Somalia’s dismemberment and possible patchwork rebuilding

[Liqaye]

Yesterday, I highlighted the recommendations of Somali experts – notably Bronwyn E. Bruton and Ken Menkhaus – for how the United States should contribute to counter-terrorism, conflict resolution, humanitarian relief, economic development and state-building in Somalia. Their pragmatic and cautious approaches argue against knee-jerk American responses to the real or perceived threats posed by al-Qaeda, the al-Shabab, and piracy.

 

Last spring at SAIS, I put together an extensive backgrounder on Somalia. The paper traces the history of state formation in Somalia from the colonial period to the collapse of the state and its current crises. At the end, I provide a brief analysis of the current challenges to peace-making and state-building placed in their historical context – something missing from much of the current writings on Somalia. I must confess that much of my understanding of Somalia has been influenced by Menkhaus, my former advisor. In reading Bruton great piece in Foreign Affairs, I also found that her recommendations closely match the findings that I developed. So if you are interested, enjoy…

 

Introduction

 

The five points on the star of the light-blue Somali flag proclaim a nation’s dream deferred. The predominantly nomadic Somalis met the era of nationalism and independence with high hopes. They and observers of the time saw a “well-defined geographic and ethnic unit…as a natural base for a sovereign state.” Ethiopia and the colonial powers, however, had different visions for the boundaries of a Somali state. Three points of the star – Djibouti, the ****** (in Ethiopia), and the Northern Frontier District in Kenya – were stripped from the Somalis before the official birth of the Somali nation. The subsequent experiments with democracy and ‘scientific socialism’ attempted to develop a modern state and in some ways rebuild a forcibly contracted national consciousness. These processes ultimately failed and led to the collapse of the state in 1991. What emerged in replace of the state were still uncongealed fragments of a dismembered nation. For external and internal reasons, Somali leaders until this day have not found a means to unite these disparate and usually warring pieces.

 

Final Analysis

 

Emerging from a dismembering birth at independence, Somali elites have constantly attempted to breed irredentist nationalism to legitimize their control of the state. The early politics of democracy challenged each government to push a hard line on securing the stripped Somali lands of French Somaliland, the Ethiopian ******, and the Northern Frontier in Kenya; former dictator Siad Barre could not concede the right of self-determination for the ****** Somalis in the late 1970s; and most recently the Islamic Court Union (ICU) could not muzzle threats against Ethiopia long enough to consolidate and defend their military and political successes in 2006.

 

Why do the elites retreat to this expansionist Somali nationalism each time in the face of clearly stronger neighbors? The answer may be that little else has thus far shown a capacity to forge a national consciousness across the real economic and social cleavages of Somali society. In addition to clan divisions, the rural/urban divide has shaped Somali politics for centuries as seen in the ebb and flow of power between the coastland to the hinterland. In the beginning of his regime, Barre recognized the importance of improving the agricultural sector, but the implementation of ‘scientific socialism,’ a product mostly of cold war convenience, could not begin to address the growing gaps between urban and rural populations. Then in the 1980s, the regime used state resources to inflame cleavages between various Somali communities. As such, there were no defenders of the state when it collapsed and, likewise, no foreign agents to blame as a means of rallying Somali nationalism to revive the state.

 

Islam presents a more indigenously suited alternative, as it can be easily conflated with Somali nationalism and has shown the ability to bridge both rural/urban and clan divisions. The slow rise of Islamic activism and the ascendancy of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) demonstrate its cross-cutting mobilizing utility in Somali politics. Nevertheless, the ICU eventually encountered the common problem of clan division, with certain groups effectively characterizing it as ******-dominated. The success of Islamic activism in Mogadishu, however, pales in comparison to the regional solutions that have endured in Somaliland and to a lesser extent in Puntland.

 

What the success of the ICU and Somaliland have in common, however, is that they are at their base Somali-derived solutions that depart in some key way from current Western models of governance. Yet, these accomplishments have been virtually unacceptable from the point of view of regional and international powers. Ethiopia views both an Islamist-oriented government in Somalia and greater autonomy or independence in Somaliland as threats to its national security.International actors also obviously fear the rise of an Islamist government in Somalia and want to avoid the division of Somalia into smaller units for fear of the encouragement that such a development would give minority groups in other countries, especially Africa. Despite these internationally imposed constraints on state-building in Somalia, the international community paradoxically continues to demand a state from the warring parties.

 

If such is still the objective, the process of national reconciliation and state formation must derive from Somali-driven processes. As theorized by as diverse an array of scholars as Ibn Khaldun and Francis Fukuyuma, social cohesiveness (or capital) and trust are key components in the formation of society and the building of a state. By all measures, these bonds have broken down in Somalia today. As such, Somalis have relied almost exclusively on their familial connections. This outcome is a result of a state that intentionally destroyed cross-cutting societal linkages in the 1980s – a process that began during the period of colonial partition. International intervention has only inflamed differences more and done nothing to rebuild trust among Somali political actors. Still both Ken Menkhaus and Peter Little have written about the “malleability of interests” even within the clan system in Somali society. They point to the way that the clan system has adapted to “the changing demands of the international community as well as to the challenges of statelessness and pastoralism.” Little provocatively asks, “Is it surprising then that Somali clans began to fracture and/or consolidate along sub-clan and lineage lines when external agencies worked within a clan idiom themselves?”

 

In order then to identify the true interests of each constituency and search for a workable compromise, it is necessary to remove the foreign influences as much as possible. The involvement of the United States, Ethiopia, Egypt, Eritrea, and even the United Nations are inherently distorting to Somali politics. As such, Menkhaus encourages the new Obama administration to seek “[p]olicies which privilege Somali-driven processes, rely mainly on Somali interests and actors to drive outcomes, and respect Somali preferences.” Were Somalis able to take control of the process in this way, perhaps finally as Samatar advised in 1988 “moral and intellectual commitments from leading classes” could emerge to take charge of the state and the economy. Western countries though must realize that in the current Somali political climate some solutions – such as regionalism or elements of Islamist governance – may emerge. It must accept, therefore, these outcomes and then support the new-born Somali state in making the central government and its governing mechanisms mean more to the Somali people than a threatening source of predation.

development, engagement, peace-making, Somalia, state-builing

Address: http://www.seanbrooks.net/2009/12/somalias-dismemberment-and-possible-patchwork-rebuilding/