Somalia's Shoebop Shabab and the Old Hold and Fold
You really have to watch the movies--and appreciate them--to get this post:
"Two rival motorcycle gangs terrorize a small town after one of their leaders is thrown in jail," says the IMDB plot summary.
Looking so very young, vulnerable, threatening and tough in leather--ain't that youth?--Brando and gang do with bikes and beer much of what their inverted mirrors have been doing in Somalia: they ride into town, humiliate the authorities, terrorize the citizens, and get gone before the cops show up in full and overwhelming force.
Across cultures and generations, removal of the surface posturing, whether the business of being out for "kicks" or out to impose Kalashnikov Sharia, leave the romantic and identity-forming plots of the old movie and the onling and moving reality looking quite the same.
Brando's character betrays a laudible nobility despite the rebel posturing, but let's be careful here: a movie is a thing scripted to "educate, entertain, and delight" its audience; in this particular cross-culture inversion in "realspace", the posturing is noble--the gang's out to save Islam in Somalia--but so many of the actions steal innocent Islamic lives, not only the police but any Moslem unfortunate enough to catch attention or crossfire in the fighting, that The Cause becomes a bewildering front, a thin mantle belying other compulsions, forces, and needs residing in the personalities of its warriors.
As with Brando's biker troops, tearing up the town for a spell and taking care of it prove quite different things.
In the living theater of war that contestants have made of Somalia, a similar thing applies: the shoot-em-up followed by a disappearing act is easy--administering, caring for, employing, feeding, housing all who care not to take up arms proves hard.
To be fair, or perhaps not, to Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and "Islamists" (and assorted warlords), nature plays a third part in Somalia's suffering.
While fighting over little more than rightful male assertion hasn't been doing anyone much good, such, for all its fury, well may be dwarfed by combined environmental and social carrying capacity issues: The country would present a culturally and physically tough challenge to international community interest in development and health were civic peace its most shining product.
That the delivery of humanitarian assistance, especially of food and medical attention, have been hampered by violence keep the same from having to prove heroic in effect.
Brando and gang, full of themselves, took pains not to reveal too much interest in the well being of others.
Somalia's Islamist warrior bands look much the same, but the bullets, grenades, and rockets are real and the suffering immense of those less interested in their own glory and most in need of the benefits certain to come with peace.
1. Benedek, László. The Wild One. Feature film starring Marlon Brando. 1953.
2. UNHCR Somalia. "Internally Displaced Persons in Somalia as of February 2008." PDF.
Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim
