Southern Somalia’s “Glorious Days Are Our Nightmare”: The Performance of Political Memory and Contestations of Commemoration in Northern Somalia (Somaliland)

Abstract

: This chapter makes a critical intervention into the academic and popular discussions about political memory in Somalia. Focusing on contestations of political memory and disputes over what occurred in the past as well as why, when and where they took place, the chapter foregrounds the importance of memory and commemoration for the Somaliland state-building project. By presenting a new perspective on the making of the breakaway region in northern Somalia that declared itself independent Somaliland in 1991, the chapter offers insights into how memories of trauma function as a political resource that could crystallise conflict and confrontation. Furthermore, in the case observed, judicious deployment of political memory elicited sympathy and solidarity locally and amongst diasporic Somaliland people in the pursuit of the separatist state-building project in Somaliland. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Somaliland at intervals between 2016, 2018 and 2019 that relied on ethnographic observations and interviews with men and women, the chapter explores how the independence project in Somaliland was constructed through accumulated collective historical grievances. These were used to strengthen the case in favour of seeking recognition for a separate state allowing the collapse of the Somali state. Supposedly collective community suffering was rooted in how the military regime – bent on the protection and preservation of specific clans – mistreated the Isaaq, the predominate clan in Somaliland. Building upon previous studies of political memory, the chapter reveals how particularistic historical grievance shaped – and continues to shape – the process of legitimising separatism in Somaliland.