Secret Policemen and Funky Bass Lines: A Somali Democratic Republic TL
- Thread starter GoulashComrade
- Start date
This is a lot of fantastic information, mate! I'll see what else I can dig up with academic access - it's a long way until we get Somalis in rockets and blue star satellites - but I'll be sure to hit ypu up when we get there!
I've already made my support for Kaddare vocal (for many of the reasons you've elucidated here.) I do think that accompanying it with Cyrillic - I'm a blatant Russophile - would be good for tech importation and Arabic could build ties with the rest of the Islamic-socialist sphere, but keeping one of the authentically native Somali scripts would be cool.
Democracy is nice, but this is a SDR TL, comrade! The will of the people must be interpreted through the dialectical materialist analysis of the party, to correct the bourgeois deviations that voting alone might create
.The Young Dervish is an OTL figure, if an obscure one. I haven't found anything on him outside some Somali-language stuff by Samatar and Cerulli, but that's true of most of the information on the PCI in the colonies anyways. There might be more on him in Italian, though.
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I'd chalk it up to a little too much Tolstoy, Gogol, and Bulgakov when I was younger more than anything else.
For a split second I thought you were a Putin fanboy, since I know far too many of them IRL; I'm glad you're just an avid reader.
For a split second I thought you were a Putin fanboy, since I know far too many of them IRL; I'm glad you're just an avid reader.
Oh god, no - I just like Russian literary culture (there's just something about the sardonic sense of humor that Russian authors write so well.) Backing a dictatorial bastard like Vlad would be the worst possible way to show genuine support for the people of Russia, barring perhaps the championing of an even more odious figure like Dugin. At the risk of sounding too political, any Russian ultra-nationalists reading this thread can gather the neo-Stalinists, the oligarchs, as well as all the other authoritarian bastards who strangle the liberatory dreams of the Russian people and collectively go jump off a cliff.
Heh, maybe a Somali retelling of the novel could be called The Master and Macchiato? Assuming, of course, that Bulgakov isn't the author "out there" enough to finally make the SDR reconsider its no-censorship policy
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Fly that Blue Flag, Comrade!
Fly that Blue Flag, Comrade!
The Coming of the First Republic
A Girl Scout troop in Mogadishu takes a group picture after attending an affiliated Young Socialist Pioneer meeting - the Girl Scouts Somalia often served as a Western-friendly arm of the Communist youth groups
Stars - The Sharero Band
A Girl Scout troop in Mogadishu takes a group picture after attending an affiliated Young Socialist Pioneer meeting - the Girl Scouts Somalia often served as a Western-friendly arm of the Communist youth groups
Stars - The Sharero Band
"The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own."
---- Antonio Gramsci
If by 1957 it was still too early to be certain of what could be achieved with the resources available in economic progress, in the field of politics there was little doubt as to the outcome. The power of the left wing of the SYL and the communists were getting to the point where their unions and worker's militias controlled whole blocks of urban Mogadishu that became death traps for any policemen who tried to enforce Protectorate law in the neighborhoods. The original hope of the Italian administrators, that the Italian communists and rhe Somali-Bantu left would be unable to work together thanks to the ethnic divide had long since been dashed - in a rare moment of true transcencion of racial barriers thanks to shared suffering under the colonial government, Montanari's PCI affliates and the Left-SYL were deeply intertwined. The countrysides were not much better for the colonials; if anything, they were worse. Any attempt to fully subjugate the unruly and well-armed nomads of the Issaq and Isse had been abandoned and the nomads (who were very politically active despite living a migratory pastoral lifestyle) by and large identified with the left wing of the SYL. It became clear that in order to stop revolution from coming to fruition, the Italians were going to have to give in to many of the most popular Communist demands.
The first of these major steps was the political preparation of Somalia for independence. Unlike the position in many other evolving African territories, in Somalia political advancement proceeded in step with the replacement of expatriate troops by Somali officials in the civil service and police. There was thus a smooth and regular devolution of authority in both the administrative and political spheres at the same pace of advancement. This sensible matching of the two lines of progress towards full autonomy was greatly facilitated by the success of the new educational measures which, if they did not produce an immediate cadre of university graduates, at least ensured a wide spread of general education. In politics, the first important step was the creation of a national Territorial Council in 1950 with consultative functions for which the ground had already been prepared under the British Military Administration. This was not merely a decorative or nominal body, but an active forum to which governmental decrees and draft ordinances were passed for scrutiny and discussion by the Trust Administration. Between 1950 and 1955 little short of a hundred ordinances, covering a wide range of subjects, were thus considered by the Council. Hence, although this body which contained some thirty-five members representative of both traditional and modern interests (including the political parties) was in composition similar to the British Protectorate’s Advisory Council, it was more truly an embryonic legislature than the latter organization. A further step in this direction was taken when, on the advice of the U.N. Advisory Council, legislative committees and offices were created to prepare the way for a fuller devolution of political authority. At the same time, at a local level, governmental responsibility was progressively devolved through two types of local government body: District Councils in the rural areas, and Municipal Councils in the towns and main centres. These organs were a direct development of what had already been established under the British Military Administration.
