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Conflict analysis: Somalia

Produced for the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) Nairobi Kenya February 2011 Updated December 2011

Ken Menkhaus Davidson College

Contents Forward Introduction Context I. Conflict Assessment Typology of Contemporary Armed Conflict Conflict Trend Analysis Actor and Interest Inventory Conflict Analysis Underlying Causes Conflict Analysis Precipitating Causes Capacities for Peace II. Armed Conflict and External Interventions III. Assessment

Forward
This conflict analysis was commissioned by the UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) in December 2010. Fieldwork was conducted in Nairobi in January 2011 to supplement the desk study portion of the research, and a draft was completed in February. Revisions to the document were made in the summer of 2011 in response to very useful feedback from stakeholders in the UN, African Union, donor states, NGO community, and Somali community, and in Fall of 2011 the update was updated. Portions of the original February 2011 draft that were rendered out of date by these changes have been updated and revised, and a new concluding section has been added to better integrate the analysis with policy implications. The author is very grateful to all of the many Somalis and representatives of international actors engaged in Somalia who generously offered their time to meet and discuss these issues, and special thanks is offered to the staff at UNPOS who did so much to facilitate the fieldwork. The analysis solely reflects the conclusions of the author; any errors of fact or analysis are solely his responsibility.

Introduction
Somalia has been in a state of armed conflict of one form or another since 1988, a condition that is largely responsible for the destruction of much of the capital, the flight of over 1.5 million Somali refugees, and the displacement of over a million other Somalis. The patterns and severity of this state of armed conflict have varied over time, ranging from intense civil war to intermittent communal clashes to chronic, low-level insecurity described locally as not war not peace. Armed conflict has affected almost every corner of the country at some point over the past twenty years, but most of the fighting has been concentrated in a few chronically contested locations, especially the greater Mogadishu area. Most of the fighting has been domestic, but external actors have frequently, and increasingly, been central protagonists in Somalias armed violence in the form of international peace enforcement or protection forces, occupying armies, proxy wars, covert operations, or as the source of policies or development resources that have inadvertently fueled conflict locally. The main clashes today pit AMISOM forces from Uganda and Burundi against an Al-Shabaab militia that has received material support from sources in the Gulf, Eritrea, and the large Somali diaspora. In addition, a growing number of local Somali clan militias have emerged, taking control of neighborhoods of Mogadishu vacated by Shabaab in August 2011. Some of these militias clash with Shabaab, and are provided various types of support from the AMISOM forces. Both Kenyan and Ethiopian armed forces are presently inside Somali territory as well; both are backing local Somali proxies in an effort to roll Shabaab back from its strongholds in southern Somalia, and both have directly engaged Shabaab in short episodes of armed combat. Finally, international actors outside the region the US, France, the many states involved in the naval task forces patrolling Somalias waters against piracy, and Al Qaeda are involved in different ways in the countrys armed conflicts. Collectively, this qualifies Somalias primary contemporary wars the battle in Mogadishu, and more recently in the Jubba regions of Somalia -- as an internationalized intra-state conflict.1 Over almost the same time period, Somalias central government has been in a state of complete collapse. This crisis of state collapse is often conflated with the countrys protracted armed conflicts, when it fact these are related but distinct crises. The absence of a functional central government providing public order, rule of law, and an arena for peaceful settlement of disputes has unquestionably been a central factor in the countrys chronic vulnerability to armed conflict. But parts of the country have enjoyed relative peace and security for extended periods of time without the benefits of a central state, thanks to resilient local governance practices. Indeed, in some instances efforts to revive the central state have actually triggered armed clashes. The relationship between state failure, state-building, and armed conflict is complex in Somalia.

Paul Williams, War, in Security Studies, ed. by Paul Williams (Routledge 2008).

Many external peace-building efforts in Somalia have failed to fully appreciate these two observations that Somalias war is (1) internationalized and (2) not synonymous with state collapse. The result are external initiatives which either focus on peace negotiations exclusively involving Somali actors (when in fact external actors and their interests are increasingly central to the Somali drama) or which focus exclusively on state revival and state-building on the assumption that that will solve the broader problem of armed conflict. Put another way, past policies on Somalia have trended to misdiagnose the crisis, and hence apply prescriptions destined to fall short and potentially make things worse. This paper provides an assessment of armed conflict trends and drivers in Somalia. It is intended as a baseline document in support of the formulation of a UN Integrated Strategic Framework for Somalia, reflecting a commitment for UN strategy on Somalia to be conflict sensitive. Methodologically, the study draws on a desk review of existing literature on conflict in Somalia, including extensive previous research on this topic by the author, supplemented by interviews with Somali and international analysts and policy-makers conducted during a ten day trip to Nairobi Kenya in January 2011. The assessment considers evidence and trends across the entire duration of the long period of civil war since 1988, but places special emphasis on current conflict and its causes. The structure and logic of the analysis draws extensively on frameworks for conflict assessments developed in recent years by USAID, the World Bank, UNDP, and DFID, among others.2 Analytically, this paper attempts to move discussion of conflict in Somalia into more nuanced consideration of the catalysts and inhibitors of conflict the intervening variables and conditions that tend to amplify, neutralize, or even transform the impact of conflict drivers. In Somalia, as elsewhere, most drivers of armed conflict can also be a source of stability, peace, protection, and cooperation. State-building, development resources, commerce, and clan can all generate armed conflict but can also serve as a source of protection or a catalyst for cooperation. The analytically sound question to ask, then, is under what conditions do certain factors fuel conflict or promote peace? Any analysis that attempts to identify the underlying and precipitating causes of armed conflict in Somalia wades into turbulent waters. Competing narratives and interpretations abound, and almost every claim made by observers comes under attack by others. Readers searching for a consensus on the topic will be left disappointed. While some of these differing interpretations can be attributed to overt political agendas, others reflect honest differences over interpretation of a long, complex, and contentious twenty-year conflict in Somalia. This paper offers what the
2

See USAID, Conducting a Conflict Assessment: A Framework for Strategy and Program Development (Washington DC, 2005) and the forthcoming CAF 2.0 (2012); DFID, Conducting Conflict Assessments: Guidance Notes, (London 2002); World Bank, Conflict Reconstruction Team, Conflict Analysis Framework, (Washington 2005).

author has concluded constitute the most persuasive and empirically-grounded explanations of armed conflict in Somalia, but attempts to recognize alternative interpretations and points of especially contentious debate. Finally, policy-oriented analysis such as this must respect the need for brevity, clarity, and parsimony. None of these virtues comes naturally to academic regional specialists, whose inclination is to privilege complexity, context, and particularities. Generalist readers with little background on Somalia are warned that Somalias conflict dynamics are a great deal more complex than this paper can possibly capture. Readers with intimate knowledge of Somalia are reminded that the objective of policy-oriented research is to identify theories, frameworks, and linkages that have general explanatory value, not the power to explain every single instance of armed conflict in granular detail.

