elliot&holzer 2009 the invention of terrorism in somalia

The invention of ‘terrorism’ in Somalia: paradigms and policy in USforeign relations

Ashley Elliot* and Georg-Sebastian Holzer

Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, USA

The article first traces events in Somalia since 9/11: the rise of the Islamic Courts,the Ethiopian occupation, the recalibration of the interim government and the al-Shabaab insurgency. A second layer of analysis brings into focus three fluctuationsin the external perception of the Somali crisis: (i) a post-Cold War narrative of‘state-building’; (ii) the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’; and (iii) a reloaded vision of‘state-building-as-counterterrorism’. Such models inform US policy, yet theirroots lie in an Anglo-Saxon intellectual edifice, detached from the Somali context.Nomothetic fallacies over US political agency encourage paradigms to linger longafter the facts have failed them * a disjuncture brought to light most visiblyduring the second term of the Bush administration. In this period, the unrealitiesof the ‘war on terror’ were refracted instrumentally by local actors in the Horn ofAfrica, creating a web of distorting friend-enemy distinctions. While the Obamaadministration is less devoted than its predecessor to imagining an opponent inSomalia, it too has misread the core political logic. The article explores how thisdissonance between external perception and local reality creates difficulties forpost-interventionary states, whose politicians must win favour in Washington inthe knowledge that favour alone cannot ensure political survival * and maysubvert domestic attempts to secure it.

Keywords: Somalia; Horn of Africa; US foreign policy; Shabaab; Wahhabism;Sufism; political Islam; terrorism; state-building; conflict resolution

Introduction

When the new Somali president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, met with US Secretary

of State Hillary Clinton in Nairobi in August 2009, the well publicised handshake

affirmed an unlikely revival of fortune for the former school teacher and Sufi spiritual

leader. Over the second half of 2006, Sheikh Sharif had led the Islamic Courts Union

(ICU) * a movement that included a radical youth wing, the Shabaab, which in

Clinton’s public estimation was seeking a ‘haven for global terrorism’ in Somalia.1 The

question is why, over a short period, was Sheikh Sharif elevated from wanted adversary

to Washington’s most ardent hope for a solution to the Somali crisis?

Sheikh Sharif’s tenure as leader of the Islamic Courts was short-lived. By January

2007, the ICU leadership was fleeing the advance of Ethiopian forces. Avoiding the

US air strikes that accompanied the Ethiopian invasion, Sheikh Sharif reached the

Kenyan border on 21 January and came under arrest. From Nairobi, he travelled first

to Yemen and later to Djibouti where his hastily constructed opposition faction, the

Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (Djibouti wing), entered a unity

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

South African Journal of International Affairs

Vol. 16, No. 2, August 2009, 215�244

ISSN 1022-0461 print/ISSN 1938-0275 online

# 2009 The South African Institute of International Affairs

DOI: 10.1080/10220460903268984

http://www.informaworld.com

http://www.informaworld.com

government with the moribund Transitional Federal Government (TFG). In

December 2008, Sheikh Sharif returned to Somalia to implement the Djibouti

agreement and on 31 January 2009 was sworn in as the country’s new interim

president.

On 2 February 2009, President Ahmed, whose associates have included some of

Washington’s elusive ‘al-Qaeda suspects,’ travelled to Ethiopia to attend an African

Union Summit. So recently hunted by the Ethiopian Defense Forces, President

Ahmed was greeted warmly in Addis Ababa as a partner in the effort to reorient a

peace process that had failed, in one form or another, some 15 times since 1991. And

as the high-profile meeting in Kenya later confirmed, his refashioned interim

government had acquired the full backing of the United States.

Amidst this rapid rehabilitation, President Ahmed’s own political vision remained

an enigma. On 10 March 2009, in an attempt to reach out or co-opt the Shabaab, his

new Cabinet voted in favour of implementing sharia law in Somalia.2 In the same

month, President Ahmed promised international donors his government wouldcombat ‘terrorism’ and support human rights, gender equality and civil society. Since

then he has visited Europe, the Middle East and five states in the Horn of Africa. The

new Somali president is thus juggling two quite separate impulses * the pursuit of

domestic legitimacy through a shift toward Islamism and co-optation, and the need to

obtain international support against an ascendant insurgency, secured through

opposition to radical Islamism. As the government is struggling even to defend the

few Mogadishu suburbs it controls, each of these imperatives comprises avery pressing

reason of state. Succeeding in only one will not suffice. The difficulty for President

Ahmed is that the different degrees of Islamism, from ‘moderate’ to ‘extremist’, are

categories defined by the various and jostling departments of the US government *they belong to a normative vocabulary he is powerless to affect.

In this way, the Somali case provides an illuminating aperture into the difficulties

confronting politicians in weak post-interventionary states. The preference of those

who sponsor intervention is for arrangements that keep power in the hands of an

internationally controllable and nationally controlling political class.3 This political

class must win favour in western capitals but such favour alone cannot ensure politicalsurvival * and may subvert domestic attempts to secure it. The military power of the

United States is supreme but its reach is limited and where it is exercised, resentment

breeds. It is a conundrum that plays out from Baghdad to Kabul (where President

Karzai saw his attempt in April 2009 to pass harsh Islamic laws vetoed in

Washington);4 yet the conjuncture of events and its subordinate position in geopolitics

makes Somalia an absorbing case. Because the Somali perspective is rarely aired, the

effect is magnified.

The first purpose of this article is, accordingly, to ‘reverse the image’ from the main

body of research on Somalia (which follows a US-centric policy-evaluative or policy-

prescriptive approach), in order to bring the difficulties confronting the post-

interventionary Somali state squarely into focus. The article focuses on the war-

ravaged southern and central Somalia, although the analysis roves freely into the

narrative of Somalia’s two additional political trajectories * the fragile peace in

Puntland and the nascent democracy in Somaliland. The article’s second theme, which

elaborates on the difficulty for Somali politicians in reconciling international withdomestic legitimacy, is to offer a sense of how and why external actors have misread the

dynamics of the Somali conflict. Two external analytical frames * one as old as

Somalia’s own statelessness, the other more recent * have been prominent. We label

216 A Elliot and G-S Holzer

these interpretations the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘state-building’ narratives. Both, we shall

argue, are rooted in formulas and labels abstracted from a different or generalised

political world and imposed on the Somali case without attention to context and

specificity. From among the different motors of agency and conflict in Somalia * clan,

class, nation, religion and so on * such narratives stress aspects that accord with their

assumptions and disregard others. The resulting conceptual ambiguity lacks any

historically grounded understanding of what led to chronic disorder in the Somali

polity in the first instance * a cause located not in the centrifugal clan dynamics of the

1990s but earlier, in the final decades of the Cold War. Because outside interference is

relentless and often decisive, external ideational shifts over what matters about

Somalia’s statelessness bear directly on the political landscape in the country. The

rupture between external perception and local reality carries a heavy explanatory

burden for the present situation in Somalia. Reducing it may determine what political

future is attainable.

The article has three parts. The first sketches an analytical narrative of events since

9/11; section two offers a critique of the use of ‘terrorism’ as an analytical tool in

Somalia; part three draws out the premises underlying the ‘state-building’ narrative andputs forward an alternative. The conclusion returns to the present in order to outline future

scenarios for Somalia.

Somalia since 9/11

Since 1991, Somalia has provided a headache for international politicians, instability

for the region, and misery for many of its inhabitants. Until 11 September 2001,

analysts and policymakers discussed Somalia’s seemingly intractable problems, such as

the absence of formal government, the predation of militia-factions and the failure of

humanitarian efforts, while Islamist groups and US counterterrorism policies

remained peripheral.5 In a framework that has since been applied from Haiti to

Afghanistan, the Somali crisis came to be understood through a conceptual prism that

wedded the idea of peace-as-order to state-centric notions of institution-building and

economic development. This outlook was embodied in the first humanitarianintervention to be authorised under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the

ill-fated United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNISOM) from April 1992 to March

1995. Its guiding objective was to impose a monopoly on force *an external Leviathan

* on what was then and remains a state without a state.

While the vision of state-building as a solution to the Somali conflict lasted

throughout the 1990s, the United States and other states proved gradually less willing

to act on it. After 9/11, however, Somalia’s changing politics and fortunes were

increasingly surveyed through the lens of ‘terrorism’.6 Somalia became a standing

threat to international security. The country’s statelessness, it was assumed, would

provide a ‘terrorist safe haven’. Although Somalia was relatively neglected in the early

attentions of the ‘War on Terror’, the US-sanctioned Ethiopian invasion of southern

Somalia in December 2006 comprised the belated culmination of this focus.

Yet in the wake of the failure of the Ethiopian occupation, international observers

began to diminish their emphasis on international terrorism (even if, in the western

media, Somalia became the emblem for another threat: piracy).7 Even after the rise ofthe radical Islamist group, the Shabaab, in 2007�2008 it was clear that the balance

of opinion within the various arms of the American state, latterly under the direction of

the Obama administration, had reverted to the ‘state-building’ narrative of old, this

South African Journal of International Affairs 217

time wedded awkwardly to the goal of counterterrorism. (This shift away from the

Bush-era strictures of the ‘War on Terror’ ideology was demonstrated in the Obama

administration’s provision of 40 tons of arms to President Ahmed’s moderate Islamist

government in the summer of 2009.)8

Thus, international apprehension over the significance of the Somali conflict

commenced, in the emboldened current of early post-Cold War interventionism, with

the idea of state-building. As this rescinded into inaction it was replaced after 2001

with a new set of imperatives anchored in the ‘War on Terror’, before returning to areloaded vision of state-building-as-counterterrorism under the Obama administra-

tion. In Somalia, of course, events continued. As the following analytical narrative

reveals, a dissonance emerged and widened between local reality and the fluctuations

of perception and policy in western capitals.