Although elected membership in the rural councils was introduced in 1955, the District Councils tended to be less effective than their urban counterparts and remained essentially consultative bodies providing a useful adjunct to the system of direct administration through District Officers. The municipal councils which were not so directly affected by the exigencies of the nomadic life developed very successfully, their members showing a marked desire and aptitude for increased responsibility. Thus by 1956, 48 of these councils had been established with a fair degree of financial as well as political autonomy This rapid progress was assisted by the Administration’s policy of attaching as secretaries to the councils officials with a training in municipal administration. Initially council members were nominated by the Administration, but in 1954 the first municipal elections were held and no less than sixteen parties presented candidates. Seventy-five per cent of the male electorate voted, suffrage being then confined to men, and the S.Y.L. won over half the available 281 seats. In 1956 when Somalis were replacing Italians in all senior administrative positions, these developments were crowned by the transformation of the Territorial Council into a legislative assembly composed of 70 seats, ten of which were reserved for ethnic minorities: the Italian and Arabian communities being allocated four seats each, and the Indian and Pakistani groups one seat each. The new assembly was given full statutory powers in domestic affairs, although the head of the Italian Trust Administration retained the right of absolute veto. Initially Italian counsellors were to be attached to the Somali Ministers in the cabinet appointed after the elections, and draft legislation had to be approved by the Italian authorities before passing to the assembly. Candidates for election were required to be literate in Arabic or Italian, a qualification which indicates the spread of education which had already been achieved by this time. As was to be expected, the new assembly was much more representative in composition than the old Territorial Council, and included a wider coverage of modernist opinion.
Voting, which the communists had been able to ensure would be kept open for both men and women as opposed to earlier colonial legislatures, was conducted by different procedures in the urban and rural constituencies. In the municipalities, voters had to be registered on the municipal lists and votes were cast by secret ballot. In the interior where the conditions of nomadic life made this procedure difficult and uncertain, voting took place through traditional clan and clan section assemblies. These meetings passed block lists of votes to the recorders, a procedure which lent itself to manipulation. It was therefore no surprise to find that the total recorded vote was far in excess of what might have been predicted from the estimated strength of the population, although the latter figures themselves were by no means definitive. Whatever shortcomings may have marred the conduct of the elections in the rural areas, the exuberance with which the general population seized this first opportunity to express its political will was remarkable.
Of the 60 seats available to the Somali electorate, 43 were won by the S.Y.L (of those, 27 were won by Left-SYL members), 13 by the H.D.M.S., three by a small group called the Somali Democratic Party, and one by a frankly clan organization called the Marehan Union. From fifteen opponents at the previous municipal elections, the League’s rivals had now dwindled to five, largely as a result of amalgamations amongst the smallest and most narrowly based groups. With this impressive consolidation of their position, the party was called upon to form a government under ‘Abdillahi ‘Ise as Somalia’s first Prime Minister. By this time, little trace remained of the earlier antagonism between the Italian Administration and the bourgeois sections of League; a good working basis of agreement had now been reached between the two sides, which was strengthened with the appointment in 1955 of the highly respected liberal Dr Enrico Anzilotti as Administrator. Although this new happiness was not quite present amongst the trade unionists and communist sympathizers of Somalia, the obvious march towards independence kept them from engaging in total revolt.
Henceforth, in so far as it was in a position to do so, the Italian Administration confined its participation in Somali politics to seeking to encourage those elements within the S.Y.L. which it considered most ‘moderate’ and favourable to a continuation of the Italian connexion. At the 1956 elections the League was estimated to have a mixed national membership distributed amongst the main clan groups as follows: Darod, 50 per cent; Hawiye, 30 per cent; Digil-Mirifle, 10 per cent; and others, 10 per cent. When the British withdrew from Somalia the principal cleavages within its leadership (which the Italians had sought to exploit) had been amongst its Darod adherents. Now although it still did not command an absolute monopoly of Darod support, the party’s following from this major group of clans was exceedingly strong. The Hawiye, however, were divided in their attitude towards the party. Division within the leadership between Darod and Hawiye members, had led to the formation prior to the 1956 elections of an organization originally calling itself the Hawiye Youth League which sought to detach Hawiye support. These differences within the S.Y.L., however, were resolved in time to present a united front at the elections (in which the Hawiye Youth League won no seat). But the extent of the party’s difficulties in patching up this cleavage was evident in the composition of ‘Abdillahi ‘Ise’s government. In addition to the Premiership itself, two of the remaining five ministries were assigned to politicians of the Hawiye clans, while the Darod gained two ministries, and the Dir one. This allocation of portfolios, which seemed to meet the needs of the moment, later caused the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction, thus favouring the formation of Darod break-away groups.