Context
This assessment is being conducted at a pivotal moment in Somalia. The Transitional Federal Governments (TFG) mandate ended in August 2011 with a one-year extension tied to a transitional roadmap and there is considerable uncertainty about what comes next. African Union peacekeeping forces (AMISOM) have been expanded in number and will be expanded further with the inclusion of Kenyan forces already in southern Somalia in an offensive launched against al shabaaab. For its part, shabaaab has fallen back from areas it controlled in Mogadishu, has lost control of some borders areas in southern Somalia, and appears weaker than at any time in the past five years. Its gross mishandling of a sizable famine in its area of control in the summer and fall of 2011 further discredited the group. But it remains a potent insurgency, and has accelerated its use of roadside bombs and assassinations in southern Somalia. The droughtinduced famine that broke out in summer of 2011 has forced the international community to make difficult decisions about whether and how to respond with humanitarian assistance in zones where Shabaab, a designated terrorist group, is in control. Finally, the wider region of Northeast Africa and the Horn is experiencing major new developments with potential impact on Somalia, including the secession in south Sudan, Kenyan political devolution, and popular uprisings against governments in parts of the Arab world, including Egypt and Yemen, both important players in Somalia. All of these have the potential to produce wildcard events and trigger rapid changes in the Somali political landscape. The relative stasis and stalemate the country has endured since late 2008 may well continue into 2012, but Somalia is also ripe for major changes and new directions in the patterns and scope of armed conflict. The Somali context is unusual for a conflict analysis designed to inform a UN integrated strategic framework, for several reasons. First, the country is not a post-conflict setting but rather the site of an ongoing armed conflict. This is thus both a study of conflict vulnerability and an assessment of ongoing conflict. Second, a standard element of conflict analysis assessment of problems and prospects of negotiated settlements and power-sharing is off the table in the Somali context, since the main armed insurgency, Shabaab, is a designated terrorist group and at least for now formally considered off-limits for dialogue and negotiations.3 Third, armed conflict is currently a critical part of the strategy embraced by the UN, the African Union, and other international actors in Somalia, as they support the AMISOM force in military operations designed to push shabaab out of Mogadishu and create expanded space for the TFG to hold and govern.4 Kenyas decision to launch an armed offensive against shabaab in its border areas in
3

There are ample backchannel contacts with some elements of shabaab, both by diplomatic and humanitarian players. Some calls to negotiate directly with shabaab have been raised, but as of December 2011 have not changed international policy.
4

AMISOM, the African Union, the regional organization IGAD have pressed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution authorizing expansion of AMISOM forces to 20,000, greater UN support to AMISOM, and more robust actions against shabaab, including naval blockades

October 2011, in response to a series of cross-border kidnappings it claimed were conducted by shabaab, is another example. Armed conflict is in this case viewed by important external actors as a critical tool of multi-lateral statecraft in Somalia, not exclusively as a problem to be solved.5 The Somali case thus falls in a special category of countries in which the UN is simultaneously pursing peace while supporting a peace enforcement operation that is employing lethal force against one or more armed groups. For the purposes of this kind of analysis, this compels the UN to distinguish between armed conflict that is seen as useful and necessary in Somalia versus armed conflict that is seen as bad and to be avoided. Somalia is also unusual, though not unique, in that it is plagued by a state of armed conflict and state collapse that has endured in various forms for over 20 years. This is not merely an armed conflict; it is a protracted armed conflict. The factors that trigger armed conflict are often distinct from factors that help to perpetuate them. The wider literature on protracted conflict suggests that over time interests develop in perpetuating conditions of war and lawlessness; these spoilers (both local and external) can become additional impediments to peace-building and state-building. That same literature also reminds us that spoilers come in many varieties, including both situational as well as total spoilers. More broadly, this line of inquiry rightly emphasizes the fact that good conflict analysis must include an interest inventory of the key actors, recognizing that some may actually have an interest in perpetuating conditions of durable disorder. In addition, Somalia is unusual in that it remains essentially a collapsed state across most of south-central Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu. To the northwest, the secessionist state of Somaliland enjoys strong command over a security sector that, in partnership with local community leaders, keeps the peace in its territory except in contested portions of Sool and Sanaag region bordering Puntland. In the northeast, the autonomous state of Puntland has much lower capacities to contain insecurity, but has nonetheless been the site of a variable levels of peace and security since it was established in 1999. Other nascent regional administrations in central Somalia Galmudug, Hiib and Himaan have very modest capacities to govern. The
and no fly zones. See the most recent IGAD communiqu, Communique of the 17th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Assembly of Heads of State and Government on Sudan, Somalia, and Kenya, Addis Ababa (30 January 2011) http://igad.int/attachments/283_Communique%20of%20the%2017TH%20Summit.pdf. Update: as of October 2011, AMISOM forces grew to 9,600 in number.
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Since this report was first drafted, the government of Kenya also engaged in an armed offensive in the Jubba regions of southern Somalia in pursuit of shabaab (since October 2011); both Ethiopia and Kenya have trained and support Somali anti-shabaab militias; and the US has stepped up periodic kinetic operations against shabaab targets. When considered in combination with the AMISOM forces and anti-piracy naval operations off the Somali coast, the use of armed force is a significant and increasingly important tool on the part of external actors inside Somalia.

