What Motivates Somalilander’s Opponents

- Somalilanders need to understand motivation of their opponents, especially the tribal tooting on and off line effective hate campaign – believe it or not, their motivation is nothing more than a simpl ENVY ! They have long convinced themselves Somalilanders (particularly Idoors) are Qad chewing wild society who is unskilled to govern… They just don’t want to accept what they thought was Qad chewing wild society have not only proven to govern, but in fact succeed building their own thriving nation.

To be envious of success is inherent human and Somali characteristic (.. hadee ma kii xunka ahaa ee reer waqoyi baa wax qabsan kara), regrettably, in Somalia, this prevailing indoctrination now became a clinical disease affecting our civilization.  Somalilanders need to come together with foresight and work harder for the nation building. But, with new and relevant strategies, especially, at the national, intra-Somali and international diplomacy front. We acted by standing up to injustice and by building a successful nation from the ground up.

However, our opponents continue to actively undermine and relabel us while others are studying our success. It’s time to create new realities, alliances and act with foresight to be our own histories actors.

Today’s world is linked by media systems and awash in advertising images; political policies are packaged by public relations experts and celebrity gossip [in our case Hirsi’s afaray] considered “hot” news. More and more of the economy is devoted to marketing and the performance of scripted roles and in the advancement of one’s cause/nation. We live in a “society of the spectacle,” as the French theorist-provocateur Guy Debord declared back in 1967. Yet, faced with this new world, Somalilanders (both Diaspora and the homeland) are still acting out a script inherited from the past. This is a mistake. 

If democracy in nation building is to be sustained (both in Somalia and Somaliland) and citizens are to truly govern their lives, then the manufacture of aggressive but convincing Somaliland brand must be continuously revealed and deconstructed, including the preoccupation and endless distraction of what I called “needless” internal “football”. We should not shun away engaging the envy driven Somali discourse and southerner’s political stagecraft must be relentlessly attacked with our arsenal of facts and reason.

In brief, we ought to learn to manufacture dissent, while staging success and crafting the art of cutting timely and self-centered, but genuine deals advancing nation’s interest. We need to do this for strategic reasons. Whether one approves of it or not, fantasy and spectacle have become the lingua franca of our time.

''Happy 22nd anniversary''

Ahmed Qani