Somalia is currently becoming caught in an existential crisis - the threat that it will disappear as a place for Somalis, as a self-organized political community.  

The crisis is directly caused by a state of frozen warfare that has been polarized in confrontation between transnationalist Islamic revolution and multi-lateral neo-colonialism. The former is represented by Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen (H.S.M.) and the latter by the coalition that has disjointedly mobilized against H.S.M. - including as one player among others Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) - and that is incompetently orchestrated by a divided international coalition composed of Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Washington and Brussels, along with the African Union and the United Nations. An emirate in a would-be caliphate or a collection of neo-colonial dependencies: Is that what Somalia's leaders want?  

The present situation is the result of the 2006 Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia, undertaken to quell the Islamic Courts revolution, and the resistance to it: frozen war between the most transnationalist elements of the Courts revolution and the most abject dependents of external powers. Nationalism is missing from the equation - the sense that the Somali people should stand on their two feet and be able to exercise some discretion over their future. That sense was there in the Courts revolution, but Washington and Addis Ababa crushed it with help from the excessive provocations of the militant Salafists. One cannot expect the Somali people, having been betrayed and punished, to try it themselves again. If the alternatives of emirate and dependency are to be avoided, then only leaders can do the job.  

The job, most generally put, is to create a strong form of political organization for post-independence Somalia that will allow it to have some self-direction in a highly competitive world of predatory states. It does not matter what form it takes at the end of a more or less protracted, but developing process: it could be a league of independent states with a unified foreign policy, a confederation, a federation, or a unitary state - in any of their myriad variations. Its political formula could take account of clan or not; it could be a formally Islamic/Islamist state or not.  

In order to do the job, the leaders would have to have two characteristics: 1) share an interest in post-independence Somalia achieving a measure of self-determination in the world; 2) be willing to work within their factions and constituencies, and across factional lines to advance that interest.  

The point here is not holding another conference - with or without foreign intervention - but of forming factions dedicated to effective, rather than merely juridical, Somali statehood within each faction, and then for the statehood factions to form links with each other, at first unsystematically and by affinity, and eventually by systematic coordination. As the statehood factions built support within their own groups and worked with each other, the basis would be laid for a popular national movement that that would give leaders a chance to withstand external pressure and would strengthen their positions within their respective factions. The movement would be a second independence movement that would tap the associative tendencies of traditional Somali dispute resolution.  

At present, the most likely result of post-independence Somalia's conflicts is multi-lateral neo-colonialism, which would most likely take the form of Balkanization, neglect by the divided predators consistent with their exploitative interests, continued domestic disorder, and a drift toward genocide/suicide. It is much less likely that H.S.M. would create an emirate, because anything is preferable to the predatory powers than that outcome, including the present frozen war and its attendant humanitarian disaster.  

The possibility of a second independence movement is offered as an alternative to multi-lateral neo-colonialism - as a description of what is required to overcome the latter. Its probability of success, were it to be initiated, was not of uppermost concern, because it did not seem that anything less could be effective.  

A Somali intellectual and activist writes: "Who has the definition of the leaders they want?" That is a question for Somalis to answer. The foregoing piece has been written as an appeal to Somalis to think about that question.  

Report Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein, Professor of Political Science, Purdue University Chicago weinstem@purdue.edu

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