| 19 May 2007 04:20 SOMALIA WATCH |
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In Response to Prof Abdi I. Samatar's I.M. Lewis's Retired Ideas and Somalia By Ali A.Jama - Director - Somalia Watch Organization - Feb 3, 2001
Somalia Watch published Professor Lewis's article - UN Paperclips for Somalia - which professor Samatar has labeled as a 'diatribe against (UN) David Stephen and Djibouti.' The message in Prof Lewis's article and the reaction of our good Professor in Minnesota typifies the current debate on whole Somali issue. In my mind, the two great professors represent two schools of thinking about the Somali issue - the old centralized governance school of thinking represented by Prof Samatar and federalist school represented here by Prof Lewis. In my opinion, Prof Lewis made his point clearly - the joint UN and Djibouti actions in creating the Arta Faction may only have the net result of destabilizing the peaceful areas of the country. Is this a diatribe? It is, according to Prof Samatar! The Prof from Minnesota has not presented any good arguments why he disagrees with Lewis except to suggest that 'the Somali world is beyond his (Lewis's) grasp'. I wonder if there is any scholar, dead or living, who can challenge Prof Lewis's work on the Somali Nation. Samatar's response gives one the impression that he is street fighter intent to badmouth and give Lewis a bloody nose. I have some other problems of my own with Prof Samatar's following statements:
In refuting Prof Lewis's thesis Prof Samatar has resorted to the use of inappropriate and vulgar language when he referred to Somaliland and Puntland as "Balayo-lands" and its leadership as "sectarian entrepreneurs in Hargeisa and Garowe". This is an affront to the sentiments of so many Somali men and women who worked very hard and succeeded to set up functioning administrations in the most participative manner possible at a very difficult time. It took years of consultative processes to create the administrations in the North of the country. If the Prof from Minnesota truly cares about Somalia shouldn't he be paying homage to these men and women who have made these administrations a reality? It is the work of these selfless individuals that created Puntland in 1998, - the first Somali State that made its objective the re-constitution of the Somali State and declared the sanctity of the Somali Nation. I hope he will agree with me that these are noble goals. These statements are also, in my opinion, not worthy of someone claiming to be in an academic environment - a Prof in a university, where decency, good language and above all accepting different points of view are the hallmark
In addition to Prof Samatar's wonderful desire at badmouthing, there is much intellectual bankruptcy in the premises of his discourse. He seems to have a distorted notion of the term democracy. The people in Somaliland and Puntland have spoken in democratic forums, and as a result set up the Somaliland and Puntland administrations. I thought that was what democracy was all about!!. Why does the Prof from Minnesota think that there was more 'democratic weight' in the Arta (Dj) Tent than the SL/PL founding, grassroots conferences in Buro, Borama and Garowe? The group he loves to hate in Hargeisa and Garowe has been elected by their respective people. The premises of Djibouti Conference was to ignore all existing governance structures in the country. That was the big mistake, I believe. The logical thing to do would have been to build on the existing governance structures in the country, instead of trying hard to discredit and destroy what the North has achieved. The leaders in the North, understandably, rejected Arta as it would probably have meant the end of their administrations. There could have been other reasons not known to the general public. This is what Pres Abdullahi Yusuf of PL told a group of community elders in Garowe in Jan 2001:
The good Prof from Minnesota owes to his professional ethics as writer and educator to check the facts first before giving blanket condemnation to the leaders in North. When faced with the situation described above, I think anybody with a bit of brain would reject the Arta Process.
Here Prof Samatar is guilty of fabricating self-serving disinformation about the extent of the involvement of Northern States in the Arta Process. Sure, there were individuals from SL and PL in Arta, but were these individuals representing anybody? And, in number how did they compare with the founding populace of SL/PL?
Here, I do not understand the logic of the Prof from Minnesota. If he is accusing Prof. Lewis of ignorance on the modern conflict resolution techniques, why is he an apologist for Arta Process, which was based on the premises of ignoring the achievements of the last ten years in Somalia, represented, among other things, by the creation of Puntland and Somaliland states. Let me be clear here, I do not support the secession of any part of the country. But New Somalia has been slowly but surely taking shape, almost unnoticed, in the country in the last ten years. I thought Prof. Lewis described these new structures well, and it is unfair to fault him for describing the present realities in the country. The good Prof from Minnesota may want to bury his head in the sand but when he wakes up, if he does, what he called "Balayo-Lands" may still be there, and may be more of them. A federal system consisting of bunch of 'Barwaaqo-Lands' may not be a bad idea after all!
Ali A. Jama Director - Somalia Watch Organization [Feature] |
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