Somalia: In the Vestiges of an Intrastate War - Essay Example

Somalia: In the Vestiges of an Intra War Somalia to me became post-Cold War Africa. . . . As Somalia went, so might go a host of other African countries, teetering between strongman rule and violent anarchy. Africa was, in that sense, a series of Somalias waiting to happen: in Zaire, in Sudan, in Nigeria, maybe even in Kenya. . . . Somalia, then, became the prism through which I came to view the rest of Africa. It was to become the metaphor for my own disillusionment. Keith Richburg Journalist, quoted from his book, Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa (Basic Books, 1997) War has no ultimate good that comes out of it. State conflicts do not only hinder the economic stability of a nation, but the long-term emotional trauma it could inflict to its people would be more detrimental. The fear, the starvation and the lives wasted always haunt not only the nation to where it is occurring, it affects the whole world in the final analysis. In our present age, Somalia has always been the epitome of poverty. Pictures of toothpick-thin Somali children have flooded the magazines all over the world, with drooping eyes seemingly begging for our help. Until now, their state conditions had barely changed. Almost 15 years after Somalia fell apart in 1991 in spate of clan-based rebellions against the genocidal, 22-year dictatorship of President Mohammed Siad Barre, the fear and the loathing in this country still exists. Since 1991, there have been fourteen efforts at national reconciliation; to date, none has been successful. Various groupings of Somali factions have sought to control the national territory (or portions thereof) and have fought small wars with one another. Dahir Riyale Kahin was elected President of the self-declared "Republic of Somaliland," which is made up of the former northwest provinces of the Somali republic, in presidential elections deemed free and fair by international observers in May 2003. In 1998, the area of Puntland in the northeast declared itself autonomous (although not independent) as the "State of Puntland" with its capital at Garowe. Puntland declared it would remain autonomous until a federated Somalia state was established (US Department of State, 2005). Good Morning, Somalia! As we all know, the terrible famine of 1993 in the south was entirely induced by civil war. A US- and UN-led humanitarian intervention failed to understand Somali complexities, was humiliated, and when it left in 1995 had only instigated more conflicts to arise. The destruction of the infrastructure in the south and central areas, including schools, clinics and buildings of any significance similarly annihilated any form of hope to float among its citizens. Relentless efforts of other African powers and the international system to abominate war have led to a national vacuum. Insisting “Somalia” be reunified under a joint administration had not brought their leaders to senses. Accordingly, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, leader of the relatively peaceful and homogeneous northeastern enclave of Puntland and a candidate just about acceptable to other warlords, took power in October 2004. This was the result of a long drawn-out, internationally mediated negotiation and election process in Nairobi, Kenya. However, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) remains, squabbling at international expense over the nationality of possible peacekeepers to help them go home. Somaliland, which has been an independently functioning political and administrative entity since 1993, refused to participate in this peace process and maintains a tireless quest for separate recognition (Black, July 2005). Waking up during mornings has never become better in Somalia. With its governance-free condition, central and southern Somalia being run by local armed warlords, the dizzyingly complex and fluid state of allegiance and feud leave the country wallowing in fear, poverty and hunger. Crossing the shifting boundaries between their terrains is risky, depending on a persons clan lineage and the local militias mood. However, people manage. There has even been a renaissance of colleges, hospitals and other facilities in Mogadishu, thanks to inward investment from the Somali diaspora. The extremely free trade environment suits speculators and entrepreneurs of a particular stamp, particularly those in the qat trade: chewing this narcotic leaf is epidemic among men. As long as a person is not attractive as a ransom prospect and has not excited an irrational gunmans ire, normal life goes on. Civilians, especially women and young people, express exasperation at the credibility given to warlords by external powers. If they could be starved of finance, guns and glory at the negotiating table, peaceful cooperation on the ground would become more practicable. Civilian bodies and local authorities, with support from the diaspora and external agencies, provide the only basic services. Businesses or privateers keep roads driveable, vehicles running, phones ringing and lighthouses beaming. The very few resident international UN and NGO staff are mostly African; offices, locally staffed, operate under armed guard, directed from Kenya. A number of NGOs, run for the most part by courageous Somali women, function despite the risks. These, the local people and UNICEF provide most of the resources for health programs and schools (Black, July 2005). At the height of the humanitarian crisis in Somalia, eight hundred to nine hundred people were dying each day. In air-conditioned offices across the ocean, dedicated and well-intentioned people packed up their briefcases and headed home, wondering if tomorrow would bring the political will necessary to stop the suffering. In the morning, they would return to work, check faxes from the field, and begin another