International Actors and a New State-Building in Somalia

William Reno, Department of Political Science

1

Northwestern University

The Somalia region is a paradigmatic case of open-ended conflict, chaos and insecurity, a

sovereign vessel without an effective pilot. Somalia regularly tops Foreign Policy magazine’s

Failed States Index.2 Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared that “dealing with

such fractured or failing states is, in many ways, the main security challenge of our times.” Then

US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton justified the 2011 intervention in Libya to prevent Libya

from becoming “a giant Somalia.”3 Academic researchers often express a divergent view, that

the absence of a central state authority in Somalia is not a grave problem. This sovereign vessel

contains lots of little pilots, local authorities that provide order, administer civilians, and promote

some measure of economic security.4 Effective state-builders survive because they perform, and

it is the duty of the international community to support these efforts.

At first glance, it appears that the first vision wins out among foreign policy makers. By

late 2011, it appeared that the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) soldiers had forced

1 The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Research Council of Norway, project 214349/F10,

“The Dynamics of State Failure and Violence,” administered by the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Elements of this

paper were presented at the conference, “Struggles Over Emerging States in Africa” at the University of Durham, -

11 May 2014. Research for this project was carried out under Northwestern University IRB STU00051371.

2Foreign Policy, “Failed States Index, 2014,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/fragile-states-2014.

3 Both quotes in Stewart Patrick, “Why Failed States Shouldn’t Be our Biggest Security National Fear,” Washington

Post, 15 April 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-failed-states-shouldnt-be-our-biggest-national-

security-fear/2011/04/11/AFqWmjkD_story.html.

4 Benjamin Powell, Ryan Ford & Alex Nowrasteh, Somalia after State Collapse: Chaos or Improvement? Journal of

Economic Behavior & Organization, 67 (2008), 657-70; P Leeson, “Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and after

Government Collapse,” Journal of Comparative Economics, 35:4 (2007), 689-710; Tatiana Nenova & Tim Harford,

“How Does Somalia’s Private Sector Cope without Government?” World Bank, 2005; Ken Menkhaus, “Governance

without Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State-Building and the Politics of Coping,” International Security 32:3

(2007), 74-106.

al Shabaab militants from Mogadishu so that the Transitional Federal Government could begin to

rule from Somalia’s capital. AMISOM steadily increased the territory under its control,

coordinating with Ethiopian and Kenyan forces that occupied other parts of Somalia. The

February 2012 London Conference brought together dozens of governments and most major

Somali political groups to formulate a plan to create a new national government, reconstruct the

security and judicial institutions and provide social services to citizens. Foreign governments

denounced “spoilers” and promised continued logistical and financial support for AMISOM and

pressed Somali leaders to elect a new legislature and write a new constitution.5 On 20 August

2012 a new legislature was sworn in and on 10 September 2012 it elected a new president,

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a professor with technocratic credentials. On 17 January 2013 the US

extended diplomatic recognition of what was now the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS)

and then on 6 March 2013 the UN Security Council partially lifted an arms embargo, signaling

that Somalia had taken major steps after more than two decades without a formally recognized

central government.6 This intensive international engagement is to continue to elections in 2016,

by which time the FGS is to have implemented new human rights legislation, administrative

reforms, strengthened security institutions and improved social service provision.

This record appears to indicate that an extensive state-building project is underway in

Somalia. It occurs in the context of international efforts to remove the influence of al Shabaab,

elements of which have professed allegiance to al Qaeda and are implicated in terrorist attacks in

Kampala and Nairobi. The state-building reality is dramatically different. The government

hardly controls anything, at least in a conventional form, in its own capital city and is exposed to

5 “London Conference on Somalia Communique,” UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 23 Feb. 2012; “UN and

Partners Issue Warning Against Somali Peace Process Spoilers,” United Nations News Center, 1 May 2012.

6 Rick Gladstone, “Security Council Loosens Somalian Arms Embargo,” New York Times, 6 March 2013.

regular attack from its foes. 7

No part of the city (outside the AMISOM perimeter) is safe for

foreign visitors or for most government officials. 8

The Somali political landscape is one in

which kinship based [“clan”] and other networks overshadow formal bureaucratic codes of

behavior. Shifting constellations of groups contend over these allegiances as much as over

territory. Groups devote considerable energy infiltrating one another as soon as any get close to

the levers of power associated with sovereign status or connections with foreign actors. In this

context, conventional concepts such as “control” are difficult to define. Physical and political

boundaries are hard to identify if armed groups simultaneously infiltrate one another and their

members selectively collaborate with the people that they fight. Concepts such as “liberated

zones” or “rebel-ocracy” apply very imperfectly, as does the concept of “government control.”

This also means that theories that base their analysis of the logic of the exercise of violence on

assumptions that groups act in a unitary fashion and fight to control territory and the people on it

require reevaluation.9 “Discriminate violence” and “indiscriminate violence” operate differently

in this environment, as do “collaboration” and “resistance.”

What are foreign actors who support the SFG doing? Surely they recognize this reality,

even if many are reluctant to acknowledge it. The section that follows provides an argument that

7 Rare is the week that goes by without attacks that directly challenge government control. “Somalia: Gedo

Governor Survives Explosion, Al Shabaab Opponent,” Garowe Online, 3 May 2014,

http://allafrica.com/stories/201405040023.html, In a separate attack, “Somalia Unrest: Deadly Blast in Mogadishu,”

3 May 2014, BBC News Africa, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27268938, “Somalia: UN Envoy Condemns

Murder of Second Lawmaker in less than 48 Hours,” United Nations News Centre, 22 April 2014,

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47624#.U2oqj1fN4TA.

8 The author observed in June – July 2012 and August 2013 visits to Mogadishu the absence of government police

and security forces on the streets of the capital, and then when they appeared, a tendency to disappear to avoid

attacks. Visits to government officials require travel to a fortified enclave and passage through numerous

checkpoints staffed with members of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces. Some high

government officials travel in AMISOM armored vehicles.

