I’ve been a sometime educator to a steady stream of Somali immigrants into my city whose ongoing diaspora suggests you shouldn’t read too much into the above essay. Some of the claims in that essay are just surreal distortions of reality (like that the violence in Somalia largely vanished in 1994 -- actually, most stability that there has been is to be found within the regions controlled by the transitional federal government around Mogadisho—outbreaks of violence and warlordism are not things of the past here.
It’s jarring to contrast this account of relative prosperity compared to the Barre government with those of my more recently-arrived students, one of whom had an unborn child literally sliced out of her womb with a bayonet five years ago, or the one who lost an arm to random gunfire sometime in the last three, or the teacher who held on for a decade and a half in Mogadisho before finally fleeing in the face of warlord crossfires (even under the aegis of what passes for a government). There are hundreds of these people in the ESL classes I taught alone.
What I’m saying isn’t which system produced less violence, it’s that the framing in the article of things being mostly stable and peaceful and violence being an isolated, localized phenomenon is misleading at the very best—the article says that by 1994 it had largely petered out.
Given what I’ve heard about daily life there from people who’ve actually, you know, lived there in the timeframe the article cites, including in the areas generally agreed to be the most stable, that seems like comparing a sucking chest wound from a bullet to a 6-inch long knife wound that’s penetrated the abdominal cavity and saying that the latter is much better.
Well, it’s not as immediately life-threatening, sure (in a merely-relative sense), but it’s still intolerably bad, enough that trumpeting it as a triumph of some social policy is just disingenuous.
Let us compare with Ivory coast democracy, where most of the coastal population was ethnically cleansed to the less desirable inland areas, or Nigerian democracy that led to the the Biafran genocide.
Black African governance is apt to be extremely bad under all systems. Anarchic Somalia not only does considerably better than the outstandingly dreadful Barre government, but arguably better than some governments beloved by the UN, the world bank, and western agencies.
Faced with Ivory coast democracy, it is reasonable to fight. Had the locals fought, and done OK, you would be getting similar reports about how dreadful things were in the Ivory coast.
I’ve been a sometime educator to a steady stream of Somali immigrants into my city whose ongoing diaspora suggests you shouldn’t read too much into the above essay. Some of the claims in that essay are just surreal distortions of reality (like that the violence in Somalia largely vanished in 1994 -- actually, most stability that there has been is to be found within the regions controlled by the transitional federal government around Mogadisho—outbreaks of violence and warlordism are not things of the past here.
It’s jarring to contrast this account of relative prosperity compared to the Barre government with those of my more recently-arrived students, one of whom had an unborn child literally sliced out of her womb with a bayonet five years ago, or the one who lost an arm to random gunfire sometime in the last three, or the teacher who held on for a decade and a half in Mogadisho before finally fleeing in the face of warlord crossfires (even under the aegis of what passes for a government). There are hundreds of these people in the ESL classes I taught alone.
Which system are you saying produced less violence? I’m not sure I follow.
What I’m saying isn’t which system produced less violence, it’s that the framing in the article of things being mostly stable and peaceful and violence being an isolated, localized phenomenon is misleading at the very best—the article says that by 1994 it had largely petered out.
Given what I’ve heard about daily life there from people who’ve actually, you know, lived there in the timeframe the article cites, including in the areas generally agreed to be the most stable, that seems like comparing a sucking chest wound from a bullet to a 6-inch long knife wound that’s penetrated the abdominal cavity and saying that the latter is much better.
Well, it’s not as immediately life-threatening, sure (in a merely-relative sense), but it’s still intolerably bad, enough that trumpeting it as a triumph of some social policy is just disingenuous.
Let us compare with Ivory coast democracy, where most of the coastal population was ethnically cleansed to the less desirable inland areas, or Nigerian democracy that led to the the Biafran genocide.
Black African governance is apt to be extremely bad under all systems. Anarchic Somalia not only does considerably better than the outstandingly dreadful Barre government, but arguably better than some governments beloved by the UN, the world bank, and western agencies.
Faced with Ivory coast democracy, it is reasonable to fight. Had the locals fought, and done OK, you would be getting similar reports about how dreadful things were in the Ivory coast.