hawiye land because the Hawiye know how to fight. We made you who you are; Ayro brought you from nowhere. Sheikh Hassan Dahir and Sheikh Mohamed Dheere are still around and relevant. The Hawiye had fought against Mohamed Abdille Hassan, Ali Yusuf, and Siad Barre. We would defend ourselves. You, Al-Shabab group, only know how to detonate a bomb. We would build fortresses from Mogadishu to Ceel Buur then wait and attack you. Go to Bay and Bakool where defenseless people live and takeover their land.

Fouad Shongolo who was born and raised in Mogadishu but hails from the Awrtoble lineage (Darod) responded to Dalabeey’s speech by denouncing the latter’s claim that Mogadishu belonged to the Hawiye. “Who said that this land belongs to the Hawiye,” bellowed Shongolo. Shongolo said that the Al-Shabab Group came to existence to fight against tribalism. He also urged people whose homes have been taken away from them to seek his assistance in getting their properties back.
http://miisaanka.com/article.php?articleid=2729

Given the current situation of Somalia, the issue of who does Mogadishu belongs to is a diversion to the real story; the story of a country that has become a byword for religious extremism and anarchy.

Ciise Dalabey is a new tribal chieftain in the political landscape who has embraced his role with a convert’s zeal. He is already exhibiting a mania for disputation. A friend of mine, who used to be a high official in the Somali Football Federation and who also belongs to the same sub-clan as Dalabey, chastised me for magnifying the significance of the chieftain. “He is nobody”, my friend said, “but I am sure some people are pleased with what he is saying.” I have to agree with my friend that there are some people who think that Dalabey is making sense and that, perhaps, it is better that we reexamine the tribal land delineation. Can clans claim their own territories, or are the Somalis so intertwined that dividing the land based on clan domination or numerical majority in an area becomes insignificant? Dalabey’s willingness to carve out Somalia into clannish enclaves and his bravado for calling for an open warfare deserve condemnation. His bellicose rhetoric is nothing but a paragon of hate speech. What is equally deplorable is Farole’s arbitrary deportations of many people from Puntland. I will only address the issue of Mogadishu in this particular article.

The history of Mogadishu, before the civil war, is a history of diversity and peaceful co-existence. Once upon a time, no Somali lived in Mogadishu. According to Al-Shaikh al-Imam Shihab al-Din Abi Abdalla Yaqut al-Hamawi al-Rumi al-Baghdadi’s book, Kitab Mu’jam al- Buldan, in 1286 Mogadishu had residents “whose inhabitants were all foreigners and not Black: (Cited in Hersi 1977, P. 103). These foreigners originally came from Arabia and Persia and settled there. Long before the Arabs and Persians made their way to Marka and Barawe, there were travelers such as Ibn Said (died 1286) who visited the Benadir coastline and found Marka the capital of Somali Hawiye clan. The Hawiye were a present force in Benadir in the 12th Century but they were not “the only occupants of the land” (Lulling 2002, P.16). There were other communities such as the Digil/Mirefle, the Biimaal, Bantu, and, according to Lulling, the predecessors of the Eyle, “who in modern times are scattered bands of professional hunters,” who were already settled in these areas. Cassanelli goes even further when he argues that,”The Digil appear to have been among the earliest Somalis to occupy the Benadir, probably in the first Millennium A.D (Cassanelli 1974, P. 6). But Mogadishu was different in its demographic makeup. By the time the renowned Arab traveler, Ibn Battuta, visited Mogadishu in 1331; the city was ruled by a Somali who spoke both Arabic and Somali fluently. The city’s population consisted mainly of the descendants of earlier Arab/Persian communities and whom we call today “Benadiris”. Mogadishu residents were engaged in trade and the city was bustling with merchandise from all over the world. Ibn Battuta also noted that about 200 camels were slaughtered in the city every day and that the residents consumed large quantities of food to the extent that they were corpulent. Mogadishu, to Ibn Battuta, was a prosperous and booming town compared to Zayla, in which the Moroccan traveler had earlier visited and called “the dirtiest, most abominable, and most stinking town in the world”. Zayla residents had plenty of fish and they had a habit of slaughtering camels in the streets. “When we got there [Zayla] we chose to spend the night at sea, in spite of its extreme roughness, rather than in the town, because of its filth”. But Ibn Battuta was impressed with Mogadishu and the hospitality he received as a religious scholar.

The outskirt of Mogadishu was inhabited by nomads who were Hirab or Darandolle. What made Mogadishu special and prosperous was the fact that it was not a self-sustaining town. It was a city that manifested economic interdependence as well as good neighborly existence. Somali pastoralists and the people in the inter river plains had stake in the prosperity of Mogadishu. There was a period during the Ajuran Empire in which Mogadishu was jointly run with the Mudaffar Dynasty. One Ajuran Imam was ruthless to the Darandolle nomads and would not allow them to use certain wells. There were times that the nomads were also not allowed to stay in Mogadishu after sunset. Between 1600 and 1625, the nomads rebelled against the repressive rule of one Mudaffar leader and took control of the city. An Abgal king was installed in Shingani and subsequently became the head of both the Abgal and the city (Cassanelli, 1974, P. 36). Mogadishu’s rule changed hands and by the 18th century it found itself under the joint rule of the Geledi Sultanate and the Arab Sultan of Zanzibar. It was in 1892 when the Sultan of Zanzibar leased the city to the Italians. By 1905, the Italian colonial administration had made Mogadishu the capital of Italian Somaliland.

Mogadishu went through massive transformation in the twentieth century as many people, from the north to the southern tip of the country, made it their home and achieved a degree of harmony. It became the only cosmopolitan city in Somalia that could boast of being diverse and peaceful. Every Somali administration since colonialism made Mogadishu its capital. If there was a census in the city in 1990, I am sure it would have shown a melting pot. Perhaps, to the detriment of the development of other cities, Mogadishu received more attention and aid both from foreign countries and previous governments.

