What Somalia Can Teach Kenya On Elections And Power Transitions

Incumbents losing an election and graciously conceding is not what most associate with the continent, let alone Somalia. By contrast, the Kenyan experience is rather typical. Here, no incumbent President has ever lost an election. Whether by hook but more often by crook, they manage to cling onto either the end of their terms or their lives, whichever came first.

But a graceful concession from a losing incumbent is exactly what the world witnessed in the Somali capital on Wednesday. The election of former Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo as the country’s ninth President upheld a rather curious, perhaps unique tradition: Somalia has never re-elected an incumbent as President.

It’s a tradition that goes back to the founding days of the Somalia republic. In its first election following independence and unification in 1960, the popular Aden Abdullah Osman Daar was elected President. Seven years later, he would become the first African head of state to peacefully hand over power to a democratically elected successor -his former Prime Minister, Abdirashid Ali Shermarke.

Now this week’s election in Mogadishu was not, by any stretch of the imagination, one to be emulated. Due to the ongoing terrorist insurgency perpetrated by the Al Qaeda-allied al Shabaab, universal suffrage was out of the question. Instead 135 elders picked 14,000 delegates who elected 275 MPs and 54 Senators who elected the President. The process was marred by allegations of corruption, vote buying and intimidation, which is perhaps not surprising for a country that ranks at the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The head of the country’s police publicly supporting the incumbent and security concerns led to both the shut down oftransportation across the Somali capital and the moving of the election to the airport, which is secured by troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Much of this would be familiar to Kenyans as our own general election looms. Though not as dire as that of our neighbor, our system is not without it controversies. There are credible suspicions of attempts to steal it right from the voter registration stage, with public officials, especially chiefs, illegally co-opted into an effort to help boost registration numbers in areas perceived as supporting the incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee party. Further, our global corruption ranking is not that much higher (relatively speaking) than Somalia’s and the expected deployment of thousands of police and security agents to safeguard the election speaks not just to the legitimate security concerns in the wake of our invasion of Somalia, but also to the government’s fear of its own people.

President Kenyatta has recently said he is willing to peacefully hand over power if he loses and to his credit, he has already delivered a historical first: in 2002, he became the only losing Presidential candidate from a major party in Kenya’s electoral history to deliver a concession speech. Whether he will remain true to his word remains to be seen, but, as Somalia illustrates, the fact of a chaotic and problematic electoral process need not preclude it.

Somalia also provides an object lesson in the dangers of the ethnic mobilization and military takeover of civilian affairs. Despite being one of only two largely ethnically homogenous sub-Saharan African states, fragmentation along clan affiliation is one of the main reasons the civil war has persisted for so long. Kenya itself had a taste of it in the violence that followed the disputed elections of a decade ago.

Another factor in Somalia’s disintegration was the military takeover that followed the assassination of President Sharmake in 1969. The Siad Barre dictatorship that followed set the country on the path to destruction. Kenyans should therefore be wary of occurrences that diminish civilian control over the military of give it a taste for civilian responsibilities. Thus the decision by President Kenyatta to appoint Gen Chief of Defense Forces Samson Mwathethe to chair a committee overseeing the implementation of government projects should be of concern as should the seeming inability of civilian authorities to hold the military to account following the debacles at Westgate, El Adde and most recently, Kulbiyow.

Somalis are a fiercely independent-minded lot, not as reticent in expressing their opinions as Kenyans are generally perceived to be. “Every man is his own Sultan” is how one 19th century visitor described them. Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society, in 2011 recounted an incident in which a waiter publicly berates a government minister in a restaurant in Hargeisa, capital of the northern breakaway -and far more peaceful- Somaliland republic. Such a scene would be unlikely to be repeated here (except perhaps on our famously noisy online platforms). But maybe we could learn from that waiter the value of confronting, rather than accommodating, our lying and thieving politicians.

Did Operation Linda Nchi Secure Kenya?

This Sunday will mark the fifth anniversary of the start of Operation Linda Nchi, Kenya’s surprise invasion of Somalia. By the government’s own admission, the October 2011 deployment of the Kenya Defence Forces across the porous border had been long in the planning. A spate of kidnappings of tourists and aid workers in the preceding months by armed gangs based in Somalia, which the state subsequently blamed on the Al Shabaab terror group and which laid waste to the lucrative tourism industry, provided the pretext to launch the first ever major cross-border military operation in the country’s history.

Five years since that fateful decision, and with the Kenyan forces now ensconced within the African Union Mission in Somalia, there has been little public discussion of the wisdom of the incursion and even less of whether the operation achieved its stated objectives.

The Kenyan government had invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which recognizes member nations’ right to self defence as a justification for its actions. And while no one would dispute that Kenya was indeed threatened -and had been severally attacked- by the gangs and extremists on its border, the lingering question was whether sending troops into Somalia was the best way to guarantee domestic safety.

In the short term at least, the decision to invade appears to have backfired spectacularly. Rather than reducing attacks on the homeland, the invasion appears to have opened the floodgates. In the four years following Operation Linda Nchi, terrorist attacks went up nine fold, compared to the four years preceding it. They increased, not just in number, but in ferocity as well. 3 of the 4 worst attacks in terms of lives lost happened after the Somalia invasion. And consistently, the invasion itself was cited as justification for the atrocities.

The aim of creating a buffer zone ad push the militants away from the border similarly remains unachieved. The Al Shabaab are still able to enter Kenyan territory regularly and with relative ease. Attacks on and kidnappings of citizens and security personnel in isolated outposts continue unabated and with impunity.

Neither has the invasion proven particularly decisive in helping to restore order in war-torn Somalia. The government in Mogadishu is as unpopular, riven and ineffectual as ever, popular elections remain a dream and the feckless Somali National Army, which AMISOM is meant to be training up, is little more than a hodge-podge of disparate clan militias. The security situation continues to be dire with Al Shabaab in control of vast swathes of the Somali countryside from where it is able to plan and launch devastating attacks in Somalia and in Kenya.

Nearly a year after the invasion, the Kenyan contingent, now at least nominally directed by the AMISOM Force Commander in Mogadishu rather than the the Ministry of Defence in Nairobi, rolled into the strategic Al Shabaab stronghold at the sea port of Kismayo, to date its most significant achievement.

But even this did not turn out to be the fatal blow many had predicted. Allegations soon surfaced of the KDF engaging in the illegal export of charcoal through the port, a trade that directly benefitted the terror group they were supposed to be fighting. A report by the UN Monitoring Group indicated that Al Shabaab was actually making more money from charcoal after the KDF took over the port.

If anything, the legacy of the operation has been felt much more within Kenya than across the border.  Under the rubric of a country at war, oppressive laws have been enacted which seemed to target internal dissent rather than external aggression. As the Al Shabaab have mercilessly exploited Kenya’s vulnerabilities and exposed security and intelligence failures, “national security” has become a catch-all phrase for the government to avoid accountability. Within the media and the largely silenced civil society, patriotic jingoism has been preferred to sustained scrutiny of the government’s record.

By providing justification for continued attacks on Kenya as well as a cover for government to hide its malfeasance and incompetence, Operation Linda Nchi did little to live up to its billing. On that score, it must be considered a failure.

El Adde Shows How Not To Fight Al Shabaab

In the wake of the Al Shabaab attack on a base manned by the Kenyan contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in the south Somalia town of El Adde, many of our returning soldiers, as well as the many who died, are being hailed as heroes. On social and mainstream media it has become de rigueur to declare love for the Kenya Defence Forces, to hail their bravery and martyrdom. Questioning the details of the incident only invites appeals to national mourning or accusations of spitting on their sacrifice.

Yet the questions must be asked. If, as seems likely, reports of tens, perhaps over a hundred killed turn out to be true, it would be the highest one-day toll both the KDF and AMISOM have suffered in their history. It would also demonstrate that reports of Al Shabaab’s imminent demise may be greatly exaggerated. The immediate as well as wider reasons for both the catastrophe and for Al Shabaab’s ability to inflict such pain must be explored if we wish to prevent similar disasters in the future.

The facts of what happened at El Adde should give us all pause for thought. Newly deployed and inexperienced troops came under attack, their camp was overrun, their commander captured and the soldiers scattered to the wind in disarray. Many died, others fled to the bush or requested shelter from local civilians, from where we are now trying to recover them. This is not how we should be fighting our wars.