9 For example, Stathis Kalyvas, Logic of Violence in Civil War, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006),

esp. 146-209.

explains how international actors adjust to the problem of state-building in Somalia and respond

in innovative ways. This explanation develops the concept of “preventative counterinsurgency,”

an idea that is important for understanding new US and European approaches to security

problems and international relations with many other states that face internal disorder.

Subsequent sections explore this process in three parts of the Somali space; in Somaliland,

Puntland and in southern Somalia. These sections provide a clearer view of the mechanisms

though which this new kind of security-based international relations is pursued.

The Argument

Counterinsurgency in the 21st century has become about state-building. This has

happened because of a fundamental mismatch between the original concept of counterinsurgency

and the realities of places like Somalia. Conventional approaches to battling rebels historically

rested upon two core principles: (1) there must be a government with the political will and

capacity to undertake reform and effectively engage citizens, and (2) there must be an indigenous

armed force with the ability to protect the government and provide security to civilians.10

These

principles presuppose that local political actors accept the existence of a state as appropriate and

that state collapse is temporary and that its restoration is desired and feasible. The contemporary

reality of places like Somalia is that politics violates these principles. Local authorities often

collaborate with the rebels that they fight. Armed groups, including armies built with external

assistance, frequently split and join temporary coalitions with others. Personal authority, honor

10

These principles appear in classic works, i.e. David Galula’s concept of “political action” in his

Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, (New York: Praeger, 1964) and the combined civil-military

strategy in Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, (New

York: Praeger, 1966). Later expressions of these principles appear in David Kilcullen, “The Three Pillars of

Counterinsurgency,” (Washington, DC: US Government Counterinsurgency Conference, 26 Sept 2006) and US

Army & Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual [FM3-24], (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

and vendetta become wrapped up in what observers may call “subversion” and “infiltration.”

This behavior contributes to exceptionally blurred boundaries between licit and illicit; what

observers are prone to label as “corruption.”

Scholars engage in heated debate about the importance of these characteristics and what

this means for Somali society.11

Foreign officials and others engaging with Somali politics also

engage in this kind of debate, but in a different fashion. They operate in the broader context of

the international community’s unanimous refusal to decertify the sovereignty of Somalia within

its internationally recognized borders, despite the development of effective alternative authorities

within it. Diplomatic recognition of sovereignty has real consequences, denying authorities that

govern in a conventional bureaucratic territorial fashion access to many of the prerogatives of

sovereignty such as creditworthiness and limit their access to international forums with other

states.12

These existing authorities occupy a range of strategies of governance. These include the

Republic of Somaliland, Puntland State of Somalia, Galmudug State, Khatumo State of Somalia,

the Maakhir State of Somalia, the Jubaland Administation, Galmudug, Himam & Heeb, and

others. Groups like Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (al Shabaab) pursue a purified Somalia

and some imagine building a component of a global caliphate. This reality reinforces foreign

actors’ search for alternative ways to engage Somali politics at the same time that it offers

Somali political actors new resources and strategies for maintaining their positions.

Somali actors engage with international actors on specific tasks of governance, especially

in building and controlling local armed groups and developing new systems for surveillance.

11

Catherine Besteman, “Representing Violence and ‘Othering’ Somalia,” Cultural Anthropology, 11:1 (1996), 120-

33; I.M. Lewis, “Doing Violence to Ethnography: A Response to Catherine Besteman’s ‘Representing Violence and

“Othering” Somalia’,” American Ethnologist, 13:1 (1998), 100—08.

12 This is articulated in Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Through task-specific cooperation, these authorities are integrated into a global security network

that constitutes a parallel sphere of recognition, with its own prerogatives and rules, and with

concrete influences on how these authorities govern in an open-ended conflict. Like conventional

global norms of sovereignty, integration into security networks involves mutual recognition

within specific realms of governance, initially centered on matters related to internal and

international security. The relationship is more intensive and complex than a powerful state’s

episodic use of localized armed groups as proxies in conflicts. Instead the relationship prescribes

and shapes standards of governance within the authority’s realm and signals a shift in what the

international actor understands as constituting effective governance.13

These interactions are based upon a tacit assumption of a rough equality of external and

Somali actors in realms of security endeavor in the sense that these Somali actors are treated as

valid partners in international relations. This vision of governance in Somalia accepts and builds

upon the publically denied vision of diverse local governance in Somalia in that it rests upon the

capacity and political will of these authorities to demonstrate their effectiveness at managing the

exercise of violence and in conducting surveillance of territory and people. Even though the

international community is unanimous in according the FGS exclusive formal sovereign status,

these security capabilities are sufficient to convince foreign officials and international

organizations to deal directly with Somali authorities that are not part of this recognized

government in a security-defined regime of international relations. The capacity to govern in

open-ended conflict legitimates these authorities’ knowledge about and influence over the micro-

politics of specific populations when applied to maintaining order and control. This validates the

13

Robert Mandel, Global Security Upheaval: Armed Nonstate Groups Usurping State Stability Functions, (Palo

Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013). Jean François Bayart, Le Gouvernement du monde. Une Critique politique

de la globalization, (Paris: Fayard, 2004).

private administration of force, and entrusts the monopolization of the exercise of violence to

patronage and kinship networks. It tolerates and even incorporates activities on a limited basis

that are defined as criminal in wider international society, so long as these contribute to the long-

term goal of the monopolizing the exercise of violence and strengthens surveillance.

This form of international relations and “state-building” is a product rather than a victim

of globalization. Transnational non-state actors are integral to the internal capacities of Somali

authorities of diverse varieties. These transnational networks include private security firms,

information collection and risk management enterprises, and state and private firm providers and

operators of surveillance technologies. This mediation on the part of private firms contributes to

the mutual compatibility in relations between what from a conventional view would seem to be

radically different kinds of authorities. These global changes also include the fragmentation and

proliferation of state-managed security services in powerful states, particularly in the United

States, that become the instruments of this new kind of international relations. Far from

undermining Somalia’s diverse forms of governance, the overlapping activities of these actors

strengthen these localized authorities. Global collaboration elevates knowledge and techniques of

surveillance and empowers those who can style themselves as “security technocrats” to occupy

positions of influence.

