Contemporary Somali culture

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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.

Here’s a link to the report

Two prints from the Coming Home series by Mustafa Saeed (Hargeisa), 2020: Monument (l) and Vintage Spirit (r). Artist’s website
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Reflections on the crumbling of the Afghan state

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I first arrived in Afghanistan on March 21, 2000. I was immediately whisked into the office of the Taliban Deputy Minister for Culture, who warmly welcomed my mission to collaborate on the documentation and protection of cultural heritage. In the following seven months I occasionally worked with him and other Taliban authorities, mostly at the provincial and district level, as I surveyed Afghan monuments and archaeological sites and undertook some small-scale protection and restoration works. I lived in Kabul and moved freely, without needing any protection, through the city and the country, except in the Northeastern areas held by the opposition.

Visiting the site of Hadda in Eastern Afghanistan, Sep 2000. Photo credit Molly or Nellika Little

I found the Taliban personable and hospitable as only Afghans can be, but I also noticed they were often uncultivated and inept, and intensely disliked by my Afghan colleagues. I once co-hosted a political gathering of Taliban (for the opening of the National Museum in August 2000) and then noticed that usually calm Taliban contacts suddenly agitated for jihad and national cultural resistance (the museum was closed again after three days): to me an antipathetic group identity and project. Moreover the Taliban were clearly incapable of governing the country – in four years since they had gained power they had not restored any buildings, and only paved 20 km of road – and most Afghans I met ardently longed they would disappear.

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Somaliland elections – backgrounder

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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.

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Understanding the current Somali political crisis

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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.

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L’Europe se trompe de politique en Somalie

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In English: Reconsidering EU policy options in Somalia

INTERVIEW SUR LA SITUATION POLITIQUE PUBLIÉE SUR RFI – 19 FÉVRIER 2021

Interview sur la crise électorale – Radio Vatican, 26 avril 2021.

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.

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Sonic BBQ and the Hunger Kitchen

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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 2017
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The place of the Law in France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

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Today everybody, when speaking of Human Rights, thinks of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, with its 30 articles. But this declaration took its name, the principle of its existence and several of its articles from the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’ established by the National Assembly of revolutionary France in August 1789. Prior to that there were other declarations of legal/constitutional nature specifying rights of men, notably the US Declaration of Independence (1776, co-written by Thomas Jefferson who also helped write the French Declaration), the English Bill of Rights (1689),  the 1215 Magna Carta and even King Cyrus’ cylinder (539 BC) which proclaimed the freedom of the Babylonian people. But the French declaration, as the name indicates, was the first to be specifically concerned with the rights of the individual human being and put these at the centre of the political system.

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Transnational Elite Theory: Understanding Hegemony in International Relations

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Abstract

To understand the interplay between international hegemony and the apparent loss of state sovereignty, it is necessary to reintroduce the transnational elite as a global actor. Hegemony, meaning leadership, is based on values. The transnational elite embodies these values and adapts them to the changing global context, integrating counter-hegemonic tendencies and establishing a consensus. That consensus is transmitted through the transnational elite members to domestic societies whose consent – active or passive – is required for socioeconomic reforms which benefit the transnational elite. The role of states as sites for political contestation and debate has decreased, as policy-making, supposedly of a technical/expert nature, is shifted to the inter-state level, leading to an increase in international regulatory regimes which are dominated by the transnational elites. Instead, the state is increasingly becoming an instrument to transmit and enforce the transnational consensus. While transnational values remain largely liberal and elite membership is accessible to anyone sharing them, the manner of establishing consent is increasingly authoritarian. This article retraces the concept of the transnational class in international relations theory and, through a case study of the Trilateral Commission, looks at how the transnational elite has evolved since the 1970s, and how it is integrating counterhegemonic pressures today, becoming increasingly powerful – as the rapidly growing income gap between rich and poor underscores.

Download pdf full text here

Submitted to Millenium Journal of International Studies

Somaliland suspends relations with the United Nations among rising social tensions

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African Arguments published a short version of this article with a focus on the UN, and a similar, slightly improved version of this article appeared on democracyinafrica.org,

On October 25, 2020, Somaliland authorities suspended their relations with the United Nations and banned its activities ‘until further notice’. While the frustration of the thirty-year old unrecognized state with the UN can easily be understood, this move is unlikely to bring any benefit to the country. Somaliland is gradually developing into a clan-based autocracy. President Bihi maintains a balance among the ruling elites by granting and revoking business licenses and political positions, but this clientelist system produces little economic growth and offers no scope for political renewal. The youth is increasingly disaffected. The President instead blames the country’s problems on the lack of direct access to international funding and is increasing the pressure on the international community.

One week earlier, on October 17, the cabinet of Somaliland’s President Muse Bihi decided not to restore the landing rights for direct flights from the unrecognized state’s capital Hargeisa to Dubai by Air Arabia and Fly Dubai, citing legal difficulties. The details of the underlying conflict provide a clear window into Somaliland’s politics and how they affect, and are affected by, clan and business interests.

A Fly Dubai airliner on the tarmac of Hargeisa in better times
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The aid expectations gap: political analysis and how to deal with it personally

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This article was reposted by the International Humanitarian Studies Association

This morning I spoke with an evidently motivated and capable, but thoroughly disheartened foreigner working on Somalia for an international agency. She had made great plans for the development of the sector she was entrusted with, but these had mostly come to nothing because of the non-cooperation of local authorities. Her activities were blocked by the national counterpart of her agency, which was a domestic institution which she herself had helped set up and fund. Protocol within her own organization made it mandatory for her to work through that agency which was blocking any chance for her to reach out to other prominent actors that she found worthy of support.

Chewing qat in the former residence of the British agent in Sheekh

I’m currently staying in Mogadishu, Somalia, outside the heavily fortified airport – known as ‘MIA’ for Mogadishu International Airport by foreigners, and ‘Halane’ by Somalis – where foreigners invariably remain cloistered. I’m having conversations with artists, youth, cultural producers, local and national authorities and visiting the cultural sites of the capital. This is a particularly nice consultancy: a scoping study for a small European donor intent on spending its money smartly. Mogadishu is bursting with energy and full of promise. Because few foreigners leave MIA, and donors generally don’t place much confidence in what Somalis tell them, I’m enjoying being an observer with privileged access to my field of study, which is the same as that of the disillusioned international agency worker, whose access is barred by mostly bureaucratic reasons (no, it is not so unsafe in Mogadishu today). Here I will try to elucidate the nature of the problem she faces, which is encountered today by many aid workers; the roots of the problem lie in what I call an expectations gap.

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