Especially worrisome is the fact this attack did not come out of the blue.

The troops in El Adde had only been there for two weeks, many coming fresh from their base in Eldoret. Al Shabaab have been known to attack AMISOM positions immediately after troop rotations, knowing that AMISOM’s practice of replacing units of experienced soldiers with entirely fresh soldiers guarantees they would face inexperienced opposition.

Further, despite losing much of the territory it once controlled across Southern Somalia, the Al Qaeda-affiliated terror group has shown time and again that it remains capable of mounting devastating attacks across the country.  Of late, the group has developed an appetite for taking on AMISOM’s Forward Operating Bases.

The El Adde attack was the third such attack in the last seven months. Over 50 Burundian AMISOM soldiers were reported to have been killed when the group overran their base at Leego, 62 miles north-west of Mogadishu. Then four months ago, they sacked the Ugandan contingent’s base in Janale, again killing at least 19 soldiers, though media quoted a briefing note sent to diplomats by Western military officials claiming that around 100 soldiers were "unaccounted for" after the attack.

The tactics Al Shabaab has employed across the last two assaults are also remarkably similar to those used in the El Adde attack, both coming immediately after troop rotations and involving use of suicide car bombs and large swarms of fighters to overwhelm resistance.

Even more damning are the reports that the El Adde attack was widely anticipated and that locals had left their homes in advance of it. It is curious that little has been said about the Somali National Army troops that were co-located with the AMISOM troops. They appear to have not taken part in the fighting which probably means that they too had evacuated the area in advance of the attack. The reports indicate that this information may even have been shared with the Kenyans!

Further, the obviously poor state of relations and distrust between the Kenyan contingent and local people is another source of concern. Somalia’s fractious clan divides are a dangerous minefield that would be peacekeepers must navigate carefully. The KDF’ support for Ahmed Madobe in Kismayo has inevitably earned Kenya the suspicion, if not hostility, of clans rivalling the Ogadeni, including the Marehan who dominate El Adde.

All this is most troubling. There is a clear and massive failure of leadership which left our troops at the mercy of our enemies and that should not be swept under the carpet of a jingoistic patriotism. Once the current search and rescue operations are done, we must set up an inquiry, learn lessons and hold senior officers to account. We failed to do this following similar KDF failures at Westgate and at the Garissa University and are once again paying the price for it in blood.

The above also invites a serious debate about Kenya’s and AMISOM’s objectives in Somalia and what it will actually take to achieve them.

Kenya’s invasion of Somalia in October 2011 was in response to a spate of kidnappings for ransom by Somalia-based bandit gangs which threatened the lucrative tourist industry. Although the goals of Operation Linda Nchi were not well articulated at the time, at the very least it was meant to make the country safe for tourism. By that measure, the invasion was a spectacular failure. In the time since the invasion, attacks by Al Shabaab (which by the way had denied responsibility for the kidnappings but was targeted by the KDF anyway) on the Kenyan homeland multiplied exponentially, almost obliterating the tourism Linda Nchi was meant to save.

Today, little is heard about this. This is because Linda Nchi was hurriedly would up and the Kenya forces in Somalia rehatted as AMISOM less than a year later. They thus acquired a different set of objectives. AMISOM is a peace support mission mandated to help restore the Somalia National Security Forces, fight Al Shabaab and help extend the writ of the government in Mogadishu. It does not exist to secure Kenya.

However, it is true that a stable Somalia would be a boon for security across the region and there is no doubt Kenya would be a major beneficiary. It is important then, as a contributor to AMISOM, that Kenyans examine how that effort is doing.

On the surface, there is reason for hope. Since 2011, as noted above, Al Shabaab has been pushed out of nearly all of Somalia’s major towns including all the ports it once controlled. But while the terror group has been degraded, the authority of the Federal Government does not extend much outside the towns and Al Shabaab is still able to operate freely in much of rural south Somalia. Further, as the El Adde attack demonstrates, the Somali forces are far from ready to take on Al Shabaab.

This has critical implications for AMISOM. Its exit strategy is predicated not just on sufficiently degrading Al Shabaab, but also on training up effective Somali troops. The latter’s continued weakness is a double blow to AMISOM. Firstly, it delays the date of an eventual AMISOM exit. Secondly, one of the reasons for the UN Security Council authorising relatively low troop numbers for AMISOM was the expectation that the SNA would fill the gap. The UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) – the second phase of the initial UN intervention, from March 1993 to March 1995 – had a similar mandate to AMISOM and had 30,000 troops. AMISOM has just over 22,000 and for much of its time Somalia has had much less.

The Mission also lacks crucial equipment and support enablers. Although belatedly authorised by the Security Council in 2012, helicopters are yet to arrive in the Mission area. Thus despite the successes it has achieved, there remain serious questions as to whether AMISOM, as currently constituted, can fully deliver on its mandate.

These and other issues should form the basis of an informed public debate on the wisdom and objectives of the KDF deployment in Somalia.  There is an opportunity today for Kenya to begin to seriously examine the options it has in Somalia and for the Kenyan public to finally have an informed say on what course to follow.

The Kenyan Roulette

Once, when I was young boy, one of my numerous uncles, a policeman by trade, came calling. He had with him a rifle and he set it down in the corner of the room. I couldn’t take my eyes of it as he and my dad chatted away. Its presence in the room was both terrifying and comforting. Terrifying because of what it could do. Comforting because, at least in my childish imagination, it would be doing it on my behalf, wielded by people on my side against those who would do me harm.

As I have grown older and hopefully wiser, I have come to see that the state’s capacity for violence is rarely comforting, that the state rarely wields its violence on my behalf. Rarely does it carry guns into homes to protect the people within. Neither is it a source of comfort to encounter them in the streets.

Though we like to tout ourselves as exceptional, as an island of peace, Kenya is actually a very violent place, where the language of violence is routinely used to mediate relationships, between parents and their children, teachers and their students, the men and their women, the rich and the poor, the state and its subjects Security and peace seem to have become the passwords to a system of exclusion that means at any time any of us could be at the receiving end even as we declare we have peace and security. On the receiving end, in fact, to preserve peace and security.

Violence has become normalized, acceptable, desirable even. It has become a way to build the nation by constantly defining ourselves in terms of opposition to one another. Kenyanness is constantly recreated  by acts of violence. Thus it becomes the height of patriotism to call for a war with Uganda over a tiny piece of rock in Lake Victoria. And unpatriotic to question the actions of the government in Somalia or in a shopping mall in Nairobi.

In the aftermath of the Westgate attacks, Kenya will again be redefined by the violence we will mete out against those we have othered. Today it is the Muslims, the refugees, the Somalis, and the Somalians. There will be little outrage when doors in Eastleigh are kicked down and people in Garissa are hauled away and some village in Somalia is leveled the name of fighting terrorism. Just as when it’s the turn of civil society activists and ICC witnesses to be threatened or hunted down in the name of preserving a tenuous peace. Before them, the Kikuyu, the Luo, the the Kalenjin the Oromo, the Sabaots, the Pokot, the Turkana, the Whites, the Indians. Everyone gets their turn on the Kenyan Roulette.

In this Republic of Fear, there is little need for justice, or values, or rights. Only someone on whom to focus our ferocity, and with whose body and dignity to establish our claim to togetherness. We constantly terrorize and dehumanize. It is a place where the victims of that violence are told to accept and move on. Where cops laugh at women reporting rape. Where a senior public official can tell the hundreds of thousands displaced by the 2007/8 post-election violence that they came out “way ahead” and face no opprobrium. It is a place where we fight, not to end oppression, but for our turn to be the oppressors, our turn to eat.

The republic is defined by the very violence we say we want to end but yet celebrate. Where the fear, adorned in the language of civility, is what unites. Where we are one because, not despite, our terror of one another. A place where reconciliation becomes a euphemism for “until next time.” A place where economic growth need not generate good jobs nor end poverty, where the purveyors of violence take what they want, when they want. Where we dare not question official truths lest we are ourselved othered.

I suppose we are not unique. It is in the nature of states to be violent. They are after all the product of exclusion. Parceling out the world according to arbitrary imaginary lines drawn on maps by men of power can only create communities where the state is allowed to decide who is a human being and who is not and where we can legitimately have otherwise obscene arguments over who deserves dignity and who doesn’t. Where humanity is accessed and indeed defined by things like citizenship and passports and IDs, the state gets to certify your very existence and can declare you a non-person.