These processes are central to the real way that Somalia is governed and incorporate its

existing post-state logic, even as the illusion of more conventional state-building continues at a

public diplomatic level. These processes are varied, and it is a case of an easier compatibility

that follows immediately.

The Easy Compatibility of Somaliland

On 15 May 1991, less than five months after the collapse of Somalia’s central

government, local administrators and community leaders and the leadership of the Somali

National Movement (SNM) that had fought the central government for almost a decade, declared

the northwestern territories of Somalia to be the independent Republic of Somaliland. Since then

no foreign government has recognized this declaration of a new state. In arguing their case for

recognition, Somaliland authorities routinely stress the gap between the accomplishments of their

domestic administration and the obstacles to further progress that non-recognition imposes. They

advance arguments for recognition based on elements of the 1933 Montevideo Convention that

stress the maintenance of order and consistent control over territory as necessary conditions for

others to accept them as a sovereign state. 14

Scholars regularly point out that Somaliland’s

government possesses these capabilities, and often make implicit or explicit arguments that

extending recognition would set the stage for greater progress in providing services and

protection to Somaliland’s citizens.15

Somaliland officials provide evidence of their

government’s capacity and willingness to conform to contemporary global standards of behavior

in the administration of justice16

and devote particular attention to advertising the conduct of

democratic elections.17

These officials complain that non-recognition stunts Somaliland’s

14

Republic of Somaliland, Submission on Statehood and Recognition of the Republic of Somaliland, Hargeisa, June

1996 [dot matrix printout]; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The case for Somaliland’s International Recognition as an

Independent State, Hargeisa: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 2002.

15 Tobias Hagmann & M V Hoehne, “Failures of the State failure Debate: Evidence from the Somali Territories,”

Journal of International Development, 21:1 (2009), 42-57; Nicholas Eubank, “Taxation, Political Accountability

and Foreign Aid: Lessons from Somaliland,” Journal of Development Studies, 48:4 (2012), 465-80.

16 War Crimes Investigation Commission, “War Crimes Investigation Commission and what it Stands for,”

Hargeisa, 8 May 2003.

17 Somaliland Non-State Actors Forum, Post-Election Statement: Domestic Election Observation Project, 26 June

Presidential Election, July 2010,

http://www.sonsaf.org/Files/somaliland_presidential_observation_mission_report_%281%29.pdf (accessed 4 Dec

2012).

economic growth and increases political uncertainty. They point out that Somaliland’s absence

of a separate de jure sovereignty complicates efforts of foreign investors to secure insurance and

credit guarantees from private backers and their home governments.18

Somaliland diplomatic activities involve ad hoc arrangements that demonstrate how non-

recognition is less of an obstacle to normal international relations as first appears. Somaliland’s

government sends officials to represent the country’s interests in Ethiopia, Britain, the US and

several other countries. Ethiopia maintains a consulate in Hargeisa, the head of which enjoys the

rank of ambassador. Somaliland officials have received advice and assistance from the NGO

Independent Diplomat to develop a diplomatic strategy and on technical and political aspects of

dealing with international bureaucracies.19

In principle, Somaliland might use these skills to

access international organizations whose membership is overwhelmingly but not exclusively

made up of recognized states. Palestine is a member of the United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization, for example, though Palestine differs from Somaliland in

that more than 130 countries recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. Palestine’s officials had

access to UN bodies well before this development, as the Palestine Liberation Organization was

accorded observer status in the United Nations General Assembly in 1974. Likewise, most

member states of the African Union recognize the sovereignty of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic

Republic under the same principle of national self-determination that Somaliland officials use to

make their case for recognition. Membership in international economic bodies such as the World

Trade Organization (WTO) should be within Somaliland’s grasp, as its charter states: “Any State

18

This view is expressed in numerous meetings that the author has had with Somaliland officials since 2006.

19 Author’s observations and discussions in Hargeisa since 2006, Independent Diplomat,

http://www.independentdiplomat.org/. See also Vishakha Apte, Sarwat Hameed, Christina Kiel, Leila Tayeb,

“Taking the Initiative: Somaliland’s Regional Opportunities for International Recognition,” Graduate Program in

International Affairs, New School, New York, April 2006 [a paper prepared for Independent Diplomat].

or separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial

relations… may accede” to the WTO.20

Taiwan, having joined in 2001 as “Chinese Taipei,”

shows how the international community accommodates non-recognized states to promote good

relations and to facilitate trade and investment.21

Several NGOs in Hargeisa and abroad facilitate Somaliland officials’ contacts with

officials of other countries. These NGOs provide venues and organizational platforms for

numerous conferences on administrative reform, security and virtually any other subject related

to governance. These conferences act as a powerful tool for standardization, on paper at least, of

internal administration in Somaliland along the lines of an international conception of “good

governance.” Groups within Somaliland’s political establishment are closely affiliated with

specific NGOs that outsiders can use as contacts as an informal means of conducting relations

with Somaliland officials. In this sense, Somaliland’s diverse conduct of international relations

promotes convergence toward technocratic standards and policy priorities that are widely shared

among foreign officials as characteristics of well-governed states. This Somaliland government

strategy is most effective for engaging international actors on security matters, and gives the

government an incentive to define security as broadly as possible. For international actors

concerned with preemptive counterinsurgency, Somaliland is attractive because it actually does

approximate conditions needed for conventional counterinsurgency: (1) a government that can

make convincing claims to have political will and capacity to undertake reform, and (2) a

reasonable prospect that local security forces can protect the government and citizens.

20

Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/04-wto.pdf.

