State Collapse, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Somalia

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STATE COLLAPSE, INSURGENCY,AND COUNTERINSURGENCY:

LESSONS FROM SOMALIA

J. Peter Pham

November 2013

The views expressed in this report are those of the author anddo not necessarily reect the ofcial policy or position of theDepartment of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) andU.S. Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy fullacademic freedom, provided they do not disclose classiedinformation, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresentofcial U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them tooffer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the inter-est of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared forpublic release; distribution is unlimited.

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FOREWORD

For almost a generation, Somalia has been a bywordfor state failure, defying the combined efforts of diplo-mats and soldiers to restore some semblance of order,to say nothing of a functional national government. Inthe absence of an effective sovereign, the country isa backdrop for multiple humanitarian crises, as wellas the emergence of an epidemic of maritime piracythat threatened vital sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden andthe western Indian Ocean. Even worse, notwithstand-ing a military intervention by the army of neighboringEthiopia and the subsequent deployment of an Afri-can Union force operating with a mandate from theUnited Nations Security Council, an al-Qaeda-linkedmilitant group, al-Shabaab, managed to seize controlof most of central and southern Somalia and conned

the internationally-recognized government and thepeacekeepers protecting it to little more than a few be-sieged districts in the capital of Mogadishu.

Consequently, in the space of months, the tide wasturned against the insurgents, and a new Somali au-thority, appointed in late 2012, presents what appearsto be the most promising chance for a permanent gov-ernment in recent memory. It is not surprising thatmany policymakers have sought to tease out lessonsfrom the apparent success of the Somali model thatmight be applicable to similar situations, both in Afri-ca and beyond, where weak governments face Islamistinsurgents, including the Sahel, in particular where al-Qaeda-afliated ghters and their allies have posedsevere challenges to embattled governments.

In this monograph, however, Dr. J. Peter Phamadopts a different approach. Beginning with a keenappreciation for the intricacies of Somali culture and


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history, he argues that the key is to understand politi-cal legitimacy among the Somali and then examines

how both al-Shabaab and the different local politiesthat have emerged in Somalia have, to varying de-grees, acquired itas well as how successive Somaliregimes have not. He also explores how weakness of,and divisions among, the insurgents can be better ex-ploited by engaging and empowering alternative cen-ters of legitimacy. What emerges from his analysis is arather nuanced picture of the counterinsurgency strat-egy that, following several frustrating years, nallyachieved its objectives, as well as several provocativesuggestions.

For these reasons, the Strategic Studies Instituteis pleased to offer this monograph as a contributionto not only regional knowledge about the social,political, and security challenges faced in a geo-

strategically sensitive part of the African continent,but also the broader literature on insurgency andcounterinsurgency.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. Director Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. PETER PHAM is Director of the Africa Center at theAtlantic Council in Washington, DC. Previously, hewas tenured Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Po-litical Science, and African Studies at James MadisonUniversity in Harrisonburg, VA, where he directed theNelson Institute for International and Public Affairs.He has also regularly lectured at the Foreign ServiceInstitute, the Joint Special Operations University, theDefense Institute of Security Assistance Management,and other U.S. Government professional education in-stitutions. Dr. Pham has testied before the U.S. Con-gress on a number of occasions and conducted brief-ings or consulted for U.S. and foreign governments aswell as private rms. In May 2008, at the invitation ofGeneral William Ward, he gave the keynote address

at the rst Senior Leaders Conference of the UnitedStates Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Mainz, Ger-many, and subsequently served on AFRICOMs Se-nior Advisory Group. Dr. Pham is the incumbent VicePresident of the Association for the Study of the Mid-dle East and Africa (ASMEA), an academic organiza-tion chaired by Professor Bernard Lewis representingover 1,300 scholars of Middle Eastern and AfricanStudies at more than 300 colleges and universities inthe United States and overseas. He regularly appearsin numerous national and international media outlets.Dr. Pham is also Editor in Chief of ASMEAs agshipJournal of the Middle East and Africa. A specialist on U.S.foreign and defense policy, African politics and secu-rity, and terrorism and political violence, Dr. Pham is

the author of over 300 essays and reviews and the au-thor, editor, or translator of over a dozen booksmostrecently, Somalia: Fixing Africas Most Failed State, co-authored with Greg Mills and David Kilcullen.


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SUMMARY

For more than 2 decades, Somalia has been theprime example of a collapsed state, thus far resistingno fewer than 15 attempts to reconstitute a central gov-ernment, while the 16th such undertaking, the currentinternationally-backed but struggling regime of theFederal Republic of Somalia, just barely maintainsa token presence in the capital and along the south-eastern littoraland that due only to the presence ofa more than 17,000-strong African Union peacekeep-ing force. In fact, for much of the period, insurgentsspearheaded by the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen(Movement of Warrior Youth, al-Shabaab), a militantIslamist movement with al-Qaeda links, dominatedwide swathes of Somali territory and operated moreor less freely in other areas not under their de facto

control. Despite the desultory record, the apparentspeedy collapse of the insurgency since late-2011 hasmade it fashionable within some political and militarycircles to cite the Somalia model as a prescriptionfor other conicts in Africa, including the ght in Maliagainst al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) andits allies.

In contrast, this monograph argues that the failurefor so long of any of Somalias successive governmen-tal entities to prevail over their opponents and bringan end to conict has little to do with the lack of out-side assistance, especially of the military variety, oftencited by way of explanation and more to do with otherfactors on which external actors can have little positiveeffect. Specically, if the regime ghting an insurgen-

cy is unable or unwilling to take the steps to achieveinternal political legitimacy, no outside interventionwill be able to help it to victory. In examining how


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such has been the case in Somalia, the nature of politi-cal legitimacy in Somali society is closely examined,

deriving pointers not only from the success of al-Sha-baab and its allies, but also those of relatively stablenew polities that have emerged in various parts of theformer Somali state in mobilizing clan loyalties andlocal community sensibilities. Both the implications ofengaging these alternative centers of legitimacyanapproach the international community only reluc-tantly and hesitantly came around to embracingandthe potential to exploit the opportunity presented bythe weakness of and divisions among the extremiststo not only clear a space for humanitarian action, butalso to ensure a modicum of stability and security inthe geopolitically sensitive Horn of Africa, are thendiscussed.

Among the lessons thus drawn, which are appli-

cable to other insurgency and conict situations inAfrica, is that the repeated failure of internationally-backed attempts to reestablish a national governmentin Somalia underscores the limitations of top-down,state-centric processes that are structurally engineeredwith a bias in favor of centralization, rather than bot-tom-up, community-based approaches better adaptedto the local sensibilities.


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STATE COLLAPSE, INSURGENCY,AND COUNTERINSURGENCY:

LESSONS FROM SOMALIA

J. Peter Pham

Introduction.

It has been 2 decades since the day in late January1991 when dictator Muhammad Siyad Barre packedhimself inside the last functioning tank belongingto his once-powerful military and ignominiouslyed Mogadishu. He left behind a capital in ruins.Caught in the throes of uncontrolled street violence,Somalia has been the prime example of what RobertRotberg has termed a collapsed state: a rare andextreme version of the failed state that is a mere

geographical expression, a black hole into which afailed polity has fallen, where:

there is dark energy, but the forces of entropy haveoverwhelmed the radiance that hitherto providedsome semblance of order and other vital politicalgoods to the inhabitants (no longer the citizens) em-braced by language or ethnic afnities or borders.1

The country has stubbornly resisted no fewer than15 attempts to reconstitute a central government,and the 16th such undertaking, the internationally-backed,2but struggling regime of the Federal Repub-lic of Somalia (FRS), barely manages to maintain atoken presence in the capital and along parts of thesoutheastern littoraland that much only thanks to

the presence of the more than 17,000 predominant-ly Ugandan, Burundian, and Kenyan troops that makeup the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).3


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discussed, thus not only clearing a space for humani-tarian action, but also ensuring a modicum of stabil-

ity and security in the geopolitically sensitive Hornof Africa. Finally, lessons are drawn that might havemore realistic applicability to other insurgency andconict situations in Africa.

