Contents | Summary | One: Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | Team | Visits | Map

Removing Barricades in Somalia

Proposed Organizing Perspectives

How does one implement these enabling conditions? Is there a role for outsiders? Many of our conversations indicated that Somalis were not the only ones contributing to political instability in the region. Conversations revealed that the politics of the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s assumed that development involved building up the national, centralized infrastructure. To this end donors worked for more than twenty years expanding ports, harbors, and airports; build ing capabilities for government-based planning and action; emphasizing the export sector, especially high-value crops and livestock; and strengthening the military. Mogadishu, and to a lesser extent Berbera and Kismayo and the irrigated stretches of the Shabelle and Juba Rivers, became focal points for investment and development. Much of the northeast was utterly ignored and many of the important yet remote interior regions neglected because they had low strategic advantage and little potential for producing high-value surplus for export.

     During the same period external development funding became by far the largest single source of revenue for the government budget. It is therefore little wonder that the principal locations of conflict in the post-Siyad era have been in Mogadishu and Kismayo, and to some extent in Berbera, the very sites where donor capital was invested in development and infrastructure. This is not to suggest that Baidoa, Merca, or Bosaso have had no conflict. But it does signal that one of the major disputes has been over controlling the fruits of centralized development investments as well as controlling possible new aid funding.

     These local conflicts have created a second level of dispute, this one internal to the clans. Where three decades ago Somali governance was in the hands of elders, today it is not. Siyad worked vigorously to weaken the power of traditional institutions, in many cases quite successfully. Donor groups dealt with the government, not the elders.

     In the post-Siyad era, leadership has passed to still another group, generally referred to as faction leaders or Òwarlords.Ó They are generally not religious (with a few notable excep tions); they are certainly not clan elders. Instead they tend to have backgrounds in business, the military, or politics. They rely for their strength on a complex alliance of com mercial interests (for example, Malaysian joint ventures); aid agreements (for example, several people we met commented that ÒprotectionÓ payments for food deliveries during the war were one of the primary means by which faction leaders financed their war machines); and young, urban-based militia members, who tend not to be influential leaders in clan affairs but young men looking for adventure, money, and a fast life.

     To an outsider, it is a sobering thought that resources designated for emergency food, health, and related relief supplies were one of the principal reasons for both the perpetuation of the conflict and the proliferation of factions. While there is no way to track the flow of these resources or to document how these funds were spent, it is abundantly clear that many of the people we met believed they had been diverted, though they wished to express such thoughts anonymously. Further, locally produced plays and poetry suggest that faction leaders enjoy the many conferences on peace and reconciliation of recent years as they keep the donor resources flowing in ways they can control.

     In short, perhaps the most significant conflict in Somalia at present, one that is rarely mentioned, pits warlords, faction leaders, and a rising commercial elite against traditional religious and clan leaders as well as womenÕs groups that seek to maintain order and stability. It is a conflict between political entrepreneurs representing a new macropower and peopleÕs organizations drawn from the clans, religion, and women.

     If there is a place for outsiders in Somalia to build peace and create a setting for devel op ment, it is to strengthen capacities among local groups, Islamic institutions, and womenÕs groups. Such capacity building creates opportunities for leveraging the peace process from a grassroots perspective and promises to bring energy and activity to the very groups that have already provided leadership to support peaceful integration. This approach through local institutions places emphasis on development rather than on narrow political power and gives priority to human and social services rather than simply making money. There are at least three specific leveraging tools that outside groups can consider.

Tool 1: Decentralization and Local Autonomy

Total decentralization is chaos, as events of the past five years confirm. But greater local authority is fundamental to the development of sufficient local capacity to check autocracy. Local arrangements underpinning a sustainable autonomy have sprung up already in dozens of ways throughout the country. Our visit made us aware of many examples. Some are experimental and revised almost daily; others draw on well-established Somali procedures of conflict resolution and resource access management; still others draw on community-based initiatives from other parts of Africa.

     Some of the needed decentralizing tools include:

• strengthening local groups in data collection and analysis, planning, implementation, and monitoring;

• providing training in local-level conflict resolution;

• encouraging local alliances that cut across clan, gender, age, and political ideologies;

• devising local techniques to manage and account for money;

• building capacities for transparency in decisionmaking;

• offering training in technical skills pertinent to local needs in agriculture, water, credit, veterinary medicine, health, and education, as well as small finance and marketing;

• strengthening capacities of local leaders in skills such as running meetings, deciding on action, building local alliances, and implementing project activity;

• opening research efforts on scaling up local priorities and resource contributions to district and regional levels; and

• introducing community-based monitoring and evaluation.

