Getting Paid
December 27, 2007: Somalia has become one of the most extreme examples of social disintegration on the planet. Bandits are increasingly targeting relief workers, either to extort them, or kidnap them. While most Somalis realize the relief workers are there to help, there are still many heavily armed and bad tempered Somalis who see the foreigners as a source of income. These Somalis traditions of warlordism and opportunism are not easily cured. A century ago, a British colonial official observed that, when dealing with this type of Somali, the best approach was to; "shoot on sight, shoot first, shoot to kill, and keep shooting." Little has changed. Even in "quiet" parts of Somalia, bandits still do what they please. In northern Puntland, one such gang kidnapped two foreign medical aid workers (two women, a doctor and a nurse), and are holding them for ransom. There is some law and order in Puntland, so the security forces are in pursuit. But the way things work in Somalia, the kidnappers expect to be paid, and will kill their captives if a ransom is not forthcoming. Recently, a French journalist was kidnapped in the same area, and held for eight days until an $80,000 ransom was paid. After news of that got around, Somali gangsters took a different view of unarmed foreigners.
U.S. naval forces off Somalia have been ordered to be more strict with pirates. Details of the new rules of engagements were not released (lest the pirates figure out how to exploit them), but the announcement was apparently intended to intimidate the pirates. U.S. naval intelligence has collected a lot of information on the Somali pirates, and is trying to take apart the pirate organizations, without getting involved with the fighting inside Somalia.
Mogadishu is still the scene of fighting between rival clans, one side aided by Ethiopian troops. In the last two months, about a quarter million people have left Mogadishu, mostly members of the clans that are losing the battle for the city. The Ethiopian troops are aiding factions that agree to pacify the city, and not conduct raids into Ethiopia. The expulsion of clan militias from Mogadishu has led to more banditry outside the city, as the displaced clan gunmen look for other sources of income (they used to control major market places and commercial neighborhoods, which were heavily "taxed.") Now the gunmen prey on trucks carrying foreign aid, or other goods. The trucks must either pay cash at a dozen or more roadblocks, or risk being robbed. Some trucks travel in heavily guarded convoys, which enables them to get past some roadblocks for free, while strongly defended ones require some negotiation and payment.
Burundi sent a hundred troops to join the 1,600 Ugandans already in Mogadishu, with another to follow in the next three weeks. But Burundi will not send another 800 man battalion unless other African nations honor their commitment to establish a 8,000 man peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. Ethiopia says it will withdraw its several thousand troops if the full UN force ever shows up. That is still in doubt. The African nations who are supposed to send peacekeepers, know they cannot fight the Somali irregulars as effectively as the Ethiopians (who have been doing it successfully for centuries.)
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/somalia/articles/20071227.aspx
Life, and Death, Goes On
December 18, 2007: There's a certain sameness to this land. Somalia is a big place, with a population of ten million. About 20 percent of those people depend on foreign aid to survive. Only a few thousand people are involved in any kind of combat on any given day. About ten percent of the population is armed. Most Somalis go about their clan based lives of farming, fishing and fighting. Battles, usually over real estate, have defined Somali life for centuries. The few towns and cities have an additional asset to fight over, taxes from markets.
Somalia has had religious leaders become political ones in the past. It lasts for as long as a few key clerics live, then it goes away. Currently, the Islamic Courts is a clan coalition that is losing, and is desperate to get back some of what has been lost. Case in point is Mogadishu, where the clan that was long dominant, and allied with the Islamic Courts, is being forced out. The Ethiopians are helping, and making a big difference. The Ethiopians may not be quite as scary as the Somalis, but they are trained soldiers and pretty effective. The Somalis can't beat the Ethiopians in a battle, and the Ethiopians have no problem with chasing the civilian supporters of the Islamic Courts out of town. Now the Islamic Courts fighters operate from makeshift, or formal, refugee camps outside of Mogadishu. These are increasingly the scene of fighting, as Ethiopian troops, and their Somali clan allies, go after the civilians who support the fighters. This is classic Somali warfare. If the fighters can't protect their families, they will quit fighting. There are actually very few Islamic Courts fighters still at it, but it's enough to keep the foreign media busy. Several explosions or firefights a day is just about right for a busy reporter.
Meanwhile, up north, a French reporter was pursuing another story, the one about the people smuggling, that gets Somalis out of the country and into Yemen (thence Saudi Arabia, Europe and so on). This is a big business, and the gangsters running it did not like the attention. So they have kidnapped the reporter, about a day after he arrived, and are demanding $70,000 ransom. Problem solved. The Somalis can be very efficient when they want to be.
Uganda is sending new troops to replace its 1,800 peacekeepers, who have been in Mogadishu for nine months. The Ugandan troops have basically guarded the airport, and not much else. Uganda can pull its troops out, Ethiopia cannot afford to until the Islamic Courts are destroyed. That's because the Islamic Courts have pledged to take part of Ethiopia (the southern Ogaden province) that has long been a point of contention between Ethiopians and Somalis. The Islamic Courts also want to crush Ethiopia because it is a Christian nation (the ruling class, and about half the population have been Christian for nearly 2,000 years). The Ethiopians just want the Somalis to leave them alone, as does Kenya, which has suffered raids by Somalis for centuries.
Meanwhile, up north, U.S. warships helped persuade pirates to free a Japanese tanker and its crew, over a thousand kilometers to the south, an Italian cargo ship, moving towards the Kenyan port of Mombassa, was apparently seized by pirates.
http://www.strategypage.com/
Choice and Evasion in Judicial recognition of Governments: Lessons from Somalia
by Mària Aristodemou
I. Introduction
The role of judges in domestic legal systems and the question of how they decide or should decide cases have been the subject of extensive discussion, explanation, description and prescription for many years, with commentaries on the topic ranging from the normative, to the conceptual, to the empirical. The area has been the concern of, amongst others, legal philosophers, practising lawyers, sociologists of law and politicians for so long that one may venture to suggest, in the words of one wit, that even if we cannot pretend to be any wiser on this issue, we can at least claim to be better informed. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of similar writing on the role of judges and the nature of judicial decision-making in the international arena; by the latter I refer both to judges applying international law in international tribunals and judges called upon to examine elements of (or to deal with issues that have implications for) international law in domestic tribunals. This comment stems from the belief that although theories of adjudication addressing the domestic legal system may be concerned with similar issues and may illuminate our understanding with analogous insights, certain characteristics peculiar to international law and the international legal system make this area worthy of separate consideration.
The High Court's decision in Republic of Somalia v. Wodehouse Drake,2 demonstrates our courts' unwillingness to address issues relating to international law at the same time as exemplifying an area where the decisions of domestic courts can have important implications beyond the domestic arena. The question before the court was who, if anyone, was entitled to the proceeds from the sale of a cargo of rice which, as a result of the civil war in Somalia, had not been delivered. The deposed Government of Somalia had bought and paid for the rice in December 1991 but a new interim government set up at an international peace conference in July 1992 was claiming the proceeds. Hobhouse J decided that neither the interim government nor any of the other warring factions in Somalia could be regarded as the Government of Somalia and therefore the money would be kept in court until and unless a group could prove to the court's satisfaction that it was the Government of Somalia. ....
http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol5/No4/art3.pdf
The Journal of Modern African Studies (2006), 44: 397-414
Political identity, emerging state structures and conflict in northern Somalia
Markus V. Höhne a1
Abstract
This paper discusses the logic of political identification by individuals and groups in the context of re-emerging state structures in northern Somalia. Current identities are analysed as political identities, which are both a product of and a driving force behind political and military conflict in the region. In everyday life political cleavages can be bridged by cross-cutting ties based on neighbourhood, intermarriage or common experiences and history. Only when conflict reaches a certain level and violence escalates, do political identities become mutually exclusive and large-scale fighting become a real threat.
Somali Societal Dictatorship
By Abdi-Noor Haji Mohamed (Eagle Of Hope)
Posted: Wednesday, January 09, 2008
How societal dictatorship destroyed peace in somalia. this is an extract of my speech at the human rights conference in stockholm conducted from 21 to 22 November 2007
How to Attain Peace in Somalia
Background information
Somalia is located in the horn of Africa bordering Kenya in the South, Ethiopia in the West and the Indian Ocean in the East along the northern tip of Djibouti off the Red sea. It is blessed with two rivers and a huge livestock potentiality.
Prior to the arrival of the European colonial powers Somalis have been able to feed and clothe themselves without needing any support from outside. But they were communities who have had no central authority to govern themselves under the banner of one nation with viable state institutions. Over the meagre resources of water and pasture they fought as tribal anarchy reached peak during dry seasons. Those days they were free to move around though the risks and clashes among the tribes were quite high.
Apart from the liberalized way of settling disputes under a tree, the pastoralist system of life heralded tremendous obstacles, which were a breeding ground for dictatorship. A man was the head of the family who had absolute powers over the entire members of the family including his wife. And in a village or a nomadic settlement, a chief was crowned as the leader of the community who was regarded as a sacred personality whose word has power over the rest of the people he was leading.
When the Europeans, especially the Italian colonizers, seized the Somali territory by overpowering the local communities (sometimes on arrangement with tribal chiefs) the Somalis were put together in certain confined areas in order to have some control over their movements and have thus created tribal boundaries among tribes who once had crossed to each other as freely as they wished. The imposition of the movement restrictions has greatly affected their pastoral freedom on one hand and improved, to some extent, the security situation of their environs on the other. The arrival of the Europeans was the beginning of a gradual process of politicizing and consolidating this traditional dictatorship into a more acceptable norm of social and political setting.
When Somalia became independent in 1960 all the seats of the parliament have been shared on tribal basis (essence of dictatorship) and the seeds of conflict have been sown in the fabric of Somalia's political systems. Somalia's freedom went on fire when tribalism was used as an essential tool to achieve political goals. The civilian governments of the sixties failed due to divisions as interest-oriented rifts dominated the political life of the country.
Nine years after declaring independence from the Italians, Somalia fell in the jaws of a military dictatorship. All the private enterprises have been nationalized and brought under the control of the government such a banks, fuel companies, cinemas and trade institutions. Freedom of expression has been banned and anyone caught not speaking or writing in praise of the state was liable to loose his or her neck or was put in jail where security services tortured, abused and molested him/her.
In the first years of the revolution, the military regime has tried to eradicate all forms of tribalism including nepotism and corruption, which had devastated the Somali political system of the sixties but to no avail. It was an initiative that had further aggravated the situation by plunging Somalis tribes and communities into abysmal depths of revenge after they have lost some of their men in the president's cleansing exercises to eradicate tribalism.
Many tribes who have lost their men in some of these cleansing jobs have developed deep sorrow and animosity against the regime. To counter balance or otherwise overwhelm these animosities that were brewing behind the scene, the president tightened his dictatorship grip on the nation to cling onto power forever.
Coming under pressure from the world, the military regime were forced to soften their centralized approach of governance so as to provide a space to the general public who were yearning for freedom and democracy. But the regime, in response to these calls, has changed the military dress to a civilian one in order to appease the international community. By pretending to have decentralized its rule and governance, the regime attracted massive inputs from the international agencies, which were mostly provided to them through military support worth of millions of US dollars.
Somalia in Civil War
The worst thing happened when the military dictatorship was dislodged in a popular uprising in January 1991 when armed factions chased away the president and his supporters from power. These factions failed to come up with an authority that can fill the vacuum which later on degenerated to a total breakdown of law and order, which saw Somalia fall apart into fragments of tribal fiefdoms.
Warlords have emerged in all corners of the nation killing tens of thousands while forcing millions of people to internal displacement or seek safe haven in neighbouring countries where they were granted resettlement in the free world.
They have attacked the nation and its people with mortar bombs with the intention to climb on the power ladder at the expense of the lives of millions. But not only people did they kill in their contest for power but they also murdered a whole nation and its history.
With the spears of ignorance they have destroyed the culture and language of the nation which are the bedrock of a nation's existence. They were the warlords of the century who employed tactics of terror by imposing fear, disease, hunger and destitution to the people of Somalia.
These warlords who were the product of a prolonged dictatorship both in the political and cultural systems of Somalia have reduced Somalia into a nation without a face in the international community. Despite a UN arms embargo imposed on Somalia in January 1992, the warlords were being armed to the teeth by some neighbouring countries especially Ethiopia which had allegedly supplied enormous amounts of weapons to the Somali factions.
The unending war in Somalia has created an atmosphere of despondency whereby the country’s borders remained porous making it vulnerable to enemy incursions as Somalia’s military might has been paralyzed by selfish clan wars and clan lords. In addition to that there were business operations run by international mafia linked to Somali warlords who have dumped the Somali seas with nuclear and industrials wastes. With the money generated from these evil sea-poisoning jobs the warlords have bought weapons to further perpetuate their murder project against the Somali people.
It is with great shock to note here that some of the sealed containers have been washed in the seashores of Somalia. UN and international experts who visited the site confirmed that these containers were nuclear wastes that have been discarded into the sea and can cause enormous hazards both to mankind and the marine life. Please refer to the attached poem.
These warlords have led Somalia to disintegrate like empires of the ancient times which were once very strong and powerful but later on collapsed as a result of the chaotic environment their leadership had created.
While Somalia remained a land of criminals neglected by the international community (with the exception of a two year intervention by the UN) there emerged a religious group with extremist Islamic ideology. Being themselves a product of dictatorship in Somalia, they have sprang up in increasing numbers across the country like mushrooms.
They have established Islamic centres, Islamic Courts and schools to spread their version of Islamic Wahabbism. There were other Islamic organizations who made themselves visible as moderates but harboured sinister ambitions to jump to power in ways that can only promote the dictatorial systems that had destroyed Somalia.
The existence of the Islamic courts became visible to the world especially when they have threatened a transitional government instituted in Kenya in 2004. They denied the Ethiopian-backed secular government to be relocated to Mogadishu and even acrimoniously lashed out their displeasure of seeing an international or African force being deployed in Somali soil.
In the beginning of the year 2006, fighting broke out between the warlords and the Islamic Courts militia in Mogadishu. The warlords were supported by the Americans who claimed that there were Al-Qaeda linked elements in Somalia who took part in the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Darusalam in Tanzania. The war continued until the Washington-supported warlords were defeated and expelled from the capital city of Mogadishu.
The Islamic courts have brought back some semblance of law and order but soon lost confidence of the people by banning a most cherished narcotic leaf QAT which Somalis chew on daily basis. They also tampered with the youth sports activities and cinema houses which Somalis frequented to keep themselves update with the sports tournaments of the world. This uncalculated move of harassing the general public in particular the young boys and girls, has earned them nothing more than hatred and strong distaste against their actions.
Current Situation
The rise of Islamic courts hastened the intervention and subsequent occupation of Somalia by Ethiopian troops under the pretext of propping up a weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) which was then based in Baidoa, South west of Somalia. The Ethiopian military intervention resulted in a clash between them and Islamic courts militia who organized themselves in Iraq-type insurgency jihadists.
As they exchanged fire in the city, they killed thousands of innocent people, mainly women and children and wounded a much higher figure in their indiscriminate murder of Somalis in Mogadishu. They have committed gross human rights abuses compatible to what happened in Bosnia, Darfur, Rwanda etc.
Much to the disappointment of the Somali freedom of expression, the Somali government, the Ethiopians and the Islamic insurgents targeted Somali journalists, writers, poets and almost all artists, with the intention to silence the media and deny these artists their right to speak and report war crimes that had been sweeping all across the nation. Somalia, being the hottest spot in the Horn of Africa, is now considered as the second most deadliest place on earth far too dangerous for journalists to operate. Being next to Iraq, Somalia has become the slaughterhouse of journalists where media reporters are killed and assassinated while undertaking their routing duties. In Mogadishu an Islamic insurgent is only 50 times at risk for being hunted down by TFG or Ethiopian troops but a writer or a journalist is exposed to a 100 % risk as he or she is targeted by both factions.