Identity and Legitimacy among the Somali.

Somali identity is historically rooted in paternaldescent (tol), which is meticulously memorialized ingenealogies (abtirsiinyo, reckoning of ancestors) anddetermines each individuals exact place in society.At the apices of this structure are the clan-families.According to the most generally accepted division,the major clan-families among the Somali are theDarod, Dir, Hawiye, Isaq, Digil, and Rahanweyn. The

rst four, historically predominantly nomadic pasto-ralists, are identied as noble (bilis) clans, whilethe Digil and Rahanweyn, also known collectivelyas Digil Mirie, were traditionally cultivators andagro-pastoralists and occupy a second tier in Somalisociety. The latter also speak a dialect of Somali, af-maymay, which is so distinct from the af-maxaadialectof the former that it is properly a not-mutually-in-telligible language.11A third tier also exists in thisSomali social hierarchy, consisting of minority clanswhose members, known collectively as Sab, histori-cally carried out occupationssuch as metalworkingand tanning that rendered them ritually unclean inthe eyes of the nomadic noble clans.12 This socialhierarchy likewise has implications for political life.

It is noteworthy, for example, that the vice presidentand defense minister (and sometimes prime minister)in Siyad Barres regime, Mohamed Ali Samantar, was


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a Sab of metalworking background (Tumal). Thisparticular individual who, thanks to a potentially

far-reaching unanimous 2010 decision by the U.S. Su-preme Court,13is currently the defendant in a lawsuitin the U.S. federal courts brought under the TortureVictim Protection Act of 1991 on behalf of victims ofthe regime. This undoubtedlywas related to the factthat his origins made it highly unlikely that he couldever lead a coup against his benefactor.

Because these genealogical groupings have tradi-tionally been too large and too widely dispersed toact as politically cohesive unitsalthough in moderntimes, the advent of instantaneous mass communica-tions has rendered the segmentary solidarity of theirmembers a signicant factor in national politicstheclan-families are now subdividing into clans and sub-clans by descent in the male line from an eponymous

ancestor at the head of each clan lineage. Within theclan, the most clearly dened subsidiary group is anindividuals primary lineage, which also representsthe limits of exogamy, and within which an individu-als primary identication is with what has been de-scribed as the diya-paying group (from the Arabicdiya, blood-wealth). This most basic and stable unitof Somali social organization consists of kinsmen withcollective responsibility for one another with respectto exogenous actors. The unity of the group is found-ed not only on shared ancestry traced to a commonancestor four to eight generations back, but also on aformal political contract (heer) between its members. Ifa member of a diya-paying group kills or injures some-one outside the group, the members of his group are

jointly responsible for that action and will collectivelyundertake the task of making reparation. Conversely,if one of its members is injured or killed, the diya-pay-


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ing group will either collectively seek vengeance orshare in whatever compensation may be forthcoming.

Of course, the nature of the clan system is itself verynuanced and, while rooted in blood relationships,is also historically a consequence of nomadic pasto-ral life, with its need to defend scarce resources, thatresults over time in an openness to the formation ofnew alliances and, even later, of new identities.14Brit-ish anthropologist I. M. Lewis, arguably the foremostliving authority on Somali history and culture, has ob-served that:

the vital importance of this grouping, in an environ-ment in which the pressure of population on sparseenvironmental resources is acute, and where ghtingover access to water and pasture is common, can hard-ly be overemphasized

since it is:

upon his diya-paying group, and potentially on widercircles of clansmen within his clan-family, that theindividual ultimately depends for the security of hisperson and property.15

The pervasiveness of the clan system distin-

guished Somalia from the vast majority of post-independence African states, where the principalproblem was the formation of a viable transcendentnationalism capable of uniting widely divergent eth-nic groups who found themselves grouped togetherin states created by colonialism. The Somali weredifferent. They consisted of a single ethnic group

with only one major internal divisionthe dividethat separated the members of the four noble clansand the Digil Mirieand considered themselves


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bound together by a common language, by an es-sentially nomadic pastoral culture, and by the shared

profession of Islam.16

Nationalism was already partof their experience insofar as national culture isconcerned, since they spoke the same language,shared the same predominantly nomadic herdingculture, and were all adherents of Sunni Islam with astrong attachment to the Su brotherhood; all theylacked was political unity at the level of the cultur-ally dened nation.17Thus, Somalis formed an ethnicgroup or nation but not, traditionally, a single pol-ity. Despite 50 years of state-building, urbanization,civil war, state collapse, and emigration, the bonds ofkinship remain the most durable feature of Somali so-cial, political, and economic life. While ethnicity is acategory that has applicability vis-a-vis non-Somalis,within Somali society, clan is the focus of identity,

notwithstanding the fact that the latter, unlike theformer, does not exhibit readily apparent formalmarkers but relies instead on genealogical criteria,which, until fairly recently, were orally transmitted.

From Union to Fragmentation:A Brief History of Modern Somalia.

Modern Somalia itself, which historically hadnever been a unied political entity, was born out of aunion betweenthe British Protectorate of Somaliland,which became the independent state of Somaliland on

June 26, 1960, and the territory then administeredby Italy as a United Nations (UN) trust that had,before World War II, been an Italian colony (Soma-

lia Italiana). The latter received its independence onJuly 1, 1960, and the two states, under the inuenceof the sort of African nationalism fashionable during


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the period, entered into a union, even though theyhad never developed a common sense of nation-

hood and had very different colonial experiences,common language and religion notwithstanding.Consequently, by the time army commander SiyadBarre seized power in October 1969:

it had become increasingly clear that Somali parlia-mentary democracy had become a travesty, an elab-orate, rareed game with little relevance to the daily

challenges facing the population.18

A year after taking over, Siyad Barre proclaimedthe Somali Democratic Republic ofcially a Marx-ist state and tried to stamp out clan identity as ananachronistic barrier to progress that ought to be re-placed by nationalism and Scientic Socialism. Thenon-kinship termjaalle(friend or comrade) wasintroduced to replace the traditional term of politeaddress inaadeer (cousin). The positions of tradi-tional clan elders were abolished or, at the veryleast, subsumed into the bureaucratic structure ofthe state. At the height of the campaign, it became acriminal offense to even refer to ones own or anoth-ers clan identity.19Given how deeply rooted the clan

identity was, it was not surprising that Jaalle SiyadBarre failed in his efforts to efface the bonds. Ironi-cally, he evolved over time from a Soviet client into aU.S. ally after President Jimmy Carter broke with theEthiopian regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam over thelatters increasingly repressive human rights record.20Ultimately, the regime itself simply dissolved in

January1991, when Siyad Barre was caught betweenpopular rebellions led by the Isaq and Darod in thenorth and a Hawiye uprising in central Somalia and


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chased out of Mogadishu altogether. By the time ofthe dictators ight, Somalia had fallen apart into the

traditional clan and lineage divisions that, in the ab-sence of other forms of law and order, alone offeredsome degree of security. The general situation nowvividly recalled the descriptions of Richard FrancisBurton and other 19th century European explorers: aland of clan (and clan segment) republics where thewould-betraveler neededto secure the protection ofeach group whose territory he sought to traverse.21

Although Siyad Barre had adopted Scientic So-cialism with the professed goal of uniting the na-tion by eliminating its ancient clan-based division, thedictator soon fell back on calling on kinship ties inorder to maintain poweranother example of thesebonds continuing relevance. With the exception ofhis previously mentioned defense chief Samantar,

Siyad Barres most trusted ministers came from hisown Darod clan-family: the Marehan clan of his pater-nal relations; the Dhulbahante clan of his son-in-lawAhmed Suleiman Abdulle, who headed the notori-ous National Security Service; and the Ogaden clan ofhis maternal kin. Siyad Barres MOD coalition rstled him into the disastrous Ogaden War (197778),a clumsy attempt to exploit the chaos of the Ethio-pian Revolution to seize the eponymous territoryin the Haud plateau that the dictators irredentistkinsfolk viewed as Western Somalia. The inux ofover a million Ogadeni refugees following the So-mali militarys humiliating defeat at the hands of theEthiopians and their Soviet and Cuban allies cre-ated enormous problems for the Somali state. These

challenges were only exacerbated when half of theOgadeni refugees were placed in refugee camps inthe middle of the northern regions of Somaliland,