The malevolent power, represented by the menacing presence of that gun in the corner of the room, can only offer a temporary comfort, an illusory safety, a false peace. True comfort will only come with true community, when we embrace our humanity and refuse to be defined by the logic of the state, by the logic of othering, the logic of fear. When we are one with all, not just with those who look like us or speak like us or believe what we do. Otherwise, we'll just have to take our chances on the roulette.

De Fence Strategy

Fighting Words

The recent kidnappings of two disabled Europeans from the Kenyan coastal resort town of Lamu have brought to the fore concerns about the spill-over effects of continued anarchy in neighbouring Somalia. For much of the last 20 years, Kenya has had to contend with huge flows of refugees and illegal arms into its territory as well as conflict along the common border which have rendered the North Eastern province essentially ungovernable. The terrorist attacks of 1998 and 2002 in Nairobi and Kikambala were both planned from within Somalia and, more recently, piracy off the vast Somali coast and now the spate of kidnappings for ransom by Somalia-based bandit gangs are posing significant threats to the Kenyan economy. This raises the question of what the country is doing to address these threats.

Two weeks ago, while addressing a Mini-Summit on Somalia that was held at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, President Mwai Kibaki called on the international community to expand its support for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which was deployed in Mogadishu in 2007 under a UN mandate to help support the Somali peace process and protect the institutions that the process had generated. However, while thanking “Uganda and Burundi for their continued unwavering commitment in providing the AMISOM troops”,” the President did not explain why Kenya itself has not contributed troops to the mission.

The Kenyan reluctance can be partly explained by the fear that a peaceful, confident and secure Somalia may once more stoke irredentist ambitions among the Kenya’s Somali population as it did in the years immediately before and following independence, leading to the “Shifta War” of 1963-67. However, this fear ignores the fact that in the last 20 years, as Somalia dissolved into chaos, much has been done on the Kenyan side of the border to integrate the Somali population into the rest of the country. The harsh policy of emergency rule by decree was lifted in 1992 and, in a 2005 report, Dr. Ken Menkhaus, Associate Professor of political science at Davidson College and a former special advisor to the U.N. operation in Somalia, noted that “the introduction of competitive elections for Parliament has had the positive effect of opening up political space for debate in the region, and of generating legislative representatives seeking to serve the interests of their home constituencies.” Today, ethnic Somalis hold high positions in the Kenyan political and business landscape. Compare that with the situation 30 years prior, when a British commission of inquiry reported that 87 per cent ot the population in what was then known as the Northern Frontier District, favoured unification with Somalia and subsequently boycotted the 1963 elections in favour of armed insurrection.

While undoubtedly much more remains to be done to extend the benefits of Kenyan citizenship, including government services such as registration, security and infrastructure, as well as investment and economic opportunities to the North Eastern Province, it is clear that the fear of irredentism is a historical relic that should not stand in the way of stabilizing Somalia.

The fact is Kenya has been an instrumental actor in the search for peace in the Horn of Africa. Its facilitation enabled rival Somali groups to negotiate and develop the transitional structures at several conferences hosted in Kenyan towns. In fact, the Transitional Federal Government and Parliament were formed in Nairobi and from there, set out to establish a governmental presence first in Baidoa and then in Mogadishu. Kenya’s involvement was motivated as much by self interest, given the price it was paying for the anarchy, as by good neighbourliness.

Over the past year, the support of AMISOM has been critical in entrenching this peace process. With it, the TFG has achieved significant success in forcing the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab extremists out of Mogadishu, and establishing a measure of relative security in the Somali capital. The confidence this has engendered in the population is evidenced by the fact that many Somalis displaced by the famine ravaging the country are opting to flee to the relative safety of the sea-side city, where international agencies have been providing humanitarian aid. This undoubtedly relieves the pressures that would otherwise be brought to bear on the already overcrowded refugee camps in Daadab in Kenya. In fact, as many refugees were heading north to the capital daily, as were headed south to Daadab, and while the flow into Kenya has somewhat diminished, that into Mogadishu continues unabated.

Further, the relative peace has created room for further negotiations among Somali factions with a view to the eventual conclusion of the transition and the return of permanent government. In his speech to the UN, President Kibaki alluded to the conference held a month ago in Mogadishu, during which a detailed Roadmap to achieving this, complete with benchmarks and timelines, was adopted. It is undeniable that these achievements in the security, humanitarian and political spheres will, if entrenched and expanded, have a lasting beneficial effect on the situation along the Kenyan border.

However, as demonstrated by last week’s horrific suicide bombing in Mogadishu, this is easier said than done. As President Kibaki noted, AMISOM urgently needs to be reinforced so that the city can be secured and the war taken to the extremists in the southern areas, where the famine has hit hardest and where criminal gangs benefit from the al Shabaab’s protection. The AU’s Peace and Security Council has already authorised the deployment of up to 20,000 AMISOM troops, which is what the field commanders say is necessary to secure the whole country. Further, the UN Security Council has committed to review the AU request for expanded support but pegged it to an increase in troops to the already authorised 12000, up from the current 9,000 now in Mogadishu.

It is up to African countries to make up the numbers. While encouraging noises have been heard from Sierra Leone and Djibouti with regards to deployments (the former have promised a battalion by April next year while the latter have also declared their intentions to send troops), nothing in this regard has been heard from the Kenyans. Yet with one of the more advanced and better equipped militaries in the region and the strongest economy to boot, Kenya would be a valuable addition to AMISOM.

The fact is, whether it likes it or not, the Kenyan military is likely to be increasingly drawn into a confrontation with the extremists on its North-Eastern frontier. The question is whether this will take the form of a unilateral, protracted, low-level conflict on the border or whether Kenya will join the AU forces in Mogadishu working for a holistic solution. In the final analysis, a strong Somali state, able to enforce its writ across the whole of the country’s territory, would be a boon to the fight against piracy, terrorism and radicalisation within the region as well as a reliable partner in combating cross-border crime.

In conclusion, just as the fight against piracy cannot be resolved by policing the high seas, so the pacification of the North Eastern border is not to be achieved through creation of buffer entities along the border or declarations of war against small gangs of bandits intent on kidnapping elderly, disabled pensioners in speedboats. The real and lasting solution lies in the pacification of Somalia through support for the peace and reconciliation process and the reconstitution of an effective, representative and democratic administration in Mogadishu. The participation of Kenya in this endeavour, utilising its considerable diplomatic, economic and, yes, military muscle, will not only expedite this outcome, but also ensure that its economic interests as well as the safety of its tourists are secured in the long term.

Come One, Come All!

HADAF Somalia International Cartoon Competition

The Association of East African Cartoonists (KATUNI )invites all cartoonists to participate in the

HADAF Somalia International Cartoon Competition.

Theme: The search for peace in Somalia: Achievements and Challenges

1st Prize: $3000
2nd Prize: $1500
3rd Prize: $750

Competition Rules

• The maximum number of entries you may submit is 5.
• Deadline for receiving cartoons is Monday 14 March, 2011
  
• All entries should be without any kind of frame and must not be folded
• Each entry must be accompanied by a short biography and/or CV as well as the name and contact details of the cartoonist.
• Submitted works may be put on exhibition and used in future publications.
• The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence shall be entered into it.
• Submitted works will not be returned.
• By participating, you grant the organizers the rights to publish and use the submitted artworks in any form including:

a) Reproduction and dissemination in printed form for all editions (e.g. study edition, school edition, special edition) and in unlimited print-runs (printing right). The printing right embraces in particular hard-cover editions, paperback editions, reprints, magazines, newspapers, collected works, via all distribution channels such as retail bookshops, other retailers selling books, book clubs, open and closed user groups and in all formats.

b) Electronic/digital storage and making accessible (including in databases) by means of digital or other storage or data transmission technology, with or without intermediate storage, in such a way that users have access from a place and at a time selected individually by them and can download, play back, interactively use and/or pass to third parties this work via PC, eBook, mobile telephone or other wired or wireless appliances, for example via the internet, UMTS, cable, satellite or other transmission paths (online right).

How to Enter:

Digital copies of the cartoons may be sent to katuni@gmail.com and should be in JPEG format with a resolution of at least 300 dpi.

