Political Insignificance & A Virulent Pursuit Of Power

The Sad Plight of Some Somaliland Expatriate Intellectuals

By Ahmed M.I. Egal

The vast majority of Somali intellectuals either have grown up as expatriates, or now live outside their country as such. Accordingly, it is appropriate to explore how this phenomenon of prolonged foreign residence has affected the activist expatriate intellectual as opposed non-activist migrant or foreign worker. For the sake of clarity, we are concerned herein with someone who has either left his home country involuntarily (i.e. through persecution, social or political pressure, exile, civil war or state collapse), or remains away from it for the same reasons. He or she has received a formal secondary education at a minimum and he or she aims to influence through advocacy and/or direct action the political set-up of his or her homeland. Thus, we are not at all concerned with the large immigrant communities of Europe and North America who have permanently left their homes to make a new life for themselves and their children in their adopted homelands. Neither, are we concerned with the equally large communities of migrant workers which leave their homes for economic reasons to make their livings in other countries and who return home after their stint of work abroad.

It is clear, therefore, that we are concerned with a very small community of educated expatriate activists that historically have had an impact upon political developments in their homelands that far outweigh the paucity of their numbers. The most celebrated, if infamous, example of this breed in recent years is Ahmad Chalabi of Iraq, who persuaded the government of George W. Bush that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and that the people of Iraq would welcome the invading US and British troops with victory garlands. Of course, there are other celebrated examples who not only do not share Chalabi’s infamy, but indeed are lauded as the true voices of their downtrodden and brutalized peoples, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov of Russia; Donald Woods and Miriam Makeba of South Africa, to mention but a few. Thus, we find among the ranks of expatriate intellectuals both noble men and women who seek to replace the despotic regimes of their homelands with genuine, representative governments, as well as self-serving charlatans who seek merely to replace the ruling autocrats with themselves or their chosen front men.

The case of Somaliland expatriate intellectuals is no different. There are those intellectuals who established and peopled the political opposition to the Siyad dictatorship, whether in the UFFO direct-action, self help group in Hargeisa, in the political wing of the SNM or through participation in NGOs that sought to shine the light of international publicity on the dictator’s malevolent policies and actions. Somalilanders everywhere and of every age will long remember and honor the sacrifice, courage and nationalism of these brave men and women. There is also, however, the other breed of Somaliland expatriate intellectuals that seek only to advance their own narrow and selfish interests at the expense of the mass of ordinary people, while posing as learned, impartial commentators giving voice to the wishes and interests of their people. A common, and revealing, characteristic of these charlatans is their total alienation from the very masses they profess to represent and empower through their advocacy. In this group we find the likes of Ismail Buuba, Ahmed Xashare , Osman Kaluun and the others who have sought office in the various so-called governments set up for Somalia, not to mention the vacuous Professor Samatar and assorted pundits of similar ilk.

Just as Ahmad Chalabi was completely ignorant of the true lot (not to mention aspirations) of the ordinary Iraqi through having been away from Iraq for decades, so these Somali ‘Chalabis’ are ignorant of the realities in Somaliland through their many years of exile. While it is probably the case that Somalia is too dangerous for long-exiled intellectuals to visit, such a case cannot be made for Somaliland , which is widely recognized as an oasis of peace and security in the Horn of Africa. Thus, the decision to remain alienated from the true lot of the people of Somaliland through distance by the pundits that portray themselves as their voices is not only voluntary, but indeed mischievous. These people are not interested in ascertaining or voicing the true wishes and aspirations of ordinary Somalilanders, just as Chalabi was uninterested in the true wishes of the ordinary Iraqis as he was conning the Americans to rain down ‘shock and awe’ upon them after a decade of crippling sanctions. Indeed, these would-be Chalabis seek to usurp the democratic will and deepest desire of ordinary Somalilanders to regain their national sovereignty by denigrating their hard won right to live peacefully and freely in their own country.

These charlatans are motivated purely and simply by a pursuit of power that they are painfully aware are doomed to failure in any free and fair scenario of political competition. Thus, they have no recourse but to employ underhand methods to further their nefarious ambitions. Unlike Ahmad Chalabi, they do not have the ear of senior officials of a hyper-power anxious to wrest control over the country they seek to rule. Therefore, they sow their seeds of misinformation in the fallow and not-so-fallow fields of academic forums, Western NGO briefing seminars and papers, on Somali internet sites and, of course, at forums in the West addressed by Somaliland ’s traditional and elected political leaders. There is a certain and peculiar tragedy attached to the Quixotic tilting at the windmills of historical reality by these alienated, often bitter and stunted men and women. More importantly, however, there is a repellent, overweening arrogance underlying their conviction that their education and exposure to the West entitle them to govern their less fortunate brothers and sisters. Instead of seeking to present themselves and their ideas to their people as true democrats, these political midgets seek to subvert the will of the people and impose upon them the rule of an intellectual praetorian elite. Just as the paternalism of the colonialists ‘knew’ what was good for the ‘savages’ of the Third World, so these modern day kulaks profess to ‘know’ the true interests of the ordinary people of Somaliland that they are themselves unable to fathom. Frantz Fanon brilliantly analyzed the psychosis of these pathetic men and women illness over a generation ago in his seminal work “Black Skins, White Masks.”

Fortunately, for Somaliland as for the rest of Africa , there are many more true sons and daughters that have obtained the benefits of higher education without losing either their souls or their commitment to their people and nation, than there are charlatans. In addition, again fortunately for Somaliland , our country does not yet attract the covetous attention of major powers that would empower these Chalabi-esque charlatans as friendly autocrats-in-waiting. We only have to suffer the self-serving and usually only semi-coherent, rants and ravings of these self-important pundits, but this is indeed a small price to pay for our liberty and our dignity. So let them pontificate, I say, for they are nothing but the scriptwriters for the political satires and spoofs of our freedom. Indeed, when viewed as unwitting Somali Ben Eltons and John Cleeses, they are actually quite funny – just imagine Mr. Buuba as the Minister of Silly Walks a la John Cleese and Professor Samatar as Dr. Strangelove a la Peter Sellers and you can see what I mean!

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