A Vote for Peace
(Doorashada Golaha Baarlamanka) (2006)
Documentary on the Parliamentary Elections in 2005.
41 min., Somali version.
http://www.apd-somaliland.org/films/votepeace1.htm
Somaliland: Advancing Democracy in Somaliland
The International Republican Institute (IRI) has been active in Somaliland since the fall of 2002, when the institute conducted a comprehensive political assessment. The institute subsequently began program activities aimed at supporting the young democracy. Since that time, IRI has conducted a number of trainings in advance of the April 2003 presidential election, and in preparation for parliamentary elections, held in September 2005. Additionally, the institute conducted a staff assessment of the September 29, 2005 parliamentary elections and produced a report on its findings.
Political Party Development
IRI hosted trainings on empowering political parties in advance of the presidential election held in April 2003. Following the election, IRI hosted a roundtable to discuss post-election issues in Somaliland with panelists Lange Schermerhorn, former U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti and David Shinn, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia, as well as John Prendergast, Co-director of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Group.
In late January 2004, IRI conducted a political party training seminar in Hargeisa on campaign planning, fundraising and budgeting. In partnership with the Somaliland Journalists' Association (SOLJA), IRI trained Somaliland's political parties, civil society members and journalists on media communications. Facilitated by two Kenyan trainers, the workshop focused on the role and responsibilities of the media in a democracy, message development for political parties, effective communication between the parties and the media, and media ethics.
Preparing Parties for Elections
With the announcement that Somaliland would hold parliamentary elections in early 2005, IRI began a new program aimed at preparing political parties to compete fairly and effectively in democratic elections. The program began with intensive training and individual consultations with leading members of Somaliland's three parties on campaign planning and management.
After the election was delayed to September 2005, the institute launched a program with the National Campaign Committees (NCC) and Regional Campaign Committees (RCC) of the three parties. These committees were the organs chiefly responsible for designing and executing the parties' nationwide parliamentary election campaigns. In June 2005, IRI conducted a training session for members from the three parties' NCCs, as well as civil society members engaged in voter education projects.
In the final months of the campaigns, IRI organized a series of three-day campaign workshops for members of the RCCs of Somaliland's three political parties. The three workshops were conducted in Hargeisa and Burao, Somaliland's two largest cities. The objective of these seminars was to prepare the RCCs for Somaliland's first parliamentary elections and to ensure that these elections would be carried out in an open and transparent manner. The training topics included organizing election campaigns, campaign communication skills and fundraising. Also covered in the workshops was the Political Parties Code of Conduct, a document jointly drafted by the three parties and the NEC to complement the electoral law.
In the two weeks before Somaliland's September 29, 2005 parliamentary elections, IRI, in collaboration with the War-Torn Societies Project (WSP), sponsored and helped to organize party poll-watcher trainings in which nearly 6,000 party agents were prepared to execute their duties on Election Day. This training was conducted at a number of universities across Somaliland.
Election Assessment Activities
For Election Day, IRI sent a seven-member election assessment team to observe voting in four of Somaliland's six electoral regions. The team managed to visit roughly 10 percent of all polling stations in Somaliland, and issued a comprehensive report on the conduct of the elections.
IRI hopes to continue to support the democratization process through future program activities in Somaliland, to include media campaigning, coalition building, forming a loyal opposition in the post-electoral context, continued outreach and mobilization at the grassroots level, maintenance of party activity, and civic education.
Somaliland's Road to Democracy
Known as the Somaliland Protectorate during almost 80 years of British rule, the Republic of Somaliland gained independence from Britain on June 26, 1960. On July 1, 1960, it joined the former Italian Somalia to form the Somali Republic. Civil war broke out in the 1980s, which led eventually to the collapse of the Somali Republic. In 1991, the people of Somaliland held a congress, during which it decided to withdraw from the union with Somalia and to reinstate Somaliland's sovereignty.
This region in northwest Somalia has made significant progress since officially declaring its independence. Although no countries officially recognize Somaliland as an independent state, determined Somalilanders have not been deterred from acting the part. In addition to ridding their region of the violent conflict that continues to plague their former countrymen to the south, they also boast a nascent democratic system of governance.
After Somaliland broke away from the Somalia in the early 1990s, conflicts flared between rival clans and sub-clans in this fledgling nation. A national conference held by the Council of Elders (Guurti) in October 1992 selected Muhammad Ibrahim Egal to be president. Egal would remain in power until his death in May 2002. In late 1996 to February 1997, Somaliland leaders held another conference in Hargeisa. With the most of the fighting over, Guurti members laid the groundwork for a national constitution, appointed Egal to another five-year term, and chose Dahir Rayale Kahin as Vice President.
Since the 1996 conference, a tenuous peace has held. In May 2001, Somaliland held a national referendum in which 97 percent of voters approved the constitution that had been adopted by the government in 1997. This first nationwide election within Somaliland provided implicit support for the territory's independence from the rest of Somalia.
The government postponed the previously scheduled 2002 presidential, legislative, and local elections for one year to allow more time for preparation. When, following this controversial decision, President Egal passed away unexpectedly in May 2002, many observers speculated that Somaliland would crumble without his guidance. However, Vice President Rayale was sworn in and has assured citizens that he will follow in Egal's footsteps, promoting recognition for Somaliland and holding elections in the coming year.
Political parties were only introduced in August 2000 with the passage of new political party legislation. This legislation specifies that only the three political organizations that received the most votes in local government elections held in December 2002 would be allowed to field candidates in any and all future elections. The three parties that achieved this were the Union of Democrats (UDUB), the government party; Kulmiye, led by Ahmed Muhammed; and the Party of Justice and Welfare (UCID), headed by Faisal Ali. The law stipulated that these parties would be entitled to equal use of the media and free expression of their political views; they would also be able to nominate individuals to stand for elections and register complaints about the commission with local courts.
The 2002 and 2003 elections resulted in a government of Somaliland that, in the words of one opposition leader, "walked with two different shoes." The municipal governments and the presidency had been chosen by the people in elections that were judged to be mostly free and fair. However, even though the two opposition parties had garnered nearly 60 percent of the vote in the presidential elections, they were awarded no posts in the cabinet, and because the parliament remained unelected and based on clan representation, these parties had no platform in the legislature. At the national level, Somaliland remained a de facto one-party state, albeit one with democratic features.
After pushing back the election date twice, Somaliland's first parliamentary election finally took place on September 29, 2005. A large group of international observers from more than a dozen countries were present to view the elections. Among observers there was near-unanimity that the election, despite some minor flaws and irregularities, had been carried out with great skill and dedication, and reflected the will of Somaliland's people.
When the results became public, it was evident that the ruling UDUB party, while retaining a plurality of seats in Somaliland's first democratically elected parliament, had fallen short of an outright majority. Within weeks of the election, Somaliland's two opposition parties formed a parliamentary coalition, making Somaliland a virtually unique case within Africa: a government with a president from one party and a parliament dominated by the opposition. Whether this arrangement will serve Somaliland remains to be seen, but immediately after the new parliament was inaugurated, it moved boldly to increase checks on the extensive powers enjoyed by the executive and to assert its own independence. Despite all its successes, Somaliland still faces the challenge of maintaining stability while consolidating its democratic gains in a highly competitive political environment and with an unresolved international status.
http://www.iri.org/africa/somaliland.asp
Somalia One Year On: Broken City
Sally Healy, January 2008
The World Today, Volume 64, Number 1
YEAR ON FROM THE ETHIOPIAN INVASION AIMED AT removing the Islamic Courts government, sixty percent of the population of the capital Mogadishu has fled, the poorest among them to destitution in surrounding areas. Some 230,000 people are camping out in makeshift settlements along the fifteen-kilometre stretch of road between Mogadishu and Afgoye.
An insurgency that joins Islamist and nationalist elements grows ever stronger. Ethiopia digs in and the transitional government formed at the turn of last year falls apart. Growing desperation stokes fear of a return to all out clan warfare of a kind not seen in Somalia since 1991.
Whether military intervention can reduce the threat of international terrorism or whether it acts as a motor for greater radicalisation still dominates international debate over both Afghanistan and Iraq. Like the forces there, Ethiopian troops in Somalia have found themselves bogged down in low-level asymmetrical warfare after an early victory. Other similarities are the methods of the insurgents, the heavy toll on the civilian population, the perceptions of a foreign occupation and the reluctance of weak local partners to engage in serious political reconciliation.
But there are some striking differences. Ethiopia is among the
poorest countries of the world, ranking 169 out of 177 in the UN’s
latest Human Development Index. How can it pay for its military
operations in Somalia? The huge amounts of relief, development and reconstruction assistance that accompany the military effort in Iraq is largely absent in Somalia and completely so in Mogadishu. The dangers of the city keep practically all foreign assistance agencies at bay.
The international community’s set piece strategy – intervention, the establishment of a government, a peacekeeping force, and stabilisation – is failing to deliver peace and stability in Somalia. At the heart of any new approach should be an early exit for the Ethiopian forces and a
Somali-led process of political reconciliation.
NEWS BLOCK
Little easily verifiable information about the situation in Mogadishu reaches the outside world. Ethiopia will not disclose the number of its troops there or casualties. The Somali death toll in Mogadishu reached six thousand last year according to the Elman Human Rights group, but the figure has barely been reported.
There are no ‘embedded’ journalists to tell the story from the military pointy of view. Somali reporters are working under acute pressure. Seven were killed last year, at least two of them deliberately assassinated. Further restrictions were announced in November, stopping the Somali media interviewing government opponents, banning reporting on military operations by government and Ethiopian troops, and prohibiting accounts of the displacement of civilians from Mogadishu.
The combination of access problems and the blocking of information may account for international neglect of an increasingly serious humanitarian emergency. Somali humanitarian organisations are desperately stretched to provide for the ever growing numbers of displaced.
The Nairobi-based UN humanitarian coordinator recently warned Somalia’s parliamentarians that without massive intervention, ten thousand severely malnourished children were at risk of death.
There has been little take up of charges by human rights advocates that the gross mistreatment of Mogadishu’s civilian population during counter insurgency operations amounted to war crimes: Caught in a Quagmire, The World Today, December 2007.
ETHIOPIA HANGS ON
Ethiopia has been the key actor in Somalia for twelve months. Most of its stated objectives had been achieved by January. Efforts to stabilise the favourable new situation have been less successful. The transitional government remains wholly dependent on the Ethiopian military.
The African Union has not produced a viable peacekeeping force to replace Ethiopian troops who are under sustained attack. Counterinsurgency operations show no signs of quelling the resistance. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi admitted to parliament that operations in Somalia have taken longer than expected and early hopes of bringing the troops home quickly were unrealistic.
Ethiopia’s actions in Somalia still have the sympathy of the international community. The United States has been a stalwart supporter and a generous ally. Ethiopia’s regional partners in the InterGovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) – with the notable exception of Eritrea – have backed its intervention. The wider International Contact Group still accepts that Ethiopia has a positive role to play in ‘filling the security vacuum’.
WEAK, CORRUPT, IRRELEVANT
In Somalia itself it has been a bad year for Abdulahi Yusuf’s transitional government, which has been unable to establish meaningful authority in Mogadishu. Alliances have been struck with warlords from certain Hawiye sub clans but none of them appear to be working to a national agenda. The transitional government’s security institutions remain chronically weak, corrupt and factionalised. Ethiopian forces
have been exasperated to discover that insurgents they had handed over to the Somali authorities were able to buy themselves out of captivity.
Government security officials live under constant threat of
assassination in Mogadishu. Most ministers and members of parliament are still based 150 miles away in Baidoa. The government organised a reconciliation conference in August but the key groups needed for dialogue boycotted the meeting.
