1

FRAGILE AND FAILED STATES

With a Case Study of Somalia

Bjørn Møller, Ph.D & MA

Professor (with special assignments), Institute of Political Science, Aalborg University Copenhagen

E-mail: bm@dps.aau.dk; Phone: +45 99402692; Cell: +45 2965 9533

External Lecturer, Institute for Political Science and Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen

Preliminary version in need of updating

Please do not cite or quote

Comments are most welcome

There can be no disputing that only few of Africa’s 53 states are completely successful and it thus seems

both logical and tempting to label some of them as “failed states” in the sense of partial or compete fiascos.

However, even more than in most other fields of political science and international relations, that of state

failure is haunted by a terminological confusion which may well reflect a similar confusion about the

concept and phenomenon as such.1

The Terminological and Definitional Jungle

Many different terms are used by different authors to refer to what may or may not be the same phenomenon,

in some cases with the suffixes “–ing” and “–ed” being used to distinguish between process and result.

Among the most often encountered terms are “failing/failed,” “collapsing/collapsed” and “defective” and

“fragile states,” all referring to bundles of characteristics, but there are also terms focusing on single features,

e.g. “fragmenting,” “disrupted,” “warlord,” “phantom,” “mirage,” “anaemic,” “captured,” “anarchic,”

“aborted” and “quasi-states,” as well as what used to be the World Bank’s favourite term: “low income

countries under stress,” acronymed LICUS.2 Realising that there may be no state to characterise, but rather a

black hole or an absence of statehood still others have refrained from pinning the various labels on the state

as such, preferring the refer to the situation as fragile.3

It is certainly conceivable that all of these terms refer to the same concept which in turn refers to the

same phenomenon in the real world, simply highligting different aspects thereof; or that each of them refer to

special species of a genus of “failed states.” However, it is equally conceivable that there is neither any

such “generic failed state,” nor any set of states exhibiting so many similar features as to make it meaningful

to group them into one category, perhaps not even with sub-categories. One might, of course, discard this

rather positivistic (or “Aristotelean”) approach to definition based on operationalisable criteria and allowing

for a clear determination of whether any given phenomenon fits these criteria or not,4 in favour of a different

kind of definition. One might, for instance, opt for a Weberian (or even “Platonic”)5 definition in the sense of

2

an “ideal type” failed state. According to Weber

An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a

great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which

are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct

(Gedankenbild). In its conceptual purity, this mental construct (Gedankenbild) cannot be found anywhere in

reality.6

Quite a lot might indeed be said for such an approach which is more open to the hermeneutic approach of

Verstehen7 than a positivistic definition, lending itself mainly to statistical correlation. In more or less the

same vein one might also adopt a Wittgensteinian approach to definition, based on “family resemblances,”8

recognising that there is a bundle of observable features which may be more or less present in any observed

phenomenon.

As neither of these approaches would allow us to determine whether a state is failed or not, we shall

stick to a positivistic approach of seeking to find one criterion—or at least as few as possible—which a state

must satisfy in order to qualify as failed. The most obvious, to which the present author subscribes, is that of

state capacity. A state is thus failed if it is unable to implement its polical decisions, regardless of what these

might be and what the observer might think about them. Considering that not even the strongest state is able

to implement every conceivable political decision and no state would be completely incapable of

implementing anything, it further makes sense to use state capacity as a continuous rather than a binary

variable. It is thus not a matter of either/or, but of how much or to which degree a state is able to implement

its policies, allowing for a conjugation of the term. We might thus want to distinguish between, for instance,

very strong, moderately strong, rather weak, weak, failing and failed states—perhaps adding “collapsed” to

refer to a state that has (almost) completely ceased to function—but all referring to the same criterion.

We are still left with the question whether to allow for only one “dimension” of strength. Some states

might be strong in one dimension—e.g. good at collecting taxes and maintaining the physical infrastructure,

but incapable of ensuring law and order. Others may be quite strong in one part of the country, but very weak

or even almost non-existent in other parts. The terms “bifurcating,” “disintegrating”or “fragmenting” states”

may be appropriate terms for such states which are falling apart. Each of the resultant pieces may well be

reasonably strong, but if one upholds the illusion of the whole remaining one state, it would have to be

characterised as weak or failed, albeit in a slightly different sense than those above. “Yugoslavia” would thus

definitely have counted as a failed state by around 1995 when seen through the eyes of those countries that

did not recognise as states the new polities which had by that time seceded from the former federal republic

(Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia), whereas those who recognised them would only be able to spot state

weakness or even failure in “rump Yugoslavia.”9 Should the secession in 2011 by South Sudan not be

universally recognised a similar confusion may emerge.

Finally, it is conceivable that states may be reasonably strong in the sense of showing no sign of

weakness—often thanks to a very dictatorial form of government—even though they are fragile in the sense

3

of being likely to break if subjected to a certain critical amount of pressure. Other states may be more

susceptible to pressure, e.g. from an organised political opposition or civil society in general, perhaps to the

extent of only being able to implement the government’s policies to a very limited degree, but nevertheless

unlikely to break down, exactly because of this elasticity. We might thus want to distinguish between weak

and fragile states, and perhaps label the former variety “rubber,” “gelatinous” or “ephemeral states,” whereas

a proper term for the other variety might be “glass” or “porcelain states,” if the present author may be

allowed to contribute to the existing plethora of near-synonyms.

The term “quasi-states,” is occasionally used to refer to non-state institutions performing state-like

functions,10 but more commonly to states which enjoy “negative,” but are deprived of “positive sovereignty.”

The former refers to formal recognition as sovereign by other states and international organisations (hence

the near-synonym “external sovereignty”) with the accompanying entitlement, according to international law,

to non-interference into internal affairs, while the latter refers to actual control, almost a synonym of

“internal sovereignty.”11 The reason why such quasi-states “exist” (if this is the proper term) is that the world

(i.e. the international system of states) has grown accustomed to disregarding differences between states and

treating them not only as “like units,” but also as permanent ones—seeing this as tantamount to systemic

order12—and is therefore inclined to turn a blind eye to even blatantly obvious instances of state failure

which would previously have resulted in de-recognition. Moreover, the strong (and in many respects, of

course, recommendable) norms against war and conquest have spared most dysfunctional states in the

modern era the previously inescapable fate of such polities, i.e. to be defeated militarily and engulfed by

stronger neighbours. State failure is thus far from a new phenomenon. On the contrary, according to Charles

Tilly, the vast majority of states created in Europe since around 1500 were either still-born or failed

completely in their infancy, and “the substantial majority of the units which got so far as to acquire a

recognizable existence as states during those centuries still disappeared.”13

What is new is thus not so much that states fail, but that other states pretend that they do not. An

obvious solution would thus appear to be to simply stop pretending and to refrain from recognising would-

be states unless they meet certain criteria, mainly based on actual control of their respective territories, and to

de-recognise or decertify states if they no longer meet these criteria, as suggested by Jeffrey Herbst.14 Such

decertification might either be a stand-alone measure, basically leaving the no-longer-states to their own

devices, or it might be combined with an imposition of a trusteeship of sorts, under the auspices of which

other states or the United Nations might assume the responsibility for bringing them up to standards, i.e.

making them ready to regain sovereignty. To pretend that they remain sovereign polities during the

trusteeship period, however, merely obsfuscates the issue, by creating what David Chandler calls “phantom

states” run by an “empire in denial.”15

4

Identifying Failed States: Avoid Bloated Definitions

In a book from 2004 on When States Fail and a companion volume of case studies, Robert Rotberg and his

associates sought to identify weak, failing, failed and collapsed states around the world according to criteria

they themselves (at least according to the editor) considered to be unequivocal and rigorously applied. As

“weak” African states Rotberg counted Guinea, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, the

Central African Republic, Malawi and Madagascar, whereas Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe were deemed

“failing,” Sudan, the DRC, Burundi, Liberia and Sierra Leone being labelled “failed,” but only Somalia

categorised as “collapsed.” Elsewhere in the very same article, however, the categorisation differed.16 This

presumably reflects the fact that the definition of states failure applied is unclear.

Some of the definitions often encountered are overloaded or bloated in the sense of including claims

about the causes or consequences of failure, while a real definition should simply allow for a clear

identification of phenomena as belonging to the category or not, leaving it to theory and empirical analysis to

establish causal links between state failure (as independent or dependent variable) and other phenomena.

Quite a few analysts thus fold “armed conflict” into their definition of failed states as did most contributors

to the aforementioned project, who seem to have more or less equated state failure with civil war, which does

not seem helpful at all.

First of all, it excludes countries from the failed states category which seem to rightly belong there, but

which have not (yet at least) experienced any armed conflict. The most obvious example of this phenomenon

is Zimbabwe, which was nevertheless listed by Rotberg and which comes out at the very top of other failed

states lists (vide infra). Secondly, by equating or conceptually joining the two the definition prevents an

analysis that would otherwise seem interesting and politically important, namely what the causal links

between state failure and armed conflict might be, including the question whether it is armed conflicts which

makes weak states collapse, or state failure which precipitates armed conflict, or perhaps both, depending on

the concrete circumstances. 17 Thirdly, including all countries experiencing some armed conflict would

expand the failed states category beyond what seems reasonable, even to countries which do not seem failed

at all. In fact, one of the explanations of the protracted nature of some conflicts is that the state is not failed at

all, but remains strong enough to wage quite a massive and challenging counter-insurgency war almost

indefinitely without collapsing, simply by re-allocating internal resources from civilian sectors to its security

forces.

It also singularly unhelpful to sneak normative assessments into a definition. It is surely possible for

one analyst to prefer what another would dismiss as state failure if the alternative is a totalitarian, predatory

or even genocidal state—and to leave some scope for such a debate is surely preferable to a priori ruling it

out by means of a definion that automatically treats state failure as a bad thing. In fact the very term is

unfortunate, as “failed” seems to refer to a deficit rather than a mere absence. It thus seems to invite a

“heroic jump” to the conclusion that a rebuilding of a “failed” state should always be attempted, which

5

would otherwise not at all be self-evident.18 Considering the centuries or even millennia when the Africans

have managed without states, they may not desperately need one today, also because their societies often

contain other institutions which may allow them to cope, as well shall see in the next section.

The more criteria are included in the definition the smaller the set of phenomena it will identify if the

“Boolean” logical operator is “and,” but the larger if it is “or.” Therein resided the dilemma encountered in

2000 by a research team assembled by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to undertake a quantitative

study of state failure, covering the period 1955-98. The research team’s initial, and quite sensible, definition

of the phenomenon (“central authority collapsing for several years”) only yielded twenty cases, which may

correspond to reality, but did not really allow for much rigorous statistical analysis. Hence, the team chose to

broaden the definition by including revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime changes, and “genocides

and politocides,” all linked by boolean “ors.” Thereby arriving at 114 cases of state failure,19 the team had, if

not a “large N” then at least a sufficient amount of material for its correlation and regression studies.

Fortunate though that may have appeared, it does not follow that the team’s listing made much sense. Its

findings are recorded in Table 120.