The emergence of warlords and religious extremism has its origins in the existence of long-standing cultural and political dictatorship in Somalia which can not be eradicated without a nation-wide campaign against any forms of war and extremism in Somalia to promote peace and stability in this war-torn nation in the Horn of Africa. I believe that until we wipe out TRIBE from our political system, we can never ever be free from mental slavery and backwardness no matter how hard we try to balance our political equation with parties or representatives belonging to tribal factions.
The current groups contesting for supremacy and control of the nation have no agenda for peace because the only chance they have is to rule at gunpoint which is basically believed to be the essence of dictatorship.
WE can attain peace by committing ourselves to a wider national cause of liberating our nation and putting democratic principles in place. Anytime Somalia's existence and integrity came under threat, it was the youth that had taken up the initiative to save the country as it happened in the 1940's when a Somali Youth League (SYL) fought with the Italian colonial powers from Italy and Britain and led Somalia to a full political independence in 1960. Now we expect no less sacrifice from our youth and we are confident that they will accomplish the job and liberate Somalia for the second time from the present occupation and religious extremists.
Somalia has been pushed to the margins of misery and isolation as it is now caught up between the cruelty of carpet bombing by the Ethiopians and the inhumanity of suicide bombers. With a sound leadership of our youth I have no doubt that Somalia will push itself up like a creeper buried under the bricks of an abandoned building. On the rocks of success it has to climb up with confidence to reach heights of life, peace and love.
In closing the speech allow me to show you a 10 minute documentary film on the challenges of Somali women in the backdrop war and famine in Somalia.
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=12041&id=35880
The Somalia Remittance Paradox
January 9, 2008
Ever wonder why it costs so much money to send money back home? What the hell is so difficult about taking money from one person and giving the same amount of money to another person? It’s not like they are actually flying those bills across the ocean from the US or UK to your Ma. So what… are they just gouging the little guy because they can? Compare what it costs to send $100 via Western Union to Uganda ($20) against what it costs to send $100 to Mexico ($10.99). What if your family lives in… Somalia? What will Western Union charge you to send them money? NOTHING… because they don’t send money to Somalia. This despite a huge potential market in Somalia.
According to the CIA (look under Economic Overview):
In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually.
Compare that to the total remittances for other African Nations as reported by IFAD:
Not to mention how many people in the Diaspora are out there… sending money back home. (source: WorldBank)
Worldwide, one of every 35 people, an estimated 175 million, live outside their country of origin , up from 75 million in 1965
Yeahp.. a big market for remittance companies… and one they are ducking like an ugly guy on a blind date. So what’s the deal? Well, it is more than simple greed or incompetence. All over the continent people are paying larger fees or using unreliable methods to transfer money to their friends, family and villages. Why is that? The reasons are many and vary from country to country. But I want to focus on Somalia and the reasons this country specifically has been given the short end of the stick. Although an extreme example, I think the problems remittance companies have in Somalia influence their business practices across the continent.
So, back in 1988 Somalia was falling into the political chaos from which they have yet to emerge and; not unlike many countries, poverty led to political unrest which, led to more poverty…. which only made the country more unstable and finally led to its complete collapse. By 2001 most of what is laughably called Somalia’s GDP came from remittances. Then came September 11, 2001. Suddenly, there was a microscope on international money. Every nontraditional transfer of funds was viewed as a threat… fattening the wallet of Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden, and leading to the fall of western civilization as we know it. Somalia with its entire economy resting on outside sources…. and not incidentally a Muslim majority was suddenly seen as a hot bed of terrorist activity and a funnel for terrorist dollars going directly to Al Queda… at least in the mind of the CIA. And to be fair… viewed through the lens of September 11th I can see how a surface evaluation of the data might have led to the conclusions they reached. Cut off the flow of money. Stop the terrorists.
However… international policy should not be made based on surface level evaluations of preliminary data (and WOW haven’t we all witnessed the effects of that shortsightedness for the last seven years! but I digress) Let’s look closer at the clues that led the governments of Britian and the US to their faulty conclusions.
Clue #1: Lack of information about who was receiving and transfering money.
This lack was interpreted as shady, secret dealings. When in fact what it was a reflection on the cultural reluctance to share personal information. Somali’s are private people willing to share tribal connections but unwilling to share the level of personal data that is common in the West. The local remittance companies–understanding this cultural reluctance accepted less than ideal identification and thereby put themselves square in the bullseye of American Anti-terrorist policies.
Clue #2: Somalia is a Muslim country
With tensions running high after 9/11, there was no inclination to review and compare the subtle differences between a Muslim nation like Somalia and one like Afghanistan. There was no patience for those small voices saying… well yes they are Muslims but not that kind of Muslim! A more careful review of the Somali culture would have shown one that had historically resisted radical Islam of the flavor we are blessed with in these modern times. Ironically the continued anarchy in Somalia post 9/11 terrorist policies against Somalia have made it open to radical Islam… as evidenced by this article from (
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/14/somali16070.htm)Human Rights Watch or this one from The Council on Foreign Relations(
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10781/)
So what happened? Well, in a country with no way to support itself aside from remittance dollars and goats; the US and Britain joined forces and closed the doors on Somalia’s #1 remitter in 2001. Thus making it more difficult and more expensive for Somalis in the Diaspora to send money home (not that it stopped them… estimates have remittance dollars to Somalia between $700 million USD and $1 billion USD. The laws are so stringent that the world’s #1 and #2 remittance companies (Western Union and MoneyGram) cannot take on the risk of doing business in Somalia. Local remitters still try, but the costs are high and the damage (to the already crippled Somali economy) is done.
Ironically USAID has been funneling money into Somalia as fast as the Anti-terrorist regulations have been turning it away: Sadly the evidence shows that while remittance monies can have a significant impact on the standard of living for the recipient, AID money is like a band-aid on a bleeding jugular… completely ineffective.
And here is my favorite bit of news in this whole story… 7 years later… not one of the companies that was destroyed by these anti-terrorist policies has been proven to have had terrorist ties. Great. So, let’s waste time, money, resources, kick a country while its down, actually create the environment we were trying to destroy AND be so totally distracted by our own ignorance that we let the bad guys continue to recieve their money from what ever source they have… cause we were too busy fighting the ghost of Black Hawk Down in Somalia. Fabulous.
http://projectdiaspora.org/the-somalia-remittance-paradox.htm
Somalia's Mystery Weapon, and Eerie Iraq Parallels
By David Axe November 27, 2007
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Thanks to the Web and other technologies, the homegrown guerrillas here are starting to act like insurgents in Iraq. Cue the improvised bombs, makeshift rocket-launchers, and text-message death threats.
These days, you can’t fight a war in isolation – not with websites, satellite phones, global shipping, 24-hour cable news and instant bank transfers. Anyone with a shared ideology, or a shared foe, can band together even if thousands of miles apart, using the same tactics to strike at the interests of the same global power. Thinkers like John Robb call this "Open Source Warfare."
Ironically, it’s for that reason that the U.S. gave the Ethiopia government the boost it needed to sweep south and destroy the Islamic Courts in Somalia. The Defense Department suspected the Courts of being friendly to Al Qaeda. But not because there were legions of extremists already running drills in the country. The suspected Al Qaeda tie, if it was indeed legit, was in all likelihood tiny. “You Americans,” one Somali professor scolded me the other day, “you’ll destroy an entire city to get three people.”
But the invasion didn't actually calm things down here. Instead, there's been more fighting -- and tactics that come straight of the jihadist playbook. Recently, there have been suicide bombings and improvised explosives – both new to Mogadishu. And these mysterious weapons, confiscated by African Union peacekeepers. Best I can tell, they’re Hezbollah-style Katyusha Qassam rockets, a relative rarity in this corner of the world, if my reading is correct. It’s a worrying omen for a country that’s already had its share of problems.
As in Iraq, a pre-emptive war targeting potential terrorists has backfired. Thanks to the U.S. intervention, Somali fighters now have common cause with extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. Don’t believe me? A couple days ago a Somali journalist showed me an anonymous text-message death threat he’d received, apparently from the nationalist insurgent group Al Shabab.
It was signed “Al Shabab = mujahideen.” The local guerrillas had morphed into international jihadists.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/just-when-it-se.html
Piracy in Somalia
Posted November 22nd, 2007
by HrKaptajn
Piracy is a problem for sailors at several locations around the world but especially dangerous is the Somalian coastline. All ships is adviced to keep a distance of more than 200 sm from the coast and still there is reports of piracy attacks on ships at 180 and 210 sm out.
On the site
http://www.marlobahrain.org/ you can read more about what happens and what is done about piracy in this part of the world.
At this link:
http://www.marlobahrain.org/2006/advisory-03-06.pdf you will find interesting information on how to react or - hopefully - avoid pirate attacks.
I know that cruising sailors often get together in a flotilla and travel these waters together - sometimes even under close supervision from the US navy, who is present in this area.
Here's some information from the above sites:
SOMALI COAST
Due to a recent resurgence of piracy off the coast of Somalia, MARLO repeats its previous advisory, and urges ALL VESSELS to REMAIN AT LEAST 200 NM OFF the eastern coast of Somalia.
Recent Events:
- February 25, 2007: Merchant vessel hijacked off Somali Coast. Vessel released after 40 days upon payment of ransom to the Somali pirates.
- May 3, 2007: Merchant vessel hijacked approximately 12 miles north of Mogadishu. As of May 17, 2007, vessel remained hijacked by Somali pirates.
- May 14, 2007: Merchant vessel evaded a piracy attack approximately 180 nautical miles off Somalia.
- April 1, 2007: Merchant vessel hijacked shortly after arrival in Port Mogadishu anchorage. Vessel released after approximately 5 days upon payment of ransom to the Somali pirates.
- May 15, 2007: Two fishing trawlers hijacked by Somali pirates approximately 210 nautical miles off Somalia. As of May 17 2007, the fishing trawlers remained hijacked.
Although there are Coalition Forces operating in the area, they cannot be everywhere monitoring every ship that passes the coast of Somalia. The Coalition Forces cannot stop these pirate attacks on their own. They need your help to effectively deal with the pirates. You can help yourselves by keeping a safe standoff distance from Somalia, and you can help Coalition Forces by informing them of any suspicious activity that you may observe.
· Commercial vessels calling on ports in Somalia still face somewhat higher risks than those transiting sea lanes off the coast.
· Fishing vessels may also face a higher risk than vessels transiting the coast, due to their smaller size and their closer proximity to the coast.
We recommend you review MARLO Advisory 03-06 (here), dated 14 March 2006 and MARLO Advisory 14-05 (here), dated 27 Nov 2005 for information regarding possible pirate tactics and some precautionary measures ships’ crews should consider to reduce their possible exposure to a successful pirate attack.
Please monitor VHF channel 16 for advisories and report suspicious activity immediately via VHF channel 16. As always, we strongly encourage you to notify the Piracy Reporting Center (PRC) of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) immediately upon a suspected or actual attack via radio, satellite phone, or any other means available.
And more: Although the frequency of pirate attacks off the Somali coast has diminished, they are still occurring. Below we have provided some information not previously provided in MARLO Advisories, as well as some reminders from earlier advisories.
Pirates have operated at night and have cued in on ship's lights. Vessels traveling off of the coast of Somalia should use the minimal lighting that will ensure compliance with International Rules of the Road and safe navigation practices.
History of attacks suggests that: primary danger area is between latitude 0200N and 0400N, secondary danger area between 0400N and 0800N. Recommend increase in vigilant watch standers when transiting these latitudes off Somalia.
Merchants should keep their Automated Identification System (AIS) on during transits.
Merchants should keep their radar on, and should open the distance when they detect any approaching vessels on radar.
The pirates have used small boats / skiffs as well as captured dhows and fishing vessel as motherships to serve as a floating base to launch pirate attacks. Avoid all close approaches from any small boats, fishing vessels or dhows.
The Pirates have operated as far as 210 NM from the Somali Coastline by employing a mothership to stage from.
It is believed that in earlier operations, the pirates used distress calls to attract good-natured mariners to the area of attack, they could return to this tactic.
Vessels with a freeboard greater than ten feet (3.5 meters) have a much greater chance of successfully escaping a piracy attempt.
Vessels with a minimum 8-inch (20 cm) wide lip on their freeboard have a much greater chance of successfully escaping a piracy attempt. A wider lip prevents the pirate's ladder from being able to hook onto the freeboard.
Vessels that rapidly increase speed have a better record of escaping hijackings. Avoid maneuvering that will decrease speed. Choose speed over aggressive maneuvering.
Several vessels have successfully used fire hoses to repel pirate attacks.
The cruise ship "Seabourn Spirit" incorporated an acoustic hailing device in their successful efforts of repelling the pirate attack on that vessel.
http://yachtpals.com/blog/pirates-somalia
Somalia: report on situation in Mogadishu during last two months
Posted: 2007/12/29. From: Mathaba
Freelance journalist Ahmedsadik Yusuf Mohamed reports for Mathaba News about the suffering of the citizens of Somalia and some of the recent developments in its capital city Mogadishu
The war crimes in Mogadishu are more than anything imaginable. The two warring parties have shown criminal disregard for the well-being of the innocent civilians.
Thousand of the barbaric actions occur each day, done either by the Ethiopian troops or by the armed groups who offer resistance to the Ethiopian offensive, known as Al-Shabab.
The inhuman crimes committed by the Ethiopian troops and the government forces including indiscriminate firing of mortar rounds into civilian areas; heavy bombardment on large areas of the city; deployment of heavily armed forces in densely populated neighborhoods; slaughtering innocents civilians are the greatest violations of human rights Mogadishu has ever experienced.
In September 2007, the Alshabab group has waged almost daily attacks on Ethiopian and government forces and made targeted killings of civilians government officials. They repeatedly launched mortar attacks from densely populated areas of Mogadishu, jeopardizing civilian security in the area.
Since October 2007, Ethiopian forces began to march the main streets of Mogadishu, especially in Huriwa, Hodan, Wardhigley and Howlwadag. This time they behaved very widely. They began to hunt the young men and they killed any man they saw. This added to the tragedy. For this and many other reasons the armed conflict in Mogadishu has steadily escalated. The Alshabab group has received hundreds of young men who are ready to side with them and fight against the Ethiopian forces, just because they have no option but to take the gun and fight against the Ethiopian and the government forces. And there for they prepare more attacks on the Ethiopia bases in Mogadishu.
Ethiopian forces, in response, launched major counterinsurgency offensive in the city. They indiscriminately bombarded areas of the city with barrages of Katyusha rockets, mortars and artilleries, making no effort to distinguish between civilians and insurgent targets, in violation of laws of war.
A second Ethiopian offensive which came a day later targeted and destroyed additional areas of the city and added several hundred more civilians to the total death toll. The precise number of civilian casualties is not known, because one third of the civilian residents in Mogadishu were occupied by the Ethiopian troops and they kill any body they captured young or old, male or female. But estimates made about the civilian death toll range from 300 to more than 600 deaths resulting from several rounds of fighting in October and November.
Again people have started to flee the city to escape from the living hell in Mogadishu. More than 500,000 people mostly women and children have gone to the countryside around Mogadishu living under trees with out clean water and food. More over, the TFG deployed troops to all areas where the civilians have taken refuge and began to force the people to leave there, threatening them gun and some times firing the refugee camps. Many of the innocent civilians in these camps were killed and others wounded in connection with remote insurgent attacks. The TFG forces have also repeatedly harassed, detained and looted the Somali people. All these brutalities are just the tip of the ice-berg.
On the other hand, a heavy battle has occurred in Suqa-Hola in Huriwa district-Mogadishu and it has been between Ethiopian forces and insurgents and it caused a lot of casualities including death and injuries and Ethiopian troops have used mortars and bm 21.
This war has coincised Somalia's interim Prime Minister Nur "Adde" Hassan appointed his new Cabinet on Sunday.
Prime Minister Nur Adde's new Cabinet, which consists of 31 ministers, is dominated by members of parliament and Cabinet ministers under the government of previous Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Geddi.
Mogadishu's former warlords, who are MPs, are not members in the new Cabinet, but two officials outside of MPS were appointed to lead the ministries of information and foreign affairs, according to the list released to the media.
