Somaliland Wandering Between Two Worlds, One That Is Blind And Another Powerless Yet To Be Born

Political strategy or national planning is the national expression of a nation’s most urgent aspirations. Aspiration is dynamic, evolving with a country’s sense of itself and its place in the world.

It is just vanity to achieve even the noblest goals without a realistic plan. A world in the midst of tectonic change can ill afford Somaliland that is not up to the capacity to have steady and well-conceived strategy.

Of course political strategy is created by vision, thoughtful planning, and the execution of enlightened suggestions, policies, and programs that elevate national performance. A strong political strategy engenders the trust and confidence of risk takers through wise and consistent potent mindset instrumental to sound national planning.

Objectively speaking, a successful national vision, like any major undertaking, demands a well-thoughtout strategy, a regularly updateable battery of plans superintending the way in which what needs fixing is looked into.

A government that believes in the talent and potential of its citizens and devotes a large portion of its resources to investing in its citizens to help them reach that potential is an attractive vision. The question is where to find that  government with the leadership that owns the vision to educate its citizens and enhance their skills by virtue of building national pride.

Since Siilaanyo legacy Somaliland national strategy has been directionless and definitionless. In fact Siilaanyo’s political strategy was one which, as we are fully aware, patently based on self-enrichment, and unfortunately the one which Muse Biixi has come up with is not better but even worse. Muse Biixi’s political strategy is far from being an inclusive strategy that might safeguard the nation’s common interests.

Currently, no legal institution is responsible for overseeing the current strategy superintending national planning and no executive apparatus is chartered to check and challenge what the existing government is doing, fulfilling and implementing across the board. There is no legal institution that can hold any responsible Somaliland politician accountable for his/her actions.

Today no one can deny the fact that in Somaliland there is no sound strategy instrumental to problems that always grow into bigger ones, problems that slow our works or make them more difficult, problems that always lag our country behind and problems that always lead our nation into where does Somaliland often fail to achieve desired goals.

The astonishing matter is in Somaliland there is no sound foudational foreign political strategy that the state follows. There are no economic plans in Somaliland that can cultivate a more fertile method to gauge how  Somaliland’s dull economy can be healthy.

There are no policies that can advance Somaliland’s educational systems that is lagging in the disciplines of the future and the technological skills that the time requires. There is no social responsibility in Somaliland that can team between the public and private sector. There is no strategy that can remedy the problem of Somaliland’s aging workforce, leave alone the vision of how job creation could be possible in the country.

The questions we need to ask ourselves are: Can Somaliland survive without sound national planning? What kind of national strategy does Somaliland need to have? When Somaliland would grow from the political mentality that is based on irrational arguments?

Political strategy (national planning) is, of necessity, a crucial part of any nation’s route map to the future. It is a set of plans that should bring solutions to the economic, social and political problems of a nation. The map to the future of any nation must begin with a consensus of social contract from which a govetnment’s right to rule comes.

First, only if Somaliland recovers consensus and prosperity will it have the political purpose needed to provide effective leadership in a changing world. Leadership is where the wisedom that moves the course of going ahead starts from.

Second, If Somaliland political strategy is to be successful it must be realistic, resilient, reliable, refined, comprehensive, and adaptable. It must energize and inspire the nation by its common sense and concept to believe in practicality.

Definition of national planning

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First, our national planning is to achieve required goals, find solutions to the ills in public services and reach self-suffiency at least in food supply with our own effort and excellence. The road to success needs a clear understanding of what it means for us to be a politically and socially united and collaborative nation.

Second, grand strategy and national plan always start at home.  It is the first national task that every leadership of any country ought do it without fail. The aim is to build power with political and economic solvency. Sound foundational planning can only build powerful country.

Third, Somaliland strategy must be structured with well-conceived national plans focusing on the demands, needs and requirements of the people.

Political strategy (national planning) that Somaliland requires.

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The country’s political strategy or vision isn’t a choice— its a condition, a reality that those who lead the country cannot escape. Escaping national vision means that Somaliland will not remain a nation of great consequence.

A political strategy can’t function fruitfully without principled norms, rules, processes, and best practices that guide national economic and political power.  A nation without disciplined plans and policies remains blind, poor and powerless.

Strategy for economic growth.