Table 1: State Failures 1955-98 Category

Country

Near-Total

Collapse

Revolutio-

nary Wars Ethnic Wars Regime Change Complex

Algeria 1962, 1991-

Angola 1975

Benin 1963-72

Burkina F. 1980

Burundi 1992-96 1963-73, 1988-

Chad 1978-83 1965-96

Comoros 1995-96

DRC 1960, 1997 1984 1960-65, 1977-79, 1991-

Congo-Braz. 1963 1997

Egypt 1986-

Ethiopia 1961-94

Gambia 1994

Ghana 1972, 1978-81

Guinea-Bissau 1998 1998-

Kenya 1991-93

Lesotho 1970, 1994-98

Liberia 1990-96 1989-97

Madagascar 1972-75

Mali 1990-93

Morocco 1975-89 1963-65

Mozambique 1976-92

Niger 1996

Nigeria 1966 1964-70, 1980-85

Rwanda 1994

Rwanda 1963-66, 1990-

Senegal 1991- 1962-64

Sierra Leone 1997- 1967-71 1991-

Somalia 1990- 1969 1988-

South Afr. 1976-77 1984-96

6

Sudan 1956-72, 1983-

Uganda 1966-

Zambia 1968-72, 1996

Zimbabwe 1972-87

Legend: -: Ongoing by end of 1998. The column for “genocides and politicides” was empty (Burundi 1972 and

Rwanda 1994 having been included under “complex”) and has been omitted.

While it seems quite sensible to count, for instance, Burundi, Chad, the DRC, Liberia, Sierra Leone and

Somalia as failed states (in the sense of “near total collapse”) for certain periods,21 the assessment of Nigeria

in 1966 seems more dubious, considering that the Nigerian state was perfectly capable of waging an

extremely brutal, quite effective and eventually victorious counter-insurgency war against Biafra a year after

(vide supra).

The most questionable of all the assessments in this table is that concerning Rwanda in 1994, i.e. the

year of the genocide. Others have also included this case as one of state failure,22 but it nevertheless seems

completely wrong. Even though an internalised civil war had been going on since 1990, when the Uganda-

based and Tutsi-dominated RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) invaded the country,23 both the state of Rwanda

as such and the incumbent (Hutu) regime of president Juvénal Habyarimana were intact and maintained their

governing capacity which had all along been among the strongest in all of Africa.24 In fact their ideological

and administrative control of the population was what made the genocide possible, implicating a very large

part of the citizenry in the slaughter, either as killers or auxiliaries25—all under the control of the interim

government which was created by the rest of the formal government when the president’s plane was shot

down on the sixth of April.26 When the interim government was finally defeated by the RPF, it simply

translocated to neighbouring Zaïre, taking with it the state treasury, the top echelons of the civil service, the

FAR (Forces Armées de Rwanda) with their heavy weaponry and the auxiliary militias (including the

infamous Interahamwe), and continued to govern those citizens who were now residing in the refugee camps.

Meanwhile, the RPF quickly established complete control of the country from the government offices in

Kampala. The total picture was thus not at all one of state collapse, but of a state turning genocidal, and to

lump this together with cases of actual breakdown of state authority seems to obfuscate matters. It is very

hard to list the defining features of any genus comprising species so far apart as those to which, say, Rwanda

and Somalia belong.27

The best known contemporary attempt at identification of failed and failing states is probably the

Failed States Index prepared by the Washington-based Fund for Peace and published annually in the journal

Foreign Policy. It assesses countries according to four social, two economic and four political indicators.

The social ones are “mounting demographic pressures,” “massive movement of refugees or internally

displaced persons creating complex humanitarian emergencies,” “legacy of vengeance-seeking group

grievance or group paranoia,” and “chronic and sustained human flight.” The economic ones are “uneven

economic development along group lines” and “sharp and/or severe economic decline,” and the political

ones are “criminalization and/or delegitimization of the state,” “progressive deterioration of public services,”

7

“suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation of human rights,” “security

apparatus operates as a state within a state,” “rise of factionalized elites,” and “intervention of other states or

external political actors.”28 The aggregate scores of African countries reaching the “alert” or “warning”

levels of conern are given in Table 229.

Table 2: Failed States Index Scores, 2005-2009

Year

State 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Algeria 81.2 77.8 75.9 77.8 80.6

Angola 87.3 88.3 84.9 83.8 85.0 Benin 70.9 72.8 75.5

Botswana 66.9 66.4 65.9 68.8 Burkina Faso 89.7 89.7 89.9 91.3

Burundi 94.3 96.7 95.2 94.1 95.7 Cameroon 84.6 88.4 89.4 91.2 95.3

Cape Verde 81.1 80.7 78.5

CAR 93.7 97.5 101.0 103.7 105.4 Chad 100.9 105.9 108.8 110.9 112.2

Comoros 77.8 79.6 86.3 Congo 93.0 93.4 93.1

Côte d'Ivoire 106.0 109.2 107.3 104.6 102.5

Djibouti 80.3 80.0 80.6 DRC 105.3 110.1 105.5 106.7 108.7

Egypt 88.8 89.5 89.2 88.7 89.0 Eq. Guin. 90.9 84.0 88.2 88.0 88.3

Eritrea 84.1 83.9 85.5 87.4 90.3 Ethiopia 91.1 91.9 95.3 96.1 98.9

Gabon 73.6 73.3 75.0 74.4

Gambia 82.4 74.0 76.0 76.9 79.0 Ghana 60.5 61.9 64.6 66.2

Guinea 94.7 99.0 101.3 101.8 104.6 Guinea-B. 85.4 88.8 91.3 94.8

Kenya 92.7 88.6 91.3 93.4 101.4

Lesotho 81.2 81.7 81.8 Liberia 99.5 99.0 92.9 91.0 91.8

Libya 80.7 68.5 69.3 70.0 69.4 Madagascar 76.5 76.7 81.6

Malawi 89.8 92.2 93.8 Mali 74.6 75.5 75.6 78.7

Mauritania 87.8 86.7 86.1 88.7

Morocco 78.9 76.5 76.0 75.8 77.1 Mozambique 87.8 74.8 76.9 76.8 80.7

Namibia 70.7 71.3 72.9 75.6 Niger 87.0 91.2 94.5 96.5

Nigeria 84.3 94.4 95.6 95.7 99.8

Rwanda 96.5 92.9 89.2 88.0 89.0 Sao T & P 78.6 78.3 76.7

Senegal 66.1 66.9 70.9 74.2 Seychelles 69.9 67.7

Sierra Leone 102.1 96.6 93.4 92.3 92.1 Somalia 102.3 105.9 111.1 114.2 114.7

South Africa 62.7 67.4

Sudan 104.1 112.3 113.7 113.0 112.4 Swaziland 81.3 80.0 82.4

Tanzania 91.0 78.3 79.3 79.1 81.1

8

Togo 80.4 88.3 86.6 86.8 87.2

Tunisia 65.4 65.6 65.6 67.6 Uganda 91.7 94.5 96.4 96.1 96.9

Zambia 79.6 80.6 81.6 84.2 Zimbabwe 94.9 108.9 110.1 112.5 114.0

Legend: Alert, Warning

“Alert”

Warning

However much one may agree with the high scores achieved by countries such as Somalia and the DRC, it is

rather surprising to find countries which are usually portrayed as anchors of stability in their respective

regions such as Botswana, Ghana and Tanzania listed as countries of concern, the latter even reaching alert

levels in one year. In 2009, seven out of world ten most failed states, and 22 of a total of 38 countries in the

“Alert” category, were African, sharing this label with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Burma, North

Korea, Bangladesh, Yemen, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Tajikistan and

Iran. The disaggregated scores are provided in Table 330.

Table 3: Failed States Index 2009: “Alert” Countries Indicator

State Social Economic Political

Rank DEM REF GG HF UED DEC CD PS RL SA FA EXT Total

Somalia 1 9.8 9.9 9.7 8.5 7.7 9.5 10.0 9.9 9.9 10.0 10.0 9.8 114.7

Zimbabwe 2 9.8 9.1 9.1 10.0 9.7 10.0 9.8 9.8 9.9 9.7 9.5 7.6 114.0

Sudan 3 9.0 9.8 9.9 9.0 9.6 7.0 9.8 9.5 9.8 9.7 9.5 9.8 112.4

Chad 4 9.3 9.4 9.8 7.8 9.3 8.3 9.8 9.6 9.5 9.9 9.8 9.7 112.2

DRC 5 9.7 9.6 8.9 8.1 9.3 8.3 8.6 9.2 9.0 9.7 8.7 9.6 108.7

CAR 8 8.9 9.0 8.6 5.7 9.1 8.4 9.3 9.3 8.9 9.6 9.5 9.1 105.4

Guinea 9 8.5 7.1 8.2 8.6 8.9 8.7 9.8 9.2 9.0 9.4 9.2 8.0 104.6

Cote d'Iv. 11 8.6 7.8 9.0 8.4 8.1 8.3 9.1 8.0 8.5 8.5 8.5 9.7 102.5

Kenya 14 9.0 9.0 8.6 8.3 8.8 7.5 9.0 8.0 8.2 8.0 8.8 8.2 101.4

Nigeria 15 8.5 5.3 9.7 8.3 9.5 6.6 9.2 9.0 8.6 9.4 9.6 6.1 99.8

Ethiopia 16 9.4 8.0 8.2 7.7 8.8 8.3 7.9 8.2 8.5 7.5 8.8 7.6 98.9

Uganda 21 8.7 9.3 8.0 6.5 8.7 7.6 8.0 8.0 7.7 8.2 8.2 8.0 96.9

Niger 23 9.5 6.4 8.5 6.3 7.6 9.2 8.7 9.5 8.2 7.4 7.1 8.1 96.5

Burundi 24 9.2 8.1 7.5 6.5 8.4 8.0 7.5 9.0 7.6 7.3 7.7 8.9 95.7

Cameroon 26 8.0 7.5 7.2 8.0 8.9 6.9 9.2 8.0 8.0 7.8 8.7 7.1 95.3

Guin-B. 27 8.6 6.5 5.8 7.0 8.5 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.0 8.5 8.0 8.1 94.8

Malawi 28 9.3 6.3 5.9 8.3 8.5 9.1 8.3 8.8 7.5 5.6 7.8 8.4 93.8

Congo 30 8.9 7.8 6.5 6.1 8.0 8.0 8.6 8.8 7.9 7.8 7.1 7.6 93.1

Sierra L. 32 8.9 6.9 6.6 8.5 8.4 8.6 7.4 8.7 7.0 6.1 7.7 7.3 92.1

Liberia 34 8.6 8.0 6.1 6.8 8.5 8.2 7.0 8.5 6.7 6.9 7.9 8.6 91.8

Burkina F. 35 9.0 6.0 6.1 6.5 9.0 8.2 7.9 9.0 6.5 7.5 7.6 8.0 91.3

Eritrea 36 8.6 7.0 5.8 6.5 6.0 8.6 8.6 8.6 7.9 7.4 7.7 7.6 90.3

Legend: DEM: Mounting demographic pressures; REF: Massive movement of refugees or internally displaced

persons creating complex humanitarian emergencies; GG: Legacy of vengeance-seeking group grievance or group

paranoia; HF: Chronic and sustained human flight; UED: Uneven economic development along group lines; DEC:

Sharp and/or severe economic decline; CD: Criminalization and/or delegitimization of the state; PS: Progressive

deterioration of public services; RL: Suspension or arbitrary application of the rule of law and widespread violation

of human rights; SA: Security apparatus operates as a state within a state; FA: Rise of factionalized elites, and

EXT: Intervention of other states or external political actors.

