By Ali Halane - Somali journalist and researcher specializing in African and Middle Eastern affairs.
“War’s greatest victory is not the fall of cities, but the moment people become reflections of war itself.”- Ali Halane
Not every act of resistance is measured by the number of rifles carried, nor is every victory proclaimed in military communiqués. In societies that have endured conflict for generations, resistance often takes a quieter form.
It is found in the refusal to surrender to hatred, in the determination to preserve dignity, and above all, in the choice not to become another casualty of war’s deepest ambition. Because war does not simply destroy cities, governments or infrastructure. Its ultimate objective is to reshape human beings—to make fear a permanent condition, mistrust the foundation of relationships, and division appear both natural and inevitable.
Few countries understand this reality more intimately than Somalia. Entire generations have grown up knowing the sound of gunfire better than the ringing of school bells. Yet perhaps the most remarkable part of Somalia’s story is not that conflict has lasted for decades, but that life has endured alongside it.
More than thirty years after state collapse, Somalis continue to marry, build homes, establish businesses, educate their children and invest in tomorrow. These are not ordinary details of everyday life. They are acts of resistance. Every new family, every classroom that opens, every business that survives and every dream that refuses to disappear is a quiet declaration that war has failed to extinguish the human spirit.
The more important question, therefore, is not how Somalis survived war, but how they resisted its deepest consequences. Wars do not truly end when the shooting stops. They end when they fail to achieve their ultimate purpose: remaking people in their own image. War attacks memory as relentlessly as it attacks geography.
It destroys trust as readily as it destroys buildings. It seeks to produce societies in which fear becomes permanent, neighbours become strangers and the future becomes impossible to imagine. If war is ultimately a project to manufacture a different kind of human being, then true resistance begins when people refuse to let that transformation take place.
What makes the Somali experience particularly remarkable is that resistance has never been confined to the battlefield. It has also been carried through memory. Somalis inherit not only the memories of their own lives but also those passed down through parents and grandparents—stories of earlier wars, of statehood, of drought, displacement, resilience and recovery.
Memory, however, is never neutral. It can become a reservoir of resentment that traps societies in endless cycles of revenge, or it can become a source of wisdom that teaches future generations how to avoid repeating past tragedies. The challenge facing Somalia today is not whether to remember, but how to remember.
A nation that remembers only its wounds remains imprisoned by them. A nation that remembers its lessons acquires the strength to move beyond them. Somalia does not need a national memory that merely counts wars and losses.
It needs one that preserves the wisdom born from those experiences. The future is not built by glorifying suffering but by transforming suffering into a collective determination never to repeat it.
Among all the institutions tested by decades of conflict, none has proved more resilient than the Somali family. Long after public institutions weakened or collapsed, families continued to preserve language, values and identity.
Around dinner tables and in family gatherings, stories were passed from one generation to the next, reminding children that belonging begins long before politics.
In many ways, the family became the country’s most enduring institution of resistance, protecting human dignity while much of the surrounding political order was falling apart.
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This is why love, in its broadest human sense, must also be understood as a form of resistance. War seeks to produce individuals who see only enemies. Resistance, by contrast, preserves the ability to trust, to cooperate and to recognise the humanity of others.
Love here is not simply an emotion; it is a moral choice. It is the refusal to allow hatred to become the organising principle of society. Those who preserve compassion after witnessing violence have already defeated war in one of the few places where it truly seeks victory—the human heart.
The Somali who embodies this resistance is rarely celebrated as a national hero. It is the teacher who continues to educate children despite limited resources. The doctor who remains in a rural clinic when leaving would be easier. The farmer who returns to cultivate land abandoned by conflict. The entrepreneur who rebuilds a business after repeated destruction. The mother who teaches hope instead of revenge. The journalist who insists on defending facts in an age of misinformation.
History may never remember their names, yet they are the people quietly shaping Somalia’s future.
This is where the conversation about state-building must begin. Too often, discussions about Somalia focus exclusively on constitutions, elections, institutions and political settlements. Important as these are, none of them can build a state without citizens who believe in the values those institutions are meant to uphold.
A state is ultimately not defined by its buildings or its legal texts. It is a reflection of the moral culture of its people. Where citizens believe in the rule of law, respect difference, trust one another and see the nation as a shared home rather than contested property, stable institutions become possible.
For this reason, Somalia’s greatest national resource is neither its strategic location nor its natural wealth. It is the human being who endured decades of conflict without surrendering to its moral logic.
The Somali who preserved integrity while institutions collapsed, who chose hope over despair and cooperation over hatred, represents the country’s most valuable national capital. That same resilience which enabled society to survive war can now enable it to build peace.
Perhaps it is time to redefine what resistance means. It is not only resisting terrorism, defending sovereignty or protecting borders—essential as those responsibilities remain.
It is equally about resisting corruption when it becomes normal, resisting clan prejudice when it replaces merit, resisting political hatred when it is disguised as patriotism and resisting despair when it convinces people that change is impossible. True resistance rejects everything that reproduces the logic of war in a society striving to build peace.
Ultimately, Somalia’s future will not be determined by those who merely survived the conflict, but by those who refused to become products of it.
The Somali who preserved memory without becoming consumed by revenge, who protected family without closing the door to others, and who held on to hope despite decades of hardship is the same citizen capable of building a different future. Nations are not built simply because wars end.
They are built by people who refuse to allow war to define who they are. In that sense, resistance is no longer a response to conflict. It becomes the moral foundation upon which a nation is rebuilt.
Ali Halane is a Somali journalist and researcher specializing in African and Middle Eastern affairs. He is a founding member of the Somali Cultural Parliament.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dawan Africa.