A new Prime Minister, Nur Adde, was appointed in November. But it will be hard for him to transform a situation in which the transitional government is increasingly irrelevant. But his hints that he may be willing to enter into dialogue with the opposition, including Islamists, are one of very few hopeful signs to emerge from the transitional government.
It has been a very mixed year for Somalia’s other political forces. The Islamic Courts and their social and economic base in the Mogadishu business community have been comprehensively destroyed. Some of their leaders are still active and Ethiopia’s archenemy Eritrea has provided
them with refuge. In September the Court’s leaders joined forces with other, more secular, opponents of the transitional government to form the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia (ALS). Their key demand is the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces.
In contrast, the radical elements in the Islamic Courts and its militant armed wing – Al Shabab – have profited. Shabab forces are spearheading popular resistance to what they call the Ethiopian occupation. Their methods show increasing sophistication. On November 27 they launched simultaneous attacks on six Ethiopian bases. Shabab is making common cause with nationalist opposition elements in Mogadishu which oppose the Ethiopian presence but do not share their radical Islamist agenda.
REGIONAL ACTORS
Kenya, Eritrea and Uganda have important regional interests in Somalia. Kenya endorses the legitimacy of Yusuf’s transitional government and supports Ethiopia’s intervention.
The flight into Kenya of refugees sympathetic to the Courts gave the Kenyan government a chance to demonstrate its credentials as a US ally in the ‘war’ against terrorism. Reports of extraordinary rendition of suspects to Ethiopia have alarmed human rights defenders in Kenya but helped firm-up Kenya’s relationship with the US.
The balance sheet for Eritrea is more difficult to assess. It had no ideological sympathies with the Courts but shared their hostility towards the Ethiopian government. With the removal of the Courts, Eritrea lost an ally against Ethiopia. Eritrea predicted that Ethiopia would get bogged down in Somalia and may be encouraged by the evidence that this is happening.
Its strategy of hosting the Somali opposition carries considerable risks and the danger of being listed by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Uganda has a military presence in Mogadishu. Its 1,600 strong contingent arrived in March, expecting to be the first of 8,000 African Union peacekeepers taking over security responsibilities from Ethiopia. The rest of the force has failed to materialise, however the Ugandans have earned praise for their conduct in very difficult circumstances and preserved their professional impartiality.
The regional InterGovernmental Authority for Development has done poorly in Somalia. It should be in the frontline of regional conflict management but has been rendered powerless to promote creative diplomatic activity. Somalia is now represented in the authority by Abdulahi Yusuf’s transitional government and the organisation fully endorses the intervention of Ethiopia. This has prompted Eritrea to suspend its membership.
The UN has been unable to fill the gap. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon conceded in November that a UN peacekeeping operation was neither
realistic nor viable. The new UN Special Representative, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has alerted the international community to the crisis, which he says is the worst in Africa.
The UN’s humanitarian efforts have been impeded not only by insecurity and extortion but also by capricious actions of the transitional government, including the imprisonment of a key World Food Programme official accused of ‘helping terrorists’.
GLOBAL INTERESTS
The US views Somalia through the prism of the global war on terrorism. From this vantage point, things look positive. US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer has consistently supported Ethiopia on grounds of stopping Somalia becoming a haven for international terrorists. US hostility towards the Islamic Courts rested on suspicions of such links. Reports last year of two new admissions from the Horn of Africa to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre give some credence to US
concerns. Frazer has continued to justify the removal of the Courts and is dismissive of the Asmara based opposition, saying it includes terrorists. She attributes the insurgency in Mogadishu to ‘extremists’.
The extent to which Somalia’s Islamic Courts were a base for Al Qaeda-style terrorism remains contested. Sheikh Sharif, their Chairman, has dismissed such claims as an ‘evil slander’. However, twice this year senior Al Qaeda figures have broadcast messages of encouragement to the Somali resistance. Images of the ugly warfare in Mogadishu appear on extremist websites.
Aden Hashi Ayro, who led the Shabab forces before the Ethiopian take over, is often described as an Al Qaeda ’s leader in Mogadishu. He is still active and recently vowed to take the fight to Ethiopia. Al Qaeda may have gained ground in Somalia in conditions that make it easier for a young firebrand like Ayro to achive a leadership position.
WHO WILL PROTECT?
The suffering of the civilian population appears to feature low in the calculations of Somalia’s leaders. President Abdulahi Yusuf has mocked international appeals for humanitarian access and disparaged the UN and World Food Programme contribution, demanding that humanitarian assistance be channelled through his government. The Islamic Courts leader, Sheikh Sharif, when asked if he could give orders to the rebels in Mogadishu for an immediate ceasefire, replied he was powerless to do so and the popular uprising could not be stopped. The cost that citizens of Mogadishu are paying for some debatable regional security gains is beginning to look impossibly high. Urgent priority needs to be given to humanitarian access for the displaced. Issues of accountability and protection can no longer be ducked.
SALLY HEALY is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme
at Chatham House.
http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/twt/archive/view/-/id/1590/
Becoming Somaliland
Mark Bradbury
Format: Paperback, 224 pages
Pub. Date: 01-Apr-2008
Publisher: James Currey Ltd
Price: 20,78 EUR
Annotations
When does a country become a state? On 18 May 1991, the leaders of the Somali. National Movement and the elders of northern Somali clans proclaimed that they were setting up the new Republic of Somaliland. why has Somaliland not followed Somalia into 'state collapse'?
Description
When does a country become a state? On 18 May 1991, the leaders of the Somali. National Movement and the elders of northern Somali clans proclaimed that they were setting up the new Republic of Somaliland. Why has Somaliland not followed Somalia into 'state collapse'? Over the past fifteen years Somaliland has successfully managed a process of reconciliation, demobilisation and the restoration of law and order. A constitutionally based government has held three democratic elections. The capital Hargeysa has become an international trading centre. Why has Somaliland yet to be recognised by the international community? The international system purports to promote 'good governance' in Africa. Somaliland has had one of the most free series of elections in the region. Yet this new republic still has no international legal status, while Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1990, is still accorded de jure sovereignty. Should a unitary government be re-established for all of Somalia? Since the collapse of the Somali state international diplomacy has supported fourteen peace conferences, each focusing on re-establishing Somalia as a whole. Yet it is Somaliland which challenges the typical image of war, disaster and social regression associated with this part of Africa since the 1990s.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Somali people & culture
The rise & fall of the state of Somalia
The political foundations of Somalia
The new Somaliland
State building and the long transition
Rising from the ashes
economic rebuilding and development
Social developments
Democratic transitions
The practice of government
Conclusions: rethinking the future.
Author Biography
Mark Bradbury is a development consultant who has worked extensively in North East Africa
http://www.kriso.ee/cgi-bin/shop/9781847013101.html
January 06, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: States with a death wish by Khaled Ahmed
Exploring Sub-Regional Conflict: Opportunities for Conflict Prevention
Edited by Chandra Lekha Sriram & Zoe Nielsen
Viva Books New Delhi 2006
Africa now monopolises in wars that no one wants to notice. After humanitarian disasters in the states of West Africa the world is shaken into taking note of this sub-regional conflict where civil wars and inter-state wars intersect. Jurisprudence is slowly developing about ‘intervention’ too despite the favourite Third World gambit of protesting sovereignty when such conflicts begin. Conflict prevention sounds good, but down on the ground, when you look closely, you might find a superpower intervening in the name of humanity and states enslaved by despots banding together to stop anyone from looking in. The book looks at some cases in the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.
Somalia is another Afghanistan in the Horn of Africa, a collapsed state where intervention has taken place. Like Afghanistan it is tribal, and is then subdivided into clans that fight one another. The ancestor is one called Samaale but conflict is among the clans that branched from Samaale till one can identify six of them: Dir, Hawiye, Darood, Isaaq, Rahanwayn and Digal. The additional factor is that the Somalians are also found in neighbouring Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya, and constantly arouse irredentist passions in main Somalia, and thus threaten the region with upheavals of all sorts. Somalia fell apart when the clans began to kill each other and the people began to die in one of Africa’s worst famines in 1992.
The clans made up most of the 8 million people of Somalia, spoke Somali and believed in Islam. There were Bantu-speaking minority who got the opportunity to make their own republic Puntland in the south along with Somaliland equally unrecognised internationally as a state. British and Italian colonisers of the Horn of Africa fouled up the future of the people by leaving behind a mess of boundaries. The UN mandate that followed was equally mishandled, which left many peoples overlapping territories that were to become states later on. In 1960, when independence came, Somali elites were completely at a loss as to how to govern themselves. They went back to their clan politics and one clan, the Hawiye, succeeded in carving out two state-lets in the north and south, inflicting some northern Hawiye leaders on the south.
In 1969, after the chaos brought about by sixty-four political parties agreeing on nothing, the military coup of Siad Barre came after murdering the elected president. Barre created the fashionable revolutionary council and took socialism as his banner in the manner of many other military takeovers in Africa. But as Barre’s popularity slid by 1977 he sought to bolster it by responding to the nationalist call for coming to the help of the downtrodden Somali population of Ogaden in Ethiopia. Ethiopia reached out to the Soviet Union and took on Somalia’s army with the help of Cuban troops and drove the enemy out of Ogaden. The defeat put an end to the rule of Siad Barre in 1991. The clans came back with a vengeance and began a civil war.
When a state becomes a black hole and attracts intervention, many who go in get hurt. The UN got into Somalia in 1992. Who got hurt? The Americans who were killed by the Hawiye despot, Farah Aidid; another 24 Pakistani troops under the UN were ambushed and killed by Aidid; and the UN secretary general Boutros-Boutros Ghali who had forced reluctant Americans into the Somali quagmire, was not re-elected. In fact the fiasco of Somalia inclined the world to ignore Africa as it proceeded to kill its populations through tribal pogroms. Additionally, states bordering on Somalia more or less succumbed to the same disease and attracted various kinds of intervention in the coming days. One such was Sudan where the ethnic Arab Sudanese — there is little visible ethnic differentiation — began to kill fellow-Muslims in the region of Darfur.
Al Qaeda has gone into Sudan and Somalia to look for a place to rule from and train terrorists for strikes into the United States. It invested a lot of money into the infrastructural projects of Sudan but was forced to leave when the local leaders decided to get rid of Osama bin Laden. He then returned, in 1996, to Afghanistan which had become a black hole following a civil war among the mujahideen. In 2001, he fled Afghanistan and came to the Tribal Areas of Pakistan where by 2007 he has almost succeeded in carving out his emirates in Waziristan (North and South), Bajaur and Swat. Before settling down in Pakistan, he tried once again to acquire Somalia as his mini-state in 2006 but was foiled by the US when it got Ethiopia to intervene and push Al Qaeda terrorists — including some Pakistanis — out of Somalia.
What to do with states with a deeply embedded death wish? They normally don’t want anyone to come in and help. In any case, tribal societies prize discord as a badge of honour and cannot agree on external help. When intervention is asked for partially or completely it usually lacks internal consensus and becomes a problem itself. In the case of Afghanistan, the tribal divisions were always there and there always was honour in not agreeing, as that prevented the identity of one tribe from being submerged in another through agreement. In the case of Pakistan, Islam became the retribalising factor forcing its politics into a cult of disagreement. Al Qaeda had to choose it as its base.
The intervention in Afghanistan is getting nowhere since it began in 2001 and now the intervening ‘allies’ are thinking of quitting in the face of Taliban onslaughts. Pakistan too is not capable of handling Al Qaeda on its own, but so far it is refusing to accept intervention for conflict prevention. What complicates the scenario is the possession of an arsenal of nuclear weapons by Pakistan that can fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden. Pakistan has adopted the technique of ‘covert’ permission, letting American drones operate against suspected Al Qaeda camps on its territory, but this is not enough. The ‘emirates’ of Al Qaeda are partially operational but the coming days will probably see some external intervention — covertly asked? — to prevent Al Qaeda from becoming a Big Power. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C01%5C06%5Cstory_6-1-2008_pg3_5
Engaging Somalia Via The Road Least Traveled
by Abukar Arman, January 6, 2008
"For start, it behoves Washington to either navigate this ship back to a safe shore by stuffing the genie back into the battle and ending the Ethiopian occupation, or to jump off and allow Somalia to settle its own issues. For, nothing radicalizes the Somali streets more than foreign occupation."