9

To find Somalia listed as the world’s number one failed state is unsurprising (vide infra), but the two

runners-up are more controversial—Zimbabwe because of the conspicuous absence of civil war or even

popular unrest,31 and Sudan because the the government’s unchallenged control over most of the country.

Consequences of State Failure

The overall picture of which states are assessed as failing or failed is thus as confused and/or confusing as

that of the different terms and equally different defintions. Even though this would seem like a good

argument to abandon the terms completely, this is unlikely to happen in the near future, if only because so

much political, military and other attention has been devoted to these elusive and enigmatic entities, mainly

because of the presumed consequences of state fragility, failure and collapse. Unfortunately, the picture of

these is no less confusing and in so far as there seems to be an emerging consensus of what the consequences

might be, it simply appears to be erroneous.

First of all, there is the wealth of problems for the inhabitants of a failed state. With the disappearance

of anything that might be called a state monopoly on the use of force all sorts of armed actors tend to appear

on the scene,32 and what has been called the “intra-state security dilemma” may be activated. This means that

even the inherently peaceful parts of the population are driven to violence, or at least to preparing for this

eventuality by arming themselves for self-protection, thereby simply contributing to the aggregate problem

in their attempt to mitigate it for themselves.33 In the absence of a Hobbesian Leviathan there may emerge “a

time of warre, where every man is enemy to every man,” and characterised by “continuall feare, and danger

of violent death,” and making the life of man “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short,”34 The dreaded

bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all)35 may become a reality, and security may become

privatised. 36 However, while something like this may certainly happen, it is less inevitable than often

assumed. As we shall see in the next section (on Somalia), the absence of a functioning state is not

necessarily the same as complete chaos as there may well be other societal institutions which are able to

maintain at least a modicum of order, i.e. forms of “governance without government.”37 Indeed, this may

well be preferable to the opposite, i.e. governments that do not actually govern or (even worse) governments

which are genocidal.

Secondly, there are concerns about a possible spill-over into neighbouring states. Even though this

does not quite amount to a scenario of falling dominos, it is nevertheless expected that one failing state might

drag its immediate neighbours with it into the abyss of chaos.38 There is certainly some truth in this, as

neighbours do tend to experience greater problems with, for instance, crime and occasionally even

insurgency, mainly as a result of the breakdown of border controls on one side of the shared border. In some

cases the adjacent state may make up for this deficiency by a unilateral strengthening of its own border

controls, but this is often beyound its capacity. There are also serious humanitarian reasons not to completely

close the borders to people fleeing from the insecurity and general misery often characterising a failed

10

state—and along with (and often hiding within) the flow of refugees may certainly come more dubious

characters such as criminals or human traffickers.39

Thirdly, criminals and armed groups may also represent threats to more distant states. One presumed

instance thereof is that of piracy, which is often held to flourish in the absence of functioning state

institutions such as a coast-guard and a competent police force. However, even here there presumed linkage

may be less direct than often assumed. As we shall see in the next section, the quasi-state established in

Somalia in the form of the stillborn Transitional Federal Government (TFG) was quite incapable (if it ever

tried) of containing piracy in the waters off Somalia, even when it was assisted by the neighbouring great

power Ethiopia, whereas piracy declined significantly in the latter half of 2006 when the Union of Islamic

Courts (UIC) had established actual control of southern and central Somalia, yet without really being a state,

and certainly not recognised as such. Since then piracy has surged, most attacks being launched from semi-

autonomous Puntland (vide infra) and taking place in the Gulf of Aden with international transit shipping en

route for the Suez Canal being the main target.40 Moreover, an interesting argument has recently been made

that state collapse is only conducive to certain types of piracy, i.e. hijacking of entire ships and crews for

ransom, whereas a different form of ship hijacking (where the cargo and/or the ship itself is appropriated)

presupposes a degree of statehood.41 Figures for pirate attacks are provided in Table 4.42

Table 4: Piracy in Somalia and Other Hotspots 2003-2009

Year

Location 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

- Somalia East Coast 3 2 35 10 31 19

- Gulf of Aden 18 8 10 10 13 92

Somalia Total 21 10 45 20 44 111

- Nigeria 39 28 16 12 42 40

- Indonesia 121 94 79 50 43 28

- Malacca Straits 28 38 12 11 7 2

- Philippines 12 4 0 6 6 7

- Singapore Straits 2 8 7 5 3 6

- Bangladesh 58 17 21 47 15 12

- India 27 15 15 5 11 10

Other Hotspots Total 287 204 150 136 127 105

Other 137 115 81 83 92 77

World 445 329 276 239 263 293

Somali Share (%) 4.7 3.0 16.3 8.4 16.7 37.9

The presumed consequence of state failure or collapse which has attracted most international attention is the

link with international terrorism. That state failure somehow creates or exacerbates terrorism has indeed

become one of those established verities that are almost universally taken for granted and for which no

empirical evidence is therefore needed. This is rather paradoxical, as closer analysis shows the causal link to

be spurious at best and most likely completely non-existent. As the present author has written about this at

some length elsewhere, suffice it in the present context to recapitulate the main findings.43

11

First of all, closer inspection of some of the anecdotal evidence often encountered reveals it to not

actually support the conclusions usually drawn from it. It is certainly true that the almost emblematic

international terrorist group, the Al Qaeda, and its enigmatic and elusive leder, the late Osama bin Laden,

sought refuge in two states which are today labelled failed states, i.e. Sudan and Afghanistan However, a

closer look at the when and where does not at all support the conclusion that they were chosen because of

the failures or weaknesses of these two states. In Sudan, Bin Laden was thus a guest of the government of

Sudan, personified by the National Islamic Front (NIF) which had assumed power through a coup in 1989,

and he set up his residence in that part of the country which was under almost complete control of the regime

rather than in the rebellious South where the regime had little or no control, probably because he needed the

government support and protection which the regime was able and willing to provide.44 When US pressure

made the regime change its mind and it threatened his extradition, however, he left for Afghanistan where it

just so happened that the Taliban had now established a greater degree of actual control than any other

government since the departure of the Soviet troops. That the Al Qaeda was now able to establish training

camps in Afghanistan was, once again, thanks to the support of the new rulers and the camps were located

where the regime enjoyed the highest degree of control rather than in those parts where its control was

contested by what later became the Northern Alliance.45 Both cases thus point to the actual control and

strength of a like-minded government rather than to state weakness, failure or collapse as that which attracted

international terrorists. As we shall see in the next section, the experience from Somalia points towards the

same conclusion.

Secondly, the available statistics do not support the hypothesis of significant correlation whatsoever

between state failure and terrorism in any of the three senses most often encountered, i.e. that failed states

serve as breedings grounds, areas of operations or transit areas for international terrorists.46 As we have seen

above, the statistics pertaining to state failure leave a lot to be desidered and those on terrorism tend to be

even more deficient, based on arbitrary categorisations and unclear definitions of both terrorism as a

phenomenon and of terrorist groups. For instance, statistics on terrorist incidents tend to list all the attacks

attributed to a group which has already been (rightly or wrongly) labelled as terrorist as “terrorist incidents,”

even those that do not meet the usual definitional criteria such as being directed against civilians. Hence, the

statistics are inflated, perhaps in order to conceal the fact that “real terrorism” is in fact a problem of very

modest proportions in virtually all countries virtually all the time. If one disregards these caveats and

limitations and accepts the listings of, for instance, the US National Counterterrorism Center’s Worldwide

Incidents Tracking System,47 not even these statistics show any significant correlations with state failure.

First of all, failed states do not generally experience more terrorism that functioning ones, for which

there is even a rather obvious explanation, i.e. that failed states have only few worthwhile targets for terrorist

attacks. The state institutions which may remain are, almost by definition, so weak that they are not really

worth attacking and most worthwhile foreign targets such as embassies, military installations or foreign

12

businesss facilities will already have been vacated. The only way of achieving a different result is to define

failed states as states experiencing severe armed conflict and all the combatants of the various armed factions

as terrorists in which case the argument becomes circular.

Secondly, failed states do not generally seem to serve as transit areas. “Transit” does, of course, have

at least two meanings, depending on the ultimate destination. Certain large airports such as Heathrow,

Frankfurt, Dubai, Johannesburg or Singapowe serve as nodes in the global air traffic network, but this kind

of transit is certainly not relevant for failed states. Where such states might have a role to play is for short-

range air or perhaps sea traffic as well as road traffic, which means that we should be focusing on their

immediate neighbourhood of failed states. However, neigbours of failed states do not generally experience

more terrorism than others, which seems to falsify the hypothesis. Thirdly, looking at two lists of terrorists

and terrorist groups, those of the detainees at Guantanamo and the list maintained by the UN’s

Counterterrorist Committee do not show any above-average representation of neither natives or citizens of,

nor residents in, failed states.

It thus seems that none of the purported links have any foundation in the available evidence—even

that provided by the state which has been the primary proponent of the link, i.e. the United States. In belated

and partial recognition thereof, the discourse seems to be gradually shifting away from failed states as such

to weakly governed parts of otherwise functioning states—which is not really the same thing.48

Somalia: Better of Stateless?

Ever since 1991, Somalia has not only been a textbook example of a failed state, but almost one of the

Weberian ideal types mentioned above. It therefore seems appropriate to spend some time on analysing its

state failure.49 Indeed, it is a failed state in several senses.

First of all, as early as 1991, the former British Somaliland in the north-western part of the country

seceded from the rest following an insurgency to which the regime had responded with an extremely brutal

counter-insurgency campaign.50 It has remained independent ever since and has, through a unique mixture of

modern and “traditional” institutions, managed to establish a (at least by African standards) quite well-

functioning de facto state, so that the only missing piece of the puzzle is international recognition.51

However,

the fact that the rest of the world continues to recognise the whole of Somalia as a state even though the

recognised “goverenment” in Mogadishu has absolutely no control of Somaliland would suffice to warrant

pinning the the label of a failed state on it in the aforementioned sense of a “bifurcated state.” This particular

weakness is further exacerbated by the fact that the northeastern part of the country in 1998 declared itself

autonomous under the name Puntland. Even though it has not (yet) proclaimed formal independence it has,

like Somaliland, established state-like institutions with a reasonable governance capacity, yet completely

beyond the control of the south-central parts of the country and the capital Mogadishu.52 Quite a strong case

might thus be made for Somalia being trifurcated or even a state system in statu nascendi.53 Some Somali

13

nationalists would go even further, viewing other territories inhabited by ethnic Somalis as missing from the

“real” (albeit mythical) Somalia,54 in which category we find all of Djibouti, the northeastern part of Kenya55

and the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, now renamed the “Somalia Region” with a territory of 279,252 square

kilometres and population of around 4.5 million, mainly ethnic Somalis.56 This all adds up to a thoroughly

fragmented “state.”

Secondly, not even in “rump Somalia” (i.e. the territory of the former Republic of Somalia minus

Somaliland and Puntland) is there a state with any capacity to actually govern, nor has there been any since

the state collapsed in 1991 with the fall of long-time dictator Siyad Barre,57 which was followed by an

extremely bloody civil war58 and a singularly ineffective combined UN/US intervention.59 Having finally left

Somalia in 1995 as stateless as when the foreign troops were first deployed, the so-called international

community (including the UN, miscellaneous foreign powers and regional as well as sub-regional

organisations) has ever since been engaged in more than a dozen attempts at creating a state. All of them

have failed miserably, probably doing more harm than good. Only the two (or three, depending on how one

counts) most recent ones are worth mentioning.