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What’s needed is a whole-of-society drive alerting Somaliland to the reality that even the most elaborate systems, however, chan’t compensate for an economy that doesn’t have sufficient energy, functional approaches, and  know-how to meet the growing domestic need for food, clean water, shelter and abundant infrastructure.

To begin with, economic growth comes from people individually seeking what is in their own interests by providing what is in the interests of others. The collective consequence of their actions, under a stable rule of law, is to create the starting point of where power and preparation for progress meet.

Three factors create economic growth:Natural resources, Human resources, and Better use of existing resources.

Building human capacity.

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The best investment this country can make is in its people. Somaliland must create the strategy to provide resources to education in all grades; target resources to the poorest areas and most marginalized children; establish methods that improve education quality; and strengthen learning systems, involve teachers’ qualification, and develop skills among S/land workforces. Educated people are at the heart of healthy, productive and prosperous societies.

Conservation of natural resources

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Almost all S/land people are not aware of how important our natural resources are and how life without them will not exist. They do not consider what nature provides for them on a daily basis. Think about life without air, water, light and food.

There are limited and unlimited Natural resources. For instance sunlight, wind, and the air we breathe are unlimited. We cannot imagine a time when we will not have an abundance of such resources.

The limited resources are those resources that  exist in a fixed amount that cannot be re-made, re-grown or regenerated as fast as they are  consumed and used up. Iron, oil and gas are examples of limited resources. They are non-renewable resources.

Animals are also limited resources but they are  renewable resources because, like plants, we  can breed them to make more. Livestock, like cows, camels, sheep and chickens, all fall into the renewable resources.

When there is bad governance,  like Kulmiye  government, of course, these resources receive less attention than they deserve,  and most of them perish due to drought and human carelessness. The forests are deforested, illegal logging or burning trees for coal takes place, soil gets eroded,  and the land turns into desert. The people start to suffer from ill services and insufficient food supplies. These issues become linked to bad governance, to corruption, to poor national leadership.

Better use of national resources

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The role in creating the approach and initiative that can make resources for economic growth happen and successful is out of Somaliland leadership scope. The need for the impending hour is to arrange strategical plans to conserve Somaliland environment, invest in livestock, encourage agriculture sectors, enhance education quality, develop skills among citizens, instantiate confidence-building measures among the population and encourage and energize national projects promoting natural resources in the country.

Strong strategy to execute and enforce the law

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Good governance begins with proper execution of the rule of law, in which the rights of some people are not secured by the denial of the rights of other people. Good leaders are those who always come up with the vision to get their country to where public institutions are dependable, honest, and effective, where legal rights are protected, and where a safe and stable civil society supports a high quality of life.  If rule of law is not executed and enforced in letter and spirit, nothing will go right and authority will be abused as we observe today.

Foreign policy/strategy

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What kind of a foreign policy an unrecognized  country may have in dealing with other countries? Selling something new is much much harder and difficult than what is already there.

Well, here is the thing — even though, as the old gag puts it, we all tend to measure our lives by how much we think we can afford, our efforts to sell Somaliland as an independent state that deserves international recognition has never been up to the required point at all. We were meant to unlock unlimited doors, establish mutual relations with the outside world, and spend more time in selling Somaliland as a souverign state of its own reality, specifically with the African countries and Asian countries as well. The problem is the inability or unwillingness of Kulmiye party to seek recognition from the outside world through undeniable and umrefutable historical facts that spooked Somaliland’s right to be recognized.

For this, Somaliland has become a joke in the eyes of Somalia, a formidable foe in the eyes of Djabouti, a doubt in the eyes of Ethiopia, a shrug in the eyes of Kenya, a snigger in the eyes of Arab world, a taunt in the hearts of the other African countries, a burden in Europe and a delimma in America. Every country has tested Somaliland and discovered that this country walks on its knees.

Kulmiye as a ruling party since 2010 has only one strategy for all the riveting scandals that have gutted its credibility: the purchase of time through delay or deception. The only time Dr Saad brings a national issue up to the public forum is when he is defending the indefensible. Somali Investment Company is a good example of what Dr Sacad Ali Shire cannot defend.

Somaliland people are, and evidently have been, wandering in twenty seven consecutive years between two worlds, one that is blind and another powerless yet to be born.

By: Jama Falaag

jamafalaag@gmail.com

       Somaliland, Hargeisa