The report card is in, and the end of the year accumulative grade indicates miserable failure. Worsening conditions for the ailing nation of Somalia, costly quagmire for Ethiopia and political wild-goose chase that produced a new hotbed of Anti-Americanism in the Horn for the US.
So now is the time for all, especially for Washington, as the most influential contributing force blamed for the current humanitarian catastrophe, to ponder the mistakes made, opportunities missed, and ways to constructively reverse course toward order and lasting peace.
Framing the right policy hinges not only the objective analysis of the current situation, but the political dynamics that paved the way for the Washington-backed Ethiopian invasion and the subsequent occupation of Somalia.
A year has passed since the Ethiopian invasion that drove the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) and installed the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu and the situation in Somalia is horrifically grimmer than any other time in Somalia’s modern history.
According to the UN observers, the situation there has deteriorated to become Africa's worst humanitarian crisis, dwarfing Darfur in severity. Approximately 1 million Mogadishu residents, fleeing the ever-increasing violence, had become internally displaced persons (IDPs), compounding the problem to put 1.5 million, mostly children and women, on the verge of starvation.
The rationale driving the "pre-emptive war" and the subsequent “regime change" was for Ethiopia to protect its national security concerns, and for Washington to continue its global war on terrorism and pursue three fugitive international terrorists that ICU was suspected of providing safe haven to.
In retrospect, the highly sensationalized heavy-handed initiatives and reckless rhetoric by certain radical elements within the ICU, have, on their part, given credence to all the charges.
Intoxicated with their swift defeat of the CIA-backed warlords and their counterintuitive ascendance to power, ultraconservative members of the ICU started to infringe in people's freedoms and haphazardly implement socially regressive and sometimes brutal policies. These individual freewheelers shut down movie theatres for playing Western films and prohibited people from watching soccer matches. They flogged drug dealers and amputated thieves, selecting those with weak clan affiliations.
These acts, though they were not based on ICU policies, would build a case against it in the court of public opinion. Domestically, as ironic as it may sound, the most offensive infringement on these freedoms, which almost endangered the popularity of the courts that brought six months of peace in Mogadishu, came with the banning of khat- a narcotic leaf traditionally chewed for its stimulant effect.
All that notwithstanding, the ICU has taken three objective steps indicating that the moderates on the driver’s seat could have been engaged diplomatically:
First, by not seeking revenge against their enemies after defeating and disarming them and allowing these warlords to retreat to their clan territories indicated that by policy the ICU accepted violence only in self-defense; this even created a rift within ICU, as some were eager to eradicate those they knew were employed mercenaries who wished them the same.
Second, immediately after taking over Mogadishu, they reached out to the international community with an olive branch.
In a 4 page letter addressed to the State Department, the United Nations, African Union, Arab League, and the European Union, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the then Chairman of the ICU has outlined the primary goals and objectives of the courts. Among other things, the letter condemned international terrorism and expressed the courts’ desire to bring peace and order, and its respect for their neighbours’ territorial integrity.
Third, they agreed to sit and negotiate with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) despite President Abdullahi Yusuf's reputation as the most brutal warlord who slaughtered more "Islamists" than any other.
Moreover, the peaceful period while the ICU ruled has inspired an unprecedented influx of Somalis of various Diaspora communities into Mogadishu, setting in motion the process of replenishing the technocratic capacity of an ailing nation suffering from a sever case of brain-drain.
Alas, Washington, while viewing Somalia through the prism of the global war on terrorism, was too wary of any Islamist government taking over Somalia, and as such, was credulous enough to accept Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s hyper inflated intelligence which led to the nightmare scenario that many objective analysts have warned against.
Now, what if Washington gave the ICU the benefit of the doubt; what if it refrained from partnering with those who perpetuated Somalia misery and political pandemonium for almost two decades; what if it allowed the repatriation trend continue on its course to ultimately balance the scale.
What if Washington worked with civil societies and Diaspora groups in capacity- building, putting emphasis in three particular areas: peace-building and reconciliation, institution-building and good governance, reconstruction and economic development!
What if, consistent with UN Resolution 1724, Washington refrained from “any action in contravention of the arms embargo and related measures, and should take all actions necessary to prevent such contraventions,” or “any action that could provoke or perpetuate violence and violations of human rights, contribute to unnecessary tension and mistrust, endanger the ceasefire and political process, or further damage the humanitarian situation”!
For start, it behoves Washington to either navigate this ship back to a safe shore by stuffing the genie back into the battle and ending the Ethiopian occupation, or to jump off and allow Somalia to settle its own issues. For, nothing radicalizes the Somali streets more than foreign occupation.
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/48734
American Chronicle, January 6, 2008
Laasqoray – the Maakhir Harbour in Northern Somalia
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
The harbour development and the promotion of Laasqoray as trade and navigation center in Northern Somalia has become a major preoccupation of the Maakhiri administration that launched a series of ambitious projects in this regard.
The following text is a fascinating insightful into the Laasqoray sightseeing and the burgeoning activities of the local people who all seem to have been engaged in the reconstruction and rehabilitation work that the Maakhiri leaders evangelized ever since they proclaimed the autonomous state in Sanaag, part of Northern Somalia between Somaliland and Puntland. The text is written by an enthusiastic Maakhiri Somali who is convinced that Unity, Peace, Reconstruction and Development in Maakhir can only herald the same for the entire Somalia.
As I find the ambition realistic and noble at the same time, I publish the text integrally, hoping to come up soon with more insightful into Maakhir.
Laasqoray
Laasqoray (also known as Las Khorey, Laasqorey) is an ancient coastal city in self-proclaimed autonomous state of Maakhir, currently unrecognized by the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. The city has archaeological sites, as well as ancient historic buildings. Most of the archaeological sites are still unexplored to the fullest. and require international organisation to come and explore them.
The historic city of Laasqoray is about 500 years old; it used to be the capital city of the Sultanate of Mohamud Ali Shire (that belongs to the Warsangeli Sultanates – which are also known as the Maakhir Coast Sultanates) and of many Sultans before him.
There is a castle in the city, and it is called Sha'a; it was the main seat of many Sultans. However, due to lack of interest from many successive central governments, the castle aged and became too dangerous to be used. Many old houses in the city are also left in the same condition as the castle.
Laasqoray is a booming city; over the past few months, new small factories have opened and by now all major economic interests in Maakhir converge to this city. Similarly with any other city or district in Sanaag, Laasqoray was neglected by many successive central governments in Somalia, and this was reflected in the gradual depopulation of the area. However, this trend is currently being reversed as many people come here to work in the newly established factories.
Currently, the estimated population is around 55000 people. Another reason for the population growth is that, when the Somali civil war broke out, Warsangelis who had been victimized in other parts in Somalia started migrating back to their "ancestral" homeland. Laasqoray is actually considered by most Warsangelis as their "ancestral" place par excellence.
When it comes to alimentary industry, the city is famous for its fish factory; there is a newly built tuna processing factory, which is the first and only factory of its kind in Somalia since the beginning of the civil war. As a matter of fact, Laasqoray used to have a Soviet-built tuna processing factory, but it was pillaged during the civil war, and more specifically in 1995 when the city experienced a heavy shelling by various fractions and groups. In Laasqoray, there are some other factories as well.
On the east side, the city is surrounded by beautiful green mountains that are locally known as Cal Madow; the area is known for its valuable unexploited mineral deposits (Oil, etc.) and unique natural habitats that are part of Somalia's National Heritage. Many travellers would find it worthy visiting Laasqoray.
The sea is famous for its white beaches and the crystal clear sea water; magnificent sea reefs are to be found in many parts of the Maakhiri coast.
In Laasqoray city, travellers will find several attractions and will have the opportunity to spend their time greatly. There are many coffee shops where khat is consumed, and connectivity with the rest of the world through several Internet cafés minimizes the distance. There are many hotels and guest houses in Laasqoray and the most famous hotel is Sha'a Hotel, named after the old castle.
Port development in Laasqoray
Horn Relief is re-developing the port in Laasqoray, and this is expected to create immediately many new job positions, offering employment and longer-term livelihood to local Somalis. Redeveloping the former Laasqoray Port, which some people say is 400 years old, is an effort of national dimensions.
The intention is to make of the new Laasqoray harbour a local centre for import and export opportunities, one of the most important in Somalia’s Northern coast; this would contribute to community and livelihood rebuilding throughout Sanaag.
This project is being undertaken with strong commitment from all stakeholders, involving partnerships with government and social/cultural authorities.
This infrastructure and governance project involves collaboration between the communities in and around Laasqoray and the private sector, including traders in the Northern hinterland; it is geared to stimulate trade development and infrastructural investment in the Laasqoray area.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=48118
The Economist.com, January 5, 2008
A very African coup - The Economist
Kenya’s president steals an election, showing utter contempt for democracy and his people Jan 3rd 2008 — THE mayhem that killed hundreds of people following Kenya’s election on December 27th completes a depressing cycle of democratic abuses in Africa’s biggest countries.
Nigeria held its own mockery of an election last April. Scores were killed and observers pronounced it the most fraudulent poll they had ever witnessed. Congo held a more or less peaceful election in October 2006, since when the main opposition leader has been hounded into exile. And the year before that, flawed elections in Ethiopia resulted in the deaths of 199 protesters. Needless to say, the incumbents all won.
So it is easy to be angry, as well as gloomy, about African leaders’ continual betrayal of the democratic values they say they hold so dear. And all the more so in the case of Kenya, which has a strong tradition of holding elections, a vibrant political culture, a relatively free press and a sophisticated economy. Given all these advantages, as we wrote before the election, Kenya had an opportunity to “set an example” to Africa and hold free and fair elections. But the country blew it.
Or, more precisely, the political elite blew it. A small cabal of politicians almost certainly stole the result by fraud (see article). In the parliamentary vote, President Mwai Kibaki’s ruling party was routed. Yet in the presidential vote Mr Kibaki emerged victorious at the last moment and had himself sworn in only a few minutes later, forestalling pleas from all sides—even from the head of the election commission he himself had appointed—for a pause to investigate mounting claims of malpractice. The report of the European observers was unusually strong in its condemnation of the count.
As in Nigeria, Kenyans queued quietly to exercise their right to vote, reflecting the enormous appetite for democracy that exists on a continent that was until recently dominated by dictators and “big men”. But for democracy to survive, it is not enough to hold elections. Politicians must accept that they may have to give up office, and thus all the opportunities for self-enrichment that come their way. It is no coincidence that the most corrupt politicians are also those who cling most desperately to power—as in Kenya and Nigeria.
In stealing the election, Mr Kibaki has also invited a dangerous backlash against his Kikuyu tribe, the country’s largest. Tense tribal divisions have long threatened to widen as the minority groups, including opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Luo, have come to feel marginalised by the concentration of power in Kikuyu hands. If the current violence does evolve into something worse, perhaps even civil war, Mr Kibaki and his henchmen will bear much of the blame.
No time to be nice Initially, America, which sees Kenya as a front-line ally in a war against Islamist militias in neighbouring Somalia, made the mistake of endorsing the president’s re-election. Now Britain, America and the African Union are urging Mr Odinga and Mr Kibaki to talk in an effort to stop the bloodletting. That lets Mr Kibaki off the hook far too easily. All the violence should certainly be condemned, but most of the diplomatic pressure should be exerted on Mr Kibaki’s supposed new government to annul the results and organise a recount—or a new vote.
