I am a long time member of the Somali Diaspora. We are scattered in all over the world. The tragic collapse of the Somali state and nationhood has provided us all with different stories.  Each Diaspora member consumes these stories in his own way.

To cope and digest all the diverse information, some of us have organized and / or attended seminars, congresses, conferences and study sessions in all parts of the world.  Others of us have written articles in the clan oriented Somali Diaspora cyber world.  Most of these articles are written in English and are recycled be those who wrote it (including this author).  But, unfortunately, the vast majority of the Somali people cannot even write the word Internet in any language.      

However, those who organise Somali sessions in the outside world are in fact notorious sectarians with hidden or open agenda. They simply organise meetings just to annoy their enemy, the enemy who might have organised his session sometime ago.

The members of the Diaspora organise demonstrations, not because the suffering masses are in pain, wherever they are in Somalia, but they fulfil what I assume to be a primitive family or clan obligation to inflict on their “enemy” as many sleepless nights as possible.   Most of these Somali seminars and meetings generate discussion in the warm sitting rooms of the Somalis in the Diaspora. These comfortable places are where the clan composition of the congress participants analyse and pontificate.  The opponent sectarians then decide to organise their own Somali Seminar. 

The biggest handicap of the Somali seminars is that the actors select their participants carefully in order to minimise any losses to what I would call “seminar harmony.” It is an open secret that the major criterion of selecting Congress, conference or seminar participants is the clan composition.  But the unwritten code is not to mention that.

Have you ever joined a Somalia Seminar or conference dealing with the Somali human disaster?  No problem, such a meeting starts usually with serious presentations and speeches, but as soon as they are finished and you join small talks with the participants, you will easily identify the reality that the more Rhetoric and nationalistic one was during the plenary , the bigger is the poisonous Clan bomb that he has hidden in his Rhetoric. 

The peak of such shameless and  hypocritical behaviour during seminars kicks off always after each  early session. The dirty clan identity and stories then becomes (or returns to) the historic backbone of the Somali society.

This is the time when anybody who has decency and morality decides to close him/her self in a room either to vomit or at least to avoid the toxic clan pollution of the pseudo Somali intellectuals. The organisers of many Somali meetings outside Somalia for the last 16 years have many things in common with that of the warlords on the ground in Somalia. 

The results of the various conferences that have been organised by the so-called Somali Diaspora activities are equal in every aspect to the 16 fruitless Somali reconciliation conferences that have been organised outside our country for killers and unscrupulous Somali warlords. 

The only difference is that Somali warlords have openly played their dirty and deadly clan cards without scruples, while the participants of Somali conferences in the Diaspora are hypocritically masked.      

The Somali tragedy started during the 80’s and reached its peak the early 90’s until even now it is still continuing. It is painful to realise that the impact of the Somali civil war is becoming obvious now in the Diaspora.  The Diaspora should be more enlightened.

Our young and future generation born in the Diaspora is either killing each other in the streets of Ottawa, London, Minnesota, ,Amsterdam  or Sydney or are being killed by gangs. Some of them are so radicalised that they escaped their homes to join what they believe a holy war, for an entry ticket to heaven.
Ahmed Hussein, a Somali engaged in social activities in Toronto, told The Edmonton Journal on the 7th of December, 2008 that “12 young Somali men have died violent deaths in Alberta in just the past four months. That means our kids are also dying through bullets, just like our Null future generation back home.  … and the Somali dirty clan lamenting continues loudly in the sitting and chewing rooms throughout the Diaspora.
Ahmed Hussein reported further to the  paper, “ Abdul Kadir Mohamoud, 23, was found shot to death on Tuesday in Grand Trunk Park, near 109th Street and 130th Avenue in Edmonton.”

The Organisers of big Somali meetings in the Diaspora missed the understanding that the catastrophic future prospective of our kids born or grown up in the Diaspora are in search of identity, leadership, even an Idol. Daily, they hear, see and read shameful stories of atrocities such killing, torture, barbarism and rape coming from their (and our) original home and they have nobody who can give them a qualified explanation. They have nobody to be proud of, neither in their original home nor in the Diaspora.