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the historical territory of their traditional rivals, theIsaq. This led to the formation of the Somali Na-

tional Movement (SNM) by the Isaq. Another resultof the failed war was an abortive coupattempt bydisaffected ofcers from the Majeerteen clan, anotherDarod group; those who escaped arrest went on toform the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, with thebacking of their clansmen. Over the next decade, thetwo new opposition groups, both born of a conictthat had its origins in Siyad Barres own complicatedpolitical management strategy, would light the fusesthat would ultimately explode not just the dictator-ship, but the Somali state itself.22

After the collapse of the Siyad Barre regime,the Hawiye leaders whose forces held sway overthe abandoned capital, Muhammad Farah Aideedand Ali Mahdi, fell out with one another. The ght-

ing and subsequent cutoff of food supplies broughtabout a humanitarian crisis that provoked globaloutrage, leading to no fewer than three succes-sive international military interventions that aimedto secure the ow of humanitarian assistance: theUnited Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOMI, AprilDecember 1992), the U.S.led Unied TaskForce (UNITAF, December 1992May 1993), and theUnited Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOMII, March 1993March 1995).23 Ultimately, however,central and southern Somalia reverted to the age-oldpattern of armed clan factions mobilized by powerfulguresreferred to by Somalis with the traditionaltitle formerly reserved for battle leaders, abbaanduule,and thus quickly dubbed warlords by foreign jour-

nalists. These factions were sustained by the spoils ofconict, vying with each other for control of territo-ry, and such economic assets as could be found amid


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the ruins of the collapsed state, including bananas forexport.24

Meanwhile, in the absence of effective politicalstructures of any kind, Islamic authorities arose inresponse to increased crime, with sharia being acommon denominator around which different com-munities could organize. As the Islamic legal au-thorities gradually assumed policing and adjudica-tion roles, those authorities who enjoyed access togreater (that is, external) resources acquired greaterinuence. It should be noted that, although the So-mali traditionally subscribe to Sunni Islam, they alsofollow the Shfs school (madhab) of jurisprudence,which, although conservative, is open to a variety ofliberal views regarding practice.25 Throughout mostof the historical times up to independence in 1960,even though different movements existed within

Sunni Islam in Somalia, the most dominant amongthe populace were the Su brotherhoods (tarqa,plural turuq), especially that of the Qadiriyya andthe Ahmadiyya orders, introduced into Somalilands in the 19th century.26While traditional Islamicschools and scholars (ulam) played a role as focalpoints for rudimentary political opposition to colo-nial rule in Italian Somalia, their role in the politicsof the Somali clan structure was historically neitherinstitutionalized nor particularly prominent. In part,this is because shariawas not especially entrenchedin Somalia: being largely pastoralist, the Somali re-lied more on customary law (xeer) than on religiousprescriptions.27 Hence, Somali Islamism is largelya post-colonial movement that became active in the

late 1980s; in the absence of the states collapse andthe ensuing civil strife (and, some authors would add,somewhat polemically, the renewed U.S. interest in


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potential terrorist linkages in the aftermath of theSeptember 11, 2011, attacks on the American home-

land28

), it is doubtful that militant Islamism would bemuch more than a marginal force in Somali politics.

Religions increased inuence has been largely aphenomenonof small towns and urban centers, al-though increased adherence to its normative pre-cepts is a wider phenomenon. Islamic religious lead-ers have helped organize security and other services,and businessmen in particular have been supportiveof the establishment of sharia-based courts through-out the south, which were precursors to the IslamicCourts Union established in Mogadishu in June 2006.Sufce it to say, the Islamists attempted to ll certainvoids left by state collapse and otherwise unattendedto by emergent forces like the warlords. In doingso, they also made a bid to supplant clan-based and

other identities, offering a pan-Islamist identity inlieu of other allegiances.29

Contemporaneously, in the absence of anythingresembling a functioning state and amid the multi-plying divisions of a society returning to clan solidar-ity as the basis for organization, Islam came to beseen by some Somalis as an alternative to both thepotentially Balkanizing clan-based identities and thenewly emergent criminal syndicates led by so-calledwarlords.30

The Failure of the TransitionalFederal Government.

Since the collapse of the Somali government and

state in 1991, regional and international actors re-peatedly have tried to nd ways to reconstitute theSomali state by sponsoring lengthy peace processes


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aimed at establishing a functioning governmentin Mogadishu.31 The embattled Transitional Federal

Government (TFG) was the result of the 14th and 15thsuch attempts, the Nairobi (or Mbagathi) andDjibouti processes.

The Nairobi Process began in October 2002 un-der the patronage of the sub-regional Inter-Govern-mental Authority on Development (IGAD)32and withinternational support, especially from the EuropeanUnion (EU) and the United States. The discussionswere so protracted that it took just over 2 years toestablish the TFG using the 4.5 formula. Accord-ing to this framework, power was to be shared be-tween four of the clan-familiesDarod, Dir, Hawiye,and Digil Mirie (the Isaq, centered in Somaliland,declined to participate)with some space (the 0.5)granted to minority clans. The Transitional Federal

Charter, agreed to in October 2004, gave the Tran-sitional Federal Institutions of government a 5-yearmandate. Heading up this structure was Darodwarlord Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad, who launched hisnational political career with the proceeds of a $1million ransom he had extracted from the Taiwan-ese after his militia seized the trawler MV Shen Kno IIin 1997.

Not until June 2005and then only under heavypressure from the Kenyan government, which tiredof footing the bill for guests whohad long overstayedtheir welcomedid the TFG nally relocate to Somaliterritory. Even then, the putative government couldnot enter its capitalPrime Minister Mohamed AliGhedi, who, to his credit, at least made the attempt,

narrowly escaped assassination for his troubleandsettled instead in Jowhar, a provincial town safelynorth of Mogadishu, under the protection of a local


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warlord who was a fellow Hawiye clansman andpatron of the prime minister. When relations with

the warlord eventually soured, the TFG was forcedto move on and, in a turn of events that is particu-larly humiliating in the Somali cultural context, takeshelter among the Rahanweyn in the backwater ofBaidoa, some 250 kilometers southwest of the capi-tal. So undesirable was the location and so reducedthe governments circumstances that it was February2006 before the TFG could muster a quorum to con-vene its parliament in a converted barn.33

Meanwhile, a new force was emerging in Soma-lia, the Union of Islamic Courts, which was madeup of the militias of the various local tribunals set upby the Islamists that took control of Mogadishu inJune 2006 after defeating a ragtag coalition of war-lords and business leaders hastily thrown together

bythe United States (presumably acting through theCentral Intelligence Agency) under the rather ironicbanner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peaceand Counter-Terrorism. The American interventionachieved the exact opposite of what was intended:far from being checked, the Islamists actually pre-vailed and, for the rst time since the fall of SiyadBarre, Mogadishu was united under a single admin-istration. Moreover, the Islamists, who reorganizedthemselves into a governmental structure called theCouncil of Islamic Courts (CIC), quickly extendedtheir control over much of southern and centralSomalia, from the southern border of Puntland inthe north to the Kenyan frontier in the south, leavingthe TFG cowering in Baidoa beneath the cover of a

protection force provided by Ethiopia.34


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The CIC was, in many respects, a mixed blessingfor most Somalis. The Islamists cleared away the

roadblocks that had been set up by rival militiasover the years and reopened the port of Moga-dishu. They organized some rudimentary services,including the rst municipal garbage collection innearly 2 decades. On the other hand, these improve-ments went hand in hand with the imposition of Is-lamic strictures that were largely alien to the Somaliexperience, including a ban on watching the 2006FIFA World Cup (deemedun-Islamic behavior).35

Given their own earlier experiences with SomaliIslamism, especiallyal-Itihaad al-Islamiya (the IslamicUnion), a group established in the early 1980s thatsought to create an expansive Islamic Republic ofGreater Somalia and eventually a political union em-bracing all Muslims in the Horn of Africa,36 it was not

surprising that, after many of the same extremistsassumed positions of authority in the CIC, neigh-boring Ethiopia would be alarmed by the rapid Is-lamist rise in Somalia. When a CIC attack on theTFG in Baidoa, where the remnants of the TFG werebeing protected by units from the Ethiopian Na-tional Defense Force (ENDF), provided the casus belli,Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi launcheda full-scale military intervention on Christmas Eve2006. The heavily armed and well-trained Ethiopi-ans quickly routed the CICs forces, many of whosecommanders made the mistake of deploying unitsin open country, where they were slaughtered by theinvaders. On the coat-tails of the Ethiopian forcesrode the TFG37 which, with the help of the ENDF

expeditionary force, assumed control over key gov-ernment buildings in Mogadishu.


