In the pursuit of the national liberation
The situation of the Somali nation demands a profound critical examination. Being one of the most homogenous nations on the face of the earth with the largest and most strategic territorial land among the nations in the Horn of Africa, the Somali nation lacks one basic element essential for its existence and progress: statehood. The cause of this is not the law of probability. It’s mainly the direct consequence and classical case of Edward Said’s Westphalia deferrals.
The destruction has two layers. First, the soil of the Somali nation was brutally obliterated and divided not by one but four colonial powers: Britain, France, Italy, and Ethiopia—Africa’s only colonial empire that persists to this day. Second, the Somali person is robbed of his/her core values and mainly reduced to a clannish entity impervious to obtaining a nation-state.
The second layer is the mortal one. As this article is being written, the juridically sovereign Somali territories are divided into clannish fiefdoms, tribal lands in Western terminology, and the Somali person is reduced into a mere instrument, bound by clannish identity and incapable of embodying values beyond loyalty to their clan. The clan is made the country, the ideology, the core values, and ultimately the God. The Somali person was made nothing but the slave of this new God. He or she was made a key instrument for his/her enslavement and the material plunders of his/her country. In the process, the person has been robbed of dignity, nationhood, country and sovereignty; all has been lost. At the individual level, he or she has been made a mere instrument confined in clannism. In a word: slave.
The dispossession of the Somali people is both moral and material, deeply rooted in ruthless international politics. Today’s world is organized into nation-states whose defining characteristics are self-interest and offensive capabilities. Whoever lacks sufficient defensive capabilities is preyed upon by predatory powers. The degree of predation is subject to the level of defense of the preyed-upon nation. This friction sets the equilibrium. If the defense level is near zero, the equilibrium is set at a negative number at the expense of the prayed-upon nation. Sometimes, the equilibrium could result in the elimination of the preyed-upon nation altogether. The Somali nation is on the verge of the existential threat level.
Justice isn’t in charge of this world. Morals are not. Fairness isn’t on the list of the proper vocabulary of international politics. Power is the currency of the world order. Survival is not a right in this world. It is a precious commodity. You buy survival when you have power, you die when you don’t. That is how the world is. Not how one would like it to be.
"How does one attain the power to survive?", one may ask. It starts with the will to attain power. A slave doesn’t have free will. One deprived of free will cannot seek power. They are deprived of the right to live a life of dignity. To seek power, one must exercise free will and to do it one must obtain his or her autonomy, not contingent on any secondary condition. Freedom and dignity are the end by themselves and when one secures that at the individual level, national sovereignty is achieved.
However, in the above paragraphs, one observes that the Somali person is deprived of this birthright. He or she is made an instrument, a slave confined into clannism conformity and deprived of all his or her core values. To attain a life worthy of dignity, the Somali individual must reclaim his or her autonomy. He or she must attain inner freedom from clannism dogmatism that reduced him or her instrument of his/her enslavement and denies the wealth and dignity of his/her own country. Anyone person diagnosed with the minimum level of clannism dogmatism is a slave instrument serving the interest of foreign enemies and isn’t worthy of living in dignity and freedom.
When the Somali person attains inner freedom, real liberation starts for the multitude, and national sovereignty, dignity, justice, equality and development for all will be certain. There is no material force that can stand between the Somali nation and their rightful destiny for justice and liberty.
