This article was posted to BlogATU by ATU President Dr. Ahmed H.
Esa. It is a heartfelt article written about the late Ibrahim Megag Samatar for
the Yale 50th Anniversary 1965 Class Book by Carl Gershman,
President of the US National Endowment for Democracy
Ibrahim
Samatar (1942-2011)
One
of the most vivid memories I have from my senior year at Yale was the
friendship I developed with Ibrahim Samatar, a Somali national who was studying
economics. We were both at Jonathan
Edwards College and had dinner together regularly. On the surface, we had very little in
common. He was a Muslim from Somalia and
I a Jew from New York. What brought us
together, I think, was that each of was something of an outsider at Yale, and
we were both deeply concerned with the social and political problems of our
respective countries, which we would talk about endlessly. I was focused on the civil-rights movement,
which had led me to drive to Mississippi and then to Selma, Alabama, during our
senior year to promote black voting rights.
Ibrahim’s focus, of course, was the future of his own country, which had
become independent five years earlier.
Ibrahim
was from the northwestern part of Somalia that had been the British
protectorate of Somaliland during colonialism. At the time of independence in
1960, Somaliland merged with the former Italian Somali protectorate to form the
Somali Republic. Ibrahim had been an
adherent of “the Dream of Greater Somalia,” the nationalist vision that rallied
the Somali people against colonialism and looked toward the unification in a
single sovereign state of all the Somali-speaking people – those living in the
British and Italian protectorates that became Somalia, French Somaliland that
became Djibouti, and Somalis living in Ethiopia and Kenya. It was not to be, and even Somalia was a
deeply divided country, with the central government in Mogadishu treating
Somaliland as “a backyard province,” as Ibrahim described it, and not a country
that had sacrificed its sovereignty for the sake of national unity.
Still,
Ibrahim was a patriot, and he returned to Somalia after graduation to become
the country’s Director of the Budget in 1968, after which he held a number of
cabinet posts, including Minister of Finance and Advisor to the President on
Economic and Political Affairs. In 1980
he was appointed Somalia’s Ambassador to Germany, but by then relations between
the two parts of Somalia had badly deteriorated, with President Siad Barre
becoming increasingly dictatorial and repressive. Ibrahim defected in 1981 and sought asylum in
the United States. He also joined the
Somali National Movement (SNM), a rebel group formed by dissidents tied to the
Isaq clans of the North that sought the overthrow of Siad Barre and evolved
into a movement for an independent Somaliland.
Ibrahim
became the North American representative of the SNM and the Chairman of the
organization’s Central Committee. It was that capacity that he re-connected
with me in 1991. The Siad Barre regime
had just fallen, and the SNM had established the sovereign Republic of
Somaliland, extricating itself from the civil war that was destroying the rest
of Somalia. (The abortive U.S.
intervention in the civil war was the subject of the film “Black Hawk Down.”) Ibrahim had discovered that I had become the
President of the National Endowment for Democracy, and he thought that I could
get NED involved in assisting the development of a democratic system in
Somaliland, and also help him connect with the policy community in Washington
so that he could make the case for the U.S. recognizing Somaliland as an
independent country. This was a step the
U.S. was loathe to take (as was the U.N. and
the O.A.U.) for fear of encouraging the break-up of other African
countries.
I
arranged a meeting with Capitol Hill staff and others, and I remember that Ibrahim gave an eloquent
presentation, laying out the history of Somaliland, its struggle against a
brutal dictatorship in Mogadishu which behaved like an alien colonial power
toward the people of the North, and its pragmatic decision to separate itself
from the chaos engulfing the rest of Somalia.
He also emphasized Somaliland’s democratic aspirations and character,
saying that the NSM “was authoritative but not authoritarian” and intended to
build a multi-party democracy with a free press. Also, as he had hoped, NED did provide
assistance in Somaliland, supporting more than a dozen NGOs working on civic
education, human rights, free media, training youth and women activists, and
strengthening Somaliland’s parliament and electoral processes.
Ibrahim
was proud of what was being accomplished in Somaliland, and in a letter he sent
to President Clinton in 1996, he declared that “One can hardly recall another
example of a liberation movement which won power through the barrel of the gun
and which was simultaneously so uninterested in ruling with its gun! With stability assured through
decentralization and consensus-reaching procedures, the formation of formal
cross-sectional political organizations can, and will evolve, during the
transitional stage.”
Ibrahim
contemplated returning to Somaliland to participate in politics, and told me
soon after the death of President Egal in 2002 that he might try to run for
president. But that didn’t happen. He continued to teach at Josai International
University in Japan, which is where he died in 2011.
A
few years before his death, when he had retired from politics, Ibrahim issued a
statement of fundamental principles called “Where I Stand” (http://arc.somaliland.org/2008/08/30/where-i-stand-by-mujaahid-ibrahim-meygaag-samatar/) that
he hoped would help guide and inform the younger generation. It’s a broad and comprehensive statement of
his views on democracy, Somali unity, Islam and Islamic radicalism, and the
economy. It shows Ibrahim to have been a
genuine democrat, searching for ways to integrate and reconcile modern
political ideas with traditional culture and religion. His vision continues to have profound
relevance in today’s very violent and divided world. These are his concluding words:
“We
know we are a poor nation. But, poverty need not be a curse. There are nations
with meagre resources like us who overcame poverty. Human development and its
mobilization can compensate for the lack of resources and perform miracles. In
addition to investing in health and education human development also means
instilling solidarity and a sense of belonging to one another, having a common
future and destiny, among the citizenry and their various communities and
clans. Competition in business, politics and among the communities can be both
healthy and unhealthy. If the unhealthy aspect is not fought fiercely it can
turn into ugly fratricide [look at the situation in Somalia]. One of the
reasons motivating me to write this simple piece is that I noticed from afar
that this competition is beginning to turn ugly. Simple matters that can be
resolved through amicable discussion and dialogue between the concerned
personalities and organs are sometimes turned into unnecessarily highly
contested national controversies wasting, when they are finally resolved, a lot
of energy and good will.
“Let us check that
tendency in time. We still have not lost that capacity for good will and
democratic dialogue, inherited from the struggle of SNM, which is the basis for
the success of Somaliland so far. We need to revive moral values of integrity,
cooperation, forgiveness and brotherhood in our people. And while this task is
the duty of all of us, the primary burden falls on the leadership: political
(whether in power or aspiring to it), religious, community elders, and the
intelligentsia. We need to rise above minor squabbles and take the high moral ground.
Some of you may say that I am too idealistic and out of touch. I do not think
so. I believe what is written here is simple and practical. I am an optimist
and have always been so even at dark moments when my life was in danger. Even
if these words are idealistic, so be it. After all it is the image of the
future that moves people and it is vision that enables a society to organize
itself for the better. It has been said long ago that those who do not learn
from history are condemned to repeat it. It is my hope and belief that we have
learned enough and will continue to move forward.”