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As the populaces sullen acquiescence to the newregime turned into resentment of what amounted

to a de facto foreign occupation, an insurgency gath-ered steam. Seeming impervious to his increasinglytenuous position, Abdullahi Yusuf was nally forcedto resign as president of the TFG in late 2008, withhis intransigence increasingly viewed by Somaliasneighbors as an obstacle to the peace process theyhad launched earlier that year by reaching out to theregimes supposedly moderate opponents, led byformer Islamic Courts leader Sheikh Sharif SheikhAhmed. Sharif Ahmed was himself installed as thenew TFG president in January 2009 by an electoralassembly packed for that purpose, which convenedin Djibouti under the sponsorship of the Nairobi-based UN Political Ofce for Somalia and its head,the special representative of UN Secretary General

Ban Ki-moon, former Mauritanian politician Ahm-edou Ould-Abdallah. The mandate of the new regimewas extended until August 201138and then, as thatdate drew near, until August 2012 in a deal betweenthe TFG president and parliamentary speaker,39 al-though the legal authority under which they actedcould not be ascertained.

Not surprisingly, given its path to power, thenew iteration of the TFG has basically been un-able to expand its authority beyond Villa Somalia inMogadishu, seat of the presidency and had littlerelevance.40In the summer of 2009, when the insur-gents attempted to encircle the TFG in Mogadishu,a number of analysts were surprised by the effec-tiveness of the Islamist push through territory con-

trolled by Sharif Ahmeds own Harti sub-clan ofthe Abgaal clanthe reluctance of even his closestkinsmen to defend him was a strong indicator of


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his near-total lack of legitimacy. The promising al-liance in early 2010 between theregime and the new

Su movement, Ahlu Sunna wal-Jamaa ([Followersof]the Traditions and Consensus [ofthe Prophet Mu-hammad], or ASWJ), whose militias had opposed theIslamist insurgents in the central regions of Somalia,collapsed when Sharif Ahmed reneged on the termsof the power-sharing agreement.Since then, with littlereference to the TFG, the various clan militia looselygrouped together under the banner of ASWJ gainedcontrol of signicant parts of the central Somali re-gion of Galguduudin late-2010 through early-2011and made modest but appreciable progress towardachieving local security and stability.

Meanwhile, the TFG president became as unwill-ing as his predecessor to engage in the sort of dealmaking that would co-opt key stake holders, extend

his regimes political base, and possibly prepare theground for security operations that might break thecontinual stalemate.41 A March 2010 report by theUN Monitoring Group on Somalia was, for a diplo-matic document, unusually candid in its assessmentof the regime and was, for all intents and purposes,a scathing indictment not only of the TFG, but alsoof any policy built on it:

The military stalemate is less a reection of opposi-tion strength than of the weakness of the Transition-al Federal Government. Despite infusions of foreigntraining and assistance, government security forcesremain ineffective, disorganized and corruptacomposite of independent militias loyal to seniorgovernment ofcials and military ofcers who prot

from the business of war and resist their integra-tion under a single command. During the course ofthe mandate, government forces mounted only one


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notable offensive and immediately fell back from allthe positions they managed to seize. The govern-ment owes its survival to the small African Unionpeace support operation, AMISOM, rather than toitsown troops. . . .42

The security sector as a whole lacks structure, organi-zation and a functional chain of commanda prob-lem that an international assessment of the securitysector attributes to lack of political commitment byleaders within the Transitional Federal Government

or because of poor common command and controlprocedures.. . . To date, the Transitional FederalGovernment has never managed to deploy regimen-tal or brigade-sized units on the battleeld.

The consequences of these deciencies include aninability of the security forces of the TransitionalFederal Government to take and hold ground, and

very poor public perceptions of their performanceby the Somali public. As a result, they have madefew durable military gains during the course of themandate, and the front line has remained, in at leastone location, only 500 meters from the presidency.43

In early 2011, the International Crisis Group alsoissued an indictment of the TFG, declaring that mem-

bers of the regime were not t to hold public ofceand should be forced to resign, isolated, and sanc-tioned.44The document bemoaned the fact that theTFG has squandered the goodwill and support itreceived and achieved little of signicance in the 2years it has been in ofce, and that every effort tomake the administration modestly functional has be-come unstuck.45This harsh assessment was echoed

by thejudgment in the most recent report of the UNMonitoring Group, released by the Security Councilin July 2011:


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mained in Somalia.48Efforts to supply this minisculeforce actually increased the threat to regional secu-

rity, with the UN Monitoring Group citing reportsthat between one-third and one-half of armamentssupplied to the regime ended up in the illicit marketand concluding that:

diversion of arms and ammunition from the Tran-sitional Federal Government and its afliated mi-litias has been another signicant source of supply

to arms dealers in Mogadishu, and by extensionto al-Shabaab.49

The investigators even highlighted one case inwhich a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and as-sociated munitions, purchased for the regime un-der a U.S. State Department contract to DynCorpInternational, found their way into a stronghold of

al-Shabaab that AMISOM captured in early 2011.50

AMISOM: Peacekeepers with No Peace to Keep.

Since the TFG failed to generate a visible con-stituency of clan or business supporters in Mogadi-shu, the regimes very survival depended wholly

on the presence of AMISOM forces.51

The questionbecame whether or not thepeacekeeping missionwas sustainable as a military operation, much lessviable as a strategy.

To its credit and that of its international partnerslike the United Stateswhich indirectly nancedthe use of private contractors to train, equip, and,in some cases, guide the African troops in opera-

tions52the progress made by AMISOM over timewas undeniable. Nonetheless, AMISOMs capacitywas consistently hampered by its lack of manpower


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and materiel. It took 4 years for the force to reachits original authorized strength of 8,000 peacekeep-

ers, with almost all the troops coming from Burundiand Uganda.53While additional deployments fromthose two countries in the rst half of 2011 broughtthe total AMISOM troop strength to just about 10,000,there were considerable difculties in bringing thenumbers up to the new ceiling of 12,000 authorizedby the UN Security Council in December 2010. Evenif the troops had been raised and the internation-al community, acting through the UN, the AfricanUnion (AU), or IGAD, been able to adequately equipthe enlarged force in an expeditious amount of time,it was hardly realistic to expect that a 12,000-strongcontingent would succeed where the innitely morerobust and better trained and armed UNITAF andUN Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) II forces, with

their 37,000 and 28,000 personnel respectively, failedjust a decade and a half earlier against a far less ca-pable opposition than the current crop of Islamistinsurgents.54

In a successful model of counterinsurgency, the200607 Iraq surge, the United States committedmore than 160,000 troops to Iraq, backed by a further100,000 servicemen and women deployed elsewherein the region to provide rear support.55These num-bers translate into one pair of boots on the groundfor every 187 Iraqis. AMISOM, in contrast, was taskedwith doing much the same job with one soldier forevery 500 Somalisif it limited its ambitions to justsouthern and central Somalia. AMISOMs problemwas, unfortunately, an all-too-familiar one: its politi-

cal architects gave very little thought to what theyhoped to achieve in Somalia, how they intendedto achieve those aims, and what their exit strategy


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might be. Instead, the result has been nothing morethan a charade, whereby the international communi-

ty pretended to be doing something while it reallydid very little, all the while throwing increasing, butnonetheless inadequate, numbers of African sol-diers into a conict that they cannot hope to win.56

One of the few factors aside from ideology that unitesthe various Shabaab factions among themselves wasopposition to the TFG and its AMISOM protectors.While instances of the sort of indiscriminate shellingthat characterized the TFGs response to insurgentattacks early in the mission have decreased withtraining, improved targeting, and the identicationof no-re zones,57the mere presence of the AU forceand deeply ingrained Somali resentment of foreignintervention in the country has enabled al-Shabaabto rally support from a Somali populace that other-

wise has little time for its alien strictures, much lessits ham-sted management of the famine.