If Mr Kibaki will not do this, the rest of the world should suspend direct aid to his regime and impose a travel ban on his officials. That is the least the wretched people of Kenya have a right to expect from their friends abroad.
27 December 2007
''Somalia's New Reality: A Strategic Overview''
Events during the weeks following PINR's December 11 report on Somalia have confirmed its judgment that the country has settled into a chronic condition of statelessness characterized by devolution of the political community to clan-based solidarities, dispersion of power to local warlords and insurgent groups, and resultant multi-faceted conflicts. [See: "Somalia Completes its Devolutionary Cycle"]
With the collapse of Somalia's internationally-supported Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) after a power struggle between its president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, and its then prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, ended with the latter's resignation on October 29, Somalia has lacked even the semblance of the possibility of an effectively functioning government. The new prime minister, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein, has already failed in a first attempt to name a cabinet and is negotiating on another list. The transitional parliament is factionalized along clan lines. The transitional high court is inoperative as a consequence of its chief justice's arrest by Yusuf's allies during the October power struggle. There is little likelihood that Somalia's failed transitional institutions can be made to function, much less mesh with one another, in the foreseeable future.
The T.F.G.'s abject failure has left Somalia without a domestic political protagonist that would play the role of offering a programmatic challenge or initiative to stabilize the country, and would draw on a power base that would make its challenge credible. The judgment that the T.F.G. has reached a dead end is becoming current among Somali intellectuals, the political and military opposition to the T.F.G., and external actors. There is no consensus, however, on how to pull Somalia out of chronic conflict, with many contending proposals springing from a common sense that a new chapter of Somalia's political history has opened.
A strategic overview of the current political situation in Somalia shows all the domestic and external players acting at cross-purposes, with none of them willing and/or able to transform the existing power configuration decisively. Since the defeat of the Islamic Courts Council (I.C.C.), which controlled most of southern and central Somalia and sought to set up a state based on Shari'a law, in December 2006 by an Ethiopian military intervention, the T.F.G. has been propped up militarily by a partial Ethiopian occupation and financially and diplomatically by Western donor powers and the United Nations.
Meanwhile, the militant elements of the Courts movement and disaffected clans have carried on a steady armed insurgency against the occupiers, and the political wing of the Courts has formed an alliance with other anti-T.F.G. elements from exile in Eritrea. At present, Addis Ababa -- strained by the insurgency, a separatist movement in its ethnic Somali Ogaden region and border tensions with Eritrea -- is increasingly desperate to end its occupation and has begun to criticize the donor powers for failing to support stabilization in Somalia adequately.
The donor powers continue to back the T.F.G. half-heartedly, unwilling to commit substantial resources to an unpromising cause. Emboldened by the T.F.G.'s collapse, Addis Ababa's exhaustion and the donor powers' tentative stance, the Courts-led opposition remains intransigent in its demand that the Ethiopian occupation must end before discussions on power sharing might begin. Pushed and pulled by the other major actors, the T.F.G. executive appeals for help that does not come.
An Imploded T.F.G.
The implosion of the T.F.G. is a direct result of the power struggle between Yusuf and Gedi, which was described in PINR's December 11 report. By maneuvering Gedi's resignation, Yusuf had sought to become Somalia's sole power broker; instead, he fell ill and was shoved aside by domestic factions and external actors, all of which launched bids for influence over the new transitional executive. [See: "Somalia Completes its Devolutionary Cycle"]
With clan factions, Addis Ababa and the donor powers presenting different candidates for the prime minister's post, Yusuf chose Hussein as a compromise candidate who lacked his own power base and was left without cover to respond to conflicting demands concerning the composition of his administration. On one side, factions in the transitional parliament pressed for a government composed of holdovers from the preceding administration; on the other side, the donor powers pushed for an "inclusive government" staffed by intellectuals and technocrats, moderate figures in the political opposition, and leaders of dissident clans.
Hussein initially presented a cabinet list drawn preponderantly from parliament, but it failed to gain approval due to opposition from clan-based factions that claimed that they were under-represented and had not been consulted. Addis Ababa, which had been marginalized by Hussein's appointment, and the donor powers, which had welcomed Hussein as a politically neutral "technocrat," made clear their "disappointment" with his list.
Having failed to satisfy parliament and having alienated the major external actors, Hussein dissolved his proposed cabinet on December 16 and jumped to the side of the donor powers, promising to reduce the cabinet to 18 ministers from the previous 31, and to choose nine from outside parliament. The donor powers had pressed for a reduction in cabinet posts in order to streamline the T.F.G. executive and make it more efficient, and had demanded ministers be named from outside parliament in order to make the T.F.G. more representative of previously excluded political forces and to infuse it with expertise.
Hussein's problems in forming a cabinet spring from the weakness of his position. Lacking his own power base, Hussein is subjected to contradictory demands for clan-based domestic factions for representation in his government and from the donor powers for an effective administration and broader power sharing. It is highly unlikely that he can satisfy both demands or even either one alone. As Hussein attempts to please the donors, he will rouse the opposition of the factions, which have on their side the fact that the T.F.G. is based on a system of clan representation. Just because the factions failed to unite on Hussein's original list does not mean that they will be ready to acquiesce in a reduced list that will diminish their power substantially.
It is also unlikely that even if a list satisfying the donor powers carries parliament, they will provide the financial and technical aid necessary for the T.F.G. actually to govern, deliver services and initiate reconstruction. Hussein appears to be in an untenable position and the T.F.G. appears to be destined to continued failure.
A Resurgent Opposition
The failure of the T.F.G. has been underscored by statements from some of its own officials that the security situation in Somalia has gone out of control. On December 13, Sheikh Qasim Ibrahim Nur, director of security at the National Security Ministry, announced that 80 percent of the country was outside the control of the T.F.G., and that the Courts' forces had regrouped and were "everywhere." Presidential spokesman Mohamed Mahmoud Nur followed, saying that the Courts' fighters had been reinforced by up to 4,500 foreign jihadists. Both officials appealed to external actors for immediate help.
On December 20, the T.F.G.'s temporary interior minister, Mohammed Mahmoud Guled, appealed specifically to the Arab League for aid in hunting down al-Qaeda cells in Somalia that he said are working with an alliance of the radical Islamist Youth Mujahideen Movement (Y.M.M.), which had split from the I.C.C. after the Ethiopian intervention, and "old leaders from the Courts" to intensify the insurgency against the Ethiopian occupation.
Although the grim assessments of T.F.G. officials are possibly exaggerated in order to get the attention of external actors, PINR's monitoring of daily reports of violent events confirms that despite continued Ethiopian attempts to crush it, the insurgency continues unabated and has spread to most of the regions of Somalia south of the sub-state of Puntland.
More significant than the mere continuation of the insurgency are signs that the opposition has begun to coalesce around a more militant line emphasizing armed resistance. Warnings from T.F.G. officials that the Y.M.M. and the Courts' leadership had healed their rift were confirmed through December. On December 10, Yusuf Indha'ade, defense minister of the Courts-dominated Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (A.R.S.), who had been reported to have joined with the Y.M.M., declared that the T.F.G. was a "colonial government" and that Hussein was a "yes-man" for Yusuf.
On December 16, Mukhtar Ali Robow, former deputy defense minister of the I.C.C. and then commander of the Y.M.M., announced from the Bay region -- where the T.F.G.'s transitional capital Baidoa is located -- that his forces were planning to launch "the most enormous attacks," and repeated that the Y.M.M. was committed to establishing a Somali state based on Shari'a law. (Robow was reported to have been replaced in late December by Sheikh Mukhtar Abdirahman Abu-Zubeyr, who had trained in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and is likely to continue the hard line.)
On December 18, A.R.S. spokesman Sheikh Abdirahim Mudey said that Courts officials and fighters were "everywhere" in Somalia. He denied that the insurgents were preparing to invade the key southern port city of Kismayo, adding "we are there right now." On December 16, a Y.M.M. commander in Kismayo had told the Associated Press that he was sending fighters to Somalia's official capital Mogadishu "every day" to engage the Ethiopians.
Although both the speaker of the transitional parliament, Adan Madobe Mohamed, and the U.N. special envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, reported discussions between the T.F.G. and some A.R.S. leaders, those reports were not confirmed by the A.R.S. and, according to Madobe, met with mixed results. On balance, it appears that the opposition senses Hussein's weakness, allowing the hawks to gain preponderant influence. Whether or not the military option is timely for the Courts, the fact that it is being taken makes it nearly impossible for Hussein to woo the opposition into his government and thereby satisfy the donor powers, which want to isolate the militants by co-opting the moderate opposition.
Hussein has also had little success with the dissident clans linked in the Hawiye Tradition and Unity Council, which have resisted the Ethiopian occupation in Mogadishu, have suffered most from Ethiopian crackdowns and population displacements, and whose leaders have been arrested or gone into hiding. Speaking from a safe haven, Tradition and Unity leader Mohamed Hassan Haad told ISN Security Watch that Hussein does not represent the Hawiye clan family and "does not have the blessing of the elders."
An Impatient Ethiopia
The consensus of all domestic and external actors, as well as analysts and journalists, affirms that the T.F.G. could not currently survive the withdrawal of Ethiopian military support. After a year of occupying Somalia, however, Addis Ababa -- faced with the T.F.G.'s implosion and the persistence of the insurgency -- is losing patience with the donor powers over their failure to give sufficient support for the expansion of a small and ineffective African Union peacekeeping mission (AMISOM) in Mogadishu, and appears to be considering a policy shift that would distance it from the T.F.G., over which it no longer has preponderant influence.
Addis Ababa wants a robust international or regional peacekeeping mission to be implemented that would replace its forces in Somalia, but sees little promise that its interest will be satisfied. At present, there are 1,600 Ugandan troops in Mogadishu out of a projected force of 8,000, with an advance party of Burundian peacekeepers on the ground to prepare for a deployment of 1,700.
The rift between the donor powers, which favor an Ethiopian withdrawal, but only on the condition that there is an effective replacement for the occupation, and Addis Ababa surfaced on December 20, when Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, told the BBC that even increasing the present AMISOM deployment to half its projected number would "go a long way to making the appropriate environment for us to withdraw." He joined his remarks to a condemnation of U.N. humanitarian agencies for their charges that the occupation had been committing serious human rights abuses in its crackdown on the insurgency, saying that the situation in Somalia -- as "bad as it is -- could do with less hype and exaggeration."
On December 10, an Ethiopian government statement had attacked the donor powers and regional states for not delivering on their pledges to recruit and supply a peacekeeping force: "Ethiopia has single-handedly been playing its role by bearing the large responsibility that the international community and countries failed to accomplish in collaboration or individually."
Signs that Addis Ababa was reconsidering its strategy toward Somalia appeared in an interview with Ethiopia's foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin, published in the newspaper Nouvelles d'Addis and posted on December 12 on the Nazret website. Mesfin remarked that "Somalia cannot be reconstituted in the old way," noting that the country's regions were "insisting on decentralized state structures." He concluded that the "new reality" needed to be "addressed by peaceful means."
Both Zenawi's public expression of displeasure with the donor powers and Mesfin's acknowledgment of a "new reality" in Somalia indicate Addis Ababa's slackening resolve to continue the occupation. Ethiopia would be satisfied with a "decentralized" Somalia, which would eliminate the latter as a potential security threat and would allow Addis Ababa to gain influence through its traditional divide-and-rule strategy.
Addis Ababa has made it clear that it is not a reluctant ally of the donor powers, to which it is tied by a marriage of convenience that is under severe strain. Although Addis Ababa, which is itself financially dependent on donor powers, is unlikely to make any precipitous policy shift, it is preparing an exit strategy. Ethiopia's faltering commitment does not bode well for Hussein's prospects of staying afloat.
