Clan Elders and the Forging of a Hybrid State

CHAPTER FOUR CLAN ELDERS AND THE FORGING OF A HYBRID STATE Wars and popular struggles tend to get mythologized. Over time, a certain version of events becomes nested in the memories of those who lived them, as well as in the memories and imaginations of their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters—part of the shared historical memory of a people. In those canons heroes play an important part. Remarkably, Somaliland’s national heroes, the ones who are remembered as having defeated Siyyad Barre and birthed the nation, are not the guer- rilla fĳighters or the political cadres of the Somali National Movement. Somaliland’s national heroes are by general consensus the clan elders. As I have shown in the previous chapter, clan elders had become central power brokers and efffective political competitors to the original SNM political leadership. After the collapse of the Barre regime, in the absence of a Somali state or state institutions, clan institutions and elders became the essential medium of politics and power in the Northwest. A political space developed in which political actors identifying as clan elders work- ing through clan institutions, engaged with the idea and eventually the actual building and governing of a state. Clan elders did not necessarily ascend to executive state rule, but they mediated the formation and nature of the state and exerted a measure of political control over it. What developed and came into being clearly was not a Weberian state but rather a dynamic, hybrid political order. The involvement of clan elders and clan institutions in that hybrid political order made it possible to overcome seemingly formidable obsta- cles to local peace and governance. It helped to manage internal political divisions within SNM that arose after the collapse of the Barre regime. Equally important, it worked to mediate conflicts and divisions between Isaaq and non-Isaaq competitors for power and resources in the Northwest. A. The Role of Clan Elders in the Undoing of the SNM With Mogadishu in the hands of looting Hawiye militia afffĳiliated with the Hawiye-based United Somali Congress, the SNM was left in the Northwest 88 CHAPTER FOUR as the most meaningful military power in Isaaq-inhabited and adjacent areas. Its military potential was far greater than that of the Gadabursi militia on the western border or the Dhulbahante or Warsengeli militias on the east. Yet, real military or political control by offfĳicial SNM struc- tures, such as the top military command or the Central Committee, was erratic and dispersed. In reality, as we have seen, the bombed-out and pillaged Northwest was controlled by roaming clan militias and the only actors able to keep those forces in check were clan elders. The elders were also key in matters of peace, because their involvement allowed conflicting parties to approach one another as clans, rather than as competitors for state power. This lowered the stakes temporarily setting aside the allocation of state power as an aspect of the conflict. On the eastern flank, Isaaq elders who were members of the guurti, the elders’ council advising the SNM leadership, agreed to a cease fĳire with Dhulbahante elders (who in principle supported Siyyad Barre) as early as 1989. SNM commanders thus committed to refrain from incursions into Dhulbahante territory for more than a year before the war end. Although they were not always successful in preventing incursions from freelance Isaaq militias, the agreement lasted (Prunier 1990: 116). After the collapse of the Barre regime SNM regular and freelance militias occupied the town of Erigavo, which was historically shared by the Isaaq, the Dhulbahante and the Warsengeli clans, but they left the rest of Dhulbahante territory undisturbed.1 Clan elders of the Isaaq and the Dhulbahante also brokered local cease-fĳires in which clans agreed to remain within their ‘traditional’ areas, where their main settlements and grazing lands were located. The SNM elders and the Dhulbahante paramount elders Garaad Abdiqani, Garaad Jama and Garaad Suleiman met again at Oog at the beginning of February 1991 to fĳinalise the agreements between them. A pledge was made in the name of God “not to fĳire any more shots but to bring back brotherhood, unity and respect among Somali people.”2 Though the clan elders approached each other as traditional clan rep- resentatives, they were not simply icons of precolonial concepts. They had changed and evolved during the military regime, the war and its aftermath. Whereas paramount elders such as garaads, which in other regions are called sultaan, bokor or ugaas, did not traditionally fĳill leadership roles, but exercised mainly ceremonial, spiritual and even mystical 1 Mohammed Said ‘Gees,’ interview, Hargeysa 06/06/2002. 2 Horn of Africa Bulletin 2/1991..

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