The Islamist Insurgents.

While the 2006 Ethiopian intervention endedthe rule of the Islamic Courts, the latters al-Sha-baab militia not only survived, but later emergedas the dominant force opposing the TFG and its in-ternational supporters. Al-Shabaab itself was bornearlier under the leadership of one of the CICsmore hard-line leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aw-eys, who wanted to create a military wing for theIslamist movement whose members would be notonly well-trained, but also indoctrinated to a pan-

Islamist identity that transcended clan allegiances.Dahir Aweys entrusted this initiative to one of hisyoung deputies, Adan Hashi Farah (Ayro), who


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had travelled to and been trained in Afghanistanbefore the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States

and the subsequent American-led invasion in 2001.Other prominent leaders of the group had also hadexperience in Afghanistan and Kashmir, includ-ing Mukhtar Robow Ali (Abu Mansur), IbrahimHaji Jama (al-Afghani), and Ahmed Abdi Godane,(Abu Zubair), who eventually succeeded Ayro asthe groups nominal leader after the latter was killedin a U.S. airstrike in May 2008.58

After the Ethiopian invasion destroyed the CIC, al-Shabaab began to operate as an independent entity.Over time, the groupinsofar as its various unitsand factions can be said to share commonalitieshas shifted its emphases from a purely local focus ondriving out foreign forces to an increasingly interna-tional agenda that has produced both a twin bomb-

ing in Kampala, Uganda, in July 2010, and formalproclamations of its adhesion to al-Qaeda. Gradu-ally gaining control over much of southern and cen-tral Somaliain January 2009, it even took control ofBaidoa, an objective that eluded its former parent or-ganization, the CICal-Shabaab has established localgovernments in those areas that administer its harshversion ofsharia,as well as adjudicating more prosaicdisputes. Since early 2009, al-Shabaab forces have notonly attacked the TFG, but also battled with AMISOMforces, drawing the peacekeepers deeper into the con-ict and causing them to suffer increasing casualtiesfrom terrorist attacks such as the September 17, 2009,suicide bombing that killed 17 peacekeepers, in-cluding deputy force commander Brigadier General

Juvenal Niyoyunguruza of Burundi, and woundedmore than 40 others.59Al-Shabaab has also enjoyedsome success reaching out to the Somali diaspora


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elsewhere in Africa and in Europe, North Africa, theMiddle East, and Australia. Although the number of

Somali recruits is tiny compared to the estimatedtwo million Somalis in the diaspora, the relative suc-cess of the recruitment program has focused consid-erable international attentionfrom both terroristnetworks and law enforcement ofcialson al-Sha-baabs capabilities, especially the extremist groupsreach into diaspora communities. One young recruit,Shirwa Ahmed, perpetrated what was the rstknown suicide attack by an American citizen when,in October 2008, he detonated a vehicle-borne im-provised explosive device in Puntland. Others in thediaspora have been indicted by U.S. prosecutors forsending funding to the insurgency.60Al-Shabaab hasalso provided training camps for foreign Islamistmilitants, as well as safe haven for some high-

ranking al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa, includ-ing Abu Taha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan,who were subsequently killed by Ethiopian and U.S.special operations forces, respectively.61

Regarding al-Shabaab and its place among in-ternational terrorist networks, considerable confu-sion and misinformation about the group exists. Mostanalysts did not believe that al-Shabaab was, for mostof its history, a branch of or under the operationalcontrol of al-Qaeda.62However, mostincluding theU.S. State Departments congressionally mandatedCountry Reports on Terrorismacknowledged thatthere are many links between the two organiza-tions.63Certainly, there was evidence dating back toat least 2007 of operational linksincluding trans-

fers of knowledge and equipmentbetween al-Shabaab in Somalia and what eventually emergedas al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in


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Yemen. Those same links seem also to be at workin the case of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a mid-

level al-Shabaab militant captured by U.S. forcesin early 2011 while traveling between Somalia andYemen, whose nine-count indictment on terrorismcharges by a grand jury in the U.S. Federal Court ofthe Southern District of New York was unsealed inearly July 2011; the evidence obtained from his ques-tioning by the High-Value Interrogation Group issaid to have provided some of the clearest evidenceto date of a deepening relationship between al-Shabaab and AQAP.64So while unlike the other majorviolent Islamist extremist group in Africa, AQIM,65

al-Shabaab was never formally admitted as a branchof al-Qaeda during Osama bin Ladens lifetime, itsstatus changed as his successors sought to establisha name for themselves by carrying out attacksor,

at the very least, apparently expanding the networkwherever they could. Thus, in February 2012, al-Sha-baab leader Godane released a video announcing thegroups merger with the remnant of al-Qaeda headedby al-Zawahiri.66

Generally allied with al-Shabaabalthough oc-casionally also competing with it for control of keytowns and strategic resources like the port of Kis-mayois Hizbul Islam(Islamic Party), formed by Aw-eys and other exiled former CIC hard-liners after themoderates acceded to the Djibouti Process with theTFG in 2008. The groups primary difference from al-Shabaab is that it does not place as much emphasison global jihadist objectives; rather, its two principaldemands are the implementation of a strict version

of sharia as the law in Somalia and withdrawal ofall foreign troops from the country. Although it lostcontrol of the strategic central town of Beledweyne to


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al-Shabaab forces in June 2010, Hizbul Islam stillcontrolled some territory in the southern and central

Somali regions of Bay and Lower Shabelle. Subse-quently, during the Muslim holy month of Rama-dan, the two groups cooperated on a joint offensiveagainst TFG and AMISOM forces in Mogadishu.

Another insurgent group that has been promi-nent in Somalia was the Muaskar Ras Kamboni (RasKamboni Brigades), led by Hassan Abdullah Hersi(al-Turki), a former military commander for theIslamic Courts. Based in Middle and Lower JubbaValley, where it gained control of several strategi-cally located towns that control access to the Kenyanborder, including Jilib Afmadoow and Dhoobley, theRas Kamboni Brigades were aligned with Hizbul Is-lam until the beginning of 2010, when the group an-nounced it was joining forces with al-Shabaab. Sub-

sequently, the two groups proclaimed their adhesionto the international jihad of al-Qaeda.67

Over time, the insurgents attacks have progres-sively increased in both ambition and sophistication.For example, whereas the September 2009 suicidebombing of AMISOM headquarters and the Decem-ber 3, 2009, assault that killed three TFG ministersand 16 people attending a graduation ceremony atMogadishus Shamu Hotel, both relied solely onexplosives to inict damage.68The August 24, 2010,attack on the Muna Hotel, a location just blocksfrom Villa Somalia that was frequented by TFG of-cials, involved al-Shabaab ghters dressed in gov-ernment uniforms who went through the building,room by room, killing their victims. They then fought

incoming security forces for some time before nallydetonating their suicide vests.69


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In the aftermath of its losses in the Ramadan of-fensive of 2010, al-Shabaab reshufed its leadership,

with Ibrahim Haji Jama, a militant who trained andfought in Afghanistan and Kashmir before returningto Somalia, emerging as the nominal leader of thegroup. More signicantly, al-Shabaab has apparentlyformally adopted a decentralized system in whichvarious leaders assume command in their home ar-eas where they are most likely to garner supportfrom fellow clansmen: the erstwhile emir Godaneassumed control of operations in Somaliland; FuadMohamed Qalaf (Shongole) was put in charge inPuntland; Abu Mansur assumed command of theBay and Bakool regions of southern Somalia; HassanAbdullah Hersi (al-Turki) continued to hold swayover the Middle and Lower Jubba Valley, albeit withgreater integration of his Ras Kamboni Brigades into

the al-Shabaab organization; and Ali Mohamed Ra-ghe (Dheere) overseeing Mogadishu with the as-sistance of the Comoros-born al-Qaeda in East Africachief Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (until the lattersJune 2011 murder).70In this respect, the insurgentsessentially combined and exploited the advantagesof both clan ties and Islamic identities.

