The Somaliland Orchestra: An African Masterpiece in Democratic Elections

[Jacaylbaro]

Somaliland has a special place in the political developments in Africa,especially in the Horn. The country was lucky to be liberated by a group which resembles a mass movement than an authentic liberation force.I spent the 1990s trying to decipher Somaliland and the positions of neighbouring countries and major global powers,when I was so oddly interrupted by the emerging menace and litrature of the Islamists and their entry to military politics.

 

Medhane Tadesse

Anyone who served on the academic front of conflict analysis in the Horn of Africa is likely to prick up his ears and experience a kind of mental salvation at the recent democratic elections in Somaliland. Somaliland has a special place in the political developments in Africa, especially in the Horn. This paper is concerned with the broader political issues surrounding the recent democratic elections.It will no dwell on the details of election politics or the nature of political parties. It aspires to serve as an analytical guide through the pressures and triumphs of one of the most important but least-recalled political achievements in Africa.The fact that Kulmiye won the election is not a surprise, and is beside the point. The most important issue is the political background that led to a vibrant multi-party politics and the most democratically contested elections in Africa.

 

The three most revealing moments that shaped my view on and engagement with Somaliland are 1) the locally rooted traditional conflict resolutions mechanisms in the early 1990s that brought calm and stability 2) the death of its President, Mohammed Ibrahim Igal and the coronation of a new president in less than three hours, all constitutionally administered. Somaliland is very lucky to have survived the death of its most important president. It also proved that politics in Somaliland is more about rules and less about individuals. And thirdly, the fisrt closely contested democratic election in 2003, in which the incumbent won by only less than 80, highly controversial, votes but failed to result in post-election violence. This tells more about the nature and historicity of the Somaliland elite and the political culture of negotiation, than the strength of its institutions. With little help from outside, Somaliland has achieved considerable progress in the consolidation of statehood: in a nationwide referendum held in 2001, the country adopted a new constitution with overwhelming support from the voters.

 

In April 2003, presidential elections were held and in September of the same year parliamentary elections took place. Both elections were declared open and fair by foreign observers. All this triggered hope and eagerness to continue engage in Somaliland affairs. It became a passion. With all the interruptions and distractions from the multi-faceted peace and security issues surrounding the Horn of Africa region, I had to always revert back to dealing with the case for Somaliland. Unlike other new-born states Somaliland was not something of an enfant terrible as a young and unrecognized nation of a few million people. Despite the enormous odds and challenges faced at the time of its 1991 declaration of independence, Somaliland has made tremendous progress in building peace, security and a constitutional democracy within its borders inherited from the colonial period. It is a telling commentary of what works and what don’t work in the Horn of African sub-region. My engagement with Somaliland in the closing decades of the twentieth century was both thrilling and discomforting. Thrilled to see a young and hopeful political community, but depressed to learn the world was not paying attention, let alone provide support.

 

If there is one thing that supporters of Somaliland insist upon, it’s that the independent country has become a source of hope and pride in the volatile and politically backward Horn of African region. It is the only area hospitable to credible and democratic elections. Somaliland proved that even an impoverished nation can succeed in building and nurturing local institutions for peace and democracy. They are home grown institutions. As Somaliland concluded its recent democratic election this week the one thing that seems to hover in my mind is the uniqueness of its experiment. Some of the stories had already been told. At least some of the facts are simple enough to understand: the dominance of one major clan, the ***** clan family. But again one would expect the same sub-clan politics as in southern Somalia.

The unique process in Somaliland is not hard to explain. I think there are various and multi-layered political reasons for it. Unlike other parts of Somalia, Somaliland followed traditional mechanisms of conflict resolution and used them to their highest limits. The protracted clan and political reconciliation processes cemented in the successive Borama conferences in the early to mid-1990s served as bedrock for long term political stability and political transition. More innovative were the clan sanctioned Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration/DDR/ rituals that led to comprehensive and parallel demilitarization of all the major clans. It created trust and confidence among the main ***** sub-clans and ensured predictability between them. This must have removed the weaponry that would have inflamed conflict and violence. This was done without external support. No wonder this is glaringly missing in southern Somalia, where misguided demobilization efforts by the US/UN forces run amock.Nonetheless,the role of traditional leadership in Somaliland is critical to the whole political process.

 

And probably due to British indirect rule the power and influence of traditional authority remains highly significant. Indeed, the political culture in Hargiessa mutated into a hybrid political system of Westministrial and Somali traditional values, as is evidenced in the web of political negotiations of a traditional kind and some sort of parliamentary democracy. Probably, the political generation groomed by the British is fast disappearing due to age and the new socio-economic changes, not to mention the spread of Islamist movements. The culture of negotiation is still strong. Probably related to the above is the concession building mechanisms that developed between the business class and the political elite, particularly the livestock trading class. Compounding this is the locally rooted economic foundations of the political establishment which became relatively immune to the predatory nature of the state and its fatal dependence on foreign aid. Another significant departure from the processes in southern Somalia. The Somaliland political elite focused on internal legitimacy as opposed to external/international legitimacy. It pursued a political direction that is locally owned, participatory and locally financed.

 

Political ownership without some financial commitment is always illusive, and this partly explains the problems of state building in southern Somalia. A major disparity with the process in Somaliland. The contextual, albeit pragmatic marriage between the political elite and the business class was the main defining feature of the political system in Somaliland, though it was briefly attempted by the Somali Islamists in mid 2006,when the Union of Islamic Courts leadership cemented a kind of profit-sharing arrangement with leading business leaders in Mogadishu. This is quite revealing on what works and what don’t work in Somalia. Such largely magnanimous political arrangement in Somaliland averted the usual fight over the foundations of the state as evidenced in many parts of the Horn and the African continent at large. Clearly, in many parts of Africa, the fight over the state in the past decade and a half has been at once violent and so disabling that, state institutions are weak and their legitimacy is highly contested. Such a grim reality has been largely avoided in Somaliland. Governments run by small elite groups with partisan agendas and militarized conception of security are sources of turmoil and less suitable for conflict resolution. Most of these states have yet to create inclusive, representative and legitimate political processes and systems. Somaliland did. Besides, Somaliland was lucky that it was liberated by a coalition of clan forces whose end set was only the liberation of the territory, nothing more nothing less.

[Jacaylbaro]

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