The Losing Formula: Hate as a Political Strategy

By Muktar M. Omer April 02, 2012

Lettered fools?

So, Ogaden intellectuals now think it is more important to check Isaaq ‘expansionism’ than to fight Ethiopian colonial occupation? Securing the borders of Aware and Dannood are more sacred than achieving freedom and justice? Subduing the Sheikhash is a victory to be celebrated with merriment? And we still wonder why we continue to be sub-humans whose purpose in life has shrunk to be mere hewers of wood and fetchers of water for cruel Tigrayan rulers? We still moan that we are Galeano’s “no-bodys”, owners of nothing, “running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way?” We still do not know why rest, for us, is in our footloose feet, in trekking eternally? We still have no idea why we cannot own land; we cannot own state; we cannot administer; we cannot dream ambition? Or perhaps we feel warmed and relish the only houses we own today- the putrid refugee camps and dusty IDP settlements in the neighborhoods! What are we? W.E.B Dubois’s “lettered fools”? When and where does this appalling scholastic self-abasement end?

If John Ralston Saul, in “Voltaire’s Bastards”, thinks western civilization is in crisis because it is based on the concept of reason, he should know our society suffers from the opposite of reason, which is irrationality. We still haven’t enjoyed the virtues of reason, so we cannot see its limits and deficits - an indulgence, western philosophers can afford to ponder on. Clearly, the utterances of Ogaden intellectuals in the past months, of course as always with the exception of a silent minority, demonstrated that rationality is a scare commodity in our midst.

Children of a deficient culture

We, Somalis, are a strange race; a kinship nation. The religion of our cultural system is patronage, tribalism and cronyism and the political constructs we identify with are mere temples of this cult. We worship this religion of kinship. We acclaim injustice; we glamourize ignorance. We even beatify the devil, if the devil happens to be of the same lineage. We perfume the ugly political behind of criminals simply because they belong to our clan. We submit to the whims of puppet political witchdoctors, simply because we think their helping hand would advance our careers or bulge our pockets.

Dadkaaga dhinac ka raac, we say. It was a fad in the Revolution days, allegedly the favourite dictum of Jaalle Siyaad. It is an adage which expiates stupidity, sycophancy and cowardice, comfortably locating all these within the human urge for self-preservation. As a proverb, it could only have come from a deficient and miscalculating culture with an ingrained misunderstanding of the true drivers of human transformation. As a society, we are a relic of this culture, and embody and dramatize herd mentality, servility and disguise as the better part of wisdom, even explaining to comic levels the virtues in not challenging, explaining, and discussing dissenting ideas or simply narrating uncomfortable socio-political realities.

Hate as a rallying political agenda

Ogaden clan intellectuals who think the short-cut for the prized Ogaden hegemony in Somali Regional State of Ethiopia is to rally behind Abdil Iley’s stinking clan wars against fellow Somalis are ardent followers of this religion of servility and sinful orthodoxy.  They are what Dr. Syed Hussien Atlas, the impressive Malay Sociologist, classifies as “badly functioning intellectuals” who “give bad diagnoses of perceived problems” and “are not capable of forming an opinion beyond what is obvious to most people.” Tolkaaga dhinac ka raac is the younger sibling of this domineering and deficient dadkaaga dhinac ka raac injunction.

Few weeks ago, Abdi Iley’s Liyu Police attacked the people of Gaashaamo. Gaashamo was merely a new killing field for the depraved militia, who in the past have attacked Dhulbahante in Buuhoodle, Aba-Yonis in Garloogube, Abaskul in Jigjiga, the Geri and Hawiye in Babile, Mareexaan in Lasa Ano, Sheikhash in Rasso, to name but few. But the biggest recipient of Liyu Police brutality, by far, remains to be the Ogaden clan. This community is killed every day. Gunagado was awash with the blood of innocent civilians just a month ago. In fact, what makes their killing different than the rest is that it is considered to be normal. People seem to have normalized to the notion that, because the enemy is so powerful, victims who resist oppression have only themselves to blame for the punishments they suffer. Read More