Somaliland, An African Exception

[Jacaylbaro]

Somaliland, an African exception

[Jacaylbaro]

The British left Somaliland functioning – unlike the Italians in Somalia. Fifty years after the end of colonialism, the breakaway region has peace and democracy, but no international recognition ..

 

By Gérard Prunier

[Wiil Cusub]

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Pls copy and paste it

[Peace Action]

Originally posted by Jacaylbaro:

The British left Somaliland functioning – unlike the Italians in Somalia. Fifty years after the end of colonialism, the breakaway region has peace and democracy, but no international recognition ..

 

By Gérard Prunier

Mr. Bugland do you miss your colonizer, the British? Ceebay tacaal.

 

The British and the Italians were kicked out of Somalia in 1960 humilated never to be trusted let alone admired.

[Wiil Cusub]

Somaliland, an African exception

 

Written by Gérard Prunier

Oct 01, 2010 at 08:40 AM

The British left Somaliland functioning - unlike the Italians in Somalia. Fifty years after the end of colonialism, the breakaway region has peace and democracy, but no international recognition To the south lies Somalia, the archetypal failed state. To the north, Somaliland, which in June organised one of the most democratic elections Africa has seen for a long time. The explanation for this contrast lies in history. When Britain occupied the north of Somalia at the end of the 19th century, it intended only to prevent the French from gaining a strategic outlet on the Red Sea, and provide cheap food for its colony in Aden, in the Arabian desert. The British were not concerned with making money from the territory and were content to run it at arm's length, interfering little with the indigenous system of governance and (effective) mechanisms for resolving conflict in a nomadic society.

 

The Italians took a radically different approach when they colonised the south. At the Berlin conference to divide Africa in 1884-85, a newly unified Italy demanded recognition, despite its political and economic backwardness as compared with the rest of western Europe. Italy's colonial ambitions were neither strategic nor economic: it sought compensatory glory (and to populate new areas to stem the emigration of its citizens, particularly to the US and Argentina). Fascism did nothing to temper Italy's pretensions; the fascist government used the imperialist project to provide its people with a compensatory psychodrama, resulting, in the 1920s, in massacres in its colonies and the destruction of indigenous mechanisms for social control.

The Somali people were divided by colonisation, but bound together by culture. They saw independence as the path to unification. Creating a Greater Somalia became a key nationalist aim, and led to the unification of the colonies under the first free Somali government in 1960. This created tension with the Organisation of African Unity, set up in 1963, which insisted on respect for colonial era borders (1).

 

But the new country was built on a paradox: territories divided by history found themselves together again within the framework of an ambiguous pan-nationalist project which gave them an artificial sense of unity . The test of this came in 1977 when Somalia, under the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre (2), invaded the ******, an ethnically Somali region of neighbouring Ethiopia and the cornerstone of Greater Somalia. The war ended in a defeat with the triple effect of destroying the grand nationalist project, turning Somali clans against each other in their search for a scapegoat, and causing Siad Barre to make the clans in the north (former British Somaliland) pay for the conflict. A million refugees from the ****** arrived in Somalia on the heels of the retreating army. Siad Barre settled them in the north and armed them. He not only gave them wide administrative powers but a free hand to plunder.

The danger Somalis had always chosen to ignore - fragmentation of the clans - now came about, with the dictatorship's blessing. With the dream of a Greater Somalia dead, the government encouraged some clans to suppress others, redrawing the north-south border inherited from the colonial era.

 

Rebellion in the north

 

In 1981 the north rebelled, beginning a 10 year civil war in which all those excluded from power rose up, one after another, against the dictatorship. It fell in 1991 leading to the collapse of the Somali state, since no confederation of clans proved able to replace the regime's scheming with constructive alliances.

The north took the opportunity to declare independence and withdraw from the fratricidal conflict into which the south had sunk. Although the first few years were chaotic, the 1993 Borama inter-clan conference provided the country with representative institutions which assured its democratic foundation.

 

While Somaliland found its feet relatively quickly, the south plunged deeper into chaos. From 1992 to 1995 the "international community" occupied southern Somalia, at the behest of the US. Operation Restore Hope did anything but that - the 35,000 soldiers deployed by more than 30 armies, at a cost of $5bn, achieved nothing and were evacuated after two and a half years (3). Weakened by outside interference, Somalia also suffered from internal stresses. Since 1992 there have been 14 attempts to reform the government. All have failed.

