     ali g | Friday, October 13, 2000 - 07:58 am
Will there be peace in Somalia now?
By Bernhard Helander
Almost hidden in the chorus of high-pitched voices rejoicing the recent
election of a president for Somalia, there are some less optimistic aspects
that have remained outside of 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 the suffering of which has prompted so much world-wide
distress, so much aid and that has contributed to an entirely new form of
peace-keeping labelled '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 amounts of
Somalis eagerly await this president's appointment of his first cabinet -
this must mean that peace has finally come?
Objections
The objections do not primarily focus on the extraordinary format of the
rise of this yet-to-be-appointed 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 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 that has 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 kind of political landscape in which this president is going to
operate? It is certainly not a uniform structure just lacking some key
persons the appointment of which will mend the conflicts and make the Somali
state re-emerge. On the contrary the conditions created by 10 years of
statelessness are to a large extent irreversible. First of all 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 against the stability that they have established locally.
In the case of Puntland, the Djibouti conference has served as a forums for
the internal opposition to the current leadership seeking to apply the
nationalist rhetoric to their own, very local, power ambitions.
Fragments and stability
It is important to emphasise 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.
The type of leadership that these polities have is also increasingly 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's 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 shrinking. In this process, that
some has termed the radical localisation of Somali politics, the goal of
restoring a national government has become reduced to an increasingly 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 to at least 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 in the shape of the system of
clanship. 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 the
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 and that forces
leaders to start all over again, on a smaller scale, narrowing the
geographical scope and with a waning 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 manoeuvre
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 localised 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.
The 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 motivations to speed up the breakdown of 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 amassment
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 harbour 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: assign a common external enemy and you will pull together the many
strands of a fragmented political reality. As Machiavellian as it may sound
in it's simplicity it formed an essential part of the toolbox that kept
Somalia's overthrown dictator Siyad Barre in power for more than 20 years.
So who will play the role of enemy? The obvious choice throughout the past
10 years has been to appeal to 'nationalism' to and revive the nation-state
rhetoric from the height of Somalis modernist era just around 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 an equal amount of
concerted opinion as the animosity expressed 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 (that
never took part in any of these conferences) couldn't be made clearer. The
fact that Somaliland's economy has gradually improved and the political
stability is admirable has not impressed many southerners. With the former
capital in ruins and in a political climate characterised by increasing
fission of even originally tiny fragments there is at least the common enemy
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 it's willingness to be part of a future
federal Somalia, it too is seen as a threat to the re-emergence 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 substantially reduced its support 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 the gold
medals for different sport accomplishments. This is now thought to be the
decisive turning point that will reopen all the international checkbooks and
see to that the stream of foreign aid comes back. Nothing of the sort is of
course going to happen and it is at that point real danger emerges. When the
celebrating crowds in the streets of Mogadishu realise that they've been let
down this time, too, that will be the point when some really good strategies
are 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 sort of
combination of Djibouti's more obscure interests and the interest of
Somalia's most recent president in creating a larger polity than that
offered by any of the southern fiefdoms for himself and his cabinet. 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 farfetched 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 must 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 actors in and
around Somalia offer a number of potential allies for someone who expresses
willingness to shoulder the task of putting a unified Somalia back on the
track. The family of Nairobi-based UN organisations involved in Somalia -
often internally fragmented in bitter fights over increasingly meagre
resource flows - have a number of actors willing to put their weight behind
a fresh political force in Somalia. In fact the most senior UN diplomat,
David Stephen, has directed the entire Djibouti process. 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 organisations 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. In fact, the UN aid
coordinator Randolph Kent quickly pledged that the new government (although
there is not one appointed yet) was going to have a tremendous impact on the
work of aid organisations.
Disastrous effects
But the aid organisations are not the only international actors involved in
Somalia. A number of other African countries also have vested interests in
Somalia or play very high-profile roles in the politics of reinventing the
country. Libya, to mention just one, 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 was not enough to buy the new president their support.
Despite extensive meetings in Tripoli, Hussein Aydiid has simply declared
that he recognises his new rival as another "local leader."
Postponing the appointments for the cabinet remains the only trick for the
president to ward off the increasing sphere of critics at home and abroad.
The idea is of course to make everyone believe that there eventually will be
a position for them. This may do the trick for a while. But with some of
more famous crooks of the Siyad Barre era reported to be on their way back
to take up positions in the new government, even the more insignificant of
warlords appear to feel that there is more to lose by joining than by simply
resisting. The many outlandish figures that have been mentioned as possible
premiers of the coming government, include a man who in 1991 run off in a
private airplane with a good part of the state's finances in his pockets.
The more serious political observers in Mogadishu, like the Dr Ismail
Jum'ale Human Rights Centre, has throughout the Djibouti process argued a
truth commission is needed in Somalia and that persons known to have
committed war crimes and other criminal offences 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
organisations 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
has surged unexpectedly for the season. Exiled Somalis who normally pay
regular visits to the country have cancelled their trips. Even more serious
are the bands of ex-militias who now room the city centre demanding to be
employed by the police force the 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 that of
limitation of damages. Will the effects of this latest disastrous move in
Somalia simply go away as the name of the "president" becomes forgotten in
the coming months? It is still too early to say because with the
international stakes raised high and a number of bureaucratic carriers
deeply invested it remains uncertain whether peace will prevail.
Bernhard Helander, Lecturer of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University,
was the ex-editor of Somalia News Update
NOTICE
SomaliNet Forum
OGEYSIIS
Please read these documents before you post articles on Somalinet forums: Guidelines Terms and Conditions
Fadlan akhri qoraalkan intaadan Somalinet wax ku soo qorin MUHIIM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add a Message |
