Somali Anarchy Is More Orderly than Somali Government

[Liqaye]

Somali Anarchy Is More Orderly than Somali Government

December 22, 2006

Benjamin Powell

 

 

Say “Somalia” to most Americans and they will likely have visions of civil war and chaos. While accurate in the early 1990s, these visions have not been the actual situation in Somalia for most of the last decade. Unfortunately, because of yet another international attempt to install a Somali government, these visions are again becoming increasingly accurate.

 

Somalia has been without a national government since 1991, when Dictator Siad Barre was ousted from power. Somalia plunged into a civil war as rival factions attempted to establish a new government. Interventions by the U.S. and U.N. tended to unite the Somalis against the outsiders, resulting in the famous “Black Hawk Down” episode, and ultimately, the withdrawal of U.S. and U.N. forces.

 

Once the U.N. withdrew, a relative peace developed in Somalia. Crime and violence persisted, but not at the levels seen during the civil war. Various clan elders, warlords, and Islamic courts had power, but none were strong enough to impose themselves as the new government, and most of the fighting stopped.

 

Once this relative peace was achieved, the Somalis began to order their affairs and adapt institutions to provide governance, even though they lacked a government. Most of the order was provided by Somalia’s customary legal code, the Xeer, which was interpreted by clan elders and informally enforced, mainly through ostracism. Islamic courts existed, but most had little influence. Islamic law was reserved mostly for matters of divorce and inheritance, while the common law covered everything else.

 

Although Somalia is still poor, the ordered anarchy that has existed since the mid–1990s has actually translated into improved living standards. In conducting research for a new study comparing Somalia’s economy relative to 42 other African countries, my coauthors and I examined 13 different measures, including life expectancy, immunization and disease rates, access to various telecommunications, and access to water/sanitation.

 

In 2005, Somalia ranked in the top 50 percent in six of our 13 measures, and ranked near the bottom in only three: infant mortality, immunization rates, and access to improved water sources. This compares favorably with circumstances in 1990, when Somalia last had a government and was ranked in the bottom 50 percent for all seven of the measures for which we had that year’s data: death rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, main telephone lines, tuberculosis, and immunization for measles and DTP. Furthermore, we have found that during the last years of Somalia’s government, 1985 to 1990, their performance was deteriorating compared to other African nations as their relative ranking fell in five of these measures. Since their government’s collapse, Somalia has seen its relative ranking improve in four of these measures and deteriorate in only one: infant mortality.

 

Perhaps most impressive is Somalia’s change in life expectancy. During the last five years of government rule, life expectancy fell by two years but since state collapse, it actually has increased by five years. Only three African countries, Guinea, Gambia, and Rwanda, can claim a bigger improvement. Telecommunications is another major area of success. With a variety of companies operating without burdensome government regulation, Somalia ranks high among African countries in the number of phone lines, mobile phone usage, and access to the Internet. According to The Economist, a mobile phone call in Somalia is “generally cheaper and clearer than a call from anywhere else in Africa.”

 

In fact, the ordered anarchy in Somalia attracted multinational corporations to the country. Coca–Cola, Dole, DHL, and affiliates of General Motors and British Airways, among others, began making investments in Somalia. Unfortunately, recent international efforts at establishing a new government in Somalia are likely to ruin what little economic progress the country has made.

 

In 2004, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was created in exile with U.N. backing. In February 2006 it entered Somalia, and so far, controls only the town of Baidoa.

 

The Somalis again have united against this attempt by outsiders to force a government on them. Unfortunately, the result has been an increase in the power of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), who, since June, has gained control over much of southern Somalia, including the former capital, Mogadishu. An estimated 600 militias have joined the UIC since the TFG moved into Baidoa in February.

 

Every government of Somalia has exploited the country’s population. International meddling created the TFG and, unintentionally, a more powerful UIC. If either group were to become a true government, the population likely will once again become oppressed. In the meantime, the two groups appear headed back into civil war, which will likely result in the kind of chaos the country has not experienced since 1995.

 

Prime Minister Gedi of the TFG recently said, “It is totally misguided not to accept the government. The alternative is chaos.” Unfortunately, he’s got it exactly backwards. It is, in fact, the attempts to impose a government on Somalia that create chaos.

 

 

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Benjamin Powell is Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at The Independent Institute and assistant professor of economics at San Jose State University. Dr. Powell received his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He has been a fellow with the Mercatus Center's Global Prosperity Initiative and a visiting research fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research.

 

very intreasting link

 

http://www.independent.org/publications/working_papers/article.asp?id=1861

[NASSIR]

Benjamin is wrong there that law and order spawns oppression in Somalia. Somaliland and Puntland are good examples how our community thrived in their local level adminstrations. I however think the main factor that we fare better than many African nations is our cultural and political devotion to our respective clans, albeit destructive in nature, it can also be progressive in terms of organizing and redirecting our energy and resources to rebuild our schools and hospitals. The provision of security and the tax collection schemes of the sub-states of Somalis have also stimulated the economy. Bosaaso, for instance, is the success story of the post civil war Somalia.

 

Check this post

 

http://www.somaliaonline.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=003617

[Caano Geel]

Caamir

I think you are mistaking the private sector (profitable enterprises) which the public sector - with by definition eat the profit.

 

Private businesses are more succesful unilateraly, so long as businesses marginal profits are greater than the cost in provisioning their own private security, there is profit to be made. Couple that with an open evironment for competition, and you have a recipe for a market - whose in which the success and failiture of entrats will be determined by how well they fare with the competion.

 

And this is what the author is talking about. Untill there is profit to be had for road building or immunising children, such success will not be translated to the public sector. Therefore this is the function of the state, i.e. to generate the wealth by nurturing markets, and collect reasonable tax for its husbandry in order to support the public sector.

 

However, as Benjamin's aricle quotes in its conclusion:

The revival of a state is viewed in Somali quarters as a zero-sum game, creating winners and losers in a game with potentially very high stakes. Groups which gain control over a central government will use it to appropriate economic resources at the expense of others, and will use the law, patronage, and the monopoly of legitimate use of violence to protect this advantage. This is the only experience Somalis have had with centralised authority, and it tends to produces risk-aversion and to instigate conflict rather than promote compromise, whenever efforts are

made to establish a national government

Given our past experience, and trak record of this coming adminstration. this i think is only too true.

 

The reference to a "zero sum game" in the quote is intersting, because it is demonstrated in the recent calls for disarmament.

 

No one will disarm because every one knows if they disarm, they are at the mercy of their rivals -and loose their prestige. Since every knows this, they can colclude that no one will disarm regarless of what they do, so in the end, no one gives up their arms. Not giving your arms is the only *rational* conclusion

 

-- hence Qaranye's remarks a few days ago that the only way he will disarm is via a simmultanious disarmament.

 

Anyhow, why do you believe that the TFG will actually play the role of a government -when it attains a monopoly on violence (a requirement on any central goverment), in anything other than a name- unlike all its predecessors and african counterparts.