day of wondering. Guidelines for political will or wont, judging from current humanitarian crises, do not appear to be guidelines at all but simply streams of thought provoked into improvisation by unexpected, yet expected, human tragedy. There is no substitute for prevention of crises; the best time to plan for emergencies is always yesterday. Preventive diplomacy is the latest conceptual fashion. One solution could be the Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflict. The emphasis on prevention has been correctly characterized by one commentator as "an idea in search of a strategy" (Lund 1994, p. 27). Such preventive actions as the symbolic deployment of a detachment of U.N. soldiers or the expanded use of fact-finding missions, human rights monitors, and early warning systems are beginning to be implemented. And although ultimately the emphasis will have to be on economic and social development as a necessary, if insufficient, condition to prevent conflict, effective prevention today and tomorrow will necessarily also entail the deployment of troops. However, if they are to be an effective deterrent, such troops must be provided with contingency plans and reserve firepower for immediate retaliation against aggressors. In addition, a well-funded non-government organization (NGO) may not necessarily be a complement to a coordinated action during an intrastate war. What other humanitarian actors and war victims may need from an NGO may not be the desire or reflect the interests of the NGOs main financial contributors. Noncombatants in a safe area may need a rebuilt sewage system to stop the spread of disease, but NGO donors may restrict the NGOs activity to providing food. When one considers that there may be over two hundred NGOs in an area providing food and few working on water sanitation, it is easy to understand the need for a more centralized coordination of humanitarian activity. The staff experienced in field operations knew the needs of the people through close work with local humanitarians and grassroots groups, but field staffs’ missions can be held hostage by donors. Somalia represents an example of the need for NGO coordination. The Refugee Policy Group reported that CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, the Red Cross, World Food Program (WFP), and the UNHCR focused largely on food distributions, which were clearly needed, while other programs were "comparatively underrepresented--water, sanitation, essential drugs, case-finding, public health worker outreach, surveillance, and other health interventions" In addition to donor constraints, NGOs’ past activities dictated their activities in Somalia, whether they were needed or not (Refuge Policy Group, 1994). Anatomy of an Intrastate War Using the Security Dilemma theory to explain Somalia’s clan conflict, international relations experts see conflict as an offensive approach, whereby one actor (in this case, the clan) prepares to defend itself, which is perceived by another actor as threatening (Kaufman, 855). In David Laitin’s paper Somalia—Civil War and International Interventions (1997), he suggested that even though there were many threats to survival and security that may have motivated the Somali clans to arm themselves, such as the fear of enemy clans gaining state power after Said lost power in 1991, the security dilemma may not have been a principle motivator for the actions taken. Laitin cites that it was not security playing primary role, but perhaps a desire to ensure a future Somali state. Until 1991, the Security Dilemma may be a good explanation for clans fighting among themselves, but when Said was taken out of office in 1991, it is no longer valid reasoning for why the fighting could not cease to allow unification. Laitin pointed out that the civil war that broke out in Somalia after 1991 was not due to the breakdown of the Central State and a resulting violent anarchy because primarily no one clan was seeking State control. Moreover, Laitin also noted that country experts usually blame the causes of that intrastate conflict on the segmentary lineage system, the brutality and corruption of Siad’s regime, the international agreements that allowed Somalia to become heavily militarized, and ecological conditions worsened in the late 1980s. Though ecological conditions in the late 1980s in Somalia were difficult, this is but another local condition of the conflict while still others argue against local conditions as the main cause. Suggesting the conflict and civil war in Somalia is due to local conditions is only a testament that the international system is not a viable option in preventing future conflicts of other countries who do not necessarily have Somali like “symptoms” of war. International relations experts will claim otherwise. The UN Security Council had relentlessly played crucial roles in the development of UN peacekeeping as a creative way of honouring at least part of the UNs foundational commitment to preserving the post-Second World War order. The use of military personnel in peacekeeping, observation, policing and humanitarian roles developed in the context of a compromise between the needs of the era and the superpower balance, and an equally difficult balance between a clear UN role in interstate and intrastate conflicts. Despite several humanitarian intervention blunders during the 1990s in Africa, the realist position of non-intervention in conflicts is problematic. Indeed, the intervention in Somalia with its catastrophic result was a big shock for the international community and for all those countries that suffered fatalities among their military contingents. The thought of intervening in the genocide in Rwanda in the mid-1990s also became more of a concern (Evans, 1994). Even today, deploying more UN troops, where the level of violence has surpassed what is normally acceptable