Tool 2: IslamÕs Role and the Peace Process

There are three compelling reasons why Islam is an important component of any Somali peace effort. First, it provides a well-established and highly respected ethical and value sys tem for carrying out social programs. Second, it is the spiritual foundation for all of Somali society and is therefore trusted and supported at every level. Third, it is one of the few cultural forces in the country that cuts across lines of clan, gender, age, and social class.

     Partly as a result of SiyadÕs religious persecutions, there is a new spirit of Islamic revival. One aspect is the growing popularity of Islamic symbols and rituals. During the colonial and postcolonial periods, Somalis regularly practiced Islamic family law but avoided Isla mic penal codes. Recently, a few enclaves within Somalia began to practice the penal code as well. This was the case, for example, in North Mogadishu for more than two years, although it was suspended just before our visit. Many people with whom we spoke noted that even if the principles of the penal code were adopted, the punishments would require modernization. There is also the longstanding need to harmonize Islamic codes with the principles and practices of Somali traditional law (xeer).

     Donors and other external actors should be careful not to confuse legitimate Islamic revivalism with the destabilizing qualities of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be found mostly in marginal regions such as Gedo and isolated areas of the northeast. Knee-jerk reactions against these pockets of fundamentalists could end up radicalizing ordinary Islamic revivals. Adventurist policies of this typeÑsuch as the Ethiopian military actions in GedoÑshould be avoided at all costs. Instead, there is need to look upon Islam as a medi ating, maturing, reconciling, and peace-building force. Traditional Islamic values of peace, fairness, justice, and human solidarity form a solid basis for the spiritual and moral uplifting of the emerging society. Islam can build cultural cohesiveness and solidarity without relying on a strong or autocratic state.

     It is not clear whether donors and other outsiders need to act in support of Islamic revival. Probably they do not. Instead, the most important donor action is simply to be supportive of Islamic family law, to recognize ways that some of the penal codes can be modernized and integrated with the xeer, to consider how such codes can become effective forces in regulating business and commercial enterprises, and to incorporate principles of Islam into constitution building, governance, and conflict management.

Tool 3: The Role of Women

In Mogadishu, committees of women are leading NGOs and other groups toward reconciliation. They have organized committees for improved health and educational services, some of which have been collaborating across the Green Line. They are among the most visible, articulate, energetic, and respected of the groups working to eliminate barriers such as the Green Line. They have been able to win the support of groups of elders of all political, clan, and factional perspectives. Their persistent efforts, complemented by other domestic and external pressures, have helped bring about the present situation in which the barricades are being removed. Today, Mogadishu is largely unified on a day-to-day, op erational level. Relations between Ali Mahdi, Hussein Aidid, and Osman Atto are the best they have been since 1992. While the airport and port of Mogadishu still remain closed, despite signed agreements, the direction toward clan and faction reconciliation in Moga dishu is positive. Women are not the only pressure group responsible for such change. Yet they are among the core groups and should be so recognized.

     In other parts of the country, women are performing similar roles. Women are organizing in Bosaso and the Bari region, building coalitions across faction lines, and support ing health and nutrition programs. They are getting schools going again. Women are an important and, in an ironic and Somali way, a significant force of neutrality in what other wise is a highly politicized social environment. The reasons for this neutrality are both traditional and modern.

     Traditionally, Somali women were not expected to represent their clans. That was a job for men. The clan system has tended to marginalize women, almost to the point of treating them as outsiders in clan public or political decision-making events. As a result, womenÕs identities and activities have tended to transcend some of the more destructive elements of Somali clanism. For example, in Baidoa, during the worst days of the violence, UN staff were surprised to see women readily bury all of the dead, regardless of clan or sub-clan. The men would bury only members of their own immediate clans and sub-clans, but women, who belong to their birth clans, identify as well with their marriage clans, facilitating their bridging roles.

     Modern roles have also placed women one step outside the clan system. Somali women are perceived both in nurturing roles and as earners. For example, when the civil war destroyed earlier livelihoods and the men were called away for militia duty, the women assumed new commercial roles to support their children and relatives. Dozens of anec dotal references from Somali refugees abroad also indicate that women benefit more from educational opportunities and job training, and are more successful at locating and main taining a job. The special adaptability and resilience of women and womenÕs groups suggests a vital and generally overlooked role for women in bringing about reconciliation.

     Special support should therefore be given to womenÕs organizations so that they can assume prominent roles and continue their constructive influence in rebuilding civil society. Women should be supported for active participation at every level in the emerging democratization process.

Contents | Summary | One: Introduction | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | Team | Visits | Map

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