Transitional Federal Government has continued to struggle to extent its influence outside portions of the capital under direct AMIOSOM protection; much of the capital is actually under the sway of clan militias and district commissioners who are autonomous from the TFG even if claiming to be part of it. This distinct political context means that most of the armed conflict in the country is beyond the control of the government; that the extremely weak TFG has been overshadowed by the rise of a number of cartels (informal political and economic networks) with far greater power in the capital; and, most distressingly, the degree of commitment to preventing or ending armed violence among some in the TFG leadership is low. Some go so far as to claim that elements of the TFG actively stoke instability and armed conflict in pursuit of parochial interests tied to the cartels noted above. This is a critical issue when forging conflict-sensitive political strategies and development programming it suggests that external actors may not have local partners who share an interest in conflict prevention. In most conflict analyses, a distinction is made not only between factors that cause wars versus those which perpetuate them, but also between underlying and precipitating causes of war. On this count the Somali context is not at all unique. In Somalia as elsewhere, underlying or structural factors which render a country vulnerable to armed conflict are relatively easy to identify. But identification of the specific precipitating causes (or combinations of causes) that can suddenly trigger armed violence on a large scale is far more difficult to achieve. The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, the fact that those uprisings took virtually everyone by surprise, and the fact that one remained almost entirely peaceful while the other produced some armed clashes, is a reminder that we are far better at identifying conflict vulnerability than we are at predicting the actual outbreak of instability or armed conflict. Conflict analyses reflect a concern with security as both a goal and a pre-requisite for other goals. But they do not always explicitly answer the question whose security? Put another way, who or what is threatened by the armed conflict under investigation local populations? the government? external interests? This is especially relevant in Somalia, where external actors view Somalia principally as a threat to their own security, where most of the international support to the TFG to date has been focused on guaranteeing security for the government, and where most of the population has been plagued by chronically high levels of insecurity in which acts of armed criminality, communal violence, and politically driven war are often indistinguishable. This study considers the security of all of these actors in the conflict analysis.

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I. Conflict Assessment Typology of contemporary armed conflict Somalia has been beset by a wide range of armed conflict since 1988. Different types of armed conflict have tended to be triggered by different factors, and have distinct trajectories. There are many ways to break Somalias armed conflicts down; this typology organizes Somalias armed conflict by scale of fighting and actors involved. These categories overlap somewhat, so some of Somalias episodes of armed conflict can fall into more than one grouping. The most significant types of armed conflict in Somalia have included the following: 1. Civil war. Civil war extensive and damaging fighting involving significant armed groups, over a matter of national politics has arguably occurred three times in Somalia since 1988, and counts as one of the most destructive forms of warfare to beset the country. The Barre regimes war against multiple liberation fronts in 1988-90 destroyed Hargeisa and much of the Shabelle valley, and resulted in over 50,000 civilian deaths in northwest Somalia alone. The civil war of 1991-92, pitting numerous clan-based militias against one another (initially over control of Mogadishu and the government), contributed to the destruction and looting of much of the capital, a famine that claimed 250,000 lives, and the displacement of millions of Somalis, one million of whom became refugees. The civil war since 2007 has been the most complex armed conflict, involving foreign as well as multiple Somali armed groups; it has produced heavy property damage, the flight of 700,000 IDPs from Mogadishu, the casualties in the tens of thousands. 2. Foreign forces at war. Internationalized intra-state conflicts can involve either direct or indirect roles of external actors. Somalia has seen both, but has been the site of a surprising number of cases of foreign forces engaged in direct armed combat inside Somalia. Foreign forces have been injected into Somalias twenty year crisis as peacekeepers (UNOSOM I, 1992), peace enforcement operations (UNITAF and UNOSOM II, 1993-94), protection missions (AMISOM, 2007-), cross-border incursions against local threats (Ethiopia, periodically since 1995), occupation forces (Ethiopia 2007-08), military advisors (Eritrea, 2006), transnational jihadi fighters and advisors (Al Qaida, 1992-94, 2003-), counter-terrorism operations (US, since 2005, possibly earlier), anti-piracy patrols and rescue operations (since 2007), private security forces (numerous, increasing in number since 2008), and Kenyan military forces (since October 2011). While some of these interventions have contributed to short-term stabilization (UNITAF, for instance, halted the civil war and famine of 1992), almost all of them have been drawn into often very heavy armed conflict with Somali armed groups. Some of the most destructive wars in Somalia have involved foreign troops, including the catastrophic period of fighting since 2007. Foreign forces employ much heavier weaponry and, because they are usually fighting asymmetrical urban guerilla wars against Somali insurgents, produce higher levels of civilian casualties. When foreigners are the

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insurgents (Al Qaida/shabaab), their extensive use of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombings, and assassinations also result in high civilian casualties. 3. Proxy wars. Foreign interests have at times played out rivalries through Somali proxies. Eritrea and Ethiopia are the most notable example; the US and Al Qaida are another. Because funds for weaponry and ammunition are scarce in Somalia, injections of funding, supplies, and advisors to Somali armed groups dramatically increases the damage and duration of battles. These armed conflicts have proven exceptionally difficult to mediate because the external actors can constitute silent and unaccountable spoilers. Because local proxies have also often been armed non-state actors or more or less autonomous security forces within national or local governments, this form of war has also reinforced local spoilers opposed to state-building, as they benefit from serving as an ally of an external force in the absence of a functional state. 4. Sub-national polities at war. Somalias regional administrations most notably Puntland, secessionist Somaliland, and more recently Galmudug are correctly viewed as zones of relative peace, where disputes are settled through politics, not armed conflict. Whether this relative peace is a function of having an effective government or not is a matter of debate some residents of these administrations argue their peace is the result of a strong social compact, and that the government is the result of, not the cause of, peace. In any event, these sub-national polities have engaged their security forces in armed conflict, against local rivals and rejectionists (Somaliland in 1994-95 and Puntland intermittently since 2003) and against one another (Somaliland vs. Puntland, intermittently since 2004). Modest resources and a local desire to contain the fighting have kept these clashes relatively limited in scope and duration. The unilateral creation of sub-national administrations raises conflict-producing issues such as rights and citizenship, borders, and control over seaport customs and energy resources. 5. Communal clashes. Hundreds of communal (clan) clashes have occurred across Somalia over the past twenty years. No region has been immune, though some have suffered much more than others. Some constitute spiraling violence originating in cycles of revenge killings for a crime. Many of these clashes are triggered by struggles over valued resources pasture, wells, markets, airstrips, seaports, and international humanitarian or development aid and contracts. Others have been fueled by disputes over political control of towns and districts. Still others have been manipulated and manufactured by Somali political elites in Mogadishu or Nairobi what Somalis call remote control wars. The pervasiveness of inexpensive weaponry has sometimes resulted in these clashes produced shocking casualty levels more akin to those from a civil war. While communal clashes have many different triggers, communities with relatively robust civic, religious, and traditional (clan) leadership are better inoculated against spiraling clan clashes, and can more effectively negotiate an end to them once they begin. The current drought is intensifying communal conflicts (discussed below).