But many former ministers were simply returned to their posts, including the ministers of internal affairs, petroleum, education, and health.
Report by: Ahmedsadik Yusuf Mohamed (Freelancer)
Mogadishu-Somalia
Email: saadaqcade@yahoo.com
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=576217
Law in Somalia: Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It
By Yumi Kim
Somalia is in the news again. Rival gangs are shooting each other, and why? The reason is always the same: the prospect that the weak-to-invisible transitional government in Mogadishu will become a real government with actual power.
The media invariably describe this prospect as a "hope." But it's a strange hope that is accompanied by violence and dread throughout the country. Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming.
As even the CIA factbook admits:
"Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia's service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu's main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security."
To understand more about the country without a government, turn to The Law of the Somalis, written by Michael van Notten (1933-2002) and edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum, sheds light on the little known Somali law, culture and economic situation. Somalia is often cited as an example of a stateless society where chaos is the "rule" and warlords are aplenty.
The BBC's country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: "Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people."
The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia's telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled.
As for Somalia being lawless, Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who married into the Samaron Clan and lived the last dozen years of his life with them, specifically challenges that portrayal. He explains that Somalia is a country based on customary law. The traditional Somali system of law and politics, he contends, is capable of maintaining a peaceful society and guiding the Somalis to prosperity. Moreover, efforts to re-establish a central government or impose democracy on the people are incompatible with the customary law.
Van Notten distinguishes between the four meanings of the word "law" — statutory, contractual, customary, and natural law. The common misunderstanding is that legitimate rules only come from formally established entities and that therefore a country without a legislature is lawless. Refuting that misunderstanding, van Notten explains that a perfectly orderly and peaceful country can exist when people respect property rights and honor their contracts. While natural laws denote peace, liberty, and friendly relations, statutory laws represent commands. Statutory laws reflect the preferences of legislators, who impose "morality" on those they govern and regulate their ability to voluntarily enter into contracts. This, according to van Notten, is wrong from the standpoint of both morality and law.
Customary laws develop in a country like Somalia in the absence of a central legislating body. Rules "emerge spontaneously as people go about their daily business and try to solve the problems that occasionally arise in it without upsetting the patterns of cooperation on which they so heavily depend" (Van Notten, 15: 2005). Van Notten contends that the Somali customary law closely follows the natural law and therefore should be preserved.
The extended family is the core of Somali society. Families descended from common great grandparent form a jilib, the basic independent jural unit, and a number of jilibs in turn form a clan. Each family, jilib, and clan has its own judge, whose role is to facilitate the handling of disputes by deciding where the liability lies and what compensation should be paid. For example if a man is murdered, the murderer's clan gives the victim's clan one hundred camels (the blood price). Verdicts are widely discussed, and a judge who does not base his decision on norms prevailing in the community is unlikely to be asked to settle further disputes. Thus while a judge may form his own principles, his customers will decide his competence as a judge.
The family of the successful plaintiff can resort to self-help to enforce a payment, or the court can order the men of the community to do so. Every clansman is insured by his jilib. For instance, if A violates B's right and it is held that A should pay compensation to B, A's jilib will provide the compensation. Hence the jilib functions as "a safety net, venture capital, protection, and insurance" (Van Notten, 74: 2005).
If a clan member constantly violates others' rights and his jilib repeatedly pays compensation, the jilib can expel him. On the other hand, there is nothing to stop someone from leaving his jilib and joining another, if it will have him, or setting up his own. A person without a jilib is unthinkable, an outlaw, because he is not insured against liabilities he might incur toward others. Hence he loses all protection of the law.
Decisions are enforced and oaths taken in ways that may seem unsophisticated or odd, yet they are the custom and must be respected. If, for instance, the defendant refuses to comply with the verdict without appealing his case to a higher court, he can be tied to a tree covered with black ants until he agrees. When evidence is sketchy or lacking, several types of oaths are available. A strong oath is one that is repeated fifty times. Another type is a divorce oath. If a man testifies under divorce oath and it is later found that his testimony was false, his marriage becomes null and void.
Independent extended families being the basic social and economic unit does have its weaknesses. While clansmen are under no obligation to share their wealth with other clans, they must share it to a significant extent within the clan. Van Notten notes this as a drawback and states that the "law makes clansmen somewhat a prisoner of their clan." Since individuals differ in their productivity, it is inevitable that some family members will benefit from more successful members. In addition, as a way of promoting internal cohesion, extended families may foment animosity against other families. Van Notten also writes that foreigners are not recognized under Somali law unless they marry into a clan or come under the protection of a Somali patron.
This has important economic implications. For example, because land cannot be sold outside the clan, foreigners would generally be prohibited from purchasing it. One way to work with this might be land leasing, which is possible under customary law. Somali elders suggested to Van Notten that a group of foreign investors could form their own 'clan' on a leased territory and develop it, say for a free port, on a land-lease basis.
An important discussion centers around democracy. In 1960, when the British and Italian colonizers withdrew from Somalia, they formed the government of the Republic of Somalia as a democratic entity. Nine years later, the country was under a dictatorship. Through these events, according to van Notten, many Somalis realized that they could return to their traditional form of governance founded on independent clans.
Nevertheless, since 1991, the United Nations has made efforts to promote the establishment of a democratic government in Somalia. Van Notten strongly argues that such government is incompatible with the Somali customary law, which prizes life, liberty, and property. He asserts that democracy is not even a viable option:
"When the electorate is composed of close-knit tribal, religious, linguistic or ethnic communities, the people invariably vote, not on the merits of any issue, but for the party of their own community. The community with the greatest numbers wins the election, and the minority parties then put rebellion and secession at the top of their political agenda. That is nothing but a recipe for chaos." (van Notten, 127; 2005)
Van Notten contends that the argument that a central government is a prerequisite for making treaties with foreign government agencies is flawed because the Somalis have long dealt with foreign governments and their agencies on a clan-by-clan basis. A common ministry of foreign affairs would pose a grave danger because it would undermine the customary law. He suggests that clans sharing a common interest could appoint a private company as their common agent. Van Notten and MacCallum further dispute that a central government is needed to provide "public" services. They propose the establishment of freeports, land-leasing, and commercial insurance companies. Certain sectors such as telecommunications have been thriving in Somalia's free market and government regulation could only hinder their growth.
Questions arise as to rampageous warlords when discussing a country without a central government. Van Notten explains that warlords exist because of the efforts to form a central government, not because of its absence: "A democratic government has every power to exert dominion over people. To fend off the possibility of being dominated, each clan tries to capture the power of that government before it can become a threat. Those clans that didn't share in the spoils of political power would realize their chances of becoming part of the ruling alliance were nil. Therefore, they would rebel and try to secede. That would prompt the ruling clans to use every means to suppress these centrifugal forces… in the end all clans would fight with one another." (van Notten, 136; 2005)
He thus asserts that efforts by the United Nations are not only futile, but also harmful to the Somalis.
Van Notten calls for documentation of clan law systems to facilitate doing business with foreigners, especially, on a nationwide scale. He argues that by compiling all the major jurisprudence under Somali law, the customary law will more readily evolve into a coherent body of common law. But if each clan is only bound by its own rules and custom, and if the Somalis so far never felt the need for the "merger of clan law systems," why would compiling rules of all different clans be necessary? Moreover, it is unclear how such a task can effectively be undertaken when the customary law evolves constantly, and clans have a nomadic character.
The book does not contain information regarding the Somali presidential election in 2004, which took place in Kenya. Efforts to construct a formal government continue but they appear to be in vain, inspiring hope in UN bureaucrats and the news media, but only fear and loathing in Mogadishu and the rest of the country.
Yumi Kim studied law in London, where she now works in financial services.
http://www.mises.org/story/2066
Somalia: Draft Media Law Imposes Overbroad Restrictions, Excessive Government Control, Says Article 19
Article 19 (London) PRESS RELEASE. 14 January 2008
ARTICLE 19 today released its analysis of the draft Somali Media Law, which seeks to establish a broad regulatory framework for all media in Somalia. Although the draft Law does include some positive features, it seeks to subject all media to a largely government controlled regulatory regime and imposes a number of overbroad restrictions on what may be published or broadcast.
The draft Law, approved by the Transitional Federal Parliament on the first reading in December 2007, starts out with an important statement on freedom of the media which refers to international standards and specifically the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the basis for this freedom. Article 2 also provides that the media shall not be subjected to censorship and shall not be required to carry messages on behalf of either the government or the opposition.
However, the bulk of the draft Law establishes a regulatory framework for the media - defined very broadly to cover not only print media and broadcasters but any system for disseminating messages, including drawings, books and even speeches - which is largely controlled by the government. The members of the National Media Council established by the draft Law are nominated by the private and public media, but formally appointed by the Minister of Information. Key roles, such as registering and authorising media outlets, are undertaken by the Minister, not the Council. Furthermore, the draft Law specifically provides that the Minister is responsible for the State media, which includes radio, television, newspapers, news agencies, a printer and even poets.
The draft Law also imposes a wide range of constraints on media output. The media are called upon to promote a number of general social interests such as Islam, justice, culture, democracy and State unity. They are also subject to a number of prohibitions, such as jeopardising Islam or national unity, endangering national stability, disseminating false information or national secrets, or displaying pictures that 'can spread shock within the community'. Journalists are also directly subject to similar bans. These restrictions are unduly vague, overbroad and, in some cases, simply illegitimate as restrictions on freedom of expression.
ARTICLE 19 urges the Somali authorities to revise the draft Law substantially to bring it into line with international standards, with a view to promoting the development of a free and vibrant media in Somalia.
Notes on the Draft Media Law of Somalia.
http://www.article19.org/pdfs/analysis/somalia-notes-on-draft-media-law.pdf
http://home.arcor.de/danneskjoeld/X/Som/
The Law of the Somalis
A Stable Foundation for Economic Development In the Horn of Africa
Michael van Notten
Edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum
Written by a trained and sympathetic observer, this book shows how Somali customary law differs fundamentally from most statutory law. Lawbreakers, instead of being punished, are simply required to compensate their victim. Because every Somali is insured by near kin against his or her liabilities under the law, a victim seldom fails to receive compensation. Somali law, being based on custom, has no need of legislation or legislators. It is therefore happily free of political influences. The author notes some specific areas that stand in need of change, but finds such change already implicit in further economic development. Somali politics is based on consensus. The author explains how it works and shows why any attempt to establish democracy, which would divide the population into two classes-those who rule and those who are ruled-must inevitably produce chaos. Viewed in global perspective, Somali law stands with the Latin and Medieval laws and the English common law against the statutory law that became prominent in Europe with the modern nationstate. This book explains many seeming anomalies about present-day Somalia and describes its prospects as well as the dangers facing it.
Born in Zeist, the Netherlands, MICHAEL VAN NOTTEN (1933-2002) graduated from Leiden University in Law and was admitted into practice in Rotterdam. Following the demise of central government in Somalia, he anticipated that Somalia might take its place in the world as a stateless society. Marrying into the Samaron clan, he promoted economic development in Awdal for the last twelve years of his life. he became a careful observer of Somali customary law and a keen analyst of the intricacies of clan politics.
SPENCER HEATH MACCALLUM is a social anthropologist living in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, where he played a central role in the economic development of the village of Mata Ortiz, now known internationally for its fine-art pottery. He has long studied the feasibility of social organization without taxation. He is the author of THE ART OF COMMUNITY and numerous journal articles.
Introduction
This book tells the story of a nation organised on the basis of folk law, or custom. This is unusual, since most nations in the world today are based on statutory law, or legislation. Statutory law is designed by politicians, whereas customary law consists of the rules that judges discern in the customary behaviour of people.
For most of its existence, humankind lived by customary law. But in very recent centuries statutory law, consisting mainly of regulation imposed by domestic or foreign rulers, has become the norm. This happened in Somalia as it did elsewhere. In 1991, however, the Somalis returned to their customary law. The Somali nation is the first in modern history to do that.
Somalis are strongly attached to their customary law, and they cherish the judges who adjudicate and enforce it. Foreigners may regard this as stubborn chauvinism, but Somalis believe they have good reasons. In this book I shall analyse their reasons, first describing their law as it functions today and then evaluating it to see why it is that, despite a number of evident weaknesses, Somalis value it so highly. I shall then speculate in what direction the Somali nation might develop and the effects that could have on other African nations. Finally, I shall evaluate United Nations policy with respect to Somalia.
The media often suggest that the political turmoil in Somalia is symptomatic of problems afflicting the entire African continent. They are right. The problems are largely a legacy of the colonial era and are much the same everywhere. Before Africa was colonised, nearly all African societies were based on customary law. Foreigners were welcome to visit or settle provided they respected their law. However, the European colonisers had other ideas. They set out to dominate the local populations. They did so by applying brute force to impose their colonial rule and its legal system. When the colonial era came to an end, the colonial administrators hastily trained a few indigenous politicians in the art of governing and set up each new nation with its own government. They modelled these governments on political democracy, despite the fact that such a political and legal system did not suit Africa. They did so because political democracy is premised on statutory law, which suited their own near-term interests.
The indigenous politicians soon flooded their countries with statutory laws, enacting these primarily to extort money from the population. Predictably, the inhabitants rebelled. Some rebelled in order to do some legal extorting themselves, but others only wanted to defend themselves from such extortion and preserve their own freedom. Indeed, not all of the political unrest in Africa has been due to the avarice of individuals wanting a larger slice of the central government's revenues. Some rebels have been motivated by a desire to preserve their customary laws and institutions.
How Europe Abandoned Customary Law
It was not long ago that something similar happened in the Western world. As recently as the eighteenth century, the bulk of law in Europe and North America was still based on custom. The massive change to statutory law first occurred in Napoleonic France following the 1789 Revolution. Politicians of other nations soon followed the French example.
At first, the attempt was to codify the customary law and make it conform to general principles of law and justice. It was thought that by weeding out the anomalies, injustices and other instances of corruption that had accumulated over time in the customary law, codification would prepare the way for a true "rule of law." All too often, the corruption of the customary law had provided a pretext for rulers to substitute their own legal order for the customary order. A purified customary law would destroy that pretext. It would make it possible to limit the role of the state to the formal administration of justice, the substance of which would be found in customary law. This idea provided the core of the program for constitutional government that many thinkers had begun to advocate in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as an antidote against the arbitrariness of absolutist royal rule. But the program contained a fatal flaw.
In the era of royal absolutism, a doctrine of "legislative sovereignty" had arisen and come to be accepted by most people. The doctrine implied that a group of rulers, calling themselves legislators, could make and impose any rule or regulation they wanted. The only proviso was that in so doing, they should act legally, in accordance with procedures they or their predecessors had prescribed. Although the program for constitutional government called for a drastic revision of the doctrine of legislative sovereignty, it nevertheless, despite the absolutist connotation, assumed that doctrine as a premise.
In the constitutional program, legislative sovereignty was to be restricted in two ways. First, legislative power was to be transferred from an unaccountable king to representatives of the people, who could be removed from office in periodic elections. Second, that legislative authority was to be limited in its scope to the formal organization and operation of the state apparatus itself. While the people themselves would be subject only to the “rule of law,” meaning the customary law, state and other political officials would be constrained, in addition, by “legal rules” imposed by the people. In short, the principle of legality would apply only to officials. It would not apply to ordinary individuals except on those rare occasions when they chose to act in an official capacity, as voters in a general election or as members of juries. In their daily life and work, they would be expected to conform to the general requirements of law, which meant in particular having respect for other persons and their property, good faith in contractual relations, and personal responsibility and liability for their own acts.
All of this was essential if the program for the constitutional state was to work. The purpose was not to create yet another institution of the rule of some over others, but to create an institution that would guarantee people their freedom while keeping the organisations of political power on a short leash. To ensure that political power would not be used to benefit some at the expense of others, but only to administer justice and maintain the order of law, required a strict separation of society and state.
Unfortunately, the representatives of the people soon extended their legislative power to cover not officials alone, but also private individuals and their families, associations, and organisations. They thought nothing of interfering with the requirements of natural and customary law, which they regarded as no more than another set of legal rules.
