In
view of the linkage between the ongoing socio-political crisis and scarcity
of environmental resources with livelihood values, the Somali Centre for Water
& Environment (SCWE) conducted an analysis on the pronounced social and
political crisis in our country. The result reveals some truth.
In general, the human life is mainly influenced by two fundamental factors;
(1) the way the people think, and (2) the environment in which the people
live. The environment forms also the way the people think.
In Somalia, there are extreme scarcity of and lack of reliable access to the
environmental resources; such as water and grassland which supports the fragile
life system of the powerful clan-based pastoral communities who claim they
are the majority of the Somali population. Socio-economic activities in Somalia
as well as the lives of the majority are desperately traditionally depending
on the rarely available natural resources particularly grass and water, which
frequently forces rural communities to migrate in search for them. In Somalia,
climate, primary factor in much of Somali life for the large nomadic population,
forms and determines the life. One of the most important tools to survive
in that harsh environment is to find these life-supporting resources through
adopting sustainable strategies that are relevant within the social and cultural
context. Unsustainable utilization of the common and scarce resources could
result competition between various users within the society, which can probably
leads the society to a difficult situation forcing them to fight between themselves
over these resources. For instance, wells are not only source of life for
rural communities but also a source of social conflict, which in most cases
lead local communities to fight over the scarce resource. This natural but
avoidable resource scarcity forced however many rural people to restructure
their approach for survival.
The modern history of Somali Plateau reveals that there is a tendency showing
Somali population movement towards the south, escaping from more arid areas
of the country and seeking refuge in southern regions. The single issue that
moves these people is environmental resource scarcity in terms av water scarcity
and lack of productive land. Many have abandoned their life style based on
pastoralism livestock raising because of the lack of water and grassland and
the recurrent severe droughts killings their animals, the source of life.
The hardest droughts in last century, just to name view, are Xaraame-cune
in 1911, Siiga-cadde in 1945, Saddex-shillinleey
1947, Daba-dheer in 1974-75, Caga-barar
in 1992. It is natural that people move from areas with little water to areas
where there is too much of it in order to survive. Environmental resource
scarcity-driven migrations from rural areas into urban environment, but more
importantly from water-scarce areas to relatively water-abundant regions are
therefore significant, as people's socio-economic activities are suffering
from water scarcity creating serious inter-community conflicts or inter-regional
imbalances.
During the last several decades, we have learned how the powerful pastoral
communities, who traditionally use to hate cultivation and despise the people
who do so, adapted new strategies of changing their livestock-based socio-economic
activities to cultivation in southern Somalia. This became evident since the
arrival of colonial powers in the late 19th century but has been intensified
since then. The inter-river land contains not only the best agricultural areas
in the whole Somali populated areas in the Horn of Africa, but also in comparison
with the rest of the country receivs the most rains. Since the independence
in 1960, most Somalis realized the productivity of the land between and along
the two rivers.
During the civilian rule between 1960-69, water has been an election issue,
and candidates to the National Assembly (the Parliament) use to dig wells
for the rural communities to attract and secure their votes. During the military
rule (1969-1991), General Mohamed Siad Barre used land registration in southern
Somalia as a part of his strategy to enrich his constituents to gain political
support.
In the Holy Qur'aan, Allah (SWJ) said that He will reward pious and righteous
persons, after this life, His Paradise which He 55 times described as Gardens
beneath which rivers flow. This is a clear indication that the life on
or near the river is the best, at least in the eyes of humans in this world
and having farmland under which river is flowing is the best a person can
possess and live on, as it may be a sustainable source of food and financial
capital. From the dawn of civilization, people have liked to settle close
to water source. Rivers is where the civilization and human development are
born, and the birth and death of civilization have always been related to
the availability of water.
On the onset of the civil war in 1991, the selfish power-hunger militia-armed
warlords have also taken advantage of these livelihood resource scarcity problems
experienced by the pastoral rural communities to manipulate divisions within
communities segmenting along lines of clans. Powerful warlords that encouraged
their fellow militia to occupy the fertile land along and between the two
southern rivers, the Jubba and Shabelle, which receives relatively high rainfall
seized through the power of the gun control of the resource base and use it
to their exclusive advantage. This resource availability in the inter-river
land might the reason behind the persistence and concentration of armed conflict
in southern Somalia during the last 12 years. Many different groups are now
competing over the accessibility of the easily available resources in that
area. Although there are natural resources everywhere on the Earth that could
sustain the human life, but the people always prefer to occupy in areas where
easily available and utilizable resources exist such as near and along the
rivers. This process often produces violence and breaksdown of traditional
sustainable system of survival and institutional mechanism of the local people.
It also violates the tradional property rights and the sustainable utilization
of the land resources.
The strong and fundamental idea of the powerful new arrivers in southern Somalia
is to seize the political power through military force in order to then gain
control and achieve the necessary economic resources such as land and water
resources. These new communities are strongly driven by their clan-based ideologies
but resource capture is their only goal. Although the basic traditional ideology
of the nomadic pastoral communities is to rely on the number of men who belong
to them, it is evident that this is changed somewhat so they also rely on
the land available for them in terms of production, so the increasing number
of people could be supplied with food.
One of the main reasons behind the Somali civil war is therefore lack of socially
acceptable system of natural resources management and development, including
water and productive land. This is to say that water, which is the major factor
determining the fragile system of life of the rural communities, was not developed
and managed to the required extent. As livestock raising and subsidence farming
are the two major traditional socio-economic activities of the country, water
play a vital role in the existence of their life. Somalia State collapsed,
among other things, because of the way it treated these environmental resources.
As a result of drier climatic conditions, breakdown in traditional governance
mechanism, lack of central system of government and increasing number of people,
conflict over water resources are now becoming a common occurrence in the
rural areas. Due to unregulated resource use, overgrazing and deforestation
resulting desertification and soil erosion, competition over water and grazing
land became rampant, which in turn result loss of life and occupation.
Struggle for land with water resources has since the independence been the
economic ambitions of the most political figures. This struggle for productive
land in southern Somalia, which is described to be the war behind the ongoing
civil war, is evident as the current armed political confrontations are concentrated
in the areas between or along the two rivers in southern Somalia, while the
other drier areas are relatively peaceful. In the future, even when contending
political factions reach political settlements, this struggle over productive
land in southern Somali will continue, because such resources represent the
economic opportunities for whichever regime emerge. Finding meaningful solution
for that struggle is likely one of the major determinant factors and impediments
for bringing Somalia into a long-lasting peace and social co-existence. The
hypothesis in this article is that the socio-political crisis has elements
of resource scarcity impeding any solution.
SCWE has no difficulties if all Somalis reside and occupy the productive land
between the rivers, and we are aware of that there are different groups interested
in those areas, but our concern is the long-term utilisation of the resources
which requires to be sustainable. SCWE believe that the available resources
in the inter-riverine land are enough for the needs of all Somalis, but NOT
for everyone's greedy. Apart from the human displacement caused by that voilatent
process, the greatest damage done during the struggles for productive land
in southern Somalia have been the adverse environmental effects that seem
to be unmanageable and irreversible even long after when solution if found
for the crisis. These damages are certain to affect the social stability of
the present and future generations as well as the required development for
resource exploitations.
The aforementioned analysis made by the SCWE concluded that one of the major
root cause of the current conflict is, among other things, strongly linked
to the lack of productive land with reliable water resources. In contrary
to what Dr. Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, the first Prime Minister of independent
Somalia State and its second President, believed, our misfortunes stem evidently
among other things from the unproductiveness of largest portion of our soil,
located in dry climate with extremely low rainfall. It is then safe to say
that the Somali crisis is mainly caused the avoidable poverty resulted from
resource scarcity fueled by the widespread social injustice and mismanagament
since the independence. In the opinion of the SCWE, the widely perceived tribalism
can not be the cause of the current conflict but could be defined as a traditional
tool for survival and interest group identification and alliance in this harsh
environment of resource scarcity.
In
conclusion, scarcity of environmental resources, particularly water and grass,
in Somalia have a key role in the ongoing political and social crisis and
its future solution, if one could be found.
