ABS syndrome - why we Somalis cannot honour ourselves...

by: Zakia Hussen
Thursday, April 26, 2012

While at a meeting in London with the new Turkish Ambassador for Somalia, I realized why people cannot seem to drag themselves out of a chaos that has crippled the nation for over two decades. I am not a medical doctor but I've always tried to analyze and diagnose societal problems so to find appropriate cure. Whilst at the meeting I realized we as Somalis suffer from a chronic, perhaps even deadly disease that I call the ABS syndrome. I first coined the phrase about a year ago in my attempt to understand why so many girls reaching martial age start preferring non-Somali guys over their Somali counterparts. ABS is short for Anything But Somali - the closest term I can find in my mother tongue would be "shisheeye kaal-kaal".

Ustaad Axmed Naaji

While at the meeting with the Turkish Ambassador, the ABS syndrome became very apparent to me. Present at the meeting was the legendary singer and song writer Ustaad Ahmed Naaji who was there to perform some of the latest tracks he has written for his nation and people. For a brief moment the Ambassador went out of the room and Ustaad Naaji was called to perform in the meanwhile. Suddenly, majority of the attendees went up and ran after the Ambassador while meanwhile our own brother and legend stood there trying to get on with his performance. That precise moment there, for me, represented everything that is wrong with Somalia. It is not that I am against the Turkish, I love what they have done and plan to do for my country and people – however, it hurts me to see how we abandon our own legends to run after a foreigner that came to us yesterday. We are a nation with a blessed land, rich culture, beautiful and strong people, ancient history and language yet how do we expect others to value, respect and honour all this if we ourselves do not?

The disease

You fall victim for the ABS syndrome when you forget or do not know what and who you are, it particularly kicks in when you are either unfamiliar or consciously chosen to forgo your history, culture, religion and language - in short everything that makes you unique from other nations and people. And for long we have carried this disease as a people and been completely oblivious to this fact - perhaps because nobody actually bothered to diagnose the problem. Since the creation of the Somali republic in 1960 we have looked elsewhere and relied on others to help us build our country -whether that be from a political or economic point of view - while all the same time forgetting we are an ancient civilization that has not only existed but thrived as a nation for centuries! From the creation of the republic until today we have tried various ideologies - from democracy, socialism, dictatorship and even Islamism - all of this has served nothing but brought us to our knees and subsequently turning us into a people living and relying on hand outs from others. It is not that these ideologies are bad in themselves; the problem is that we have embraced them wholeheartedly without adjusting them to suit our nature and customs.

The longest surviving political ideology in Somalia - no matter how much we would like to deny it - is tribalism. Governments have been trying to abolish it since the 70s but this only served to make it stronger. So I wonder, could we not utilize it for good? Well I guess we attempted to do that when we created the 4.5 formula of governance but this has brought about more conflict than peace. Why? “Because tribe is a disease” you will hear people say; however I do not totally agree. Tribe – like nationality and ethnicity – is nothing else but a form of an identity that people utilize to differentiate themselves from others. Thus it is not that tribe in itself that is necessarily bad but rather it is the way in which it is utilized that will make it either a force of good or evil. Like the warlords during the civil war, politicians have taken tribe out of its proper use and mixed it up with something that is completely alien to it (i.e. western concepts of democracy and federalism) and hence why it did not allow for creation of a representative and capable government. Once more we corrupted a traditional system that has served us for centuries in favour of systems that are not part of the Somali way of governance.

The cure

So, what do we need to do?

What we should have done decades ago – put Somalia and her people first. No nation or state has ever prospered without putting its interest first – yes, learn from other civilizations’ history and systems but make sure to assimilate it to your own cultural and political practices. We need to create what I call political doctors – academics who analyze the political ways of other civilizations – including and perhaps most importantly our own – and engineer political scholarship that caters for our needs and customs. In other words, we need to establish Somali political theories and methods of governance based on and around our very own culture and traditions. So far, our intellectuals as well as politicians have been guided by emotional rather than rational pursuits and with the arrivals of the Turkish to Somalia this attitude could not be more prevalent. We see them – no, actually almost worship them – as our saviours from the plights of our nation. Yes, the Turkish are indeed a God-sent blessing our nation needed but we should be careful not to abuse this blessing. Yesterday we all hailed Al-Shabaab as national warriors when they fought the Ethiopians, today we call them mass murders sent from the devil himself. Not so long ago, we all viewed the appointment of Sheikh Sharif as the president as a great step in the right direction, a great sense of hope was felt everywhere – today we cant wait to see him go. In the same spirit we are hailing the Turkish presence as the saviours of our nation – but what will we call them tomorrow I wonder?