Thus began a process of weaning the population from a concern for natural law and justice and habituating it to accept the arbitrary commands of the rulers, all under the pretext that they, as elected officials, merely executed the desires of the people.
People began to feel increasing need to form associations (political parties and pressure groups) to secure legal powers, privileges and immunities, and material benefits for themselves, and to impose the costs of these advantages on others in the form of taxes and regulations. Increasingly, they came to realize that political power and influence often provided an easier path to their goals than the lawful instruments of work, saving, investing, and forming voluntary associations.
Thus, the separation of society and state gave way on the one hand to an extensive politicisation of social life, and on the other to an equally extensive socialisation of politics. No longer was the state seen to have its raison d’être in the administration of justice. Instead, it now came to be seen as a tool that could serve any group or organisation for whatever purpose that group or organization could place on the political agenda.
At the root of this development was the assumption that the authority to codify implied authority to modify the natural and customary law. This had sparked a lively debate in the early nineteenth century between supporters and adversaries of the customary law. Prominent in the debate were the German professors Friedrich Karl von Savigny and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.1 Savigny held that customary law is the only true law, and he feared that with codification it would stultify and die. Hegel, on the other hand, thought codification was necessary; he thought the customary law should be systematised, strengthened, and written down in a legal code. But both opposed the idea of modifying it.2
For Europe, this spirited defence of the customary law came too late. The cult of national legislative sovereignty had emboldened its politicians to discard the long tradition of customary law. In a short time, almost all law on the European continent became statutory. Politicians came to be seen as the sole originators of the law. The result was that people became less free and less well off than they would have been had the system of customary law continued; for Europe’s customary laws during previous centuries had more or less closely approximated natural law. Natural law implies a respect for property rights and for freedom of contract, whereas statutory law mostly infringes those rights and that freedom.
In Africa, customary law is still very much alive. People tend to follow it. They abhor the statutory laws made by politicians and only obey them when forced. Much of the political turmoil in Africa is caused by the fact that Africans find statutory laws oppressive; abolishing statutory laws, many believe, would end much of that political turmoil.
When the Italian, British, and French colonisers withdrew from the Horn of Africa in the 1960s and '70s, Somalis should have made their customary law the supreme law of the land as it had been from time immemorial before the colonial period. The traditional law system was still operational, the reason being that the colonial governments had abolished it only in their own dealings with the local population. Relations among their subjects being of little concern to them, they had left the settlement of violent conflict such as murder, rape, and robbery largely to the Somalis. But on departing, the colonisers pushed the Somalis into establishing legal and political structures like those of Italy, England and France, insensitive to the fact that these structures, now almost wholly imbued with statutory law after the victory of the doctrine of legislative sovereignty, reflected a culture totally unlike that of the Africans. The result was that the Somalis found themselves at the mercy of a government soon to become an enemy of the common people and a destroyer of the economy.
The government of the Republic of Somalia began in 1960 as a democracy. Nine years later, it became a dictatorship. When in 1978 the Republic of Somalia lost its war with Ethiopia, Somalis realised that both democracy and dictatorship had totally failed them. Many wished for an opportunity to return to their traditional form of governance. That opportunity came in 1991 when, on the ouster of dictator Siad Barre, no consensus emerged for appointing a new head of the Republic. In that stalemate the government disintegrated, and its erstwhile citizens returned to their traditional system of law and politics.
The transition was not easy and is still far from complete, for the demise of the central government did little to end the ravaging of Somali society and culture that it had set in motion, especially in the area around Mogadishu, the former capitol. The reason is that the expectation, actively promoted by the United Nations, that a central government would be re-established in the near future led clan militias and remnants of the former government into armed conflict, often in disregard of customary law and their elders. Each group manoeuvred to be in the most favourable position to capture the formidable array of powers of the future government when it was re-established. Because any clan that controlled the government could be expected to use it in the interest of its own members at the expense of all others, each felt compelled in self-defence to enter the fray. In this situation, order could only resume when the expectation of a central government receded. But the United Nations has spent billions keeping that expectation alive.
What is Overlooked in Somalia
Many commentators describe Somalia today as lawless and chaotic. But that description makes no sense. Most Somalis abide by their customary law and respect the verdicts of their courts of justice. Disorder prevails only in those few areas where politicians of the defunct Somali Republic, frequently called “warlords,” still try to impose their will.
What commentators miss is that traditional Somali society is organised more or less like the Internet. Like that communications system, the Somali way of maintaining law and order has no head or tail. Its system of governance has no executive and no legislature. It functions without a minister of justice or a supreme court, and yet it provides for rule making and adjudication. Many outsiders fail to understand how this works. Because they see no one making and enforcing laws, they think there are no laws. Consequently they propose that the Somalis establish a democracy. They overlook the fact that democracy is incompatible with the egalitarian character of Somali society. Somalis strongly oppose being divided into two political groups, those that rule and those that are ruled. And that is precisely what democracy does.
A complicating factor in understanding Somali society is that, during the past 30 years, a million or more Somalis have emigrated to Europe and North America. From there, they have become a highly vocal political lobby in their country of origin. These Somalis are enjoying every advantage of the clan system while being spared most of its disadvantages. The advantages they enjoy are mutual support and comradeship. The main disadvantage they are spared is the clans’ destructive involvement in politics. While these Somalis of the diaspora see that the clan structure has become a system pitting all clans and even all sub-clans against one another, they generally fail to detect the cause. They don’t see that the clan system only became such a monster with the introduction of democracy. They also overlook the fact that the essence of Somali society consists not in the clans, but in the customary law. Finally, they don’t understand that "the West" owes its wealth not to democracy, but rather to the protection of property rights, and that democracy is undermining and destroying those rights.
Because of these weaknesses in their political analysis, Westernised Somalis see no solution for the difficulties of the clan system but to abolish the entire traditional political and legal structure of Somali society. So they propose introducing one or another form of democracy, without realizing that in doing so they are unwittingly compounding the problem.
Of the many books that have been written about the Somalis, those of I.M. Lewis excel in their scholarly approach. Almost everything he has found corresponds with what I have discovered myself. Like Lewis, I found that the Somali nation consists of many independent families, each with its own government. The average family consists of from 600 to 6,000 people. Officials of these “family governments” perform their duties on a part-time basis and are remunerated by those who require their services—their clients. These family governments form more or less temporary alliances with other family governments, depending on the policy they happen to pursue. The Somali system of governance, therefore, is best described as a network of independent organisations, each exercising its authority over a particular extended family irrespective of where its members reside. This is indeed unusual. Most governments in the world consist of a single organisation exercising authority over all the people within a given territory, irrespective of their relationship to each other.
Given this character of the Somali political system, and the attachment that the Somalis have to it, Lewis correctly concludes that all efforts to establish a Western type of democracy in Somalia will be doomed to fail.
It is at this point that I wish to enter the public discussion on Somalia. Most observers of the Somali political scene suggest that the Somalis need to improve their structure of law and politics. But that is more easily said than done. Which laws and which institutions should be changed, and how should the people effect such change? In this book, I shall endeavour to give some answers to those questions.
Notes
1 Savigny, Vom Beruf unsrer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (1815). G.W.F Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts; Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse (1821).
2 “No greater insult could be offered to a civilised people or to its lawyers than to deny them ability to codify their law; for such ability cannot be that of constructing a legal system with a novel content, but only that of apprehending, i.e. grasping in thought, the content of existing laws in its determinate universality and then applying them to particular cases.” (Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, quoted from the translation by T.M. Knox, Hegels’s Philosophy of Right, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1952, paperback issue 1967, p.136).
http://home.arcor.de/danneskjoeld/X/Som/Introduction.html
1. Michael van Notten. FROM NATION-STATE TO STATELESS NATION: THE SOMALI EXPERIENCE
http://www.liberalia.com/htm/mvn_stateless_somalis.htm
2. Alan Bock. Is Somalia a Model?
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b042903.html
3. Book Review: Michael van Notten:
THE LAW OF THE SOMALIS
Norbert Lennartz, Feb. 2006.
http://home.arcor.de/danneskjoeld/F/E/T/LawSomalis.html
lawanddevelopment.org exploring the links between law and economic development
Soft Law, Hard Compliance: The impact of international law on Somalia's informal banks
by Volker Hüls
The question of compliance with norms is at the heart of the international legal system. Arguably, only rules that are followed have sustained standing in the global community. Codified international law, derived from its traditional sources as defined by the Statute of the International Court of Justice, encourages such commitment through legally binding treaties between parties and judicial organs to punish deviation. However, not only do these treaties leave gaps where compromise could not be found, but they also must often reflect the lowest common denominator between the signatories.
Soft Law has increasingly become a remedy for both shortcomings of treaty law. Although often said to be a term redundant in itself, the phrase appropriately describes the numerous non-binding norms that today regulate international processes where no treaty exists. The very softness of these instruments has certain advantages. Parties to such agreements apparently accept more commitment than in a legally binding treaty simply because they can easily be abolished or renegotiated without any negative consequences. The definition process is consequently faster and less controversial than treaty negotiations.
These rules however, are not law as such, and must be hardened to make them effective. In practice this takes place through various compliance mechanisms and by incorporation into municipal law. Soft Law can therefore be seen as a transitional process rather than a permanent structure, which at its outcome will have created codified law.
International Financial Law in particular has very successfully embraced Soft Law as a way to address urgent issues swiftly and flexibly without the need to immediately conclude treaties. Factors promoting compliance such as peer- pressure, market incentives, and oversight bodies are firmly in place in this environment, supporting the use of non-binding instruments. A paradigm of soft law with high compliance is the output of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an interest group created by the G7 to combat illegal use of the international financial system. Through several mechanisms these non-binding norms are substantially hardened, making them applicable not only to members but also to entities and territories depending on these members.
The FATF process displays the advantages and disadvantages of soft law particularly in its effect on the informal funds transfer systems in Somalia. The country makes a perfect example for the impact of soft law - it has been without a government since 1991 and can therefore neither enter a treaty obligation nor can be subjected to international mechanisms to enforce existing obligations. In this case hard law instruments, through their traditional means, fail to have the intended impact. As a trade and service based economy, however, Somalia engages with other jurisdictions and is consequently exposed to their norms.
The absence of a conventional banking sector in particular has strengthened informal funds transfer companies in Somalia , which rely on interactions with the global financial system to operate. Previously unaffected by FATF rules these businesses, due to their informality, have attracted attention in the recent intensified focus on fighting terrorism and terrorist financing. New FATF guidelines now deal with terrorist financing and informal banking. Somali companies, with no government to advocate their cause, find it hard to comply with these new regulations. The hard impact of FATF soft norms on the Somali remittance systems is therefore an especially suitable model to demonstrate the advantages and the disadvantages of soft international law.
http://www.lawanddevelopment.org/articles/hardcompliance.html
The Challenge of Nation Building and the Rule of Law in Somalia: Roundtable Discussion
Centre for Developing-Area Studies – McGill University
Participants: Ali Mohamed Mohamud (Hareed), Minister of State for Defense, Somalia Abdulla Hussein, International Consultant Mohamed M. Kassim, Seneca College (Toronto) Moderator: Professor Philip Oxhorn, Director, CDAS
Ali Mohamed Mohamud (Hareed), Minister of State for Defense, Somalia:
The Challenge of Nation Building and the Rule of Law in Somalia.
The reconciliation effort currently underway in Somalia is the fruit of the initiative of the Inter-Governmental Agency (IGA), which includes Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and supported by the African Union and the League of Arab States. It begun in 2002 with the Somali National Reconciliation Conference held in Nairobi, Kenya, and culminated with the creation of a new Somali government, which relocated to Somali territory on 13 June 2005.
The conference included all active political forces in Somalia and involved traditional leaders, local and international NGOs, warlords, businessmen and politicians. It created a 275-member Transitional Federal Parliament, selected using the 4.5 formula: an equal number of deputies was assigned to each of Somalia’s four major clans, while half that number was allocated to other recognized sub-clans and groups. While the Parliament was not elected, it is assumed to be representative of the Somali population and thus legitimate.
The IGA created an intervention force that secured a portion of Somali territory, to which the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) relocated in June 2005. The new Somalia government in collaboration with the local administration of the Middle Shabelle region in southern Somalia secured a portion of that territory and relocated there in June 2005. However, the decision of the UN Security Council not to lift the Somali arms embargo meant that the government is still handicapped in its pacification mission and training of a new Somali national security force. This refusal was due to alleged divisions within the TFG, despite the fact that only two warlords did not support its goals. This remains the most important challenge facing the TFG and a major source of frustration vis-à-vis the international community. While the TFG has been unable to equip and train its security forces, opposition warlords have been able to purchase arms on the black market. It is important to note that the strength of the warlords is due exclusively to their financial wealth relative to the TFG; their support is not clan-based and their recruits would willingly abandon the warlords if alternative economic opportunities were available to them.
Other challenges facing the TFG are its lack if resources (the TFG has barely any tax base), its incapacity to properly house its members and the reduced territory where it can actually exercise its authority. Nevertheless, the TFG has advanced in recruiting and training personnel for its new security forces, in claiming the moral leadership of the Somali nation through peaceful means and in beginning to create a peaceful and prosperous area around the city of Jawhar (the current seat of the TFG). Given its lack of resources, the TFG approach can only be gradual and sometimes piecemeal.
The situation of Mogadishu –Somalia’s capital city–, however, displays the TFG’s daunting pending tasks: the city has a very high level of insecurity, it is a drug-lord and terrorist haven and the local warlords are steadfastly opposed to the extension of the TFG’s authority (two attempts on the life of the TFG President have taken place in Mogadishu).
Overcoming these obstacles, however, and achieving the TFG objectives of full nationhood, pacification and rule of law requires the cooperation of the international community; namely the lifting of the UN arms embargo and the granting of international assistance funds. In conclusion, the Minister made a special appeal to the government and academic community of Canada, home of a large segment of the Somali Diaspora, to intervene of behalf of the TFG before the international community.
Abdulla Hussein, International Consultant: Rehabilitation of Somali Higher Education.
Somalia’s educational system reflects both the vagaries of its colonial history and the political instability and uncertainty of the post-independence period. The fact that colonial Somalia was divided between Britain and Italy meant that, at independence, the country had two different, and largely incompatible, educational systems. Moreover, a mere 5% of the population was literate and there were only three secondary schools in the entire country.
The military regime (1969-1990) made some efforts at making education more widely available. It overhauled the entire education system, introduced Somali as the only teaching language in primary and secondary schools (replacing English, Italian and Arabic) and engaged in strong literacy and secondary education campaigns. In the end, it succeeded in raising the literacy rate to 50%.
However, the country’s political decay since the late 1980s meant that much of this progress has been lost in recent years. The civil war devastated the Somali education system by destroying existing networks, facilities and teaching materials. Many schools and even the Somali National University (SNU) were requisitioned as shelters for displaced persons.
Higher education in Somalia began in 1950 with the creation of the School of Politics and Administration (later renamed School of Public Finance and Commerce), which offered a three-year programme. In 1958, a teacher-training institute opened, followed in 1959 by a High Institute of Law and Economics. These schools became the basis for the creation of SNU in 1970. Moreover, Italy agreed to recognize these programmes as partial credit in Italian universities.
Before the collapse of the Somali government and the ensuing civil strife, 15% of secondary school graduates attend SNU with full scholarships. The University had 9 faculties, 490 staff and 3700 students. Performance, however, varied widely across faculties: while Science and Economics had very low graduation rates (20-30%), the social sciences achieved a rate of 70-80%.
In recent years, some efforts have been made to rehabilitate the Somali education system. Many private schools have appeared; however, they cater exclusively to the wealthier sectors of the population. In some peaceful areas (i.e. Somaliland), new community colleges and universities have been established, offering degrees in business, finance and education.
However, the system faces severe quality problems and a persistent lack of staff and of a uniform accreditation system. Important work is being done towards achieving these goals and it is expected that the current system will serve as a base for future developments. Disarming the private militias, however, is a prerequisite in achieving quality education in Somalia.
