In the country of “I have been a mujahid”, many things have changed since the mujahidinian theory has openly been politicised and practically promulgated within Somaliland. Which poses the questions: Is Somaliland a stratocracy state? Or is it a civilian state born out of a democratic system? Is Somaliland not
a land of saints or sages?
Regardless of whatever view that may come into your mind, take a little time to consider this: The head of the executive branch was formerly a Colonel in the army; the Interior Minister was formerly a Colonel in the army; the police commander was formerly a military officer; the president’s special adivisor was formerly an NSS officer in Siyad Barre’s regime.
When the consequences of how the mujahids and their associates politically behave is carefully weighed, the only thing that comes into the people’s notice is nothing more than a tyranny that overrides the collective will of Somaliland people; an illusion that intends to suppress a relevant opposition.
As the saying goes, only fools rush in where angles fear to tread. One great weakness of Somaliland’s democracy is that it encourages fools to become candidates.
This democracy weakness surely prompted the problem that the people we elect presidents, parliamentarians and local councilors as public servants mostly consider themselves as masters of the people who elected them. Is this not how politics is in Somaliland?
The reason that Somaliland suffers gladly
and pays a heavy price whenever presidential election approaches is that Somaliland system accommodates people who rush in where men of dignity, men of principle and men of wisdom, and men who care for their country more than they take care of themselve, fear to tread.
In the country of “I have been a mujahid”, two things can never be forgotten:What does I have been a mujahid mean and what it is that the mujahid wants to tell when he says the day and night that he is a mujahid.
The mujahid is a die-hard fighter, a hero in his
own territory who believes that no man can defeat him, for he constantly claims that he was once a brave shepherd boy who mostly used to fight roaring lions and wild bears. According to him, by using spears and shields, the mujahid survived fights with roaring lions several times in the past and made sure that no harm from the roaring lions and the wild bears could come to his herd.
But in a strange, almost unexplicable story, particularily in times of human warfare, the mujahid and his colleague had in fact not appeared at war fronts even in a fraction of a second. They all had the habit to retreat whenever SNM rebels waged a war against Siyad Barre’s forces. As the logic goes to say, how he who fought with roaring lions and tigers could retreat to fight with two-legged animals!
As times have changed, so have the way in which people live. Life, as it is presented in the flow of daily news, concerns a large number of disparate events: leaders struggling for power; democracy in decline, clashes of culture, politics that affects the life of every individual, lifestyles that will compell people to be new different persons with new ideas that can create careers, business construct and political concepts.
The reason why life is a blend of disparate social events is that building habits in only one area of lifestyle leaves a person’s overall living conditions lacking dimensions.
As a continuous aspect of life, lifestyle is determined by the dimensions of life. Lifestyle is apparantly how we desire to live and in turn determines our careers, our daily actions that shape who we become.
It flows from this that the most important part of our lives is discovering who we really are. If we carry on without asking ourselves the question of who am I, we will be unable to know where are strong, where we are weak, what we excel at, what we value and what we have to offer.
Of course, shedding layers of weakness that do not serve us in our lives and don’t reflect who we really are is a defining element on how we find ourselves and how we become who we want to be.
Much of our behavioral habits depend on the attitudes and atmosphere we grew up in and have a heavy hand on how we act as adults. Painful early life experiences often determine how we define and defend ourselves.
But lifestyle and career are two different things and one might not be confused. Career falls somewhere in the lifestyle, and is the individual’s journey through learning, getting work, gaining education, experiences, skills and other aspects of life.
Thus, a mujahid is just a person who
is living now a life that is fraught with quarrels, clashes, and conflicts. What just made him a different creature is how the mujahid defines and defends himself and that is what seems to be interesting to know.
In order to find who the mujahid in question really is, we must all seek out his own personal sense of purpose; his main aim in life. This means separating his own personal belief and point of view from other people’s expectations and objectives.
The choice of who really the mujahid has become wasn’t the mujahid’s own desire. What kind of a person the mujahid really has become was determined by the life-threatening political pressure from Siyad Barre’s regime that forced him to defect from the army forces. This was the day when the mujahid began to make his own event history.
SNM was where he began his much demented and distorted lifestyle. Beginning from the day he joined SNM in 1986, his focus was and is on two things: power and wealth, both legitimate aspirations in life, but his line of manoeuvre was and is always conspiritorial.
To say that he flip-flops is not to underestimate him. His negative attitude is best measured by his deceptive and destructive decisions. It all moves well to every direction, as it often does in his combative state.
In each season of his lifestyle, the
mujahid carried on with actions that have disappionted, shocked, annoyed, angered
and irritated not only politicians, but all Somaliland people.
The mujahid defines himself by what he values most, what matters most to him, what he likes most, what he hates most, not by what is good, what is just, what is grateful and what to offer.
He defends himself by repaying evil for evil, and even vengeance for virtues. To forgive is not part of his culture, but putting a begging bowl beneath the powerful hands of business tycoons during tight situations is not a bad attitude.
The mujahid firmly believes that nagative attitude is decisive in discovering a more hopeful outlook on all aspects of life and rationalized his actions accordingly.
If the mujahid says something it means Allah said. Nobody in this land can make the mujahid retreat from what he says, especially when the mujahid is in play for power and weath, as he is in play for today.
To be continued….. next week
By : Jamafalaag
jamafalaag@gmail.com
Hargeisa, Somaliland
As per usual the opinions expressed in this articale are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of qarannews.com