12 6. Standing clan militias at war. Whereas communal clashes involve clans mobilizing

temporarily at protect their corporate interest, some clan-based militias in Somalia are standing units, paid (irregularly) by militia leaders, some of whom have earned the moniker of warlord. Most of the fighting in 1991-92 involved clan-based factions. Since 1995 the number and political prominence of these militias have declined, but they remain a powerful player in Somali armed conflict, and have enjoyed a resurgence as partners and proxies of foreign actors since 2004. Their forces are typically poorlydisciplined. Clan leaders, who are often responsible for recruiting fighters into these militias, can and do exhibit some influence with these groups, even as they themselves are manipulated by the militia leaders. 7. Paramilitaries at war. Security forces with formal standing in national or regional governments police, army, presidential guards, and others have tended to operate as autonomous units based largely on clan and answering to their commander, not to the government. They pursue their own interests, which sometimes results in their use of lethal force against other armed groups, including other security forces nominally working for the same government. This was a major problem in the TFG in 2007-08, and remains a source of periodic armed clashes in Puntland and in the TFG.6 8. War economies. As in other countries beset by protracted war, Somalia has suffered from the rise of armed conflict driven primarily by parochial economic interests to loot, extort, and secure and protect valuable sources of rent such as checkpoints, ports, and airstrips. Many armed groups, including clan militia and government security sector units, are paid irregularly or not at all, and so approach armed conflict as an opportunity to secure war booty. This motive can animate the behavior of foot soldiers as well as top financial backers of wars. These clashes tend to involve risk-aversion, opportunism, and the targeting of civilians rather than combatants. This political economy of armed conflict extends to economic interests in continued state failure as well. A raft of illicit activities including lucrative charcoal exports, arms and drug trafficking, and the $120 million or more in ransom earned by Somali piracy (discussed below) each year all require an operating environment in which effective rule of law is not possible. Importantly, this political economy of war and instability implicates some foreign actors as well as Somalis. 9. Piracy. Piracy is not an act of armed conflict per se, but relies on the threat of use of lethal weapons to capture and commandeer ships in the Gulf of Aqaba or Indian Ocean. Somalia has been since 2005 the site of the worst piracy epidemic in the world, and today generates ransom exceeding $120 million per day making it one of the top sources of hard currency in Somalia after remittances, foreign aid, and (in good years) livestock exports. By consequence, it is arguably the most lucrative livelihood earned by force of arms in Somalia though shabaabs financial empire of charcoal exports and forced
6

At the time this paper was drafted, armed clashes broke out between a TFG police unit and army forces, initially sparked by a single killing, resulting in 16 deaths and 56 injured.

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taxation could top the list.7 Piracy attracts thousands of armed youth seeking to make a fortune; implicates powerful Somali financial backers of the pirates, including some in the diaspora; provides indirect livelihoods and investment capital for much wider group of Somalis; has created an entire network of interests in Puntland and central Somalia who resist expansion of rule of law; and is the most dramatic example of the political economies that can and do evolve, sometimes at alarming speed, around illicit activities in Somalia involving use of threat of use of armed violence. 10. Islamists at war. Various Islamist militias and movements most notably Al Ittihad al Islamiyya (AIAI), the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Hisbul Islamiyya, and Shabaab have clashed with clan militias, regional governments, transitional governments, rival Islamist groups, and foreign forces over the past twenty years. Armed conflict involving Islamist movements merit separate treatment here because they introduce new dimensions to warfare in Somalia. First, they inject a level of ideology and a war of ideas into the Somali civil war that had largely been absent since 1988. Second, they have been able to attract a cadre of fighters transcending clan lines who are much more committed, disciplined, and willing to die than fighters in Somali clan militias and government forces.8 Third, the Islamists have demonstrated a superior ability to build networks of Somali financial backers across clan lines and in the diaspora. Finally, one Islamist militia, shabaab, has introduced new tactics of war improvised explosive devices, suicide bombing and extensive use of political assassination. 11. Private militia and security forces. A certain amount of armed conflict in Somalia has been waged with private militias. These are mainly business security forces, and answer to the businessman who pays their salaries. Recently TFG MPs have recruited (from the TFG security sector) their own private protection forces which have been engaged in armed clashes. Foreign aid agencies responding to the humanitarian crisis are also having to employ private security, currently at a rate of $1500 per day.9 Foreign security firms underwritten by the US government and others are also are expanding their presence in Somalia, providing training and support to TFG and AMISOM forces. 12. Armed criminality. Gangs of armed youth are often nominally affiliated with a larger security force in Somalia but act as autonomous violence entrepreneurs engaging in
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Update: since the original draft of this study, the UN Monitoring Group issued a report which documents shabaabs financial portfolio, estimating that it earns $70-100 million per year in charcoal exports out of Kismayo and taxes on local businesses and households in southern Somalia. See United Nations Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1916 (2010) SC/2011/433 (July 18 2011),pp. 27-31.
8

This is not to imply that most of shabaabs fighters are committed mujahedeen evidence actually suggests that most have been conscripted under pressure or with economic incentives. But it does mean that shabaab possesses a group of core fighters genuinely committed to the movement and its vision.
9

Interviews by the author, Nairobi, August 2011.

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extortion and criminal violence against civilians. This includes elements in government security forces in the TFG and Puntland; clan militias; and in some cases the Islamist militias.10 For many Somalis, this is the greatest source of chronic insecurity. At present, two forms of armed criminality systematic diversion of food aid, sometimes involving armed clashes between rival militias, and a spike in kidnapping for ransom are of particular concern.