Dr. Hussein concluded by making a number of recommendations. The most important among these was to seek more international support for these efforts, as they are a precondition for achieving law and order in the country. This can be also achieved by luring the Somali Diaspora into investing its capital and human resources in the reconstruction of the country.
Mohamed M. Kassim, Seneca College (Toronto): Hawala Remittances
Somalia is unique in that it constitutes the sole existing case in which a country has continued to exist in spite of 15 years of continuous statelessness. In these conditions, the emergence and growth of a remittance system —the hawala system— that brings Somalia an income of between 0.5 and 1 billion US dollars (in World Bank figures) is quite surprising.
The hawala system is based on a combination of ancient trade credit systems, dating as far back as the Indian Ocean trade system of the 15th century, trust-based networks that involve language, ethnicity and kinship, as well as modern communication systems such as cell phone networks and off-shore banking. The result is an efficient, fast and reliable remittance system.
The growth of the hawala system is even more surprising if one takes into account that the Somali Diaspora is composed of a large number of working-class and single-mother families, which remit up to 30% of their meagre income, thus pauperizing themselves in the process. Most transactions involve sums of less than 400 Canadian dollars.
It is clear that remittances are destined to be a diminishing resource, as the younger generations abandon the strictures of the kinship system and turn to their own needs. Nevertheless, the current system opens an opportunity of creating a well-established financial system in Somalia, one that takes the cultural features of the country into account, but also makes full use of the innovative procedures modern technology offers.
To make use of this opportunity, however, the international community needs to get involved in the reconstruction of the Somali state. This is not a new or singular endeavour, Dr. Kassim pointed out: this was also the case of France, which required enormous exogenous resources to reconstruct after the end of Nazi occupation in the 1940s and is now a flourishing economy.
Discussion
During the open discussion that followed the presentations, the audience, which included McGill faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, questioned the presenters on the nature of the opposition to the TFG, to the problems of establishing governance after a Civil War in the absence of both a clear winner and of foreign intervention, on the role of the Somali Diaspora in the reconciliation process and on the non-economic dimensions of security in Somalia.
The presenters concurred in stating that law and order remained the main challenge to the TFG and that more economic resources —in the form of international assistance— were needed, both to train new national security forces and to fully co-opt the opposition (most notably two dissident warlords and/or their followers) into the TFG. In the absence of economic resources, and consequently of law and order, issues such as establishing an autonomous taxation base for the government, attracting foreign direct investment, restoring the education system and developing national sentiment could hardly be tackled. The presenters again emphasized the exclusively economic basis of the opposition’s power, an example of what Dr. Kassim referred to as “ethnic entrepreneurialism.”
The inclusive, decentralized nature of the TFG warrants it legitimate status in political circles, according to the presenters. They all insisted, especially the Minister, that the arrival of international support would produce immediate positive changes in the situation on the ground. Given the unique conditions of the Somali case, foreign assistance should precede, rather than follow, the full consolidation of the transitional government.
Rapporteur: Julián Durazo Herrmann.
http://www.mcgill.ca/files/cdas/Challenge.pdf
The Real Agenda Of The Global Elite In Somalia
Neocons are backing the same warlords that slaughtered US troops in 1993
http://infowars.net. Infowars.net. 2007
This week has seen the latest example of the US power elite bombing a broken-backed country in the name of the global 'war on terror'. The phantom menace of 'Al Qaeda' has again provided a pretext
for the further destruction and destabilization of struggling state, this time Somalia, in order that the Western elite power-mongers can move in and control its valuable resources.
The Bush Administration is essentially asking us to expect to believe that it is bombing a country in an attempt to kill three terrorists–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazul_Abdullah_Mohammed. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that killed 225 people, and accomplices
http://www.fbi.gov/terrorinfo/nabhan.htm Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhanand
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/abu_talha_al_sudani.htm. Abu Talha al-Sudani.
The Somali government has today claimed that
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/100107strikes.htm.
four more airstrikeshave been carried out, killing more innocent people. The US has
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10275163.htm. denied this. Also today, a senior Somali politician
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/story.asp?j=88437982&p=88438z84&n=88438362. said US troops were neededon the ground to fight a Muslim extremist threat.
Monday's strike reportedly killed around 200 people, including
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=8e1669fd-9a6a-4ea1-a1ee-13a86759d5ff&k=24339. Canadian and
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.1112324.0.brits_killed_in_us_strikes.php. British citizens.
Critics of the action have said it could misfire by creating strong Somali resentment and feeding Islamist militancy. Analysts fear that US interfering and backing of one Somali faction gainst another could ignite an Iraqi-style insurgency across a swath of East Africa.
There is no doubt that this is a part of the escalation of the wider war of aggression planned and executed by the neoconservatives who published their Project For the New American Century before they came to power.
"Before this, it was just tacit support for Ethiopia. Now the U.S. has fingerprints on the intervention and is going to be held more accountable," said Horn of Africa expert Ken Menkhaus. "This has the potential for a backlash both in Somalia and the region."
The truth is that, once again, the terror myth is being promulgated as an excuse to unleash violence against a largely innocent Muslim population, and one that has struggled for a peaceful existence for decades.
As prominent blogger Kurt Nimmo has stated: quot;In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Shariah, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation." Last December, the popular ICU lost control of the country after a short lived form of peace. The UIC had controlled Mogadishu and other areas of the country after defeating several local warlords who held Somalia in the grip of terror since the collapse of central rule in 1991. The Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.
15,000 Ethiopian troops, with U.S. backing, invaded in an illegal war of aggression and ousted the IUC leaders who fled to the southern-most tip of the country.
Many Somalis in areas controlled by the UIC welcomed the security and order that the Islamists brought to the country. The Bush Administration is playing on reports that the Islamists are 'Taliban like' and is lumping them in with 'Al Qaeda' terrorists.
But the UIC does not appear to be a monolithic organization and seems split between moderates who want peace and dialogue and more right wing Muslims who want to impose Muslim Sharia law. In any case
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1576099,00.html. neither have the means or the desireto commit an almighty Jihad against the West, they are simply concerned with creating some kind of law and order within Somalia.
The US response has been to provide major funding to the warlord groupings, via the Ethiopian army, that are opposed to the UIC. Before bombing the hell out of villages on Monday, the Bush Administration has long been providing backing to ruthless killers intent on keeping Somalia in civil strife because it benefits each warlord's plundering rule to keep the nation carved up.
These are the same marauding warlords who drove out American forces in 1993, killing and maiming 18 US troops in the streets then dragging their bodies around in celebration.
Many of these warlords were part of the puppet regime transitional "government" that had been organized in Kenya in 2004. But the "government" was so devoid of internal support
that it had to turn to Somalia's arch enemy, Ethiopia, to maintain control.
So why are the US power elite funding sectarian warlords in Somalia and now bombing Islamist areas of the country?
Because the control of Somalia via puppet government, just like in Iraq, is a key factor in the Neocon plan to "shrink the non-integrating gap" of the new world order, as
http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/september2004/200904newmap.htm. Thomas Barnett's 'New Map'of the world has it.
As with Iraq, the real agenda is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea.
Not surprising then that
http://www.janes.com/defence/news/jni/jni070110_1_n.shtml. multiple US warships and Ticonderoga-class cruisersare now stalking the coastline off Somalia and routinely sending intelligence-gathering flights over the country. The location is also prime in order to be able to instantly mobilize forces for any conflict with Iran at the drop of a hat. The American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips also hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, “corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia’s most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified,” - i.e. kill the "Islamofascists" and install a weak and pandering government that could never control its own resources well enough to compete with the Western global elite.
“Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001,” writes
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHI20060527&articleId=2524. Larry Chin. “This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia’s resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire.” “A new US cleansing of Somalian ‘tyranny’ would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia,” notes
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ENG502A.html. F. William Engdahl. “Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea.”
Of course the American public will simply be told that we're after 'Al Qaeda' because of 9/11, and they will buy it again. No matter that operatives involved in the African bombings at the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were admittedly
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/211106_b_Spy.htm">working for the CIA. Nah, that's a side issue, LOOK AMERICA,
http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=1973487&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.4.1.Al Zawahiri said Somalia is Islamofascist, so we gotta bomb the hell out of it and control it's oil - just get used to it.
http://www.infowars.net/articles/january2007/100107Somalia_Bombing.htm
AFROL Gender Profiles: Somalia
Somalia is recovering from a period of ten years without a central Government and civil war. Even before this, the country was ridden by poverty and women's situation was difficult. Thus, there is little reliable data available from Somalia from the lost decade of the 1990's. We know, however, that the Somali society, basically rural, is mostly traditionalist and holds on to Muslim and non-Muslim practices. As there has been no central Government for ten years to enforce the law, one can expect that traditional law has only grown stronger. The Somali interpretations of Islam are generally not favourable to women's rights, and include the almost universal practice of female genital mutilation.
Large areas of Somalia are not under control of the new government in Mogadishu. Somaliland in the northwest, drawing its history back from the British colony Somaliland, unilattery declared its return to independence in 1991. Somaliland has been polically stable since independence, but is not recognised by any country. Little is known about women's situation in Somaliland, although the country's constitution provides for equal rights, including special rights to education. The constitution is however partly based on the Muslim Shari' a laws. One can assume the tradistional practices remain strong in rural Somaliland.
The northeastern corner of the country is presently independent under the name of Puntland, a more unstable state not recognising the Mogasishu government but claiming it works for the unification of Somalia in a federal state. The situation of women in Puntland is not well known.
The legal information below will refer to Somalia under control og the Mogadishu government. Information on Somali traditional can be expected to have the same validity in Somalia proper as in Puntland and Somaliland.
Women are subordinated systematically in the country's overwhelmingly patriarchal culture. Polygyny is permitted, but polyandry is not. Under laws issued by the former government, female children could inherit property, but only half the amount to which their brothers were entitled.
According to the tradition of blood compensation, those found guilty in the death of a woman must pay only half as much to the aggrieved family as they would if the victim were a man.
Violence against women is known to exist in Somalia. About 98% of all Somali females undergo FGM. Infibulation is the form practiced. Women in Somalia averagely give birth to 7,18 children (2000 est.)
Social data
Life expectancy: Total population: 46,23 years
male: 44,66 years
female: 47,85 years (2000 est.)
Infant mortality: 125,77 deaths/1,000 live births (2000 est.)
Alphabetization rate: Total population: 24%
male: 36%
female: 14% (1990 est.)
Medical services: N.A.
Sex ratio: at birth: 1,03 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1,02 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0,81 male(s)/female
total population: 1,01 male(s)/female (2000 est.)
Religious data: Traditional African religions 1%, Muslim 99%.
Family and tradition
Women are subordinated systematically in the country's overwhelmingly patriarchal culture. Polygyny is permitted, but polyandry is not. Under laws issued by the former government, female children could inherit property, but only half the amount to which their brothers were entitled. Similarly, according to the tradition of blood compensation, those found guilty in the death of a woman must pay only half as much to the aggrieved family as they would if the victim were a man.
There is no national judicial system in Somalia. The judiciary in most regions relies on some combination of traditional and customary law, Shari 'a law, the penal code of the pre-1991 Siad Barre government, or some combination of the three. For example in Bosasso and Afmedow criminals are turned over to the families of their victims, which then exact blood compensation in keeping with local tradition. Shari 'a courts continues to operate in several regions of the country, filling the vacuum created by the absence of normal government authority. Shari 'a courts traditionally ruled in cases of civil and family law, but extended their jurisdiction to criminal proceedings in some regions beginning in 1994. In the northwest, the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland adopted a new constitution based on democratic principles, but continues to use the pre-1991 Penal Code. A U.N. report issued in September notes a serious lack of trained judges and of legal documentation in Somaliland, which cause problems in the administration of justice. In Bardera courts apply a combination of Shari 'a law and the former penal code. In south Mogadishu, a segment of north Mogadishu, the Lower Shabelle, and parts of the Gedo and Hiran regions, court decisions are based solely on Shari 'a law. The five Islamic courts operating in Mogadishu are aligned with different subclans, raising doubts about their independence. The courts generally refrained from administering the stricter Islamic punishments, like amputation, but their militias administered summary punishments, including executions, in the city and its environs. With the collapse in December 1998 of the Shari'a courts in north Mogadishu headed by Sheikh Ali Dere, the application of physical punishment appears to have ceased.
The right to representation by an attorney and the right to appeal do not exist in those areas that apply traditional and customary judicial practices or Shari 'a law. These rights more often are respected in regions that continue to apply the former government's penal code, such as Somaliland.
The traditional practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is near-universal in this country. About 98% of women undergo this harmful procedure. Infibulation, the most dangerous form of FGM, is the common practice in Somalia.
Gender sensitivity in society
Societal discrimination against women and widespread abuse of children continued to be serious problems. The 1997 Somaliland Constitution contains provisions that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and national origin.
There is no national judicial system in Somalia. The judiciary in most regions relies on some combination of traditional and customary law, Shari 'a law, the penal code of the pre-1991 Siad Barre government, or some combination of the three. This law systems are not known to favour women in any way. Shari 'a courts traditionally ruled in cases of civil and family law, but extended their jurisdiction to criminal proceedings in some regions beginning in 1994.
Several women's groups in Hargeisa in Somaliland actively promote equal rights for women and advocate the inclusion of women in responsible government positions.
Health data
Access to potable water: 69% of the population have no access to potable water.
Medical services: N.A.
Maternal mortality rate: 1.600/100.000.
Infant mortality: 125,77 deaths/1,000 live births (2000 est.)
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): About 98% of all females undergo FGM. Infibulation is the form practiced.
Female genital mutilation, which is widely condemned by international experts as damaging to both physical and psychological health, is a near-universal practice. Estimates place the percentage of women who have been subjected to FGM at 98 percent. Infibulation, the most harmful form of FGM, is practiced. The practice was illegal in 1991, when the Siad Barre government collapsed, and in Somaliland it remains illegal under the Penal Code; however, the law is not enforced. While U.N. agencies and NGO's have made intensive efforts to educate persons about the danger of FGM, no reliable statistics are available on their success.
Violence against women
Violence against women exists, although there are no reliable statistics on its prevalence. Women suffered disproportionately in the civil war and in the strife that followed. For example, there are reports that fighters loyal to warlord Hussein Aideed routinely raped women in 15 villages in southern Qoroley district.
According to the tradition of blood compensation, those found guilty in the death of a woman must pay only half as much to the aggrieved family as they would if the victim were a man.
Main sources: U.S. Department of State, CIA, Mundo negro
http://www.afrol.com/Categories/Women/profiles/somalia_women.htm
The end of one law for all?
Ethnic and religious courts are gaining ground in the UK. Will this lead to different justice for different people?
By Innes Bowen
Producer, Law in Action
Source: BBC News
Aydarus Yusuf has lived in the UK for the past 15 years, but he feels more bound by the traditional law of his country of birth - Somalia - than he does by the law of England and Wales.
"Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law. It's not Islamic, it's not religious - it's just a cultural thing."
The 29-year-old youth worker wants to ensure that other members of his community remain subject to the law of their ancestors too - he helps convene an unofficial Somali court, or "gar", in south-east London.
Aydarus is not alone in this desire. A number of parallel legal universes have been quietly evolving among minority communities. As well as Somali customary law, Islamic and Jewish laws are being applied and enforced in parts of the UK.
Islamic and Jewish law remains confined to civil matters. But the BBC's Law in Action programme has learned that the Somali court hears criminal cases too.
One of the most serious cases it has dealt with was the "trial" of a group of young men accused of stabbing a fellow Somali.
"When the suspects were released on bail by the police, we got the witnesses and families together for a hearing," says Aydarus. "The accused men admitted their guilt and apologised. Their fathers and uncles agreed compensation."
'Legal pluralism'
So how did this court come about? Some academic lawyers see these alternative legal systems as an inevitable - and welcome - consequence of multiculturalism.
Dr Prakash Shah, of London's Queen Mary University, advocates this "legal pluralism".
"Tribunals like the Somali court could be more effective than the formal legal system in maintaining social harmony."