Somalia 2001�2006

The Horn of Africa witnessed few immediate changes in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.9

Somalia lacked effective central authority, as it had done since the fall of Siyaad Barre’sregime in 1991, but it was no longer a radically violent environment. In the 1990s,

government collapse led to a bloody civil war, banditry and famine; but by 2001,

incremental improvements in local administrative capacity and economic activity

created more predictable conditions, leading some to imagine that Somalia had

reached a new phase of ‘governance without government’.10 One extraordinary change

did occur. As the majority of the world’s states remonstrated against ‘international

terrorism’, elements of Somalia’s political elite were ‘queuing up to declare their

country a potential haven for terrorists’.11 This phenomenon * one party attemptingto de-legitimise its opponents and garner international support through accusations of

‘terrorism’ * has become a vital currency of power in Somali politics since 9/11. The

new orientation among Somali actors reflected an international shift from disengage-

ment tempered by meagre multilateral efforts in the 1990s to a new agenda in which

certain states * primarily Ethiopia and the US * began actively to re-engage with

Somalia.12

In 2001, a new government was seated in the capital, Mogadishu. But the

Transitional National Government (TNG), formed at the Arta conference in Djiboutiin 1999, was stillborn: the politician’s remit confined them to the enclaves of their

Mogadishu stronghold.13 The TNG was supported by a number of African and Arab

states, especially Egypt, but opposed by the most influential external player in Somali

politics, Ethiopia. The new government was accused of favouring the interests of one

particular clan, the Hawiye, and the interests of certain Islamist groups. In response,

the Ethiopian government backed a constellation of aggrieved factions to form the

Somalia Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC). The SRRC quickly began

smearing the TNG and its supporters by accusing them of ties with ‘extremist’ groupssuch as Al-Itihaad.14

While not suffering a comprehensive military defeat, the TNG lost momentum and

dissolved in 2003. Ethiopia’s success in undermining the nascent interim government

proved that Addis Ababa effectively exercised the power of veto over the political

direction of its disorderly neighbour. The episode led to a new conference in Kenya

designed to solve Somalia’s absence of government; the fourteenth such attempt since

1991.15 The Mbgathi peace talks, conducted under the auspices of the Intergovern-

mental Authority on Development (IGAD), eventually produced the Transitional


Federal Government in October 2004. The impotence and narrow constituency of this

new government equalled its predecessor, although its make-up differed entirely.

Ethiopia’s influence on proceedings led to claims that the TFG was merely an

Ethiopian proxy and unrepresentative of Somalia’s clans. The disposition of power

appeared to favour the interests of the Darod clan and alienate large sections of the

Hawiye. Its president, Abdillahi Yusuf, was a central figure of the SRRC, a staunch

anti-Islamist, and backed to the hilt by Ethiopia.16 Yusuf perceived that the TFG’s

support-base was too narrow to operate in Mogadishu, where the Hawiye clandominated.17 The president accordingly moved the government from Kenya to the

provincial Somali town of Baidoa, where it remained powerless and divided. From this

political vacuum emerged a new player, labelled by the international media the ‘Islamic

Courts’ or Islamic Courts Union.

The Islamic Courts

Islamic Courts were familiar to the Somali political landscape. In August 1999 in the

north of Mogadishu, Islamic clerics from the Abgal sub-clan of Somalia’s largest and

most powerful clan, the Hawiye, had taken advantage of the weaknesses created byfactional infighting to recruit militias and judges, backed by their own secular clan

leadership.18 The Courts were empowered by the population’s desire for a modicum

of security, and by local business groups in particular. But the experiment quickly

faltered. As the Courts grew in stature, Mogadishu’s incumbent militia leaders began

to view them as competitors and the Courts fractured under pressure along sub-clan

lines.

In 2005, conditions were more propitious. The ICU began to unite across clan

boundaries and build a significant militia force. Predictably, a group of warlordsformed to oppose this new competitor, naming itself, with magnificent ingenuousness,

the ‘Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism’ (ARPCT).

Momentarily, southern Somalia entered a period of ‘tri-polar’ politics defined by the

rival camps of the TFG, the ARPCT and the ICU.19 But four months after its

formation, the ARPCTwas ousted by the ICU in early 2006. With astonishing rapidity,

the ICU extended their rule over Mogadishu, Kismayo and much of southern Somalia.

The Courts gained considerable performance legitimacy during this period for

delivering a level of security unmatched in Somalia in 15 years.20 For the first timein Somalia’s independent history, Islamists were governing, not merely opposing. A

stand-off ensued as the Courts’ expansion led them into direct proximity with the TFG

in Baidoa, near the Ethiopian border. An attempt to avoid conflict was made when the

two sides were invited for talks in Khartoum in June 2006, but incentives were running

against reconciliation:

On the one hand, the [Courts] were on a military roll, and saw little need to negotiatewith an entity that it intended to defeat. On the other hand, the TFG probably wouldnot have survived in a compromise situation as resulting internal schisms would havetorn it apart.21

From June 2006, both sides participated in an arms race. The TFG received supplies

from Ethiopia while shipments arrived for the Courts from Asmara, the seat of the

Eritrean government, along with supplies from various Arab sponsors.22 But in the

summer and autumn of 2006, the most important battle being waged was internal.

Within the ‘big tent’ of the Courts movement, traditional Sufi leaders such as Sheikh


Sharif Sheikh Ahmed were jostling for power with salafists and jihadists such as the

Shabaab.23 In what remains the most poignant of Somalia’s missed opportunities, the

contest was decided in favour of the more bellicose wing.

In a country with a single language and religion, born in 1960 out of the dream of

Abden Abdullah Osman Daar for a greater Somalia for all ethnic Somalis, the Courts

were genuinely popular, successfully fusing Somali nationalism with Islamism. For

some, including many in the diaspora, the movement was an alternative to the zero-

sum game of clannism; for others, it presented a useful vehicle for clan interests.24 Hadthe moderates prevailed, the Courts may have reached a compromise with Ethiopia;

but with the radicalisation of the leadership a new cycle of violence was unavoidable.

In late 2006, the Courts began a series of sporadic assaults on TFG positions

around Baidoa. This proved a serious miscalculation of the hardliners: after six months

in power, the Courts were gone within 10 days.25 On 24 December, the Ethiopian army

engaged with the Courts with token support from the TFG. In a lightning offensive,

Ethiopian forces killed an estimated 1000 Courts militiamen in the open countryside.26

Defeat turned into rout when the Courts opted for retreat to the southern port city ofKismayo over the use of asymmetrical guerrilla tactics in the defence of Mogadishu.

Kismayo’s residents soon expelled the Courts, whose members fled south toward the

Kenyan border, allowing Ethiopian and TFG forces to wrest nominal control over all

of southern Somalia.27

In January 2007, invasion settled into occupation. A new political vacuum

threatened to emerge as the weak TFG struggled to consolidate its authority in

Mogadishu. President Yusuf quickly came to rely on Ethiopian protection and an

initial African Union peacekeeping contingent of 1700 Ugandan troops under the UN-sanctioned African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).28 Other AU membership

states balked at the prospect of sending further troops. The TFG’s power was derived

from Ethiopian midwifery, yet a violent history of irredentist grievance and border

wars guaranteed opposition to the Ethiopian presence.29

Insurgency and external intervention

Within weeks of the invasion, an insurgency against TFG and Ethiopian forces

gathered momentum. The turbulent new dispensation attracted greater attentionfrom international actors. In January 2007, al-Qaeda deputy, Ayman al-Zawahir,

posted an internet message encouraging the Courts to launch a campaign of suicide

bombings against the Ethiopians.30 And the United States, for whom memory of the

messy UNISOM mission had cautioned against intervention in the wake of 9/11,

intervened once more. On 6 January 2007, as the Courts militia fled Mogadishu, the

US launched the first of a series of air-strikes in Somalia against suspected al-Qaeda

militants. (The suspicion proved false: those killed were innocents or simply rank-

and-file Islamist fighters. Only later, in May 2008, could the United States claim anysuccess, killing the Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayro in the town of Dusamareb.)31

The projection of the ‘War on Terror’ in the Horn provided justification for the

United States to militarise its policy in the region. (It has witnessed less success

elsewhere in Africa, as demonstrated by the rejection in 2008 to host the United

States African Command, or AFRICOM, by every African country except Liberia.)

These air strikes brought America back to centre-stage in Somalia. Their publicity

and timing wedded US policy to the Ethiopian occupation in the Somali imagination

* a conflation that continues to undermine US legitimacy in the region.32


Whether US support was the determining factor in the Ethiopian decision to

invade is disputed. Two weeks prior to the invasion, then US Assistant Secretary

Jendayi Frazer labelled the Courts leadership as ‘extremists . . . controlled by al-Qaeda

cell individuals’, thus shifting State Department policy very publicly away from

mediation.33 The decision to remove the ICU from power may have been taken in

Addis Ababa, but it was surely made possible only by American assent: ‘how could

Ethiopia, with a budget 50 per cent dependent on international aid, afford a military

sortie of this size without (US) backing?’34

Conditions in Mogadishu have historically provided an accurate barometer of

stability in Somalia. By April 2007, Mogadishu was engulfed in the most intense

fighting since 1991�1993 as approximately 20 000 Ethiopian troops, backed by 5000

Somali government soldiers, confronted a coalition of Hawiye clan militia, jihadists,

Islamic Courts remnants, nationalistic fighters and opportunists in a conflict whose

battle lines were re-drawn daily across the city.35

Whole neighbourhoods were shelled, producing civilian casualties estimated to exceed1,000 . . . Between 200,000 and 300,000 thousand residents were displaced . . . In someneighbourhoods in north Mogadishu, eye-witnesses estimate that as many as one inthree structures have been damaged or destroyed.36

In April 2007, an estimated 600 refugees died of cholera and other diseases on the

outskirts of the capital as a growing legion of internally displaced people (IDPs)

spread into the Afgooye corridor in the lower Shabelle region. President Yusuf

promised a national reconciliation conference for 16 April, but later postponed thenegotiations indefinitely.37 Meanwhile, the repeated shelling of urban areas by

Ethiopian forces led one high-ranking European Union (EU) security official to warn

the head of the EU delegation to Somalia that continued support to the TFG may

implicate the EU in war crimes.38

As the insurgency hardened in late 2007 and early 2008 into a cycle of asymmetric

attacks and rural land grabs, the TFG showed little aptitude for improving on the

conditions of its violent birth. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Ali

Mohamed Gedi on 29 October and the inability of his successor, Nur Hassan Hussuin,to form a new cabinet, the government threatened to fracture along clan lines.39

President Yusuf ignored political reality * his government actively ruled perhaps 5%

of Somali territory * by refusing to negotiate with the insurgents.