Certainly no other party could boast the same national following. But, as later events were to show, the more effectively the League widened its base, and the greater its electoral success, the more profound became its internal divisons. In the circumstances of Somali political realities, any party with strong national support could not but be essentially a consortium of rival clan interests. The League’s weakest following was still amongst the southern Digil and Rahanweyn who remained strongly attached to their own particularistic party, the H.D.M.S. This party did not campaign on a national basis; yet by winning 13 seats in its own electoral areas of Upper and Lower Juba Provinces, it found itself the main block on the opposition benches in the Assembly. Relations between the H.D.M.S. and the League continued to be coloured by the traditional hostility between the two factions of the nation which the rival parties tended to represent, and by their earlier differences in their attitudes towards Italy. Thus the H.D.M.S. accused the S.Y.L. government of discriminating against its supporters in the public service: and some conception of the depth of feeling between the two sides can be gathered from the assassination, in obscure circumstances by a radical young trade unionist named Aaisha Cali Raashid, of the prominent H.D.M.S. deputy Ustad ‘Isman Muhammad Husseyn in 1956. Later, H.D.M.S. members in the Assembly succeeded in having their ‘martyred’ colleague commemorated by the naming of a street after him near the principal mosque in Mogadishu. But although in 1956, the H.D.M.S. was still a force to be reckoned with, its lack of national appeal gave it little prospect of victory in a political atmosphere increasingly charged with the left-wing nationalistic fervour of a people moving rapidly towards independence.
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Great update!
I should really read some Gramsci. Odds are it'll be assigned in college at some point, of course, which is my excuse for not having read a lot of political and economic thought...
There's definitely a "big tent" joke in here somewhere.
Socialist Girl Scouts is one of those ideas that's just inherently awesome.
I should really read some Gramsci. Odds are it'll be assigned in college at some point, of course, which is my excuse for not having read a lot of political and economic thought...
There's definitely a "big tent" joke in here somewhere.
Socialist Girl Scouts is one of those ideas that's just inherently awesome.
Thank you!
Tony G is worth a read, but I think a lot of folks get intimidated by the density and Marxian terminology of the Prison Notebooks. I think it's probably best to start with his pre-jail writings, neatly collected in a reader from NYU Press. I'd tell you to buy the book, but this is a red TL, so here's a PDF. His books getting freely distributed is probably what Gramsci would have wanted, anyways.
Which will shortly become "splitting the party" jokes...
Then you're going to enjoy the 70s in Kediye's Somalia - there's a rough draft for a narrative post about Somali Girl Scouts talking to Italian ones about Marx during an ambassadorial photo-op somewhere in my computer
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Communists congregating in colonial-era cooperative coffeehouses co-opt colossal consternation and confront callous collaborators.
Flowers of the Revolution
"Flowers of the Revolution"
General Secretary Kediye's Wunderkind Generation of Technocrats, Apparatchiks, Propagandists and Killers
(A Short Look into the Future)
Members of the XHKS' Combat Groups of the Working Class party paramilitary drilling. From the mid-70s onward, the Combat Groups were mostly staffed by youths raised in Kediye's Flower Revolutionaries program
Waaberi - Tolweynaha Hantiwadaagga Ah (The Socialist Commune)
(A Short Look into the Future)
Members of the XHKS' Combat Groups of the Working Class party paramilitary drilling. From the mid-70s onward, the Combat Groups were mostly staffed by youths raised in Kediye's Flower Revolutionaries program
Waaberi - Tolweynaha Hantiwadaagga Ah (The Socialist Commune)
"All Russia was learning to read, and reading—politics, economics, history—because the people wanted to know. . . . In every city, in most towns, along the Front, each political faction had its newspaper—sometimes several. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets were distributed by thousands of organisations, and poured into the armies, the villages, the factories, the streets. The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, the first six months, went out every day tons, car-loads, train-loads of literature, saturating the land. Russia absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water, insatiable. And it was not fables, falsified history, diluted religion, and the cheap fiction that corrupts—but social and economic theories, philosophy, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol, and Gorky.