Former judge Gerald Butler QC says that while courts such as the Jewish Beth Din can work properly, it's essential that all of the involved parties "freely and voluntarily agree to the jurisdiction... and that they conduct their proceedings fairly and properly". He adds: "What they mustn't do - and this must never happen - is to stray into the field of criminal matters. That simply would never be acceptable."
While religious leaders in the UK's Jewish and Muslim communities have not sought to enforce their own versions of criminal law, they have steadily built up their capacity to deal with civil matters within their own religious codes. What's more, they are doing it with the help of English law.
The Beth Din is the most formally entrenched of these minority courts. The UK's main Beth Din is based in Finchley, north London.
It oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes.
The court cannot force anyone to come within its jurisdiction. But once someone agrees to settle a dispute in the Beth Din, he or she is bound in English law to abide by the court's decision.
This is because under English law people may devise their own way to settle a dispute before an agreed third party.
Crucially, the legislation does not insist that settlements must be based on English law; all that matters is the outcome is reasonable and both parties agree to the process. And it's in this space that religious courts, applying the laws of another culture, are growing in the UK.
"Orthodox Jews go to the Beth Din to settle their disputes," says Jonathan Greenwood, a solicitor who represents many Jewish businessmen at the court.
"They believe it is a religious obligation to go there [and seek redress under Jewish law] rather than the secular courts. But it is also usually quicker and cheaper."
Sharia law
Amongst the UK's Muslims there are sharply contrasting views about Sharia or Islamic law in the UK. Sharia is the historic legal foundations of the Islamic world - like English law, it has developed over centuries but is based on simple principles.
In an ICM survey of 500 British Muslims carried out in February 2006, 40% of respondents said they would support the introduction of Sharia in predominantly Muslim areas of Britain.
The UK's most prominent Muslim organisation, the Muslim Council of Britain, opposes the idea, saying it will not support a dual legal system.
But some of Britain's Islamic scholars have called for a different approach - Sharia legal code in areas such as family and inheritance, applied through the secular courts.
Mohammed Shahid Raza, a leading Islamic scholar, claims this is a workable model with a British precedent: "When Britain was ruling India, there was a separate legal code for Muslims, organised and regulated by British experts of law."
There is already a network of Sharia councils in the UK. They are not recognised as courts but are seen as essential by those Muslims seeking advice and religious sanction in matters such as divorce.
Ayesha Begum sought an Islamic divorce from the Muslim Law Shariah Council in west London.
"I had obtained a divorce in the secular courts - but my husband refused to divorce me Islamically. In English law I was seen as a single woman but by Islamic law I was still married to him.
"I'm a practising Muslim and I wanted to do the right things in the eyes of God. It was very important I obtained an Islamic divorce."
But Cassandra Balchin, a networker with the group Women Living Under Muslim Laws, is concerned about the growth of these minority legal systems.
"Very often traditional forms of mediation can disadvantage vulnerable groups, such as women, within a community.
"I'm concerned about how much choice the weaker party would have in submitting to the governance of these alternative forums."
Despite Ms Balchin's fears, Sharia councils have already begun to follow the Jewish model of turning themselves into recognised courts of arbitration.
Faisal Aqtab Siddiqi, a commercial law barrister and head of the Hijaz College Islamic University in Warwickshire, says he has already adjudicated in a number of contractual disputes.
"Because we follow the same process as any case of arbitration, our decisions are binding in English law. Unless our decisions are unreasonable, they are recognised by the High Court."
http://www.whrnet.org/fundamentalisms/docs/issue-somalia-0612.html
Chap 15, slightly amended by the author, from Michael van Notten, The Law of the Somalis (Red Sea Press 2005)
Chapter 15 – The Freeport-Clan
Spencer H. MacCallum
Hong Kong had the advantage of a classical-liberal rule of law, without which any meaningful economic freedom would have been impossible. We saw in earlier chapters that Somali customary law protects persons and property and that, left alone, it might be expected to develop into a full body of common law capable of serving every need of a technically advanced society. This would provide for Somalia a rule of law such as made possible a prosperous Hong Kong. Customary law changes slowly, however, so in Chapter 11 we considered ways that the process might be accelerated. We looked at the potent catalyzing role that freeports might play in the growth of Somali law as well as in the growth of the economy.
Michael van Notten in the early 1990s married into the Samaron Clan and set about promoting economic development in the Awdal region of Somalia, founding and directing the Eastern Hararghe Development Agency.
Influenced in part by Peter Drucker's writings and to a greater extent personally by Richard Bolin, dean of the maquiladora phenomenon in Mexico, Michael appreciated the economic leverage that freeports bring to poor countries. But in the absence of a central government, how could a freeport be promoted to investors and business people accustomed to relying on a central legislative authority to guarantee property and enforce contracts? On the other hand, absent a central government, how could it be integrated with traditional politics and customary law, as would have to be done in order to attract a motivated work force from the local population—not to mention prospective investors?
At this point, Michael’s adoptive clansmen made the pregnant suggestion noted in Chapter 11. They said that to develop and operate a freeport in Somalia, Michael should bring together his business friends and form a new clan. They should design their own set of laws for compatibility with Somali customary law so that differences that arose could be settled in traditional courts.1 If the law of the freeport were made to dovetail with the customary law of the surrounding region, then businessmen locating in the freeport could operate with equal ease in Somali society and in the world market, while Somalis could readily come and go and interact in the freeport.
The challenge would be to design a law system and a social structure that could interface with both Somali customary law and the conventions and usages of the global business community. To move from this vague but tantalizing idea to a developed concept and business plan would be no mean task. But Michael was undaunted. Here, he felt, might lie the key to a breakthrough in the legal and economic development of his adopted country.
By a fortuitous circumstance, I met Michael in 1997 and brought to the task a project of my own concerning the feasibility of developing a community in a stateless setting. It was a heuristic exercise of many years duration and one that involved the inputs of many different people. The object of the exercise was to design a means of providing privately, by purely free-market means without taxation, all of the public services of a community—which, of course, a freeport would be.
Such a community would operate on a land-lease basis like any multi-tenant income property, examples being shopping centers, hotels, professional centers, and so forth. These were the prototypes. But the exercise envisioned a fully generalized community in which the master-lease form would set out all of the expectations between landlord and tenant and between each tenant and his neighbors in sufficient detail to make a viable community without recourse to statutory law. Coincidentally, during the same years that I had been pursuing this, Michael had been working at drafting a proposal for a legal system consisting of an outline of natural law principles and their derivative natural rights, together with procedural rules for safeguarding those rights. It was to be a system that could serve a community in lieu of statutory law.
My leasehold structure had the drawback that it assumed, as a given, a sufficiently developed framework of common law to sustain a rule of law. Michael, on the other hand, had outlined a natural-law system but lacked a means of introducing it into a community consistent with the rights it sought to protect.
When Michael and I met, we each found the other’s work interesting and critiqued it, suggesting refinements. From our collaboration emerged an idea: introduce Michael's natural-law system into the freeport community by making it a matter of contractual agreement. A commitment by all parties to observe that rule of law could be a condition of each person’s lease. Land lease thus afforded Michael the vehicle he lacked, while his outline gave me the rule of law I lacked. Together they suggested a package of social software that could generate a freeport-clan.
On reading the proposed master-lease form now incorporating Michael's outline of law, natural-rights scholar Roy Halliday (2002) wrote that it comes as close as anything I have seen to establishing the framework for a civil society consistent with liberty and natural rights. The idea of incorporating a description of natural rights into the master lease for a proprietary community is brilliant. It satisfies both the strong natural rights advocates .. and the skeptics who believe rights are created by contracts.
The lease contract provides a way to specify how rights are to be enforced. Because of its length and perhaps dryness for those not interested in following it in detail, a working draft of the master-lease form is not reproduced here but is set out in Appendix C, “Proposed Membership Agreement for a Freeport-Clan.” The concept, however, can be explained as follows.
The Freeport-Clan
The freeport-clan is a proposed organizational structure designed for the operation of freeports in a stateless environment. As a juridical entity, the freeport-clan includes both visitors and resident members. Precisely as traditional clansmen are related by a well-understood web of kinship, so are freeport-clansmen related by a well-understood web of relationships. Theirs is not a web of kinship status, however, but one arrived at by contract. Residents and personnel of the freeport commit in a lease or rental agreement to observe the law as set out in that agreement, while visitors consent to abide by that law during their stay.2 A full member thus is anyone holding space by contract in the development, whether for as short a time as an overnight guest in a hotel or as permanent as, say, the owner of that hotel. Day visitors, on the other hand, stand in a relationship to the owners of the freeport more like that of a marti to an abbaan (guest and protective host) in Somali law.
Two Kinds of Law
The law of a freeport-clan, like that of any community, is of two kinds. There are rules and procedures applicable to everyone at all times and places (natural law), and there are rules and procedures specified in agreements between particular individuals and applicable to them alone (contract law). The former invariably take precedence.
The land-tenure agreements are contract law. These bind owners, residents, and visitors in a self-consistent network of relationships described in a complex cascade of subleases following the initial lease of land from the Somali host clan. To be consistent with the master-lease form and thereby valid, every lease, sublease, and sub-sub-lease, etc., requires a clear commitment by the contracting parties to a regime of natural law and procedural rules set forth in the masterlease
form. The master-lease form thus brings together contract law and natural law in a single document. From this document is generated the written constitution of the community, which is the sum of all leases in effect at any given time.
Whereas the contract law is whatever the contracting parties may agree to so long as it is not inconsistent with the natural law, natural law principles and rules and the procedures for protecting and enforcing them are not as easily identified. They are the principles and rules of human social behavior that are essential to the functioning of any society at any time and place. As such they must be capable of being universalized. Precisely what they are has been the subject of speculation and deliberation by ethicists, moralists, legal scholars, and social philosophers, among others.3 Humankind being part and product of the natural world, it is only reasonable to assume that scientific method ultimately will illumine the workings of human society and discover the natural laws that operate there as elsewhere in nature.4
It is expected that the proposed system of law will be readily enforceable through a decentralized (“polycentric”) justice and protection industry consisting of freely competing court and police services. The land-lease structure of the community resolves many objections commonly posed to the idea of competitive police services, since all such competing services are integrated into one and the same web of contractual relationships. Should anyone refuse to acknowledge a court summons or judgment, including any investor in or officer of the communityor any member of a justice court or police, he will be in violation of his lease.
Consequently, unless or until he redeems himself, he will be subject to eviction, losing figuratively and literally all standing in the community.
Two Contributions
Each of the two kinds of law giving structure to the freeport-clan, namely contract law (the lease agreement itself) and natural law (the outline of law incorporated in and made a part of the lease), has its independent history.
A practicing lawyer in the Netherlands, Michael first developed an interest in outlining principles of natural law in response to a competition in which he took first prize. The competition called for drafting a constitution for a free community.
Mentored by his friend, Belgian legal philosopher Frank van Dun, and with the encouragement of many other friends, he went on to work for some years at teasing out a coherent formulation of a system of natural law. Then, in Somalia, he found a customary law system in place that resembled in important ways just such a system as he had come up with. His outline of a system harmonized with Somali customary law as no legislated body of rules ever could. When he formed a company with Jim Davidson in 1997 to develop, among other things, a Somali freeport that called for its own law that would be compatible with Somali customary law, he already had in outline form a law system that he could use for the purpose.
Michael believed that natural law describes the voluntary, universal order of human society, that it originates in our life as reasoning human beings among our kind, that it acknowledges the right of every person to live a life governed by his own goals, judgments, and beliefs, and serves to prevent as well as resolve conflicts among people. It stipulates that every person be free to dispose of his property as he will and refrain from disposing of the property of others without their permission. It permits all activities that do not infringe upon the person or property of another. This law takes priority over all other principles and rules shaping human society, including rules legislated by parliaments or established by contract. It requires, moreover, that enforcement be pursued in ways consistent
with itself.
The natural law principles enumerated in the master lease form and all contractual obligations consistent with them and freely undertaken by residents and visitors would be the only law in the freeport-clan. Anyone would be free to offer and perform police and judicial services, provided only that they follow the procedural rules, or protocols, stipulated in their lease agreement.
The Agreement
The agreement itself, on the other hand, has a longer and quite different history. It was the culmination of an exercise in applied anthropology that I had conducted for more than a quarter of a century. During most of that time, it bore the title, “Drafting a Constitution for Orbis”—"Orbis" being the made-up name of one of a cluster of imaginary settlements in outer space. I promoted the exercise as a means of exploring how private contractual commitments might provide for community needs in the absence of a legislative government. Extrapolating from what is well known about clan societies, I had hypothesized that in contemporary society common or community goods, no less than private, should be able to be produced through the competitive market process in a manner fully consistent with normative property rights.
The exercise began in 1971 when Werner K. Stiefel, CEO of Stiefel Laboratories, commissioned me to draft, in exchange for a two-percent equity in the project, a master lease form for a floating community which he intended to develop on international waters. He had experienced Germany in the 1930s, and he thought that the same dynamic of political democracy would lead to similar results in the United States. He knew many who had escaped Germany by fleeing to the United States, but when the time came, where could people in the United States flee to? His dream was to found a new, free country on the high seas, starting small but with expectations that it would grow.
Werner devoted millions of dollars of his personal resources to the project but eventually had to discontinue it. At that point, he encouraged publication of the lease form, thinking to help stimulate innovative thinking about free-market provision of common goods. He only requested that it be placed in a fictional setting that would not draw political attention prematurely to the idea of settlement on the ocean. I distributed drafts and invited criticism. Several iterations were published as "Orbis" gradually took on a life of its own. Over the next 30 years, like the open software that it was, it came to reflect the inputs of many different people.
The intellectual challenge was to envision in a practical way how a hypothetical settlement, removed from all contact with earth's legislated laws, might be structured solely along lines of private agreements to meet all of the needs of its inhabitants. The reality of stateless society at the clan level is well known to anthropologists. If statelessness is the normal mode at that level, I thought, why not at the level of a more developed, market society? The reason we
don't see it may not be that it contradicts any law of social organization; it may simply have to do with the period in which we live, a function of evolutionary timing.
According to that hypothesis, humankind is navigating a transition from local cooperation based on kinship status to global cooperation based on contract, enabled by an evolving web of financial and other supportive business institutions and a market pricing system (MacCallum 1997). It is well known that times of change are marked by instabilities and stresses. In the present case, these manifest most poignantly as dehumanising,5 institutionalised coercions of various
kinds that, taken together, we call "the state" and suppose to be normal for human society. But is this normal? Since it has yet to be demonstrated that statelessness in a market economy is self-contradictory, and considering the accelerating rate of social change leading toward conditions we cannot even guess at, an advanced stateless society cannot be denied as a possibility.
Moreover, a broad range of empirical data in contemporary society goes a long way toward putting the burden of proof on those who would argue for the inevitability of a state; for it suggests strongly that the private production and management of common goods for a community of any imaginable size is both feasible and potentially profitable. That body of data is found in the twentieth century growth of multi-tenant income properties in real estate. What is significant about that growth is the fact that complex hotels, shopping malls, and many other such forms resemble in important respects what we are accustomed to think of as communities and require the same sort of administration. A hotel, for example, has private and public areas, a security office, a landscaped lobby corresponding to a town square, a public transit system which happens to operate vertically instead of horizontally, controlled climate, a system of public utilities, etc. The difference is that instead of being funded by taxation, the common goods are provided entrepreneurially for profit—quietly, effectively, and pleasantly.
A first step, therefore, in addressing the challenge of "Orbis" was to observe that all multi-tenant income properties share a common characteristic, namely, that they are structured on leasehold. Instead of a development upon completion being fragmented and sold for a one-time capital gain, the owners keep the land title intact, parceling it into usable sites by land-leasing. This enables the property to be managed as a long-term, conservative investment for income. It creates what might be called an entrepreneurial community as opposed to a political one, a community in which an entrepreneur, standing behind his product, creates and maintains optimal human environment for the particular market he targets. As he does so, he builds land value as measured by revenue flow. His customers pay for the privilege of living and/or working in an environment they find conducive to the realization of their particular goals. Ground rent pays the costs of the community administration and a profit besides.