 

This is where the colonial legacy is most evident: in the north, Somaliland incorporated its ancient clan mechanisms for managing conflict into English common law to create its own form of democracy. In the south, where Italian imperialism and fascism had eroded the indigenous system but contributed no new political or legal functions, the uncontrolled clan system hindered the emergence of any form of government, even an authoritarian one.

 

Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), in place since 2004 and recognised internationally, only controls a few streets in the centre of the capital Mogadishu - and even that is due to the support of 6,000 soldiers from the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). The TFG has been torn apart by personal quarrels and corruption, and has to deal with an Islamist insurgency which, in July, launched terrorist attacks in Kampala, Uganda, to provoke an international crisis. In fact nationalism has more influence in Somalia than Islamism, and it offers the militants of Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (movement of fighting youth) the opportunity to rebuild a national consensus around the idea of resistance, and to assuage the fears provoked by their extremism.

 

Absence of recognition

 

Up to now Somaliland has managed to keep its distance from the violence next door which has led to tens of thousands of deaths, a million refugees, and two million internally displaced over the last 20 years. The irony is that the "international community" refuses to recognise this oasis of peace and democracy, while it continues to give legitimacy to Somalia on the basis of the 1960 unification, even though it is a state in name only, incapable of meeting any democratic criteria or of re-establishing peace.

 

While the US, UK, and France are beginning to question the wisdom of this policy, inertia and convention stand in the way of Somaliland's recognition. Western powers do not want to offend the Arab world, which sees Ethiopia - a Christian "foreign body" in a predominantly Muslim region - as the enemy. Egypt has always wanted a strong and united Somalia to serve as an ally against Ethiopia (4), and the existence of Somaliland interferes with this strategy.

 

That is why Somaliland needs to be beyond reproach. "They will expect more from us than from others, but give us less," predicted a former vice-president of Somaliland just before the election. But Somaliland still has a long way to go: the outgoing head of state, Hassan Dahir Riyale Kahin, who came to power in May 2002, did not have a spotless democratic career. As vice president, he replaced President Mohamed Ibrahim Egal when Egal died of natural causes in May 2002. He then manipulated the Guurti (upper house of parliament) in order to have the elections postponed so he could stay in office. In September 2009, threatened by popular revolt and a rebellion in parliament, he asked the army chief of staff to move on the capital Hargeisa, with the probable aim of suspending parliament. But, after thinking about it for 24 hours, the head of the army refused to take part in this "legal coup", and the president was obliged to set a date for elections.

 

Somaliland's constitution limits the number of political parties to three. Riyale Kahin runs Udub, a party he formed with Egal, the "Father of the Republic". Seventeen years in power encouraged the familiar pattern of clientelism and nepotism, but while these are common in Africa, in Somaliland they are limited by a free press, genuine freedom of speech, for which a robust civil society battled hard, and a legislative body that is not totally corrupt. Udub's old opponent, Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo, created a strong and organised opposition in the Kulmiye party. The joker in the pack is the small new party Ucid, led by Faisal Ali Warabe, which combines the positive element of openness to women, minority clans and intellectuals, with a dangerous complacency towards Islamist extremists. As a result, Ucid is often perceived as opportunist, ready to use any means to dislodge the two traditional parties.

 

Warabe is much younger than Kahin or Silanyo, and does not belong to the civil war generation. He does not see Somaliland as a miracle of willpower, but as a normal political entity, and this attitude has brought him support among young voters.

 

The election went ahead smoothly on 26 June, and on 1 July the national electoral commission declared Silanyo the winner with 49% of the votes. Kahin got 33% and Warabe 17%. The turnout was 88% of 1.09 million registered voters. The role of the 70 foreign observers was largely symbolic, to legitimise the process, which took place in a visibly calm atmosphere.

 

So can the goodwill and good organisation of the elections mean that Somaliland, which has lived without international aid for 20 years, will achieve the recognition it desires? Probably not, at least in the short term. Too many people are opposed - including those nostalgic for a Greater Somalia, Islamist extremists and conservative diplomats. Some of its supporters fear that, in any case, full recognition will only aggravate the antagonisms that have devastated Somalia. Perhaps an intermediate status is possible, where Somaliland would have most of the legal and commercial advantages of recognition, and not provoke too much opposition.

[Wiil Cusub]

JB great article

Le Monde the best french news paper makes good balanced analysis Why One Somali state is a failed state, the other works.

The explanation for this contrast lies in history, how British and Italian runs their African colony.

 

Le mond is not British.