Original artworks or clear prints (no photocopies) should be placed in an envelope marked “Hadaf Somali Cartoon Competition” and either sent to:

Hadaf Somali Cartoon Competition,

P.O. Box 2074

Village Market 00621, Nairobi, Kenya

or dropped off at one of the following venues:

Alliance Francaise de Nairobi, Loita/Monrovia streets, Nairobi

4D Innovative Ltd, 3^rd Floor, Revlon Plaza, Kimathi St., Nairobi.

GoDown Arts Centre, Dunga Rd., Industrial Area, Nairobi.

Somalia: Mission Possible

Two weeks ago, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council recommended that the mandated strength of its peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) be raised from 8000 to 20,000 troops. It also called on the international community to blockade Somali ports and enforce a no-fly zone over the country to interdict resupply for Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow the internationally recognized government.

As the UN mulls over this proposal, events on the ground continue to give an indication of the effect increased troop numbers can have.

Since 2007, AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi have been deployed in Mogadishu under both an AU and UN mandate and at the invitation of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Their task is to support the decade-long Somali peace process and the transitional institutions it has generated.

For much of this time, AMISOM has been seriously under-resourced and undermanned. Nonetheless, the troops succeeded in their foremost task of protecting the Transitional Federal Government from Al Qaida liked extremist groups who have foresworn the peace process. In July, however, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development resolved to send a further 2000 troops, bringing the AU mission to its mandated strength of 8000. By mid-August, half of the IGAD troops had been inserted into Mogadishu and the effect have been quick and dramatic.

In June, the TFG controlled just 5 districts in the capital. Now, with the support of the IGAD reinforcements the TFG has managed to gain ground and now controls nearly half of the capital’s 16 districts. The gains are all the more remarkable considering that they were made in the face of a so-called “terminal offensive” launched by the extremist group, Al Shabab during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

These successes have provided a springboard for the TFG to launch its long-awaited offensive to retake the rest of the country. Last week, the TFG and its allies captured Beled-Hawo, a southwestern Somali town near the Kenyan border, deep in the heart of al Shabaab territory - a huge blow to the insurgents’ image of invincibility. Government forces are now at the doorstep of the strategically important town of Beled weyne, Hiiraan’s regional capital, threatening the insurgents’ grip over South and Central Somalia.

The losses suffered by the insurgents have amplified clan divisions and disputes over command, the policy of denying access to humanitarian organizations trying to help the suffering population in Central and South Somalia, and the role of foreign fighters. According to the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank that monitors global security, the failure of the Ramadan offensive, led to “a major rift between Al Shabab’s emir, Sheikh Ahmad Abdi Godane and his deputy, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow.”

This is significant because, as US global security consultancy, Stratfor, says, it represents a split between the group’s nationalist and internationalist elements. According to Stratfor, Godane “is considered the leader of the internationalist elements, coordinating closely with foreign jihadists from al Qaeda who have joined its ranks over the last few years,” and is “responsible for propelling the Somali theater onto the global jihadist radar.”

Stratfor however notes that fighting to bring the global jihad to Somalia and basing such efforts in Somali territory is deeply unpopular, and the group has been at pains to hide their intentions under the guise of nationalism. A split with Robow, one of the more nationalist voices, and who had previously been replaced as the group’s spokesman in 2009 following his opposition to the policy of denying access to humanitarian organizations trying to help the suffering population, would not only significantly weaken Al Shabab, but also rob them of this platform.

Meanwhile, the TFG is exploiting the space created by the AMISOM deployment to deliver some services to people in Mogadishu and beyond. At the end of August, the Independent Federal Constitution Commission produced a draft constitution and submitted it to the people for consultation. The Mayor of Mogadishu, Mohamed Nur, is rehabilitating roads, providing street lighting and rebuilding markets in the capital. He has recently submitted a 4 year plan for regenerating the city to our development partners, the first time this has ever been done.

The people of Mogadishu are voting with their feet, and most of the city’s 2 million people now live in areas controlled by the TFG, many having moved there to escape the ‘reign of terror’ offered by the al Shabab. Even in areas not yet under their control, the TFG is, according to Prof. Abdullahi Sheikh Ali, Minister of State for Planning and International Co-operation, working with community elders and non-governmental organisations to launch projects such as the rehabilitation of canals in Hiiran area and Middle Shabelle.

Much of this progress, though, is sadly undermined by continued political disagreements and wrangling within the government. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was deposed and the process of selecting a replacement has been afflicted with delays and held hostage to disputes between the President and the Speaker. However, it is instructive to note that, while regrettable, the conflicts within the TFG are being mediated through political and constitutional processes, a clear break from the past preference for violence and war.

All this has been achieved by the insertion of just 1000 extra soldiers. Imagine the impact of sending twelve times that number.

Diaspora Crucial To Somali Economy

Somalia has been engulfed in civil war for 20 years, resulting in the collapse of central state institutions, the destruction of social and economic infrastructure and massive internal and external migration. However, despite the absence of a state and its financial, economic and social institutions, combined with other challenges, the traditional Somali spirit of entrepreneurship remains strong and the private sector resilient and robust.

Indeed, the private sector has managed to grow impressively, particularly in the areas of trade, commerce, transport, remittance services and telecommunications, as well as in the primary sectors, notably in livestock, agriculture and fisheries. Aggregate trade data reported by partner countries to the IMF reveal that by 2006, Somalia’s imports had almost doubled, reaching a historical record of $461 million in 2004. In the first six years of the new millennium, exports almost tripled, reaching $266 million in 2004.

This economic activity is powered by remittances from Somalia’s vast Diaspora which, as a proportion of the country’s population, is perhaps the largest in the world. One in every 8 Somalis lives abroad, most of them having either fled the repression of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship or the chaos that followed his ouster and the collapse of the state. They constitute 80% of the country’s skilled manpower and send close to $1 billion every year to relatives in the country.

Without these remittances, the country’s private sector would undoubtedly fold. It already faces significant challenges accessing credit and other financial services. The collapse of the central government in 1991 led to the ultimate collapse of the country’s commercial banking sector, which had previously been plagued by corruption and mismanagement. There are currently no formal financial institutions operating in Somalia nor any fully functioning formal financial sector regulatory bodies, making it impossible to encourage and harness domestic savings. Further, the country is also locked out of international capital markets. Somalia relations with international creditors were frozen in late 1980s due to the economic mismanagement of the Barre regime.

The remittances also dwarf any international aid the country receives as Overseas Development Assistance. Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita income less than half the regional average and, in 2003, it was estimated that nearly three-quarters of the population lived on less than two dollars a day. Per-capita aid to Somalia, had reached $41 in 2003, totaling $272 million. Remittances, at roughly four times that number, clearly show that the major inflow of “aid” comes from Somalis themselves.

Most beneficiaries live in urban areas, with the remittances constituting about 40 percent of the income of urban households. Less than 10 percent of transactions are destined for rural villages. According to a paper prepared for the UN conference on Somalia held in Istanbul in May this year, individual transfers are usually in small amounts averaging $132, sent regularly to cover basic family needs. In fact, household consumption, including expenditure on education and health, accounts for between half and two thirds of remittance spending. However, studies in Somaliland show that remittances are increasingly being used to fund new organizations and development projects, and such transactions usually involve larger sums.

Whether invested or consumed, remittances have important macroeconomic impacts generating positive multiplier effects, while stimulating various sectors of the economy. Studies in Mexico show that for every dollar received from migrants working abroad translates to a $ 2.69 in the Gross National Product. Other studies analyzing links between remittances and poverty in Ghana suggest that raising remittance by 10 percent reduces the share of those in poverty by 3.5 percent and has a negligible impact on income inequality. A study in Hargeisa found that households earning less than $2 a day had no direct access to remittances from abroad and had to rely on gifts from family members or neighbors.

It is not only by sending money that the Somali Diaspora is contributing to the resurgence of Somalia. They are also giving of their time and skills. Many have returned to help the fledgling Transitional Federal Government create lasting institutions while others are undertaking individual initiatives aimed at improving the lives of Somalis. In 1999, a Somali Canadian family returning to Hargeisa identified an unmet demand for English language primary education for the children of families returning from the West. They founded the Blooming Primary School, which by March 2005 had a student population of nearly 600. Fully a quarter of the pupils wee exempted from paying fees, including 60 from the Hargeisa Orphanage.