Although seemingly novel, this entrepreneurial community does not represent a departure from tradition. Growing from rootstock antecedent to the state, it retains the structure and much of the function of seigneurial and manorial forms of human settlement in many parts of the lesser-developed world. The difference lies in the circumstances of the management and the services it can offer. Instead of a small and localized kin group pursuing an inevitably mixed agenda, the management is a specialized firm operating competitively within the richly supportive institutional context of a global economy and pricing system.
But, we may ask, isn't some government needed? Isn't some regulation of conduct required in an entrepreneurial community? It is, of course. But what form need that take? Observe that the sum of the lease agreements in effect at any time is analogous to the written constitution of a traditional, political community. The difference is that here is a self-regulating system within a competitive market. Instead of bureaucratically legislated rules, private lease agreements, individually negotiated, set out not only each person's obligations to the community proprietary and theirs to him, but in all important particulars his and his neighbours' behaviour vis-a-vis one another.
Life in a generalized entrepreneurial community of any significant size or complexity is likely to be highly decentralised, since most tenants deal not with the primary lessor, but with any one of a great variety of sub-lessors who operate at various degrees of remove from the primary lessor as the land continues to be parceled into use. Moreover, short of conflicting with provisions in the masterlease form, agreements can be customized to suit many tastes. Adding to this potential for variety is the fact that only the underlying land need remain in single title; improvements can be individually leased, owned outright, or financed.
The challenge, therefore, of the Orbis project was to design some social software that, absent any possibility of falling back on statutory law, would anticipate every need and contingency of life in a complex community.
The assignment turned out to be less daunting than might be imagined. It was made simpler by its focus being upon means rather than upon any particular Utopian end. Human ends are infinite, limited only by the power of the human imagination, but effective means derive from principles that are few in number and involve the how of things on an abstract level. These principles partake of natural law, the rationale of nature, and are to be discovered through examining successful behaviour and what makes it so. Understanding what makes for successful social behaviour in any place and in any age was the genius of Michael van Notten and his mentor, Frank van Dun.
In 1997, in exchange for a small equity in Awdal Roads Company, Michael commissioned an application of the Orbis master-lease form for his proposed Somali freeport. He had promoted the idea of freeports among his Samaron clansmen, noting that, among other advantages, freeports would enable Somalis to capitalize on their stateless tradition. World-class professional and business talent would be attracted to a setting in which they could be freed of the uncertainties, delays, and hardships associated with taxation and bureaucratic regulation.
The multi-tenant income property afforded a nearly perfect model for a freeport-clan. Invariably, the more successful freeports have been developed as land-lease communities rather than as subdivisions. Moreover, unlike subdivisions, multi-tenant income properties can be developed on leased land. This is fortuitous, since Somali law is receptive to leasing land, even long-term, but does not entertain the idea of selling or otherwise permanently alienating land from the
clan. Further still, leasing rather than purchasing land saves the entrepreneur having to tie up capital that might be put to better use in development and operations.
Finally, the multi-tenant-income-property model has broad areas of congruence with traditional life in a clan society. The important and complex role of insurance in the former, for example, finds its functional parallel in the requirement of Somali customary law that every person be insured against any liabilities he might incur under the law. In a shopping centre, moreover, the manager’s concentrated entrepreneurial interest in the whole enables and encourages him to act as a facilitator rather than as a ruler—precisely like the head of a traditional African village or clan.
Free Cities
Freeport-clans could function as a latter-day "free city" not unlike those of the late Middle Ages that gave rise to the modern era. Like those cities, which offered enterprising individuals a path out of feudal servitude, the freeport-clan would invite migration to escape oppressive governments or unduly restrictive practices found in other parts of Africa or the world. As elements of its freer business environment spread by adoption to other clans, it would become easy for people to migrate to the Horn of Africa, adopt its language and ways, and become productive members of a new Somali society without the limitations of the clan system. And yet it would not be an altogether new society, because the ‘new Somalia’ would be but a more evolved version of traditional, pre-colonial Somalia.
It would have the promise of becoming a beacon to a world ravaged by political democracy, a beacon to a humanity that has lost its bearings. The free cities of a new Somalia could become a light to the world for these reasons:
* Community services and amenities would be provided in abundance and variety through exclusively proprietary means in a competitive market, for profit, without recourse to taxation.
* The community authority would exercise leadership that was interested yet impartial, since it would have a personal and business interest in the success of the community as a whole. Private interest and public interest would be aligned.
* The community authority would not exercise any police function. It would serve in a facilitative role like that of a clan or lineage head in many stateless societies.
* A flexible system of land-use control—leasehold—would allow incremental land-use changes over time without eminent domain or other prejudice to property rights.
* A quantitative feedback, namely land revenue, would permit rational evaluation of planning projects and policies for their effect on the attractiveness of the community as judged by its present and prospective members—its clientele.
* The community would be served by a comprehensive, polycentric (nonmonopolistic) police and justice system for the adjudication of disputes and protection of natural rights, a system agreed to individually and before the fact by every community member.
* The economy would be freely competitive, with no coercive restraints on entry or trade, and the community management would have incentive to make and keep it so.
Notes
1 Michael van Notten died without leaving a record of the author of this creative idea, which arose in conversation at a Somali gathering that included numerous elders. The idea was well received by everyone present.
2 It should be emphasized that the development under discussion is not a subdivision in any of its forms, with or without homeowners’ associations, and including condominiums, but strictly a multi-tenant income property. This is important for the following discussion, since many who are unaccustomed to making the distinction unthinkingly bracket these very different kinds of real property. The former, to the extent it has any organization at all, is essentially a cooperative. The latter is a commercial property.
3 See, for example, Roy Halliday (2000).
4 For some pregnant suggestions on this subject, see Alvin Lowi, Jr., Scientific Method: In Search of Legitimate Authority in Society, unpublished monograph available from the author (alowi@earthlink.net).
5 See, for example, Butler Shaffer, “A Passion for Life,” Chapter 55, The Wizards of Ozymandias, LewRockwell.com Ebooks.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/ozymandias/
http://explorersfoundation.org/archive/392t1-somalia-freeport.pdf
An example leasehold agreement, binding all parties to the freeport (App. C):
http://explorersfoundation.org/archive/392t2-somalia-lease.pdf
Suggested readings:
http://explorersfoundation.org/archive/139t3-somalis-readings.pdf
The Conoco Somalia Declassification Project
By Keith Yearman,
Jun 24th, 2007
In 1992 U.S. commandos “stormed” the beaches of Somalia in what was known as Operation Restore Hope. The United States was invading Somalia to, as was told to the public, restore law and order to a country devastated by anarchy, and to feed the population. As then-President George H. W. Bush told the nation in a televised address on December 4, 1992:
“I want to talk to you today about the tragedy in Somalia and about a mission that can ease suffering and save lives. Every American has seen the shocking images from Somalia. The scope of suffering there is hard to imagine. Already, over a quarter of a million people--as many people as live in Buffalo, New York--have died in the Somali famine. In the months ahead, five times that number, 1.5 million people could starve to death…There is no government in Somalia. Law and order have broken down--anarchy prevails.”
Across Africa similar crises were causing mass devastation, yet U.S. Marines were not dispatched to deal with these humanitarian crises. For instance, Human Rights Watch reported on Mozambique:
“…The disappearance of any form of effective government throughout most rural areas of the country has appeared to draw closer by the month. The severe drought of 1991-1992 undermined the unified command of both armies, as soldiers turned to looting and pillaging to provide for themselves. Relief agencies are already describing Mozambique as ‘the next Somalia.’”
So why was Somalia the chosen country? The mainstream media applauded the administration’s efforts at humanitarian intervention, and seemingly not a critical murmur was sounded as to why Somalia was chosen over Mozambique, Ethiopia, Angola or countless other nations.
A 1993 Los Angeles Times article offered a clue. This article was completely ignored by other media outlets, yet gave critical insight into an important resource Somalia had – oil. According to the article, “Nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown..." This article also called into question Conoco’s cozy relationship with the U.S. government, pointing out that the U.S. had leased its de facto embassy from the corporation.
Newly-declassified State Department documents offer more evidence concerning the significance of oil behind the intervention. The documents, released in response to two Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the author, highlight the role Conoco played in the years leading up to the invasion and also briefly highlight Conoco’s support for U.S. government operations in the country.
Civil war brought the downfall of Siad Barre in January 1991. The conflict prompted the U.S. and most other nations to close their embassies, and for most oil companies to cease exploration efforts. On July 27, 1990 Conoco suspended operations briefly when its security captain and a fuel truck driver were shot and killed. By April 1991 Conoco notified the State Department it was ready to restart operations. The economic gains would have been great – perhaps even surpassing Hunt Oil’s windfall in Yemen (which was pumping some 200,000 barrels per day in the late 1980s). According to a June 20, 1991 cable from Richard Barrett, then-U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti, “[A source] claims to have seen an internal document of Conoco (Somalia), which states that sites in the Garoe – Las Anod area are capable of producing 300,000 barrels of oil per day…A confirmed strike could pre-empt moves toward reconciliation…It could also set off battles between clans for control of land where drilling is expected.”
Conoco’s Support
Conoco had long been providing support to State Department missions, from providing space on corporate aircraft traveling to Mogadishu, to housing and feeding State Department and other government employees, to even arranging security for government personnel. Some examples of Conoco’s support:
• From a May 21, 1991 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi: “Two USG [U.S. government] employees would travel to Mogadishu several days after Conoco re-occupies its offices on June 4…USG employees would be welcome to stay with Conoco and would be protected throughout their stay by Conoco’s private guard service.”
• From an October 9, 1991 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi: “Embassy is in daily contact with Conoco (Somalia), Ltd...During four visits by USG officials to Mogadishu over the past several months, Conoco (Somalia), Ltd. has provided the following security: USG officials are met at the airport by armed guards and escorted via convoy to the Conoco residence…USG officials move about Mogadishu as little as necessary. When they do, they are provided with armed guards. USG officials sleep and take their meals at the Conoco compound. When they leave Mogadishu, they are again escorted to the airport via convoy under armed guard…The aircraft…is in constant radio contact with the Conoco compound while in flight, which further facilitates security…”
• From an October 11, 1991 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi (discussing plans for an assessment mission to arrive the following week): “Conoco, a non-USG entity, has basically given the ‘green light’ for this mission. It is not Conoco’s call to do so. Conoco security is excellent. Their guards are well-paid and well-armed…” Concerned that the security situation might deteriorate, Deputy Chief of Mission E. Michael Southwick warned “someone could get hurt. If the latter be the case, Conoco, which has no legal responsibility to protect official USG personnel, will say ‘we tried our best’ and the USG is faced with both an embarrassing political and legal dilemma. A mission of this importance may warrant the use of U.S. military or DS [Diplomatic Security Service] Security assets.”
The assessment mission visited Mogadishu from October 17 – 20, 1991, ostensibly to evaluate the political and security situation in Somalia. The U.S. Embassy had been closed due to civil unrest, and the delegation was tasked with reviewing properties for a small diplomatic mission. According to the October 22, 1991 summary of the delegation: "There are, at present, few American citizens in Somalia. Conoco (Somalia), Ltd., however, anticipates re-commencing oil exploration work in southern Somalia within the next several months. According to Conoco, this would involve the introduction of 50-60 Amcit employees into Somalia. If the security situation does not deteriorate, it would be realistic to project a total presence of around 100 Amcits in southern Somalia by the middle of 1992. Such a community would justify a consular presence in Mogadishu.
"There are, at present, only two US firms (Conoco and Turnkey) operating in Somalia. Others, especially in the oil sector, are considering resuming operations. These firms will sometimes require the type of diplomatic support best provided by a permanent diplomatic mission.”
In early December 1992, the State Department leased Conoco’s headquarters to serve as the new diplomatic mission (technically the U.S. Liaison Office). The State Department would pay Conoco $41,260 for six months rent. As Michael Parenti noted in Against Empire, “U.S. taxpayers were paying for the troops in Somalia to protect Conoco's interests, and they were paying the corporation for the privilege of doing so."
By mid-December, arrangements were made for " a letter of appreciation from President Bush to the president of Conoco for the tremendous support that Conoco as a corporation and Raymond Marchand [of Conoco (Somalia), Ltd.] as an individual have provided here."
We know how Somalia turned out – with U.S. soldiers dragged through the streets, the U.S. withdrawal, and with oil companies still hungry for Somali crude. During the occupation of Iraq, with the president’s secret energy task force, high oil prices, and the unquestioned power and influence of the oil companies, both the reasons for and lessons from Somalia must be fresh in our minds.
The Conoco Somalia Declassification Project is available at:
http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/yearman/somalia.htm
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/6/24/235949/112
Escaping from politics and re-inventing Somalia
Alexactus T Kaure
SOMALIA is a nation without a nation state.
The country exists as a geographical entity on the African map but there has been no democratically elected authority for the past 15 years and thus no functioning central government since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991.
So, while a country like Namibia has been building and consolidating centralised state authority since the 1990s, Somalia has been dismantling its own.
And there is no indication that the Somalis are in search of a single nation state.
Presently the country is carved up into a number of different semi-autonomous political entities or 'states' - though none of these 'states' are recognised by the international community.
Thus, there are no immediate prospects of returning to the pre-1991 political dispensation as the various peacekeeping arrangements and reconciliation efforts have so far flown in the face of the international community.
Some might remember the movie "Black Hawk Down" which was based on the Battle of Mogadishu - the dramatic failure of Operation Restore Hope, an American adventure in the Horn of Africa that was later turned into a UN mission christened UNOSOM II.
As with so many other conflict situations, the solution must have the blessing of local people for it to work.
The locals have to yearn and be ready for a political settlement otherwise outside mediation is not likely to be successful - at least in the long run.
The cases of Namibia and Liberia on the one hand and that of East Timor and Sudan on the other, gives us the contrasting approaches to peace-making.
But attempts to put Somalia together are ongoing - now rising, bringing a glimmer of hope and then subsiding - setting in a mood of despair.
This condition, however, has sparked a lively debate among scholars as to what has happened to the once-strong Somali state.
Is this another case of a collapsed state on the African continent? Or was this an escape from the state by the Somali people? There is, however, plethora of terms scholars use to describe what has been happening in places like Somalia or indeed pre-settlement DRC, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
These include: collapsed, failed, quasi, artificial, marginal, ramshackle, overloaded, set-apart, juridical, besieged, suspended, weak, imported, lame Leviathan, shadow, disconnected, rhizome and bifurcated states.
These terms are an indication that the scholarly community itself is thoroughly confused and has no handle on the issues that they are trying to understand just as the politicians, in these states, have no grip on the instruments of power they are trying to hold onto.
But the case of Somalia has important implications for the way we normally understand issues of statehood, sovereignty and citizenship.
The prolific Ali Mazrui once said that statehood is ultimately a problem of structure, authority and control.
That is more or less the sense in which international law defines the state in order for it to be recognised as a legal entity.
International law and relations are thus based on highly statist and structuralist assumptions thus leaving out the state's historical and sociological moorings.
Proceeding from that, a state is then recognised as sovereign entity and can have diplomatic ties with other entities within the international system.
It is also assumed that these entities are there to carry out the nation and state building projects - carrying out the developmental agenda and thus looking after the welfare of their citizens.
But on the ground, however, we have witnessed the virtual collapse of some states in Africa or what I would term "an escape by people from centralised state authority".
The escape from the state or politics is the prism through which I would like to examine the case of Somalia.
There are no issues of tribalism or ethnicity here.
Some people point out clan as the one variable that has led to the break-up of the Somali state.
Although one might ask as to how strong a variable clan must be to lead to such a violent and prolonged break-up of the state? A plausible explanation must be sought within the Somali's sociological make-up.
The Somalis are a fiercely independent group of nomads and pastoralists - always on the move in search of grazing and water for their animals.
And that kind of existence doesn't lend itself easily to centralised political structures.
