Ensemble avec Emmanuel Al Miah et Dércio Tsandzana, j’ai écrit le premier chapitre du livre ‘Enquêter en Terrain Sensible’ (Presses du Septentrion). Le livre examine les difficultés inhérentes aux études de terrain dans les zones liminaires – soit parce qu’il y a la guerre ou d’autres types de violence, soit à cause des politiques institutionnelles d’acteurs qui sont habitués à la discrétion, soit encore à cause du positionnement du chercheur face à son objet d’enquête.
Un grand merci aux directeurs de l’ouvrage pour l’initiative qu’ils ont pris, voici il y a deux ans, et leur patience pour mener ce projet à sa fin. Les autres contributions, y compris l’introduction à la première partie du livre par Roland Marchal, sont aussi très intéressantes.
Notre chapitre décrit comment on peut faire, malgré les difficultés, des recherches dans les zones de conflit, en prenant la Somalie, l’Irak et le Mozambique comme exemples.
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.
This article, based on recent fieldwork by Somali researchers and the insights they have kindly provided me with, and on 70 interviews I conducted in Mogadishu and other places in and around Somalia in 2019-2021, 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 a social 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.
It appears likely that when international support for the dysfunctional Somali state wanes, the group will sweep to power as swiftly as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that Al Shabaab’s rule is tolerated among Somalis and has garnered some legitimacy through predictable governance, the provision of justice and a nationalist Islamist discourse. Based on extensive field work and recent scholarly research, this paper describes how Al Shabaab has successfully evolved through two critical junctures from a social movement to a quasi state-like structure. Al Shabaab outperforms the Somali state in most fields of governance. The legitimacy this brings does not translate into popularity: Somali respondents rarely align with the movement’s ideology or wish to be ruled by it. Nevertheless, the movement is fundamentally transforming the Somali sociopolitical order, harnessing clan power to impose a Weberian legal-rational, albeit illiberal type of rule.
Map from 2021 showing the extent of Al Shabaab influence over south & central Somalia (about 50% of the total territory of Somalia + Somaliland).
This article will appear soon in the Canadian Journal of African Studies after a two-year peer-review process. The link will be shared here upon publication.
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.
For the full article (in French) see The Conversation here. I also gave a 20-minute interview in French on the Belgian Radio programme ‘Au Bout du Jour’ by Eddy Caekelberghs on 28 Feb 2022 (link here)
Il y a trente ans, tandis que la Somalie sombrait dans la guerre civile, la partie nord-ouest du pays a fait sécession. Elle s’est déclarée indépendante sous le nom de Somaliland. Depuis, ce pays a construit un État, un ordre démocratique, sa propre monnaie et une économie. Il a surtout connu la paix, à la différence de la Somalie voisine.
Le Somaliland, grand comme la moitié de la France, est peuplé de trois à quatre millions de personnes. Il commande une position stratégique sur les rives sud du Golfe d’Aden, une des zones majeures du transit maritime mondial.
Depuis trente ans, ce pays cherche la reconnaissance diplomatique, en tant que bon voisin et en respectant les règles internationales. Pourtant, il n’est pas reconnu. Pourquoi ?
Le marché du bétail à Aynabo. Robert Kluijver, Fourni par l’auteurContinue reading →
Over the past year I spent a lot of time researching contemporary Somali culture in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Somaliland, Somali Regional State in Ethiopia, Addis, Nairobi, North-Eastern Provinces of Kenya) for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and a nice little consulting outfit focusing on culture called Aleph Strategies.
Unusually, SDC is planning a 12-year long smart investment into the development of Somali culture, and this report is the baseline study allowing to build a strategy. Donors rarely have the long-term perspective which allows for slow and steady build-up: the contrary of so-called ‘Quick Impact Projects’.
As part of their strategy, SDC agreed that we could prepare and disseminate a public version of the report. It covers the different types of cultural expression, the social and political context of cultural production in each region and it gives examples of current cultural developments and groups.
The parliamentary and local council elections in Somaliland on May 31 went well; they were peaceful and they delivered a surprising result, because the opposition parties won.
The ruling party, Kulmiye, came second nationwide in the parliamentary polls, preceded with just one seat by Waddani. UCID, a party which had been doing quite poorly in recent elections, made a surprising comeback.
Analysis by Robert Kluijver, April 28 2021 The crisis that is rocking Somalia now is caused by the unwillingness of President Farmajo, whose term ended on Feb 8, 2021, to allow a transition of power. If he continues to cling to the presidency, we may witness a disintegration of national security forces into clan-based militias that defend certain areas of Mogadishu, resulting in low to medium levels of armed conflict and permanent instability. The fragile political progress made over the past decade may unravel and the Somali economy may enter a phase of stagnation or decline. Mogadishu residents fleeing their homes to escape the fighting (60,000 to 100,000 on Sunday April 25, according to the UN) and the Al Shabaab attacks in Mogadishu on April 28 are a foreboding of what may come if this crisis is not rapidly resolved.
In the night of Tuesday to Wednesday 28 April, Farmaajo announced he would seek a new mandate from Parliament to solve the current political crisis through elections, overturning his earlier insistence that the extension of his mandate by two years, voted by the Lower House on 14 April, provided sufficient legitimacy for his rule. In the same speech he lashed out at his political opponents, accusing them of engineering the current crisis for their personal benefit. Far from conciliation, he did not suggest he would step down to allow a level playing field during the electoral process, which is a key demand of his opponents.
Tribune / Opinion qui attend publication dans la presse francophone, rédigée le 11 février 2021
L’Union Européenne dépense depuis des décennies des milliards d’euros en Somalie, mais le bilan de cet engagement est plus que décevant. Si bien la société Somalienne, dynamique, connait un certain essor, le gouvernement de l’État fédéral et de ses états membres, que la communauté internationale s’est engagée à soutenir, reste paralysé par les luttes pour le pouvoir entre les clans. Ce gouvernement, dépendant de l’aide internationale et profondément corrompu, jouit de peu de soutien populaire, d’autant plus qu’il est incapable de démarrer le développement du pays exsangue. Ayant échoué à tenir des élections avant le 8 février, quand leur mandat est arrivé à terme, le Président Farmaajo et son cabinet sont même techniquement illégitimes : une bonne occasion pour l’Europe d’infléchir sa politique.
These are two projects I worked on with Gilles Stassart when in Ethiopia; they finally blended into one at the Alliance Éthio-Française in Addis Ababa, in a series of performances:
VIP dinner with WFP rations, November 2018
Sonic Barbecue part 1, November 2018
Sonic Barbecue part 2, March 2019
Part 1: The Hunger Kitchen
The Hunger Kitchen idea started with the following observation that I made while working in Somaliland and Somalia: beneficiaries of food aid generally dislike the food rations they receive, and do not know what to do with them. Therefore, they often resell those rations to buy foodstuffs they’re more familiar with.
A vendor selling WFP ‘plumpy sup’ (a variant of plumpy nut) on the Somaliland-Ethiopian border at Tog Wajaale. The price is 1000 Somaliland shilling, about 10c, per ration. I took this picture in 2017Continue reading →
