Please improve this article if you can. (September 2006)
|
|
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (September 2006) |
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (January 2007) |
The Dhulbahante is a Somali sub clan of the Harti part of the Koombe and of Kablalax, of the Darod tribes. The Dhulbahante have played a key role in the history of Somalia. Great Britain, Italy, and France considered the Dhulbahante a major oppositional power to their colonisation of the Horn of Africa and interests. The Dhulbahante fought against colonisation in battles such as Afbakayle, Beerdhiga, Cagaarwayne, Daratoole, Dayuuraddii, Fardhidin, Jidbaale and Ruugga and thus viewed themselves as the sole protector of greater Somalia because of their huge loss of life and wealth and resented the signatory tribes. After the long Anglo-Dervish wars the British colonial leaders did not trust the Somalis. Under the leadership of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, Dulbahantes conducted resistance against the Ethiopians and British, a struggle that devastated the Somali Peninsula and resulted in the death of an estimated one-third of northern Somalia's population from 1899 to 1920. The dervish uprising ended in 1920 with the deployment of a British Royal Air Force's aerial bombardment (Africa's first) of the dervish capital at Taleex in northern Somalia[1].
Contents |
Dhulbahante members are found in their traditional territories such as the northern regions of Sool, Nugaal, Sanaag, Ayn (a new province separated from Togdheer), and Haud.
There are 15 current active Garaads and Ugaas (Clan Chiefs). All clan chiefs strongly oppose the existence of Somaliland; see the Boocame Declaration by Dulbahante Traditional clan chiefs for reference, though members of the public change allegiance to Somaliland, Puntland or Greater Somalia and there might be members of Dhulbahante aligned with Somaliland as well as Puntland and Greater Somalia[2]
Traditionally, Dulbahante clan is known as fierce nationalist warriors, who fought against Ethiopian expansion to their territories and rejected to sign protectorate treaty (common British tool to subjugate colonized Africans) to surrender to the British Colonial Rule. Under the leadership of Sayid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, they waged war against the British and Ethiopia for over twenty years, which ended with British Royal Air Force bombing their command center in Taleex, in 1920. The Dulbahante clan lost nearly half of its population in this struggle and as result, they naturally support Greater Somalia [3]
There is no clear agreement on the clan and sub-clan structures. For a comparison of different views on the clan-lineage-structures see the World Bank's Conflict in Somalia: Drivers and Dynamics.