The Somalia that Works: Bottom-Up versusTop-Down.

The most damning aspect of the utter failure ofthe 14 different attempts to rebuild the national-levelinstitutions of the Somali state before the TFG andthe struggles of the latter to survive the daily as-

saults of the Islamist insurgency was the presenceof ready examples elsewhere in Somali territory ofwhat is possible when a bottom-up or building-


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block strategy is adopted instead of a continualdefault to a top-down approach in conict reso-

lution, peace building, or counterinsurgency. Theseexamples illustrate how a process that is viewed aslegitimate and supported by the populace can alsoaddress the international communitys interests con-cerning issues ranging from humanitarian concernsto maritime piracy to transnational terrorism.71

Although they differ signicantly in their politicaldevelopment and the courses they have chartedfor themselves, the northern Somali regions of So-maliland and Puntland have both been relativelysuccessful in avoiding not only embroilment in theviolence that has consumed most of southern andcentral Somalia, but also major internal conict.72

After the collapse of the Somali state, elders rep-resenting the variousclans in the former British So-

maliland Protectorate of Somaliland met in the rav-aged city of Burao and agreed to a resolution thatannulled the northern territorys merger with theformer Italian colony and declared a reversion to thesovereign status it had enjoyed after its achievementof independence from Great Britain. Unlike otherparts of Somalia, conict in the region was avertedwhen the SNM, the principal opposition group thathad led the resistance against the Siyad Barre dicta-torship in the region, and Isaq clan leaders purposelyreached out to representatives of other clans in So-maliland, including the Darod/Harti (Dhulbahanteand Warsangeli sub-clans) and Dir (Gadabuursi andIse sub-clans). Chairman of the SNM AbdirahmanAhmed Ali (Tuur) was appointed by consensus at

the Burao conference to be interim president of So-maliland for 2 years. In 1993, the Somaliland clanssent representatives to Borama for a national guur-


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ti, or council of elders, which elected as presidentMohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, who had briey been

prime minister of independent Somaliland in 1960,as well as the democratically elected prime minis-ter of Somalia between 1967 and the military coupin 1969. Interestingly, while the apportionment ofseats at the two conferences was conducted alongclan lines in a rough attempt to reect the demo-graphics of the territory, the actual decisionmakingwas carried out by consensus.73

Egals tenure saw the drafting of a permanent con-stitution, approved by 97 percent of the voters in aMay 2001 referendum, which established an executivebranch of government consisting of a directly electedpresident and vice president and appointed minis-ters; a bicameral legislature consisting of an electedHouse of Representatives and an upper chamber of

elders, the guurti; and an independent judiciary. AfterEgals unexpected death in 2002, his vice president,Dahir Riyale Kahin, succeeded to the presidency. Ka-hin, in turn, was elected in his own right in a closelyfought election in April 2003the margin of victoryfor the incumbent was just 80 votes out of nearly halfa million cast, and, amazingly, the dispute was settledpeaceably through the courts. Multiparty elections forthe House of Representatives were held in September2005, which gave the presidents party just 33 of the 82seats, with the balance split between two other parties.

Although the report of a 2005 AU fact-nding mis-sion led by then-AU Commission Deputy Chairper-son Patrick Mazimhaka concluded that:


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the fact that the union between Somaliland and Soma-lia was never ratied and also malfunctioned whenit went into action from 1960 to 1990 makes Somalil-ands search for recognition historically uniqueandself-justied in African political history,

and recommended that the AU should nd a spe-cial method of dealing with this outstanding case,74

no country has yet recognized Somalilands inde-pendence. This apparent snub, while grating to So-

malilanders, has not prevented them from buildinga vibrant polity with a strong civil society sector.Left to their own devices, the Somalilanders dis-

covered that the demobilization of former ghters, theformation of national defense and security services,and the extraordinary resettlement of over one millionrefugees and internally displaced persons fosteredthe internal consolidation of their renascent polity,while the establishment of independent newspapers,radio stations, and a host of local nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) and other civic organizationsreinforced the nation-building exercise. The stableenvironment has facilitated substantial investmentsby both local and diaspora businessmen, who havebuilt, among other achievements, a telecommunica-

tions infrastructure that is more developed than thatof some of Somalilands neighbors.75 Coca-Cola haseven opened a $10 million bottling plant in Hargeisa.76

In this context, one needs to single out the edu-cational sector not only as a bridge between Somalil-anders in the diaspora and their kinsmen at home, butalso an important impetus for the reconstruction anddevelopment of the region. The showcase of this linkis Amoud University, the rst institution of its kind inSomaliland, which opened its doors in Borama in 1997.


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The school took its name from an eponymous highschool that was the rst institution of its kind under

the British Protectorate and had been the alma materfor many distinguished Somalilanders. The universitywas founded as a modest joint effort by local citizens,who assumed responsibility for the initiative, and theirrelations abroad, especially in the Middle East, whoraised money and sent textbooks and other supplies.The institution opened with just two academic depart-ments, education and business administrationtheformer because of the dire need for teachers in thecountry and the latter because of the opportunities itprovided for employment in the private sector and en-trepreneurship. Even a noted Somali critic of Somalil-ands quest for independence has praised Amoud forhaving under-scored the preciousness of investing incollective projects that strengthen common values and

deepen peace and given the population condencethat local resources can be mobilized to address de-velopment needs.77 Subsequently, universities havebeen established in Hargeisa (2000), Burco (2004), andBerbera (2009), although the latter institution has itsorigins in an older College of Fisheries and MaritimeManagement.

Unfortunately, Somalilands political progresshas stalled in recent years as a result of the repeatedpostponement of presidential and legislative electionsbeginning in 2008. Based on my rsthand observation,it would appear that while the crisis is home-grown,outside actors, especially the European Commission(EC) and the NGO Interpeace, have exacerbated thesituation, however unintentionally. First, the nomina-

tion of the National Election Commission (NEC) bythe president and the opposition-controlled parlia-ment took longer than expected. Then the government


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in Hargeisa, the EC, and Interpeace reached an agree-ment to undertake a new round of voter registration

throughout Somaliland that would result in the issu-ance of a combination voter and national identica-tion cardan admittedly important symbolic goalfor a nascent state. Complicating the exercise further,the NEC, with the agreement of Somalilands politicalparties, decided that the card would carry, in addi-tion to a photograph of the bearer, biometric data. Thewhole process only began in October 2008 and wassoon thereafter interrupted by the suicide bombingscarried out by al-Shabaab. When the process resumed,it was carried out with great enthusiasm and dispatchby both government and donors, so much so that n-gerprint data were not collected from more than halfof those registered, and multiple registrations clearlytook place in a number of localities.