Many years ago, I visited Washington D.C, which has predominantly Black residents, and I naively told an African-American cabbie of the city’s uniqueness for being a “Black city”. The cabbie looked at me with disgust and ruefully said, “Sir, Washington is not a Black city. It is an American city and the capital of all Americans”. I was hoping that Sheikh Dalabey would be a purveyor of hope rather than despair; a unifier rather than an agent of schism and belligerence. Any Somali national has the right to settle any part of Somalia without fear and recrimination. One can safely say that non-Hawiye Mogadishu residents suffered tremendously in the Civil War whether it was losing life, limb, or properties. Perhaps, the Darod and the Benadiris were specifically targeted as people and became piñatas for the Mogadishu warlords (Aidid, Ato, Ali Mahdi, Yalahow, etc). Hawiye residents, in turn, also suffered in the hands of Siad Barre’s forces, the TFG governments under Abdullahi Yusuf (remember the Ethiopian invasion) and now under Sheikh Sharif and his AMISOM backers; not mention the ruthless Al-Shabab (Shongolo, Godane, and Robow) and Hizbul Islam (Hassan Dahir Aweys). No one group in Mogadishu can claim to be sole owners of the city and only victims. After all, Mogadishu belongs to all of us and, frankly, we all have been robbed!


Reference
Cassanelli, Lee Vincent, The Benadir Past: Essays in Southern Somali History, Ph.D. thesis; University of Wisconsin, 1973.
Hersi, Ali Abdirahman, The Arab Factor in Somali History, Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977.
Luling, Virginia, Somali Sultanate: The Geledi City-State over 150 years, Transaction Publishers, 2002.

Black Mamba Boy: A Book Review

There are three types of women; those who have little or nothing to say about their fathers; those who revile their fathers and those who lionize them. The American writer/poet Sylvia Plath made it fashionable to excoriate her father in the most corrosive terms. It did not matter that Plath’s father died when she was 8 years old. In her famous poem, “Daddy”, Plath blames her father for almost everything that had gone wrong in her brief but illustrious life; from attempting suicide at an early age, to marrying a fellow poet, Ted Hughes. In her poem, she uses a metaphor of her father as Hitler and her husband as a vampire.

If I have killed one man, I‘ve killed two__
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

Plath concludes her poem with perhaps a painful departing line; “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through”. Three months after writing her poem, Plath, who suffered from chronic depression, killed herself at age 30.

Nadifa Mohamed’s new novel, Black Mamba Boy, (London: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) is an attempt to lionize her father and pay tribute to him. As a child, Nadifa imbibed stories of her father’s early life which, to the pedantic, might seem the saddest poetry. But to Nadifa they were intriguing tales that warranted a book. The term “Griot” is used by West Africans. It refers to someone whose task is to keep an oral history of a clan or a village and then entertain people by using such methods as storytelling, dancing, and songs. Nadifa Mohamed is unabashed about who she is to her father. “I am my father’s griot…This is a hymn to him. I am telling you this story so that I can turn my father’s blood and bones, and whatever magic his mother sewed under his skin, into history,” says the novelist. Nadifa was born in Hargeisa, in 1981 but grew up in England. Her serene and free-from-trauma life is no match to what her father had endured while growing up.

It is 1930s and eleven-year old Jama, the protagonist of the novel, lives with mother in Aden, Yemen; a British colonial outpost. Jama’s mother is a single woman who struggles to eke out a living in a poor and strange land. She is a woman of mercurial moods and you never know what to expect of her. She can be benevolent one minute and hard to get along on the other. Jama’s father has long been gone from their lives as he is rumored to be somewhere in Sudan. Young Jama lacks a sense of purpose and dawdles in the streets of Aden doing nothing. But this early experience in the rough streets of Yemen would later become crucial as he copes with a life rich with irony. His mother suddenly passes away and Jama is left with a meager 100 Rupees. An aunt brings him to Hargeisa, Somaliland, to live with his grandfather. But there is no grandfather in sight and he finds difficulty dealing with his female relatives. In Hargeisa, jama’s father looms imposingly over his life and the lad has a pathological drive to look for him. It becomes a veritable obsession to find his father and Jama leaves Somaliland to undertake a 1000-mile journey by foot, camel, train, and boat that takes him to Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, and Europe.

Jama’s odyssey is mired in difficulty and often warfare. He vacillates from crisis to crisis but he also utilizes a string of clan connections as well as the benevolence of strangers. Jama’s hazardous journey is all too familiar to today’s Somali immigrants who had encountered an array of hurdles, hunger, diseases, imprisonment (or to put it mildly, detention); a cascade of abuse, poverty, menial jobs, and at times, a mood of utter despondence. Jama’s survival skills and his magnificence of spirit save the day. In his journey, Jama meets a woman in Sudan, falls in love with her, and finds that he is unable to cease traveling. Jama, after making safely to London, gets news from his wife and faces the most jarring question in his life.

Nadifa Mohamed’s novel can be summarized as a novel about fatherhood and all that it entails. It is a celebration of fatherhood; the longing for a father, a search for a father, and the profound question of whether a man wants to be an active father or merely a generous sperm donor. Nadifa is a good writer who infuses fact and fiction. Her lacerating wit makes you howl with laughter. There are, at times, tedious historical details in the novel and some phrases that are left not translated to the benefit of non-Somali readers. But overall the novel is an interesting read. I can see Nadifa saying to her father, with an apology to Sylvia Plath, “Daddy, daddy, I am proud of you.” I have heard rumors of Nadifa Mohamed’s exciting novel. For once, the gossips are right.