In December 2019 issue of Puntland Post Monthly, the essay by Samiya Lerew has probably touched a raw nerve of purveyors of clannish supremacy that violently replaced a belonging based on citizenship after the collapse of the state in 1991. Her essay and the work of Professor Mohamed Abdulkadir Enow fill a vacuum created by armed clans’ retreat into clan fiefdoms. The political marginalisation of Somalis known as Others has taken a new form: think tanks deepening the narratives of dispossession have made their presence felt in the marketplace of clannish palaver.
The efflorescence of think tanks in Somalia gives the impression that the trend portends a switch to a culture of deliberations and critical thinking within the intelligentsia. The new type of Somali think tanks differ from research organisations that emerged under the wing of the former War-torn society Project. Puntland Development and Research Centre , Academy for Peace and Development in Hargeysa and Center for Research and Dialogue in Mogadishu have pioneered research into governance, peace-making and the role of traditional leaders in post-1991 Somalia. With the establishment of Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS) the pace of narrative wars has quickened. Other think tanks have followed in the footsteps of HIPS. Somali Agenda, Somali Institute for Development Research and Analysis (SIDRA), Hiraal Institute, Odoros Center, Horizon Institute and Center for Policy are some of the new think tanks. What those think tanks have in common is a tendency to turn a blind eye to political and economic inequalities suffered by Somalia’s marginalised clans.
Somali think tanks do not disclose sources of funding. Some think tanks publish unsubstantiated reports. Hiraal Institute argued in a report that Al-shabaab transported heavy arms to Northern Somalia. The founder of Hiraal Institute, Hussein Sheikh-Ali was a National Security Advisor for the Federal Government. He was privy to unclassified intelligence although Federal Government does not share intelligence with Federal Member States. In a country that has not fully recovered from state collapse and subsequent civil war, the role think tanks play in Somalia is akin to the role of a clan’s mouthpiece. Conformity with the outlook of the politically dominant group is not only the weakness of Somali think tanks, but it also devalues the commitment to objectivity and free inquiry expected of researchers. Some questions that think tanks have yet to address are: the economic marginalisation of Somalis classified as minorities; unfair competition; livelihood challenges facing internally displaced peoples; comparative study on property rights in Somalia
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