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Somalia's Transitional Institutions Snap
7 Aug 7, 2008 - 6:15:30 PM
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Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
In late July and early August, Somalia's internationally recognized and ineffectual Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) ruptured and deadlocked into factions led by its president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, and its prime minister, Nur "Adde" Hassan Hussein. Following fast on the heels of an organizational split in the coalition opposing the T.F.G. politically and militarily - the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (A.R.S.) - the collapse of the T.F.G. has thrown Somalia into a new version of the fragmented political condition that had characterized the country before the spring of 2006, when the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.) mounted a revolution to transform Somalia into an Islamic state based on Shari'a law and gained control of most of south-central Somalia, until it was dispersed by an Ethiopian military invasion in December 2006 that was supported by the United States.
The severe rift in the T.F.G., which was precipitated when Nur Adde removed former warlord Mohammad Dheere from his positions of governor of the Banadir region and mayor of Somalia's official capital, Mogadishu, and Yusuf refused to sign off on that decision, replicated a schism that had riven the T.F.G. prior to the aborted Courts revolution, when Yusuf faced off against then parliamentary speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who is now a leading figure in the diplomatic wing of the A.R.S. At that time, the rivalry between Yusuf's and Hassan's factions led for a period to the T.F.G. executive and the transitional parliament basing themselves in different "capitals," rendering the transitional institutions inoperative. Whether or not it leads to physical separation, the current split in the T.F.G. signals a similar structural failure.
Always fragile and riddled with conflict, the T.F.G., which emerged in 2004 as the result of drawn-out negotiations in Kenya brokered by Western donor powers, the United Nations and Somalia's regional neighbors, was the fourteenth attempt by external actors to save Somalia from the statelessness into which it had fallen after divergent clan-based movements succeeded in toppling dictator Siad Barre's regime in 1991, but failed to agree on a power-sharing formula that would preserve a central government. After Barre's fall, Somalia fragmented into local power centers, often dominated by clan-based warlords. The northwestern portion of the post-independence Somali state quickly seceded and became the self-declared republic of Somaliland; later, the northeast declared its provisional autonomy as the Puntland State of Somalia. The southern and central regions became a patchwork of contested and presumptive authorities. By the winter of 2006, the T.F.G. clearly had become yet another government in name only.
Born of Somalia's fragmentation, the Islamic Courts movement began as local
initiatives by businessmen and clans to provide a measure of order in Mogadishu, which had been carved up by predatory warlords and their militias. As the Courts gained popularity and power, the warlords mobilized against them and leagued together in the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter- Terrorism (A.R.P.C.T.), which gained U.S. support in return for a promise, on which it never made good, to hunt down "terrorists" who were suspected of being harbored in Somalia. In the winter of 2006, the Courts confronted the A.R.P.C.T. and, in the spring, drove them out of Mogadishu and, in a whirlwind sweep, spread their revolution through most of south and central Somalia.
Somalia's revolutionary cycle lasted for approximately six months, through which the Courts were increasingly pressured to militarize by Ethiopian incursions and support for the T.F.G., which were motivated by fears that the Courts movement would spill over into its own ethnic Somali Ogaden region (Somali Regional State). As the Courts moved against Ethiopian forces protecting the T.F.G., Ethiopia gained acquiescence from the U.S., which had its own perceived interest in "anti-terrorism," in its plans to invade Somalia, and did so in December 2006, ushering in a devolutionary cycle marked by thefailure of the T.F.G. to assert authority and of Ethiopia to suppress a Courts- led insurgency that by the spring of 2008 had gained control of swathes of south and central Somalia.
By the end of 2007, the West, led by the U.S., recognized that its policy of isolating the Courts-dominated opposition to the T.F.G. was a failure and engineered the replacement of then prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, by Nur Adde, who pledged to try to reconcile with the A.R.S., which was formed in the fall of 2007 and was based in Eritrea. Through Western pressure, the diplomatic wing of the A.R.S. agreed to engage in peace talks with the T.F.G. in Djibouti in June that eventuated in an agreement on a cease-fire that was rejected by the A.R.S.'s military wing, provoking the rupture of the A.R.S. The final shoe to drop was the schism in the T.F.G., which has returned Somalia to a condition of political entropy at the state level.
The T.F.G. Snaps
From the outset, the T.F.G. was a slow train wreck waiting to happen. A contrivance of external powers, of which Somalia's traditional rival, Ethiopia, came to play the leading role, the transitional institutions were founded on clan representation, were staffed by warlords and their followers, were dependent for their existence on funding from donor powers that proved to be meager, and have never been able to base themselves fully in Mogadishu due to insufficient security there. The mix of those four factors insured that the T.F.G. would replicate clan divisions, yet would not be representative of them
or gain popular legitimacy due to its reliance on fractious and predatory warlords. Insufficient financial and development support exacerbated the tendency of officials in the T.F.G. to appropriate whatever funds that were made available for their own private use, destroying any shred of legitimacy and rendering the "government" inoperative. Conflict on the ground, much of it instigated by warlords within the T.F.G., posed an insuperable obstacle to the divided, penurious and corrupt transitional institutions. Finally, although external actors recognized the T.F.G. as the sole legitimate authority over the entire post-independence territory of Somalia, Somaliland held fast to its
independence and Puntland did not surrender its autonomy.
