The flag of Somaliland is raised over Cardiff Castle
By: Martin Shipton,Nation.Cymru
There was a palpable sense of joy in Cardiff Castle on the morning of Friday May 16, with large numbers of excited Somalilanders of all ages beaming with smiles of excitement.
It was Somaliland’s Independence Day, and the nation’s flag was being raised above the ancient battlements alongside Y Ddraig Goch.
For those who don’t know the back story, this is a massive deal for the tens of thousands of Somalilanders who live in Wales, most of them In Cardiff.
Their ancestors came as seafarers, crewing the ships that transported coal from the south Wales Valleys overseas at a time when Cardiff was the biggest coal-exporting port in the world.
British ‘Protectorate’
Somaliland was a British ‘Protectorate’ – a polite term for a colony – at a time when the country next door, now known as Somalia, was in effect owned by Italy.
Later, when political decolonisation was under way in Africa, the residents of Somaliland voted to unify with their neighbours. But they soon lived to regret it and for many years were oppressed by a dictator based in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. They are determined this should never happen again.
Eventually, the dictator was ousted in 1991, since when Somaliland has had de facto independence.
Those left in charge then had a choice. Either they would follow the example of Somalia and become a dysfunctional, failed state, or Somaliland would do something different and better, and decide to follow a democratic path.
To their great credit, and against great odds, they have pursued the latter route rather than the former.
Revolution
I have followed the fortunes of Somaliland for more than 20 years , since meeting a stalwart of Cardiff’s Somaliland community, Eid Ali Ahmed, who used to be the deputy chief executive of the Welsh Refugee Council. He played an important role in the revolution that ousted the dictator, Siad Barre – a story that deserves to be thoroughly told one day.
It’s impossible to have a conversation with Eid without the issue of international recognition cropping up. He has a very good point. There’s something fundamentally unjust about the fact that while Somalia has almost universal recognition from the international community, Somaliland remains, to a very large extent, an outcast.
Yet despite this, the nation holds regular elections at which the party in power can be voted out – it’s happened several times, always with a peaceful transition. Those who lose bow out gracefully, which is far more than can be said these days about some politicians in the superpower that likes to project itself as the cornerstone of global democracy.
There’s something very engaging about the Somaliland community, as I have been reminded again while attending the flag-raising ceremony. Two school children from a primary school in the old docklands district of Butetown were brought along to the castle by their headteacher.
Both spoke confidently, with passion and pride about being both Somalilanders and Welsh. Many others gave speeches too, and a common theme was the way the adults as well as the children were proud of their dual identity and determined to make a positive contribution to life in Wales.
I was honoured to be asked to give a speech myself. It wasn’t something that was arranged in advance, but I could see it coming when others before me were asked to speak without having been tapped up previously.
Terrorist attack
I was happy to speak about what I have learnt from Eid predominantly over the years, and how, for example, I was able to get a phone interview with the then president at a time when the country had suffered an extremely rare terrorist attack by Al-Shabaab infiltrators from Somalia. The Somaliland security services are highly trained and very efficient.
There is something special about the Somalilanders I have met. They are entrepreneurial and tend to be positive in outlook, with a mischievous sense of humour .
They have no interest in portraying themselves, or being portrayed, as victims without agency – and they abhor self-pity. This is all the more admirable, given the country’s constant knock-backs when seeking international recognition.
Instead, they just get on with it. The women play an important role, not only in a traditional home-based sense, but increasingly with talented young women making a mark academically and professionally.
One of the best examples of creative Somalilanders is the brilliant novelist Nadifa Mohamed, whose Booker Prize-shortlisted The Fortune Men told the tragic story of Mahmood Mattan, the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice in Cardiff in the 1950s, when he was wrongly hanged for murdering a shopkeeper. Yet it’s not a depressing book and is narrated with great verve.
Immediately you have anything to do with Somalilanders in Cardiff, you become aware of their commitment to their cause. But it’s a passion for their ‘home’ country to prosper and do well, unlinked to any violent and extremist ideology.
“We are moderate Muslims,” one of them said to me in the aftermath of the flag-raising ceremony, which led to whooping cries of jubilation as the flag went up the pole.
These people, it occurred to me, are the living embodiment of the very opposite of the grotesque caricature of migrants as rapacious and violent criminals who are opposed to social integration and determined to screw as much out of Britain as they can while giving nothing in return.
Instead, they are a credit to Wales.
Several of them told me how keen they are for twinning arrangements between Cardiff and Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, and between Somaliland as a whole and Wales.
This makes absolute sense to me. May it happen.
And may the UK take the plunge and recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state, as the Senedd did a decade ago.
