Tafelberg Short: Somalia - Fixing Africa's Most Failed State. Greg Mills

Sheikh Mohamud was elected as Somali president by MPs on 10 September 2012.

Two days after his election, Mohamud survived an assassination attempt. Little wonder that he was moved to say: ‘Security is my number one, number two and number three priority.’15 Lauded as the head of a ‘constructive elite’ coalition (one that built ‘universities, hospitals, charities, and businesses in the country during the long civil war’) which ‘defeated a parasitic elite coalition’ of ‘warlords and moneylords’ that had ‘devoted all its energies to diverting public funds’,16 he is seen to offer Somalia its best chance in twenty years of emerging from devastating civil conflict. But he will have his work cut out for him.

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      With the above in mind, this ebook uses Somalia, the most extreme of examples, to examine three issues associated with whether external intervention can be successful at ‘putting back together’ or ‘stabilising’ failed states: First, why did Somalia collapse? Second, does Somaliland’s experience to the north offer any pointers to would-be state-builders in the south and further afield? And third, what can be learnt from the history of external intervention?

1 Conrad Norton and Uys Krige, Vanguard of Victory: A Short Review of South African Victories in East Africa – 1940-1941. Pretoria: Government Printer, 1941, p. 35

2 This ebook is based on three research trips each to Somalia (December 2011, June-July 2012 and September 2012) and Somaliland (June 2010, May 2011 and September 2012). Where not specifically footnoted, the quotes are taken directly from meetings during these visits.

3 On his visit to Mogadishu in February 2012. At http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/02/192105.html.

4 For a most readable literary summary involving descriptions of modern Somalia and the harrowing life this produces, see Nuriddin Farah, Crossbones. Johannesburg: Penguin, 2012. See also Peter D. Little, Somalia: Economy without State. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003.

5 See, for example, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failedstates2012.

6 Political scientist Robert Rotberg even invented a special category of ‘failed state’ to describe Somalia: the ‘collapsed state’, which he defined as a ‘rare and extreme version of the failed state’ that is ‘a mere geographical expression, a black hole into which a failed polity has fallen’, where ‘there is dark energy, but the forces of entropy have overwhelmed the radiance that hitherto provided some semblance of order and other vital political goods to the inhabitants (no longer the citizens) embraced by language or ethnic affinities or borders’. Robert I. Rotberg, ‘The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair’, in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 9-10.

7 See http://www.somaliareport.com/index.php/post/370/Livestock_Exports_Drop_Dramatically_in_2011.

8 At http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-11/help-somalia-s-new-president-cut-off-aid.html.

9 Somalia’s total aid flow was $497m in 2010, of which $239m was in humanitarian assistance. See http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/somalia. By 2012, this had increased substantially. Turkey, for example, is supplying $300 million in direct aid (projects conducted by Turks), including refugee camps, roads, hospitals and schools. The UN requested $1.5 billion in 2012, partly to prevent a return to famine. For example, the World Food Program was, by 2012, bringing in 5,000 tonnes of food aid into Mogadishu alone each month. See http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-20092927.html. This fed around 420,000 people on a continuous basis. See http://article.wn.com/view/2012/08/18/Somalia_food_support_for_420000_people_in_Mogadishu/. The benefits of such aid are, however, held to be dubious. See ‘Help Somalia’s President: Cut Off Aid’, at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-11/help-somalia-s-new-president-cut-off-aid.html.

10 At http://somalianewsroom.com/2012/07/06/kenya-defense-forces-officially-integrate-into-amisom-to-save-money/; and http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-05/03/c_131564771.htm.

11 See http://www.economist.com/node/21560905.

12 See, for example, Ken Menkhaus, ‘The Somali Spring’, Foreign Policy, September 2012, at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/24/the_somali_spring?page=0,1; see also J. Peter Pham, ‘State Collapse, Insurgency, and Famine in the Horn of Africa: Legitimacy and the Ongoing Somali Crisis’, Journal of the Middle East and Africa 2, no. 2 (2011): 153-187.

13 At http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/201272081233390153.html. The UN report found inter alia that of every $10 received by Somalia’s transitional government between 2009 and 2010, seven dollars are unaccounted for. In May 2012, the World Bank reported that $131m in government revenues were unaccounted for from that same period. The UN report notes that almost a quarter of government spending in 2011 – over $12m – was ‘absorbed’ by the office of the president, prime minister and the parliamentary speaker, and that a further $40m in government revenues in 2011 could be missing.

14 Discussion, Turkish ambassador, Mogadishu, 27 September 2012.

15 Cited in the (Kenyan) Daily Nation, 24 September 2012.

16 Menkhaus, op cit.