It was sad to see the plight of a family friend in London. She had always smiled and laughed about everything but on my last visit it appeared as though she was possessed by misery. Between uncontrollable sobbing and long periods of pause she finally made me understand. It was indeed the worst case of abuse of refugees I have heard recently.
Fatumo (not her real name) has been supporting her sister’s family in Mogadishu Somalia since she came to the UK in 1996. She works as a cleaner and uses her meager wages to split in so many ways in an effort to feed her extended family which she left behind. A few months earlier her sister’s eldest son, Ahmed, decided he could no longer remain at home and stole the family’s entire savings to pay people traffickers to take him first to Libya and then across the sea to Italy and into, as he put it, “More friendlier European nations.”
Despite her sorrow, Ahmed’s mother forgave him and wished him well on his journey. There was nothing else she could do without money, connections and abandoning her remaining 7 young children. She consoled herself with the thought that when Ahmed did make it to Europe safely he will contact her immediately and also provide for them from his employment earnings. This soothing thought was shattered when she did eventually receive a call from Ahmed who was sold on to a Libyan gang by his Somali traffickers. Ahmed’s captors demanded the payment of a $3000 ransom to release him to continue on his journey without which he was going to be killed and left to rot in the desert. His mother was frightened and furious. All the property that was in the family could be sold but none of them belonged to her alone. In any case, what little they did have was not worth much anyway. The desperate mother turned to her only sister, Fatumo, who worked long hours for a minimum wage and still managed to support them from her pitiful earnings. Fatumo however, did not have the kind of money the kidnappers needed to free her sister’s beloved child so she went round to her friends in London to fundraise.
As painful and shocking as this was I was not surprised at all. Many Somali young people living in Somalia and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland routinely risk their lives in search of a better life in the Western nations. Desperation, high unemployment, lack of opportunities, violence, corruption and political turmoil drives them away from their loved ones and delivers them straight into the hands of smugglers and sometimes, death itself. One can only imagine the sense of hopelessness that drives a person with their entire life ahead of them to want to risk so much.
Reading reports about this issue, it was clear that the blame for the hopelessness was laid squarely at the door of unemployment, poor governance and the inability of governments, in the case of Somalia, to devise interventionist policy strategies to stop the tide. Unemployment is truly a curse all over the world today disproportionately hurting the young work seekers who in many cases are highly qualified and educated. However, in Somalia and the neighboring countries as well as most of the African continent, high unemployment across the board has always been a permanent fixture. In Somali society this was mitigated through the strength of family ties, a focus on sharing and neighborliness. These still are very strong today and combined with the remittance sent by the Diaspora, arguably many Somali families are better off today than they were before the civil war. The sad fact is that many of the young men and women escaping Somali in search of greener pastures in the West are highly educated, have some financing behind them and are members of the financial middle class. They are the very people their nation needs to develop and attract foreign investors to grow. However, they dream of professional and financial opportunities abroad as well as returning in the future to their native lands as one successful refugee in the UK put it, ” As Somebody’s.”
Somebody
Somebody is a term created in the minds of many who risk their lives to come to the West and other developed nations based on observing and listening to the boastful Diaspora returnees. These colourful, jovial characters from abroad often are those that were lucky enough to be sponsored by family members or who successfully reached their desired destinations, sought asylum, were granted it and are employed in their new nations. Some, like most of the European Diaspora, also take State Benefits intended for the unemployed as most fall in to this category. The Somali professional class is now slowly starting to rear its head in most of the developed nations like England and America, but the majority of the Diaspora are still among the most socially excluded, impoverished and discriminated against wherever they live. In addition to this, they suffer from many societal ills which hamper them further like high levels of family breakdown, intergenerational conflict and youth crime. The best of the Diaspora save from their meager resources and build homes or set up small businesses, others return to be involved in politics. This monopoly of private and public life has been facilitated by their foreign passports and living conditions abroad. This is obvious to the determined and ambitious native Somali residents who have very little in comparison by way of employment, wealth and social security. By just looking around at the new businesses, houses and at the television, it is easy to see how the young natives can easily come to the conclusion that life is better on the other side.
Some members of the Diaspora spare the native Somalis the effort of observing and speculating. They openly show off to them and spread false tales of how easy it is to make money abroad and how quickly one can get a degree and the endless opportunities open to them if only they can join them. Yesterday’s local idiots in Hargiesa, Borama and Mogadishu, simply by securing Western citizenships, have become the ruling class. What is the point of a PhD in Africa when a cleaner earns more in London? But of course, according to the Diaspora there are no cleaners. Everyone is a Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer or a Professor. It is a pity that the Somali natives who are induced to risk their lives by such lies do not have access to American, British and Swedish government data on the Somali community which across the board is still struggling to integrate. The few that do are the exception and not the norm. They also rarely have enough time, if working professionally, to sit idle in Somalia or the self-declared independent state of Somaliland telling dangerous tall tales as the length of their annual holidays would not be tolerated by most professional employers.
The TRUTH
The IOM, UN and many governments of Africa as well as the European Union have for years discussed how best to tackle the mass exodus of young people from Africa. Every stakeholder has their interests close to heart but the ideas of democracy, Human Rights, institutional capacity building and direct and indirect aid which have been the prevalent interventions have failed to produce the education and training systems required to attract the foreign direct investment needed for employment creation in Africa if this is the answer. Somalia, which was totally neglected by the international community until piracy and Al-Shabaab put it on the agenda, and the Self-declared independent state of Somaliland, have NGOs as the key investors if they can be called that. The NGOs pay the best salaries and offer the most worthwhile training. This sad state of affairs is not advanced by just peace alone as Somaliland could easily claim, but actual economic policies aimed at stimulating competition, supporting Small Medium Enterprises and lending directly to start ups which will mainly be owned by the younger generation. This ought to be done in conjunction with improving the national investment environment with laws, roads, ports and good governance. For both Somalia and Somaliland which are aid dependent, this is an impossible task for now and the situation is most likely to remain this way for the foreseeable future unless a miracle occurs.
What both the Somali and Somaliland government as well as other stakeholders can do is tell the truth about the difficulties of migration, the new global hostility especially in the developed world towards refugees, and the fact that the boastful Diaspora are mostly liars living a fantasy of the professionalism they aspire to but have not yet attained. The key policy problem here is that most of the Somali and Somaliland Ministers are from the Diaspora and those that are still Somali natives want to join them in having foreign citizenships. The very people that are required to dispel the dangerous “greener on the other side” related myths of migration are at best illiterate about the issue or worse hypocritical as they want what they would be discouraging their citizens from wanting and acting on. Prosecuting the human traffickers is a rational step to take legally within Somalia but the key issues will be identifying and prosecuting them in the absence of a coherent and functioning police force and a fair and transparent legal system. In any case, it may be hard to find witnesses against them because they offer the hope of escape that many disillusioned young people dream of.
On the issue of mass migration and people smuggling everyone has a role to play in deterring it, especially the government, international organisations and more importantly, the families who sometimes openly encourage it. If these key stakeholders turn a blind eye, remain deaf or continue to be politically incompetent for much longer, they will be complicit in the deaths of many Somalis in the deserts of Africa or in the rough lonely seas of the wider world.
http://somalilandpress.com/somalilandlife-is-not-always-greener-on-the-other-side-43259
Liibaan Obsiye
Libanbakaa@hotmail.com
@LibanObsiye (Twitter).
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