First came a so-called Transitional National Government (TNG) which was established in 2000, as

the outcome of an internationally sponsored conference in Arta, Djibouti, where 2,000 delegates elected a

245-man Transitional National Assembly (TNA), on a clan basis. This in turn elected a transitional President,

Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, who appointed an interim Prime Minister, Ali Khalif Galaydh. This Transitional

National Government (TNG) established in August 2000, formally remained in power until it was toppled by

a vote of no-confidence in October 2001. However, its actual control extended to only half of the capital and

small enclaves in the interior, and it was never able to ensure the personal security of its members, as several

members of the TNG were assassinated. By 2003 it had collapsed in all but name, even though it had called

upon former SNA (Somali National Army) troops for protection. Despite its weakness, however, as

representative of this virtual or quasi state the TNG’s President Abdiqasim attended UN Millennium Summit,

thus achieving some de facto recognition by the UN of his “one-man government still in exile,” which was

formalised on the 1st of November 2001. From the UN, he proceeded to summits in the Arab League, OIC

and IGAD, likewise achieving de facto recognition, and the TNG was even recognised de jure by the OAU

as early as December 2000.60

Next came a Traditional Federal Government (TFG), which was created in 2004 under the auspices

of the sub-regional organisation, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD (more on which in

Chapter # below). It was the product of the so-called “Eldoret process,” commencing with a gathering of (for

the most part self-appointed) Somali “political leaders” in October 2002 in the Kenyan town Eldoret. It

produced the Eldoret Declaration on “Cessation of Hostilities and the Structure and Principles of the Somali

National Reconciliation Process,” and the signatories subsequently reconstituted themselves as a “Leaders’

Committee.” By 2003 what had begun as a promising process had, according to the International Crisis

14

Group, evolved into “an unimaginative ‘cake-cutting’ exercise in power-sharing by an un-elected and only

partially representative political elite that threatens to repeat the history of earlier failed initiatives.”61

Regional rivalry between, on the one side, Ethiopia, sponsoring the Somali Reconciliation and

Reconstruction Council (SRRC) and, on the other side, Djibouti and various Arab countries, supporting the

TNG, did not help at all. Nevertheless, a “draft transitional federal charter” was formally adopted in

February 2004.

Whilst repeatedly underlining the unity of the Somali nation, it described a federalist political

dispensation, yet without at all addressing the question of secessionist Somaliland. The charter described the

countours of a political dispensation featuring what has become know as the “transitional federal

institutions” (TFI), the most important ones being the Transitional Federal Parliament (TFP) and the

Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The former was described as having a single chamber and

comprising 275 parliamentarians, to be appointed (rather than elected) by traditional leaders and others on a

sub-sub-clan basis for a five-year period, explicitly without any option of extension. Besides legislating the

TFP would also, according to the charter, appoint the President of the TFG, likewise for a five-year term, to

serve as head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Besides the president, executive power

would be vested in the TFG, headed by a prime minister and responsible to the TPF which should be

empowered to force the resignation of the TFG through a vote of non-confidence. Furthermore, the country

should have an independent judiciary, an obligation to comply with international law and to honour the

various civic rights set out in the charter, which should be replaced by a formal constitution, to be drafted

within two-and-a-half years and adopted by a general referendum before the end of the transitional five-year

period.62

All this might in fact describe the political structure of almost any country, except for two minor

“details.” First of all the fact that that the parliament empowered to appoint the rest of the TFI was not to be

actually elected, but appointed by the various clans. While a number of clans were indeed co-opted into the

agreement, others remained excluded, and from the very beginning the TFI were dominated by the SRRC

(Somali Reconciliation and Reconstruction Council) and Ethiopia’s closest ally in Somalia, Abdullahi Yusuf

Ahmed from Puntland. The TFP was formed in October 2004 and on the 10th of October 2004 it elected

Yusuf for interim president and head of the TFG. Three weeks after his inauguration, Yusuf appointed Ali

Mohamed Ghedi for Prime Minister, who in turn was charged with appointing a cabinet. Its very size—

comprising three deputy PMs, 33 minister, 34 deputy ministers and eight state ministers—might be seen as

evidence of its being based on co-optation of potential rivals. That this did not ensure its representativity was

demonstrated when the TPF with 153 out of 275 votes passed a motion of no-confidence, which only made

the president dissolve the TFP whilst retaining Ghedi as PM.63 Tensions grew between the president and the

PM leading to the resignation of Ghedi by the end of October 2007 in favour of an interim PM, Salim

Aliyow Ibrow who was succeeded a month later by Nur Hassan Hussein.

15

The other, and even more serious, deficiency was that the TFI never really governed anything. In

fact, as opposed to the aforementioned “governance without government” the label “government without

governance” would seem appropriate. The TFG had absolutely no actual control over the country which they

were ostensibly governing. Moreover, even though leading members of most of the armed factions were

represented in the cabinet, the TFG did not find the situation in Somalia safe enough for it to dare relocate

from Kenya to Somalia without foreign protection. Having appealed in vain to both the UN and the African

Union for a protection force of 20,000 troops, the TFG eventually settled for Ethiopian armed protection

allowing it to move its headquarters to Somalia in January 2006, albeit not to the capital, Mogadishu, but to

Baidoa—whilst still denying the presence of any Ethiopian troops. This growing reliance on the arch-enemy

was probably the main reason for the internal disagreements within the TFI, several members of the cabinet

resigning in March 2005, mainly the so-called “Mogadishu group,” most belonging to the Hawiye clan.

The TFG made some attempts at creating an army, partly in contravention of the UN-imposed arms

embargo which remains in force,64 but merely implemented a certain redeployment of militias from Puntland

to the central parts. Most of the country had by this time come under the control of the Union of Islamic

Courts (UIC) to which we shall return shortly. Only after a full-fledged Ethiopian invasion in December

2006 did the TFG dare translocate to the official national capital, Mogadishu, yet still sorely lacking in

governance capacity as the country plunged into an abyss of chaos, by which time the TFG’s alliance with

Addis Ababa had deprived it of whatever little legitimacy it might previously have enjoyed.

Following the invasion and the ensuing reignition of the civil war (vide infra), the TFG became

increasingly isolated nationally, notwithstanding its unwavering support from abroad. By the end of 2008

following negotiations in Djibouti the TFG had decided to simply extend its own mandate which had by that

time expired, and it had undergone a rather profound transformation by co-opting one faction of UIC, now

renamed the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS, created in September 2007) into an enlarged

TFP and a “unity” TFG and appointed one of its leaders as “President.” It therefore seemed more appropriate

to refer to this as “TFG-2” rather than pretending that it remained the orginal TFG. Indeed, the main feature

shared by TFG-1 and 2 was that neither possessed any governance capacity whatsoever.65

None of the externally driven and sponsored attempts at creating a state in Somalia had thus

succeeded in rebuilding a functioning state and the state-building attempts had, on balance, done more harm

than good. In those period when the rest of the world had not interfered, however, other societal institutions

had stepped into the breach and proved themselves capable of upholding at least a modicum of order, i.e.

forms of “governance without government.” Even though Somalia remained far from orderly (and certainly

not centralised) neither was it completely lawless, anarchic or chaotic.66 The clan system with its diya paying

groups and collective responsibility provided some deterrence against violent crime, as clan elders were

usually inclined to restrain younger clan members for fear of ending up in costly blood feuds;67 and

religious societies, especially the various Sufi orders, established their own shari’a courts in the absence of

16

any formal state or district courts, and hired militias to serve as an informal police force of sorts, etc.68 The

business community also raised its own militias—or hired private security companies—for protection, thus

providing a modicum of law and order, at least in the major cities.69 The economy did not fare too badly

either as the foreign trade, mainly in cattle and hides, continued, arguably doing better without a state that it

had done under the dictatorship of Siyad Barré. Surprisingly, the economic transactions did not degenerate

into a barter system, but contined to accept paper money as legal tender, even after the point when the last

legal banknotes had disappeared, leaving behind several types of counterfeit money.70

The inability and/or unwillingness of the international community, especially the West, to compre-

hend (or even see) this kind of stateless order was the reasons for launching the various futile state-building

attempts recorded above. What made state-building seem all the more urgent was 9/11 and the

aforementioned belief that statelessness somehow invited terrorism. This general (unfounded and erroneous)

belief was combined with the very specific assumption (which may or may not have been correct) that a

couple of individuals were hiding somewhere in Somalia who were suspected of having been involved in the

terrorist attacks against the US embassies in Nairobi and Daar Es Salaam in August 1998.71 This spurred

Washington to launch a clandestine mission in February 2006 to create an Alliance for the Restoration of

Peace and Counter-Terrorism, acronymed ARPCT—mainly involving a handsome distribution of dollar bills

to various warlords in Mogadishu and elsewhere.72 This operation backfired even more than most other

clandestine missions,73 as the formation of the (extremely short-lived) ARPCT provoked the various shari’a

courts—which had already formed a loose coordination body—to unite for good in the UIC (also know by

various other acronyms) with a coordinated command of the various court militias.

The UIC quickly defeated the ARPCT and had by June 2006 established control over most of south-

central Somalia, including all of Mogadishu—thus coming much closer to actual statehood than any of the

moribund and de facto externally imposed “governments” before them. 74 However, they never really

managed to establish a clear and hierarchical governing structure, which allowed partly self-proclaimed

spokespersons for minor groups to rise to prominence. Among these “rising stars” was Sheik Aways, a

former military commendar of the Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya (AIAI), which had enjoyed a certain success in the

early 1990s, only to be defeated,75 receding into near-oblivion, also because their ideological foundation in a

Wahhabist version of Islam had little ressonance among the Somali population, accustomed to much more

liberal and undogmatic forms of Islam.76 While the AIAI’s ideological affinity to Al Qaeda is indisputable,

their actual links are more dubious. It seems that Osama bin Laden and associates had in the early 1990s

shared the US belief (in fact preceding Washington in this respect) that a failed state offers a hospitable

environment for terrorism. Hence, the Al Qaeda leadership had dispatched operatives to then stateless

Somalia to exploit the expected opportunities, only to be profoundly disappointed—as is obvious from the

correspondence between the AQ agent and his superiors which has been published by the so-called Harmony

Project, hosted by the US Military Academy at West Point.77

17

Be that as it may, the rise to prominence of a former AIAI commander, sounded alarm bells both in

Ethiopia—where the AIAI had been, perhaps rightly, accused of a couple of terrorist attacks in the mid-

1990s—and in the United States which had included Sheikh Aways and his organisation in its lists of foreign

terrorists and terror organisations. When the UIC also began flirting with the various rebel groups in

Ethiopia—not only those claiming to represent the ethnic Somalis, but also the Oromos—Ethiopia began

planning for a military invasion. Having apparently consulted with Washington and obtained the US

approval, in late December 2006 it launched a full-fledged invasion, albeit officially acting on behalf of the

TFG. The UIC, in turn, almost immediately dispersed, only to continue the struggle in a very disoranised

fashion, blending small-scale guerrilla warfare with acts of terrorism, in which they received support from Al

Qaeda, which declared Somalia a new battleground in its global jihad against the infidel, now personified in

Ethiopia, the United States and virtually all the expatriates in Somalia.78

Whereas Somalia had not previously been a hotbed of terrorism, it now became one as a result of the

“war on terror.” Not only did it now attract foreign fighters, but new armed groups also sprang up across the

country with an ideological affifinity with them and with a particularly nasty disposition and an unfortunate

preference for attacking humanitarians, most prominently the al-Shabaab (“Youth”) militia with certain links

to AIAI, but soon superseding it in all respects.79 The fact that the country had in fact been invaded by an

infidel, i.e. Christian, neighbour whose counter-insurgency warfare was very brutal, 80 allowed them to

skillfuly blend a patriotic with their own religious political agenda.