Conflict trend analysis Armed conflict has seen significant shifts in Somalia since 1988. From 1988 to 1993, the country was beset by very destructive civil war in which militias fought across a wised stretch of land in southern Somalia. The UNOSOM intervention of 1993-94 put a temporary end to armed conflict between the Somali factions (though it got bogged down in a bloody four month counterinsurgency against the militia of General Mohamed Aideed). When UNOSOM departed in March 1995, the country did not fall into renewed civil war, as most expected. Instead, armed conflict became much more localized and sporadic, producing almost no new population displacement and far fewer casualties. Armed factions splintered into dozens of sub-sub clan units or disappeared altogether, and most of the warlords of the early 1990s lost most of their militias and support from their clans and the diaspora. Several factors accounted for this reduction in armed conflict, including the rise of a new network of businesspeople and their interests in improved law and order; the reassertion of authority by clan elders; the rise in power of civic groups; the expansion of local government authority and economic recovery in northern Somalia; war-weariness on the part of the general population; and the expansion of local, clan-based sharia courts, which provided salaries and respectable jobs as sharia police to young gunmen, drawing them away from warlord militias and criminal gangs. Southern Somalia remained a chronically insecure place, but more as a result of new forms of armed criminality (like kidnapping) than armed conflict. From 1995 to 2005, this shift toward more low-level, contained armed conflict looked to be an enduring trend.11 But a number of new developments combined to plunge the country back into a new round of civil war in 2006. A small Islamist militia that came to be known as Shabaab emerged out of two local sharia courts; it had leadership with ties to al Qaida, and embraced a violent, extremist ideology that produced a dirty war of assassinations in Mogadishu in 2004.12
10

Shabaab militias are generally better-controlled and behaved, but in parts of the country have been known to exploit their power by robbing and extorting local communities.
11

This trend is documented in close detail in Menkhaus, Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism (London, IISS Adelphi Paper, 2004).
12

International Crisis Group, Winning Hearts and Minds? (Brussels/Nairobi, 2005)

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US counter-terrorism concerns led it to provide backing to a collection of militia leaders who formed a counter-terrorism coalition to monitor and interdict East Africa al Qaida cell members believed to be moving through Mogadishu with protection from shabaab. The establishment of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in late 2004 heightened tensions between the governments leaders, who were closely backed by Ethiopia, and a loose collection of opponents based in Mogadishu. And an Islamist umbrella movement (eventually known as the Islamic Courts Union, or ICU) organizing Mogadishus sixteen neighborhood sharia courts developed into a robust coalition with strong backing from key business figures. This combination of new actors and interests transformed the political landscape of southern Somalia and set the table for the explosion of armed violence that has rocked the country since 2006 and reversed most of the incremental gains in containment of violence in the 1995-2005 period.13 The period of renewed civil war began with heavy fighting between the Islamic Courts and the US-backed counter-terrorism alliance in Mogadishu in early 2006 at the time, the heaviest fighting the capital had seen since 1993. A decisive victory by the ICU ushered in a brief lull a six month period of ICU governance of the capital and most of southern Somalia that Somalis now recall with nostalgia as a time of peace, order, and the promise of an end to 16 years of war and state collapse. But tensions between the ICU and neighboring Ethiopia quickly worsened, culminating in the December 2006 Ethiopian offensive that crushed the ICU. The ICU leadership fled abroad to Eritrea, the remnants of the ICU militia, including shabaab, melted into the interior, Ethiopian forces occupied Mogadishu and the TFG leadership was flown in from Nairobi Kenya to assume power under the protection of the Ethiopian forces. For the next two years, Mogadishu was wracked by some of the heaviest fighting of the entire twenty year crisis. Shabaab led a complex insurgency opposed to the Ethiopian occupation and to TFG and mounted an increasingly lethal campaign involving mortar attacks, suicide bombings, assassinations, and roadside bombs. Ethiopias counter-insurgency response was heavy-handed, and the TFGs security forces were predatory against the local population, producing displacement of 700,000 residents of the city. In addition to the fighting, political violence in the form of threats and assassinations made the city impossibly dangerous for most civic leaders and businesspeople, prompting a mass exodus of leadership. Since late 2008, armed conflict remains principally a crisis in and around Mogadishu. In shabaab-controlled areas of southern Somalia, the insurgency has kept the peace and maintained relative order, via extremely harsh and unpopular measures. Tensions within shabaab, or between shabaab and other armed Islamic groups (Hisbul Islam, Ras Kamboni Group) have on a few occasions led to clashes between them.14 In central and northeast Somalia, new and
13

See Menkhaus, The Crisis in Somalia: Tragedy in Five Acts. African Affairs (2007) pp, 357-90.
14

HIsbul Islam was forcibly absorbed by Shabaab in 2010. After losing a battle with Shabaab over the port city of Kismayo, the Ras Kamboni group shifted positions and cooperates with

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established regional authorities preside over unstable peace both within their areas of jurisdiction and between them. In the Mogadishu area, AMISOM forces are now the principal protagonists in battles with shabaab. The fighting is sporadic, mainly involving brief but intense exchanges of gunfire and shelling. The front in the war a loose green-line dividing Mogadishu remained more or less static from 2008 until shabaabs withdrawal in the summer of 2011. Many civilians have moved out of the main zones of combat into safer neighborhoods, but even so civilian casualties remain high, with ICRC reporting that 6,000 war-wounded civilians 40% of whom were women or children -- were treated in two Mogadishu hospitals it supports in 2010, up from 5,000 in 2009 and 2,800 in 2008.15 This latest evolution in the Somali crisis has seen the resurgence of clan-based militia in Mogadishu, supported in some instances by AMISOM, as allies in the fight against shabaab. Shabaab has had success both with roadside bombs and with suicide bombings to hit sensitive TFG and AMISOM targets on several occasions. In 2010 it also expanded its campaign beyond Somali borders by launching two terrorist bombings in Kampala Uganda, killing 79 people. Somali security groupings and alliances have tended to ebb and flow in periods of consolidation and fragmentation. After a long period of fragmentation in 1992 through 2004, Somali alliances saw a period of consolidation into a few larger movements the ICU, the TFG, and Shabaab counting as the largest of these groupings. The pendulum is now swinging back toward fragmentation again. Brief but revealing clashes are occurring between rival security forces in the TFG and the clan militias nominally allied to the TFG, which now number over a dozen in the city. Some of these clan militia commanders are also MPs in the TFG parliament; their growing presence in the city have prompted some to worry about a return of warlordism. The Islamist insurgencies have also experienced brief armed clashes within their ranks most notably in Kismayo in 2008 and are now coping with significant political strains within the movement over leadership, clan, tactics, and objectives.16 Some observers have gone so far as to predict the rise of Islamo-warlordism if shabaab fragments as many expect. Finally, the most important but often overlooked conflict trend in Somalia has been spatial in nature. That is, over time the most damaging armed conflicts have been concentrated in and around Mogadishu, with a secondary ring of crisis along the Shabelle river valley and Lower Jubba valley. These coincide with the most valuable real estate in the country the capital Mogadishu, the port city of Kismayo, and the fertile riverine valleys. Most of the rest of the country has been largely (though not entirely) spared of extensive armed conflict since 1993. If one were to eliminate Mogadishu from consideration, the rest of Somalia has been chronically
neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia against Shabaab.
15

ICRC, Somalia: Even Higher Numbers of War-Wounded in Mogadishu Hospitals Reliefweb (27 January 2011).
16

International Crisis Group, Somalias Divided Islamists, (Brussels/Nairobi, May 2010).

