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LMOST HIDDEN in the chorus of
high-pitched voices rejoicing the recent election of a
president for Somalia, there are some less promising aspects
that have remained outside the media focus. To raise doubts is
a little bit like swearing in church; how can anyone seriously
be against peace in Somalia? A country whose suffering has
prompted so much world-wide distress, generated so much aid,
and contributed to an entirely new form of peace-keeping
labeled “humanitarian intervention,” surely it’s nothing
more than academic hair-splitting to object to the peace
believed to be under way. Now that this country that has been
without a central government since 1991 finally has set up a
parliament in neighbouring Djibouti and that parliament in
turn has elected a president, and now that vast numbers of
Somalis eagerly await this president’s appointment of his
first cabinet — doesn’t this mean that peace has finally
come?
Objections
The objections do not primarily
focus on the extraordinary format of the rise of this
yet-to-arrive government. While there are ample reasons to
question a “parliament” with so many members living in
exile, and while one may wonder what’s in it for Djibouti
— a country that has lost valuable parts of its transit
trade to a self-proclaimed independent part of Somalia, an
independence now challenged by the very conference that
Djibouti has initiated and hosted — let’s at least
temporarily leave such issues aside.
The more substantial objection is instead that the current
process is out of phase with the realities in Somalia. It
could perhaps have been a good idea to assemble in Djibouti
back in 1991, just after the former regime had been toppled.
In fact the major political leaders did precisely that —
twice — and they even elected a new president who became the
first in a series of rival presidents who have since emerged.
Admittedly it’s been a few years now since the last
appointment of a president claiming to operate on the national
level; but the point is that having someone named for that
position is nothing new, and it has not helped to solve
anything in the past, just created new rivalries and more
instability.
The Somali political landscape
What is the political landscape in
which this president is going to operate? It is certainly not
a uniform structure merely lacking some key persons whose
appointment will end the conflicts and mend the Somali state.
On the contrary the conditions created by ten years of
statelessness are to a large extent irreversible. Most
notably, two large territories of the former Somali republic
have formed their own independent states with their own
governments, parliaments, and heads of state. The former
British colony in the northwest of Somalia declared its
secession already in 1991. While political leaders in Somaliland,
as it now calls itself, may want to hold a door open for some
form of future merger with the rest of the country, the
popular support for independence is enormous. Slightly less
determined to pursue independence, Somaliland’s eastern
neighbour, calling itself the Puntland State of Somalia,
was formally launched in 1998 but was preceded by a number of
regional administrations. Somaliland and Puntland arguably
comprise about a third of the Somali population and both
governments have refused to play any role in the Djibouti
process. They regard the appointment of a national level
government as a direct threat to the stability they have
established locally. In the case of Puntland, the Djibouti
conference has served as a forum for the internal opposition
to the current leadership seeking to apply nationalist
rhetoric to their own, very local, power ambitions.
Fragments and stability
It is important to emphasize that
Somaliland and Puntland, while perhaps the most stable ones,
are not the only regional governments with a de facto control
of more or less autonomous areas. It could be argued that the
whole country consists of a patchwork of such locally formed
polities of various sizes, with varying internal stability and
with highly varied life spans. Increasingly, the leadership of
these polities is based on local political histories involving
commercial elites, militant Islamists, former politicians,
traditional leaders, wealthy returnees, and militia and
military leaders. While the infamous “war lords” of the
early 1990-92s are still around and here and there form part
of the local competition for power, the last five or six years
have gradually seen their power diluted and their range of
influence reduced. In this process, which some have termed the
“radical localization” of Somali politics, the goal of
restoring a national government has diminished to nearly empty
rhetoric, fashionable among some exiled intellectuals and, now
and then, forming the theme for internationally sponsored
conferences.
The point is that many of these small polities are doing
fairly well. Or, more correctly, a good number of people with
influence within these polities are doing fairly well. Rampant
capitalism reigns, and businessmen are always willing at least
to consider exchanging some of their profits for protection of
their investments, thus ensuring a small but steady trickle of
“taxation” into the hands of “politicians” to allow
investments in public services and increased political
goodwill. Thus an unholy alliance of business interests and
political entrepreneurship forms a kind of centripetal force
creating relative stability and a climate that allows the
delivery of at least rudimentary social services.
Yet the flip side of the coin is the
centrifugal force of the clanship system. The fragmentation of
the state has its close parallel (some would say reason) in
the fragmentation of clan identities. Clans are really tiny
groups of people bound together by obligations to pay blood
wealth and other forms of legal compensation. In times of
peace such groups merge and large-scale kinship-based clans
emerge. In times of war these clans fall apart, sometimes even
the blood wealth groups have to split up. For political life
this means that trust — one of the most essential aspects of
any society — becomes an increasingly scarce commodity. And
as clans fragment the social basis for the tiny polities
erode, forcing leaders to start all over again, on a smaller
scale, a narrower geographical scope, and a diminished social
catchment area. This is a good recipe for economic disaster.
