SIGNS OF HOPE FOR SOMALIA
London conference looks toward future, but security woes mean West will seek a central government
Somalia has known little peace since the evening of Jan. 26, 1991, when Siad Barre abandoned his bombed and burning presidential palace, emptied the contents of the country’s treasury into his remaining battle tank and sped off into the southern desert.
But now, in a slow, demanding and bloody battle against radical Islamic al- Shabaab fighters who have controlled much of the country’s south, troops from Somalia’s neighbouring African countries are succeeding where nearly 20 years ago a massive United Nations- mandated expeditionary force failed.
They have brought security and the prospects of a bright new dawn to key areas of the destroyed land.
Since al- Shabaab fighters took over much of the south of the country in 2007 as people sought any respite from 15 years of chaos, African Union ( AU) troops, initially mostly from Uganda and with United Nations backing, have attempted to defend the internationally created Transitional Federal Government ( TFG) in Mogadishu.
For years the African Union troops were able to hold only a few blocks of the capital and the TFG was an almost completely non- functional institution with no credibility and a well- earned reputation for corruption.
But in recent months the picture has changed.
First the flight of refugees from a famine in the south to neighbouring Kenya prompted the Nairobi government to mount an invasion to stop alShabaab fighters preventing international aid getting to people in need.
Then Ethiopia invaded from the north. On Tuesday, its troops captured from al- Shabaab the key central town of Baidoa.
Meanwhile the African Union forces in Mogadishu have slowly and surely fought street- to- street and now control the capital.
However, as leaders of the various Somali factions gathered in London on Thursday with representatives from neighbouring states and interested distant countries, including the United States and Canada, to pencil in a road map for the future, only the foolishly optimistic could believe this is the beginning of the end or even the end of the beginning.
The whole enterprise could still fail over a clash between what kind of government and institutions outsiders think Somalia needs, and what Somalis themselves prefer and what, ever since the flight of the old dictator Siad Barre, they have shown works and works well.
For non- African outsiders, which means the U. S., European and Asian countries plagued by Somali- based pirates attacking their shipping in the Indian Ocean or fearful that the country will become a base for international terrorism now that al- Shabaab has publicly allied itself with al- Qaida, the issue is security.
This line of thought leads inevitably to the conclusion that what Somalia needs is a strong centralized government in the old capital, Mogadishu, capable of defeating or neutering alShabaab, eradicating the pirates and overseeing a reconstruction program.
It is this approach that has coloured the creation in 2004 of the United Nations- backed TFG whose mandate expires in August.
Part of the purpose of the London conference is to envisage what comes next. It will probably be a constituent assembly which will draw up a new constitution and oversee direct elections for a new parliament.
But as long as security considerations dominate, the pressure from outside will be for the creation of a central government that, while it may have Somali characteristics, is culturally recognizable to the West.
If that happens it will be a mistake and failure to understand the abundant evidence on the ground today of why Siad Barre was ousted and how very many Somalis have coped with two decades of chaos, often successfully.
The Cold War may have avoided conflict between NATO and the Soviet Bloc, but it was a very hot war for many of their proxies and surrogates.
Siad Barre’s was Washington’s man in the Horn of Africa. He imposed a central government, often by the expedient of the mass slaughter of his subjects, on a country whose governance is by experience and cultural preference based on clan and family obligations, unwritten law and Islam.
Since 1991, for example, the northern half of Somalia has hived itself off as Somaliland and, despite the lack of international recognition, held two democratic elections, including peaceful changes of government, and is prospering. There is no popular enthusiasm in Somaliland to rejoin the south.
Similarly, other regions of the old Somalia such as Puntland and Galmudug, have set themselves up as selfgoverning regions and will not easily be dragged back into a unitary state.
The London conference would do well to look for its road map to what has succeeded in Somaliland rather than what has failed in Somalia.