In early 2008, Mogadishu witnessed a spike in insurgent attacks. The nature of the

insurgency also shifted. In mid-March, three Somali soldiers were beheaded by

insurgents. This followed the earlier introduction of suicide bombings against

Ethiopian forces, AU forces, and Somali government soldiers.40 By the end of 2008,

insurgent attacks had become more sophisticated and ambitious, with the use ofimprovised explosive devices (IEDs) and a level of co-ordination hitherto unseen in

Somalia.

The Djibouti Agreement

Yet by the end of 2008, the political deadlock within the TFG began to ease when on

29 December the unpopular 75-year old president, Abdillahi Yusuf, formerly

announced his resignation, citing his desire not to be seen as an ‘obstacle to peace’

in Somalia.41 The Djibouti peace process followed, culminating in January 2009 with

the promise of an Ethiopian withdrawal, the formation of a new government and an


expansion of the parliament by 275 seats in order to combine existing representatives

with a number of former ICU (now Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, or

ARS) members.42

Oddly, the danger posed by the Shabaab helped facilitate the rapprochement

between the ARS and the interim government. With the threat of the radical Shabaab

seizing power in Somalia, the position of the ARS as a moderate opposition in exile,

with no real power on the ground in Somalia, was no longer tenable. And perhaps

more ironically, the conditions of the Djibouti peace deal, which doubled the size of

parliament to 550 in a country of just 8 million, ultimately allowed Sharif Ahmed to

win the presidency.43 Among the new MPs added were 200 from the ARS, Sharif’s

principle constituency, thus tipping the vote in his favour.

On 27 January 2009, the new Transitional Federal Parliament adopted a resolution

to amend the Transitional Federal Charter to extend its mandate for two years, until

August 2011.44 This was followed two weeks later on 13 March by the inaugural session

of the newly enlarged parliament, the first to be held in the capital since the formation

of the TFG at Mbgathi.45 The new government immediately turned its attention to

security. The Djibouti process provided for the creation of three key institutions: the

Joint Security Committee, the Joint Security Force and the Somali Peace Force.46

Western governments agreed to provide $213 million to set up a 6000-strong army and

a police force of 10 000,47 but the intensity of the Shabaab-led insurgency stalled the

efforts of the interim government, rendering the new security apparatus stillborn.

Despite the optimism surrounding his election, President Ahmed missed several

opportunities at Djibouti. He underestimated the antipathy his new government

excited amongst the various outliers to the process, among whom he was viewed as a

traitor. He also failed in the difficult task of reconciling the original Yusuf-era MPs

with the new ARS MPs. More decisively, his bargaining position was poorly

prepared: Ahmed failed to volunteer any concessions to the patchwork of militias *secular and Islamist * that had taken de facto control over segments of southern

Somalia following the Ethiopian withdrawal (the last Ethiopian troops had crossed

back into Ethiopian soil on 25 January).48 This would sorely hinder the task of

securing state authority outside Mogadishu. For example,

Contacts with militant leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys were particularly underminedby this ambivalence. Beyond the vague promise that the TFG and Arab governmentswould push for his name to be removed from the U.S. list of foreign sponsors ofterrorism, nothing else was offered to Mr. Aweys. It was inevitable he would soon . . .turn into a spoiler.49

President Ahmed’s timidity was also exacerbated by international hesitation over the

endorsement of particular groups. Washington proved unwilling to abide the

involvement of Somali actors whose records (in American eyes) suggested a jihadist

dint. This intransigence on behalf of the international community recalled the failure

to invite any civil or armed groups outside of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance

leadership to the 2001 Bonn conference on Afghanistan. Just as a preoccupation with

counterterrorism blinkered western states in the founding of the post-Taliban Afghan

state, so the snubs during the Djibouti agreement guaranteed opposition to the

interim government in Somalia from groups with little a priori reason to remain as

spoilers.

Nevertheless, the new interim government showed some early signs of promise.

President Ahmed reached out to opposition groups, both directly and by proxy, and


the unity government attracted a degree of support from the population. The new

government passed a national budget and made use of legitimate tax revenue from

Mogadishu’s port to pay TFG troops. In a further boost, the government was

reinforced in March 2009 by the deployment of a fifth battalion of 850 AMISOM

troops from Uganda, bringing the overall AMISOM presence to 4300 (54% of the

mission’s mandated strength).50

The sectarian dimension

More unexpectedly still, a new force in Somali politics entered into a loose alliance

with the government to oppose the insurgency. In the Ceel Buur region of central

Somalia, a new group, Al-Sunna w’al-Jama’a, succeeded in expelling the Shabaab

from several towns.51 In January 2009, in the Galgaduud region, for example, the Al-

Sunna wa-al-Jamaa engaged Al-Shabaab militias, reportedly killing 35.52 The

movement comprises Sufi students and adherents * a group with no previous

history of political or military action in Somalia * who oppose the radical Shabaab

interpretation of Islam as ‘un-Islamic’ and ‘un-Somali.’ Somalia’s conflict has thus

entered an ideological phase * a new contest over the relation of religion to Somali

statehood.

Stalemate: the equilibrium of 2009

The wider outlook remains bleak, however. Popular support for the insurgency may

be waning; for example, following the Ethiopian withdrawal, traditional leaders of

the Mudulood, the dominant Hawiye sub-clan in Mogadishu, rejected the continua-

tion of the insurgency.53 But the political�military reality is different. The Shabaab’s

operational capacity remains strong. Somaliland’s ‘9/11’ provided an explosive

indication of this reach. On 29 October 2008, three co-ordinated suicide bombings hit

Hargeysa, the capital of the semi-autonomous republic. The bombs targeted the

Presidential Palace, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) com-

pound and the Ethiopian liaison office. Simultaneously, two offices of the Puntland

Intelligence Service (PIS) in Boosaaso, capital of the Puntland region, were hit. The

attacks were timed to coincide with a press conference in Nairobi announcing

negotiations between the TFG and ARS. This timing and choice of target reflected

the fact that radical Islamism in Somalia is wedded to a powerful notion of Somali

nationalism * set against the balkanisation of the state into three separate

republics.54

On 22 February 2009, a double suicide bombing by the Shabaab of the

Burundian AMISOM base in Mogadishu killed 11 peacekeepers and injured 28.

The organisation has also proved capable of taking and holding territory,

consolidating its presence in the lower Shabelle region, expanding further into the

Bay and Gedo regions and capturing Baidoa, the seat of the parliament, in the wake

of the Ethiopian withdrawal. A second radical Islamist group, Hizbul Islam, an

amalgam of four groups including the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia

(Asmara wing), has also emerged in alliance with the Shabaab. The group appears to

control large territories in the south-west of Somalia. Both groups have received

training or volunteers from Eritrea, Yemen, Libya, Qatar, Iran and a number of

western states.55


In the light of an emboldened insurgency, the interim government is beginning to

fray. The wave of assassinations and inflammatory rhetoric has removed the prospect

of negotiation in the near-term. Meanwhile, the government currently controls only a

portion of southern Mogadishu. In a telling indication of his own perception of the

situation, on 20 June 2009 President Ahmed called for the Kenyan and Ethiopian

governments to intervene or else risk Somalia falling to jihadism. Over the summer of

2009, in the aftermath of the assassinations of Somalia’s interior minister,

ambassador-designate to South Africa and police chief in successive suicide-

bombings, the country’s new legislators fled Mogadishu in droves.56 As many as

300 members of parliament are now abroad.57 Most recently, on 19 June, the

Shabaab killed the charismatic Somali Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden along

with 30 others.58 The government, in plaintive understatement, has called a state of

emergency.

Yet the lesson from the post 9/11 era of occupation and asymmetric opposition

across the Middle East is that an insurgency requires more than suicide bombings to

take power. In order to rule, any political actor must possess the coercive power to

overcome competitors and meet what the political philosopher Bernard Williams

labels a ‘basic legitimation demand’.59 As with all historical Islamist movements in

the Horn of Africa (and perhaps elsewhere), the Shabaab is oppositional * it thrives

as a spoiler yet becomes exposed as a governing force.60 Even in opposition, the

Shabaab is failing to retain much legitimacy, since the central planks of its platform

have evaporated with the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces and the decision to institute

sharia law. What remains is the Shabaab’s vision of an Islamic caliphate returning

Somalis to their interpretation of purity in the Prophet’s time * an offer few Somalis

are drawn to. Hence, over the near-term, the conflict in Somalia is likely to remain a

stalemate: no player is presently powerful or popular enough to overcome its

contenders. Even if in areas such as the Presidential Palace in south Mogadishu

insurgent fighters are positioned just metres away from AU forces, we are unlikely to

witness the complete fall of the capital. The likely scenario is of an intensely violent

continuation of the present equilibrium.

The humanitarian crisis

The effect of the crisis on the Somali people surpasses even the endemic insecurity of

the 1990s. The scale of the violence and internal displacement has badly damaged the

coping mechanisms developed during two decades of statelessness. As many as 3.25

million people are in need of humanitarian assistance; 330 000 children in Somalia are

acutely malnourished and approximately 1.3 million Somalis remain internally

displaced.61 In total, there are approximately three million Somali refugees, including

those able to flee Somalia in the 1990s and 2000s for North America, Europe and the

Middle East.62 According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR), 204 000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since early May

2009. While many have fled west to Afgooye, an area that hosts more than 400 000

IDPs, ‘the majority are now heading further afield to the Lower and Middle Shabelle,

Galgaduud, Bay and Lower Juba regions’.63 Meanwhile, Medicins Sans Frontiers, a

western non-governmental organisation (NGO), has left the capital’s clinics for the

first time in 17 years, leaving thousands without basic medical care.64


The international dimension

Events in Somalia since the Ethiopian withdrawal have solicited a range of

international responses and prevarications. The United Nations has tabled a plan

to intervene with a force of some 22 500 troops, although no UN member countries

have offered troops and the most recent UN reports argue against their deployment.