21 Scott Pegg, International Society and the De Facto State, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008).

This standardization of practice appears in Berbera Port, for example, for which Nordic

Crisis Management was hired to implement the International Ship and Port Security Code

(ISPS).22

This code was developed in response to 9-11 the attacks on the US to provide a

standard risk evaluation of all ports and encourage implementation of International Maritime

Organization-approved security measures. Berbera Port has acquired a perimeter fence, guard

posts and surveillance cameras, security measures that accord with recommendations of British

security advisory teams drawn from several British Government agencies.23

The murkier currents

of inter-clan group rivalries are there for closer observers of local politics to see, but the

Somaliland government’s engagement in this fashion shifts the focus to commercial and security

concerns as officials in Hargeisa interpret them.

These and other quasi-official Somaliland contacts with US officials at a bureaucratic

level stress Somaliland’s reputation for relative stability in a strategically sensitive region

between Yemen and southern Somalia, both with their al Qaeda aligned groups, particularly

Somaliland’s role in assisting in counter-terrorism efforts. Here one finds the emergence of a

more flexible vision of governance in an open-ended (wider) conflict. These relations reflect a

basic organizational compatibility; that the official bureaucratic hierarchy of administration in

Somaliland plays a significant enough role that these officials can speak authoritatively and

relations with them can produce concrete results. A former Foreign Minister noted upon visiting

US officials in Nairobi that Somaliland was a “de facto partner of peace in the region.” He made

specific requests for financial assistance for new government schools as an alternative to radical

Islamic schools and for programs to boost the capacities of Somaliland’s security services to

22

Ministry of National Planning and Development, Somaliland: The Way Forward: National Development Plan

(2012-2016), (Hargeisa: Pointe Invisible, 2012), 154.

23 Interview with former Somaliland security official, Hargeisa, 6 Aug 2011 and author’s observations in Berbera.

support Somaliland as a “viable, secular constitutional state.”24

Such requests confirm suspicions

that a weaker party will try to exploit the agendas and anxieties of the stronger partner to extract

as many resources as possible to serve a wide range of other interests. Nonetheless, the language

and conduct of relations occurs on a specific shared set of governance tasks focused on security,

even if individual actors are aware of the strong cross-currents and interests of clan and personal

politics that characterize politics in Somaliland. Non-recognition still presents obstacles to the

direct conduct of relations, but these quasi-official associations and other flexible arrangements

provide means to manage this problem

Non-recognition presents less of an obstacle to the external relations of Somaliland’s

officials directly engaged in security-related matters. These relations reflect the development of a

parallel network of international relations outside of the more formal bureaucratic realm. Since

many members of Somaliland’s political establishment possess foreign passports, they do not

face the restrictions that confront travelers who hold only a Somaliland passport. These people

are able to meet counterparts in most any other part of the world.25

Contacts with Ethiopia are

extensive, due in part to the Ethiopian regime’s willingness to harbor Somali National Movement

fighters in the 1980s, some of whom later played important roles in Somaliland security policies.

The head of Somaliland Security Services (SSS) in 2012, for example, graduated from an

Ethiopian military college, as did several subordinates. Since 1997 Ethiopia’s Ministry of

Defense has supported a program to train members of the SSS and other Somaliland security

agencies in Ethiopian military academies. Ethiopian officials maintain contacts with Somaliland

24

US Embassy Nairobi, “Somaliland Foreign Minister Appeals for Recognition and Aid,” Wikileaks id#98185, 9

Jan 2007.

25 Somaliland issues its own passports that are accepted in Ethiopia and in Djibouti (with visas) as official travel

documents. Most residents of Somaliland have the right to acquire Somali passports, though travel on this document

is difficult, due in part to clandestine sales of these documents and foreign government concerns about this practice.

counterparts over a variety of other issues. Ethiopian efforts to develop a road and rail link to

Somaliland’s Berbera Port (so far unsuccessful) lead to frequent discussions among officials, and

included an Ethiopian-organized trip in 2011 for Somaliland’s president to visit potential

investors in China.

Security contacts on counter-terrorism issues take on a more panoptic quality suited to

managing populations. These contacts exceed bureaucratic boundaries where social structures

such as clan and sub-clan allegiances play overwhelming roles in people’s political, social and

economic associations. A former Somaliland Interior Minister noted: “When you have a hidden

enemy, it can be your cousin at home.” Violent radicals can call upon kinship relationships to

conceal their activities, as occurred in October, 2008 when three suicide bombers successfully

concealed their preparations to attack Somaliland’s presidency, UNDP offices, and the Ethiopian

consulate. Surveillance in this setting, he noted, calls for “security committees that reach across

community divides” that have access to intensely local information that normally is beyond the

capacities of democratic states to collect.26

A former president of the country stresses that the

collection of intelligence in Somaliland occurs on the level of personal relationships, which

requires working with families to identify and track individuals who may have joined radical

groups or who are suspected of travelling overseas for malevolent purposes.27

This requires

detailed knowledge about diya paying groups. These are contracts among members of related

lineages to take collective responsibility for the behavior of individuals within the group and to

pay compensation when necessary. Members of these groups thus have a personal interest in the

conduct of other members, particularly when they set out to harm other people. Far from being a

26

Interview with Minister of Interior, Hargeisa, 10 Aug 2011.

27 Interview, former President Dahir Riyale Kahin, Hargeisa, 5 July 2012. [This official served as the head of state

security in the Berbera region in the 1980s under the Siad Barre regime.]

“weak state,” Somaliland’s conduct of security in many parts of the country greatly exceeds the

formal bureaucratic boundaries of the SSS and police.28

Foreign engagement with Somaliland officials on security matters at this fine grained

level brings to the fore elements of counterinsurgency strategies that are embedded in much of

international actors’ engagement with Somalia. Foreign military analysts and security officials

often view problems of violent religious extremism in the Horn of Africa in terms of loose,

decentralized networks that are embedded in complex amalgams of kinship loyalties, criminal

gangs, and religious groups.29

Complex bureaucratic systems such as US defense and security

agencies respond to this problem through building contacts with intermediaries who are well

situated within local networks that have access to important information about the backgrounds

of individuals and their activities. This adaptation reflects the process through which the

hierarchical bureaucracy with fixed institutional boundaries learns how to operate in a more fluid

and flexible fashion that is central to the process of establishing new kinds of international

relations across heterogeneous forms of governance.

