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 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).
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.
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.
Late June 2018 the Somali insurgent movement Al Shabaab announced a ban on plastic bags, citing environmental concerns and the impact on livestock. In my travels through Somalia, I have noticed extensive plastic bag pollution. The first cause of death for camels in the United Arab Emirates is plastic bags (see an article in The National or a short analysis here), and undoubtedly they cause many deaths in Somalia too. Camel raising is a main source of wealth in Somalia. So a ban on plastic bags, whoever declares it, should be greeted with relief.
Mogadishu’s beaches are full of plastic and other litter
Remarkably, the few international media that reported on it, as
well as almost all social media comments, ridiculed the decision. See for
example the New York Times
report which gives some examples of the laughter generated
about the ‘first eco-terrorist group’.
In brief: the IMF has congratulated the Federal Government of Somalia on its progress on revenue collection and other reforms it considers necessary. It has also suggested that the government increase its regulation of the Somali Telecoms sector, an often-repeated request of the international community, worried about Al Shabaab’s use of mobile money services. Meanwhile, the insurgent group has been engaged in a taxation war with the Islamic State. In the middle of these contentions, between a rock and a hard place, stands Mogadishu’s successful business community.
Pizza House in Hodan has considerably expanded since it was attacked by Al Shabaab a few years ago. It’s a favorite hangout of Mogadishu’s youthContinue reading →
At times it appears that United Nations analyses of local situations have become increasingly divorced from ground realities. This becomes apparent when one critically reads briefings to the Security Council, which often are closely reflected in subsequent Security Council resolutions.
In 2002, when I was political affairs officer for the UN mission in Afghanistan, I was charged with the compilation and writing of the weekly situation reports that were sent to the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, including the Secretary General’s office. Continue reading →
(this is the concluding section of the first chapter of my doctoral thesis in preparation, “International Intervention and State-Building in Somalia”, 45 pages. The entire chapter can be downloaded here).
The historic survey of international interventions in Somalia provides us with some interesting insights:
The Somali state has been an international project that started in the 1950s. State-building has taken place above and along local governance systems, usually clan-based, that have continued to function in the absence of an effective state. Rather than being the fundamental organizing principle of Somali society – as is often assumed – the Somali state is essentially an interface between that society and the international community, brought into being and almost entirely funded by the latter.
The state provides external resources that can be captured. President Siad Barre had captured and then exhausted this resource as he fought against his rivals. The vestiges of the state—its property of land and buildings, weapons, personnel, reserves, monopoly position regarding taxation, etc.—were either destroyed or divided among many Somali factions in the civil war. Without a state to fight about, Somali society stabilized into forms of local governance in the 1990s.
As an instrument, the Somali state has mainly been used in a predatory fashion. It has never invested much in education, health and infrastructure. Somali experiences of the state have been overall negative, from Barre’s time to today, when a checkpoint manned by government forces is more likely to result in extorsion, rape or intimidation, than one manned by clan militia or Al Shabaab. This negative perception of the state among the Somali public is not addressed in international state-building plans.
There is a clear correlation between levels of external financial support and civil strife in Somalia: The more aid, the more war. Both humanitarian and ‘state-building’ assistance are seen as a resource to be captured.
The one time that a home-grown system of governance was established in most of Somalia, the Islamic Courts Union, it was rapidly destroyed by external intervention. The international community supported the Ethiopian invasion under the banner of the War on Terror. This gave Somalis the impression that the international community is not interested in peace and stability per se, but only on its own terms, through a state that it controls; this leads them to believe that control is the objective of the international presence in Somalia.
Since 2004 the international community has embarked on a sustained effort to create a new Somali state, based on a federal model. The de facto independence of Somaliland since 1991 has not been recognized. Although many Somalis still contest the legitimacy of the federal state, it appears that acceptance levels are gradually rising, as that state, while still quite powerless, is becoming increasingly stable. The insistence may be paying off, but Somalia remains a failed state by all definitions.
The international community has always been coy about its involvement in conceiving, building and sustaining the Somali state, making it seem like either a developmental necessity (in the 1950s), or as a request by Somalis themselves (since 1992). Given the systematic dependence on external support, the donors of the Somali state could claim ownership over it, but instead they maintain the fiction of sovereignty and independence.
There is little historical evidence that the colonial period was a traumatic one in Somalia, and it would be hard to argue that the roots of Somalia’s troubles lie in the policies of colonial powers. In fact, colonial administrators made more efforts to understand and work within the Somali context than interveners do today. The colonial period was disruptive because it was the first contact between Somalis and the ‘modernized’ world, but then prevalent policies sought to preserve and work with local balances of power and traditional self-governance rather than replace/reorganise them as today.
Until the 1990s, there was a degree of frankness within the international community when discussing the situation in Somalia; since the 2000s, international discourse about its presence and objectives in Somalia has become increasingly out of touch with reality. This is evident, for example, when comparing UN documents about Somalia of the 1940s, 1990s and 2010s. Today, international agencies’ assessments of the context and the actions to be taken therein are often in contradiction with those made by independent experts.
The disconnect between international intervention and the Somali ground truth has notably increased with the Global War on Terror. Somalia was no threat to the international community, but it has been treated as such since 2001. It can be argued that the War on Terror has spawned radical Islam and extremism in Somalia, rather than preventing it. Despite – or because of – more than a decade of warfare.
Intervention in Somalia has been justified mostly on humanitarian grounds, both in policy documents and towards international public opinion. However, humanitarian action has been increasingly constrained and diverted for external state-building and counter-terrorism purposes. This has led not only to failure of international assistance when Somalia faced major crises (1991-1993, 2007-2008 and 2011-2012), but also to the loss of impartiality and autonomy, as the aid sector is now amalgamated to the overall Western agenda of forced modernization and is incapable of accessing populations in opposition-held areas.
Somalia has been a test case where many of the assumptions underlying international intervention have been broken. Both superpowers failed to make Somalia an ally despite considerable investments. The UN intervention failed spectacularly to bring peace and allow humanitarian aid delivery, despite the seminal invocation of Chapter VII of the UN charter and the massive means deployed. The powerful US was routed militarily in 1993. The NGO sector lost its independence. Coordinated donor policies failed to make an impact on the ground. Despite being one of the theatres of the War on Terror and ‘Counter Violent Extremism’ programs, at least half of South-Central Somalia is controlled by Al Shabaab, which has progressively radicalized.
In short, it seems Somalis never aspired to building a state and the international efforts to create one and then support it have met with overall failure. From a study of the internal dynamics of Somali society over the past hundred years, it seems clear that the less intervention in Somalia, the better. It also appears Somali systems of self-governance have been resilient and overall effective, although skewed toward the powerful clans. Why then is the international community still engaged in external state-building in Somalia? After having discarded internal reasons to do so, it is time to consider possible reasons external to the Somali context.