Realising that it was not at all welcome, Ethiopia from the very beginning was looking for an exit

option, repriring it to find other external actors willing and able to support the TFG. Fortunately for Addis

Ababa, but very unwisely, the African Union offered to send troops in order to allow Ethiopia to withdraw,

but only two countries, Uganda and Burundi, were willing to provide troops, leaving the AMISOM (African

Union Mission to Somalia) seriously under-staffed and unable to do much more than protect itself. The

requests by the AU to the UN to dispatch a UN mission were rejected, as we shall see in the chapters on the

AU. By the time of writing (May 2011) neither the TFG(-2) nor AMISOM had made any headway

whatsoever and the solemn proclamation by an AU Summit meeting on the need to strengthen its

peacekeeping mission seemed as unlikely to be implemented as previous declarations to the same effect.81

Endnotes

1 Call, Charles T.: “The Fallacy of the Failed State,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 8 (2008), pp. 1491-1507;

Bilgin, Pinar & Adam David Morton: “Historising Representations of ‘Failed States’: Beyond the Cold-War

Annexation of the Social Sciences?” ibid., vol. 23, no. 1 (2002), pp. 55-80; Gros, Jean-Germain: “Towards a

Taxonomy of Failed States in the New World Order: Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti,” ibid., vol. 17, no.

3 (1996), pp. 455-472; Bøås, Morten & Kathleen M. Jennings: “Insecurity and Development: The Rhetoric of the

‘Failed State’,” European Journal of Development Research, vol.17, no. 3 (2005), pp. 385-395; Brooks, Rosa

Ehrenreich: “Failed States or the State as Failure?” University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 72, no. 4 (2005), pp. 1159-

18

1196. See also Cornwall, Andrea: “Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development Discourse,” Development

in Practice, vol. 17, nol. 4 (2007), pp. 471-484. 2 Zartmann, William I. (ed.): Collapsed States. The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder,

CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), passim; Jackson, Robert: Quasi-States, Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third

World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), passim; Reno, William: Warlord Politics and African States

(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), passim; Crocker, Chester A.: “Engaging Failing States,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82,

no. 5 (2003), pp. 32-44; Li, Jieli: “State Fragmentation: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Territorial Power

of the State,” Sociological Theory, vol. 20, nol. 2 (2002), pp. 139-156; Saikal, Amin: “Dimensions of State Disruption

and International Responses,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1 (2000), pp. 39-49; OECD-DAC (Organization for

Economic Co-operation and Development—Development Assistance Committee): “Monitoring Resource Flows to

Fragile States,” DAC News, 26 July 2006; World Bank: “Fragile States—Good Practices in Country Assistance

Strategies,” World Bank Document, no. 34790 (2005); World Bank Operations Policy and Country Services: “Low

Income Countries Under Stress: Update” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005). 3 OECD: Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations (Paris: OECD, 2007); idem:

Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations: From Fragility to Resilience (Paris: OECD, 2008);

idem: Statebuilding in Fragile Situations: Initial Findings (Paris: OECD, 2008); Zoellig, Robert B.: “Fragile States:

Securing Development,” Survival, vol. 50, no. 6 (2008), pp. 67-84; Engberg-Pedersen, Lars, Louise Andersen & Finn

Stepputat: “Fragile Situations. Current Debates and Central Dilenmmas,” DIIS Report, no. 2008:9 (Copenhagen: Danish

Institute for International Studies, 2008); idem, idem, idem & Dietrich Jung: “Fragile Situations. Background Papers,”

ibid., no 2008:11 (2008); Unsworth, Sue: The State’s Legitimacy in Fragile Situations. Unpacking Complexity (Paris,

OECD, 2009). 4 For an approach to this see Anderson, Edward & Oliver Morrissey: “A Statistical Approach to Identifying Poorly

Performing Countries,” Journal of Development Studies, vol. 42, no. 3 (2006), pp. 469-489. 5

On the differences between Plato and Aristotle with regard to “universals” and “forms” see Leszl, Walter:

“Knowledge of the Universal and Knowledge of the Particular in Aristotle,” Review of Metaphysics, vol. 26, no. 2

(1972), pp. 278-313; Thompson, Manley: “Abstract Entities and Universals,” Mind, vol. 74, no. 295 (1965), pp. 365-

381; Raphael, D. Daiches: “Universals, Resemblance, and Identity,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 55

(1954/55), pp. 109-132. 6 Weber, Max: “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy,” in Maurice Natanson (ed.): Philosophy of the Social

Sciences (New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 355-418, quoted on p. 498. See also Hendricks, Jon & C. Breckinridge

Peters: “The Ideal Type and Sociological Theory,” Acta Sociologica, vol. 16, no. 1 (1973), pp. 31-40; On “ideal types”

see Hekman, Susan J.: “Weber’s Ideal Type: A Contemporary Reassessment,” Polity, vol. 16, no. 1 (1983), pp. 119-137;

Pepper, George B.: “A Re-Examination of the Ideal Type Concept,” American Catholic Sociological Review, vol. 24,

no. 3 (1963), pp. 185-201. 7 Weber, Max: “Some Categories of Interpretive Sociology” (1913), in Sociological Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2 (1981), pp.

145-150. See also Lindbekk, Tore: “The Weberian Ideal-Type: Development and Consequences,” Acta Sociologica, vol.

35, no. 4 (1992), pp. 285-297. 8 On family likenesses (or resemblances) see Wittgenstein, Ludwig: The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies

for the Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), pp. 17-18; idem Philosophical Investigations (Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1953), p. 31. See also Pompa, L.: “Family Resemblances,” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 17, no. 66

(1967), pp, 63-69; Khatchadourian, Haig: ”Common Names and Family Resemblances,” Philosophy and Phemonenolo-

gical Research, vol. 18, no. 3 (1958), pp. 341-358; McLachlan, Hugh V.: “Wittgenstein, Family Resemblances and the

Theory of Classification,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 1, no. 1 (1981), pp. 1-16; Beads-

more, R.W.: “The Theory of Family Resemblances,” Philosophical Investigations, vol. 15, no. 2 (1992), pp. 131-146. 9 Li: loc. cit. (note 197).

10 Deutsch, Karl W.: “State Functions and the Future of the State,” International Political Science Review, vol. 7, no. 2

(1986), pp. 209-222; Beck, Ulrich: “Reframing Power in a Globalized World.,” Organization Studies, vol. 29, no. 5

(2008), pp. 793-804. There are also some who use the term about the precolonial polities in Africa. See, for instance,

Hopkins, A.G.: “Quasi-States, Weak States and the Partition of Africa,” Review of International Studies, vol. 26, no. 2

(2000), pp. 311-320; Warner, Carolyn M.: “The Political Economy of ‘Quasi-Statehood’ and the Demise of 19th

Century African Politics,” ibid., vol. 25, no. 2 (1999), pp. 233-255. 11

The term seems first to have been used in this sense by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson in The Expansion of

International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 430; but it is mainly attributed to Robert Jackson. See

his “Quasi-States, Dual Regimes, and Neoclassical Theory,” International Organization, vol. 41, no. 4 (1987), pp. 519-

549; idem: op. cit. (note 197), passim; idem & Carl G. Rosberg: “Why Africa’s Weak States Persists: The Empirical

and the Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics, vol. 35, no. 1 (1985), pp. 1-24; Stanislawski, Bartosz H. (ed.): “The

19

Forum: Para-States, Quasi-States, and Black Spots: Perhaps Not States, But Not ‘Ungoverned Territories,’ Either,”

International Studies Review, vol. 10, no. 2 (2008), pp. 366-396; Rywkin, Michael: “The Phenomenon of Quasi-States,”

Diogenes, no. 210 (2006), pp. 23-28; Erskine, Toni: “Assigning Responsibilities to Instiutional Moral Agents: The Case

of States and Quasi-States,” Ethics and International Affairs, vol. 15, no. 2 (2001), pp. 67-85. For additional

distinctions between “domestic,” “interdependence,” “international legal” and “Westphalian sovereignty,” see Krasner,

Stephen D.: Sovereignty: Organized Hypocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 3-25. 12

On “order” in the international system see Bull, Hedley: The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics.

2nd

ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977), passim. The concept of “like units” is primarily associated with

Kenneth N. Waltz, e.g. his Man, the State, and War. A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press,

1954), pp. 159-186 (on “the third image”); and idem Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA.: Addison-Wesley,

1979), pp. 66-67 & passim. For a partial critique see Wendt, Alexander: “Anarchy is What States Make of It: The

Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization, vol. 46, no. 2 (1992), pp. 391-425. 13

Tilly, Charles: “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in idem (ed.): The Formation of National

States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 38, quoted on p. 303 in Herbst, Jeffrey:

“Let Them Fail: State Failure in Theory and Praxis,” in Rotberg, Robert I.: (ed.) When States Fail. Causes and

Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 302-318. On the virtual disappearance of “state

deaths” see Fazal, Tanisha M.: “State Death in the International System,” International Organization, vol. 58, no. 2

(2004), pp. 311-344. See also Anderson, Lisa: “Antiquated Before They Can Ossify: States that Fail Before They

Form,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 58, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1-16. 14

Herbst: loc. cit. (note 208); idem: “Responding to State Failure in Africa,” International Security, vol. 21, no. 3

(1996), pp. 120-144; Joseph, Richard & idem: “Correspondence: Responding to State Failure in Africa,” ibid., vol. 22,

no. 2 (1997), pp. 175-184. 15

Chandler, David: Empire in Denial. The Politics of State-Building (London: Pluto Press, 2006), pp. 43-47 & passim.

See also idem: Bosnia. Faking Democracy After Dayton, 2nd

ed. (London: Pluto Press, 2000), passim; Von Einsiedel,

Sebastian: “Policy Responses to State Failure,” in Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff & Ramesh Thakur (eds.):

Making States Work. State Failure and the Crisis of Governance (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2005), pp.