As Somalis work to rebuild their country from the ashes of the last twenty years, it is certain that those in the Diaspora will continue to play a critical role.

Banking on Somalia: Why Remittance Companies Are Crucial to Rebuilding The Shattered Economy

Somalia’s crippled financial system faces severe challenges even as the country struggles to emerge from two decades of conflict.

Peacebuilding and reconstruction work will cost billions of dollars. The question of how this is paid for is crucial. Though Somalia potentially has sufficient natural resources, these are yet to be developed and the current level of funding for the Transitional Federal Government does not inspire confidence that the international community is keen to foot the bill.

Further, the country has been suspended from accessing global financial markets, and cannot expect to borrow to finance the cost. Further, rampant borrowing by Somalia's former military regime has left a pending debt crisis and the country has not taken advantage of the many opportunities for debt relief that have presented themselves over the past 20 years. As of 2007, the national debt stood at US$ 3.3 billion, 81 per cent of which is arrears.

Though the private sector is growing the country lacks a strong banking sector able to mobilize domestic savings for investment, providing the fuel for economic growth and the resources for reconstruction. In January 1991, all state institutions that provided services and regulated the economy collapsed, including the Central Bank of Somalia and the entire banking system.

According to a 2004 report by KPMG, the banking sector currently comprises a virtually-non-existent formal sector and an active informal sector. The former includes central banks in Mogadishu, and in the self-governing regions of Puntland and Somaliland. The country has no commercial banks though the central banks in Bosasso and Hargeisa offer limited commercial banking services, creating an undesirable conflict of interest with their role as treasurer of their respective regional governments.

Though the Central Bank of Somalia reopened its offices in Mogadishu and Baidoa in December 2006, it continues to have limited functionality. Despite a draft Central Bank Bill and Banking Bill having been developed, these are yet to become law and the bank operates under Decree Law No 6 of 18 October 1968.

The informal sector, which is dominated by privately-owned remittance companies, offers more promise. What started as a way for Somalis fleeing poverty, repression and, more recently, anarchy, to send cash back to their extended families in Somalia has in many cases blossomed into full-blown financial operations. By 2004, the remittances had reached $1 billion and to date remain Somalia’s largest source of foreign exchange. Though a tiny proportion of the global remittance industry, which is estimated at between $100 and $300 billion, these transfers account for up to 40 percent of the income of urban households in Somalia. A survey conducted by UNDP estimated that more than a quarter of families in Somalia receive remittances from abroad.

Remittance companies, being the sole international financial institutions operating in Somalia, are a lifeline for many Somali families both in Somalia and in the Horn of Africa. They provide a conduit for hard currency entering and leaving the country, as well as an instrument for trade and commerce in Somalia and abroad.

According to Mohamed Abshir Waldo, founder and director of the Sandi Consulting Group, a political, business and strategic consulting group whose primary focus is the revival and reconstruction of the Somali nation, the system of sending remittances in the first half of the 1990s was highly informal and personalized. It typically relied on trust relations with a known broker based in Nairobi or elsewhere who would insure that funds were delivered (either by carriers who flew to cities with cash on daily khat flights or via local high frequency radio operators) to family members inside Somalia or in refugee camps in the Horn of Africa.

HF radio was at the time the only means of communication available inside Somalia at that time and local private operators thus handled most remittances. They founded the first, small-scale remittance sector and a lack of capital prevented them from expanding the service beyond very modest levels. However, revolutionary advances in the telecommunications sector in the 90s made remittance transfers from great distances much easier. The rise of the remittance companies specializing in global money transfers into and out of Somalia followed the introduction of the first private satellite phone companies in 1994-95. Most of HF radio operators have been absorbed into these larger remittance companies as local agents, giving the companies the ability to reach virtually every community in the country, though some independent operators in small towns and villages continue to play a minor role in remitting money.

It is a misnomer to call these Somali remittance companies. Whilst the owners and origins of these companies are ethnic Somalis, most of them have operations in the Gulf, United States, Europe and East Africa and almost all are, in fact, owned and managed by citizens of these countries. According to Waldo, Somali nationals own less 15 hawalas while the overseas-owned remittance companies could be in the hundreds. It is the close partnership and networking between the overseas hawalas and the local Somali hawalas that gives the impression that they are one and the same. Typically, the international operators create regional clearing centres or headquarters in key locations worldwide, and decentralize most of the operations at country level through ‘agents’ – either as branches owned by the company or agencies franchised to independent agents.

Major operators include Sahaan, Amal Express, Global, Al-Mustaqbal, Towfiq and Barwaqo Financial Services, all of which are based in Dubai. Others are Cidgal in Djibouti, Kaah Express and Dalsan Nairobi and Salama Money Express operates out of London. The largest is Dahabshiil which is based in Hargeisa, the capital of the autonomous region of Somaliland. According to a report published in The EastAfrican, industry experts estimate it handles up to two-thirds of remittances to Somalia and is fast emerging as the largest money transfer company on the continent.

Growing out of a small store in the tiny town of Burau, Dahabshiil, which also deals in telecommunications, is today a multi-million dollar empire, with bases in over 40 countries including Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Britain. The company maintains offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan and Ethiopia.

While the remittance companies rely mainly on the business of migrant money transfers from western economies for family maintenance and investment in Somalia, individuals and businesses within the country use them as crude savings banks, depositing funds for short periods. According to the KWPC report, this quasi-banking role continues to generate the most interest amongst major remittance companies. In fact, Dahabshiil is currently constructing a bank in downtown Hargeisa.

However, most other remittance companies face major constraints in converting themselves into banks, not the least of which is the lack of a centralized government and financial regulatory authority. The lack know-your-customer regulation coupled with the relative simplicity of hawallas creates the possibility of hiding the origin and destination of funds or breaking the audit trail. That has led to unfounded suspicions that these firms were being used by terrorists to transfer funds for terror plots and as a conduit for money laundering. Such accusations can have devastating effects.

In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, the US government shut down the overseas money remittance channel of the then largest Somali remittance company, al-Barakat, labeling the company "the quartermasters of terror." This was despite numerous investigations turning up nothing linking al-Barakaat to terrorist activities as outlined by the 9/11 Commission, and the fact that the terrorists involved in the attacks received the majority of their funds through the conventional financial system.

Nonetheless, the closure of Al-Barakat significantly dented the confidence of the Somali business community in the remittance companies as a result of losing their deposits. And though other companies were quick to step into the void, the humanitarian impact of money frozen in transit was considerable because Al-Barakat handled half of all remittances to Somalia and was the country's largest private employer.

As Somalia strives to rebuild its shattered economy, a viable commercial banking sector will be indispensable. As noted in a UNDP report prepared by Dr. Abdusalam Omer, “commercial banks provide services that are not currently provided by the remittance companies such as retail banking, corporate banking, and loans for commercial and social development.”

In creating such a sector, the country would do well to take advantage of the remittance companies, most of whom are legally registered or in the process of legalizing their status and pay taxes in every country in which they operate. As the KPMG report says, there is no reason why the existing Somali remittance companies cannot expand to provide commercial banking services in Somalia, or anywhere else. Despite the lack of formal regulatory mechanisms in Somalia, all these companies exercise self-regulation of some kind and at a conference held in Dubai in June 2003, they committed themselves to move towards licensing and to formalize their operations preparing the ground for the expansion of financial services.

Dahabshiil, for example, embarked on a campaign to apply for and register its operations with concerned authorities in all countries where this is required, hired money laundering reporting officers and trained staff on rules and procedures. It incorporated appropriate checks in its IT software allowing for the reporting of suspicious activity and on transactions that exceed a certain amount by agents and published guidelines for its agents on how to detect suspicious transactions and report them.

Still, Somalia does not have much of the legal framework, technical expertise, security, or strong central bank needed to regulate the establishment of any commercial banks. This will only come with the establishment of the state and its institutions. This is what the TFG and the international community must strive to do with utmost haste.

As Dr Afyare Abdi Elmi, professor of international politics at Qatar University and author of the book, Understanding the Conflagration of Somalia: Identity, Islam and Peacebuilding, wrote in an article published by Al Jazeera earlier this year, “economic development is key to a sustainable peace in Somalia…. The time has now come for the international community to stop bypassing or ignoring the already weak Somali government institutions. Reinstituting a legitimate and functioning central authority should be the priority of all interested stakeholders.”

