A brief background of how Somalia has arrived to the present situation of conflict and chaos.

I wonder how a whole nation can lose its freedom to tribal thugs who control every corner of the country including its seas and oceans at gunpoint. Somalia has plunged itself into turbulent waters of chaos and strrifre as its freedom and the freedom of its people have been trampled on by warlords . When have we lost our freedom?

Prior to the arrival of the white man Somalis have been able to feed and clothe themselves without needing any support from outside. But they were communities who have had no central authority to govern themesleves under one nation with viable state institutions. Over the meager resources of water and pasture they fought as tribal anarchy reached peak during dry seasons. Those days they were free to move around though the risks to clash with another tribe was quite high. When the white colonizer seized their territory (sometimes on arrangement with tribal chiefs) he put them together in certain confined areas to have some control over their movements and and have thus created tribal boundries among tribes who once had crossed to each other as freely as they wished. The imposition of the movement restrictions has greatly affected their pastoral freedom on one hand and improved, to some extent, the security situation of their environs on the other. Was the arrival of the white man the beginning of a gradual process to lose freedom or was it the beginning of understanding the value and meaning of freedom? Anyway Somalia was declared as an independent nation in 1960.

Somalia's freedom went on fire when tribalism was used as an essential tool to achieve political goals. In the early sixties the parliamnet seats were divided along tribla lines, the military regime tried its best to eradicate tribalism but to no avail. It only buried the roots to tribalism deep in the soil of revenge and anarchy. But the worst thing happened when Somalia fell apart in the early nineties due to widspread chaos and strife across the nation. Somalia has been reduced to a nation without a face in the international community. It had disintegrated like empires of the ancient times which were once very strong and powerful but later on collapsed as a result of the anarchic environment their leadership had established. Today these empires have a small space in history books to teach students how every wrong rise has a sudden fall. I believe that until we wipe out TRIBE from our political system we can never ever be free people, no matter how expertly we balance our political equation with parties belonging to tribal factions.