Eventually, an internal compromise worked outin late September 2009 by all three of the regions po-litical parties, with encouragement from Ethiopia andthe United Kingdom (UK), postponed the terms of thepresident and vice president until 1 month after theelectionsthe date of which was not speciedthuspreventing the escalation of the crisis into violence butstill not carrying out the elections. While the electionproblem is rooted in Somalilands internal politics,the outside actors have done their local partners nofavors by backing a process that was highly problem-atic from the outset and then, in the case of Interpeace,becoming embroiled in the expanded conict. Fortu-nately, good sense and some timely mediation by thetraditional clan elders won the day, and the interna-

tionally monitored presidential election in June 2010that resulted in the defeat of incumbent Dahir RiyaleKahin, the election of Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud

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(Silanyo), and a smooth transition between thetwoan unheard-of occurrence in the regionrein-

forced Somalilands case for the international recog-nition that has thus far eluded it. As one report by agroup of Africanist experts concluded:

Recognition of Somaliland would be a most cost-effective means to ensure security in an otherwisetroubled and problematic region. Moreover, at a timewhen ungoverned spaces have emerged as a major

source of global concern, not least in this region ofthe world, it is deeply ironic that the internationalcommunity should deny itself the opportunity to ex-tend the reach of global governance in a way thatwould be benecial both to itself, and to the peopleof Somaliland. For Africa, Somalilands recognitionshould not threaten a Pandoras boxof secessionistclaims in other states. Instead it offers a means topositively change the incentives for better gover-

nance, not only for Somaliland, but also in south-central Somalia.78

One of the leading experts on the Somalis has put itin even starker terms:

For both Somalia and Somaliland, separation is viablein that there is no economic interdependence between

them, but an enforced union against the will of the ma-jority would become a serious liability, possibly lead-ing to war.79

The Darod territories in the northeastern prom-ontory of Somalia have also demonstrated the suc-cess of the building-block model and the wisdomof working with the Somalis deeply ingrained clanidentities.80 In 1998, tired of being held back by theconstant violence and overall lack of social and po-


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litical progress in central and southern Somalia, tra-ditional clan elders of the Darod clan-familys Harti

clanincluding its Dhulbahante, Majeerteen, andWarsangeli sub-groupsmet in the town of Garoweand opted to undertake a regional state formationprocess of their own in the northeast, establishing anautonomous administration for what they dubbedPuntland State of Somalia. After extensive consul-tations within the Darod/Harti clans and sub-clans,an interim charter was adopted that provided for aparliament whose members were chosen on a clanbasis and who, in turn, elected a regional president,the rst being Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who wenton to become president of the TFG in 2004.81

Following Yusuf Ahmeds departure for whatwas to be his disastrous tenure at the head of the TFG,Puntland legislators chose General Mohamud Muse

Hersi (Muse Adde) as the new head of the regionaladministration. After serving one 4-year term of of-ce, Muse Adde lost a reelection bid to AbdirahmanMohamed Mohamud (Farole), who was elected inJanuary 2009 from a eld of over a dozen candidates.Unlike Somaliland, which has opted to reassert its in-dependence, Puntlands constitution simultaneouslysupports the notion of a federal Somalia and assertsthe regions right to negotiate the terms of union withany eventual national government. In late 2009, in asign that secessionism nonetheless is gaining sometraction, the regional parliament voted unanimouslyto adopt a distinctive ag, coat of arms, and anthem.

The region has, of course, become the center of So-mali maritime piracy.82The towns of Eyl and Garaad

in Puntland, together with Hobyoand Xarardheere incentral Somalia, have emerged as the principal pirateports. Analysts believe that senior Puntland ofcials


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are abetting the piracy networksthe UN SanctionsMonitoring Group has charged that President Farole

and members of his cabinet have received some of theproceeds of piracy83and that the region is movingin the direction of becoming the pirate version of anarco-state.84This development should not be sur-prising given that in 2008a year in which an esti-mated $100 million was paid in ransom to the piratesoperating therethe entire budget for the PuntlandState amounted to $11.7 million.85Nevertheless, onereport by the Council on Foreign Relations suggeststhe possibility of a grand bargain, in which Punt-land reins in its piracy-inclined citizens in return forpolitical and economic engagement by the interna-tional community.

Development agencies should also seek to create

a partnership with Puntlands legitimate businesscommunityprobably the only social segment cur-rently strong enough to challenge the pirate networks.The international community could focus on orga-nizing the professional community in Puntland intoa professional association, providing capacity-build-ing support,and engaging the group in discussionsabout what can be done to reduce piracy. A programthat explicitly ties development incentives in the

coastal zones to antipiracy efforts could effectivelymobilize a population tiring of pirate promiscuityand excess.86

The problem, of course, is getting members of theinternational community to actually engage a non-state entity like Puntland and to do so in a consistentand sustainable manner. In 2002, for example, the

Puntland Intelligence Service was established withAmerican and Ethiopian assistance, but this organi-zation has focused almost exclusively on counterter-


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Somaliland, Puntland, and other Somali regions havemanaged to deliver to their constituents a relatively

high degree of peace, security, economic progress,and rule of law, despite the lack of international rec-ognition or involvement. Put another way, they havecombined Webers traditional legitimacy and legalright with service provision in order to establish asustainable political arrangement, an order besidethe state.92 As counterinsurgency theorist David Kil-cullen has noted:

Somalia is virtually a laboratory test case, with thesouth acting as a control group against the experi-ment in the north. We have the same ethnic groups,in some cases the same clans or even the samepeople, coming out of the same civil war and thesame famine and humanitarian disaster, resultingfrom the collapse of the same state, yet you see com-

pletely different results arising from a bottom-uppeace-building process based on local-level rule oflaw versus a top-down approach based on puttingin place a grand bargain at the elite level.93

Vital to Somaliland, Puntland, and other areasrelatively successful efforts to avoid both major in-ternal conict and embroilment in the violence af-

fecting most of southern Somalia has been the roleplayed by their clans. Traditional clan elders havenegotiated questions of political representation in keyforums. In circumstances under which elections wereimpossible, representatives were designated by clanunits from among their members through a delibera-tive process in which all adult males had an oppor-

tunity to participate, and decisions were made on aconsensual basis. In stark contrast to the TFG process,which emphasizes the individual actor, the resulting


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introduction last year of universal free primary andintermediate schooling through the elimination of

school fees. Likewise, what is arguably the secondmost successful state-building exercise is occurring inPuntland, where the reliance on customs duties andan occasional sheries license is perhaps more remotethan direct taxes, but nonetheless requires that thegovernment maintain certain minimum levels of ef-ciency (yet another reason why revenue ows frompiracy, which is centered in Puntland, are so perni-cious). In contrast, the TFG and its predecessorshave relied exclusively on foreign aidwhen theywere not stealing it.

Perhaps most important in the context of the ris-ing tide of Islamist militancy in southern and centralSomalia is the fact that, as one of the most astute ob-servers of contemporary Somali society has observed,

this relianceespecially in Somaliland, but also inPuntlandon the older system of clan elders and therespect they command has served as something ofa mediating force in managing pragmatic interactionbetween custom and tradition; Islam and the secularrealm of modern nationalism, leading to a uniquesituation where Islam may be pre-empting and/orcontaining Islamism.96 The consequence of the de-velopment of an organic relationship between Somaliculture and tradition and Islam appears to ensure astabilizing, rather than disruptive, role for religion insociety in general and religion and politics in particu-lar. In Somaliland, for example, although populationis almost exclusively Sunni Muslim and the shahda,the Muslim profession of the oneness of God and the

acceptance of Muhammad as Gods nal prophet, isemblazoned on the ag, sharia is only one of threesources of jurisprudence used in the regions courts,


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alongside secular legislation and Somali traditionallaw (xeer). However, given the limited resources of

the Somaliland government, Quranic schools playan important role in basic education. Yet alongsidethese popular institutions stand equally well-receivedsecular charities like the Hargeisas Edna Adan Mater-nity Hospital, founded in 2002 by Edna Adan Ismail,the former foreign minister of Somaliland, whichprovides a higher standard of care than is availableanywhere else in the Somali lands for maternity andinfant conditions, as well as diagnosis and treatmentfor HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, andgeneral medical conditions. Thanks to this integrativeapproach, the northern clans have largely managedto domesticate the challenge of political Islam ina manner that their southern counterparts would dowell to emulate.

Although they were a long time in coming, therehave been indications that the international commu-nity has nally begun to arrive at the same realization.In September 2010, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Statefor African Affairs Johnnie Carson announced a sec-ond-track strategy that included greater engagementwith government ofcials from Somaliland and Punt-land, with an eye to looking for ways to strengthentheir capacity both to govern and to deliver servicesto their people.97Likewise, the following month, af-ter long refusing to even acknowledge their existence,the AUs Peace and Security Council directed then-AU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping to broadenconsultations with Somaliland and Puntland as partof the overall efforts to promote stability and further

peace and reconciliation in Somalia.98


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Famine Changes the Game?