The preceding analysis makes clear that the T.F.G. was never more than a notional government that covered with a facade held up by external actors a socially destructive ineffectuality. Any life that the T.F.G. had was given to it by Western donor powers using the U.N. as an instrument, keeping the transitional institutions barely on life support and placing performance tests on them that they could not pass precisely by virtue of the faulty structures that the external powers had imposed. As an actual political force, the T.F.G. had no resources except for international recognition, which placed it in a posture of resentful dependency, with attendant fawning, spasms of rebellion, empty shows of serving the donors' interests, and most of all attempts to play
the donor powers for suckers as each of its factions vied for preferment.
Until the Courts revolution, the T.F.G. simply presided from afar over a devolved Somalia, the various power centers of which went their own ways and clashed with each other chronically. U.S. support for the A.R.P.C.T., whose warlords defied the T.F.G., even though they were often members of it, was a hammer blow to the government. When the Courts routed the Mogadishu warlords and began their sweep, the T.F.G. was utterly powerless to resist and was forced by donor powers and regional neighbors to enter into reconciliation talks with the I.C.U., which were favored by Hassan and resisted by Yusuf, opening up the split that has been replicated currently between Yusuf and Nur Adde, who now plays the role that Hassan once did before he defected/was dismissed from the T.F.G. When the talks failed because the Courts saw no reason to make compromises and Yusuf tried to undermine them, the T.F.G. became abjectly dependent on external support that came in the form of the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and subsequent occupation.
At the beginning of 2007, the donor powers declared that the T.F.G. had a "window of opportunity" to become a legitimate government, a judgment that was either cynical or extravagantly naive. As Ethiopia proved incapable of stemming the insurgency and the T.F.G. was unable to extend its authority, a split opened up between Yusuf and Gedi over contracts with foreign oil companies to explore for Somalia's unproven petroleum reserves. At that time, in the fall of 2007, the A.R.S. had already organized and the donor powers were ready to shift to a "reconciliation" policy, using the Gedi-Yusuf rift as an opportunity to replace Gedi with Nur Adde.
After Nur Adde assumed the post of prime minister and named a cabinet of "technocrats" to suit the West, the donor powers concentrated all their attention on bringing the T.F.G. and the pro-conciliation wing of the A.R.S. into peace talks, which resulted in the Djibouti cease-fire agreement, provoked a split in the A.R.S., and left Yusuf in his familiar position of resisting "reconciliation." The stage was set for the T.F.G. to snap.
A weak reed, upon which the external actors were leaning too heavily, the T.F.G. snapped at the end of July, when Nur Adde dismissed Dheere as governor of the Banadir region and mayor of Mogadishu, and Yusuf refused to approve the action. A snapped reed is not yet severed, but it will never recover its normal configuration; such is the case with the T.F.G.
Behind Nur Adde's attempted removal of Dheere was his interest in gaining credibility and building a power base that would be necessary for him to pursue "reconciliation." Known as the most powerful warlord in south-central Somalia before the Courts revolution, Dheere gained the most important positions of regional leadership from the T.F.G. because he controlled militias and was perceived as a strong man who was safer inside the T.F.G. than he would have been if left to his own devices. Although he is often referred to as an ally of Yusuf's, the two are united only by their respective interests in maintaining power, which translates into resistance to any power-sharing agreements that would diminish or eliminate their standing.
From Nur Adde's perspective, Dheere is an unqualified liability; he has collaborated with the Ethiopian occupation; his militias have staged brutal crackdowns in Mogadishu leading to deaths, mass population displacements and destruction of neighborhoods; and, at times, he has opposed delivery of humanitarian aid to the displaced, charging them with harboring insurgents and terrorists. As a predictable result, he has alienated the majority of Mogadishu's present and former residents, has unwittingly instigated the insurgency, and has, along with the Ethiopians, hardened elements of Mogadishu's powerful Hawiye clan against the T.F.G. and Western-sponsored reconciliation.
With reported Western support and the acquiescence of the Ethiopians under pressure from the West, Nur Adde acted against Dheere as a desperate measure to gain popular support and change the balance of power within the T.F.G. in his favor. Feeling cornered and threatened with losing the backing of his Ethiopian "allies," Yusuf struck back, producing a deadlock and setting off major ruptures in the transitional institutions, including the resignations of eleven of the fifteen members of Nur Adde's cabinet, moves in the transitional parliament to hold Nur Adde to a vote of confidence, and counter-moves to impeach Yusuf. Parliament initiated investigations of the T.F.G.'s finances, with some members accusing Yusuf of embezzlement, others raising the same charges against Nur Adde, and others tarring both the president and the prime
minister.