The most likely course of action for 2009�2010 is the adoption of a ‘light footprint’

approach in which the UN continues to strengthen AMISOM and assist the TFG in

building security institutions while retaining a low visible profile in the country.

Yet international concern is rising. In April 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-

moon and AU Chairman Jean Ping hosted the first donor conference for Somalia in

18 years in Brussels, promising substantial funds for the interim government.65 In

July 2009, UN Security Council ambassadors discussed the imposition of a no-fly

zone and a blockade of Somali ports to prevent the entry of foreign fighters and

weapons shipments. The Security Council has also considered sanctioning Eritrea,

which stands accused of providing support to the insurgency.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, sent a $10 million arms and military

training package to President Ahmed’s government in June 2009.66 Washington has

also committed to financing the governments of Kenya, Burundi and Uganda to

train TFG troops.67 More strikingly, the United States has begun sharing

intelligence with the unity government and invited Somali political leaders to

Washington to develop a counter-insurgency strategy.

The Obama administration is eschewing military counterterrorism operations in

favour of a focus on state-building.68 The regional strategy has also undergone

adjustment. Johnnie Carson, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, posited

that ‘given the long-standing enmity between Somalis and Ethiopians, I will

encourage the Ethiopians not to re-engage in Somalia’.69 The Secretary of State

indicated that the administration will seek a ‘comprehensive’ approach, tacitly

admitting that, as recently as 2008, US Somalia policy within different government

agencies had worked at cross-purposes. To that end, the National Security Council

(NSC) has brought together the Department of State, the Department of Defense,

USAID and the intelligence community to draw-up a unified Somalia policy.

The following section returns to US Somalia policy under the Bush administra-

tion in an effort to unravel the unintended consequences of militaristic counter-

terrorism efforts, focusing on the role of Islam in Somali society and the origins and

motivation of Somalia’s Islamist groups.

Fighting terror, chasing shadows

As a Muslim state in close proximity to the Middle East and Sudan (host to al-Qaeda

in the 1990s), Somalia’s lawless environs seem a likely incubator of Islamic

extremism. After 9/11, this supposition was pushed forcefully by the Bush

administration. In his 2001 Senate testimony, then US Assistant Secretary of State

for African Affairs, Walter Kansteiner, concluded: ‘Where there should be a nation-

state [in Somalia], there is a vacuum filled by warlords. What better place for the

seeds of international terrorism and lawlessness to take root?’70

From 9/11 until the policy reappraisal under the Obama administration, US

intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense (if not always the State

Department and executive) acted on this premise by targeting jihadists militarily. Yet


the ‘War on Terror’ was a premise whose vocabulary and conjectures coalesced into

what the philosopher Michel Foucault described as a ‘regime of truth’ or what political

theorist Quentin Skinner identifies as ‘systems of meaning’ constructed through

‘rhetorical re-description.’71 Such a regime rests upon a ‘ ‘‘symbolic technology’’ that

contributes to the construction of knowledge . . . and legitimate policy responses, while

excluding and delegitimizing alternative knowledge’.72 Drawing on the narrative of

‘global terrorism’, Somalia’s Islamic Courts were understood in the western media,

where they attained prominence only a full decade after their arrival in Somali politics,

as an offshoot of al-Qaeda. This external perception of the Somali political landscape

was,

Based on events far away from Somalia with little or no consideration of internal Somalipolitics [and used] after 20 December 2006 to justify the Ethiopian and US militaryintervention in Somalia.73

The remainder of this section pursues two separate tasks, seeking firstly to uncover

the flaws in this perception and secondly to outline how the ‘War on Terror’

framework was refracted locally * adopted and applied instrumentally by certain

actors.

Islamism in Somalia

‘Transnational terrorism’ may be a concern for policymakers in Washington but it has

never been a significant entity in Somalia. In her 1981 study of the causes of terrorism,

Martha Crenshaw differentiated between instigative and permissive causes.74 On this

dichotomy, Somalia has only ever played host to permissive causes of terrorism. A

limited number of al-Qaeda operatives have used Somalia as an operational base or

transit point, but less so than in other states, including Kenya. There are likely more

extensive al-Qaeda networks in western states.

At second blush, Somalia is not even a very permissive environment. Kenneth

Menkhaus, a political scientist at Davidson College in the United States, has argued

that Somalia’s lack of government inhibits rather than facilitates international

‘terrorist’ groups. The US search for suspects is not restricted by concerns over

intrusions of sovereignty; Somalia’s instability precludes the presence of large numbers

of expatriates, making foreign jihadists more noticeable; and foreign jihadis remain

vulnerable to the same risks of kidnapping, extortion and betrayal that abound in

Somalia. In the factionalised game of Somali politics it has proven difficult for foreign

groups to enjoy the patronage of a particular group without being targeted by that

group’s adversaries.75

There is a second more systemic explanation: domestic support for radical

Islamism in Somalia is limited. The Somali interpretation of Islam is a ‘veil lightly

worn’. The majority of Somalis have traditionally followed a Shafi’i version of the

faith, governed by apolitical Sufi orders.76 After the collapse of the repressive Barre

government in 1991, numerous Islamist groups emerged but of these few pursued

political violence. The explanation for this opposition to extremism may lie in the

pastoral nature of Somali culture which ‘imbues a strong preference for pragmatism

over ideology, not so much as a matter of choice, but as a matter of survival’.77 Strict

Islamic codes such as Wahhabism are largely viewed as an imposition of ‘un-Somali’

Gulf customs.


After 1991, most Islamic groups, such as the charity al-Islaah, resembled western

NGOs, providing services in the absence of government. Of the minority of Salafist

groups associated with violence, al-Itihaad al-Islaami was the most prominent. The

organisation conducted operations in Somalia and the Ogaden * the eastern region

of Ethiopia inhabited by ethnic Somalis.78 The organisation’s objectives were

confined to the Horn, largely directed against Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden, where

it established a joint front with Ethiopian opposition groups such as the Ogaden

National Liberation Front (ONLF). But in 1996 Ethiopian forces attacked al-Itihaadcamps in Somalia and the organisation crumbled. By 2003, al-Itihaad amounted to

‘little more than a transient shadow cast across the Horn by militant Wahhabism and

Arab oil wealth’.79

The existence and activities of al-Qaeda in Somalia are even less certain. The

group has maintained an interest in the country, ‘but the attraction does not seem to

have been mutual’.80 Few Somalis have joined al-Qaeda and the attacks perpetrated

by al-Qaeda in East Africa have not included individuals of Somali origin.81 Some

analysts claim a working relationship between al-Qaeda and al-Itihaad in the early1990s when Osama Bin laden was based in Khartoum; thereafter accusations have

circulated that al-Qaeda operatives * such as the perpetrators of the Paradise Hotel

bombing in Kenya in 2002 * have found shelter in southern Somalia. But

significantly, when choosing a new base after his departure from Sudan in 1996,

Bin Laden eschewed Somalia as a refuge.82 (Perhaps his leadership had discerned

that the country’s militias and Islamist groups were left cold by al-Qaeda’s global

vision.)83

Thus, in spite of the convictions professed by the Ethiopian government and theTFG, the hopes of al-Qaeda itself and the assumptions of US policymakers,

Somalia’s conflict fits uneasily with the simple ‘global jihadism versus pro-western

secularism’ dichotomy. The motives of Somalia’s various actors are messier, more

local, perhaps mercantile. Rendering this more variegated account requires a return

to the pre-1991 era. On one level, the narrative stems from the dynamics of clan, a

unit politicised under British and Italian colonial rule and energised further by

Siyaad Barre, whose consolidation of power rested upon the manipulation of clan

politics through his alliance of Darod clans. By the 1980s, the clan unit had become asignifier for group competition over state-directed resources. This signifier was

retained in the Somali imagination after the outbreak of civil war and so the idea of

the state has retained its imaginative link to the zero-sum contest for political

supremacy between clans. The following section traces this dynamic from the

outbreak of conflict in 1991 to the present.

Interest-groups and Islamism: the clan connection

In 1991, the main clan protagonists that ousted the Darod-dominated Barregovernment were affiliated to Hawiye, Isaaq and Ogaden clan lineages.84 The contours

of this original contest can be traced through to the initial Hawiye-dominated

insurgency in 2007. When the TNG formed in 2001, it represented the interests of the

Hawiye and its Arab and Egyptian backers. After the TNG dissolved under pressure

from the SRRC, ‘the clan alliances underpinning the TNG [were] . . . replaced by a

rival set of alliances * aided and abetted by Ethiopia * that became the TFG’.85 This

rival alliance was popularly perceived as a Darod-dominated group (80% of the TFG

ministers belonged to the alliance of Darod-dominated factions that Ethiopia had


supported against the TNG in 2003).86 Perceiving a threat to their lucrative business

interests and following their exclusion from the new government being formed in

Kenya, the Hawiye clan * and the Ayr subclan of the Habr Gedir in particular *sought to project their interests through the Islamic Courts. The new government

angered the Hawiye leadership further through its removal of Sharif Hassan Sheikh

Aden, the TFG parliament speaker. Although a member of the Rahaweyn clan, Sharif

Hassan was viewed as the ‘key representative of the Hawiye business class’.87 Faced

with disenfranchisement, the Hawiye leadership organised armed opposition to thegovernment and looked to Asmara for assistance.

The salience here is not that clan explains all in Somali politics (it does not) but

rather that the success of the Courts, even their existence, relied on the support of the

Hawiye clan-grouping and the assistance of the most secular state in Africa, Eritrea.