This foreign partnership means that innovations in global commerce that are often

blamed for undermining the capacities of states, particularly ones like Somaliland that are

assumed to be weak in a purely formal institutional sense, are deployed in creative ways to

strengthen the state monopoly over violence and conduct of surveillance. Private security service

contractors play a limited but important role, as does the proliferation of paramilitary groups and

advisory missions within the US military and among civilian agencies. The visitor to Hargeisa

can find these individuals at the Ambassador Hotel, where, as a former Somaliland Interior

28

This extensive network of surveillance becomes visible when informants note the author’s personal movements

from days earlier, collected by neighborhood watch members and reported to authorities, for example.

29 Angel Rabassa, Radical Islam in East Africa, (Santa Monica: RAND, 2009).

Ministry official explained, “everyone knows who is who.” This, the official explained, allows

different US agencies to keep track of colleagues in other agencies, as this fragmentation of

American agencies renders them susceptible to a sort of “clan warfare” of their own that

Somaliland officials struggle to interpret.30

Somaliland’s security elite hold the keys to access these local networks beyond the

formal purview of the bureaucratic state. This elite benefits from having arrived at positions of

power as guerrilla fighters in the SNM and participated in the creation of the Somaliland state

through intensive community level negotiations with local clan and religious authorities during

the first half of the 1990s. These forums remain very important in managing disputes and in

tracking the activities of local people, as they play roles in intensely complex land disputes and

commercial networks. Somaliland officials share an interest with their foreign partners to find

ways to ensure that a symbiotic connection between these networks and the Somaliland continue

and are used to promote stability. Though this elite group remains blocked from direct benefits

of sovereignty, their engagement with international actors gives them a form of exclusive

recognition that enables them to channel a different reservoir of resources and influence to the

tasks of exercising authority. In this project their key virtue remains their relations with security

officials outside their country and to community notables and their networks inside Somaliland.

Thus the international relations of places like Somaliland are increasingly organized in

terms of relations between actors that recognize each other’s capabilities in the realm of security.

Private port security firms like the one operating in Berbera are important elements of

commercial globalization that strengthen state capacities to monitor and provide, or at least take

credit, for security, even in instances like Somaliland’s in which the state is not a globally

30

Interview, former Interior Ministry official & a more recent manager of security investigations, Hargeisa, 7 June

2012.

recognized de jure sovereign. Somaliland’s bureaucratic capacities earn it partial and ad hoc

recognition in ways related to particular tasks. The significant kinship-based networks are known

widely in local society but so too is the significance of consolidated state authority.. Other parts

of Somalia exhibit considerably greater divergence in the regime of bureaucracy and the regime

of political networks. It is this consideration that occupies the sections that follow.

Puntland and the Sovereignty of the Pursuit of Security

Organized in 1998, Puntland (officially known as the Puntland State in Somalia) does not

trying to gain international recognition of its sovereignty. Compared to Somaliland, its

leadership reflects more transparently complex and shifting clan rivalries that occasionally erupt

into violence. Kinship networks also play important roles in the security, governance and

economic opportunities of communities. The relations of these groups with one another can

almost seem like state-to-state relations in their alliances and jealous guarding of community

interests. This political environment also creates opportunities for entrepreneurs who take control

of bargaining and coercion for personal interests and the interests of kin. External relations with

this kind of political system thus requires international actors to deal more directly with these

networks, regardless of the bureaucratic façade local politicians contrive as the networks’ visible

image. From the point of view of international actors, however, this network logic of governance

contains important positive features related to capacities to conduct surveillance and to influence

which group controls the exercise of coercion.

Puntland supports several bureaucratic security agencies. Alongside the police, these

include the Puntland Intelligence Agency (PIA)31

and the Puntland Maritime Police Force

31

Known as the Puntland Intelligence Service before 2010.

(PMPF) and the Puntland Dervish Force. The reality of Puntland politics, however, is that the

government’s leadership is dominated by what many local people label as members of the

Majeerteen sub-clan of the Darood. This group has struggled with another sub-clan, the

Warsangeli, for many years over the distribution of commercial opportunities associated with the

port city of Bosaaso. Warsangeli and other sub-clan leaders complain that the PIA is used as a

tool to assert the leadership’s sub-clan interests at their expense. The personalization of security

forces appeared in the move of about 1,500 members of the Darawiish paramilitary force in 2007

to southern Somalia to follow Adullahi Yusuf, Puntland’s first president, after he became the

head of the Transitional federal Government in Mogadishu from 2004 to 2008.32

Foreign security experts realize that helping Puntland’s officials to exercise more control

over coercion and surveillance drags them into a complex constellation of kinship rivalries. This

suits some external actors. Ethiopia’s extensive connections in this region—Ethiopia hosted the

Somali Salvation Democratic Front in the 1980s under Abdullah Yusuf’s leadership—provide its

government with a lever for gathering information and influencing developments on its eastern

border. Threats remain, however, that a particular group will use assistance to marginalize or

oppress other groups that would then turn to violent religious extremists for protection. Leaders

in al Shabaab use this clan politics too, offering protection to smaller clans that have been targets

of others who want to appropriate their lands and marginalize them in often violent political

negotiations. Members of the Warsangali sub-clan, squeezed between Puntland and Somaliland

forces in disputes over territory and business networks, have on occasion accepted protection

32

United Nations security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Paragraph 3 of Security

Council Resolution 1811 (2008), (New York: United Nations, 20 Nov 2008), 14.

from the Shabaab-aligned militia commander Mohamed Said Atom.33

He was alleged to have

been involved in incidents that included targeting government officials for assassination.34

Yet

even as Shabaab (or anyone else) establishes an alliance, they have to contend with supporters

whose loyalties are also subject to complex obligations of kinship. This appeared in Atom’s case,

as an offensive on the part of the Puntland State resulted in the defection of several hundred of

the Shabaab-aligned fighters to the ranks of the PIA.35

Agencies in this context are little more

than facades behind which the much more important personal and kinship networks operate.