An Irresolute "International Community"
If Ethiopia is the T.F.G.'s military support, the donor powers -- the United States, the European Union and the U.N. -- are its economic lifeline; without them, not only would there be no aid to alleviate Somalia's devastating humanitarian crisis, but there also would be no funds to sustain the T.F.G.'s existence.
Having, for the moment, taken center stage by pressing Hussein into their corner, the donor powers are confronted with Somalia's "new reality" -- an imploded T.F.G. on which they have staked themselves, a defiant and militant Courts-led opposition alliance, and a flagging Addis Ababa. Reluctant to take up the challenge to be a protagonist, they have stood pat in their diplomatic support of the T.F.G. and their unwillingness to make that support materially effective, dealing Hussein his final blow.
The U.N.'s envoy to Somalia, Ould-Abdallah, understood the gravity of the situation, the slim opportunity presented by the donor powers' momentary position of influence, and the new reality. In advance of a Security Council meeting on Somalia on December 19, he told the Financial Times that international efforts in Somalia had been "half-hearted" and were dissipating, even as the insurgency had "escalated." He warned that a robust peacekeeping presence would be essential to "political progress" in Somalia, and concluded: "The credibility of the U.N. is at stake."
Ould-Abdallah expanded upon his comments when he addressed the Security Council and bluntly stated that its "wait-and-see attitude" was a prescription for failure in Somalia, and that it was "time to decide whether to give up and withdraw aid" or to "find a new strategy." He suggested trying to convince Saudi Arabia to coordinate a mission to expand AMISOM that would be recruited from Muslim countries and would receive logistical support from "one or two NATO states."
On December 19, the Security Council took up Somalia and issued a non-binding presidential statement disregarding Ould-Abdallah's warning and plea, and reaffirming its previous policies, including support for AMISOM and calls for contributions to it, calls for "full and all-inclusive national reconciliation," and calls to strengthen efforts to provide humanitarian relief. The Council said that Hussein's appointment offered "a renewed opportunity to make further progress," and called for the T.F.G. to provide a "roadmap" for the transitional period that is supposed to end in 2009 with national elections held under a permanent constitution that has not yet begun to be drafted.
As a Somali proverb would have it, the T.F.G. has become "sand in the hands" of the donor powers. They fail to acknowledge the new reality in Somalia because any other alternative seems to be too costly to them. They realize that in Somalia's current security environment, a broadened peacekeeping mission would be a high stakes gamble, would be difficult to recruit for, and would be expensive to fund were it to be effective. They are ambivalent about dealing with the Courts. They fear the destabilizing effects of "decentralization," yet are unwilling to expend the resources for nation-building. That is why they clutch the sands of the T.F.G. and watch statelessness settle in.
On December 21, the African Union Peace and Security Council (P.S.C.) issued its own statement, scoring the international community for failing to "seize the window of opportunity" opened up by the Ethiopian intervention. The P.S.C. concluded that the international community and Somalia's domestic political actors needed "to explore new avenues in order to effectively address the current situation and to muster the required political will and resources."
Conclusion
With general acknowledgment among the major actors in Somalia's conflicts -- except for the donor powers -- that the country has returned to its former condition of statelessness -- the meaning of Mesfin's "new reality" -- what "new avenues" might there be that would lead to stabilization?
One possibility is the revival of the Islamic state that had begun to develop when the Courts movement controlled much of southern and central Somalia in 2006. That alternative, which seemed to have been eliminated by the Ethiopian intervention, has again become actionable, although its probability of realization remains low, given resistance from the other major players and much of Somali society. Nonetheless, at the moment, the opposition is the only actor evincing momentum.
The other alternatives for Somalia's political future, which are increasingly proposed and debated on Somali websites, break with the T.F.G.'s hybrid structure of a central government grafted on a system of clan representation, taking one of its elements for a new political formula. Centralists recommend a unified and streamlined government transcending clan representation, where as decentralists urge a "bottom-up" approach in which regional conferences would pave the way for local conflict resolution and the establishment of legitimate regional administrations.
The roadblock to progress up either "new avenue" is the lack of mobilized popular impetus, which, in consequence, means that the impulse to move would have to be provided by external actors with the will to commit the required resources. In practical terms, the centralist approach finds its correlate in the attempts of the donor powers to impose an efficient central government on the clan-based T.F.G., and the decentralist approach translates into the proposal circulating in the U.S. military and reportedly in Addis Ababa to cantonize Somalia in order to contain the insurgency.
Neither of the practical alternatives would draw Somalia out of statelessness, the first because the T.F.G. executive is too weak to bear its burden, and the second -- especially if it would involve recognizing the independence of the self-declared republic of Somaliland -- because it would void the possibility of an integrated political community in Somalia.
The "required political will and resources" that would lift Somalia out of its "new reality" are nowhere to be found.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=734&language_id=1
The unspeakable practice of female circumcision that's destroying young women's lives in Britain
By JO-ANN GOODWIN and DAVID JONES
3rd January 2008
Femail Genital mutilation: Thousands of British-African girls have been forcibly 'cut'
The girl is 15 years old but looks much younger. Her face has the fine-boned elegance typical of her native Somalia, but her accent belongs to the streets of East London. She is plainly terrified. That much is clear from the way she avoids eye contact and constantly fidgets in her chair.
"Promise you won't print my name or anything?" she implores repeatedly. "Promise no one will ever know that I've spoken to you? If people in my community find out, they'll say that I've betrayed them and I'll have to run away. And anyway, I don't want my parents to be sent to jail."
With great courage, this British-Somali girl - she asks that we call her "Lali" - is about to describe a barbaric act of ritualised cruelty which has been perpetrated against her. Knowing the danger to which she is exposing herself, her anxiety is entirely understandable.
For by speaking about it, Lali will break the ultimate taboo among Britain's 600,000 ethnic Africans. In Norway, where this brutal act is also prevalent, a young Somali woman was recently beaten, almost to death, for talking to TV documentary programme-makers.
It is known by a variety of names, the most common of which are female genital mutilation (FGM), female circumcision, or simply "cutting" - a word which somehow conveys the raw pain its prepubescent victims suffer.
Most people will be unfamiliar with this practice, which involves removing part or all of the clitoris, the surrounding labia (the outer part of the vagina) and sometimes the sewing up of the vagina, leaving only a small opening for urine and menstrual blood.
It is carried out for a variety of cultural reasons. Such is the secrecy that surrounds the practice that even those aware that it occurs in large swathes of Africa and Asia will be shocked to learn that it is prevalent in Britain.
During a highly disturbing, four-month investigation, however, we uncovered evidence that thousands of British-African girls, in towns and cities throughout the country, have been forcibly "cut".
By conservative estimates, 66,000 women and girls living in Britain have been mutilated. This figure, accepted by the Metropolitan Police, came in a report by a volunteer organisation funded by the Department of Health and carried out with academics from the London School of Tropical Hygiene and the City University.
And thousands more girls are at imminent risk as families club together to fly professional "cutters" from Africa to Britain.
These women "elders" perform the crude operation for up to £40 a time, often on kitchen tables or floors, without anaesthetic, using filthy, blunt knives, razor blades or scalpels.
Many readers will be distressed by our report, but this practice is an abomination which has no place anywhere, let alone in a civilised society, and if it is to be expunged then this is a story that must be told.
There is no way of escaping the unpalatable terminology, just as there is no way for girls like Lali to escape the unsterile knife which cuts them as they are held down and which will result in a lifetime of physical and psychological pain.
Some people say the practice is to increase the sexual pleasure of the man, but this is only one appallingly outdated reason why many womenfolk from 28 African and some Middle Eastern countries, most of which have sizeable representation in Britain, are treated like this.
It is also done to demonstrate their virginity on their wedding night; and because "uncut" girls with the ability to enjoy love-making are considered more likely to be promiscuous, unhygienic, and prone to diseases such as Aids.
Attempts are also made to justify this iniquitous practice on religious grounds. Some hard-line Muslims insist that women must undergo genital cutting to remain faithful to the purest teachings of Islam - although, in truth, it is not even mentioned in the Koran, and only ambiguously in the Hadith (a collection of oral traditions about the life of the prophet Mohammed).
Several leadings Imams have openly condemned the practice. This, though, does not deter its proponents, who maintain that it is their inalienable right to live according to their traditional beliefs and customs, rather than conform to British values. Indeed, some argue that the freedom to carry out FGM is a fundamental principle of our multi-cultural society.
Whatever the arguments, the fact is that genital mutilation is a reality, and the Metropolitan police is so concerned that it recently set up a special unit to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators. Heading the unit is Detective Inspector Carol Hamilton, herself a mother, who was horrified when she discovered what was happening to other people's daughters.
The Met team also educates regional police forces about FGM, and speaks to mosques, community groups and local authorities.
Usually their visits are well-received, but we found that at least one London council declined to publish material highlighting the suffering and danger the practice causes - for fear of offending ethnic African residents.
This kind of attitude incenses Detective Inspector Hamilton. "We are all becoming very culturally sensitive," she says. "People are a bit frightened of saying 'You can't do this here' because people shoot back with 'But it's our culture'.
"But it's not: this is just plain cruel. I won't be put off by the politically correct argument. We have to be seen to be strong on this. I don't care about human rights - I care about the rights of the child. Everything else has to go out of the window.
"We have one rule in child protection: the child is of paramount importance. I stick by that firmly."
Together with the Waris Dirie Foundation, an international campaign group formed by the Somali-born supermodel who suffered genital mutilation as a five-year-old child, the Met announced a £20,000 reward last July for information leading to the conviction of anyone who performs or abets cutting.
Under the 2003 Female Genital Mutilation Act, those involved could be jailed for 14 years. Yet the fact that no one has been prosecuted says much about the problems the police are facing.
"There are thousands of girls being cut in your country," says Waris Dirie spokesman Walter Hutschinger. "We are sure it's going on, and on a very big scale. Your law is one of the most comprehensive in the world, but it is useless if nobody will help to implement it.
"We have been contacted by girls from all parts of Britain - London, Cardiff, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool, Reading, Slough, Milton Keynes, Crawley - anywhere there are big African communities.
"Many of these girls know they are about to be cut and are desperate for help, but they are even more afraid of what might happen to them if they come out in the open.
"One young woman wrote recently to tell us that she was about to be taken home to Somalia to be cut, and she was terrified because her older sister had died after cutting. [To avoid detection, the mutilation is often done in a girl's native country.]
"She was thinking of running away - but she didn't know where she could go or what she would do. The girl says genital mutilation has destroyed her family. We wrote back offering a meeting, but she has not been back in touch.'
During our investigation, we found similar difficulty finding girls willing publicly to condemn a practice whose "virtues" are impressed upon them from infancy so that they are effectively brainwashed into believing it to be an essential step towards womanhood.
Lali is so determined that other girls should be spared the misery she has endured since the cutter came to call four years ago that, last week, she bravely told us her story.
She was three years old when her family left impoverished, war-ravaged Somalia and settled in the East End of London, where her early childhood life seemed immeasurably better.
Everything changed for Lali when she was 11 years old. One morning, her mother told her, quite casually, that they were to visit another Somali girl, whom she liked.
"I thought I was just going to play with my friend, so I was happy," Lali says quietly, avoiding eye contact.
Soon after she arrived at the friend's anonymous council house, however, cold reality dawned. In fact, Lali's mother had secretly joined together with several other women to pay for a "cutter" to travel to London from Mogadishu to circumcise their daughters.
"They believed it had to be done, otherwise we would never get a husband,' Lali shrugs.