The sheer magnitude of the 2011 famine ensuredthat the humanitarian crisis would have a signicantgeopolitical impact. While there is blame enough togo around, al-Shabaab was particularly culpable be-cause of the role that its policies and actions played inexacerbating the consequences of the disaster.

While most analysts view al-Shabaab as a far frommonolithic organization,99its leadership had a historyof arbitrarily denying relief organizations access tothe areas under its control.100 In early 2010, severalinternational agencies, including the World Food Pro-gram, and NGOs pulled out of certain militant-dom-inant areas after several aid workers were killed andthe group began imposing strict conditions on theirremaining colleagues, extorting security fees and

taxes.101

Moreover, because al-Shabaab had beendesignated as an international terrorist organizationby the United States and a number of other countries,funding for UN operations has been restricted, whileNGOs have avoided working in areas the organiza-tion controls for fear of running afoul of laws againstproviding material support to terrorist groups.102

While fears of leakage from aid are not entirelymisplaced, a far more important source of incomefor al-Shabaab was, in fact, more directly related tothe drought and faminesthat is, the industrial pro-duction for export of charcoal. While people livingbetween the Juba and Shabelle rivers in southern So-malia have gathered charcoal for their own use fromthe regions acacia forests since time immemorial, it is

only in the last few years that production has reachedits present unsustainable levels. It is estimated thatsomewhere around two-thirds of the forests that used


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to cover some 15 percent of Somali territory have beenreduced to chunks of black gold, packed into 25-ki-

logram bags, and shipped to countries in the PersianGulf, which have themselves banned the domesticproduction of charcoal.103 In the year before their ex-port was nally embargoed by the Security Council in2012, the UN Monitoring Group conservatively esti-mated that up to 4.5 million of these sacks are export-ed each year, primarily through the port of Kismayo,which has been controlled by al-Shabaab or otherforces allied to its cause since September 2008, earningthe group millions of dollars in prots.104Meanwhile,where old-growth acacia stands once grew, thornbushes now proliferate, rendering the areas uselessto the Somali people, whether pastoralists or agricul-turalists (the former graze their livestock in the grassthat ourishes where the root systems of acacia groves

hold in ground water and prevent erosion, while thelatter grow staple crops in neighboring lands as longas there are tree stands holding in top soil), and con-tributing further to the desertication that is alwaysa persistent threat in a land as arid or semi-arid asSomalia. Thus, it was both simultaneously tragic andironic that when a heavy rain briey passed throughthe region that was formerly the countrys breadbas-ket in 2013, the result was not deliverance, but disas-ter, as, in the absence of any foliage to help absorb theprecipitation, ash oods compounded the miseryin several places.

Al-Shabaab also operated a complex system oftaxation on residents within areas subject to its domi-nation and imposed levies not just on aid groups, but

also on businesses, sales transactions, and land. Thetax on arable land in particular has had the effect ofchanging the political economy of farming commu-


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nities that previously eked out a living just abovesubsistence. For example, in Bakool and Lower Sha-

bellenot coincidentally, the rst two areas where thefamine was declaredcommunities once grew theirown food and, whenever possible, stored any surplussorghum or maize against times of hardship. How-ever, when al-Shabaab imposed a monetary levy onacreage, farmers were pushed into growing cash cropslike sesame, which could be sold to traders connectedwith the Islamist movements leadership for export inorder to obtain the funds to pay the obligatory jihadwar contributions.105

As if all this were not bad enough, once the famineset in, al-Shabaab leaders alternated between denyingthe crisisarguing instead that accounts of hungerwere being exaggerated to undermine their holdover the populaceand preventing affected people

from moving in search of food. Whether it is a for-mal policy of the group or not, al-Shabaab forces haveused force or the threat of force to prevent displacedpeople from leaving its territory to nd help in LowerShabelle106and the Gedo and Bay regions.107

For a long time, despite the extremist ideologyespoused by its foreign-inuenced leaders, which setthem outside the mainstream of Somali culture andsociety, al-Shabaab could present itself as being bet-ter (albeit harsher) rulers than the corrupt denizens ofthe TFG. The brutal hudud punishments its tribunalsmeted out, for example, may have been utterly aliento the Somali experience, but they represented justicenonetheless and were a better alternative than the cha-os and lawlessness that was the experience of many

Somalis in the 1990s. Moreover, the group managed towrap itself up in the mantle of Somali nationalism byportraying the AU peacekeepers as foreign occupiers,


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and the fact that AMISOM troops were propping upthe despised TFG and, in the process, causing civil-

ian casualties made this narrative all the more cred-ible. However, as discussed previously, within thelast year, AMISOM has improved its capabilities andmanaged to lower civilian casualties while pushing al-Shabaab forces back within Mogadishu. In addition,the famine, and al-Shabaabs clumsy response to it,have damaged the movements already questionablereputation for good governance. Not only have theeffects of famine been exacerbated by al-Shabaab, butalso the disaster exposed divisions within the move-ment, with some local councils and militias express-ing a willingness to accept help from outside sources,even as the central leadership continued to spurnit.108Furthermore, actions such as the refusal to allowpeople to escape the famine will sap al-Shabaab of

what remains of its popular legitimacy. While there isundoubtedly some risk in sending aid to areas whereal-Shabaab operates, it is likely that whatever negativeeffects may result from the assistance will fall largelyon the group as some of its local leaders defect or pop-ulations are weaned from their reliance on it.109

Of course, if one is seeking to use this opportunityto undermine al-Shabaab, the attempt would be morelikely to succeed if a prospect more attractive thandomination by the venal TFG was offered to commu-nities just freed from the militants yoke. For example,on August 6, 2011, weakened by the famine both polit-ically and nancially, al-Shabaab abruptly withdrewfrom Mogadishu under cover of darkness. Althoughits spokesman insisted that the pull-out was merely

for tactical reasons and that the group had decidedto change its strategy to hit-and-run attacks, the So-mali capital was nonetheless left, for the rst time in


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years, entirely within the potential grasp of the TFG.110

Instead of seizing the opportunity, however, the re-

gime continued to rule as if nothing had changed.Government troops red on internally displaced per-sons lined up to receive corn rations from the WorldFood Program, killing at least seven people, and thentried to steal the food.111 Journalists subsequentlydiscovered that thousands of sacks of food aid meantfor famine victims were being sold at markets aroundMogadishu by local businessmen with connections togovernment ofcials.112

AMISOM Turns the Tide, al-Shabaab Mutates.

The 2011 famine coincided with the long-awaitedprogress of AMISOM. At the beginning of that year, atnot insignicant sacrice, the AU force had managed

to extend its operational reach to 13 of Mogadishus16 districts and, according to its commander, Ugan-dan Major General Nathan Mugisha, to dominatein more than half of these.113 The strategic effectwas even more impressive in that it meant that about80 percent of the citys estimated two million peoplewere in areas controlled by the force. Then, during theheight of the famine in the rst week of August, al-Shabaab announced its withdrawal from Mogadishu.While the combined effect of the famine destroying themilitants hitherto lucrative taxation rackets and thepopulaces growing exasperation with their brutalityleft al-Shabaab at its weakest point in years,114credit isalso due to the efforts of Nathan Mugisha and his suc-cessor, Major General Fred Mugisha, in adapting their

troops to ght a counterinsurgency campaign in anurban settingand with limited resources at that.115


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While many of the Ugandan and Burundian sol-diers who, until quite recently, made up almost all of

the AMISOM force, have experience ghting and evencounterinsurgency operations in their own countries,these mostly took place in rural settings, not the urbansprawl of a city like Mogadishu. Early in the missionsdeployment, AMISOM was widely criticized for thecivilian casualties that resulted from its often ham-sted response to insurgents who red from populat-ed areas. Under the new doctrine, the use of indirectre weapons was curtailed and otherwise limited todepopulated areas, while no-re zones were estab-lished in the most densely populated areas. Moreover,civil-military cooperation units were established toinvestigate such incidents of civilian casualties, whichstill occurred. Pre-deployment training for AMISOMtroops

Documents

State Collapse, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Somalia