--- John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World
"Let us do away with this noxious idea of the clan, abolish it entire from the face of the Earth! What has it brought Somalia but misery and a slavish worship of the old traditions? Our new socialist Somalia will be built during our lives, God willing, but we can not be its citizens. The revolutionary generation are forever exiles from the old world which they dismantled; the first citizens of Socialist Somalia in truth will be our children. They will not know any race but the proletariat, they will have no clan but the nation."
--- Comrade Salaad Gabreye Kediye
From "Marx-Engels-Lenin Thought: The General Secretary's Ideology and the Nation it Made" by Anthony Richards, UT Austin Press
"We must now attempt a deeper assessment of the true extent of the transformation achieved by Scientific Socialism (offically known as Marx-Engels-Lenin Thought or Individualist Marxism in Somalia) of the most pervasive traditional forces; Islam and the clan (or lineage) system. Although there were said to be more than a few atheists amongst the young Somali Marxist elite (perhaps including even Secretary Kediye himself - who was married to a Christian Italian communist and was certainly a non-practicing Muslim at least), Colonel Kediye repeatedly insisted that his government’s commitment to Scientific Socialism was fully compatible with Islam and indeed, as he pointed out with some justice, expressed the essential communal spirit of Islam. As he declared in a speech a few months after seizing power:
‘Our Islamic faith teaches us that its inherent values are perennial and continually evolving as people progress. These basic tenets of our religion cannot be interpreted in a static sense, but rather as a dynamic source of inspiration for continuous advancement. . . . To help our brethren and our fellows, we must go beyond the concept of charity and reach the higher and more altruistic concept of co-operation on a national scale. We must strive with enthusiasm and patriotism to attain the highest possible rate of general welfare for all.’
Moreover, as General Siyad explained in a speech in 1972, evidently aimed at young secular radicals,
‘The founders of Scientific Socialism - the fathers Marx and Engels, who are a part of our nation as much as Maxamad Cabdille Xasan - were not against religion in particular but they exposed and disproved the reactionary elements of religion that dominate [the] sound reasoning of mankind and hence hinder [the] progress of society.’
There was no question, therefore, of the death of God here – whatever conservative Islamic critics inside Somalia or outside it claimed. As the secretary declared in another speech in 1972:
'As far as socialism is concerned, it is not a heavenly message like Islam but a mere system for regulating the relations between man and his utilization of the means of production in this world. If we decide to regulate our national wealth, it is not against the essence of Islam. God has created man and has given him the faculty of mind to choose between good and bad, between virtue and vice. We have chosen social justice instead of exploitation of man by man and this is how we can practically help the individual Muslim and direct them to a virtuous life. However, the reactionaries wanted to create a rift between socialism and Islam because socialism is not to their interest. Let us be clear, the realization of socialism is the realization of Islam.'
In this eclectic fashion the Kediye regime staunchly defended its blend of socialism and Islam against conservative criticism of such reformist measures as the introduction of sexual equality in inheritance rights, women in the military and government, and huge welfare programs funded by the mixed capitalistic economy. In effect, in an old and venerable Islamic tradition, the Head of State claimed to understand the Prophet’s message better than his critics. The state media, and particularly the television shows, promoted a subtle synthesis of Islam and Somali socialism, in which Quranic texts and commentaries led naturally to socialist ideals and to their pithy formulation in the Head of State’s much-quoted slogans. If external reservations from the more conservative Muslim powers about the orthodoxy of Kediye’s Islam persisted, it was at least a much less implausible and logically consistent interpretation than that implied in Colonel Gaddafi’s bizarre Libyan confection of Islam and socialism....
....The announcement of the advent of Individualist Marxism was coupled with a vehement denunciation of tribalism, which as the official slogan succinctly stated ‘divides where Socialism unites’. The former government-stipended local lineage headmen (akils) were replaced by elders with the appealing title of ‘peace-seekers’ (nabad-doon), or at any rate this new designation was officially adopted. The abolition of payment of blood money was likewise confirmed, and those prone to engage in this or other tribalistic actions connected with the traditional lineage and clan organization warned that they risked swingeing fines and prison sentences. As a positive measure against urban tribalism, the government undertook to provide funeral expenses for those who died in towns without relatives available to help them perform these services. The national campaign (olol) or ‘crash programme’ (parnaamaaj) against tribalism culminated in demonstrations later in the year and early in 1971 when effigies representing ‘tribalism, corruption, nepotism and misrule’ were symbolically burnt or buried in the Republic’s main centres. The circumlocutary use of the term ‘ex’ (ex-clan) tolerated by previous civilian regimes was completely outlawed - a rare case of explicit social control by the Kediye regime -and the word comrade (jaalle) launched into general currency with official blessing to replace the traditional, polite term of address ‘cousin’ (ina‘adeer), which was now considered undesirable because of its tribalistic, kinship connotations.