Thus a centralised polity, in the context of Somali culture, would lack a sense of embeddedness in addition to the usual failure of so many states in Africa to deliver the social and economic goods either because of lack of capacity or due to their corrupt nature.
So, what failed in Somalia are the imported and transplanted political models.
There were no fertile grounds for them to grow on and prosper.
It's very much like the human body rejecting a foreign organ - for the donor must be closely related to the patient.
And the Somali are perhaps trying to put into place something that is historically and sociologically closer to them.
So, what form would the re-invention of the Somali state take? Some of the groups, notably those in the 'state' of Puntlant, have been calling for local autonomy while also ready to partake in a new central government of Somalia - this smells like a federalist system that they are calling for.
Maybe a blend of Somali traditional political system(s) and 'modern' institutional arrangements would be needed to come up with a system that is less centralised and thus responsive to the needs of citizens.
The UN, through UNOSOM II, failed in Somalia mainly because it assumed that its mission and objective was to initiate a 'nation building' project.
Whereas what is needed instead is a 'state building' project because the Somali nation already exists.
As for now, we are not sure what path the reinvention and reconstruction of the new Somali state will take or what the end product would look like.
But it has to be radical, creative and embedded in Somali's culture and history.
http://www.namibian.com.na/2006/June/columns/062DEF71C2.html
Regional Reconciliation and Reconstruction Approach: A Paradigm Shift for Somalia
23 November 2007
Regional Reconciliation and Reconstruction Approach: A System Based on Responsibility and Accountability for ALL Stakeholders in Somalia
By Ahmed Dirie
The political, social, and financial sacrifices made and risks taken by the international community and brave Somalis could be wasted if regional reconciliation and reconstruction Approach (RRARA) efforts, long overdue, are not implemented right after the National Reconciliation Congress. In this feature, RRARA is proposed as a drastic political paradigm shift to achieve stable and sustainable political system.
For the last 17 years, the Somali people, with the guidance, support and intervention of the international community, have been relentlessly pursuing the institutionalization an all-inclusive Somali Government. However, the pursuit of an all-inclusive Somali government exclusively through a national reconciliation process has probably become an obstacle itself for any budding Somali government to rise from the ashes of the brutal civil conflict.
Under the current political environment, an all-inclusive Somali government means a government with representations of all clans, from warlords and money lords, from politicians, representatives from civil society, women and other marginalized groups, from intellectuals and Diasporas, and all the warring factions including leaders of Islamic courts. For this reason, there have been 14 attempts in convening all-inclusive national reconciliation conferences and almost all attempts have ended in vain. The most recent of these attempts were the conferences in Arta, Embaghati, and Mogadishu held in Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia, respectively. To the dismay of those closely following and monitoring these developments, the Transitional National Government (TNG) of Arta has collapsed two years after its election; the current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Embaghati is still struggling to take off after three years. The latest attempt in this pursuit was the 45-day National Reconciliation Congress (NRG) convened by the TFG leaders concluded last August 30th, 2007 in Mogadishu.Conceptually and without argument, the idea of establishing an all-inclusive Somali government is definitely a cause worth pursuing for it is one of the ways of re-establishing civility and governance and achieving lasting peace in the country. However, it appears that the timing and means of attaining this goal does not fit with the present political situation nor is it realistic in its approach. At the moment, the insistence of bringing in ALL warring entities may not be the most appropriate in the absence of ideal democratic institutions and processes in place.
One may then ask, is an all-inclusive Somali government an elusive dream for any transitional government to install given the highly complicated, volatile and unstable political situation in Somalia? Or is there a way to achieve peace and development by re-evaluating the processes and steps taken and adopting alternative approaches? The All-Inclusive NRC Approach: Why it’s not Working? It is most likely that the previous National Reconciliation Conferences (NRC) failed because of the following reasons:
- National Reconciliation as Top-Down Approach: In principle, the national reconciliation conferences should pave the way for political and social reconciliation through forgiveness of atrocities committed during the civil war at the national level by concerned parties – from the aggrieved to the aggressor. For example, the recently concluded Mogadishu NRG has paved the way for social reconciliation to a certain degree — where clan leaders have committed, in principle, to forgiveness, peace, disarmament of militias, and resolution of property disputes. However these commitments were not followed through because the national reconciliation programs terribly failed to specifically address the root causes of the Somali conflict or solve specific regional conflicts.
Appeasement of Warlords and Habitual Defectors: For the longest time, the Somali political system has been using the “fire hydrant” approach by appeasing ever-defecting warlords, local leaders, parliamentarians, and money lords to gain support for current reconciliation attempts. The common practice was for defecting political entities to be given greater recognition and extended more political concessions from both the transitional Somali governments as well as the international community. This approach has led to the indirect legitimization of “warlordism” and political defection as a way of gaining political leverage. Furthermore certain clans demand more representations due to their sizable number of warlords and the political influence that they wield. But the appeasement of defecting individuals or groups has never led and will never lead to political stability or to the strengthening of democratic processes and institutions. Instead, this tactic of “pacification politics” will most likely lead to the demise of transitional governments as we have witnessed in Somalia causing more violations against the human and political rights of the Somali masses and under-represented and marginalized groups.
Prioritization of Mogadishu Security vs. Regional Political Hot-Spots: Unquestionably, Mogadishu is the capital and the pulse of the Somali nation. Yet an overemphasis of Mogadishu security to the neglect and exclusion of the rest of the country is absolutely misplaced. History has seen the failure of two Somali governments by overemphasizing in controlling only the national capital region (Banadir region or Mogadishu) and where Somali presidents have been reduced to mayors of Mogadishu. In fact the current TFG was isolated in Jowhar and then Baidoa before it was rescued by African Peace Keeping forces and the international community. Thus, the efforts taken and the political risks made by the international community were again wasted and rest of the country remains neglected.Single-minded Pursuit of Ideal Political Conditions under Extremely Difficult Situations: A functioning and an all-inclusive Somali government is hard to achieve in a short span of time under the prevailing difficult political conditions. In reality, the current state of affairs in Somalia may not be conducive for any transitional government to take off and be regarded as an inclusive and legitimate regime. This is further compounded by experiences in the past where the international community and the Somali people were quick to withdraw their support of and for transitional authorities due to the defections and boycotts of parliamentarians, warlords, and interest groups. These quick withdrawals of political support have prolonged the civil war that eventually led to the current level of political complexity and conflict. It might be worthy to remember that it may be not feasible to immediately create a spotless political system in Somalia or anywhere in the world after 17 years of brutal civil war. It is therefore very important for various stakeholders to have long term commitment and for the international community to sustain their support for any effort at implementing reconciliation processes both at the national and regional levels and find a system that doesn’t work as fire hydrant.
Lack of Intellectual Debates of the NRC Approach: For more than a decade and a half, the international community and Somalia's political leaders were stuck with a political process that hardly produced any tangible success. This may indicate the lack of formal and informal intellectual discussions among the different stakeholders on the practicality of the 16 year-old NRC strategy and the lack of consideration of alternative processes that might lead to the same desired result. With the inherent flaws of the NRC processes as applied to the Somali situation, it is crucial to implement an aggressive, coherent and appropriate conflict resolution programs at the regional levels. A regional reconciliation and reconstruction approach (RRARA) may prove better than the NRC approach which has only resulted in the negligence of regional conflicts, endless pursuit of unachievable democracy under difficult political conditions, the legitimization of “warlordism” through the appeasement of warlords, and the utter lack of accountability of who is in charge.
The implementation of an RRA will bring with it small but sustainable distributed successes in various areas which are badly needed to sustain the Somali people’s spirit in these difficult times as they pursue a peaceful and dignified existence.Regional Reconciliation and Reconciliation Approach (RRARA) The regional reconciliation approach (RRARA) is a bottoms-up process which tries to move away from the primary weakness of the NRC by addressing specific regional conflicts. It defines the involvement, responsibility, and accountability of the stakeholders and clearly describes what is at stake—the survival of the Somali people under politically stable Nation. This process will serve as a complementary peace building effort to the recently concluded national reconciliation congress. The regional reconciliation process starts at the grassroots level of a defined geographical territory (Table 1). Concerned Somalis with common concerns and interests and other stakeholders are brought together repeatedly over time to have meaningful discussions and dialogues over the kind of future they want and how to approach it.This process is greatly empowering because the local people will finally become part of the solution through their participation and their contribution in the political dialogues and processes meant to achieve peace and stability at the local level. The adoption of this approach eventually becomes the foundation of a participatory democracy at the national level. Therefore, the regional reconciliation model defines the role of the TFG representatives, local tribal leaders, Somali intellectuals, peacekeeping forces, other stakeholders and that of international community. Transitional Federal Government (TFG) representatives: The current TFG representatives are parliamentarians and ministers selected through a 4.5 clan representation system. Symbolically, each representative brings with him/her the political support of his/her clan or region; thus it is understandable that their initial sense of accountability is towards protecting and preserving their clan or regional interest. But it certainly does not help the TFG to fulfill its role in nation building when its members are safely nestled at Baidoa and not actively engaged in the politics and reconstruction of their own regions. In addition to this, the TFG members must learn to widen their sense of accountability—that to their clan or region to that of being accountable to the Somali nation as a whole. Continuing to pursue limited and narrow clan or regional interest without representing the nation as a whole will prevent any step towards rebuilding Somalia. Certainly, nation building transcends petty politics and narrow clan interests. Therefore, representatives not committed to nation-building and those who continue to view their role on a very limited scale must either shape up or ship out. To ensure compliance to this role and given the abnormal situation of the political environment, concerned oversight agencies or institutions may impose political, financial, and travel restrictions, and if
necessary military action to weed out erring members or elements.
Traditional Community leaders: There is no doubt that the role of the Somali tribal and clan leaders has been weakened and challenged by authoritarian regimes, warlords, money lords, unrestrained population growth and the urbanization in the last 37 years. Despite this perception of the erosion of power and credibility of traditional leaders, it is important to include them in regional conflict resolutions processes. These leaders have a stake in a peaceful and developed nation, thus it will not be difficult to ask their commitment to support the will of the people and the RRARA outcomes.
Minority Populations in the South: It is very important to unite and empower the minority communities of Southern Somalia by letting them participate in the political process and nation building. These minority communities have bore the brunt of brutal human rights violations by major Somali clans and they will be balancing force to achieve peace and stability in the South. The minorities must be given a leverage to participate the reconciliation and reconstruction of
Southern Somalia. Somali Intellectuals: The Somali professionals cannot set themselves apart and not participate in the efforts towards rebuilding Somalia. It is impossible for the outside community to sustain their efforts to help the nation when Somalis themselves will not productively participate in the affairs of their own country. More importantly, it must be stated here that a call for a resistance or liberation movement is counterproductive and unrealistic in current international politics. A resistance movement will only prolong the civil war and cause more human rights violations. There is no doubt that the highly-educated Somalis are maginalized by the international community as well as TFG officials. But, Somali professionals could challenge “the system” in more productive ways if they become integral part of the reconstruction process. At the moment, it seems that the national affairs are already beset with enough players. But there will be more room in the very near future. However, Somali professionals can still involve themselves in the politics of national reconstruction through diverse venues (including RRARA) and they will find out that RRARA approach can certainly make a big difference—Maybe, national reconstruction by educated Somalis through their regions of origin.
Peacekeeping Forces: Unfortunately, the realization of peace and stability in Somalia is dependent on the deployment of sufficient peacekeeping forces. It is undeniable that Somalis terribly failed to end the civil conflict and foreign intervention is indispensable at this time. However, peacekeeping forces must be deployed all over the country especially the regional hot spots (please see map deduced from the regional characterization table) and not be confined only to the
capital region (Mogadishu). There must be a political commitment and the will to deploy a thousand peacekeeping forces in those regions identified as regional hotspots (1000 peacekeepers/hotspot region). On top of that thousand-readably deployable peacekeepers must be ready for any emerging hot-spot. The peacekeepers with the help of government and international representatives will facilitate for the local people to participate in the regional reconciliation process. In addition, the peacekeepers can effectively neutralize any militia or other spoilers who are threat to the political will of the Somali people.
International Development Community (IDC): The IDC must re-evaluate its role and be willing to abandon the 16-year old strategy of endorsing NRC and managing Somali affairs from satellite offices safely nestled in Nairobi (Kenya). The IDC leadership must adopt a drastic policy shift and implement the following: I. Adoption of regional reconciliation process as a urgent follow up process to the recently concluded national reconciliation congress in order to conclude the political and social reconciliation process.II. Shift from relief operations mode to nation building mindset through the creation of regional economic development zones and investment of mega development projects that will spur reliable and decent livelihood and job opportunities. Besides, the economic growth opportunities will set forth a healthy regional competition which may eventually lead to peace and stability at the national level.III. Genuine and aggressive engagement of critical mass of educated Somalis in the reconstruction of Somalia. At the moment, there are short assignment (3-6 months) programs intended to engage educated Somalis in the Diasporas for skills and knowledge exchange. But these programs are not recruiting the critical mass and qualified Somali professionals needed for regional-national reconstruction. These programs need to be streamlined, less bureaucratic, scaled up, and become permanent relocation in nature in order to attract qualified Somali professionals in the Diasporas than marginalizing the much needed Somali technocrats. There is a need to establish a regulatory body that will oversee the selection and recruitment of highly qualified Somalis for the real reconstruction of Somalia. IV. Permanent or temporary relocation of IDC Offices to Somalia or-autonomous regions. The international community (IDC) must be imbedded in the Somalia and must soak themselves into ground realities rather than just operating from a safe distance in Nairobi for 17 solid years. Relocation of IC offices to Somalia will not only cultivate confidence between Somalis and international community but it will also save substantial amount funds for development projects. Absolutely, there are serious security issues but the IC could operate from the relatively stable autonomous regions of Somalia. Relocation to Somalia means a goodwill gesture on the part of the international community to the Somali people and it may re-energize a fresh commitment for reconstruction of Somalia from the charitable foundations and foreign governments. Challenges to Regional Reconciliation:The main challenges to regional reconciliation approach would be the lack of sufficient peace-keeping forces, the continued blind support to the flawed NRC and other reconstruction process, and the lack committed of international community as well as Somali
professionals. In fact, democracy is an evolving and self-criticizing process and it is takes time and unwavering commitment for democracy to take off. Therefore, a shift to regional reconciliation approach would lay the foundation for a fresh mindset of how to stabilize Somalia and end the prolonged civil war.However, the significant political and financial sacrifices and risks made by the international community and Somalis could be squandered if an overdue regional reconciliation approach is not implemented right after the National Reconciliation Congress. Somalia needs a new paradigm shift, implementation of painful reforms based on accountability, and committed individuals and communities to rise from the ashes of the brutal civil war.
http://www.dn-sottedi.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=21
Bottom-Up Approach: A Viable Strategy in Solving the Somali Conflict
By Nuredin Netabay, March, 2007
Abstract
Although Somali people have the same religion, language and cultural background, they have been forced to fight each other by self-interested warlords and their supporters at the cost of rule of law and statehood. The civil war has caused enormous destruction in the economic, social and political spheres of Somalia. Despite the current Transitional Federal Government that has been brought back to Mogadishu by Ethiopian force, it could not control and stabilize the country. The government has no support from most Somalis and its efforts to exert itself by force might bring another cycle of bloody violence. Hence, Somalia is still in partial anarchy, and its people have been hopeless and helpless about their future.
After so much destruction, after so much human misery and suffering, Somalia's civilian population is desperate for any solution. Somali people need hope and peace. They are in desperate need of a trustworthy government, free from clan and sub-clan influence, which can serve the interest of the whole Somali population to bring peace and stability. But peace and reconciliation might not be easy to come by in Somalia. There is a great social divide created by spilling of blood, which will take generations to erode. This paper, therefore, presents a bottom-up approach to build peace from the grassroots level in Somalia. The paper argues that the bottom-up approach is a viable strategy to narrow down the social divide in Somali communities and to realize a lasting peace and reconciliation in Somalia.
http://www.beyondintractability.org/case_studies/bottom_up_approach.jsp?nid=6800