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unstable but not, for the most part, at war. But because Mogadishu is the capital, observers often conflate it with all of Somalia.

Actor and Interest Inventory Of the dozens of armed actors in the Somali crisis, only a relatively small number have the potential to play a major role in provoking, preventing, or waging war. The following short inventory constitutes some of the most important domestic and international actors, the interests they are seeking to advance, and the extent to which armed conflict serves or harms their interests. It is worth stressing here that the influence and involvement of external actors in Somalia has grown significantly in recent years and, while foreign interests have faced great frustration influencing their Somali allies or clients and securing outcomes they desire in Somalia, they nonetheless are powerful drivers of armed conflict and are able to block and undermine outcomes they do not like. They, like a number of key Somali actors, possess what amounts to veto power in Somalia, which they exercise through threat or use of force. The growing internationalization of the Somali crisis requires us to pay more attention to external actors and their interests and place them at the center of both analysis and strategy. Ignoring or downplaying them is a recipe for misdiagnosis and policy frustration. The TFG: The TFG is remarkable for its lack of capacity to play a decisive role in armed conflicts at this point in time. Its poorly integrated security forces generally remain safely behind AMISOM posts in the protected area of Mogadishu, and have not yet demonstrated a will or capacity to project force into shabaab controlled areas or successfully hold areas captured by AMISOM. Moreover, none of the top TFG leaders -- President Sheikh Sharif, the various Prime Ministers who have held that position (most recently Abdiweli Mohamed Ali), and Speaker of the Parliament Sharif Hassan, are in a position to mobilize substantial militia support from their own clans. This is a very unusual and significant feature of the TFG, in that its internal political disputes are not likely to spill over into armed clashes at this point in time. Internal TFG politics are at present of little consequence to the most serious conflict dynamics in the country. However, Sheikh Sharif and Sharif Hassan are part of a set of overlapping cartels within the TFG that possesses substantial revenues and a capacity to indirectly engineer insecurity if they so choose. The greatest conflict danger involving the TFG is the possibility that any attempt by its top leaders to manipulate the last year of the transitional period and the roadmap laid out for key transitional tasks, in order to claim power over a post-transitional government, could prompt some of the armed groups nominally allied to it to defect and to oppose it militarily. That would be a worst case scenario for the roadmap, and is worth carefully monitoring. Puntland. Puntlands regional government has been estranged from and essentially independent of the TFG since the replacement of President Abdullahi Yusuf in early 2009. TFG members

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from the Puntland clan-family (the Darood/Harti) do not represent Puntland interests and are viewed as such by Puntland authorities. On 16 January 2011, the Puntland government issued a press release stating that the TFG no longer represents Puntland. At the time, Puntland authorities claimed they would not cooperate with the TFG until a legitimate federal government was put in place, and firmly opposed any term extension for the TFG. In August, however, that position was modified, and the TFG and Puntland signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

The Puntland government is in a position to delay or block progress in the TFG merely by noncooperation yet another example of veto power in Somalia. At times, the Puntland administration takes positions that seem to focus on advancing its core political goal of federalism in Somalia; at other times its actions reflect its need to advance the interests of the Harti clan in national politics; and at other times Puntlands policies reflect the personal ambitions of its head of state. Puntlands government has helped to maintain peace in the large territory of northeast Somalia, but has not been reluctant to employ its security forces against domestic enemies and regional rival Somaliland, with which it has a long-running territorial dispute. Puntland is also on Shabaabs short list of targets, and its security forces have been engaged in operations against suspected Shabaab cells in Puntland.

Puntland government and civic figures have also been the targets of a wave of political assassinations, most of which implicate shabaab.

Other regional and local polities. Emerging regional authorities in south-central Somalia Galmudug administration, Heeb and Himan administration, and the Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamma (ASWJ) militia have areas of influence stretching from northern Hiran region to the southern border of Puntland. To date, these largely clan-based entities have maintained a fragile peace in their areas and enjoy an apparently good level of legitimacy with local communities. They share with the TFG a common enemy in shabaab, but remain autonomous from the TFG. Of the three, ASWJ possesses the strongest militia and, thanks to external support is in a position to pressure shabaab. Clan militias. Much of the Mogadishu zone of influence of the TFG is in fact patrolled by clanbased militias with no formal role within the TFG security structure. They do not openly oppose the TFG, but they are autonomous from it, or enjoy negotiated relations with it. AMISOM forward positions rely on these militias as buffer forces protecting them from direct contact with shabaab. AMISOM provides these forces with support, including ammunition, and considers them more reliable allies than the TFG security forces. These forces are commanded by militia leaders who in some cases are viewed by Somalis as warlords from the pre-2006 period. The

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interests of these militia leaders vary, but generally reflect narrow concerns holding valuable real estate in Mogadishu, profiting from relations with AMISOM, ensuring a position of power in the event of the TFG collapse, and positioning themselves as indispensable allies for either the TFG or a future political dispensation. They are in the process of resurrecting their once bleak fortunes. They are not strong enough politically to translate their militia strength into leverage in the TFG but that could change. They enjoy one major advantage in the event their clan feels threatened, they can count on rapid mobilization of resources and fighters. This has an unfortunate tendency to encourage clan militia leaders to stoke tensions, or put another way encourages spoiler tendencies in this group. Jubbaland clan militias. The border areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, and shabaab-controlled areas of southern Somalia are flashpoints of armed conflict and are populated by a number of militia with complex relations between them. Shabaab has generally controlled almost all of the Somali territory along these borders, but since 2010 several enclaves have been liberated by antiShabaab militia. All of the anti-Shabaab militia in this zone currently enjoy some degree of support from the governments of Kenya or Ethiopia. This support can include training, equipping, and direct logistical support in operations against shabaab. Ethiopia and Kenya have entertained plans to support these militia for operations intended to clear shabaab of large areas of the regions of Gedo, Bay, Bakool, Middle Jubb, and Lower Jubba. A high priority goal in this regard is the liberation of the seaport of Kismayo, which is a stronghold of shabaab and a critical source of its revenues.

