… and the Scholarship on Somalia and Somaliland
The state trajectories of Somalia and Somaliland lend themselves to an investigation of the theoretical issues at stake for several reasons. Not only have the Somali territories seen numerous processes of state-making and state-breaking in their post-colonial era, but they are also particularly well-suited to study the relationship between war and state trajectories, because in the Horn of Africa this relationship has been “far more intensive, and of much longer duration, than elsewhere [in Africa]” (Clapham 2001:2). There already exists an extensive literature on Somalia, and scholarly work on Somaliland’s state-making project has also been growing, but despite this significant scholarship, notable gaps and inconsistencies remain.
One of the frequently made propositions this thesis subjects to critical scrutiny concerns the allegation that the state of Somalia was ‘unique’. Shortly after the British Protectorate of Somaliland and the Italian colony of Somalia gained independence in 1960 and decided to unify in the Somali Republic, the newly born country came to be celebrated as one of the rare authentic nations in Africa (Fitzgibbon 1982a:2). Based on their “burning sense of nationalism” (Legum/Lee 1977:31; Laitin 1977b:14) and “genuine democracy” (HRW 1990:14; Contini 1964:3; Pegg 1998:11), Somalis and their state-making endeavor were considered inimitable on the African continent. Although it is undeniable that the Somali state trajectory of the 1960s and thereafter constitutes a case of its own, I question the supposition that the Somali Republic in general and the processes that characterized its state trajectory were a “striking anomaly” (Lewis 1972:384; see also fn. 11). In highlighting the more general underlying patterns of state-making and state-breaking in Somalia, this thesis counters those arguing that “Somalis are so unique that systematic comparison can be of no benefit” (cf. Kapteijns 2001:15).
A second inconsistency addressed by this thesis regards the supposition that “the dismemberment of Somalia began right after the hasty and legally unconsummated union of Somaliland and Somalia in 1960” (Adan 1994), that the Somali state collapse started with the military coup of General Siyad Barre in 1969 (Abdullahi 2007a:43), and that “Somalia’s experience as an independent state was negative, to say the least” (Battera 2004:6). While such accounts rightly emphasize that the disintegration of the Somali Republic did not occur overnight, but was marked by long-term undercurrents, they gloss over the notable processes of state-making that were pursued in the decades after independence – and also, and as I suggest, particularly so, under Barre’s dictatorial rule in the early to mid-1970s. In analyzing the mechanisms underlying processes of state-making and state-breaking, this thesis challenges such oversimplifications and suggests that divergent state trajectories hinged less on different types of government (e.g. democratic vs. autocratic) than on progression and regression regarding institutional and socio-cognitive standardization.
Apart from these issues, further gaps remain concerning the explanation of the Somali state trajectories. One largely unanswered question is why Somalia’s project of state-making in general and nation-building, in particular, started crumbling in the late 1970s, despite an inter-state war with Ethiopia, which enhanced national sentiments in a society that was already euphoric about irredentist ideas. While some scholars suggest that it was the misfit between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ forms of governance that caused the demise of the state (Mansur 1995:115; Lewis 1980, 1994), others point to its dire economic performance, which ultimately brought it to its knees (Markakis 1987:90f.; Laitin 1993:125). Again other analysts locate the breaking of the Somali state and nation in international politics, blaming either the “black colonialists of Ethiopia” (Fitzgibbon 1982b:141) or “Soviet complicity” (Payton 1980). While all these accounts have a point, their underlying theoretical conceptualizations are, amongst other flaws, analytically unable to grasp the (dis-) continuities between state-making and state-breaking. This thesis attempts to fill this void by pointing to deeper underlying patterns of state trajectories.
A central puzzle that the more recent Somali scholarship has found a hard nut to crack regards the question of how the significantly divergent state trajectories that occurred within the (former) Somali Republic in the post-1991 era could be explained. A common explanation to account for the difference between Somaliland ‘wunderkind’ and the Somali ‘rapscallion’ suggests that the answer lies in the regions’ dissimilar colonial histories. While this proposition suffers from a number of empirical flaws, it is also analytically problematic in that it inherently assumes that socio-political structures were static. A related but alternative argument that has gained much currency in the scholarly literature – predominantly amongst proponents of the concept of HPOs – points towards the revival of ‘traditional institutions’ (Bryden/Farah 1996; Bradbury 1997, 2008) and argues that it was the ‘elders’ who were “responsible for the success of Somaliland today” (Leonard 2009:13; Flint 1994:36). Although the role of ‘traditional authorities’ in Somaliland’s state-making endeavor can and should not be dismissed, this thesis scrutinizes this proposition on empirical grounds. It furthermore advises that the role ‘traditional authorities’ played fell more into the realm of peace-building rather than state-building, which should not be confused analytically.
By means of rounding up this brief overview of some of the key literature on, and remaining gaps in, Somali scholarship, I touch upon a final proposition that has risen to prominence. Building on the ‘benevolent elders thesis’ much of the literature on the self-styled state of Somaliland is united in its, at times overly benign, portrayal of this state-making project. Once formally launched with the polity’s unilateral declaration of independence after the Somali civil war in 1991, this state-making endeavor has recurrently been depicted as ‘unique’ (Hoyle 2000:85; Kaplan 2008b:148; Jhazbhay 2009:50). Its alleged inimitability is not only rooted in its supposedly genuine process of ‘bottom-up’ peace-building (Farah/Lewis 1993; Bryden/Farah 1996), ‘traditional reconciliation’ (Brons 2001), and ‘grassroots’ democracy (Adam 1995; Terlinden/Debiel 2003), but also in the circumstance that its state-making project was carried through in the absence of significant international financial assistance (Weinstein 2004; Bradbury 2008:4; Eubank 2010). Consequently, numerous analysts celebrate Somaliland as an impressive “African success story” (Henwood 2007:168) and represent it as “Africa’s Best Kept Secret” (Jhazbhay 2003).
This rather one-sided portrayal of Somaliland is partly due to the fact that it is frequently compared with the “quintessential failed state” of Somalia (Nenova/Harford 2004:1), which has remained caught in the “tragic vicious circle” (World Bank 2008) of a “bloody civil war” (Wahlers 2011:4). The strong emphasis on Somaliland’s peaceful state-making components however glosses over the fact that this polity was also embroiled in a number of civil wars – wars that were in part instigated by its political leadership in order to consolidate its power, and which ultimately lay at the heart of Somaliland’s state trajectory. Although Somaliland’s ability to ultimately replace violent means of conflict resolution by non-violent ones is as laudable as its progress in establishing structures of governance, this thesis questions the outright ‘success’ that Somaliland has frequently been accorded. In proposing that its state-making was decisively informed by shrewd politicians, top-down policies, and bellicose power politics, this work acts as a corrective to a number of established and emerging narratives on Somaliland’s state-making project, and shows that there has been a learning curve in Somali state-making endeavors since 1960.
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