AMISOM Expands Bases as Shabaab Offensive Fizzles

The view from an Amisom position overlooking a busy intersection at Kilometre 4 in Mogadishu. Civilian lfe is slowly returning to normal in areas under the peacekeepers control

By Patrick Gathara
Nairobi, September 15 2010

The “terminal” Ramadan offensive by Al Shabab, the extremist group fighting to overthrow Somalia’s internationally-recognized Transitional Federal Government and impose an extreme form of Islamic law, seems to have run out of steam. Barely three weeks after declaring they would drive AU peacekeepers out Somalia and erase the TFG presence, the militants top command have reportedly gathered in Baidoa to review their Ramadan operations amid reports of mass desertions and huge complaints from the populace as fighters are returned to their villages scarred, injured or dead. All indications point to complete disarray within the extremists ranks, dwindling public support and an inability to decide on their next course of action.

Unable to dislodge the peacekeepers, the Al Qaida-aligned extremists, under the tutelage of foreign fighters, have turned on the civilian population. On August 24, militants wearing Somali military uniforms stormed Muna hotel in Mogadishu, firing indiscriminately and killing close to 40 people, including six parliamentarians. A day later, a roadside bomb killed 15 people, including several school children. Just last week, a suicide attack on the Aden Ade International Airport claimed the lives of 9.

The militants’ tactics are increasingly alienating them from the local population. A sign of their desperation came this week when a spokesman for the militants reportedly went on radio to appeal for public support, money, food and even blood donations. The call came as reports emerged of a crowd walking out of a Mosque in protest at the Mullah's support for the Shabab. Other reports have pointed to civilians leaving areas under Shabab control and streaming into those under the TFG and AMISOM where they can access medical attention and humanitarian aid. AMISOM already distributes 1.8 million litres of clean drinking water to civilians living near its bases in addition to providing them with free medical services at its hospital and outpatient clinics.

Following the failure of the offensive, sources at AMISOM say, the Shabab are probably at the weakest they have been since 2006, having taken hundreds of casualties while achieving little in terms of strategic gains. However, the AU peacekeepers, hamstrung by a restrictive mandate and a shortage of troops, are unable to capitalize on this to push the extremists out of the city altogether.

The 7000-strong AMISOM force has been in Somalia since 2007 in support of the decade-old peace process and the government generated by it. For most of that time, despite being undermanned and underequipped, they have successfully held of repeated attacks by the Islamist rebels. The troops, drawn from Uganda and Burundi, are only authorized to fire in self-defense and in defense of critical infrastructure and civilians.
During Ramadan, the AU peacekeepers, working closely with Somali government forces, managed to secure key positions and civilian areas in the Somali capital. One company from the Burundi contingent recently deployed to Hoshi, which guards the south-western route into the city, in support of Transitional Federal Government troops there who had come under attack from the Shabab. The location is critical to securing the neighbourhood of Medina, and also serves to extend the defenses of the Mogadishu National University campus where the contingent has its main base.

Col. Aloys Sindayihebura, the Deputy Burundi Contingent Commander, and Col. Agi, a senior TFG commander, accompanied journalists on a tour of the base, which basically comprises two compounds on either side of Kabka road, one of the city’s main arteries and a crucial supply route.

Addressing the reporters, the two officers were candid about the challenges facing the fledgling Somali army and the need for continued AMISOM support. The TFG, said Col. Agi, had problems paying salaries and providing meals to his troops. He acknowledged that this was having an adverse effect on recruitment. “Some of my soldiers have gone nearly 5 months without pay,” he said.

In addition to Hoshi and the University, the Burundi contingent has 4 other bases along Kabka road covering the area between Madina and Gaashandiga, including one at the Siad Barre Military Academy. Burundi soldiers are also deployed in two bases at Al Jazeera, guarding the southern approach to the Aden Ade International Airport, where the main AMISOM Force Headquarters are located.

Kilometre 4, a public square in the city, is now a hive of bustling activity as people go about their business free from the fear of insurgent attack. This followed the opening of a new AMISOM base at Coca Cola village, just a day into the militant’s offensive. Giving journalists a tour of the new position, the commander of the Ugandan contingent, Col. Michael Ondoga, said the base was necessary to reinforce weaker TFG positions and to deny the militants mortar range. Prior to that, al-Shabab attacks had killed 7 people at K4, including 6 at a nearby camp for the displaced.

At another outpost bordering the northern district of Bondere, AMISOM troops are sandwiched between Villa Somalia, the seat of the Transitional Federal Government, and al Shabab positions to the north and east. The hilltop encampment is on territory formerly used by the Shabab to shell the Presidential Palace and surrounding civilian areas. It was taken on July 21 following three days of heavy fighting which cost the lives of 2 AMISOM troops and those of over 70 Shabab fighters.

Al-Shabaab Score Own Goal

The soccer-hating Al-Shabaab terror gang has found itself in financial difficulties following the heinous attacks in Kampala. The twin bombings targeted crowds watching the World Cup final and killed 76 people. The militant's benefactors in the Somali Diaspora apparently think that is 76 murders too many. If only they attached the same value to Somali lives...

Unmasking The Terror

Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Movement of Warrior Youth), more commonly known as Al Shabaab (The Youth) is an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union, a grassroots community-driven movement inspired by Somali Islamic scholars trained in Saudi Arabia as Wahhabi sect followers.

The group is opposed to the decade-long Somali peace process which produced the TFG and other transitional federal institutions. This process has the backing of the majority of Somalis and the international community, including the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union. It is in support of this process, undertaken by the Somalis themselves, that the AU deployed peacekeepers to Mogadishu in 2007.

Records of its formation are scanty, but it is widely believed that their former commander Aden Hashi Ayro played an integral part. According to a report by the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Al Shabaab was created as a youth militia of the ICU in the years leading up to 2006. Ayrow wished to wage a violent Jihad against the West and was disappointed by the limited nationalistic goals espoused by some in the ICU, especially the now President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed of the Somali Transitional Federal Government.

According to an Al Shabaab propaganda magazine, “Shaykh Sharif, former chairman of the executive committee of the Islamic Courts… is nothing more than a Somali nationalist, pure and simple. The global jihad means nothing to him — he just wants Somalia to be a democratic Muslim state.” In fact, as the ICU sought to present a more positive international face, a tense relationship developed with Shabaab’s more radical elements. On occasion, the ICU even apologised for the group’s Taliban-like activities.

In May 2007, Ayrow was killed in a US air strike on a house in his central Somalia home town of Dusamareb. A few months later, in December, Al Shabaab named Sheikh Mukhtar Abdirahman (Abu Zubeyr), who hails from the relatively peaceful enclave of Somaliland, as its new leader.
Following the Islamists’ defeat by Somali Transitional Federal Government troops backed by Ethiopian forces, the ICU splintered, with some of the more radical elements, including Al Shabaab, regrouping at the Kenyan border to mount an insurgency. When Ethiopia withdrew its troops, Al Shabaab and their Islamist allies retook much of the former ICU territory but have been unable to topple the TFG in Mogadishu, thanks largely to African Union Peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi.

According to a report by the Critical Threats Projects of the American Enterprises Institute, Al Shabaab, which has acted independently of the now-defunct ICU since early 2007, currently controls much of southern and central Somalia, including large portions of the capital, Mogadishu.
According to Abdisaid M. Ali, a former Cabinet secretary in the TFG, now an independent consultant, Al Shabaab does not have a written or declared programme apart from creating and imposing strictly Islamic Wahhabi doctrine in Somalia, and eventually spreading it to the rest of the African continent. It refers to the territory that it governs as the “Islamic Provinces,” which is one step short of declaring an Islamic state or a Caliphate. In an April 2008 announcement, the group itself declared that “the concept of jihad... does not recognise fanciful boundaries or so-called international legitimacy.”

Like many Islamist movements across the globe, Al Shabaab seeks to sustain jihad by continuously expanding its local community infrastructure and support. It has filled a vacuum in the country by providing the population with essential services and welfare — clearing of roadblocks, repairing roads, organising markets, and re-establishing order and a justice system through the use of Sharia courts — similar to the way the Islamic Courts acted in 2006.