By 2008 Asmara was hosting the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS),

comprising the remnants of the Courts, disgruntled ex-TFG ministers and a coalition

of intellectuals and businessmen. Hence, the conflict in 2007 arose not between

Islamists and their adversaries but rather from competition over access to the statebetween rival interests groups, driven by economic class and signified by clan. That

conflagration then fed into the Ethio-Eritrean regional security dilemma. (With the

government and insurgent forces in 2007�2008 representing strikingly similar clan

divisions to the Barre-era civil war, some interpreted in the 2007 Ethiopian invasion

and subsequent shelling of urban areas ‘a nightmare scenario of a Darod revenge for

the ‘cleansing’ of Darod clans from Mogadishu in 1991’.)88

In this way, a sequence of perplexing chapters * civil war in the 1990s, the

subversion and dissolution of the TNG, its replacement by the TFG, the rise of theCourts and their defeat by the Ethiopian-backed TFG * each represented

consecutive rounds of competition for political power between two central clan-

groupings and two regional adversaries. Since 9/11, one side * the Darod-dominated

TFG and Ethiopia * has profited from accusing the other of ‘Islamic terrorism’ and

accruing the attendant benefits of US support. The following section brings this

instrumentality into focus.

The instrumentality of ‘terror’

In 2002, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, declared his country ‘at the epicenter

of terrorism and a secular island in the sea of Islam’.89 Such rhetoric reflected a keen

understanding for the opportunities afforded by the post-9/11 strategic paradigm

constructed by the only Western state willing to consider political�military interven-

tion in the Horn. Ethiopia harnessed the US agenda instrumentally for its own

domestic and regional purposes. In the domestic sphere, US sponsorship provided a

crutch to the Zenawi regime in power for nearly two decades. The government’s shaky

electoral and human rights record was partially protected from external criticism andthe threat of donor cancellation by virtue of Ethiopia’s close relationship to

Washington.90

Moreover, US military and financial resources given to the Ethiopian regime have

been substantial. In 2003, US food aid to Ethiopia was nearly half a billion dollars.91

Ethiopia received military support through the US Foreign Military Financing

(FMF), International Military Education and Training (IMET), and Anti-Terrorism

Assistance (ATA) programmes. Since 2002, American military instructors have been

training Ethiopian forces and pro-Ethiopian Somalis in Ethiopia.92 While Washington


has provided limited direct military aid, it has enabled large arms transfers from other

states. One example in particular warrants elaboration. In violation of US-led UN

sanctions on arms sales from North Korea, Washington overlooked an arms shipment

from Pyongyang to Addis Ababa via the Somaliland port of Berbera in the lead-up to

Ethiopia’s invasion of southern Somalia.93

In addition to accruing political capital from US support, the Ethiopian

government utilised the US resource flow to further its regional interests. The

motivation for the invasion of southern Somalia had less in connection with‘international terrorism’ than with Ethiopia’s perception of the regional balance of

power. When President Ahmed met with his Ethiopian counterparts for the first time in

2009, the first question raised was ‘why the Islamic Courts had warm relationships with

Asmara, not whether [the Courts] were Salafi or jihadist.’94 Ethio-Eritrean relations

remain bellicose.95 Realism dictates that the Ethiopian government cannot abide a

recrudescence of political power in Somalia that favours Eritrean interests. Moreover,

the historical lessons drawn from the 1977�1978 border war between Ethiopia and

Somalia remain part of the institutional memory in the Ethiopian regime: historysuggests that a strong Somali state independent of Ethiopian influence may pursue

irredentist grievances in the Ogaden, backed by Asmara. For these reasons, Somalia

remains a proxy theatre for conflict with Eritrea; hence, despite Prime Minister Meles

Zenawi’s counterterrorism rhetoric, US and Ethiopian motivations for deposing the

ICU differed substantially.

This divergence was also evident in Ethiopia’s assistance to the US over the

detention of ‘terrorist suspects’. In April 2007, more than 200 CIA and FBI agents

established a base of operations in the Sheraton Hotel in Addis Ababa where theydetained and interrogated dozens of suspects provided by the Ethiopian govern-

ment.96 However, far from being al-Qaeda suspects, many of those interned were

simply Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) fighters. The US rendition

programme simply provided a useful depository for the Ethiopian government’s

domestic adversaries.

Somali actors

The most obvious example of the instrumental application of the ‘War on Terror’occurred in 2006 with the emergence of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and

Counterterrorism. The organisation consisted of nine Hawiye militia leaders and

businessmen and their attendant militias. As an exercise in branding, the group

displayed considerable acumen but their motivation was less original: the control of

territory in order to accumulate rents. In early 2006, the CIA began channelling

between $100,000 and $150,000 per month to the Alliance. Military equipment was

also provided through Select Armor, a private military company (PMC) based in

Virginia (USA).97 Although these funds were conditioned on the ARPCT’s promise todeliver terrorist suspects, the Alliance was more interested in contesting Mogadishu’s

turf-wars. After the defeat of the ARPCT, the organisation’s militia simply surrendered

and joined the ranks of the Islamic Courts.98

The TFG played a similar game. Just days after the installation of the new

government in Mogadishu, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi claimed he needed

only to ‘wipe out the terrorists clearly linked to Al-Qaeda’,99 to bring stability to

Somalia. This focus on terrorism attracted significant US funding. But like Ethiopia,

the interim government nurtured the ‘War on Terror’ narrative for its own purposes.


President Yusuf, for example, used the pretext to target his personal political enemies

and business competitors.100

Yet the government’s rhetoric and actions were not only opportunistic. The

unbridled adoption of the ‘War on Terror’ paradigm by President Yusuf, however

dislocated from political reality, also reflected an intractable dilemma facing his

government. And here we return to the hazardous challenge for post-interventionary

states of playing simultaneously to a domestic and international audience. The TFG

displayed small interest, and certainly little ability, in enhancing its performance

legitimacy. But this was partly because by assuming power on Ethiopia’s coat-tails, the

TFG was never in a position to engender popular support. The anger engendered

among Somalis when the government supported US strikes that led to innocent

casualties only worsened an already dire situation. With the prospect of gaining

domestic legitimacy closed-off, obtaining international legitimacy and support (even if

this reduced domestic support still further) was the only reason of state that remained

on offer. When the TFG painted itself as a bulwark preventing terrorism, the

government understood it was playing exclusively to an international audience. Yet

Yusuf’s preoccupation with ratifying or acquiescing to US and Ethiopian decisions

appeared as the only guarantor of his survival, even if this proved insufficient in the

final analysis.

Beyond the governmental elite, the ‘War on Terrorism’ is an anathema to Somalis,

for whom there are more immediate things to fear. State legitimacy derives from a

government’s ability to facilitate security (first) and prosperity (second), yet the TFG

sought only to ‘protect’ its citizens from something about which it made no sense for

them to be afraid. By the end of 2008, this disconnect and the disillusion it incurred

had forced the TFG into negotiation with elements of the opposition.

The Shabaab

Just as the focus on ‘terrorism’ in Somalia began to wane in 2007�2008, observers

were beginning to argue that the Shabaab represented, for the first time, the true

arrival of ‘global terrorism’ on Somali soil. It is to the force of this argument that we

now turn.Information on the Shabaab is hazy. The group is presently the strongest and best

financed in Somalia, controlling the largest territory in the south of the country. A

Somali, Ahmed Abdi Godane, leads the movement, aided by a 10-member shura or

council. However, the autonomy of different cells allows regional leaders to pursue

strategies independently. The organisation maintains two wings, the military Jaysh

Al-Usra (army of hardship) and the law and order branch Jaysh Al-Hesbah (army of

morality). Although foreign fighters have joined, the Shabaab’s vision of jihad,

recalling that of Al-Itihaad in the 1990s, has a regional rather than global focus.In a second parallel, the Shabaab merges Islamism with a strident vision of pan-

Somali nationalism, a conflation that attracted popular support during the

prosecution of so-called ‘just war’ against the Ethiopian occupation. The brutality

of the Ethiopian occupation from January 2007 to January 2009 left Somalis (and the

Somali diaspora) enraged. However, following the Ethiopian withdrawal and

introduction of sharia law, it has become increasingly hard for the Shabaab to

make the ‘just war’ case. Somalis are simply less convinced by the casting of former

Islamic Courts leader President Ahmed and the AMISOM forces as ‘infidels’.101


Does global concern over a Shabaab�al-Qaeda connection accord with the local

facts? At least two factors suggest the conflation is exaggerated. Firstly, just as the

interim government made use of the language of ‘terrorism’ to garner external

resources, so the Shabaab deploys the language of jihad both to attract international

assistance and to provide a structure to govern. The strategy is purposive, not merely

ideological. Jihadi rhetoric attracts external resources from the Gulf and beyond.

Looking beyond the hackneyed typologies of western pundits, for whom recourse to

an al-Qaeda rationalisation is expedient, there is a familiar element of raison d’etat

instrumentality at play.

Secondly, the Shabaab has deployed Salafi-Wahhabism in the areas it controls as

a tool for ‘social transformation’, transcending local clan divisions. Like the ICU in

2006, the organisation has provided the local population with a modicum of service

provision and a legal apparatus through sharia courts. In Baidoa, seat of the TFG

parliament, the Shabaab met with local community leaders, held public rallies and

negotiated a peaceful take-over with local elders. In other areas, such as Kismayo, the

Shabaab is ruling at the apex of a confluence of business interests, based on the tradein khat (a mild amphetamine) and charcoal.102 These strategies indicate a pragmatic

streak that removes the Shabaab from the nihilism of the al-Qaeda model.

Such a conclusion may appear at odds with the violence of the Shabaab’s actions

but the extensive opus on the motivation of extremist groups indicates that suicide

attacks and other methods are driven less by religious zeal than political grievance.103

Moreover, these actions occur in a fluid conflict in which over the previous five years,

‘hit squads and factions paid for by the United States and/or Ethiopia were killing or

kidnapping religious figures and Islamic militants’.104 Like Hamas in Eiaza, the

Shabaab retains the potential to transform itself into a political party, a possibility that

was underlined when a power struggle within Hizbul-Islam led to the emergence of

former ICU leader and mercurial pragmatist Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys as leader.