Two Kenyan backed militia have a presence along the Kenyan border. The Ras Kamboni militia, now headed by Ahmed Madobe, was in past years a jihadi group allied with shabaab and composed mainly of fighters from the Ogaden clan of the Darood clan family. A series of events an internal power struggle in which a younger generation of leaders attuned to the interests of the clan won out over the then leader Hassan Turki, a committed radical Islamism; rising tensions between Ras Kambo ni and shabaab over control of Kisamyo port

The Kenya-backed militia is primarily composed of members of the large Darood/Ogaden clan which is a major presence in Kenya and Ethiopia as well as lower Jubba, though in late 2011 it reportedly expanded to include Marehan and other clan. The Ogaden have a wide range of interests, including powerful stakes in cross-border commerce between southern Somalia and the trade town of Garissa, Kenya; protection and expansion of the clans role in leadership positions in the Kenyan police and military; support to the estimated one to two million Ogaden clan members in Eastern Ethiopia, most of whom support the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in its armed insurgency against the Ethiopian government; aspirations to control the port of Kismayo, which some in the clan see as the clans territory; and an end to the clans political

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marginalization in Somali national politics. Ethiopia is leery of any outcome in Jubbaland that would result in Ogaden control of Kismayo, and instead backs Darood/Marehan clan militias some of which also have aspirations to lay claim to Kismayo. All the main clans in the region are focused on claiming some control over the prize, Kismayo and its seaport revenues.17 There is real potential for Kismayo to become the epicentre of clan clashes in the event shabaab is dislodged from the city. Shabaab: Shabaab is the most powerful Somali military force in the country and exercises varying degrees of control over the most territory, including almost all of southern Somalia and more than half of Mogadishu. Its ongoing insurgency against AMISOM, and AMISOMs counter-insurgency attacks, have for several years been the main source of armed conflict, though in the latter half of 2011 the theatre of war has increasingly shifted toward the EthiopiaKenya borders. Estimates of its militia size varies, with most speculating that the movement is comprised of up to 2,000 full-time Somali fighters, hundreds of foreign fighters, and a large corps of reservists who can pick arms at short notice.18 Since 2007 foreign al Qaida operatives have assumed positions of leadership in shabaabs Mogadishu Council, though the exact nature of their relationship to the Somali leaders is not well understood by outsiders. Shabaab has inflicted losses on the TFG and AMISOM, but has not been able to dislodge them from Mogadishu, and has taken heavy losses in several failed offensives, one of the reasons it opted to pull out of Mogadishu in August 2011. It enjoys all of the benefits that accrue in an asymmetrical war, including the ability to shell the fixed locations of AMISOM from densely populated civilian neighborhoods, make itself indistinguishable from civilians, and employ terrorist tactics IEDs, assassinations, and suicide bombers against the TFG and AMISOM. Shabaab is strong relative to other Somali armed groups but is plagued by serious weaknesses, including funding shortages, sharp disagreement over tactics and tolerance of civilian casualties, clan tensions, and rivalries over leadership. The group has lost most of the public support (both in the country and in the diaspora) it once enjoyed, thanks to its own missteps and in some cases appalling actions in areas it controls, including its mishandling of the 202 famine. Shabaabs interests are a matter of speculation, and the group appears to be divided on the issue. On paper the group subscribes to the same long-term goals as al Qaida, namely global jihad in pursuit of defeat of the West and the creation of a global caliphate. In reality most Somali shabaab leaders appear focused on Somali agendas, specifically defeat of the TFG and the ouster of infidel military forces (AMISOM) from Somali territory. Some in the movement have in the
17

Ken Menkhaus, After the Kenyan Intervention Enoughproject (December 2011).

18

Supporting Act: Al Qaedas Mutually Beneficial Relationship with the Shabaab, in Relationships and Rivalries: Assessing Al Qaedas Affiliate Network HIS Janes Consulting (October 2010), p. 37.

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past embraced the goal of an Islamic state in all Somali-inhabited portions of the Horn of Africa, and position that puts then in tension with al Qaidas global vision. Yet the movement has opted not to declare a state despite controlling most of southern Somalia, and has been slow to establish its own administrative capacities in areas it controls. Many observers believe that this is due to fear that shabaabs many internal divisions will be exacerbated to the point of open conflict were the group forced to make fundamental decisions over political leadership and governance policies. Shabaab leaders whose power base rests on their clans backing have tended to pursue more pragmatic policies designed to protect clan interests, such as ensuring the flow of humanitarian assistance to their constituencies. By contrast, constituency-free shabaab leaders (mainly those from northern Somalia operating in the south) have tended to embrace policies exhibiting indifference or even hostility to local needs. Some have suggested that shabaabs interests may actually be served by the prolonged stalemate since 2008 the standoff allows shabaab to mobilize for jihad indefinitely without the risks of actually governing. It is known that some shabaab figures have made quiet overtures to explore possibilities for a negotiated end to the fighting or for their defection from the movement, but have been pulled back in line by the shabaab Mogadishu Council and have not received positive signs by the international community. Foreign shabaab leaders. Even less is known about the interests and motives of the foreign jihadists who have joined shabaab and assumed leadership roles in the movement. To date, evidence suggests that they have been the most hard-line element in the group, and have signed off on terrorist attacks the suicide bombings in Uganda (an attack which did not involve Somalis) and the suicide bombing of the medical school graduation ceremony in Mogadishu in December 2009 that caused mass civilian casualties and reflected a powerful indifference to the impact of the attacks on Somali interests. This has the potential to drive a wedge between the foreigners and the Somalis in shabaab; it has prompted discussion among Somalis of a Somali version of a sunni uprising again foreign jihadis who are increasingly seen as attracting only more trouble to the country. The June 2011 death of top foreign shabaab leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed at a TFG check-point is widely believed to have been a trap laid by his internal rival in shabaab, Godane. Whether true or not, it sparked an exodus of non-Somali jihadis who no longer had confidence that Somali shabaab members would protect them. At present the most dangerous foreign jihadi presence in Somalia consists of several hundred East African shabaaab members, some of whom are recent converts to Islam. This is the group that was responsible for the Kampala bombing in 2010, and that poseds the greatest security threat inside Kenya today. Somali civil society. Civic groups in Somalia a loose collection of womens groups, professional associations, religious leaders, clan elders, and others grew steadily in importance and autonomy in the relatively stable years from 1995 to 2005. They demonstrated the potential