Despite the flurry of charges and counter-charges, the root of the T.F.G.'s breakdown is the same underlying conflict between military and diplomatic factions that generated the split between Yusuf and Hassan in 2006, and that caused the organizational rupture in the A.R.S. in the wake of the Djibouti agreement. Having attempted to impose "reconciliation" on compliant factions of the T.F.G. and the A.R.S., the donor powers have succeeded in snapping the government and rupturing the opposition, causing the diplomatic wing of the A.R.S. and both wings of the T.F.G. to weaken, and only the military wing of the A.R.S. to strengthen as it and its allies consolidate their gains on the ground. The fall-out from the "reconciliation" policy has also compromised
Ethiopia, which Garowe Online reported had called its two top generals in Somalia to Addis Ababa following the "crisis" of the T.F.G.
The Future is the Past
Lacking both a coherent opposition and a coherent government, Somalia returns to what it was during the fifteen years following the fall of Siad Barre - a patchwork of power centers, often at odds with each other and often overlapping; a patch of thorny vegetation that will cut any intruder even when the intruder can trample on it.
It is difficult to construct a scenario that would promise the revival of the A.R.S. and/or the T.F.G., and the achievement of reconciliation on a national level, even if one leaves Somaliland and Puntland out of the picture. The most probable eventuality is a drainage of power to local sub-clans and notables that are loosely administered by presumptive regional authorities, some of them allied with Islamic political and military forces, others coexisting with them in shifting arrangements, and the rest attempting to preserve their independence, sometimes under warlord rule. In the new version of the past, the question mark is how much support the Courts and their allies will generate as they pursue a strategy of consolidation and accommodation with local sub-clan and business interests.
The scenario of decentralization sketched above presumes a waning interest of external actors in shaping the configuration of power in Somalia. It appears that Ethiopia has been badly cut in the thorny patch and, having trained several thousand Somalis in "urban and rural warfare" for the T.F.G., is preparing to use them as the excuse for a withdrawal to border defense. The Western powers, having watched their successive strategies go to ground, are likely to draw back from aggressive involvement, turning their attention to other trouble spots to which they give a higher priority. The best that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could say as the A.R.S. and T.F.G. unwound was that Washington was keeping a "watchful eye" on Somalia, waiting, presumably, for "progress toward reconciliation." U.N. special envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, told the Security Council even before the T.F.G. snapped that the Djibouti agreement could not bring peace to Somalia "for a single day," and warned that it was "time for bold action by a united international community," adding that division among Somalia's "stakeholders" was hindering implementation of the Djibouti agreement. The director of U.N. peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, expressed reservations about sending a U.N.- sponsored "stabilization force" - called for in the Djibouti agreement - to
replace the Ethiopians, asking: "The people who sign agreements ... how much of the guns on the ground do they control?" One should expect none of the "bold action" urged by Ould Abdallah and a good deal of handwringing and pious admonitions.
Within Somalia, both Yusuf and Nur Adde have lost power through the snapping of the T.F.G. Yusuf appears to be the big loser; having alienated the West and no longer sure of being able to count on Ethiopia, Yusuf is increasingly isolated and is likely to turn his attention to restoring - if he can - his power base in an increasingly troubled Puntland. (Local media report that Yusuf has begun to funnel money back to Puntland in order to arm the sub-state's militias to take back the Sool region, which was recently occupied/annexed by Somaliland.) Nur Adde has also been weakened and - as long as Dheere remains in office - has been deprived of any political capital and credibility. His negotiating partner in the A.R.S., Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad, has been hobbled by his lack of a military card to play and by Nur Adde's inability to be a credible interlocutor. That leaves, among the leading domestic players, the head of the A.R.S.'s military wing, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, as the only figure who has increased his power, although he is by no means in control of the multi-faceted armed resistance.
It has taken two years for Somalia to fall from the height of a revolutionary cycle, through a devolutionary cycle, to a return to political entropy at the state level. Perhaps the retreat of external actors, which given Somalia's geo- strategic importance can only be partial, will provide Somali factions some breathing room, if not to reconcile, then to begin to make deals among themselves that the parties will perceive to be in their respective interests. That, at least, has been the way of Somali society throughout its history, when Somalis are left free of malign or misguided intervention from the outside. What Somalis do not need is more imposed "solutions" and trompe l'oeil "windows of opportunity." What Somalis do need is more forbearance toward each other and less forthputting. Fulling the negative and positive requirements, however, might be too much to expect.
Expect a decentralized Somalia with endemic conflicts that might be contained and even diminished by the resilience and resourcefulness of the Somalis themselves. Political entropy at the state level offers the chance for initiatives among multiple power centers.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein,
Professor of Political Science, Purdue University
weinstem@purdue.edu
©2008
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