Washington Resists the Transitional Federal Parliament’s Term Extension By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein

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Somalia: Washington Resists the Transitional Federal Parliament’s Term Extension

26 Mar 26, 2011 - 2:19:03 PM

 

By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein

 

The politics of the territories constituting post-independence Somalia have been dominated in 2011 by the issue of the “transition” of “Somalia’s” Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) to a (permanent) government, as envisaged by the Djibouti Peace Process as happening in August, 2011.

 

Until the end of 2010, there appeared to be little concern on the parts of the actors involved in Somalia’s conflicts about the “transition.” Everybody knew that things were supposed to change in August, but nobody wanted to start the process, which was bound to be a hornets’ nest. After all, nobody had made any serious efforts to plan and/or make progress on implementing a plan. The actors had variant interests and had not yet reached anything approaching a consensus on planning and implementation. From the viewpoint of realist political analysis, a rational political actor would look at the conditions – hyper-fragmentation and civil war in “Somalia,” no process of “transition” or preparation for it – and conclude that extending the T.F.G. and the Transitional Federal Parliament (T.F.P) would make sense. That is what happened when the T.F.P.

unilaterally decided to extend its term in office for three years. The Horn of Africa sub-regional organization the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.), under Ethiopia’s guidance, had inspired the T.F.P.’s move in the first place; the African Union and the European Union accepted it with varying degrees of reluctance.

 

Only the United States was determined to reverse the T.F.P.’s decision rather than work within it. By trying to reverse the T.F.P.’s decision, Washington has stopped any progress toward “transition” in its tracks: it has diverted efforts to the problem of who will manage the “transition” rather than doing anything to make the transition. Through March, 2011, the “transition” lost a month through Washington’s attempt to claw back control over the transition (something it never actually had and had never applied sufficient resources to achieve) and the T.F.P.’s and I.G.A.D.’s push back against Washington, while the other players have looked on and the United Nations diplomats have been short-circuited by international disagreement.

 

Washington’s lone-wolf position was evident at the United Nations Security Council’s “open debate” on Somalia on March 8, when alone among the stakeholders it called for the reversal of T.F.P. term extension and stated its unwillingness (refusal) to accept it. On March 15, U.S. Undersecretary of State Johnnie Carson reiterated the position in an interview with the All Africa website. The problem was that the refusal to accept term extension did not come along with an alternative plan that would prevent a “power vacuum “ (as I.G.A.D. predicted) from opening up in August if the T.F.G./T.F.P. were dissolved without a structure to take its place, much less a “permanent” structure.

 

By March 15, the game of clawback-pushback had reached a stalemate. Washington remained adamant in trying to claw back control over the “transition;” but was getting nowhere; the T.F.P.-I.G.A.D. had succeeded in pushing back, but had not converted their adversary. It was up to Washington to move and put something behind its rhetoric or let the term extension stick and join the pack.

 

A closed source in the Horn of Africa provides intelligence that indicates that Washington is making its move by inspiring the U.N. to hold a conference on Somalia’s future after the transition in Nairobi on April 7. The “consultative” conference would bring together Somali factions and stakeholders to reach some sort of consensus to bring to the donor-dominated International Contact Group meeting in Kampala in mid-April. Then Washington’s plan would be launched.

 

Washington’s Plan for Transition

 

According to the source, Washington’s plan, which it will attempt to press through U.N. Special Representative for Somalia Augustine Mahiga, concedes a one-year extension for the T.F.G./T.F.P. with the election of a new leadership in August, 2011. From then on the plan takes off into the realm of political fantasy. After August, the T.F.G. would keep its name, but would be - what it is fashionable to call now – a “new political dispensation.” It would work under a new “interim constitution” that would replace the present Transitional Federal Charter (T.F.C.) and would be compounded out of the Djibouti Constitution (the recent draft constitution formulated by an independent Somali commission assisted by the U.N.), the T.F.C., and past Somali constitutions. The present constitution commission would be dissolved and a new one that would be more “representative”/”inclusive” would be established and would come up with a permanent constitution to be put into effect in August, 2012. Then a new leadership would be elected under the new (permanent) constitution and the “transition” would be consummated.

 

The only way in which Washington’s plan might conceivably contain any practical sense would be if Washington was willing to take responsibility for the “transition,” that is, to put full diplomatic and material resources behind it – but Washington does not intend to do that, which renders its plan dead on arrival.

 

Does Washington have an “interim constitution” in its pocket? If not, how does Washington intend to engineer agreement on one in a process that will presumably last for no more than three months? The process would take place among severely divided factions in Somalia and an I.G.A.D. (Ethiopia) regional bloc with a different policy. This process would supposed to be “representative” and “inclusive,” bringing in the regions of post-independence Somalia, such as Puntland and Somaliland; and nascent regional “administrations” in southern and central Somalia. The unintended result would be incorporating even more divisions in an already hyper-factionalized process. Somaliland is committed to having its self-declared independence recognized (it has reportedly rejected an invitation to attend the Nairobi meeting). Puntland is committed to a federal formula for “Somalia” that preserves its autonomy. Washington’s plan is the stuff of dreams.