What happened next was like a scene from medieval times. Her mother, other female relatives and family friends suddenly grabbed Lali and grappled her to the floor. Then, on cue, the strange woman came in, like a torturer with her bag of implements.
"They held me down, and when the woman began cutting I screamed, so my friend's sister put her hand tightly over my mouth," she says. "I had known her and these other women all my life, and now they were doing ... this."
The cutting often results in life-threatening complications such as septicaemia, haemorrhaging or cysts, but in this respect Lali was fortunate. Outwardly, at least, she quickly recovered and returned to school, too frightened and ashamed to tell her teachers and friends about her ordeal.
However, the legacy of the atrocity inflicted on her when she was 11 years old will always remain. When a marriage is arranged for her, sex will be a painful duty to be endured.
If she is lucky enough to avoid the pre-natal complications frequently caused by genital mutilation and have children, she will almost certainly have to undergo a Caesarean section.
"It is the most traumatic rite of passage," says Comfort Mohmoh, a doctor who runs a Well Woman Clinic at London's St Thomas' Hospital and has performed a number of successful operations to reverse genital mutilation - a procedure possible only in less severe cases. She sees from 400 to 500 cases a year.
"These women get abdominal pains, backache, extremely painful periods, recurring urinary infections and, inevitably, a great deal of pain during intercourse."
Lali is already encountering some of these physical problems, yet in some ways the emotional and psychological damage is even worse.
"What happened to me has totally broken my trust in the women I loved," she told us. "I didn't believe my mother could let this happen. My love for her has changed.
"It hurt so much. I would never let my children suffer this. I don't believe this is right. It's a stupid, old-fashioned custom. Why can't we forget it?"
This alienation between mothers and daughters, of course, is another subtle way in which the practice subjects African women to male authority. Among the many otherwise educated and reasonable British-African men we spoke to, however, few were willing to call a halt.
With breathtaking sadism, their attitude was summed up by one man during an internet chat forum for Somalis living in Britain. "They should get their kintirs [Somalian for clitoris] cut off if they can't control their passions," was his message to liberated female compatriots.
One lone voice was Asif, a 26-year-old Somali mechanic who came to London at 15 - though his reasoning was hardly reassuring.
"We call these girls 'table-tops' because they are like wood," he told us. Rapping his fist on the table, he added: "Who wants to make love to this? I would never allow this to happen to my daughters."
As Detective Inspector Hamilton has discovered, however, he is very much in the minority. "I met one group of Somalis and got the message that cutting was even stronger here than in Somalia," she says. "Here, it seems, they feel the need to keep their traditions going.
"But detection is very difficult. If somebody rings and tells us a girl has been subjected to it, how do you check that? Especially when the family seem quite reasonable and say they don't believe in it, but refuse permission for the children to be medically examined."
Perhaps we should take a lead from France, whose methods of prevention have been strengthened following a landmark case in 1999, when a woman of West African origins was jailed for eight years for cutting 48 young children.
Now all French children of African background are closely scrutinised by social workers and doctors during infancy, and any abnormal behaviour or prolonged absence from school is immediately investigated.
It is also considered a duty of French doctors to examine any ethnic African girls they suspect have been mutilated and, waiving usual patient confidentiality rules, report their parents to the police if their suspicions are confirmed.
In this age of political correctness, no doubt, factions in Britain will argue that such interventionist activity is discriminatory and a breach of human rights. There will also be those who believe female genital mutilation to be an issue for the African community to resolve, arguing that our overstretched police and health professionals have more pressing matters to address.
Detective Inspector Hamilton was persuaded otherwise when she sat through a graphic video showing a cutter at work. With its haunting screams and bloodied instruments, this real-life horror film changed her life.
"These little girls shouldn't have to live in that other world," she says. "They go to school here. Their homes and friends are here. They are our little girls. They are British. What is happening to them is barbaric - and it must be stopped."
• Anyone with information about female circumcision should call Crimestoppers in confidence 0800 555111, or email david.jones@dailymail.co.uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=505796&in_page_id=1879
Time.com, January 06, 2008
An End to Female Genital Cutting?
Jan. 04, 2008 By NICHOLAS BIRCH/ARBIL
These are busy times for Pakhshan Zangana. Head of the women's caucus in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament in Arbil, she is on the verge of pushing through a piece of legislation that is the first of its kind in the Middle East — a law criminalizing female genital mutilation (FGM). "Sixty-eight out of 120 deputies signed our bill, so we could have got it passed by ministerial decree," Zangana says. "But law-making is the job of parliament, and we want everybody to debate this issue openly." The bill received its first reading on Dec. 3 and is likely to be passed by February.
Affecting up to 90% of women in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia, FGM is widely seen as an African phenomenon. But it also happens to a lesser extent throughout the Middle East, particularly in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq.
If the Iraqi Kurds are leading the way today, it is partially thanks to a handful of local women's organizations that have struggled for greater awareness of the issue since the early 1990s. But the real breakthrough came in 2005 when WADI, a German non-governmental organization, published the results of its survey of 39 villages in the Germian region, east of Kirkuk.
Of 1,554 women and girls aged older than 10 interviewed by WADI's local medical team, over 60% said they had undergone the operation. Larger surveys completed since show the practice is prevalent among local Arabs and Turkmen, as well as Kurds. The surveys provide the first solid statistics on a tradition which — while practiced relatively openly in parts of Africa — is so veiled in secrecy here that brothers are often unaware their own sisters are affected.
A farmer's wife in Zurkan, a remote village close to the Iranian border in northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan, Amina Khidir began performing the operation when her mother became too old to carry on. Her first patient was her own daughter. "I didn't feel nervous, because I had spent years watching how the cut was done," Khidir remembers. "And my daughter was a baby at the time, too small to understand what was happening. That's the best age to do it." Matter-of-factly, Khidir describes dealing with the aftermath of her work. She applies oak charcoal to reduce pain, cold water and antiseptic solution to reduce the risk of infection. Asked about the specifics of the procedure, she covers her face with her loosely worn headscarf. "I cut about a quarter off," she says. It's a reference to the so-called 'Sunna' circumcision, the removal of prepuce and sometimes clitoris that some Muslims attribute to a tradition taught by the Prophet Mohammed.
"According to the Shafi'i school [of Islamic law] to which we Kurds belong, circumcision is obligatory for both men and women," explains Mohamed Ahmed Gaznei, chief cleric in the city of Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan's second city. "The Hanbali [school] says it is obligatory only for men." Personally opposed to female circumcision, Gaznei in 2002 issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for imitation of Hanbali practice. He has since appeared on a short film about FGM shot by a Kurdish filmmaker that WADI medical teams now take with them when visiting villages.
"Look, they even got Osama bin Laden to talk," quips Gula Hama Amin, one of 30 women watching the film in Nura, a village 100 miles north of Sulaimaniyah, referring to Gaznei's luxuriant beard. The others tell her to quiet down. All have been circumcised for reasons hovering somewhere between religious belief and tradition: locals say the food an uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean, or that the operation makes a girl more affectionate to her family.
So great was the taboo surrounding FGM until recently that even the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, largely supportive of campaigns against it, have sometimes been tentative in their resolve to take action. Since 14,000 people signed an April 2007 petition for a law against FGM, though, the mood has changed radically. Both the region's main parties have given their blessing to the law, and FGM is now openly discussed by the local media. Back in parliament, Pakhshan Zangana knows the law represents only the end of the beginning of this struggle. Her aim now, she says, is to end FGM in Iraqi Kurdistan within five years. "A law on its own can't do that," Zangana says. "What can is full cooperation between government departments, and people like me, in parliament, making sure the law is enforced."
The ‘Wonders’ of Anarchy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mog
August 17, 2007
Nothing leaves me convinced libertarians relish being marginalized like a roundtable debate on ANARCHY. The Cato Institute, always eager to make itself less relevant in the affairs of this country, has decided to host a debate wondering what’s really so bad about pirates and failed states. To argue the pro-anarchy side, Cato enlisted Peter Leeson, the BB&T Professor of Capitalism at George Mason University (a made-up title if one ever existed). He tries to make the argument that “self-governance” (which is to be, I suppose, distinguished from representative democracy in some way) really isn’t all that bad:
Self-governance, however, might work better than you think. A small cadre of self-described “anarcho-capitalists” reject the anarchy-as-chaos “wisdom.” In the 20th century the most notable of these thinkers have been Murray Rothbard, who grounded his defense of anarchy in natural rights theory, and David Friedman, whose book, The Machinery of Freedom, provided the quintessential consequentialist defense of a purely private society.
Despite the important theoretical arguments in these and other anarcho-capitalist works, even among those familiar with them, most remain unconvinced. On the one hand, natural rights defenses of anarchy do not persuade consequentialists, such as economists, who see significant problems with anarchy’s ability to cope with cheating and violence.
On the other hand, most consequentialist defenses of anarchy are purely speculative. In forging responses to how a stateless society could cope with every conceivable contingency it might confront, anarchists often offer imaginative conjecture, in some cases bordering on science fiction.
Ironically, the case for anarchy derives its strength from empirical evidence, not theory.
Yes, despite the deep theoretical background for anarchy—a small cadre of guys wrote a few essays about it!—and people who can think through the logical conclusions of human behavior find the idea of anarchy morally repugnant. But IRL anarchy, like, totally works! However shall Mr. Leeson prove this?
Most of the world, for most of its history, has existed without effective governments. As noted economic historian Joel Mokyr points out, “In England,” for example, “there was not even a professional police force to protect private property” until the 19th century.
So Leeson’s argument is that England didn’t have a government or system of rule until the 19th century?
Large arenas of economic activity in the world remain anarchic, or nearly so, to this day. For example, there is no supranational sovereign with the authority to create formal international laws to regulate countries or to enforce such laws if they existed.[5] Adding to international anarchy is the absence of state-made, supranational commercial law to enforce contracts between private international traders.[6]
It is interesting his arguments about the state of international anarchy rely on papers published before 1994—before the World Trade Organization, which is a group through which member states settle disputes—was formed. Since then, there has been a vast improvement in international commercial law, as well as an enormous reduction in predatory commercial practices (those things still exist, they’ve just been mitigated). And there is a formal system of International Laws: treaties. For as long as states have existed, treaties have been considered binding agreements, the breaking of which was considered the deepest treachery. Many, if not most treaties were entered into as the result of one country losing a war—the bully telling the victim what to do, in other words. This is something Leeson exalts as natural and preferable.functional to perform even the most basic tasks, like securing the property rights of their citizens. According to the 2007 Failed States Index, governments in 129 countries are on or nearing the brink of collapse.[7] Somalia has no central government at all.
Even in the developed world pockets of anarchy persist. The costliness of state enforcement, coupled with the fact that the state’s eye cannot be everywhere all the time, means that people cannot in many cases rely on government to protect their property or enforce their contracts even though, officially, a well-functioning state exists.
We’re dealing with apples and oranges here, and I don’t think Leeson knows what he’s really arguing here. Is he saying those 129 countries with either collapsed or nearly collapsed governments are preferable places to live, compared to, say, Canada? Similarly, the anarchy in Mogadishu, where there is no central government, is of a wholly different nature than small scale “anarchy,” which is a semi-chaotic environment within a societal framework of government performing those property protection and contract enforcement functions. If I live in a small town with one cop, he clearly can’t be everywhere at once; he can, however, continue to enforce the laws that exist.
Despite these significant arenas of anarchy we do not observe perpetual world war in the absence of global government, shriveling international commerce in the absence of supranational commercial law, or even deteriorating standards of living in Somalia.
Okay, hold it. Right. There. No deteriorating standards of living in Somalia. In one of the worst places on earth to be right now, where there is widespread, grinding poverty, famine, random violence, and brutal civil war… no deteriorating standards of living. Compared to when? 1993? Just how far can standards of living collapse? Why isn’t Leeson living there, if it is such a libertarian paradise?