Indeed, rather as Hamas was ostracised for its extremist credentials only to be

outflanked in 2009 by new groups whose call for an Islamic caliphate made the Hamas

agenda appear moderate by comparison, so the sweeping condemnation of the

Shabaab may in retrospect appear counter-productive.105 The Shabaab can be

characterised as a populist group ‘with a Salafist orientation [whose] core leadership[understand] that they cannot rule a region or a country against the whole world.’106

It is also noteworthy that whatever the divergence of their subsequent paths, the

ICU * a movement that included the Shabaab * emerged in part on the crest of a

widely shared aspiration for a new generation of Somali leaders to take over from the

generation tainted by civil war. Thus, class and religion, the Shabaab (‘youth’ in

Arabic) comprises part of a generational struggle, seeking to overturn the generation

that led Somalia to ruin.

Why should the distinction between populist militia and terrorist organisation

matter? The question is relevant because in the face of the Shabaab’s increasing grip

on power in 2009, international observers have once again returned to the notion that

Somalia is in danger of becoming a ‘safe haven for al-Qaeda’. While the assumption

is specious, its very propagation fuels the on-going conflict. The language of

‘terrorism’ puts in absolute terms the conflict between parties in Somalia, making the

possibility of reconciliation more distant. Such polarisation stands in contrast tothe successful Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) negotiations between the

Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Sudan in

2003 where international mediators treated both government and opposition as


entities with legitimate political grievances. In Somalia, only one side has received

this treatment (notwithstanding the admission of the ARS as a legitimate opposition

in 2009). ‘Terrorism’ is a label that masks the real economic and political grievances

of Somalia’s interest groups, exacerbating the conflict by reducing common ground.

A major obstacle to peace therefore remains the reluctance of the external world

to give-up its seductive dichotomies between Islamists and secularists and between

moderate and hard-line Islamists. If a lasting settlement is to obtain in Somalia, the

Islamist opposition cannot be excluded. The most immediate problem, however, isnot that reconciliation is de facto impossible or that the ideological intransigence of

the Shabaab is preventing it, but rather that with the Islamist insurgents controlling

the greater part of southern Somalia, the present balance of power provides no

incentive for them to do so. One phenomenon that may encourage that balance to

shift is the remarkable rise of the religious opposition the Shabaab began to face in

the spring of 2009, the subject of the following section.

Religious war

The uprising of Sufi groups in areas controlled by the Shabaab was unforeseen by

external observers. It is a sub-plot whose full dimensions remain as yet unclear. Sufi

groups had remained aloof from the clan conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s. Yet in

November 2008, the Shabaab shot dead several Sufi students and destroyed a number

of Sufi shrines, stirring local religious sentiment. As Sufi leaders increasingly felt

targeted for associative reasons, they found themselves engulfed in the wider conflict.

As one Sufi leader, Sheik Omar Mohamed Farah, declared: ‘this time, it was

religious’.107

The uprising, led by the Al-Sunna w’al-Jama’a, is militarily active only in the

central Somali region of Galgaduud. The organisation has succeeded in driving

Shabaab insurgents out of several towns of the region.108 In their place, it has

established its own incipient local administration, liaising with UN officials and

patrolling the locality.109

For Roland Marchal, a senior research fellow at the National Center of Scientific

Research in Paris, Al-Sunna w’al-Jama’a represents ‘a challenge to Al-Shabaab but

eventually also the TFG. [However,] it is limited at this stage’.110 The accomplishmentsof Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama’a imply two realities. First, the severe Wahhabi governing

methods of al-Shabaab, which echo those on view in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, and

include stonings and amputations, elicit little local support.111 In mid-2009, popular

resistance to the insurgency was reported with increasing frequency. On 26 March, for

example, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in protest against a ban on the

sale of the narcotic khat (and in response, the Shabaab intensified its strategy of

coercive intimidation by assassinating selected opponents).112

Second, the wide territorial dominance of the jihadists is perhaps more a functionof the lack of any countervailing force than an emblem of innate strength. The

movement’s support has weakened considerably, since two pillars of its political

programme have been removed by the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and the

introduction of Sharia law by the new government. The Shabaab may find itself

progressively confined to pursuing the insurgency only ‘in conditions that are suitable

for its low membership and its lack of popular support’.113 However, Ken Menkhaus

cautions against over-stating the importance of the Sufi uprising: ‘religiously-based

opposition to the shabaab and its radical interpretation of Islam is already wide and


deep in Somalia, but it has not been able to organize itself . . . The Sufi militias are

only a small part of the equation, at least for the moment.’114 Hence, the TFG

requires a broader alliance than the present accommodation with the Sufi groups to

change the balance of power in south-central Somalia. ‘If the TFG is able to build an

alliance capable of gradually pushing back al-Shabaab, it will be via a combination of

clan-based alliances, business funding, and co-optation of some or even much of the

forces currently fighting in the name of al-Shabaab.’115

Does President Ahmed have the support and the political elan to draft in his

adversaries? By the July of 2009, progress was measured but tangible. The government

has appointed as state Defense Minister a former official of the Hizbul-Islam

insurgent group which fights alongside al-Shabaab.116 And through intermediaries

such as the Islamic Clerics Council, the Hawiye Cultural and Unity Council and

influential clan leaders, the TFG has reached out to other insurgent groups and has

persuaded some to join the peace process.117 Yet the co-optation imperative, however

expedient, offers no panacea. Firstly, the full spectrum of Somali Islamists share a

predilection for pan-Somali nationalism whose corollary is a rejection of the federal

‘building-blocks’ approach in favour of a strong centralised state. Having such a voice

at large within government is likely to worsen relations with the more secular and

secessionist outlook of the semi-autonomous republics in the north. In Iraq, Nouri

Al-Maliki has yet to discover whether the Sunni awakening of 2007, in which Sunni

tribes with historical ambivalence to the state were armed to oppose al-Qaeda, will

place limits on the kinds of political programme his government can attempt. As the

leader of a state considerably more hapless than Iraq in shaping its own future,

President Ahmed will face similar restrictions the deeper his co-optation agenda is

pursued.

Second, full-scale co-optation risks de-legitimising the government, leaving it

hamstrung. In Afghanistan, the Karzai government adopted this approach. In the

2005 parliamentary elections, no fewer than 557 candidates had challenges filed

against their names on grounds of corruption, drugs trafficking or war crimes. Only 11

were disqualified. Between 50% and 80% of Afghan parliamentarians are former drug

traffickers and strongmen who continue their enterprises in office with impunity.118

The net effect has been to alienate the Afghan population from an increasingly

predatory government and fuel support for the Taliban insurgency. In Somalia,

President Ahmed risks inviting a similar outcome if his policy of co-optation is not

more discriminating. It is a difficult impasse as the least desirable candidates for

government office often exercise a very immediate form of incumbency advantage

through the exercise of power in their local areas of control * a reflection of the fact

that Somalia continues to struggle with the first political question of all, that of

creating statehood from mayhem. The following section considers how external actors

have been drawn to a seductive remedy for that question: the imposition of an

externally inspired and centralised state.

Beyond Leviathan: the political economy of statelessness119

The modus operandi and guiding US interpretation of events in Somalia shifted with

the incoming Obama administration. Although the Shabaab is considered a ‘global

terrorist entity’ and the administration’s guiding objective is still the elimination of

‘terrorism’, this has not tempted it into the use of direct force. Rather, the US has


taken the long-view that state-building should be viewed as the only durable form of

counter-terrorism.

Few would deny that this new policy is more reasonable than the old. But the new

approach raises a new dilemma: as Harvard professor Rory Stewart contends, ‘[the

United States] claim[s] to be engaged in a neutral, technocratic, universal project of

‘‘state-building’’ but we don’t know exactly what that means.’120 President Obama’s

Somalia policy has a narrow focus, to prevent terrorists from operating in Somalia,

but the method for achieving it * creating a Somali state * is so expansive as to lose

meaning. As Stewart notes in the case of Afghanistan the relationship between

counter-terrorism and state-building is presented as a ‘formal syllogism’;121 yet this

represents a very strained line of thinking indeed.The post-Cold War notion of state-building emerged as an expedient response to

a set of pressing political problems confronting a newly unipolar world. It was drawn

loosely from the history of western political thought and experience, based upon a

juridical view of the international system. The philosophers of the modern state (e.g.

Hobbes and Locke, Kant and Hegel) were each engaged with the twin questions of

how to establish a Leviathan (a monopoly on the legitimate use of force) and how to

render that monopoly as legitimate. The supposition for policymakers seeking

to build states externally is the need for strong and representative government able to

pursue economic development. These objectives are then conflated into a single,

hypnotising, framework. The flaw is that such a policy matrix merely comprises a

description of what has failed to obtain in Somalia for at least 18 years. It deceives, as

Stewart notes,

In several respects simultaneously: minimising differences between cultures, exaggeratingour fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power,and confusing our goals . . . It conjures nightmares of . . . ‘global extremism’ [and] offersthe remed[y] of ‘state-building.’122

Perhaps mercifully, memory of the United States’ earlier intervention in Somalia and

the country’s relative lack of strategic value warned even the ‘vulcans’ of the Bush

administration against using Somalia as testing ground for state-building via the

direct projection of US power. (Indeed, Somalia has twice been overshadowed by the

prosecution of an American war in the Gulf. When Mogadishu first erupted in

December 1990, international concern was focused on the first Gulf War; in 2002�2003 Somalia was initially raised as a site for intervention but later dismissed as plans

for the Iraq invasion gathered momentum.) But regardless of whether it is pursued

militarily or by external assistance, state-building carries no necessary link to counter-

terrorism (consider the Indian state, after 60 years of consolidation, still facing

multiple domestic insurgencies; or the British state, after a thousand, during the

Troubles).123 Moreover, Somalia provides an abrupt dismissal of the causal link

between conflict and economic development championed by the Oxford economist

Paul Collier.124 Somalia maintains a gross product far higher than its neighbours,

Ethiopia and Eritrea, and those states currently providing for its security, such as

Burundi. Somalia has among the most sophisticated telecommunications and

financial sectors in Africa (remittances account for approximately 40% of gross

national product and the country’s leading money transfer company, al-Barakaat,

generates around $3 million in profit each year).125 Import�export figures place

Somalia above 25 African countries.126


The sum of this assorted sweep of state-building assumptions is an instinctive

preference for a strong centralised state. But this conclusion is mistaken because the

decisive relationship in durable state-formation is not between terrorism, development

and state-formation but rather between class (economic) and political power. Indeed, it

is the central claim of this paper that any understanding of what a stable Somali state

might look like must reach beyond the state-building hypothesis and the dynamics of

clannism to grasp the economic incentive structures that drive interest group

behaviour.