13-35; Chesterman. Simon: “Transitional Administration, State-Building and the United Nations,” ibid., pp. 339-358;

Bain, William: “The Political Theory of Trusteeship and the Twilight of International Equality,” International Relations,

vol. 17, no. 1 (2003), pp. 59-77. 16

See the map on p. 49 in Rotberg, Robert I.: “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States. Breakdown, Prevention, and

Repair,” in idem (ed.) op. cit. (note 208), pp. 1-49. The companion volume is idem (ed.): State Failure and State

Weakness in a Time of Terror (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), passim. 17

See, for instance, Goldstone, Jack A.: “Pathways to State Failure,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, vol. 25,

no. 4 (2008), pp. 285-296; Howard, Tiffany O.: “Revisiting State Failure: Developing a Causal Model of State Failure

Based Upon Theoretical Insight,” Civil Wars, vol. 10, no. 2 (2008), pp. 125-147. 18

Brooks: loc. cit. (note 196); Kraxberger, Brennan M.: “Failed States: Temporary Obstacles to Democratic Diffusion

or Fundamental Holes in the World Political Map?” Third World Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 6 (2007), pp. 1055-1071;

Löwenheim, Oded: ”Examining the State: a Foucauldian Perspective on International ‘Governance Indicators’,” ibid.,

vol. 29, no. 2 (2008), pp. 255-274; Call, Charles T.: “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State’,” ibid., no. 8 (2008), pp. 1491-

1507; Manjikian, Mary: “Diagnosis, Intervention, and Cure: The Illness Narrative in the Discourse on the Failed State,”

Alternatives, vol. 33, no. 3 (2008), pp. 335-357; Jones, Branwen Gruffydd: “The Global Political Economy of Social

Crisis: Towards a Critique of the ‘Failed State’ Ideology,” Review of International Political Economy, vol. 15, no. 2

(2008), pp. 180-205; Morton, Adam David: “The ‘Failed State’ of International Relations,” New Political Ecnomy, vol.

10, no. 3 (2005), pp. 371-379. 19

Logan, Justin & Christopher Preble: “Failed States and Flawed Logic. The Case Against a Standing Nation-Building

Office,” Policy Analysis, no. 560 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2006), p. 7. 20

Goldstone, Jack A. & al.: State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings, at http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/

SFTF%20Phase%20III%20Report%20Final.pdf , pp. 64-79. 21

For an argument against state failure in Burundi see Daley, Patricia: “Ethnicity and Political Violence in Africa: The

Challenge to the Burundi State,” Political Geography, vol. 25, no. 6 (2006), pp. 657-679. On the DRC see Reno,

William: “Congo: From State Collapse to ‘Absolutism’, to State Failure,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 27, no 1 (2006),

pp. 43-56. 22

Evans, Gareth: “Cooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict,” Foreign Policy, no. 96 (1994), pp. 3-20. 23

Prunier, Gérard: “The Rwandan Patriotic Front,” in Clapham (ed.): op. cit. (note 136), pp. 119-133; Reed, William

Cyrus: ”Exile, Reform, and the Rise of the Rwandan Patfriotic Front,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 34, no.

3 (1996), pp. 479-501.

20

24 Hintjens, Helen M.: “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 37, no. 2

(1999), pp. 241-286; Langford, Peter: “The Rwandan Path to Genocide: The Genesis of the Capacity of the Rwandan

Post-Colonial State to Organize and Unleash a Project of Extermination,” Civil Wars, vol. 7, no. 1 (2005), pp. 1-27. 25

Straus, Scott: “How Many Perpetrators Were There in the Rwandan Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research, vol.

6, no. 1 (2004), pp. 85-98. 26

See the chapter on “The Organization” in De Forges, Alison: Leave None to Tell the Story. Genocide in Rwanda

(New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), at www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno4-7-03.htm; and Human

Rights Watch: The Rwandan Genocide. How It Was Prepared (New York: HRW, 2006). Good general accounts of the

genocide are Prunier, Gérard: The Rwanda Crisis. History of a Genocide. 2nd

ed. (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1999),

passim; Mamdani. Mahmood: When Victims Become Killers. Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda

(Oxford: James Currey, 2001), passim; Barnett, Michael: Eyewitness to a Genocide. The United Nations and Rwanda

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), passim; Khan, Shaharyar M.: The Shallow Graves of Rwanda (London:

I.B. Tauris, 2000), passim; Dallaire, Roméo: Shake Hands with the Devil. The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto:

Random Hourse Canada, 2003), passim. 27

For an attempt see Gros: loc. cit. (note 196). The account of the strength of the Rwandan state on p. 460 would seem

to exclude it from the failed states genus, but the author argues for its inclusion by referring to the fact that the polis

excluded parts of its citizens, i.e. the Tutsis. See also Clapham, Christopher: “The Global-Local Politics of State

Decay,” in Rotberg (ed.): op. cit. 2004 (note 208), pp. 77-93, esecially p. 87. 28

For a critique see Call: loc. cit. (note 196); Jones, Branwen Gruffydd: “The Global Political Economy of Social Crisis:

Towards a Critique of the ‘Failed State’ Ideology,” Review of International Political Ecomy, vol. 15, no. 2 (208), pp.

180-205; Ikpe, Eka: “Challinging the Discourse on Fragile States,” Conflict, Security and Development, vol. 7, no. 1

(2007), pp. 85-124. 29

Annual scores taken from Fund for Peace: Failed States Index, years 2005-2009, at www.fundforpeace.org/. 30

Same source as note 224. 31

In December 2008, the ICG thus devoted a chapter in a policy briefing to ”Preventing a Failed State.” See ”Ending

Zimbabwe’s Nightmare: A Possible Way Forward,” Africa Briefing, no. 56 (Brussels: ICG, 2008), pp. 8-11.: 32

Reno, William: “Explaining Patterns of Violence in Collapsed States,” Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 30, no. 2

(2009), pp. 356-374; idem: “The Politics of Violent Opposition in Collapsing States,” Government and Opposition, vol.

40, no. 2 (2005), pp. 127-151; idem: “African Weak States and Commercial Alliances,” African Affairs, vol. 96, no.

383 (1997), pp. 165-185. 33

Kasfir, Nelson: ”Domestic Anarchy, Security Dilemmas, and Violent Predation,” in Rotberg (ed.): op. cit. 2004 (note

2008), pp. 53-76; Vinci, Anthony: ”Anarchy, Failed States, and Armed Groups: Reconsidering Conventional Analysis,”

International Studies Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 2 (2008), pp. 295-314; Posen, Barry R.: “The Security Dilemma of Ethnic

Conflict,” Survival, vol. 35, no. 1 (1993), pp. 27-47; Walter, Barbara F. & Jack L. Snyder (eds.): Civil Wars, Insecurity,

and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), passim; Roe, Paul: “The Intrastate Security Dilemma:

Ethnic Conflict as Tragedy,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 36, no. 2 (1999), pp. 183-202. On the international

security dilemma see Jervis, Robert: “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, vol. 30, no. 2 (1978), pp.

167-214. 34

Hobbes: op. cit. (note 44), pp. 184 and 186. See also Kraynak, Robert P.: “Hobbes on Barbarism and Civilization,”

Journal of Politics, vol. 45, no. 1 (1983), pp. 86-109. 35

The actual wording is “Status hominum naturalis antequam in societatem coiretur bellum fuerit; neque hoc simpliciter,

sed bellum omnium in omnes,” quoted on p. 3 in Diesner, Hans-Joachim: “Thukydides und Thomas Hobbes: Zur Struk-

turanalyse der Gewalt,” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, vol. 29, no. 1 (1980), pp. 1-16. It is found in the

chapter 12 of Hobbes, Thomas: De Cive, English translation at www.constitution.org/th/decive.htm. 36

Taulbee, James Larry: “The Privatization of Security: Modern Conflict, Globalization and Weak States,” Civil Wars,

vol. 5, no. 2 (2002), pp. 1-24; Musah, Abdel-Fatau: “Privatization of Security, Arms Proliferation and the Process of

State Collapse in Africa,” European Journal of Development Research, vol. 17, no. 3 (2005), pp. 911-933; Cilliers,

Jakkie & Peggy Mason (eds.): Peace, Profit or Plunder? The Privatisation of Security in War-Torn African Societies

(Halfway House: Institute for Security Studies, 1999), passim; Mills, Greg & John Stremlau (eds.): The Privatisation of

Security in Africa (Braamfontein: South African Institute of International Affairs, 1999), passim. 37

The term seems to have first been used by James N. Rosenau in 1987. See his “Governance without Government:

Systems of Rule in World Politics,” (Los Angeles, CA: Institute for Transnational Studies, University of Southern

California), cited on p. 7 in idem: “Governance, Order, and Change in World Politics,” in idem & Ernst Otto Czempiel

(eds.); Governance Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1992), pp. 1-29. See also Rhodes, R.A.W.: “The New Governance: Governing Without Government,” Political

Studies, vol. 44, no. 4 (1996), pp. 652-667; Baker, Bruce: “African Anarchy: Is It the States, Regimes, or Societies that

21

Are Collapsing?” Politics, vol. 19, no. 3 (1999), pp. 131-138; Skaperdas, Stergios: “The Political Economy of

Organized Crime: Providing Protection When the State Does Not,” Economics of Governance, vol. 2, no. 3 (2001).pp.

173-202. 38

For a critique see Morton, Adam David: “The ‘Failed State’ of International Relations,” New Political Economy, vol.

10, no. 3 (2005), pp. 371-379. 39

Iqbal, Zaryab & Harvey Starr: “Bad Neighbours: Failed States and Their Consequences,” Conflict Management and

Peace Science, vol. 25, no.4 (2008), pp. 315-331; Sung, Hung-En: “State Failure, Economic Failure, and Predatory

Organized Crime: A Comparative Analysis,” Journal of Reseach in Crime and Delinquency, vol. 41, no. 2 (2004), pp.

111-129; Luke, Timothy W. & Gerard Toal: ”The Fraying Modern Map: Failed States and Contraband Capitalism,”

Geopolitics and International Boundaries, vol. 3, no. 3 (1998), pp. 14-33; Carment, David, John J. Gazo & Stuart Prest:

“Risk Assessment and State Failure,” Global Society, vol. 21, no. 1 (2007), pp. 47-69; Gros, Jean-Germain: “Trouble in

Paradise. Crime and Collapsed States in the Age of Globalization,” British Journal of Criminology, vol. 43, no. 1

(2003), pp. 63-80; West, Jessica: “The Political Economy of Organized Crime and State Failure: The Nexus of Greed,

Need and Grivance,” Innovations: A Journal of Politics, vol. 6 (2006), pp. 1-17. 40

For an elaboration see Møller, Bjørn: “Piracy, Maritime, Terrorism and Naval Strategy,” DIIS Report, 2009:2

(Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2009). See also Murphy, Martin N.: Small Boats, Weak States,

Dirty Money. Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World (London: Hurst, 2008), pp. 101-111 & passim; idem:

Somalia: The New Barbary (London: Hurst & Co., 2010), passim; Cawthorne, Nigel: Pirates of the 21st Century

(London: John Blake, 2009), passim; Middleton, Roger: “Piracy in Somalia. Threatening Global Trade, Feeding Local

Wars,” Chathan House Briefing Paper (London: Chatham House, 2008); Anyo, J. Ndumbe & Samuel Moki: “Africa:

The Piracy Hot Spot and Its Implications for Global Security,” Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 3 (2009), pp. 95-

121; Menkhaus, Ken: “Dangerous Waters,” Survival, vol. 51, no. 1 (2009), pp. 21-25; Weir, Gary E.: “Fish, Family, and

Profit: Piracy and the Horn of Africa,” Naval War College Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (2009), pp. 15-29; Nincic, Donna:

“Maritime Piracy in Africa: The Humanitarian Dimension,” African Security Review, vol. 18, no. 3 (2009), pp. 2-16;