This environment of networked authority and shifting alliances provides scant foundation

for constructing stable relations between international actors and local authorities, particularly

when these shifts expose intelligence agencies to infiltration and cause partners to renege on

deals. 36

Some international actors turn to use private security contractors to aid Puntland’s

authorities in this context. This form of assistance can be destabilizing in local politics when

local strongmen incorporate newly trained fighters into their power struggles with political and

commercial rivals. 37

The centrality of these relationships in the conduct of governance in

33

United Nations Security Council, “Security Council Committee on Somalia and Eritrea Issues List of Individuals

Identified Pursuant to Paragraph 8 of Resolution 1844 (2008),” 12 April 2010,

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2010/sc9904.doc.htm.

34 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia pursuant to Security Council

Resolution 1853 (2008), (New York: United Nations, 10 March 2010), 44-45.

35 Somalia Report, “Galaga Militia Prepares to Fight Puntland,” 2 April 2012,

http://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/2640. Author’s discussions with Puntland‘s Minister of Security, July

8 2012 indicated that Puntland security forces are abundantly aware of the importance of kinship relations in shifting

political allegiances.

36 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to the Security

Council Resolution 2002 (2011), (New York: United Nations, 13 July 2012), 21-25.

37 Author’s observations in Bossasso and Garowe; discussions with TFG officials and others in Mogadishu, 2012;

“Somalia: New guns on the Block,” Africa Confidential, 51:25 (17 Dec 2010), 3; Mark Mazzetti, “Private Army

Formed to Fight Somali Pirates Leaves Troubled Legacy,” New York Times, 4 Oct 2012,

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/africa/private-army-leaves-troubled-legacy-in-

Puntland forces officials from the US and elsewhere to focus on personal ties and the interests of

individuals who are well situated in these networks to collect intelligence and conduct

surveillance. Essentially this means picking a side and helping it prevail. Consistency in the

conduct of these personal relationships then becomes the platform for the introduction of new

technologies and maintaining the inter-connection of surveillance systems across political

boundaries.

Immigration controls at Boosaaso’s Bender-Qassim International Airport (built with

money from the United Arab Emirates that flows to a particular clan-based faction) demonstrates

how surveillance systems are used to simultaneously perform security related tasks and to assert

the faction’s authority. The airport hosts an effort to standardize technologies of surveillance of

travelers. Immigration formalities include the use of facial recognition technology and passport

scanners that are linked to sophisticated telecommunications equipment that transmits

information beyond the airport’s confines. This technology is a standard feature of airport

arrivals throughout Somalia and has appeared at land borders too.38

International assistance takes a more significant form in terms of local politics with

private security company assistance to the PMPF as part of efforts to boost local anti-piracy

efforts. Through the use of company-supplied aircraft the PMPF also reportedly provided aerial

surveillance and fire support to ground operations engaging al Shabaab fighters in the Galgala

somalia.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. See also Christopher Kinsey, Stig Jarle Hansen, George Franklin, “The Impact

of Private Security Companies on Somalia’s Governance Networks,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22

(2009), 147-61.

38 Author’s observations and a Bender Qassim International Airport official’s demonstration of the technology to the

author, 2012.

region of Puntland in repeated occasions in early 2013.39

This assistance involves a privately

constructed base that UN observers report is the “best equipped military facility in Somalia after

AMISOM,” with space for 1,500 trainees, a control tower, an airstrip and a helicopter deck.40

The PMPF answers directly to the president and also has been used to distribute humanitarian

aid. One can imagine that this configuration of tasks benefits the president’s authority. This

relationship also draws in other global networks, as it involves firms and governments in a

variety of countries that collaborate in this commercial venture that strengthens the authority of

local actors who appear willing to assist in an international security agenda.

Puntland’s government vigorously displays anti-terrorism credentials and advertises the

threat that these groups pose to it: “According to Puntland Minister of Information Mohamud

Aideed Dirir, the Al Shabaab fighters have been receiving support from elements looking for

political gain and insecurity in Puntland.”41

More important, it sells its dominance and

knowledge of networks that are able to conduct surveillance of the movement of violent religious

extremists from southern Somalia and between Somalia and Yemen. These surveillance

networks are organized on the terms that local authorities determine, and include close personal

ties with important families and businesses. These ties are integral to the local conduct of

politics, which entails mediation between and sometimes picking sides in personal and family

39

United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, Pursuant to Security

Council Resolution 2060 (2012): Somalia, (New York: UN, 19 June 2013), 330.

40 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, pursuant to Security

Council Resolution 2002 (2011), (New York: UN, 27 June 2012, 22. Pages 235-48 of this report contain more

information about private military company activities in Puntland and southern Somalia.

41 Garoweonline.com, “Somalia:Puntland Foreces Kill 7 Al Shabaab, near Galgala,”

http://www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_Puntland_forces_kill_7_Al_Shabaab_near_Ga

lgala_printer.shtml, accessed 6 Dec 2012.

business and land tenure disputes, controversies over the distribution of local resources and other

seemingly purely parochial matters.42

Surveillance of this sort is integrated into this intricate patronage network and contributes

to the patron’s capacity to protect and provide for clients at the same time that elements of it are

shared with international actors. International actors engaged in security tasks benefit selectively

from this network-centric element of Puntland authority as they help to reinforce it. Conceivably

this relationship could help a strongmen to establish himself as an exclusive hegemon on a

particular piece of territory, much like a conventional state. But the relationship also contributes

to the fragmentation of Somalia as local authorities find encouragement to consolidate their own

positions. Leaders of minority clans and other networks may conclude that armed Islamist groups

are their only realistic protectors, further undermining conventional state-building projects.