to a Western mentality, is presenting particular difficulties. Intractable forms of conflict, like intrastate wars, are rooted in a multiplicity of conflicting and overlapping tensions and are marked by “self-sustaining patterns of hostility and violence’ revolving around ‘control of the states political institutions and/or the search for national autonomy and self-determination” (Buzan 1992, p. 187). According to Buzan, such conflicts inevitably involve regional dynamics or ‘regional security complexes’. Both local and regional dynamics, as well as the structural inconsistencies of the international system over sovereignty, non-intervention, and self-determination mean that it is virtually impossible to address contemporary forms of conflicts underlying issues in the Westphalian framework. The most that can be achieved is a fragile realignment of interests and resources, which then must be implemented and managed in the future, achieved by peacekeeping, mediation or negotiation, and a mixture of high-level, impartial or partial intervention, based on the application of external resources, be they diplomatic or material (Stedman 1988, p. 9). It is also recognized that groups are central to violent conflict, the questions become why and how they are mobilized. In order to mobilize groups, there must be some way in which groups are differentiated from one another. Studies show a number of contemporary examples. In Central Africa, ethnic identity has been the major source of group definition and mobilization; in Central America, group identification and organization occurred along class lines, but with some overlapping ethnic dimensions. In the case of Somalia, the cultural source of group differentiation and mobilization was the clan (different lineages within broadly the same ethnic group). The Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland has undertaken an extensive effort to track and code the relative destructive power of ongoing conflicts since 1946 (Marshall, 1999). With this, Monty Marshall includes interstate and intrastate conflicts (state versus ethnic group or between rival political groups); the main criterion for inclusion is organized political violence (not incidental or accidental clashes between armed forces or nonsystematic campaigns). Factors such as fatalities and casualties, resource depletion, infrastructure destruction, and population dislocations (refugees) are combined with subjective elements (psychological trauma or adverse changes to political culture) reflected a huge impact of the violence on the society experiencing conflict. With this, Bruce Jentleson observes that the outbreak of “mass violence” marks the crossing of a Rubicon, “on the other side of which resolution and even limitation of the conflict become much more difficult” (2000, p. 330-331). Conclusion As the international community started to pay closer attention to an expanded security agenda, its ability to protect peace was sorely tested in a place like Somalia. Beyond the moral imperative to respond to the worst cases of violence involving humanitarian and human rights disasters, the international system found itself ill-equipped to address intrastate or local conflicts appropriately. The solutions would never be obvious or readily available. The dire need for policy community to turn to experts, researchers, and policy analysts for insights will be very helpful in carefully suggesting compromise. As decision-makers struggled to respond to each crisis on an ad hoc basis, the research and policy analysis community faced an equally difficult task. For almost fifty years, academics and researchers had basically addressed the twin issues of international security and intrastate affairs separately. Thus, as a part of the world community, the people could persuade their governments or the UN to strive and learn the lessons they had gained in dealing with the intrastate conflicts in Somalia. The people there have waited too long and we could no longer stand seeing their children in magazine covers showcasing that nothing happened in the almost twenty years of efforts of the UN and the African nations to alleviate their conditions there. We had seen enough of it. The next best option should be taken in to Somalia by now. Works Cited Black, Maggie. Somalia (Country Profile). New Internationalist, (380), July 2005. Buzan, Barry. Third World Regional Security in Structural Perspective, in Brian L. Job (ed.), The Insecurity Dilemma: National Security of Third World States, (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner), 1992. Evans, Gareth. Cooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict, Foreign Policy, (No. 96), Fall 1994. Jentleson, Bruce W. “Preventive Diplomacy: Analytical Conclusions and Policy Lessons, ” in Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post–Cold War World, ed. Bruce W. Jentleson (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 2000. Laitin, David. D. Somalia: Civil War and International Intervention. Institute for War and Peace Studies, February 1997. Lund, Michael S. Preventive Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy ( Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press), 1994. Marshall, Monty G. Current Status of the Worlds Major Episodes of Political Violence: Hot Wars and Hot Spots. Report to the State Failure Task Force, (College Park, MD: Center for Systemic Peace), 2000. Refugee Policy Group. Somalia: Lives Lost, Lives Saved (Washington, D.C.: Refugee Policy Group), November 1994. Stedman, Stephen John. Peacemaking in Civil War International Mediation in Zimbabwe, (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner), 1988. US Department of State. Background Note: Somalia. Bureau of African Affairs, October 2005. Acquired online last December 6, 2005 at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2863.htm. Read More