Vrey, François: “Bad Order at Sea: From the Gulf of Aden to the Gulf of Guinea,” ibid., pp. 17-30; Onuoha, Freedom

C.: “Sea Piracy and Maritime Security in the Horn of Africa: The Somali Coast and Gulf of Aden in Perspective,” ibid.,

pp. 31-44; Hansen, Stig Jarle: “Piracy in the Greater Horn of Africa. Myths, Misconceptions and Remedies,” NIBR

Report, no. 2009:29 (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 2009); Anderson, David, Rob de

Wijk, Steven Haines & Jonathan Stevenson: “Somalia and the Pirates,” ESF Working Paper, no. 33 (Brussels, London

& Geneva: European Security Forum, 2009); Sörenson, Karl: “State Failure on the High Seas: Reviewing the Somali

Piracy,” FOI Somali Papers, no. 2 (Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency, 2008). 41

Hastings, Justin V.: “Geographies of State Failure and Sophistication in Maritime Piracy Hijackings,” Political

Geography, vol. 30, no. 1 (2009), pp. 1-11. 42

Based on data from Table 1 (listing actual and attempted attacks) in the ICC International Maritime Bureau: Piracy

and Armed Robbery Against Ships. Annual Report 1 January-31 December 2008 (London: ICC, 2009), pp. 5-6. 43

Møller, Bjørn: “Terror Prevention and Development Aid. What We Know and Don’t Know,” DIIS Report, no. 2007/3

(Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies, 2007). See also Newman, Edward: “Weak States, State Failure,

and Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 19, no. 4 (2007), pp. 463-488; Simons, Anna & David Tucker:

“The Misleading Problem of Failed States: a ‘Socio-Geography’ of Terrorism in the Post-9/11 Era,” Third World

Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 2 (2007), pp. 387-401; Hehir, Aidan: “The Myth of the Failed State and the War on Terror: A

Challenge to Conventional Wisdom,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, vol. 1, no. 3 (2007), pp. 307-332;

Patrick, Stewart: “Weak States and Global Threats: Facts or Fiction,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2 (2006), pp.

27-53; Piazza, James A.: “Incubators of Terror: Do Failed and Failing States Promote Transnational Terrorism,”

International Studies Quarterly, vol. 52, no. 3 (2008), pp. 469-488; 44

Gunaratna, Rohan: Inside Al Qaeda. Global Network of Terror. 3rd

ed. (New York: Berkley Books, 2003), pp. 39-53;

Burke, Jason: Al Qaeda. The True Story of Radical Islam. 3rd

ed. (London: Penguin Books, 2007), pp. 143-157; Wright,

Lawrence: The Looming Tower. Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), pp. 186-246;

International Crisis Group: God, Oil and Country. Changing the Logic of War in Sudan (Brussels: ICG, 2002), pp. 71-

90; Taylor, Max & Mohamed E. Elbushra: “Research Note: Hassan al Turabi, Osama bin Laden, and Al Qaeda in

Sudan,” Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 18, no. 3 (2006), pp. 449-464; Zahid, Mohammed & Michael Medley:

“Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sudan,” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 33, no. 110 (2006), pp. 693-708. 45

Gunaratna: op. cit. (note 239), pp. 1-41 & passim; Burke: op. cit. (note 239), pp. 173-197 & passim; Wright: op. cit.

(note 239), pp. 284-421 & passim. 46

For a rather unconvincing argument to the contrary see Tikuisis, Peter: “On the Relationship Between Weak States

and Terrorism,” Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, vol. 1, no. 1 (2009), pp. 66-79. 47

Available at http://wits.nctc.gov/.

22

48 Korteweg, Rem: “Black Holes: On Terrorist Sanctuaries and Governmental Weakness,” Civil Wars, vol. 10, no. 1

(2008), pp. 60-71. 49

The following is partly based on other writings by the present author: Møller, Bjørn: “The Horn of Africa and the U.S.

‘War on Terror’, with a Special Focus on Somalia,” in Ulf Johansson Dahre (ed.): Post-Conflict Peace-Building in the

Horn of Africa (Lund: Media-Tryck Sociologen, Lund University, 2008), pp. 87-140; and idem: “The Somali Conflict:

the Role of External Actors,” DIIS Report, no. 2009:3 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Stdues, 2009). 50

Africa Watch Committee: Somalia: A Government at War with Its Own People. Testimonies About the Killings and

the Conflict in the North (New York: Africa Watch Committee, 1990), available online from the Human Rights Watch

website at www.hrw.org/en/reports/1990/01/31/government-war-its-own-people. 51

Bradbury, Mark: Becoming Somaliland (Oxford: James Currey, 2008), pp. 22-76; Hansen, Stig Jarle & idem:

“Somaliland: A New Democracy in the Horn of Africa,” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 34, no. 113 (2007),

pp. 461-476; Walls, Michael: “The Emergence of a Somali State: Building Peace from Civil War in Somaliland,”

African Affairs, vol. 108, no. 432 (2009), pp. 371-389; Adam, Hussein M.: “Formation and Recognition of New States:

Somaliland in Contrast to Eritrea,” ibid., vol. 21, no. 59 (1994), pp. 21-38; Kaplan, Seth: “The Remarkable Story of

Somaliland,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 19, no. 3 (2008), pp. 143-157; Kibble, Steve: “Somaliland: Surviving without

Recognition; Somalia: Recognized but Failing?” International Relations, vol. 15, no. 5 (2001), pp. 5-25; Huliaras,

Asteris: “The Viability of Somaliland,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 20, no. 2 (2002), pp. 157-182; Fox,

M.J.: “Somalia Divided: The African Cerberus (Considerations on Political Culture),” Civil Wars, vol. 2, no. 1 (1999),

pp. 1-34; Eggers, Alison K.: “When Is a State a State? The Case for Recognition of Somaliland,” Boston College

International and Comparative Law Review, vol. 30 (2007), pp. 211-222; Jhazbhay, Iqbal: “Somaliland’s Post-War

Reconstruction: Rubble to Rebuilding,” International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, vol. 3, no. 1 (2008), pp.

59-93; International Crisis Group: “Somaliland: Democratisation and Its Discontents,” Africa Report, no. 66 (Brussels:

ICG, 2003); idem: “Somaliland: Time for African Union Leadership,” ibid., no. 110 (2006); Abokor, Adan Yusuf ,

Steve Kibble, Mark Bradbury, Haroon Ahmed Yusuf & Georgina Barrett: Further Steps to Democracy. The Somaliland

Parliamentary Elections, September 2005 (London: Progressio, 2005). 52

Höhne, Markus V.: “Political Identity, Emerging State Structures and Conflict in Northern Somalia,” Journal of

Modern African Studies, vol. 44, no. 3 (2006), pp. 397-414; idem: “Mimesis and Mimicry in Dynamics of State and

Identity Formation in Northern Somalia,”Africa, vol. 79, no. 2 (2009), pp. 252-281; Hagmann, Tobias & idem:

“Failures of the State Failure Debate: Evidence from the Somali Territories,” Journal of International Development, vol.

21, no. 1 (2008), pp. 42-57; Doornbos, Martin: “When Is a State a State? Exploring Puntland,” in Piet Konings, Wim

van Binsbergen & Gerti Hesseling (eds.): Trajectoires de libération en Afrique contemporaine (Paris: Karthala, 2000),

pp. 125-139; International Crisis Group: “Somalia: The Trouble with Puntland,” Africa Briefing, no. 64 (Brussels: ICG:

2009). 53

Haldén, Peter: “Somalia: Failed State or Nascent States-System?” FOI Somali Papers, no. 1 (Stockholm: Swedish

Defence Research Agency, 2008), pp. 53-56. 54

Laitin, David D.: “Somali Territorial Claims in International Perspective,” Africa Today, vol. 23, no. 2 (1976), pp. 29-

38; Jaenen, C.J.: “The Somali Problem,” African Affairs, vol. 56, no. 223 (1957), pp. 147-157; Barnes, Cedric: “The

Somali Youth League, Ethiopian Somalis and the Greater Somalia Idea, c. 1946-48,” Journal of Eastern African Studies,

vol. 1, no. 2 (2007), pp. 277-291. 55

Thompson, Vincent B.: “The Phenomenon of Shifting Frontiers: The Kenya-Somalia Case in the Horn of Africa,

1880s-1970s,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 30, no. 1 (1995), pp. 1-40; Castagno, A. A.: “The Somali-

Kenyan Controversy: Implications for the Future,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (1964), pp. 165-

188; Turton, E. R : “Somali Resistance to Colonial Rule and the Development of Somali Political Activity in Kenya

1893-1960,” Journal of African History, vol. 13, no. 1 (1972), pp. 119-143; Mburu, Nene: Bandits on the Border. The

Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity (Trenton, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 2005), pp. 64-80 & passim. 56

Hagmann, Tobias: “Beyond Clanishness and Colonialism: Understanding Political Disorder in Ethiopia’s Somali

Region, 1991-2004,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 43, no. 4 (2005), pp. 509-536; Samatar, Abdi Ismail:

“Ethiopian Federalism: Autonomy versus Control in the Somali Region,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 6 (2004),

pp. 1131-1154; Bogale, Ayalneh & Benedikt Korf: “To Share or Not to Share? (Non)Violence, Scarcity and Resource

Access in Somali Region, Ethiopia,” Journal of Development Studies, vol. 43, no. 4 (2007), pp. 743-765; Markakis,

John: “The Somali in Ethiopia,” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 23, no. 70 (1996), pp. 567-570; idem: “The

Somali in the New Political Order of Ethiopia,” ibid., vol. 21, no. 59 (1994), pp. 71-79; Khalif, Mohamud H. & Martin

Doombos: “The Somali Region in Ethiopia: a Neglected Human Rights Tragedy,” ibid., vol. 29, no. 91 (2002), pp. 73-

94; Human Rights Watch: “Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the Ogaden Area of

Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State,” Report, no. 1-56432-322-6 (2008).