Sovereign Statelessness

Southern Somalia, the focus of the international effort to support sate-building processes,

provides an extreme setting in which shifting political networks overshadow formal institutions

or battles over territory. These networks integrate conflicts and concerns beyond conventional

ideas of public administration about what constitutes the state’s realm of concern. State

institutions are subordinate to this logic, to the extent that UN observers concluded that “the

systematic misappropriation, embezzlement and outright theft of public resources have

essentially become a system of governance” as private individuals, whether inside government or

not, make personal requests for assistance that cannot be resisted for reasons related to

42

As explained to the author in an in interview, Khalifa Isse Mudan [Minister of Security], Garowe, 8 July 2012.

obligations of kinship or political clientage.43

In 2012, 76 percent of all Central Bank payments

were to private individuals,44

which is at least lower than the 88 percent that one estimate of the

decade of Central Bank operations identifies through the various “transitional” governments that

international actors have supported in Somalia.45

A World Bank report observed that “although a

Central Bank was in existence, with a main building in Mogadishu… it apparently was (and

continues to be) largely circumvented by the TFG executive branch and their key staff.”46

In this environment it is difficult to distinguish state from private or licit from illicit.

Overlapping authorities also undermine concepts concerning the relationship of violence and

territoriality. For example, conventional accounts of repeated attacks on Mogadishu restaurants

are that “they [al Shabaab] attack the restaurants because they hate to see people peacefully

spending time together.”47

A Mogadishu businessman provides another explanation, citing the

possibility that they failed to pay taxes to the city’s al Shabaab commanders or that they are

involved in a dispute with a business receiving al Shabaab protection in what is supposed to be

government-held territory less than a kilometer from the president’s residence.48

The issue of

overlapping control and mutual infiltration comes in the tendency for Islamist groups, especially

43

United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group, 2012, 12

44 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, Pursuant to Security

Council Resolution 2060 (2012): Somalia, (New York: UN, 19 June 2013), 155.

45 Abdirazak Fartaag, “Reconstructing Somalia and the Politics of Public Sector Finance,” LSE, May 2013.

46 World Bank, World Bank Summary of Financial Diagnostic Assessment of “Audit Investigative Financial Report

2009-10, (Washington, DC: World Bank), 30 May 2012, iv.

47 Sudarsan Raghaven, “Blasts Kill at Least 15 at Mogadishu Restaurant,” New York Times, 7 Sept 2013. See also

Xan Rice, “Letter from Somalia: Now Serving,” New Yorker, 30 Sept 2013.

48 Discussion with a mini-warlord businessman, Mogadishu, 18 Aug 2013.

al Shabaab, to regularly infiltrate agents into government security services.49

One detects

significant insecurity among even highest ranking members of the administration, some of whom

recognize that foreign security guards protect them as much from colleague’s followers as from

Shabaab, but admits that the two are difficult to distinguish.50

The 2009 kidnapping of two French operatives illustrates the challenges of

conceptualizing security institutions in the context of networked authority. The French operatives

were seized in an operation allegedly masterminded by a relative of the Interior Minister and a

deputy leader of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a predecessor to al Shabaab that joined a

December 2008 power sharing agreement with the TFG. 51

ICU head Sharif Sheikh Ahmed

became the president of the TFG in January 2009, which provided the ICU with an opportunity

to position their own operatives in the TFG security services. 52

This pattern of alliance and

opposition appeared to facilitate this sharing of information and collaborative operations. For

example, Hizbul Islam emerged among those in the ICU that rejected the 2008 power sharing

deal with the TFG. Hizbul Islam then merged with al Shabaab in December 2010. In 2009 these

groups fought together against the TFG in Mogadishu while fighting against each other in

Kismayo.53

This situation underlines the problems in applying rigid political labels to groups that

49

Mohamed Mubarak, “Spying Game: Shabab’s Double Agents in Somali Intelligence,” Jane’s Intelligence Review,

24:3 (March 2012), 14-17; “French Somalia Raid ‘Was a Trap,’” Africa Confidential, 54:2 (18 Jan 2013), 11.

50 Interview, Government Minister, Mogadishu, 2 July 2012.

51 This perspective was expressed in author’s discussions with a Somali official, 4 July 2012 and in Mareeg,

“Somalia: the Abduction of French Agents Well Planned, Sources.”

52 Some TFG officials and militia leaders revealed in discussions with the author that they had personal concerns

about security due to perceived Shabaab infiltration into security services, Mogadishu, June – July 2012.

53 Jean-Pierre Filiu, “Lesson from Kismayo,” Jihadica, 6 Oct 2009,

collaborate in some areas and on particular issues while fighting one another elsewhere, often in

the service of clan or other kinship obligations.

The January 2013 French attempt to rescue one hostage (the other having escaped by one

account or ransomed by another account54

) underscores the problems of organizing international

relations with stateless authorities. Those rescuers needed intelligence to locate their target. The

Somali government’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA)55

, built with US Central

Intelligence Agency help from 2008, 56

was supposed to assist, but given Islamist group

infiltration into the intelligence service,57

the French were led into a trap. 58

Heavily armed

Shabaab fighters battled the French rescuers for several hours. Al Shabaab claimed that they had

killed a French soldier and captured another, while a French official announced that two French

soldiers were killed in the failed operation.59

54

This event sheds light on yet other family and clan network considerations guiding the captors. Hizbul Islamiyya’s

capture of the French hostages drew al Shabaab onto the scene, leaving Hizbul Islamiyya with only one hostage to

sell back to the French. Even this ransom activated other cleavages as the original kidnappers and the ultimate

recipients of the ransom quarreled over how the act of the seizure—involving about 40 fighters arriving at the Sahafi

Hotel where the French were staying—and the distribution of the ransom would affect the power of each faction

within the larger collection of Islamist groups. This was further related to the complex nature of the Islamists’

selective participation in the TFG and anxieties to smooth over relations while sill personally benefiting from the

ransom. The situation got more complex after that! (Discussions with a mini-warlord and owner of the Sahafi Hotel,

Mogadishu, Aug 2013. See also “Qaeda Linked Somali Group Takes One of French Hostages,” Reuters, 16 July

2009.)