Generally, people in the Diaspora use the freedom they have in the free world as an arena to articulate the injustice, human right abuses in their original home. They document acerbic any atrocity and crimes against humanity they make courageously public the names of those who committed crimes at home. Somalis in Diaspora failed to do so because every group are protecting their own clan murders and masters of the Somali inferno. Therefore, Somali seminars, conferences and studies sessions can be regarded with any hesitation as weak and fraudulent manoeuvres.  

However, Somali women are the unknown managers of the biggest feeding centre of the world namely Somalia and the Somali single mothers in the Diaspora are literally overtaxed while Somali men are mostly engaged in producing hate propaganda ala Gobbles in written or oral form during Mira sessions everywhere in the world.

We cannot Honour the better half of our bleeding nation with words but allow me to honour them by presenting the words (which I cannot translate with my Basic English) of the living legend and Somali poet honourable Hadraawi.    

Haweenkuna waa duggaal
Deeqdaada badh bay yihiin
Waxaa lagu daaqayaa
Siday u dul leeyihiin
Shar daalacan baa jiree
Iyagu dedan bay dhasheen
Dunuubta ninkay badhxaan
Rabbow ducadayda sii
Samaa dumar noogu dhiib,
Raggana dummaddooda saar
Waxay dumiyeen Rabbow
Haddaanay xumaanta deyn.
   
Most of the said political circuses organised by Somalis in the Diaspora are exclusively externally funded just like all Somali warlords’ reconciliation conferences have been funded:  by Canada, USA, Germany, Norway or Sweden etc….

During the 70’s and the beginning of 80’s we had a “United Somali Student union” in Germany. Our Organisation used to organise ritually a 1st July party every year for all Somalis. The members of our organisation at that time came from all parts of Somali speaking areas in the Horn of Africa. Today they are all professionals:  Medical Doctors, Engineers and Social scientists.

Just to manifest or demonstrate that Somalis can share ideals without any dirty clan prejudices, we built in 1980 a women’s centre in Qorjolle town in Lower Schebelle region of Somalia. Besides our individual contribution, we collected during Christmas (every year in December) money from the streets of Bonn, Aachen, Bielfeld, Kiel and Osnabrucken in Germany. We regularly organised cultural events to earn money for our women’s project. Alone, the building in Qorjolle costed us 500,000 German marks at that time. However, the women’s centre has now been totally looted, including company Landcrusier, work instruments, and all the tools.  It is symbolic of the national looting of Somalia in every respect.      

During those good old days, it was a healthy nationalism and intellectuality which united us.  There was no space for perverted clan stories. Family life, Profession and the situation in Somalia separated us from the ground in Somalia, but the feelings of unity were there.  I miss those days when we tried to be constructive across all clan lines. 

Nevertheless, and nostalgically, I would like to salute my Comrades wherever they are:

Dr med Ahmed Awad
Dr med Ahmed Abukar
Dr med Ali Mohamud (Chief Ideologist)
Dr med Abdillahi Mire      
Dr med Abdulazis
Dr Ismail Waise PhD Economist
Ahmed Farah   sociologist
Zakaria Hassan  
Sahardiid
Mrs Saida Hassan
Aden Mohamed Tani, Agricultural Engineer (M.sc).

All of us started our University studies in Germany and we graduated from the different Universities in West Germany. As I said, we came from the different Somali speaking regions in the Horn but the support of our poor and refugee Somali women in Qorolle united us although most of us had never seen or been there.

Today, the support of the Somali Diaspora to the suffering Somali people (except the monthly remittance to the families) is more or less clan based, not much different from the dirty warlord politics.

Therefore, my conclusion is:  The Somali warlords are not necessarily worse than the Somalis in the Diaspora.  Both groups preach and manipulate the deadly clan resentment among the Somali people.  That is why I say a socio-political activity in the Diaspora is hypocritical and perverse. 

I must admit that my article is generalising but purposely, therefore I hope that my good Somali brothers and sisters will understand me.

Aden Mohamed Tani
E-mail:adentani@yahoo.de
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