23

57 On his way to power see Laitin, David D.: “The War in the Ogaden: Implications for Siyaad's Role in Somali

History,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (1979), pp. 95-115; Sheik-Abdi, Abdi: “Ideology and

Leadership in Somalia,” ibid., vol. 19, no. 1 (1981), pp. 163-172; Laitin, David D.: “The Political Economy of Military

Rule in Somalia,” ibid., vol. 14, no. 3 (1976), pp. 449-468; Lewis, I. M.: “The Politics of the 1969 Somali Coup,” ibid.,

vol. 10, no. 3 (1972), pp. 383-408. 58

Adam, Hussein M.: “Somalia: A Terrible Buty Being Born?,” in Zartman (ed.): op. cit. (note 197), pp. 69-90; Laitin,

David D.: “Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention,” in Walter & Snyder (eds.): op. cit. (note 228), pp. 146-

180; idem: “Somali Civil Wars,” in Taisler M. Ali & Robert O. Matthews (eds.): Civil Wars in Africa. Roots and

Resolution (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 1999), pp. 169-192; Africa Watch & Physicians for Human

Rights: No Mercy in Mogadishu. The Human Cost of the Conflict and the Struggle for Relief (26 March 1992), at

www.hrw.org/ reports/1992/somalia; Blackley, Mike: “Somalia”, in Michael E. Brown & Richard N. Rosecrance (eds.):

The Costs of Conflict. Prevention and Cure in the Global Arena (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 75-90. 59

Lyons, Terrence & Ahmed I. Samatar: Somalia. State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political

Reconstruction (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), passim; Sahnoun, Mohamed: Somalia. The Missed

Opportunities (Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace, 1994), passim; Hirsch, John L. & Robert B. Oakley:

Somalia and Operation Restore Hope. Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping (Washington, DC: United States

Institute for Peace Press, 1995), passim; Durch, William J.: “Introduction to Anarchy: Humanitarian Intervention and

‘State-Building’ in Somalia,” in idem (ed.): UN Peacekeeping, American Politics and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 311-366; Clark, Jeffrey: “Debacle in Somalia: Failure of Collective

Response,” in Lori Fisler Damrosch (ed.): Enforcing Restraint. Collective Intervention in International Conflicts (New

York: Council of Foreign Relations Press, 1994), pp. 205-240; Sapir, Debarati G. & Hedwig Deconinck: “The Paradox

of Humanitarian Assistance and Military Intervention in Somalia,” in Thomas G. Weiss (ed.): The United Nations and

Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 151-172; Lewis, Ioan & James Mayall: “Somalia,” in James

Mayall (ed.): The New Interventionism 1991-1994. United Nations Experience in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia and

Somalia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 94-126; Findlay, Trevor: The Use of Force in Peace

Operations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 142-148 and 166-218; Daniel, Donald C.F. & Bradd C. Hayes

with Chantal de Jonge Outraat: Coercive Inducement and the Containment of International Crisis (Washington, DC:

Unites States Institute of Peace Press, 1999), pp. 79-112; Wheeler, Nicholas J.: Saving Strangers. Humanitarian

Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 172-207. 60

Jan, Amin: “Somalia: Building Sovereignty or Restoring Peace,” in Elizabeth M. Cousens & Chetan Kumar (eds.):

Peacebuilding as Politics. Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp. 53-88;

Lortan, Fiona: “Africa Watch. Rebuilding the Somali State,” African Security Review, vol. 9, no.5/6 (Pretoria: Institute

for Security Studies, 2000), pp. 94-103; Anonymous: “Goverment Recognition in Somalia and Regional Political

Stability in the Horn of Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 49, no. 2 (2002), pp. 247-272, especially pp.

252-254; Streleau, Susanne & S’Fiso Ngesi: “Somalia: Beginning the Journey from Anarchy to Order,” in Erik

Doxtader & Charles Villa-Vicencio (eds.): Through Fire with Water. The Roots of Division and the Potential for

Reconliation in Africa (Cape Town: David Philips Publishers, 2003), pp. 154-185, especially pp. 155-156; International

Crisis Group: “Somalia: Countering Terrorism in a Failed State,” Africa Report, no. 45 (Brussels: ICG, 2002), pp. 5-7;

idem: “A Blueprint for Peace in Somalia,” ibid., no. 59 (2003), p. 3; Doornbos, Martin: “Somalia: Alternative Scenarios

for Political Reconstruction,” African Affairs, no. 101 (2002), pp. 93-107. 61

ICG: “A Blueprint for Peace” (op. cit., note 256), p. 1. 62

Available at www.iss.co.za/AF/profiles/Somalia/charterfeb04.pdf. 63

International Crisis Group: “Biting the Somali Bullit,” Africa Reports, no. 79 (Brussels: ICG, 2004); idem: “Somalia:

Continuation of War by Other Means,” ibid., no. 88 (2004). 64

It was instituted by the UN Security Council in its resolution 733 of 23 January 1992, under Chapter VII of the UN

Charter. Paragraph 5 called on all states to “”immediately implement a general and complete embargo on all deliveries

of weapons and military equipment to Somalia until the Council decides otherwise.” While certain exemptions from the

embargo were decided in UNSCR paragraphs 6-7, the same resolution explicitly maintained that the embargo as such

remains in force. 65

International Crisis Group: “Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State,” Africa Report, no.147 (Brussels: ICG,

2008), pp. 10-11; Bruton, Bronwyn: “In the Quicksands of Somalia,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 6 (2009), pp. 79-94;

Dagne, Ted: “Somalia: Prospects for a Lasting Peace,” Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 20, no. 2 (2009), pp. 95-112. 66

Feldman, Stacy & Brian Slattery: “Living Without a Government in Somalia: An Interview with Mark Bradbury,”

Journal of International Affairs, vol. 57, no. 1 (2003), pp. 201-217; Menkhaus, Kent: “Governance without

Government in Somalia: Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping,” International Security, vol. 31, no. 3

(2006), pp. 74-106; idem: “Local Security Systems in Somali East Africa,” in Louise Andersen, Bjørn Møller & Finn

24

Stepputat (eds.): Fragile States and Insecure People? Violence, Security, and Statehood in the Twenty-First Century

(Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 67-97; Hagmann, Tobias & Markus Hoehne: “Failures of the State

Failure Debate: Evidence from the Somali Territories,” Journal of International Development, vol. 21, no. 1 (2009), pp.

42-57; Le Sage, Andre: Stateless Justice in Somalia. Formal and Informal Rule of Law Initiatives (Geneva: Centre for

Humanitarian Dialogue, 2005); Osimbajo, Yemi: “Legality in a Collapsed State: The Somali Experience,” International

and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4 (1996), pp. 910-923. 67

On the clan system and diya payment see Lewis, Ioan M.: Blood and Bone. The Kall of Kinship in Somali Society

(Lawrencevill,. NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994), pp. 102-106; Mansur. Abdalla Omar: “The Nature of the Somali Clan

System,” in Ali Jimale Ahmed (ed.): The Invention of Somalia (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1995), pp. 117-134;

Luling, Virginia: “Genealogy as Theory, Genealogy as Tool: Aspects of Somali ‘Clanship’,” Social Identities, vol. 12,

no. 4 (2006), pp. 471-485; Barnes, Cedric: “U dhashay—Ku dhashay: Genealogical and Territorial Discourse in Somali

History,” ibid., pp. 487-498; Contini, Paolo: “The Evolution of Blood-Money for Homicide in Somalia,” Journal of

African Law, vol. 15, no. 1 (1971), pp. 77-84; Gundel, Joakim with Ahmed A. Omar Dharbaxo: The Predicament of the

“Oday.” The Role of Traditional Structures in Security, Rights, Law and Development in Somalia (Nairobi: Danish

Refugee Council, 2006). 68

Le Sage: op. cit. (note 261); Osimbajo, Yemi: “Legality in a Collapsed State: The Somali Experience,” International

and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4 (1996), pp. 910-923. 69

Hansen, Stig Jarle: “Private Security and Local Politics in Somalia,” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 35,

no.118 (2008), pp. 585-598. 70

Little, Peter D.: Somalia: Economy without State (Oxford: James Currey, 2003), passim; Mubarak, Jamil A.: “A

Case of Private Supply of Money in Stateless Somalia,” Journal of African Economies, vol. 11, no. 3 (2003), pp. 309-

325; idem: “The ‘Hidden Hand’ Behind the Resilience of the Stateless Economy of Somalia,” World Development, vol.

25, no. 12 (1997), pp. 2027-2041; Leeson, Peter T.: “Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government

Collapse,” Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 35, no. 4 (2007), pp. 689-710; Nenova, Tatiana & Tim Harford:

“Anarchy and Invention. How Does Somalia’s Private Sector Cope Without Government?” Note, no. 280 (Washington,

DC: Public Policy for the Private Sector, World Bank, 2004); Reno, William:: “Somalia and Survival in the Shadow of

the Global Economy,” QEH Working Papers, no. 100 (Oxford: Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, 2003);

Webersik, Christian: “Mogadishu: an Economy Without a State,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 8 (2006), pp.

1463-1480. 71

On the 1998 attacks see Champagne, Becky (lead ed.): Anatomy of a Terrorist Attack. An In-Depth Investigation into

the 1998 Bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (Pittsburg: Matthew B. Ridgway Center, 2005). 72

Prunier, Gerard: “A World of Conflict Since 9/11: The CIA Coup in Somalia,” Review of African Political Economy,

vol. 33, no. 110 (2006), pp. 749-752; McGregor, Andrew: “Warlords or Counter-Terrorists: U.S. Intervention in

Somalia,” Terrorism Focus, vol. 3, no. 21 (2006). 73

Menkhaus, Ken: “The Crisis in Somalia: Tragedy in Five Acts,” African Affairs, vol. 100, no. 204 (2007), pp. 357-

390. 74

Bryden, Matt:“Can Somalia Salvage Itself?” Current History, vol. 105, no. 691 (2006), pp. 225-228; Barnes, Cedric

& Harun Hassan: “The Rise and Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts,” Briefing Paper, no. AFP BP 07/02 (London:

Chatham House, 2007); Stevenson, Jonathan: “Risks and Opportunities in Somalia,” Survival, vol. 49, no. 2 (2007), pp.

5-20; Shay, Shaul: Somalia Between Jihad and Restoration (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008), pp. 93-128 &

passim; Spencer, Robert: “Somalia: Rise and Fall of an Islamist Regime,” Journal of International Security Affairs, no.

13 (2007), pp. 31-37. 75

Tadesse, Medhane: Al-Ittihad. Political Islam and Black Economy in Somalia (Addis Ababa: Meag, 2002); Le Sage,

Andre: “Prospects for al Itihad and Islamist Radicalism in Somalia,” Review of African Political Ecnomy, vol. 28, no.

89 (2001), pp. 472-477. 76

Marchal, Roland: “Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War,” in Alex de Waal (ed.): Islamism and Its

Enemies in the Horn of Africa (London: Hurst & Co, 2004), pp. 114-145. See also Vikør, Knut S.: “Sufi Brotherhoods

in Africa,” in Nehemia Levtzion & Randall L. Pouwels (ed.): The History of Islam in Africa (Oxford: James Currey,

2000), pp. 441-476; Lewis, I.M.: “Sufism in Somaliland: A Study in Tribal Islam,” parts I and II, Bulletin of the School

of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 17, no. 3 (1955), pp. 581-602, and ibid., vol. 18, no. 1 (1956), pp. 145-160. 77

Harmony Project: Al Qaeda’s (Mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa (Westpoint, NY: Combating Terrorism Center,

United States Military Academy, 2007). 78

Statement by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, July 2007, quoted in Blanchard, Christopher: “Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving

Ideology,” CRS Reports for Congress, no. RL32759 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2007), pp. 13-

14.

25

79 Hansen, Stig Jarle: “Misspent Youth. Somalia’s Shabab Insurgents,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, September 2008, pp.

16-20; Marchal, Roland: “A Tentative Assessment of the Somali Harakat Al-Shabaab,” Journal of Eastern African

Studies, vol. 3, no. 3 (2009), pp. 381-404; Bruton, Bronwyn E.: “Somalia: A New Approach,” Council Special Report,

no. 52 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2010); Pantucci, Raffaello: “Understanding the al-Shabaab

Networks,” Policy Analysis, no. 49 (Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2009); 80

Human Rights Watch: “Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu,” Human Rights Watch, vol. 19, no. 12A

(2007); idem: “‘So Much to Fear’: War Crimes and Devastation in Somalia,” HRW Report, no. 1-56432-415-x (2008). 81

“African Union Pledges to Reinforce Its Somalia Force,” BBC News, 27 July 2010, at www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-

africa-10753009.