I’ll tell you why: it is a lie to claim Somalia proves the success of anarchy. In fact, Somalia proves the utter, complete NIGHTMARE of anarchy. It is actually in the perpetual war Leeson glibly discounts; similarly, no overarching world government (for various reasons) has meant China could invade Tibet, Russia can bomb Georgia, and we can invade Iraq—all examples of egregious violations of sovereignty with very real, and very dire, human costs—with little or no costs. This is something Leeson holds up as exemplary.
On the contrary, peace overwhelmingly prevails between the world’s countries, international trade is flourishing, and Somali development has improved under statelessness.
Argh, no it hasn’t. But we’ll get to this later, when Leeson “proves” Somalia is better now than when it had a government. First, he thinks Pirates are an awesome example of anarchy being a workable, sustainable anarchic system. No, I’m not joking.
In many ways pirate ships were like floating societies.[10] And, like other societies, pirate ships confronted problems of theft of cheating. Since they were outlaws, pirates did not enjoy state protection. Government did not enforce employment agreements between pirates or other piratical “contracts,” nor did it prevent or punish theft between pirates, etc.
Wait, so pirate ships, in which the men were commonly slaves conscripted into service by imperious captains, where starvation and desperation were the norm, that furthered their existence through the raping and pillaging of innocent vessels, that were literal parasites upon the existence of man (being unable to produce anything they used, they simply stole from the more productive, more just, non-anarchic societies around them)… are an example of how anarchy works? I don’t get it. Real life was not Pirates of the Caribbean, yet Leeson seems to think it was.
But truly, beyond exalting the pirates (Leeson notably avoids mentioning the anarchic pirates of ancient China, Indonesia, or India, all of whom were reknown for their brutality), we also get to hear about how Somalia has turned into a libertarian paradise. Again, I’m so not joking:
"From 1960, when Somalia gained its independence, until 1991, it was ruled by a socialist (though, officially, he later abandoned socialism) dictator named Mohamed Siad Barre. Barre’s policies and behavior looked a lot like the wealth-destroying, wildly corrupt, and highly predatory policies and behavior we observe in many other Sub-Saharan African countries today.
In 1991 a coup d’etat tumbled Barre’s regime. Unlike most coups, which replace one predatory government with another, this one replaced the old regime with nothing. Although there have been a few failed attempts at resurrecting government in Somalia, including the most recent one by the international community-backed “Transitional Federal Government,” for the last fifteen- plus years Somalia has been stateless.
This situation has caused a great deal of hand wringing among international observers who continually point to the severe poverty and other problems in the country.
“Other problems” includes famine, an actually thriving piracy that preys upon merchant and aid ships off the Horn, rampant slaughter, Taliban-esque shari’a, the world’s highest infant mortality rate, and a thriving arms market and cellular industry. So I guess it’s a wash, then? Better than socialism?
Apparently.
In a recent study I compared Somali welfare under anarchy to welfare under government using all key development indicators for which data allowed comparison.[15] According to the data, of the eighteen development indicators, fourteen show unambiguous improvement under anarchy. Life expectancy is higher today than was in the last years of government’s existence; infant mortality has improved twenty-four percent; maternal mortality has fallen over thirty percent; infants with low birth weight has fallen more than fifteen percentage points; access to health facilities has increased more than twenty-five percentage points; access to sanitation has risen eight percentage points; extreme poverty has plummeted nearly twenty percentage points; one year olds fully immunized for TB has grown nearly twenty percentage points, and for measles has increased ten; fatalities due to measles have dropped thirty percent; and the prevalence of TVs, radios, and telephones has jumped between three and twenty-five times.
His study is along the lines of Benjamin Powell’s study of Somalia that I found wholly uncredible. (As an interesting side note, both Leeson and Powell are recent products of George Mason University’s economics department—whether this really says anything more about GMU’s economics department is for anyone to say… but it makes me dislike it, if it produces such shoddy scholars). It is interesting, too, given how Leeson discounts the civil war that has raged since 1991—claiming that most of the country was peaceful from 1994 onwards (in part thanks to the “predations” of American and UN peacekeepers), and that things are just dandy today. This is interesting because Leeson copyrighted the referenced essay in 2007, during which time the entire country had fallen into unimaginable misery. It’s also worth noting that for years no government has considered the country safe to travel to, because of the widespread violence, even in the “relatively peaceful” (what a modifier, that relatively is) northern areas and Somaliland.
In the paper he references, Leeson uses studies which are upfront about the poverty of their data, since there is no government to conduct a census or security to conduct a meaningful survey. So all development data on Somalia is guesswork and inference based on vanishingly small sample sizes from the safest and most stable areas of the country. How this proves Leeson’s case, rather than his biases, I don’t understand. As to the flawed assumptions behind his work, I feel it is useful to quote my own takedown of Powell’s study:
Their basic assumptions seem flawed as well: Somalia is not really useful as a comparison of government vs. non-government, it is more a comparison of tribal government vs. brutal dictatorship. Small wonder tribal rule, even when violent and extraordinarily brutal, results in slightly better living conditions than the traditional kleptocratic African strongman. They describe a banking system “in shambles” well before the collapse of the Barre regime, which implies it was bad governance, not governance itself, that had created the institution-less conditions under which the current Somali anarchy formed. Just like in all other similar countries, the informal sector took over and provided some basic services.
This isn’t new. Students of European economic history will know that credit systems sprang up spontaneously in places like rural France in the 17th century (run by Jewish money lenders because of Catholic usury laws), but that substantive economic development only occurred when these informal systems were incorporated into a government-regulated financial system. At best, the current state of informal structures in Somalia could be called a stopgap or a coping mechanism, rather than a viable solution. Informal systems only work on small scales and with small amounts of money.
Finally, though, Leeson gets to the meat of his argument. After explaining the concept of choice constraints (which dictate he drive a Subaru rather than a Ferrari), Leeson says:
The same kind of reasoning applies to thinking about anarchy versus government in Somalia and the large part of the developing world that is teetering on state collapse. Although it is certainly reasonable to believe that a transparent, well-constrained, and highly-functional government, like the one we have in the United States, would improve Somali welfare beyond what it has experienced under anarchy, this does not mean that reintroducing government in Somalia would be better for Somalis.
Like all other choices, the choices we face in “selecting” governments are constrained. Unfortunately for most developing countries, the political choice set they face is far smaller than the political choice set more developed countries face. Historical features, such as clan tension, rampant corruption, territorial conflicts, and many others, which cannot be changed in the short run, severely restrict the kind of government countries like Somalia can reasonably expect to have if they have a government.
Sadly, well-functioning, well-constrained governments like the ones we observe in the U.S. and western Europe are not part of this choice set. Ultra-predatory, corrupt, and abusive governments, however, are. And so is anarchy. As Somalia’s experience illustrates, for many LDCs with these limited options anarchy may very well be the best feasible choice.
I see. So Somali anarchy is the Subaru to American representative democracy’s Ferrari. What? The developing world has never produced functioning governments, and the choices they face are either anarchy or vampire states? Rubbish. Even a cursory glance at South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, even Kenya or Uganda would violate Leeson’s false choice. Looking further abroad, to South America or Asia, one can see numerous cases where governments appeared on the verge of collapse but were rehabilitated. Government is not an either/or choice—it is not tyranny versus anarchy. There is a range. Yet Leeson seems intent to deny that range of choices to the Somalis. He would prefer they be at the whims of the tribal warlords.
Speaking of incentives and self-initiative is a wonderful thing, and it makes sense sitting at your think tank and pondering intently all the wonderful times pirates and Somalis must be having in their anarchic states. In the real world, however, where survival may mean having to choose between a tribal warlord (Leeson should have the balls to admit that Somalia does have a government, just not a centralized one—individual areas are governed by tribes or coalitions, like the Islamic Courts which almost took over the country late last year and imposed Shari’a) and a kleptocrat… neither choice is very good.
And always, there are major questions to this kind of thing. Pro-anarchy arguments require the ignoring of pretty fundamental questions when assessing its viability: are there any data indicating which state the Somalis themselves preferred? How have things changed since the worst of the fighting in 1993? If people could choose between a working telephone system and a working hospital, which would they choose? If anarchy cannot solve fundamental healthcare and food supply issues, why is it in any way superior to a dysfunctional government?
Then again, this is a proud member of the Austrian School—someone who thinks the biggest problem in the world is that the markets are not free enough. Of course one who so deeply believes in a theory that, if actually practiced, would generate unfathomable chaos, should be expected to advocate chaos, even in its most brutal forms.
Indeed, it would be neat to see Leeson approach anarchy from a perspective that isn’t rooted in early 20th century dissident European economists. I will shy away from making broader arguments about the ideas he cultivates here, as he specifically says his case is not generalizable. Except he does generalize, when he says Somalia (among other, half-argued points) somehow proves anarchy is “better than you think,” which is just a pathetic standard. An incremental improvement in an abysmally low attitude (much like Somalia’s development indicators) doesn’t reveal much, and doesn’t make any choice any more attractive.
I truly am fatigued of this sloppy mind gaming in the name of rigorous research. After a certain point, there is only so much you can say about these sorts of people, save perhaps one thing: if anarchy is so goddamned efficient, why don’t you move to an anarchic state and leave the rest of us who want a non-violent life the hell alone?
http://www.conjecturer.com/weblog/?p=3816
CONNECTED LIVES: SOMALIS IN MINNEAPOLIS DEALING WITH FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES AND THE MIGRATION DREAMS OF RELATIVES
Cindy Horst, University of Amsterdam
Introduction
Somalis have migrated and dispersed globally for centuries, but especially since the civil war, they can be found in almost every country. A lot of research has been done on Somalis across the world, focussing on stayees, Internally Displaced People (IDPs), returnees, urban refugees, refugees in regional camps and resettled refugees. Yet, as the 9th Somali Studies International Conference clearly recognizes, there are many connections between the lives and livelihoods of these people in different positions. As such, a more integrated approach that studies their connectedness from the point of view of Somalis in different places is vital; both for an increased understanding of their situation as well as in order to improve the policies that affect their lives.
http://www2.ihis.aau.dk/development/Somali%20papers%20pdf%20format/Cindy%20Horst.pdf
Diaspora and State formation
Diaspora and its role in establishing new regional veterinary institutions¦ The case of the Sheikh Technical Veterinary School Project.by Dr Abdi Osman Haji-Abdi, Sheikh Technical Veterinary School, Somaliland.
Contact Address: Terra Nuova, P.O. Box 74916, 00200; Telephone: 00254-2-4445511/2; Fax: 00254-4443748; email: tnea@africaonline.co.ke
Introduction and Background
The devastation, problems and predicament facing the ¡®failed state¡¯ of Somalia after a long-lasting civil war and political unrest are indeed enormous and the challenge to reconstruct the country is great. Despite the pervasive and widespread annihilation that characterizes what was formerly known as the Somali Republic, there exist vestigial traces of some of the most intrinsic features of the Somali people such as high self-esteem, resilience, optimism, creativity and versatility, which have not been scarred and survived the war. It is these traits of its human resources that give credence to a rapid reconstruction and resurrection of the currently shattered country, thus making Somalia once again a peaceful, prosperous, and glamorous pace in the Horn of Africa. It should be borne in mind that only after the Somalis capitalize on these positive attributes and instigate themselves the hazardous task of reconstruction task could the eventual support and assistance of the international community be secured. In other words, the hope to rebuild Somalia lies in the first place with the Somali people themselves. The framework for planning and coordination of Somalia¡¯s reconstruction and rehabilitation has the specific objectives of establishing a common vision of economic, environmental and social reconstruction and identification of priorities for long-term recovery and key performance indicators in meeting these priority needs.
