Continuities and changes regarding minorities in Somalia

Abstract

Somali society has long since been considered ethnically homogenous. The better known pastoral-nomadic section of society was perceived as representative. Politics and economy throughout the twentieth century were controlled by ‘majority’ clan members. ‘Minority group’ members were generally marginalized and sometimes even oppressed and exploited; during the civil war from 1991 onwards, they became easy victims for majority group militias. Previously respected religious or occupational ‘castes’ also fell victim to the general insecurity and lawlessness during that period. The civil war not only had enormous negative consequences for minority group members; in some cases, it increased the self-consciousness of minority groups and led to the formation of new identities that, in combination with international organizations and their human rights policies, provided members of certain groups with chances for resettlement or made them actively demand more rights.

Keywords:

• minorities
• inequality
• Somalia
• civil war
• Bantu
• Asharaf
• Midgaan

Acknowledgements

I thank the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany) for providing me with a great research environment for 10 years until October 2013.

Notes

1. Somali clan and place names in this text follow Somali orthography. The Latin ‘c’ stands for the Arabic ‘ع’ (ayn); ‘x’ denotes ‘ح’ (ha).

2. This literally means ‘people of Hamar’–Hamar (meaning ‘red’) being an old name for Mogadishu.

3. Schlee (2013, 262–263) stressed that under Somali customary law the differential fighting power of the groups in conflict was taken into consideration and stronger groups had a better chance to get ‘their rights’.

4. The Raxanweyn agro-pastoralists in the regions Bay and Bakool also suffered from the militias clashing over the control of their fertile land. However, since the Raxanweyn are not counted as a minority group, they are not dealt with in this article.

5. Still, the courts entailed a clan element and initially many of their members belonged to the Hawiye clan-family.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Markus V. Hoehne

MARKUS V. HOEHNE is a Lecturer at the Institute of Anthropology at Leipzig University.