This essay highlights the effects of triable polarization and othering the natives in their own land by other natives of the land. Please look up beizani.com and quote this website.
Othering Somali citizens as ‘Looma Ooyaan’.
By Samiya Lerew
Tribalism is so hardwired in human psychic, we have evolved alongside with conflicts and warfare. Those who hunt together, defend together, attack together survive better in the Serengeti of human evolution. Although tribalism itself may not be so damaging but when mixed with politics of polarization it can be lethal for those on the receiving end.
Once the politics of polarization was brought in to Somalia, straight after the Americans abandoned their mission of “Operation Restore Hope’. US troops were withdrawn March 25, 1994. The consequence for the vulnerable Somali citizens were so severe that it can be said that Pandora’s Box was opened. Civil strife, famine, warlordism which ushered an era of social Darwinism were some of the tools that assisted othering the organic natives of Somalia. The case deserves 21st century tribble literature of its own.
According to Eno, “The 4.5 formula for political power sharing rep- resents the social fibre that encapsulates and feeds from the Somali founding ancestor narratives. It was incubated in Sodere, Ethiopia, in 1997 and introduced in 2000 during the 13th Somali reconciliation conference in Arte, Djibouti. In other words, Somali political and cultural elites incorporated the social distinctions created by the formula narratives into the political and nation-making pro- cesses in a way that is accessible to organizations and both victim and victimizer. The participants divided the Somali society into superior and inferior groups: descendants of the so-called Somali original ancestor (Darood, Digil-Mirifle, Dir, and Hawiye) as superiors and none descendants (Bantu Jareerwayne and occupational caste groups) as inferiors.”
However the chaotic polarization did not end there. It spill over to the dominant clans. These four clan cousins did not agree on many things. What one has, the other wants, what one wants, the other pursues to the extreme point where two sub-clan of a sub-clan who are literally half-brothers each claiming a state of his own with presidents who competes with the central government.
According to Sultan Ibrahim Abdullahi Addo, in his article Bad Policies of Marginalising Organic natives in their own region. “If one fully understands the root cause of the cycles of any conflict, one should be able to express it in a single statement. The root cause of the cycles of the Somali conflicts is nothing more than as a result of, the fact that a group of ambitious and determined Somali criminals targets to marginalize certain Somali communities (agrarian) economically within that communities’ region. In the process it uses primarily clan along with intimidating force, religion, politics and propaganda through the media to achieve and attain their ambition. Though this may be the root cause, many missed that it remained as the same factor that perpetuates the cycles of the Somali conflicts to this day.” Published on beizani.com
Sultan Ibrahim only scratches the surface of othering people on the basis of perceived supremacy. Dr M. Eno however goes much deeper in his analysis of othering. Eno eloquently explains the causes of othering and sheds light as he follows the contours of progressed forms of internal othering problems to more lucrative wealth making for some local NGOs. Eno says,
“It is based on the conscious or unconscious assumption that a certain identified group poses a threat to the favoured group. It is not these attributes themselves that are the problem, of course, but how they are made salient and how they are manipulated.
I am therefore particularly concerned with how Othering shows up in today’s power structures: how it is used to divide and dehumanise groups, and capture and reshape government and institutions. For society’s leaders and culture play an oversized role in helping us make sense of change – and so greatly affect our responses to anxiety”.
What Eno describes is a classic evidence of how people who might have everything in common, culturally, linguistically, religion, kinship and so on are made to believe that they are somehow different from each other. In central, north and northwest of Somalia superior ancestry based on camel herding pastoralism mythology has been used to justify segregation, marginalization and suppression. In most cases villages are raided, houses, farms, personal possessions torched and village people sent to IDP camps and refugees camps in the neighbouring countries. Eno explains at the point where marginalization becomes part of International narrative of othering.
Eno elucidates, “All international organizations, the UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Care International, and other service providers followed this division in terms of all their provision of assistance to Somalis in the refugee camps, categorizing the groups as Somalis, Somali outcasts, and Somali Bantu.
In time, the separation of all Somalis in the refugee camps into oppressor and oppressed and the kind of victim narratives provided by Bantu and outcast individuals seeking resettlement to the United States and other parts of the West became standardized case reports as filed in the organizational immigration records. The policy of separation was used to protect the marginalized groups from the imminent domination of their oppressors who had immediately upon arrival in the refugee camps created leadership structures that obscured the equal rights of the minorities. More significantly, the policy empowered the minorities to establish their own independent leadership structures to liaise directly with the international organizations providing service to the refugees. It also resulted not only in the allocation of separate settlements but also provision of separate schools for the minority children who were facing extreme forms of marginalization when sharing classrooms with their noble-claiming peers in the refugee camps.
Moreover, even in the regional offices and sub- offices of these service-providing organizations, identities such as “Somali Bantu,” or “Somali outcast” have become very effectively constructed to the point where they became synonymous with “oppression,” marginalization,” and “vulnerability.” In the course of time, the organizational symbols or narratives of identity paved the way for individual and community-wide consideration for resettlement in many countries in the West, mainly in the United States, as a durable solution to the persecution they had been facing over the years and the possibility of suffering further persecution upon returning home. Understanding the interaction between client and advocacy organizations is extremely important in that the construction of group identity based on victim narratives alone could not create normatively audible stories without the active participation of the listeners, the organizations that had the access to influence. As a former refugee from one of the camps in Kenya admitted in a discussion with one of the authors (Mohamed) in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2008, “Without high level advocacy campaign by the UNHCR and other service providers, we would still be rotting in the refugee camps in Kenya.”
International organisations have actively participated in the narrative of victimhood and the need to provide aid to those who need it most. In the absence of functioning state institutions or apparatus to deal with aid redistribution at local level, local NGOs with untoward intent have filled in the void statelessness created. While clan polarization created othering the natives citizens, for the oppressors or shall we say ‘clan superiors’ made huge gains out of othering. In short, the misery of one group of people became profit making industry for others.
Author: Samiya Lerew.
Bibiliography:
M. Eno ed al Abdi M. Kusow, Formula Narratives and the Making of Social Stratification and Inequality. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1-15 American Sociological Association 2015, DOI: 10.1177/2332649215574362, sre.sagepub.com
Sultan Ibrahim Addo, 2019, Bad Policies of Marginalising Organic natives in their own region. Published on beizani.com
Top illustration: Amin Amir, 20 April 2015, published on aminarts.com
