Exploring the Sociopolitical Conditions in Somalia w/ Abukar Arman

Africa World Now Project

Image: Painting by Najma Ahmed, founder of Nujuum Arts. Based in Mogadishu and Hargaisa. Somalia/ somaliland. More information available here: https://web.marcelforart.com/nujuum_hashi/about

The geopolitical conditions within which Somalia was born cannot be divorced from the conditions that institutionalized themselves in 1884/85 at what has come to be called the Scramble for Africa at the conference convened in Berlin, the Congo Conference.

During the Conference where European white supremacist decided it was their right to divide the lands to which they had no affinity other than economic motives, the geographical region of Somalia was divided into three parts: British & Italian Somalia [gaining independence 1960—immediately untied, forming greater Somalia], and French Somalia [gaining independence in 1977, becoming Djibouti].

Other historical influences that produced current Somalia, are located in the conditions that surround the periods when the Ethiopian Empire took over [Ogaden] and Kenya took over [Northern Frontier District] regions.

These historical conditions bolstered by exacerbating and fomenting divisions among the various groups of people who live in the region are important to understand as they directly impact the environments within which the people live today.

To erroneously label Somalia as a fail state, instead of a collapsed state, distorts the how and why the region is in a state of intentional conflict accelerated at the behest of Western foreign capitalist interest that have historical roots in the many attempts to control the region; that is the wars between European cultural groups and the sociopolitical, cultural ‘Others’ they created as their ‘enemies’.
To be clear, upon closer analysis the real threat of the region is the fact that the people of Somalia are really showing that the nation state is not the only system upon which peoples can organize themselves. What do I mean, the people in the region have been functioning against the imposition of foreign structures that have cause internal conflict for over 30+ years. If left to organize themselves on the trajectory they were ancestrally on before the intentional and aggressive efforts of Western nations to destabilize the region for its own economic and geopolitical ends, Somalia as we know it would be what it once was erroneously labelled, the Switzerland of Africa.

The reason I say erroneously labeled [but still useful to highlight the point]; the model of peaceful sociopolitical organization should not be limited to a European nation. This label, also, dismisses the deep logics and sociopolitical histories of African peoples who organized themselves into civilizations before the creation of the nation state. These histories and logics are in the ancestral membrane of the people. And the peoples of Somalia, despite the distorted narrative and images are exemplar to this fact [https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeraworld/2016/10/somalia-forgotten-story-161027115655140.html].

Today, AWNP’s, Mwiza Munthali is in conversation with, Mr. Abukar Arman.

Abukar Arman is a former diplomat, once serving as Somalia's Special Envoy to the US. As a Somali political analyst, he is widely published on issues related to foreign policy, Islam, the Horn of Africa, and extremism among other topics.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!