Somalia's Refugees Stand Up

Whatever else Somalia's anarchic warfare may be doing to Somalia, it may be brewing up a hornet's nest of angered and resentful victims who may one day, sooner or late, come out fighting in their own right--and woe to their enemies for that.

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1. Reuters Alertnet. "Displaced families participate in a protest outside their camp near Somalia's capital Mogadishu," July 19, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Comments

[James]

In the social science sense, Islam doesn't "explain" Somalia. For reading--I've just scratched its surface myself--you may enjoy Catherine Besteman's _Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence and the Legacy of Slavery_. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

All societies adopting or converting to Islam contain cultures that far predate its arrival and whose characteristics persist in tandem with it. With regard to Somalia, I would venture that common lineage passages in biblical literature weigh nothing against recitals of clan legacy and village acquaintance.

[tammy swofford]

Thanks for educating me, James.
Regarding lineage, I have reference on my shelf of the ancestry of Muhammad back to Adam. I starts like this:
Muhammad bin 'Abdullah bin Abdul-Muttalib, bin Hashim, (named "Amr) bin....bin...bin.... back to bin Shith, bin Adam.

(Ibn Hisham, 1/2-4; Rahmat-ul-lil-"alameen, 2/18; Khulasat As-Siyar, page 6.)

Smiling,
Tammy

[James]

From Senlis in Afghanistan, a PDF, "Chronic Failures in the War on Terror: from Afghanistan to Somalia": http://www.senliscouncil.net/documents/chronic_failures_war_terror

The Islamic Small Wars are all "detectives' wars", even and especially for the countries that host so much civil discord and violence. Countering sponsoring regimes also involves great emphasis on accessing and understanding private networks.

The Somalian theater involves multiple contributor categories when it comes to violence. Firefights between government, the presence of which entity may be validated, and guerrilla forces, which evolve from several paths themselves, have some clarity, but assassinations and other murders do not. In Somalia, I have read there are parties who are neither government nor Islamist in orientation that have vested interests in sustaining anarchy. Whatever their business, constant war helps sustain it, and courts, moderate or unbecomingly feudal, pose a threat.

However powerful a part lineage has played in Somali society -- Hirsi Ali recalls memorizing her parentage back ten generations -- it has failed to spare the assets and civil way of life of upwards of one million internally displaced persons. Moreover, I have read of no evidence suggesting tribal bias or targeting in attacks against local elements in the humanitarian aid community or in the crossfire of misfired mortar and other weapons that claim innocent lives daily.

While Somalia hosts some internecine and sub-state warfare--e.g., in the Sool, the Ogadan--well related to tribal interests or traditions, the present slaughter in Mogadishu and surrounds seems not to form closely, if at all, along blood lines.

[tammy swofford]

James,
While in the West a soft target is considered a school (think Beslan), shopping center or hospital, it appears Somalia is a soft target across the board. Government intelligence is hampered by tribal and clan ties which count for more than money in the bank in these agrarian economic structures. There are stronger loyalty structures in place in which the word of a man supercedes any law of the land.

Tammy

[James]

I could be arch and say it's the men who are killing them, but that would do a disservice to men within the local and international aid communities and to military forces and police agents in the employ of TFG, UN, Ethiopian, US, and other elements.

The protest, which may amount to whining about being killed, stems from guerrilla-style (small band) attacks against aid targets. As elsewhere in the world, there's little defending dispersed soft targets; in Somalia, in particular, there may be insufficient government-side intelligence and organization when it comes to identifying and apprehending or interfering with attacking parties who don't fire warning shots, and then wherever they make a mess, make sure to haul ass away from it (if they're not suicides or detained by an engagement with government forces).

[tammy swofford]

Where are the men? Where are the men to take a stand on behalf of the women and children? The strength of male leadership is lacking. The protective role of men appears to be missing from this "family picture". This looks like widows and orphans, a most vulnerable group within society. It is a picture of the powerless.

Tammy