The Awdal Conspiracy

Is there something called  “The Awdal Conspiracy”? In order to answer that you need to look closely at both the distant and the recent past of Awdal .One would inevitably see the facts glaring at one in the eye.
 
In order to understand these facts  , we have to ask ourselves the following questions:-
1) Why was the ancient city of Zeila destroyed and deserted at the beginning of the last century?
2) Why did the British Colonial Administration leave and set their headquarters in Hargeisa in spite of the fact that Zeila was the most cosmopolitan and the most prominent city in the whole country?
3) Why was the functioning port of Zeila abandoned?
4) Why would the British colonial fore-runners such as Richard Burton be biased against the inhabitants of Zeila namely Samaroon and disliked them?
 
To answer the above mentioned questions, let us first get acquainted with some historical facts :
 
A—Awdal lived through centuries of successive Islamic rule (Adal, Ifat ,Ottoman empires etc) with conjunction with vast areas of Somalia (up to Merca in the south at one time) These empires included other adjacent territorial entities such as Harar and Tadjoure.

B—Unlike other sub-saharan African colonies , Awdal neither needed “civilizing the African native” , nor the seeking of their salvation by converting them from “heathen ancestral religions” to Christianity. Awdal people were muslims from the 4th century AD.

B—In pre-colonial epoch ,Europe  perceived Awdal as an impending menace. Somalia in general and Awdal in particular was considered to be the gate-way where Islam would spread to the heart of Africa.
C—The most powerful European countries in that era( Spain, Portugal , France , Britain , Italy , and Tsarist Russia) were sympathetic to the Christian Monarchy in a very small isolated section of what was later called The Ethiopian Empire  .
D—The arrival of Colonial Britain at Awdal in 1884 was never welcomed there. 
People hated the colonial rule because everything that they represented was alien to them .The elders and elite of Awdal started to alert their counterparts in other regions of Somalia of the forthcoming danger. This culminated in the signing of the famous treaty between the British and Somaliland Protectorate.
 
Due to the afore- mentioned reasons and others that couldn’t be covered all here, Old Awdal was deserted
 
The British colonial administration didn’t stop there. To add insult to the injury
The beautiful priceless buildings in Zeila were demolished on the pretext of paving the useless coastal dirt road that joined Zeila to Tokhoshi and the newly emerging city of Djibouti.
 
Some of us who are old enough , would remember in Djibouti, hearing people talking about what was happening  to the still intact but vacant buildings in zeila. Folks were encouraging each other to go there and reclaim their houses and rescue whatever remained to be rescued.

Later after the independence in 1960 , every government whether civilian or military exercised a totally undemocratic and deplorable side-rule in Awdal only. .In both the central government level and local government a member of parliament and the executive officer of the local government were hand-picked without election or consensus and with no other contestant -  “an unopposed delegate”.
 
Now , after the disintegration of the Somali Republic, the present government in Somali Land , knowingly or unknowingly , took up the task from where the previous regimes left off. The  mayor of the newly proclaimed province of Salal is selected by the present president.

This event of choosing such an important post without consulting the majority, and worst of all appeasing a certain neighboring country is an unprecedented case of betrayal. Eventually let us ask again. Isn’t there an Awdal conspiracy?
 
Written by Cisman Muse
London, UK.

Filed Under: Opinion