Politial Evolution

As the pandemic has worn on, I feel that the passage of time seems to be accelerating. Weeks are ticking by at an alarming rate. Things that were on my schedule way into the future are either imminent or behind me. And yet as I read Twitter posts, others seem to have the opposite sensation. I’ve seen several posts that talk about how to use the extra time during Covid or how to avoid becoming bored. I don’t remember being bored in my entire life (certainly not since the cell phone was invented).

Granted, I am a parent with two pre-teens. I have a job where I focus on a war-torn country in the midst of a contentious election, fraught with violence. I’m weathering most of the pandemic in an amazingly beautiful country loaded with things to see and do (and has thus far kept a lid on the pandemic). And I have an endless list of interests/hobbies that could fill several lifetimes. So no, I’m not bored and I very likely never will be.

Regarding some of these areas, I can provide a brief update. The pre-teens are now on holiday for the next couple of weeks. The school’s efforts to restore face-to-face education have largely been successful and so we enter this brief vacation knowing that they will return to the classroom thereafter. It’s a huge relief and possibly something that could have even been done earlier. But we’re all learning a lot as this pandemic rolls on. As for how they are spending this holiday, we have some other obligations, including my job, so we will have a limited amount of time when we can get away. We might go camping or something.

As for the country in crisis, Somalia is in a bit of a mess right now – even more than normal. My last posting was from my visit in which there was a nearby terrorist attack. Since then the political stalemate has been exacerbated, violence has continued and Covid-19 cases are on a sharp rise. My travel to the country is on hold indefinitely while these things are sorted out. I know that some Somalis have made comparisons to 1991 (the beginning of the civil war), and that may well be justified, but I tend to think that’s probably a bit hyperbolic. I may be wrong. I’m not Somali and I have had far less experience with the country than some. But I tend to think that the situation is different now, with stakeholders that have far too much to lose than stakeholders did back in the day. The unraveling of the country might benefit terrorists but for the players at the negotiating table(s), it’s likely they will continue to push their agendas to the very limit and likely not take them beyond. I have no idea how this is going to play out but I suspect that we will end up with a delayed, flawed election. Players will allow for some compromises. Everyone will have plenty to complain about but the system shouldn't fall completely apart.

I may be talking complete nonsense but I’m basing this on my attempt to look back and see the overall trajectory, going back more than a century. In sum, it’s about a fractured, clan-based society that is absorbed into a world that now functions with interacting nation states. While the old way was sustainable for centuries, it is now clashing with a world system that has demands and expectations that frustrate the old system. In fact many nations went through this same evolution, some of them centuries ago. Countries have formed and nations tend to work most effectively with other nations, rather than a dynamic grouping of clan societies. In some cases multi-country institutions have formed (ex. EU). No one knows where this is headed but it’s clear that, generally speaking, the smaller the entity, the less the leverage (we'll see how Brexit works out).

As such, the old system in Somalia has for the past several decades been grappling with what sort of system might work. Though almost no one likes their federal government, people are increasingly realizing that it's getting more and more difficult to avoid. Some have discussed dissolving into smaller, more clan-homogenous states (ex. Somaliland) but in most cases there just aren’t the natural resources to make such a thing viable. Most Somalis recognize that a federal government is a necessary evil. What’s happening today is the defining of the way forward. How will the power of this beast be distributed? How will resources be shared? What processes will be in place to protect the interests of all stakeholders? These people (mostly men) seem to be cognizant of the fact that they are, in many ways, the nation’s founding fathers. Thus, the stakes are high.

One could say that independence happened in 1960 so this can’t be the foundational period. Unfortunately, those early years, although they contained a constitution, did not effectively lay the foundation for a nation. Imagine the US Civil War taking place thirty years after the Declaration of Independence rather than ninety years. The unraveling happened before the nation could get to its feet.

So this is no doubt a critical time in the history of the country. If level heads prevail, we could come out the other side in a more mature political context. Or not. Time will tell.