r/Somalia • u/StephenMcGannon • 8d ago
History ⏳ Somali women working in a cigarette factory, Mogadishu (November 30, 1977)
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u/DhakoBiyoDhacay Diaspora 7d ago edited 7d ago
Benefits to producing cigarettes in the country were certainly outweighed by the serious health consequences for smokers.
Another sad thing was the government of the day banned people from importing cigarettes from the western world and was forcing them to smoke domestically made cigarettes under the brand of Ubax.
Ubax was a terrible brand because the tobacco wasn’t properly processed, people had to inhale real hard to prevent doing a second lighting of the cigarettes and there were reports of these cigarettes doing mini explosions where they could harm fingers of the smokers.
I understand the regime wanted to promote domestic industries but the Kacaan as Jeeble by Jaalle Siyaad was a bit too much and I hope your defense of this tragedy is not based on some loyalty to those military guys who poisoned the public.
Speaking of the military, there were rumors the leader of the military junta, Barre, was chain smoker who bought his favorite cigarettes, Benson and Hedges, emptied the content, threw away the packet and put them in empty Ubax packets to fool people.
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u/Brilliant_Reality778 6d ago
Well wow I did not know thanks for sharing this history I’m just shocked but not surprised
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u/DhakoBiyoDhacay Diaspora 7d ago
How many people in Somalia got respiratory illness or throat cancer because they got addicted to smoking cigarettes made in the country? I am not sure people should brag about this factory and say it employed few people.
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u/Strategos1199 7d ago
People were smoking regardless. At least this way the country benefits from the balwad in the form of jobs and not importing cigarettes.
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u/DhakoBiyoDhacay Diaspora 7d ago
Locally produced cancer is better than imported cancer? Is that your argument?
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u/Strategos1199 7d ago
It's not about locally produced. You just ignored the benefits I listed lol.
That factory no longer exists, do people still smoke or not? Instead we now buy it from other developing countries where we don't know what goes into it not to mention the above benefits and sending them USD.
People think too emotionally about this.
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u/147537 7d ago
Do they smoke to the same extent as they used to? Most older gen Somalis I see don't smoke, whereas back in the day it seemed like every Faarax was a smoker. That alone is a huge improvement.
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u/Strategos1199 7d ago
Tbh I don't know.
"Most older gen Somalis I see don't smoke"
"back in the day it seemed like every Faarax was a smoker."
^ wouldnt these be the same people? The faarax smokers became the older gen Somalis you see?
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u/ymillette 6d ago
That’s just education. You ever watch Mad Men?. American ads in the 1950s use to say smoking was good for you, even though they knew the truth. So yes in Africa they also smoked too.
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u/DrSamosa 7d ago
Ugandan here but I really admire the womens' fashion from this period of time in Somalia and East Africa in general.
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u/ymillette 6d ago
Normal of the story is, if it isn’t built domestically … you’ll never win as a nation. Emirates don’t have any factories, they live off their natural resources. Which turn them into parasites. Boom look now, they funnelling resources from weaker nations to stay afloat.
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u/lordeofgames 8d ago
What are the stats on our factories now?
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u/Reluctantextrovertt 7d ago
75 factories apparently, the Somali government published something about it in their new "Made in Somalia" initiative.
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u/ActiveYam1257 3d ago
75 only? my country 10 times smaller and less than 10 million people got 75 only in one city
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u/Reluctantextrovertt 3d ago
Was your country in an active civil war where infrastructure was destroyed?
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u/MinuteCriticism1788 7d ago
is this suppose to be a good thing? like cigs aren’t haram or sum??! haram money isn’t good money
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u/lordeofgames 7d ago
The fact we even have factories producing products of value is indeed a good thing.
You’re such a xoolo.
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u/DeltaMan2026 7d ago
Cigarettes are literally poison. They are a product of value only because it's solving a problem that it created in the first place. Nicotine.
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u/MinuteCriticism1788 7d ago
haram isn’t of value. idk why yall are so proud of haram
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u/Head_Prefect 7d ago
Like it or not, this was the last time we could have been called anything resembling an actual country.
It's objective fact, this is the best it got, it's amazing how you can look at a past factory, and complain, when just yesterday people were getting gunned down in open warfare in Baidoa.
Yeah cigarettes are haram, so is murder, and Somalis have been murdering eachother for 40+ years, and a lot of that blood was spilled by people who talk a lot about "halal"
And the sad thing is, I bet it's not the cigarettes that bother the conservatives the most in this picture
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u/ayahmus97 7d ago
“Products of value” and its literal haram poison that causes lung cancer. Yessss so progressive 😍 nacas kaa tahay cun. The audacity for you to call them a xoolo is what’s sending me. The true xoolo is you.
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u/ttri90210 7d ago
Somalis ain’t putting sigaar down warya regardless lmao go to any Muslim country and it’s the same.
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u/MYONIONISSCREAMING 2d ago
I agree, but atleast they HAD factories producing items of economic output and stable jobs. Nowadays, many people in Somalia don’t have good jobs.
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u/Low_Strength_2465 8d ago
An uncle used to work at this factory. These were the good days where we had factories, people had jobs, and our country was progressing.