The Destruction of the Education System in Post-state Somalia
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The Destruction of the Education System in Post-state Somalia
With the collapse of the state in January 1991, the country immediately succumbed to the opportunistic tendencies of a dozen or so competing factions mostly created and led by special interest warlords. The warlords, having learned their political lessons from the former military dictatorship, all wanted, rationally or irrationally, to occupy the seat of the presidency. State, in this context, is defined as the law enforcing agencies of the country (Gellner, 1983). More broadly, it could also be seen as representing a political entity that functions within a set of prescribed boundaries that are primarily designed and maintained to deal with the organizations of human associations (Samatar, 1994). In the Somalia of the early 1990s, the conspicuous absence of the state was complemented by the lack of any genre of national leadership that was able to see beyond the tribal spectre of events. In lamenting the paramountcy of this leadership vacuum, Mirreh (1994) concludes that the ‘single most important factor responsible for Somalia’s catastrophe is the nature of the opportunistic leadership that is there’ (p. 23).
In terms of what happened to Somalia’s schools and systems of learning after the collapse of the state, the scenario, tragic as it is, may still have a ‘cluster’ of historical parallels. In early civilizations, many treasuries of learning such as schools, universities and libraries were either destroyed during wars, or were intentionally burned down, demolished or converted into less dignified facilities or residencies. In all the cases, the perpetrators of these acts of senseless destruction, to be described in our context as deliberate, or at times, ‘innocent’ forays of de-development, were the invading groups, who, for all possible explanations, were enemies of what they did not understand: the value of knowledge and learning. In a more generalized manner, the almost permanent relationship between education and social development (Nyerere, 1968; Thompson, 1981; Fagerlind & Saha, 1985; Mandela, 1994; Tilak, 1994) was apparently lost on the invading factions.
In Somalia’s case in particular, the deliberate destruction of schools, university lecture halls, libraries and laboratories, sometimes complemented by the targeting of the educated cadre among the warring factions, may sadly remind one of different, albeit less promising, historical epochs. One such historical moment that could serve as a relevant example in this regard was the desmaction of the Alexandria Library in Ancient Egypt. That library had the hitherto unprecedented collection of 400,000 volumes, and it was destroyed by the Roman army commander Julius Caesar in 48 BC (Jackson, 1970).
In terms of what happened to Somalia’s schools and systems of learning after the collapse of the state, the scenario, tragic as it is, may still have a ‘cluster’ of historical parallels. In early civilizations, many treasuries of learning such as schools, universities and libraries were either destroyed during wars, or were intentionally burned down, demolished or converted into less dignified facilities or residencies. In all the cases, the perpetrators of these acts of senseless destruction, to be described in our context as deliberate, or at times, ‘innocent’ forays of de-development, were the invading groups, who, for all possible explanations, were enemies of what they did not understand: the value of knowledge and learning. In a more generalized manner, the almost permanent relationship between education and social development (Nyerere, 1968; Thompson, 1981; Fagerlind & Saha, 1985; Mandela, 1994; Tilak, 1994) was apparently lost on the invading factions.
In Somalia’s case in particular, the deliberate destruction of schools, university lecture halls, libraries and laboratories, sometimes complemented by the targeting of the educated cadre among the warring factions, may sadly remind one of different, albeit less promising, historical epochs. One such historical moment that could serve as a relevant example in this regard was the desmaction of the Alexandria Library in Ancient Egypt. That library had the hitherto unprecedented collection of 400,000 volumes, and it was destroyed by the Roman army commander Julius Caesar in 48 BC (Jackson, 1970).