55 Some Somalis refer to this as variously NSA, NSS and NIIS in response to frequent previous name changes.

56 Jeffrey Gettleman, Mark Mazzetti, Eric Schmitt, “US Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict,” New York

Times, 10 Aug 2011. The author has noted in visits the trademark white armored SUVs with beverage cooler

between front seats that suggest at least suspicion of some continuing connection to those who occupy safe houses,

etc.

57 “French Somalia Raid ‘Was a Trap,’” Africa Confidential, 54:2 (18 Jan 2013), 11.

58 The French Defense Minister’s alleged that Shabaab fighters were forewarned of the French attack as local

residents detected the approaching French force. Agence France Presse, “France Defends Failed Somali Raid as Toll

Mounts,” 13 Jan 2013. See also “French Somalia Raid ‘Was a Trap’,” Africa Confidential, 18 Jan 2003, 11.

59 “Second French Soldier Dies after Somalia Raid – Rebels,” BBC,14 Jan 2013; “Soldat français tué en Somalie:

publient des photos,” Le Monde, 14 Jan 2013.

This event illustrates the problems of attempting to build state-like security institutions in

contexts where they become subordinate to local factional politics. Other attacks suggest

infiltration and factional struggle, such as that on the Somali intelligence chief Khalif Ahmed

Ilig’s vehicle on 18 March 2013 and the 20 January 2013 suicide bomb attack on the Prime

Minister’s home inside the presidential compound by a former intelligence service employee.60

Suspicions of infiltration give individual political actors incentives to align with US interests as

best they can if this gives them personal protection and access to intelligence and other tools that

they can use in their own political struggles. Americans who are cynical about the public state-

building effort can use these personal ties and competitive infiltration to try to gather information

through becoming a part of this network. American engagement in Somalia’s “clan” and

personal politics also enables local actors. As an interlocutor said of a former NISA (then NSSA)

director: “He must be better linked to you [the Americans] than to [TNG president] Sharif.61

Integration into complex political and personal networks still leaves international actors

without prospects for a reliable guarantor of a standard of surveillance and security. Attention

turns to private security companies for this pursuit. Somali interlocutors, including high

government officials, complain that private security is a realm beyond even their reach. An aide

to a former defense minister reported, for example, that his boss was told that he was “not

authorized” to enter a compound housing private security forces and speculated that “Americans

hesitate because they aren’t confident about the Somali government’s reliability.62

A high

60

The author noted that the later blast scene required passage through multiple checkpoints. See also “Suicide Blast

by Offices of Somali President and PM,” BBC, 19 Jan 2013.

61 Interview, Really Big Warlord, Mogadishu, 1 July 2012. He stressed to the author that he also “was not an enemy

of the American devils” even though ears earlier they had held him captive in connection to the 1993 Black Hawk

Down incident.

62 Lunchtime discussion with Somali informants, Mogadishu, 18 Aug 2013.

official complained that new private security and military companies simply appeared in

Somalia, a problem that started with the TFG and we inherited” and that was “not in the hands of

the state.”63

It is exceedingly difficult to get an accurate comprehensive list of private security

companies in Somalia, though UN investigators identify many of the larger foreign firms.64

Local private security companies are a flourishing but uncharted areas and appear to operate at

the junction of foreign and local political agendas. Some pay diligent attention to public

presentation, such as one run by a former police commissioner.65

Many others are run by mini-

warlords and others who have significant histories of involvement in Somalia’s various

conflicts.66

[Clearly there is much more than can be said about this.]

In this context, “state-building” on the basis of externally supported security agencies,,

means that the security force intervenes and shapes the political process, plays a role in at least

monitoring in a campaign of assassination and other internal strife as part of ongoing local

bargaining among factions, including ones defined as “insurgents”. This approach is compatible

with the eventual construction of a hegemonic force, possibly to eventually be subsumed in a

state, but that now recognizes and takes account of the profoundly non-bureaucratic nature of

authority as it is exercised in Mogadishu. In this respect, US [and Ethiopian] policy is more like

counterinsurgency as it was learned in Iraq and Afghanistan among elements of the military and

63

Interview, State Minister for the Presidency, Mogadishu, 17 Aug 2013.

64 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts, 2013, Annex 6.3, “Private Security Companies,”

346-61.

65 For example, Ilaalo Security, http://ilaalosecurity.com/. One must not suspect such an established firm of using

the police recruits and equipment gained through internationally sponsored police training programs.

66 List of private security companies in author’s possession; compiled from field observations and discussions,

Mogadishu, Aug / Sept 2013..

CIA. One of the applicable lessons is that existing bureaucratic states in this context become

subjects of infiltration and corruption and are thus unreliable partners in counterinsurgency.

These agents of corruption and infiltration have superior knowledge of and roots in the local

society. These features make them attractive partners for collaboration and for intervention into

this political system to try to influence it. But built up around them are systems run by foreigners

and select Somalis (such as airport data collection systems, signals intelligence and other core

functions), some of which can be selectively famed out to local organizations in places like

Somaliland.

Conclusion

Present the spectrum of international relations in terms of mutual recognition, from

bureaucracy to network. Private security and the configuration of personal networks around

security agencies facilitate this connection. “Within these assemblages, state power is certainly

reconfigured, but is not necessarily weakened. Instead, the very distinctions between the public

and the private, the global and the local are rearranged, producing new practices and forms of

power that cannot be neatly contained within the geographical boundaries of the nation-state.”67

Bayart notes the extent to which the US exercises power through this hybridity, ultimately

assisting the territorialization of power and concentration of coercion in the hands of local

ruling cliques. Addressing US assistance to anti-Soviet Afghan groups and then post 9-11

counter-terrorism, Bayart observes: “This sequence of events… provides us with a striking

summary of the fusion between the processes of formation of the state and those of globalization,

67

Rita Abrahamsen & Michael Williams, Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics, (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 3.

on the basis of systematic hybridization of the private and the public.”68

This process in Somalia

produces new opportunities for savvy political players that oversee governance in this open-

ended conflict.

68

Jean-François Bayart [trans. Andrew Brown], Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization, (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 2007), 75.