When a “state” becomes a few blocks in the bombed-out
former capital, there is simply nothing left to fight over.
Somaliland and Puntland have been able, for different reasons,
to maneuver themselves free from these disastrous
developments.
• In
Somaliland, the armed struggle against the Siyad Barre regime
from 1982 and onwards formed a point of departure for an
impressive process of localized peace conferences that
eventually embraced all groups in the former British colony
and resulted in the decision to secede. This decision also
gained impetus from the first Djibouti conference in 1991,
where yet another southerner had been proclaimed president.
Somalilanders felt that they had suffered under the patronage
of southern rule for 20 years and were not willing to try a
new such constellation.
•
The reasons why Puntland has been able to avoid the southern
fragmentation has much to do with the fierce battles fought
against southern militias back in 1992. These battles (some
count them as the bloodiest in the entire Somali civil war)
forced the emergence of a series of attempts to establish
regional and interregional administrations. The large stream
of capital and migrants from the south to Puntland has also
given the area a good number of social and economic reasons to
stay clear of the muddle in the south.
Recent political history of southern Somalia
The southern part of the country has
had a rather different history that has produced a broad set
of factors that undermined political loyalties. It was the
fierce battles in and around the capital Mogadishu that really
marked the beginning of the full-scale civil war. The dispatch
of political and economic resources, not least by the UN and
other agencies, to Mogadishu unfortunately served to increase
the economic basis for fission. The potential spoils on the
national level were enormous, but in Mogadishu you could do
rather well with much less.
Today the UN and most others have left. The harbor and airport
are closed. Most of the essential agricultural resources are
far inland. The main export outlets are in Somaliland and
Puntland. The only safe way of getting an income is to set up
yet another checkpoint, blocking off an even smaller area than
before. And so the southern fragmentation continues. It is in
that context that a “national conference” comes in so
handy. The political culture of Somalia has a built-in
shortcut to overcome fragmentation and division: Identify a
common external enemy, and you will pull together the many
strands of a fragmented polity. As Machiavellian as it may
sound in its simplicity, this device formed an essential part
of the toolbox that kept Somalia’s overthrown dictator Siyad
Barre in power for more than twenty years. So who will play
the role of enemy now? The obvious choice throughout the past
ten years has been to appeal to “nationalism” and to
condemn seccessionist tendencies, in hopes of reviving the
nation-state fervor that united Somalis at the time of
independence. In that light Somaliland’s secession and
Puntland’s autonomy become indigestible disobediences that
must be put straight.
The Northern “enemies”
There are few issues in the south
that have created the amount of concerted opinion as has the
animosity against the secession of Somaliland. Nearly every
one of the twenty or so “peace agreements” that southern
factions have signed throughout the war starts off with the
phrase, “The unity of Somalia is sacred.” The implicit
reference to Somaliland (which never took part in any of these
conferences) couldn’t be made clearer. That Somaliland’s
economy has gradually improved and its politics are admirably
stable has not impressed many southerners. With the former
capital in ruins, and in a political climate of increasing
fission among even tiny fragments, there is at least the
common enemy in Somaliland to bemoan. It is as if the declared
secession was to blame for all the disasters that the south
has suffered. And while Puntland does not officially claim
anything else than its willingness to be part of a future
federal Somalia, it too is seen as a threat to the reemergence
of a united Somali republic.
It is in this context that we should view the Djibouti
conference, the parliament and the president it selected. It
is in the possibility of confrontation between Puntland/Somaliland
and the south that the real threats lie. And to be fair we
must allow the thought that Djibouti has not invested in this
huge conference out of unselfish interests in bringing about
peace in the very distant southern Somalia. Djibouti is a
barren desert that survives on generous French aid and the
Ethiopian transit trade. Recently France has reduced its
support substantially, and a small but increasing share of the
Ethiopian trade now goes through Somaliland instead. To make
the point very clear, one should also be aware that the part
of Somaliland that borders on Djibouti comprises some
excellent farming land.
A cargo cult
So what is going to happen? Well, it
has already started. The new president has gone to the south
where a veritable cargo cult has exploded. Congratulatory
telegrams from heads of state all over the world are mixed
with local signs of appreciation like awarding the president
with gold medals for different sport accomplishments. This is
now thought to be the decisive turning point that will reopen
all the international checkbooks and ensure that the stream of
foreign aid comes back. Of course, nothing of the sort is
going to happen, and it is at that point that real danger
emerges. When the celebrating crowds in the streets of
Mogadishu realize that they’ve been let down once again,
some really good strategies will be needed.