However, these limited gains to the populace are more than offset by the group’s ruthless and uncompromising application of its particularly harsh version of Sharia. In October 2008, in the southern port city of Kismayo, the group condemned 13-year-old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death by stoning for the crime of adultery after she was gang-raped by three men. None of men she accused of rape were arrested.

In December 2009, an Al Shabaab suicide bomber killed 19 people, including 4 cabinet ministers as well as reporters, dignitaries, parents, and students from Mogadishu’s Banadir University attending a medical school graduation ceremony at the Shamow hotel.

Since capturing large swathes of southern Somalia, the radical Islamists have been undertaking a programme of destroying mosques and the graves of revered religious leaders from the Sufi branch of Islam, to which most Somalis belong. They have also banned the playing of music on radio and the hiring of women by broadcasting stations.

Prior to the attacks in Kampala, the group banned the playing of football and screening of soccer matches in the areas it controls in Somalia, describing the sport as ''a satanic act'' that corrupts Muslims. In 2006, two people, including a young girl, were killed in Mogadishu when Shabaab gunmen fired their weapons directly into a crowd of demonstrators protesting their attempts to forcibly shut down a cinema theatre screening a World Cup semi-final.

Al Shabaab has loosely co-ordinated levels of leadership that revolve around local villages and religious leaders who rely on radical scholars for interpretations of the meaning of the jihad and the Koran as well as guidance in the armed conflict against the Transitional Federal Government and the African Union peacekeeping troops in Mogadishu. In the past, they used to be in conflict with traditional religious leaders but the radicals seem to have overpowered them through intimidation and assassination.

Though the group is nominally led by Sheikh Mukhtar Abdirahman (Abu Zubeyr), experts say a core group of senior leaders guide its actions. According to a situation report titled Somalia: Understanding Al Shabaab written by Paula Cristina Roque for the Institute for Security Studies, Zubeyr is assisted by a 10-member council, or Shura. In accordance with the general structure of jihadist organisations, this consultative council is comprised of sub-emirs in charge of different areas — military, theology, political information and external relations.

The militia is divided into three geographical units: Bay and Bokool regions, led by Mukhtar Roobow "Abu Mansur," the group's former spokesman; south-central Somalia and Mogadishu; and Puntland and Somaliland. A fourth unit, which controls the Juba Valley, is led by Hassan Abdillahi Hersi "Turki," who is not considered to be a member of Al Shabaab, but is closely aligned with it. These regional units "appear to operate independently of one another, and there is often evidence of friction between them," says a December 2008 UN Monitoring Group report.

Roque writes: “The Shura council and operational autonomy of different cells allows each commander to pursue his own military strategy and administer the areas conquered independently, but this decentralisation also makes the group difficult to monitor and oppose, as the removal of the top leadership would not render the organisation inoperative.”
To further complicate matters, the organisation also has two branches, or sub-units, the military branch Jaysh Al-Usra (the army of hardship), and the branch that maintains law and order, Jaysh Al-Hesbah (the army of morality).

Much of the Shabaab leadership hails from Somaliland and Puntland. While rank and file fighters are recruited from inside and outside Somalia, many come from the southern regions of Kismayo and Baidowa. According to Abdisaid Ali, Shabaab members tend to be men aged between 20 and 30 years, mostly uneducated. There however have been reports of boys as young as 14. After a review of all publicly available ranges, the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research estimates Al Shabaab's strength at approximately 4,000 individuals. The Economist magazine believes 3000 may be closer to the mark. However, as Stephanie Hanson notes in a report for the Council on Foreign Relations, “The number of rank-and-file members is less important than the number of hardcore ideological believers.”

According to Andre le Sage, a senior research fellow for Africa in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defence University of the US, the most hardline and ideologically motivated Al Shabab militias remain those run by Abu Zubeyr and Fu’ad Shongole (originally from Puntland but holds Swedish citizenship) around Mogadishu, and Ibrahim Haji Jama “al-Afghani” around Kismayo. These individuals are seen as the primary leaders of Al Shabaab’s foreign fighters, the strategists driving Shabaab’s support for global jihadi agendas rather than a narrower focus on controlling Somalia, and those with the deepest ties to Al Qaida.

UN Security Council documents estimate the number of dedicated foreign fighters at about 300, mainly from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Pakistan and Yemen. According to the New York Daily News, scores of U.S.-born Somali-Americans have flocked to their ancestral homeland to take up arms with the group. The several hundred Kenyan fighters are not considered particularly dedicated and frequently defect owing to the strict rules against smoking, alcohol, chewing khat and having extra-marital relation with women.

Abdisaid Ali fingers Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states as significant sources of external funds flowing to Al Shabaab and other radical Islamist movements in the Horn of Africa through Dubai. He however believes that terror financing in East Africa “is mainly a ‘local loop’, community based grass-roots support structure that help these elements to prevail… Local mosques, local religious leaders, and local community networks provide the bulk of long term financial support for logistical and operational needs.” Other analysts have disputed this, saying Al Shabaab thrives on taxes imposed on the local population, and especially the trade in charcoal and khat. This may partly account for the group’s about-face on the banning of chewing khat in areas it controls.

Failed State? What Failed State?

Hussein Abdulkadir, 30, wakes up every morning at 5.30 am. After a quick shower and morning prayer, he has breakfast with his wife and three kids. After making sure they do not miss the school bus, he also gets on a bus to head to the hospital where he works as a nurse. Money is short and like many workers across the globe, he worries about his ability to provide for his family. “I have to pay rent at the end of the month and the kids go to a private school which is very expensive.” What makes Abdulkadir’s mundane story remarkable is he lives in what has been described as the most dangerous city on the planet: Mogadishu.

For many, Somalia epitomises a situation of constant crisis, a ‘black hole’ of death and disaster. For the last three years, the country has occupied the top spot in the Failed States Index compiled by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. Though there is a paucity of meaningful human development data, available indicators paint a sorry picture.

For example, drought and civil unrest have displaced 1.5 million people and, according to WFP, left 70 percent of the population in central Somalia in need of humanitarian assistance. Overall, a third of Somalis are dependent on food aid and one in six children is acutely malnourished – a total of some 240,000 children – the highest acute malnutrition rates anywhere in the world. Maternal mortality rates are also among the highest in the world with studies showing that as many as 45 women die everyday during pregnancy and childbirth.

However, this image belies the reality of emerging national and sub-national political entities that have ensured a degree of civilian security in particular places at particular times as people have adapted their behaviour and livelihoods to cope with insecurity and even to profit from the opportunities that conflict throws up. “There is life in the midst of all the chaos,” says Abdulkadir. “Not everyone has left. We cannot leave the country to the dogs.”

According to Anna Lindley, formerly a Research Officer at the Refugee Studies Centre and now a Lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, “on one level, the question of why people have been leaving Mogadishu since 2006 has an obvious answer. But on another level, many of the people find ways to negotiate daily dangers. They are witnesses to the last two decades of insecurity, but their voices are rarely heard. Life does go on, albeit in ways outsiders often find hard to imagine.”

“Four of my children go to school but for the last few weeks their learning was interrupted by the fighting,” says Abdullah Nur, a 55 year old porter at the city’s Aden Ade international airport. “We are used to such clashes and after some time, life goes back to normal.”

The absence of a central government has had a surprisingly limited effect on daily life with ‘local authorities’ largely filling the vacuum. These have provided a surprising degree of stability in some places. "Notwithstanding the general perception of Somalia as anarchic, basic law and order is in fact the norm in most locations… much of the Somali countryside - especially Somaliland, Puntland, and pockets of southern Somalia - is safer for local residents than is the case in neighbouring countries… It is important not to confuse the security problems of international aid agencies with security problems for average residents," says Ken Menkhaus, a professor at Davidson College and a specialist on the Horn of Africa.

Under the stewardship of the Transitional Federal Government, which has been in place since October 2004, the country has made major strides. That year, according to the African Executive, enrolment in primary school shot up to 300,000, much higher than what it was prior to the civil war. In addition, to secondary, vocational institutes, and adult education colleges, the country now has up to 10 universities, three of which are ranked among Africa’s top 100. They include Hargeysa University, Mogadishu University, Puntland State University, Amoud University and Banadir University.