Earlier Somali nationalists, both religious and secular, had appealed to the transcendent brotherhood of Somalis, uniting those of different clan and lineage. The new stress on friendship appealed for co-operation and unity on the basis of an undifferentiated, nationalistic Somali identity, in which traditional divisions were totally annulled. The development of this official ideology and of other reinforcing divisions became increasingly important to Kediye's regime to keep up the public enthusiasm which had greeted the Second Red October coup initially. The new official hagiography presented the youth of Somalia as the ‘Victorious Leaders’ (Guulwaadde), dauntessly leading the nation in its unremiting struggle against its foes - both the reactionaries at home and the targets of Somali irredentism abroad. Posters, poems, songs of praise and panegyric speeches soon proclaimed throughout the country the sublime calling of Individualist Marxism. Inspired by Scientific Socialism, this mystical union of personal drive and collective achievement was depicted as the source of prosperity and success in the nation’s struggle forward.
Amongst its more precious progeny were the ‘Flowers of the Revolution’ (as they are officially designated) – destitute children, often orphans, who had been gathered from the streets of Mogadishu and other towns during the first years following the Red October Coup into Revolutionary Youth Centres, where they received food, clothes, shelter in schoolhouse dorms, education and training in the tasks of nation-building. These new recruits to the nation symbolized the ideal new citizen whose dedication to their country was pure and untarnished by atavistic kinship allegiances. East German and Russian instructors drilled them, hoping to mold these eager young party members into the finest technocrats of a new Africa. They were trained to be critical thinkers in accordance with the individualistic currents of Marx-Engels-Lenin Thought - Kediye did not want his country run by robots when he was gone - but the children were utterly loyal to the XHKS and even something like a nascent cult of personality around the General Secretary. Only time would show where the Flower Revolutionary program and the communist party members it created would lead the nation."
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Great update as always!
It seems that Kediye is trying to abolish the clan and other parts of Somali society which can stymie its progress, but is smart enough to use Islam so as to make it palatable to most of Somalia. The reference to Gaddafi seems on point, will we be seeing more of him?
It seems that Kediye is trying to abolish the clan and other parts of Somali society which can stymie its progress, but is smart enough to use Islam so as to make it palatable to most of Somalia. The reference to Gaddafi seems on point, will we be seeing more of him?
The Islamic Socialism is from OTL, although it's less Afro-Socialist and more explicitly Leninist here. Siad basically copy-pasted his harmonization of religion and communism from Kediye's theory.
The hard anti-tribalism and the Revolutionary Flowers program? That's all new: Siad made anti-tribal noises, but at the end of the day, was an opportunist who was looking to enrich his clan just as much as the nation. Kediye is a true believer (being from the relatively weaker Hawiye clan and having a Midgaan - one of the fringe outcast groups that existed in old Somalia - mother might have helped to shape his views) and seriously intends to see tribalism in its grave by the end of his rule.
Of course, being a true believer means that Kediye has some ideas that are more unorthodox than the average WARPAC client dictator: namely his program to create the perfect revolutionary vanguard party from Somalia's wards of the state. Kediye's dream is to see these students (who are given the best educations, government stipends and living accommodations the state can provide - no expense is spared on the future of the Party) become Somali (though the Revolutionary Flowers are also commonly Italian, Bantu, Pakistani and Arab kids as well - the destruction of racial distinctions in the new Vanguard Party was a part of the plan) versions of the New Soviet Person; educated in many diciplines, multilingual, schooled in both the Western canon of literature and Sufi Islamic theology, scholars of Marx and Lenin, tireless functionaries helping to keep the nation's Red Capitalism running smoothly until the time was right for the transition to full socialism. A bit of a spoiler: it works...too well. The problem with engineering your perfect successors is that they often decide that it's time for you to make way for the young a lot earlier than you intended.
Thank you! You can be sure that Colonel Sunglasses will show up again - he'll be a complicated ally for Kediye's Somalia. While on the surface they seem rather similar and are indeed on the same general side of most situations, in economic fundamentals of the countries, the nature of the party rule, and the personalities of the two leaders couldn't be more different. Gaddafi was very much a showman as much as a strongman, while Kediye was a bookworm theory wonk who preferred to do most of his work through subordinates.
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