Given the backing of Djibouti, it
will be tempting for the new president to use the nationalist
angle to maintain his momentum. One can foresee a number of
different scenarios that all involve some combination of
Djibouti’s more obscure interests and those of Somalia’s
most recent president in creating for himself and his cabinet
a larger polity than that offered by any of the southern
fiefdoms. It is probably only by very explicitly targeting the
northern secessionists that the southern power base can
expand. Put in slightly different words: the road to political
success in the fragmented south is to attack the stable north.
A far-fetched conspiracy theory? Maybe. But one must remember
that the new president served in vital cabinet positions for
Siyad Barre during more than a decade. Djibouti’s president
is himself related to others in the same sphere of
politicians. And key members of the parliament include people
like the former military commander of Siyad Barre.
One must also point out that an
“attack” in this case may not necessarily involve military
means. There is enough harm to be done in diplomatic and aid
circles to cause serious blows to both Puntland and
Somaliland. The international offices in and around Somalia
offer a number of potential allies for someone willing to
shoulder the task of putting a unified Somalia back on the
track. The family of Nairobi-based UN organizations involved
in Somalia — often internally fragmented in bitter fights
over increasingly meager resource flows — have a number of
actors willing to put their weight behind a fresh political
force in Somalia. Indeed, the most senior UN diplomat, David
Stephen, directed the entire Djibouti process, and the UN aid
coordinator, Randolph Kent, promptly pledged that the new
government (although there was not yet one appointed) was
going to have a tremendous impact on the work of aid
organizations. It is also an inauspicious sign that the
Italian envoy to Somalia hurried to Djibouti to attend a human
rights seminar with the newly appointed MPs. If it comes to a
point where the UN, the EU, and other organizations have to
make a choice between working for something that purportedly
could lead to a reunification of Somalia, or to go on working
with increasingly minuscule local administrations, the choice
will be rather easy.
Disastrous effects
But the aid organizations are not
the only international actors involved in Somalia. A number of
other African and Arab countries also have vested interests in
Somalia or play very high-profile roles in the politics of
reinventing the country. Yemen is rumored to have delivered
arms to the new government while also attempting to persuade
the rival warlords to recognize that government. Libya has
given financial support to every actor in the current
conflict. Backing both Puntland and southern politicians,
Khadaffi seems to have established future friends no matter
how it all ends. However, even Khadaffi’s generous recent
offers to the rival warlords in Mogadishu were not enough to
buy the new president their support. Despite extensive
meetings in Tripoli, Hussein Aydiid has simply declared that
he recognizes his new rival as another “local leader.”
Postponing the appointments for the cabinet initially served
to ward off the growing swarm of critics at home and abroad.
The idea was of course to make everyone believe that there
eventually would be a position for them. This kept the more
serious local opponents calm for a while. But with some of the
more famous crooks of the Siyad Barre era now appointed as
ministers in the new government, even the more insignificant
warlords appear to feel that there is more to lose by joining
than by simply resisting. The appointment process itself has
created a rift between the president and the parliament (of
which some 60 percent bothered to show up in the capital).
More seriously, the president has lost the support he
initially had in the former famine zone around Baidoa, where
the local militia now refuse to allow entry to anyone
associated with the Mogadishu government.
Among the many outlandish figures appointed is the prime
minister who in 1982 ran off in a private airplane with a good
part of the state’s finances in his pockets. The minister of
defense is a person who failed to become elected as
Puntland’s president two years ago and who was also forced
to abdicate from the traditional leadership position he held
up to that point. The more serious political observers in
Mogadishu, like those of the Dr. Ismail Jumaale Human Rights
Centre, have throughout the Djibouti process argued that a
truth commission was needed in Somalia and that persons known
to have committed war crimes and other criminal offenses
should be blocked from participation in the political process.
So will there be peace in Somalia now? The question answers
itself. Is it good policy to establish an exiled government
whose only chance of success lies in attacking those parts of
the country that, through their own efforts, have reached
stability? Whose interests are really served by this?
Less then a year ago, the word of
the day among the international organizations was the
so-called building bloc approach to Somalia. It was widely
argued that the only road ahead was for other parts of Somalia
to follow the examples set by Somaliland and Puntland. With
what first appeared to be a quick-fix solution within reach,
those plans were buried. However, the first telltale effects
of the Djibouti process are already at hand: Trading in the
Mogadishu area has significantly decreased and food prices
have surged unexpectedly for the season. Exiled Somalis who
normally pay regular visits to the country have canceled their
trips. Even more serious are the bands of ex-militiamen who
now roam the city center demanding to be employed by the
police force the new president has declared he is going to set
up.
The short answer to the peace question is no. But
unfortunately the more serious issue that observers all over
the world now confront is how to limit the damage done in
Djibouti. Will the effects of this latest disastrous move
simply go away as the name of the new “president” is
forgotten in the coming months? That seems unlikely, now that
the international stakes have been raised high and a number of
bureaucratic careers are deeply invested. 
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