Improvements have also been recorded in the health sector. UNICEF country representative Rozanne Chorlton says Somalia is on track to be measles and tetanus-free. It has been polio free since 2007 and in 2009 immunized 1.5 million children – 85 per cent of those under five – as well as 1 million women, 65 per cent of those of child bearing age against tetanus.

Ordinary life is sustained by a vigorous economy based on pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods, and on trade. Nomads and semi-pastoralists make up a large portion of the population, are dependent upon livestock for their livelihood. The sector accounts for about 40% of GDP and about 65% of export earnings.

Commercial infrastructure and institutions, World Vision says, are functional and relatively sophisticated. The sprawling Somali diaspora sends home an estimated $1 billion every year and the country has some of the best telecommunications in Africa: a handful of companies are ready to wire home or office and provide crystal-clear service, including international long distance, for about $10 a month." According to the BBC, it takes just three days for a landline to be installed - compared with waiting-lists of many years in neighbouring Kenya.

Prior to 1991, the national airline had only one airplane. Now there are approximately fifteen airlines, with over sixty aircraft plying six international destinations, and many more domestic routes in Somalia. According to a 2005 World Bank report, the "private airline business in Somalia is now thriving." The carriers offer competitively priced tickets and are crucial to Somalis’ booming trade and the delivery of humanitarian assistance by the international community. The international airport in Mogadishu has been renovated and sports a new 3km runway, an 80 feet air traffic control tower, a reorganized baggage system and even a duty free shop and restaurant to serve travelers.

However, the insurgency continues to pose grave problems. Jihadist cells in Mogadishu are increasingly fragmented and answer to no one, and some have targeted national aid workers and civil society leaders. This has infused political violence with a high level of unpredictability and randomness in Mogadishu that has eroded the ability of astute Somali aid workers, businesspeople, and civic figures to take calculated risks in their movements and work.

The U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report published in June 2009, noted the widespread use of children in fighting forces in the country. Extremist groups opposed to the TFG, such as the Al Shabaab, conscript and recruit children as young as eight years of age, including girls, to plant bombs, carry out and assassinations. “I have so many friends who were brainwashed by the Al Shabaab to join them. I don’t think we will realize peace at home as long as Al Shabaab exists” says a Somali teenager who only gave his name as Kadhar. The militias also reportedly traffic Somali women and children within the country for sexual exploitation and forced labor.

The diminished capacity of the transitional government also presents huge challenges. The livestock industry, one of the main pillars of the economy, lacks proper regulation, and lacks certificate of origin regimes needed to meet phytosanitary requirements for international trade, affecting access to export markets. Following an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever on the African Horn in 2000, Saudi Arabia banned livestock imports from the country for nine years.

Similarly, the lack of a monetary authority has resulted in the frequent issue of ‘counterfeit’ Somali shillings, triggering inflation. The informal Hawala systems of remittances may be efficient but is unable to demonstrate compliance with international standards and regulations, and has in some cases been subject to legal sanctions.

In addition the absence of macro-economic management leaves the economy at the mercy of businessmen and money traders. Abdallah Hussein, 20, who lives in the capital, says: “Life in Mogadishu is very harsh. There are no jobs, there is nothing at all. I wish the country was a better place where I can go to school, live a better life and shape my future”

The situation is complicated by easy access to firearms. Mogadishu is awash with weapons. There is even an arms bazaar called Cirtogte or “Sky Shooter” within the expansive Bakara market where feuding groups have a ready supply of cheap munitions, guns, grenades and mortars. Says Saado Ahmed, an 18 year old resident of the city: “The biggest challenge facing the youth in Mogadishu is lack of opportunities. Youths have nothing to do, they are all idlers and that is what makes them vulnerable to these armed groups. All the soldiers you see fighting each other are youngsters with no future at all. They just believe in guns.”

Somalia's Peace Process

The backbone of the Djibouti Peace Process is a 2008 peace accord signed in neighboring Djibouti between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) that is meant to pave the way for the cessation of all armed conflict across the country. The 11-point agreement expanded the parliament to include representatives of the opposition alliance and civil society.

The first phase of the Djibouti talks resulted in agreement on the formation of a new Transitional Federal Government in early 2009. This included the expansion of the Parliament from 275 to 550 members, to bring in ARS parliamentarians and an expanded cabinet. It also requested the UN to deploy an international stabilization force from “countries that are friends of Somalia" excluding the neighboring countries, and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.

The Djibouti process, which has the support of the international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and the United States, is itself just the latest step in the broader process of political settlement and peacemaking in Somalia, which began almost immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. It builds upon the achievements of the earlier efforts. The challenge, as always, is to cement the gains that have been made, and to draw others into a constructive dialogue and out of a cycle of violence.

Following the ouster of Siyad Barre in 1991, the first two international reconciliation meetings aimed at re-establishing a Somali government took place in Djibouti in June and July 1991. Six organizations participated. An agreement endorsing Ali Mahdi as president was immediately rejected by General Muhammad Farah Aidid, and a bloody civil war in Mogadishu and the south ensued.

In March 1993, fifteen parties to the Somali Civil War signed two agreements for national reconciliation and disarmament: an agreement to hold an Informal Preparatory Meeting on National Reconciliation, followed by the 1993 Addis Ababa Agreement made at the Conference on National Reconciliation. Fighting continued, however, and the agreement later fell apart.

From November 1996 to January 1997, a conference on national reconciliation was held in Sodere, Ethiopia. It created a 41-member National Salvation Council (NSC) charged with the responsibility of organising a transitional government. The conference was, however, boycotted by Hussein Farrah Aidid, (now leader of his father’s faction following Gen. Aidid’s death) and by the government of Somaliland. A similar conference in Sana'a, Yemen, did not include all the parties of the conflict, and was rejected by those not attending.

A fourth reconciliation meeting in Cairo, Egypt, in December 1997 saw 28 signatories to the ensuing agreement, including both Ali Mahdi and Hussein Farrah Aidid. The "Cairo Declaration" provided for a 13-person Council of Presidents, a prime minister, and a national assembly but left the country without a national leader.

Officially dubbed the Somalia National Peace Conference (SNPC), and sometimes called the Djibouti conference, this was a series of meetings held in Arta, Djibouti, from 20 April – 5 May 2000. In contrast to previous reconciliation meetings, the Arta conference included extensive participation by unarmed civic leaders – intellectuals, clan and religious leaders and members of the business community. It culminated with the Arta Declaration and the formation of the Transitional National Government (TNG), the first Somali government since 1991 to secure a measure of international recognition, enabling Somalia to reoccupy its seat at the UN and in regional bodies. The TNG was opposed by a rival pan-Somali governmental movement, known as the Somalia Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), made up of warlords from different regions of the country.

In an effort to reconcile the TNG with its SRRC adversaries, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Eastern Africa launched a fresh national reconciliation process before the TNG mandate had ended. This process eventually developed into a sixth major Somali reconciliation meeting, the Somali National Reconciliation Conference, held in Eldoret, Kenya, in October 2002. It produced a ceasefire agreement signed by 24 faction leaders stipulating the need to create a federal structure, reversing the unitary structure established at Arta.

The 15th Somali National Reconciliation Conference (SNRC) was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in September 2003. The Initiative to convene the conference was endorsed by the IGAD summit of 2003 and supported by the AU, the Arab League and the UN. At the conference, the TNG and the SRRC were reconciled, and a new united movement subsequently developed, dubbed the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The Conference was successfully concluded with the formal adoption of a Federal Transitional Charter.

From 9 to 29 January 2004 a conference was held in Nairobi, Kenya, at which the Transitional Federal Government developed further. A document was signed by the major factions, titled Declaration on the Harmonization of Various Issues Proposed by the Somali Delegates at the Somali Consultative Meetings from 9-29 January 2004. The agreement called for the establishment of Transitional Federal Institutions as well as elections. This was followed by the inauguration of a Transitional Federal Parliament in August 2004, election of a President in 2004, and finally the granting of the vote of confidence to a prime minister and the establishment of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in early 2005.

Following the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union, more than 3,000 people from all of Somalia's regions and clans as well as the Somali Diaspora participated in a National Reconciliation Conference convened by the TFG in Mogadishu from 15 July - 30 August 2007. Offshoots of the ICU and opposition leaders, however, held a separate meeting in Asmara, Eritrea, where they joined forces to fight the TFG under the banner of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS).