Kismaayo puzzle: An old wine in a new bottle

The high concentration of creating an autonomous administration in the southernmost regions of Somalia by solely Kenya and its interlocutors had cultivated a new looming future across the country which otherwise those populations could have been expected a relatively calm situation once the ferocity of Alshabaab is dismantled. However, contrary to that aspiration; it came obvious that the liberators of Kismaayo had no faith in consultation with the popularly elected national leaders of Somalia that also dying for the ultimate and sincerely support from both Kenya and those with its Somali cronies lobbying with the creation of a regime exclusively envisioned outside Somalia. This newly created political suspicion is firmly rooted on two existing political cultures in Somalia - Clan Supremacy and Land Expropriation!  

Right from the Italian colonization to the Post-Independent regimes as well as in the anarchy period, these two perspectives have been utilizing by the dominant politicians in the successive governments of Somalia that each administration sought by any means to expel the former tenants in Juba regions as to install a new favorable one with the rely of external power as is indicated to the current scenario. And every administration has actually implemented these two narratives through coercive and violence methods by outlawing the noble concepts of seeking mutually beneficial approaches for the political power and economic distribution of the Middle and Lowe Juba regions. For the Italian part, Governor Carletti in the Lower Juba has seized 10,000 hectors of plantation by forcing its owners to flee with the help of superior firearms. I.M Lewis said in his book of Modern History of Somalia that this land has previously been cultivated by Tuni clan. As a consequence, it is obvious that a degree section of those indigenous subjugated people had fled from their homes reaching out to the corners of Central Africa. Likewise, the military regime cleaned the remaining resilient indigenous populations by adopting far more serious policies that badly affected the sedentary people in the regions of Lower and Middle Jubas and Lower Shabele as well. The regime misappropriated the land of interverine and revrine areas by trans-planting it to over 100,000 displaced people from northern nomads in 1973 -74 on the grounds that the land belongs to no one. In the meantime the government didn’t adopt conceding policies and all the historical inhabitants were gradually misplaced from their swath. In this way the traditional owners of Kismaayo and across those regions were expropriated and minimized to the level of pariah. The land tenure that resisted trying to protect their land were threatened and imprisoned. The Department of Land Use and Irrigation was instrumental for the expropriation of the land. Today, it goes without saying that clans like Bajun and Tuni even can’t dare about putting their agenda on the table of the two Jubas let alone deciding its fate.

By the same token, the warlords in the civil war kept the track on by forming alliances under different banners and invaded the city several times just to control its economic resource. In the game of zero-sum competition no faction did ever succeed to rule the region and all of them ended futile in terms of Human and Capital; in addition to the environmental desertification they inflicted. Even Alshabaab being the most powerful group had eventually lost to these current occupiers. What matters in this brawl is not just how much superior armoires one has and the number of human resource as opposed to the indigenous; but actually who is not seeking to snatch people’s land and not illegally expelling them. Abdi Aynte said in his article of ‘Kismaayo Conundrum(S)’ that Kismaayo is the graveyard of many Somali powers, and expectedly Kenya along with Ras Kamboni militia might likely meet the same consequence if they won’t review their current position.  

In a dramatic move, however, it is safe to assume that Ras Kamboni politicians along with their cronies in Nairobi are in the struggle again to sweep the least remaining populations in those areas, and by their turn to project themselves that they are proper tenants of the city while in fact they hold marginal constituency in the districts of Lower Juba and Middle Juba. As the region is prized for a fertilized land, a relative mild weather, an airport and port facilities; it attracted non-native factional groups that continued to champion the top leadership of the politics and tried to conquer the land tenure against their will. So, today it is ill-fated that Ras Kamboni with the help of Kenya revived this trajectory of clan hatred and land expropriation in Kismayo.   

To sum up, Kenya’s anxiety to a future possibility of border insecurity could be minimized only through establishing effective diplomatic collaboration with the Somali Federal Government not solely its effort of erecting a buffer zone in the region by passing over the central government; and the Somali associates should not digging out a new misfortune in the country.  

Abdulkadir Suleiman
Political Analyst and Researcher




"Didiinglay dhamaateih"