Let me first begin my presentation with some statistics, which you presumably have heard several times during this conference.
Even before the outbreak of the civil war and the subsequent collapse of the Somali state in 1991, Somalia was with an estimated per capita GDP of 170 USD, one of the poorest countries in the world. Agriculture was and still is the principal economic activity, employing about ¨ú of the population and contributing to more than 65% of GDP. Within agriculture, nomadic livestock production accounts for more than 44% of GDP and about half of the population is engaged in this sub-sector.
Most of Somalia consists of arid and semi-arid rangelands, making migratory pastoral production systems with domestic ruminants the most appropriate form of land use. Under these circumstances livestock is the key to the survival for large segments of the population. Nomads and agro-pastoralists are heavily dependent on milk, meat and marketable animals for their food supply and also for their other needs. In addition to being the main source of Somali livelihoods, the livestock export sector contributes 80% of the exports and is thus the main source of country¡¯s foreign currency earnings. Taxation of livestock trade and export is also one of the major sources of income for local administration.
Despite the overwhelming significance of nomadic pastoralism to Somali economy, the sector is affected by a number of technical and institutional constraints that seriously jeopardize its long-term viability. It is not my intention here to provide a detailed account for the multiplicity of constraints that hamper the potential productivity and efficient economic performance of this sub-sector, but rather to emphasize its institutional shortcomings and put forward some of the solutions perceived by the current project in alleviating these pitfalls.
In addition to the technical constraints undermining the sustainability of the export-oriented livestock economy of Somalia, the lack of effective and effective supportive institutional veterinary services exacerbate the already precarious situation of the sector.
Generally speaking, the ramifications of the war on the institutional infrastructure of the country as a whole were devastating and are not only confined to the veterinary sector. However, the particular emphasis on veterinary institutions results from the overriding importance of the sector to the whole economy and livelihood of its population.
In the light of the breakdown of law and order, the absence of a central institutions and the endemic sense of insecurity, new institutional structures are required to respond to these uncertainties.
The provision of strong and functional veterinary institutions becomes self-evident when one considers the inherent institutional limitations affecting the veterinary sector. These include, inter alia:
* Absence of veterinary training institutions, disease diagnostic and surveillance services, certification and disease control centres, ever since the collapse of the central government in 1991
* Lack of qualified veterinarians that could replace the ageing professionals. The exodus of the most qualified veterinary professionals from the country has created a serious shortage of competent professionals and has aggravated the human resources situation
* Absence of Somali veterinary professionals from the international scene and fora and the concomitant knowledge gap.
* Imposition (and persistence) of successive export bans of Somali livestock due to the alleged existence of infectious diseases and lack of proper certification procedures
Terra Nuova and UNA, two Italian NGOs, that have accumulated considerable experience in the rehabilitation of the Somali livestock sector have recognized the strong need for a rapid intervention and proposed the establishment of a technical veterinary training centre in Somalia as the first step towards revitalizing the export-oriented pastoral economy of Somalia.
The Sheikh Technical Veterinary School Project in brief:
The overall objective of Sheikh Technical Veterinary School, hereafter STVS, is to ensure that the Somali people gain access to better veterinary services in order to safeguard public health, improve livestock production and performance and sustain livestock export. The establishment of a technical veterinary training centre for prospective Somali veterinarians in the small and renowned town of Sheikh, Somaliland, was envisaged as a means to the end mentioned above. The school will conduct a three-year veterinary diploma course. After a successful completion of the first two years of pre-clinical studies, students might continue specialized university training in neighbouring countries or abroad or enroll in a third year to specialize in veterinary clinical work or meat inspection. The school is envisaged to act as a reference center for pastoral production systems in the region comprising the Somali ecosystem and is open to all secondary school leavers from Somalia proper and other students from neighbouring countries (i.e. Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti). The regional character of the school is reflected by the composition of the first row of students enrolled this year: they comprise students from Somaliland, Puntland, Northern Region of Kenya.
It will serve as an important link and a forum of exchange of veterinary and livestock-related information between Somalia and the outside world. The technical cadres graduating from the school will replace the ageing professionals and initiate the formation of a critical mass of veterinarians for the country. It is anticipated that the skills and technical knowledge acquired by the school graduates will enable them to overcome some of the most limiting production and health constraints affecting currently the livestock sector.
The role of the Somali diaspora in the reconstruction and development of Somalia, in general and STVS, in particular.
A) Diaspora and development in general
Today, a considerable number of Somalis live outside their ancestral homeland and are spread across the globe, but most of them can be found in Europe and North America. Just like other immigrants, Somalis made their way to their present home countries as a result of repressive regimes, upheavals and major conflicts which engulfed their countries.
The contribution of Somali diaspora to their country has until now been concentrated on extending aid and relief to their brethrens in the form of remittances. For many families, this money sent by relatives overseas spells the difference between relative poverty and total indigence. The remittances from the diaspora , which is estimated at about half a billion dollars, support the local economy. The strong purchasing power of the diaspora also allows Somalia to sustain high trade figure. The Somali diaspora has heavily invested in all fields of trade, particularly telecommunication and thriving Telecom companies keep the country wired with cell phones, email and satellite television.
In economic terms, the Somali economy is indirectly embracing globalization, while the political system is becoming more localized and fractured. The shift of power from tribal elders, warlords and militiamen to business-oriented diaspora, Islamic charities and civil society groups is becoming more evident in this political localization process.
The Somali diaspora has furthermore, significantly contributed to the process of regional integration, and indirectly conflict minimization, by establishing multi-national companies through closer financial and technical co-operation between ethnic Somali diasporas of different nations. The improving diplomatic and relationship and growing trade ties between Somaliland and neighbouring Ethiopia in recent times has replaced century-old animosities and can be considered as an important precursor to the process of regional integration facilitated by the diaspora.
In socio-cultural terms, the impact of the diaspora on the Somali society can¡¯t be overlooked. Through the diaspora, the Somali society is getting more involved with the western world. In the education system, English is replacing Somali in many of the proliferating private schools throughout Somalia.
The role of the diaspora in generating development through brain gain, i.e. reversing the notion of brain drain, and know-know transfer is taking new dimensions and gaining more and more in importance. Whereas in previous times talented professionals from the developing world have migrated westbound and reduced their ties with the homeland to remittances, today a new pattern has emerged: a brain gain that provides opportunities for development of the country of origin and propelled by the diaspora. Tapping the capital, know-how of this new breed of expatriates for development generation in the developing world is imperative and of utmost priority.
Somali diaspora have initiated and realized projects like rebuilding the hospitals, medical relief, schools and universities. The establishment of the universities of Hargeisa and Amoud in Somaliland demonstrate how specific and dedicated diaspora groups from widely different regions represent knowledge networks in action and the role they could play in fostering educational progress back home.
B) The specific role of the diaspora in STVS
Recognizing the crucial importance of the Somali diaspora to the homeland reconstruction and development through its gained experience and know-how, valuable networks and international contacts, and access to significant sources of capital and technology, the implementing NGOs of the STVS project, i.e. Terra Nuova and UNA, have from the very beginning of the project inception, pleaded for the inclusion of qualified and dedicated Somali diaspora into the prospective tutorial staff of the school. The position was widely advertised in selected newspapers and specific Somali web sites so that competent professionals are drawn from the Somali region and Somali diaspora. Three individuals from the diaspora group, including me were successful in securing the position. Apart from the diaspora group, a group of three Somali national professionals who were previously engaged in teaching activities of the veterinary faculty of the Somali National University in Mogadishu, constitute t he tutorial team of STVS.
Although the school has not yet been fully operational due to unexpected and perpetuating delays regarding fund procurement by the donors, the tutors have been working meticulously over the past 18 months in developing a comprehensive three-year school curriculum that could best reflect the ecological, economical realities that characterize the export-oriented pastoral production system prevailing in the Somali ecosystem, as well as epizootic diseases that are of considerable relevance to the export-oriented livestock industry. Instead of being accused of plagiarizing the curriculum of similar veterinary institutions, the STVS tutorial team has embarked on the daunting task of starting the current curriculum from scratch. This painstaking and cumbersome venture was chosen after we, in retrospect, have unanimously acknowledged the inherent shortcomings and severe drawbacks of the widespread and purely content-based curriculum, which in Somalia represents the mainstream meth od of curriculum conceptualization. The way a curriculum is conceptualized in theory and subsequently designed, organized and developed for practical implementation is largely determined by one¡¯s answers to some fundamental questions of curriculum as to what should be taught, why, to whom, how (i.e. in what manner), and where.
In the case of content-centred curriculum, particular emphasis is laid on the knowledge, which is mistakenly treated as having intrinsic value, to be taught and the student is reduced to a more or less recipient of externally derived information. Instead of the content-centred curriculum with its emphasis on knowledge per se, we decided to devise our curriculum by putting more emphasis on: the organization of teaching/learning process, structure and sequence of learning and the organization of learning/teaching materials. Enquiry, rather than knowledge, becomes the focal point and the goal of education is learning how to learn. In other words, the acquisition of knowledge is treated as a means to an end rather than as an end as in the content approach.
The urgent for students of veterinary medicine and natural resource management to develop problem-solving and critical thinking competencies and skills has been taken into full account in this effort of curriculum revitalization. In contrast to the fragmentary nature of the traditional subject-divided curriculum, we strived for an integrated curriculum by organizing ideas and subjects and disciplines.
We believe that this relatively innovative and pioneering approach towards curriculum development as adopted by our team will alleviate in the short and medium term the purported
deficiencies inherent in previous school curricula, thereby ensuring its widespread adoption by educational planners and vocational trainers.
In addition to the great contributions made by the Somali diaspora representatives within the STVS to the development of an integrated curriculum for the school, the daspora has capitalized on their valuable networks and contacts overseas and exploited this comparative advantage for the purposes of school. The diaspora¡¯s former linkages with international institutions and alma mater has enabled members of the tutorial team to participate in international and regional conferences on veterinary medicine and related fields. The re-emergence of Somali professionals in international and regional fora was becoming a reality thank the international links of the diaspora group. Our mere participation in these regional and international events has enabled us to promote the school by launching a popularization campaign for the STVS project and the need for their assistance and cooperation in its full realization. My presence in Aalborg and participation in this conference should be regarded as an opportune moment for continuing this policy of popularization and questyou¡¯re your assistance.
Some challenges and obstacles facing the Somali diaspora in reconstruction and development Notwithstanding the dire need for the Somali diaspora and their undisputed role in rehabilitation and development of Somalia, there are, however, a number of factors that might hamper their maximum utilization for the development task. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the challenges and obstacles mentioned reproduce personal perceptions and experience and are therefore relative and subjective. In other words, individuals are different in assessing challenges and obstacles in accordance to their expectations, aptitudes, resilience. Below, some of these challenges are stated briefly:
The ¡®transnational¡¯ character of the diaspora:
Broadly speaking, the extent of assimilation of a diaspora member in his host country, and hence resultant attitude of the individual towards the host country and its society, determines his/her willingness to repatriate for ever. Assimilation is largely determined by the length of the period spent in the country. One can generalize by saying that the more the individual is assimilated, the more reluctant one becomes to repatriate forever.
Conflict of interest within the family
- Skilled professionals who are basically willing to repatriate are sometimes hindered by the utter desire of his/her partner or children to stay further in the host country
- Financial and commensurate remuneration packages
- More often, the lack of financial incentives and relatively inappropriate remuneration packages discourage many skilled returnees to stay the home country for longer periods.
- Institutional, political and socio-economic determinants security and rule of law and order, personal freedom of expression, justice, availability of medical care and educational infrastructure, gender equality, liberal trade policies, are some of the factors primarily considered when one thinks of repatriation.
Professional barriers:
From a professional point of view, there exist serious constraints to the re