La Somalie: État défaillant ou État aubaine?

This is my 1.5 page contribution to “Un Monde en Crises“, an analytical digest of the world today written by researchers of the Centre de Recherches Internationales. It argues that the Somali state is not a failure for Somali elites, who distribute international funding to their clan constituencies. Since all clans are represented in the current make-up of the Federal State, this maintains some stability in the country.

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Neoliberal academic publishing

revised on 28/06 01.00 am

I participated in a workshop on academic publishing in peer-reviewed journals, given by the editors of a journal based in Central Europe. This journal has become part of the Palgrave-Springer conglomerate.

While nearly all journal editors, all reviewers and authors work for free, and authors that want to publish ‘open access’ with one of those journals need to pay a fee of typically 1500-3000 USD (so their article does not appear behind a paywall), the journals themselves make whopping profit margins of 40% on average by selling subscriptions and individual articles for very high prices.

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Al Shabaab governance

This article, based on recent fieldwork by Somali researchers and the insights they have kindly provided me with, and on interviews I conducted in Mogadishu and Beled Weyne in 2020, examines how Al Shabaab exerts its rule over the southern and central regions of Somalia. The movement depends on local support, as it receives practically no international support, and thus needs to gain legitimacy through its governance. The opposite is true of the federal government of Somalia, which receives most of its funding from abroad. The insurgents outgovern the federal government of Somalia in practically all aspects. They also govern the population in Mogadishu and other areas supposedly under government control.

To explain Al Shabaab’s staying power despite the international community’s continuous efforts to militarily defeat it, the insurgency is examined as an expression of what once was a successful social movement, as a nationalist resistance movement, and through the lens of rebel governance. Its political project, to supercede fractious Somali clan identities by imposing an Islamist state, is shared by many Somalis, even if they dislike Al Shabaab’s religious fervour and would prefer to live in an open society accepted by the rest of the world.

What seems practically sure is that when international support for the dysfunctional Somali state wanes, the group will sweep to power as swiftly as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

Following is first the summary of the article, then a link to the full text (24 pages + 3 pages bibliography

Abstract: Viewing the Somali Islamic insurgency movement Al Shabaab as a terrorist or criminal organization strips it of the very possibility of legitimacy. Foreign experts commonly assume that it rules through fear, violence, propaganda and the manipulation of the population’s needs. Recent studies however show that Al Shabaab’s rule is largely tolerated and that the movement, through tight and predictable governance and a nationalist discourse, has garnered some popular legitimacy. This article places these findings within a critical ‘rebel governance’ discourse that examines the movement not from a counter-insurgency perspective but through the lens of evolving socio-cultural relations between the population and the insurgents. How does Al Shabaab respond to the demands of the population while accomplishing its social transformation project: replacing fractious clan identities with a nationalist Islamic one? Considering that the main long-term problem facing the Somali people is climate change, while in the short term peace is the most urgent issue, I argue that the international intervention in Somalia should take into account existing local governance arrangements, including Al Shabaab rule, instead of trying to replace them with liberal democracy.

Map from 2021 showing the extent of Al Shabaab influence over south & central Somalia (about 50% of the total territory of Somalia + Somaliland).

Download the full article here.

Interview in NRC over staatsopbouw in de Hoorn van Afrika

Interview

‘De liberale democratie die het Westen altijd als panacee voorschrijft, werkt simpelweg vaak niet’

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/05/29/er-zijn-meerdere-vormen-van-bestuur-als-alternatief-van-een-centrale-overheid-a4165826

Robert Kluijver | Expert internationale betrekkingen

In de Hoorn van Afrika verkruimelen staatsstructuren. Het Westen moet steun geven aan plaatselijke zelfhulpinitiatieven van burgers, zegt Robert Kluijver.

De Hoorn van Afrika staat in brand en staatsapparaten verkruimelen. In Somalië ging de centrale staat al ten onder in 1991, in Ethiopië nemen sinds 2020 regio’s het op tegen de centrale autoriteit. En in Soedan raakten de machthebbers vorige maand onderling slaags. Maar de bevolking zit niet bij de pakken neer en werkt aan alternatieve vormen van bestuur. De vraag is hoe om te gaan met dit proces van eroderende staatsstructuren. Misschien is het misplaatst om een sterke centrale regering te willen vestigen en moet juist steun worden gegeven aan plaatselijke zelfhulpinitiatieven van burgers, zoals de verzetsgroepen in Soedan en de lokale vredesinitiatieven in Somalië. Dat betoogt Robert Kluijver, die westerse pogingen bestudeert om liberale democratieën te vestigen in landen die cultureel vaak enorm verschillen.

Wat is er over van de staat in Soedan?

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From Limonov to Surkov: trying to understand Russian politics

Two books I read recently, ‘Limonov’ by Emmanuel Carrère and ‘Le Mage du Kremlin’ by Guiliano da Empoli, ignited my old passion for Russia.

In 1997 I spent a few days in Moscow on my way to Tajikistan, where I learnt to speak Russian. I took the train from Bishkek to Moscow on the way back, managing to blend in sufficiently to cross into Russia without a visa, and spent a week or so in Moscow figuring out how I would travel onward. After that experience I did a Masters in Post-Soviet Studies (in a programme set up by Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, the mother of Emmanuel) and returned a few times to Central Asia, Russia and Ukraine for research or simply travelling, before life pushed me southwards to Afghanistan and the Middle East.

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Sudan – The Solution is Real Democracy

Note: this article has appeared in African Arguments (Sudan: Revolutionary Reflections amid a Raging War) on May 5, 2023. A French version, more didactic and less politically engaged but otherwise substantially the same, appeared in the French edition of The Conversation (Soudan: la Transition Démocratique en Péril) on May 3, 2023.

The current fighting between military factions in Sudan must be seen against the backdrop of the Sudanese revolution that started in December 2018.

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Memories of the Emergency Loya Jirga in South-West Afghanistan

In May and June 2002 I oversaw the holding of elections in Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan. I was the only UN political/civil affairs officer in south-west Afghanistan and had to single-handedly support – I barely had office staff – the Afghan team in charge of organizing the elections. This meant

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Rêverie Politique

This was my submission to an ‘Ideas Festival’ organized by the Full Circle in Brussels from 2-4 December 2022

The human species is like an organism in which each individual is a node connected in dynamic ways to other individual nodes. Like the cells in a body, together we form a super-organism: humanity.

We may wonder whether Agent Smith in the Matrix was right when he characterizes humanity as a cancer exhausting and ultimately destroying its natural environment.

Still and text from the Matrix, 1999
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My PhD Process

Lessons from a 50-year-old professional drifter

This text covers my experience writing a PhD in a mid-career phase of my life. The experience is of course specific to me, but it might help other people contemplating this move. I sometimes sought such reflections online, when I felt lost, and rarely found anything useful.

I have not yet defended my dissertation (that will happen on 26 January 2023) so it may be a bit premature to share this experience, but whatever the result of my defence, the trajectory leading to it will remain the same.

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Mother Earth returns through the Milk of her Dreams – Impressions of the Venice Biennale, 2022

Over the past years, most of my visits to contemporary art exhibitions have ended in disappointment. I consider myself an ex-curator: after my last show in 2015 I decided to step out of the art world. I usually tell people I enjoyed working with artists but increasingly disliked the art world, in both its commercial and institutional aspects. But this Biennale has left me inspired and hopeful for the art world – reviving my old hope that artists give creative expression to the deep undercurrents of collective development, giving an indication of where we are heading. This impression was left especially by “The Milk of Dreams” show curated by Cecilia Alemani, but surprisingly also by many of the national pavilions and some of the collateral events.

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