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Even if an interim constitution were established, how, within a year, could a permanent constitution be drafted that even began to reconcile the competing interests and thereby gain legitimacy? Where it to be drafted, how would such a constitution be ratified through a popular election, when most of southern and central Somalia is controlled by Harakat Al-Shabaab Mujahideen, which is waging an Islamist revolution against the T.F.G. and all other factions opposed to its revolution?

 

Washington’s plan is a symptom of the psychological mechanism of “wish-fulfillment” – “This is what I want. It does not matter whether or not it is practical … this is what I want, and I do not intend to do the work necessary to get it.” This is political pathology, not political rationality: psycho-politics, not interest-based politics.

 

According to the source, the push back against Washington’s plan began with Mahiga pressing for the T.F.P. to reverse or at least abbreviate its term extension and the T.F.P. refusing to do so. The source reports that within the T.F.G. a counter-move to Washington’s initiative is being considered in which the T.F.G. would call a national conference in July in Somalia (Mogadishu or Puntland’s capital Garowe) to elect leadership and to side track the U.S.-U.N. process in Nairobi (Washington does not trust Somali factions to hold a conference and elect a [satisfactory] leadership in Somalia).

 

The push back ratcheted up as the Nairobi conference has drawn close and the E.U. partially acceded to Washington’s plan. The part of the plan calling for only a one-year extension of the T.F.P.’s term mobilized the M.P.s against the claw back. Having counted on the E.U. to work within the three-year term-extension decision and now seeing it defect to Washington, the parliamentary faction stiffened its resolve. Sentiment in parliament turned anti-Western and nationalist, even defiant, with some M.P.s saying that they did not care if the donors pulled the plug on aid that finances the T.F.P. and on support of the African Union “peacekeeping” mission that protects the transitional institutions.

 

From the T.F.G. side, Prime Minister Mohamed Farmajo told Voice of America’s Somali Service that any plan for a one-year extension of the T.F.G. was unworkable – there simply was not sufficient time to organize two elections in a year and still expect any progress on governance. Farmajo said that the T.F.G. would draft a new plan for transition that would attempt to take all sides into account.

 

On March 23, the T.F.P. and the T.F.G. broke into open conflict with one another, as T.F.P. speaker, Sharif Hassan Sh. Adan, announced that he had nominated a committee to plan for a presidential election and requested the help of the “international community” in implementing the process. The president of the T.F.G., Sh. Sharif Sh. Ahmad, immediately rejected Sharif Hassan’s move, claiming the latter had no authority to carry out a presidential election. Both sides appeared to be acting as though they had no concern with Washington’s plan, but only with their own chronic in-fighting.

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Conclusion

 

What can explain Washington’s flight into wish-fulfillment and its escape from political practicality? Is there an interest behind it? One cannot escape the conclusion that Washington is replicating in Somalia a pattern of behavior that it is following elsewhere in the world. Washington is trying to wind down its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and having been dragged/dragged-itself into Libya, it wants to retract. Washington is trying to disembarrass itself of Somalia by getting a “transition” to a “permanent government” in quick time. Of course, Washington cannot get itself out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Somalia. (And what will it do about the rest of the Middle East?) Washington is stuck and, as the source says, finds itself “outmaneuvered” in Somalia, and one might also add in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and elsewhere. Washington is breaking under the weight of its “commitments” at the same time that it is trying to cope with the effects of the global financial crisis, and with an anti-government and anti-administration domestic opposition. It is this objective limitation on Washington’s power that accounts for its wish-fulfillment behavior in Somalia. It cannot do the job that it once thought it could (and never actually could), but it is unwilling in part and unable in part (due to the position of arbiter it occupies from the past) to give up the job (even though it cannot/will not do it).

 

Washington is the most important destabilizing element in the Horn of Africa, because it is not behaving as a rational political actor that bases actions on perceived interests. Instead, it is behaving as a conflicted psychological subject, expressing a wish (to withdraw) and a blocking wish (to hold its position), and ending up with the “compromise formation” of fantasy politics.

 

How much damage will Washington be able to do as it attempts to “manage” a “transition” that it cannot (will not try to) control? The answer depends on whether the other actors are able to bring it to heel as they pursue their own diverse and conflicting interests. That is likely to happen at the cost of more trouble for everyone, including, of course, Washington.

 

Report Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein, Professor of Political Science, Purdue University in Chicago weinstem@purdue.edu

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Quote un-quote

 

Washington is the most important destabilizing element in the Horn of Africa, because it is not behaving as a rational political actor that bases actions on perceived interests. Instead, it is behaving as a conflicted psychological subject, expressing a wish (to withdraw) and a blocking wish (to hold its position), and ending up with the “compromise formation” of fantasy politics.

 

Nothing new there brethren