For example, a traditional state-building emphasis on representation has led to

experiments such as the UN-brokered 4.5 clan formula (matching clan size to seat

representation in a government of national unity). In the current unity government,

MPs are selected on the basis of a similar formula, leaving each clan to negotiate

internally how best to represent its sub-clans. The effect is to explicitly politicise clan

as a vehicle to access state power in contrast to its intended purpose, which is to

ameliorate clan antagonism. (This system also leads to claims that MPs from the

Puntland and Somaliland are interfering by tackling issues in the south, adding heat

to the simmering federal question.) Analytically, this clan focus obscures the interest

groups that truly matter. The real conflict is over control of productive resources. One

way of bringing into focus the reality that clan politics cannot provide the foundation

for statehood is to look north to the creation of the (so far) resilient semi-

autonomous republics of Puntland and Somaliland. Alex de Waal offers an

assessment of how stability in these unlikely polities was secured:

The success of certain factions of the merchant class in gaining control of state [wascritical to stability]. This is related to the fact that the dominant mode of production inthese regions is pastoralism and the livestock export trade, rather than agriculture andstate-focused rent-seeking . . . In the 1990s, the leading export traders of Berbera playeda key role in establishing and stabilising the Somaliland state, while those in Bosasoplayed a similar role in Puntland . . . The Republic of Somaliland may be described as aprofit-sharing agreement among the dominant livestock traders, with a constitutionappended.127

While it may be specious to apply the Somaliland model directly to southern Somalia,

the contrasts in political economy provide a useful basis for gauging how different

actors in southern Somalia have come to view the state and why. In the south, historical

experience stretching back to the Barre regime of the 1970s and 1980s informs an

incentive structure that champions control of state-directed resources. Clan identity

acts as a potent but functional mechanism for the collective organisation of economic

interests in the pursuit of state access (political Islam can perform a similar function

and links the merchant class to neighbouring markets in the Gulf). During the 1980s,

capitalist development and cumulative land acquisition * both channelled in large

part through the state * allowed one favoured strata of the emergent merchant class to

acquire significant wealth and possession of vast stretches of agricultural and pastoral

land.128 Competitors, such as the Isaak livestock merchants, were partially squeezed

out. This systematic expropriation for the politically favoured was ‘economic madness

that directly attacked the productive sectors of the economy . . . [Subsequently] the

state’s dependence on foreign aid and military coercion proved unsustainable and it

collapsed.’129

The perversion of the economy in the 1980s set in train a number of legacies that

continue to breed conflict in Somali society. Firstly, land theft and asset


expropriation are still unresolved. The potential for conflict lingers between current

tenants and a ‘landowner’ class that occupied property in the capital before being

forced to flee in 1991. Disputes over the prime real estate in Mogadishu and riverine

land across southern Somalia continue to fester and any new government will face

pressure to resolve them. To these grievances may be added the prospect of violent

competition between the livestock traders of Berbera and Bosaso and a new

government supporting its own mercantile class to dominate the livestock trade.

Because the Somali state has historically dictated the winners and losers of the

political economy and commercial class, current political competition is intensified

as elites anticipate that those who gain control of the state will deploy it as did their

forbears two decades ago.130 In short, the extreme rent-seeking, accumulation of

foreign patronage and commercial control of the Barre regime continues to ensure

that ‘conflict over the imaginary resources of a restored state has been sufficient to

disable the establishment of an effective state.’131 The problem is that each of the 15

peace agreements attempted since 1991, including the TFG, has simply tried to re-

institute the old state-centric patrimonial structures.Thus, on each occasion groups that fear being poorly represented perceive that

they have everything economically to lose from allowing the formation of the new

government. This dilemma is exacerbated by the unique access any government will

obtain to external aid and the prospect of state-directed international economic co-

operation. The latter may become more significant in the wake of the appearance of

China in the current narrative of Somali politics. In July 2007, for example, the

Chinese state oil giant, CNOOC, secured permission to search for oil in Somalia.

(The CNOOC’s deal with the TFG provided for exploration rights in the north

Mudug region, 500 kilometres north-east of Mogadishu. One oil group has estimated

that Somalia’s Puntland province has the potential to yield between five and ten

billion barrels of oil.)132

The only existing alternative in recent Somali history to this zero-sum game for

domination of a neo-patrimonial state apparatus was the Islamic Courts movement

in 2006. The ICU consisted in the projection of the interests of the Mogadishu

business class and functioned as an adaptable site for political rule. (The problem inthis case was the international climate and the narrowness of the commercial class

represented.) Yet the ICU experiment was the first successful exercise in ‘organizing

the business sector into a political force capable of gaining control over state

structures’.133 In the light of each successive failure to create a monopoly on force

(including, since 1991, the UN intervention, the ICU, the Ethiopian occupation and

the US-sponsored TFG government, backed by AU peacekeeping forces), a

properly co-ordinated mobilisation of the different strata of the business class

may prove the only escape from the ‘prisoners dilemma’ * whereby any one faction

will always desire to opt out of a proposal for state-formation * created by a

heavily charged set of expectations about the state’s purposes. The barriers would be

many. For example, the nature and duration of the Somali conflict has created a

‘war economy’ in which, for certain powerful actors, statelessness has become a

good for its own sake. Such a compact would scarcely address the social and

economic scars left by two decades of war, such as the massive youth unemploy-

ment that feeds directly into militia recruitment, or the $3.7 billion in debt still

owed to the Bretton Woods international financial institutions.134 Nevertheless, itremains Somalis most rational hope for statehood able to endure. The difficulty is

that this messier line of state-building would first require external actors to reject


the idea of a strong, centralised and clan-representative state as their starting point

for engagement * a stance that goes to the heart of the ‘state-building’ world view.

Conclusion

This article has detailed two external interpretations of Somali politics and evaluated

the impact of the policies arising from these. The argument has been that when such

paradigms are set against an analytical narrative of the core political logic of events in

Somalia, a dissonance arises. This dissonance has impaired external engagement in the

country and yielded a number of unforeseen consequences. Somalia presents a highly

visible case of the distorting power of normative language when wedded to other forms

of power. (The example of the Somali ‘terrorist’ whose status is ‘defined’ through

inclusion on the US terror list is germane.)135 Terms such as ‘terrorist’ help simplify

and moralise, while generalised policy frameworks offer seductive yet speciouspathways through the complexity of Somali politics.

The implication for the United States is that a more discursive approach may yield

fewer unwanted consequences. Such an approach must begin with recognition of the

regional dimension. It was only in the wake of the Ethiopian occupation that the

United States began to view Eritrea as a key player in Somalia.136 While Washington

would do well to avoid backing Ethiopian interests as unthinkingly as it did in 2007,

Eritrea should be identified as the principle spoiler. By the summer of 2009, Asmara

was providing a monthly sum of $500,000 to leading insurgents in Somalia, plus arms

and a safe haven. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s threat of UN Security Council

sanctions is a positive step; but engagement with Eritrea is also required and may bring

results. As a classic spoiler, the Eritrean regime is actually more likely to respond to a

reversal in the incentive structure of its international relations (few recall, for example,

that in 2003, Eritrea dispatched a team to Washington, DC, to lobby for the

AFRICOM headquarters to be located in Asmara).137 All this will require careful

balance and recognition that, with the leading regional actors still choking on the jingo

enmity of partition and war, progress will be slow.The United States must also recognise the weakness of its own agency as a state

whose past actions in Somalia will taint Somali perceptions for a generation. The

difficult reality, however, is that while the US is poorly disposed to lead any

external engagement, regional actors are even less suitable. Somali politics lie inert

in a regional dynamic that makes it a theatre for the Ethio-Eritrean security

dilemma to play out. Until a new political shock alters the incentive structure,

Somalia is doomed to statelessness by default. The change will not come from

Asmara, Addis Ababa, Cairo or Khartoum. There is simply no political capital

anywhere in the Horn. President Afewerki of Eritrea remains a spoiler; President

Bashir of Sudan is facing arrest and partition in his own country and President

Zenawi of Ethiopia is set shortly to resign. Neither is change likely to come solely

from within Somalia. The accumulated web of friend�enemy distinctions is too

thick. Perhaps only the Obama administration has the power (if not the will) to

break the stalemate. To do so, it must pursue careful engagement with the entire

spectrum of actors (including the Shabaab) rather than labelling them. Support for

some version of political Islam is a rational response to government failure. It has

been consistent in Somalia for more than a decade and will remain so. Hence, anylasting settlement must draw in Islamists from the insurgent umbrella. Moreover,

the US will need to appreciate that it cannot influence short-term events in Somalia


using force; attempting to do so would renew the Shabaab’s claim to Somali

nationhood couched as resistance to foreign interference. The administration must

also navigate the exigencies of domestic political competition. For example, if the

TFG were to fall, this would provide the Republican opposition an opportunity to

question the toughness of President Obama’s national security and foreign policy

agenda.

