Violent conflicts in Somalia continue to cost lives, draw in funding and demand attention from the international community. Somalia is no longer considered ‘stateless’, or a ‘failed state’ but the high levels of violence and conflict continue their tragic impact on people’s lives. Civilian casualty figures are consistently high – 1,154 between January and November 2019, and there have been significant attacks on international community targets.
I have worked in and on Somalia since 2013 and there are four characteristics of the multiple, intertwined, violent conflicts that seem to be counter-intuitive, yet I notice that they occur often. They are not unique to Somalia, but often Somalia seems to demonstrate other conflict lessons particularly starkly.
1. There is a system that functions
‘It’s complete chaos!’ – I’ve heard that phrase a lot and it is, perhaps, the most common misunderstanding that internationals make about Somalia. It is also reflected in literature on African development and, elsewhere challenged. Bluntly, it isn’t chaos. There is a system that functions. But it doesn’t function as we expect it to or think it should.
When I arrived to work in Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu, I – like many others who have experience of other conflict-affected countries – tried to avoid making widespread assumptions and instead apply what I had learnt from other contexts. But we all inevitably fall into our usual approaches to understanding our environment. For example, of looking for positive reinforcements of things that are familiar to us, such as patterns of political affiliations across clans, business interests, political ambitions. These approaches exacerbate our blind-spots and subconscious biases, limiting the scope of our understanding about what is actually happening and undermining our efforts to influence effective peacebuilding.
The best advice I received was to take an anthropological approach and keep asking ‘why?’: Why does it work like that? Why is that happening? Why is that not happening? What are the reasons behind this? What are the interests of those involved? Who stands to lose out from this happening/not happening?
When I forget to ask ‘why?’, Somalia becomes much more straight-forward, easier to understand. That is the warning sign that I am viewing things simplistically, because the situation is complex and it is challenging to know what is really happening. The simplistic interpretation usually misses the point.
2. There is no one enemy
Al Shabaab can often be presented as the primary driver of conflict in Somalia but the picture is more complex than this binary description: there isn’t a ‘good’ side and a ‘bad side’ (see the previous point on the dangers of over-simplifying).
Firstly, there are multiple conflicts, not just one and those conflicts are multi-layered. Social conflict and marginalisation is expressed through conflict between clans. There is a high degree of political conflict across the whole country at various different levels, including inter-state (e.g. Somalia vs Somaliland, depending whether you accept Somaliland as a separate state), intra-state (e.g. Jubaland vs Federal Government of Somalia), and localised conflict.
Secondly, there are many conflict actors involved, including criminal interests – it’s not just the Federal Government of Somalia and Al Shabaab. And conflict is business, e.g. for the proliferation of private security providers in Somalia. Some of those conflict actors have an active interest in perpetuating the conflict because it provides work and resources.
And thirdly, referring to Al Shabaab as ‘the Enemy’ also makes the flawed assumption that the group is a single homogenous entity. There are different factions of Al Shabaab, with different attitudes and intentions to deliver their aims.
So, why is there so much focus on Al Shabaab in discussions about security in Mogadishu? They are a major and active conflict actor. But there may be other reasons. One possibility is that maintaining the focus on Al Shabaab as the enemy is useful for the Federal Government of Somalia to justify enhanced and flexible security, and the removal of sanctions that restrict their ability to acquire arms. Either way, fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of the conflicts in Somalia are further perpetuated by the focus of the international community on Al Shabaab as the driver of instability in Somalia, rather than using a broader perspective of the various Somalia conflicts.
3. Instability is good for business
Securing and controlling resource is critical for power – this is true everywhere, not just in Somalia. The priorities for the Federal Government of Somalia have been for some time: 1) retaining power, and; 2) securing debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPCI). Holding power provides the primary position to acquire and control resources; the delayed parliamentary and presidential elections mean a longer stint in this position for the current incumbents, at least most of them. Securing HIPC debt relief would be widely considered a triumph for the existing administration as it would open the scope for new international lending to Somalia, presenting new challenges for accountability.
And conflict means money – money for those fighting (for example for the Somalia security forces and the UN-backed African Union peacekeeping mission AMISOM) and control of sources of money (for example by controlling ports and transit routes). As elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, the instability allows leaders to operate a business model, securing funds for their ‘political budgets’, to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. No-one has the monopoly on violence in Somalia. There is instead a marketplace for this, as other commodities.
Resources drive decisions in the international community too. For many of the troop and police contributing countries, the income generated by involvement in the African Union peacekeeping mission brings welcome revenue – note the ‘displeased’ reaction from Uganda and Burundi when asked to reduce their troops in AMISOM.
Understanding the resource implications of the current systems and consequences caused by any changes is critical to understanding what is happening and why.
4. We are all protagonists
The international community has its interests in and is, therefore, a protagonist in the Somalia conflicts – overtly in the form of AMISOM, and less overtly in the form of the political, diplomatic and programme delivery. Although striving to ‘Do No Harm’, any intervention, or non-intervention, in a conflict necessarily means that the interests are affected, which influences the conflict dynamics.
AMISOM provides the African Union with a high-profile mission that demonstrates the value of a multi-lateral African peace-keeping operational capability, funded externally. In Burundi the mission keeps 25,000 former rebels and troops happy. Somalia also hosts a high-profile UN mission where staff on lucrative contracts can demonstrate their field credentials, allowing a good move into their next role or promotion. And there are incentives for the IMF and World Bank too for a HIPC deal – Somalia would become a client again and a new market for loans.
The donors have their interests, including continuing disputes from elsewhere with proxies and striving to demonstrate the success of the policies and programmes.
It is hard to find a genuinely neutral party in Somalia and all of these dynamics have an impact on the conflicts in Somalia.
Philippa (Pip) Brown is Director of Conflict Insights Ltd and was an IDS Visiting Fellow from September 2019 to November 2020.