In the meantime, politics in Somalia continue. Three future scenarios are

possible. In the best case, the unity government will co-opt the larger part of theinsurgency and gradually regain territory from what opposition remains. In the

worst, Mogadishu will fall, prompting a new cycle of intervention from external

actors * Ethiopia and the US, Somaliland and Puntland * unable to stomach a

recrudescence of jihadist power. The most likely medium-term outcome is status

quo ante * a violent continuation of the chronically unstable environment with

localities controlled by the Shabaab, the TFG or local militias. Every scenario

implies a degree of conflict. A better alternative is possible only if the regional

and international players can improve the quality and lessen the frequency of theirinterferences. For that to transpire there would first have to be a will in

Washington to actively resolve the local and regional impasse and with the will a

way that follows not from abstracted paradigms but rather from a properly

contextualised sense of the core political logic of events in Somalia and the wider

Horn.

Notes on contributors

Ashley Elliot currently works at the World Bank Group in Washington, DC, USA.

Georg-Sebastian Holzer is a Research Assistant at the Johns Hopkins University School ofAdvanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, USA.

Notes

1. AP, 6 August 2009.2. The law will now be submitted to parliament for consideration; see UN Security Council,

16 April 2009, p. 2.3. The phrase is Hawthorn’s. See Hawthorn, 1999, p. 155.4. Borger, 2009.5. See, for example, Bradbury, 1994; Besteman, 1999.6. See, for example, Stephenson, 2007; Menkhaus, 2005; Bryden, 2003.7. Menkhaus et al., 2009, p. 7.8. Bennett, 2009.9. De Waal & Salaam, 2004, p. 231.

10. International Crisis Group, 23 May 2002, p. i; Menkhaus, 2005, p. 27.11. Bryden, 2003, p. 24.12. Barnes & Hassan, 2007.13. International Crisis Group, 2002, p. i.14. International Crisis Group, 11 June 2005, p. i.15. Woodward, 2006, p. 144.16. International Crisis Group, 2005a, p. 2.17. Indeed, the refusal of the ‘Mogadishu Group’ of Hawiye militia leaders and businessmen

to accept a provisional government located outside of the capital indicated a ‘transparentattempt to use its militia dominance over Mogadishu to hold the TFG hostage’,Menkhaus, 2007, p. 363.

18. Barnes & Hassan, 2007, p. 152.19. International Crisis Group, 2006, p. 1.


20. Menkhaus, 2007, p. 369.21. Le Sage, personal email correspondance with author, 18 April 2007.22. UN Security Council, 2006, pp. 15, 22�23.23. Menkhaus, 2007, p. 371.24. Ibid., p. 371.25. Economist, 6 January 2007.26. Menkhaus, 2007, p. 371.27. International Crisis Group, 2007, p. 1.28. BBC News website, 1 March 2007.29. Somalia and Ethiopia went to war over the contested Ogaden region in 1977.30. The Telegraph, 6 January 2007.31. The Independent, 3 May 2008. Ayro was suspected of perpetrating the 1998 US embassy

bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.32. US officials confirmed that these attacks were directed on the basis of intelligence reports

regarding the whereabouts of ‘known al-Qaeda associates’, although the attacks are onlyknown to have killed civilians, livestock and a smattering of Islamic fighters fleeing southfrom Mogadishu. See McCrummen, 27 April 2007.

33. Menkhaus, 2007, p. 378.34. Marchal, 5 February 2007.35. Guardian, 27 April 2007.36. Menkhaus, 2007, p. 386.37. Shabelle Media Network, 5 April 2007.38. Independent, 7 April 2007.39. Weinstein, 2007.40. Reuters, 13 March 2008; Institute for Security Studies, 15 March 2007.41. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, p. 2.42. Hassan & Hayes, 2009; UN Security Council, 9 March 2009. The ARS received 200, with

the remaining seats allocated to members of civil society, businesspeople, women, thediaspora and other opposition groups.

43. The Djibouti process showed more promise than previous attempts, not least because inplace of the 3000 participants that had swarmed to the Mgbathi talks, the various sideswere on this occasion able delegate negotiations to senior representatives.

44. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, p. 2.45. UN Security Council, 16 April 2009, p. 1; the enlarged unity Cabinet comprised 36

members.46. Ibid., p. 8.47. Economist, 21 May 2009.48. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, pp. 3�4.49. Kroslak & Stoehlein, 2009.50. UN Security Council, 16 April 2009, pp. 5�6. AMISOM is currently deployed at the

‘seaport and airport, Villa Somalia, the old university and military academy, and otherstrategic sites in Mogadishu. The forces provide security . . . basic medical support andfreshwater to the local community . . . and support to the fledgling Somali NationalDefence Force’, Ibid.

51. UN Security Council, 16 April 2009, p. 3.52. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, p. 4.53. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, p. 3.54. Hohne, 2008.55. Menkhaus et al., 2009, p. 7.56. Economist, 25 June 2009.57. Reuters, 24 June 2009.58. Reuters, 19 June 2009.59. See Williams, 2005.60. Gettleman, 2 June 2009.61. UN Security Council, 16 April 2009, p. 4.62. Ould-Abdallah, 2008, p. 2.63. UNHCR, 7 July 2009.64. MSF Press Release, 7 July 2009.


65. Shabelle Media Network, 23 April 2009.66. Voice of America, 7 July 2009.67. Bennett, 2009.68. McCrummen, 25 June 2009.69. Reuters, 4 July 2009.70. US Department of State, 2002.71. The Foucault analogy is Marchal’s; see Marchal, 2007, p.1091f.; for more on Skinner’s

appraisal of the power of language, see Skinner, 2002, p. 7.72. Ibid.73. Ibid., p. 1093.74. Crenshaw, 1981, p. 381.75. Menkhaus, 2005, p. 40. It is noteworthy that the most recent US Military Report on Al-

Qaeda in the Horn of Africa appears to recognise this point, stating: ‘‘Al-Qaedaoperatives were so frustrated that they listed going after clan leaders as the secondpriority for jihad.’’ Not unusually, the US military appears to be thinking well ahead ofits political class. See, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, 2007.

76. International Crisis Group, 12 December 2005, p. 1.77. Menkhaus, 2002, pp. 110�111.78. Marchal, 2004, p. 125.79. Bryden, 2003, p. 50.80. Ibid., p. 27.81. S Lone, conversation with the author, London, UK, 21 April 2007.82. International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 2007, p. 257.83. Bryden, 2003, p. 25.84. Issa-Salwe & Ciisa-Salwe, , 2004, pp. 60�61.85. Hassan & Barnes, 2007.86. Marchal, 2007. The token Somali government troops of the TFG presented further

evidence of clan-bias as these forces were picked exclusively from President Yusuf’s nativePuntland region.

87. Hassan & Barnes, 2007.88. Ibid.89. Senator Specter, 2002.90. Following the May 2005 parliamentary elections in Ethiopia, for example, 193 people

were reported killed in an election that delivered an unprecedented number of seats toopposition parties despite being pronounced unfair by international observers. After thepost-electoral crack-down, media access to the Ogaden, Oromia and Amhara regions wasrestricted. See BBC News website, 19 October 2006.

91. Keller & Rothchild, 2007, p. 113.92. Woodward, 2006, p. 144.93. New York Times, 12 April 2007.94. Marchal, 2007, p. 1105.95. In April 2007, for example, Eritrea seceded from the Inter-governmental Authority on

Development in protest at Ethiopia’s occupation of Somalia; Al Jazeera, 22 April 2007.96. McCrummen, 2007. Human rights groups have labelled the join operation a ‘decen-

tralized Guantanamo’.97. Church, 2006.98. Menkahus, 2007, p. 369.99. Shabelle Media Network, 26 April 2007.

100. Washington Post, 4 March 2008.101. This section draws heavily on Roque’s article ‘Somalia: Understanding Al-Shabaab’. The

article also provides the following detail: ‘The Bay and Bakool command is led byMukhtar Robow (former spokesperson for Shabaab); the Juba command is led byHassan Al-Turki (although not directly affiliated to Shabaab); the Mogadishu Commandis apparently led by Sheikh Ali Fidow and three other commanders. Some of Al-Shabaab’s top commanders are originally from relatively stable regions of the country,including Abu Zubeyr and Ibrahim Haji Jaama ‘al-Afghani’, who are both fromSomaliland, and notorious commander and Swedish national Fuad Mohamed Shangole.’

102. Gettleman, 2 June 2009.


103. See, for example, Zartman, 1989 (updated version); and Crooke, 2009.104. Marchal, 2007, p. 1103f.105. See, for example, Al-Jazeera Online, 15 August 2009.106. Marchal, 2007, p. 1103f107. Gettleman, 23 May 2009.108. UN Security Council, 9 March 2009, p. 4.109. Gettleman, 23 May 2009.110. Roland Marchal, email correspondence with the author, 30 July 2009.111. McCrummen, 7 August 2009.112. UN Security Council, 16 April 2009, p. 3.113. Roland Marchal, email correspondence with the author, 30 July 2009.114. Ken Menkhaus, email correspondence with the author, 2 August 2009.115. Ibid.116. UN Security Council, 20 July 2009, pp. 1�2.117. Ibid.118. Kippen, 2009, p. 12.119. The following section draws on the excellent account in De Waal’s ‘Class and Power in a

Stateless Somalia’, 2007.120. Stewart, 2009.121. Ibid.122. Ibid.123. Ibid.124. See, for example, Collier et al., 2003.125. Marchal, 2002, pp. 1�18.126. Ould-Abdallah, 2008, p. 3. The figures are taken from the World Bank and the

Economist Intelligence Unit127. De Waal, 2007. See also Bradbury, 2008; and Jhazbhay, 2009.128. De Waal, 2007.129. Ibid.130. Ibid.131. Ibid.132. Jopson, 2007.133. De Waal, 2007.134. Ould-Abdallah, 2008, p. 8.135. Marhcal, 2007, p. 1093.136. Marchal, 2007, p. 1105.137. De Waal & Salam, 2004, p. 236.

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elliot&holzer 2009 the invention of terrorism in somalia

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