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for mass mobilization against militia leaders in protests in 2005, but the extreme violence in the wars since 2007 drove most civil leaders out of the country and silenced the rest. There is now some evidence that civic society is regrouping and could be poised to play a narrow but significant role in resisting and pressuring all Somali armed groups. The popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia are being discussed and watched intently by Somalis; the Somali street is a wildcard that could play a role in protests against shabaab, AMISOM, and the TFG. AMISOM. Since 2008, AMISOM has been at the center of the heaviest armed conflict in Somalia. Though it has a limited mandate focusing on protection of the TFG and humanitarian relief, it has engaged in extensive counter-attacks in response to shabaab mortars and ambushes. Somalis accuse AMISOM of firing into densely populated civilian neighborhoods, producing heavy casualties, a charge AMISOM denies. AMISOMs force is now slated to increase to 12,000, making it the biggest and best armed military in Somalia. Ugandan and Burundian political leaders have consistently expressed a strong interest in expanding both the size and mandate of AMISOM. They have recently requested a change of their mandate to allow them to go on the offensive, with attack helicopters, against shabaab. AMISOM force commanders have expressed frustration with the TFG security forces and have sought to expand their military linkages with other Somali armed groups in the fight against shabaab. Some Somalis claim that the AMISOM forces and their governments have become just another set of players in Somalias war economy, motivated to stay on by economic opportunities afforded them by the intervention. However, a case can be made that AMISOM seeks a military victory but is constrained by mandate, resources, and policy preferences of Western states. AMISOM and its regional diplomatic support the African Union and IGAD are among the strongest advocates for a military solution to the Somali impasse, specifically the military defeat of Shabaab by AMISOM and Somali allied militias. Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a powerful interest in ensuring that no Somali government emerges that is hostile to Ethiopia either as an irredentist or jihadi Islamist threat, and more than any other external actor will take whatever steps are needed to assure that this core interest is met. Ethiopian leaders profess that they are ready to co-exist with any government including an Islamist government -- in Somalia as long it is respects Ethiopias borders, sovereignty, and security. Some Somalis argue Ethiopia wants a highly decentralized, weak Somalia that amounts to a series of satellite states it can control. Still other Somalis embrace a conspiracy theory that Ethiopia (and other external actors) wants Somalia to remain indefinitely mired in a state of collapse and warfare, a claim that holds no water when judged against Ethiopias solid relations with Puntland and Somaliland. In the past, Ethiopia has distrusted Mogadishu-based political movements while working more comfortably with clans and administrations based outside Mogadishu. Ethiopia is also leery of any political development that empowers the Ogaden clan in southern Somali and Kismayo port, due to the ongoing insurgency in eastern Ethiopia by the

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Ogaden National Liberation Front. Ethiopia provided robust backing to the TFG under President Abdullahi Yusuf in 2007 and 2008, but has been distrustful of the current TFG leadership. It has been pursuing policies in Somalia designed to forge alliances with clans, other armed non-state actors, and regional administrations in Somalia. As of late 2011, Ethiopian forces are well inside portions of its border in Gedo and Bakool regions, and are supporting several clan militias poised to attack shabaab in southern Somalia.

Kenya. Kenya has committed itself to the success of the TFG, the continued presence of AMISOM, and more aggressive pursuit of security measures in its long border area with Jubbaland. Its surprising military offensive against shabaab in the Lower Jubba region in fall 201 has dramatically increased its commitment to defeating shabaab. It is unclear at this time how the rehatting of Kenyn forces into AMISOM forces will affect its operations in the Jubba regions. Kenya is by far the most exposed neighboring country to a shabaab terrorist attack. The total number of Somalis now residing and investing (legally or illegally) in Kenya is believed to have jumped considerably in recent years, creating a unique and complicated political situation for Kenya in its Somalia policies. Somalia has in some respects become a domestic as well as foreign policy challenge for Kenya. The fact that so many Somalis are so heavily invested in Kenya as a site of business, transit, and residence appears to have served as a constraint on shabaab.

Arab and Islamic states. Arab and Islamic states have unfortunately remained largely outside the discussions and efforts to coordinate policy in Nairobi, and yet remain active in Somali politics. Some Arab states Qatar and Kuwait are reportedly providing direct financial support to Sheikh Sharif and may seek to promote an extension of the TFG with its current leadership come August 2011. Arab states have consistently supported a more central state vision for Somalia and will be resistant to policy that expands support to sub-national regional administrations. Egypt is likely to take the lead on this latter position, though its current political turmoil could temporarily distract it from the Horn in 2011. The most significant new player from the Islamic world is Turkey, which since mid-2011 has assumed a lead role in famine relief and is attempting to play a diplomatic role as well.

Eritrea. Eritrea provided substantial support to Islamists in Somalia in 2006-08, first channeling training, advising, and financial support to the ICU and then to Islamist insurgents (mainly Hisbul Islamiyya, not Shabaab) in 2007-08. This was not a case of ideological affinity Eritrea is a staunchly secular government dominated politically by Christians but rather a proxy war policy designed to support Somali armed groups fighting occupying Ethiopian forces.

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The US government threatened to designate Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism in 2007-08, but did not do so. In the past two years Eritreas role has become less critical in Somalia. Conflict drivers Underlying causes Underlying causes of conflict the factors that create conditions that make countries or communities vulnerable to armed conflict are ubiquitous in contemporary Somalia, and have only grown in number and intensity since the 1980s. An inventory of these factors is thus very sobering. In many respects it is a testimony to Somali societys strong conflict management capacities that the country has not seen even more armed conflict than it has. What follows is not an exhaustive inventory, but only a list of the most persistent and dangerous underlying causes of conflict in Somalia, cited most often by close observers of the countrys politics. Those which fall in the category of external interventions are treated in more detail in Section II of the paper. Readers will note that different underlying drivers of conflict are relevant for different types of armed conflict as listed in the first section of the paper. And, as noted earlier, some of these factors can also be forces for peace, under the right conditions. . Extreme resource scarcity and poverty. Poverty and scarcity do not cause war, political violence, or extremism, but can make a society more susceptible to certain kinds of armed conflict, especially communal clashes over resources. It also generates large numbers of unemployed young men, making easy recruits for criminal gangs and militia. Somalia is one of the poorest places on earth; most of the population lives at or below the absolute poverty line. At the time of this writing, 2.4 million Somalis, or one third of the population, are in need of emergency assistance, and one in four children in southern Somalia is acutely malnourished.19 The two decades of war and state collapse have not worsened this condition available evidence suggests a slight improvement in income and basic human development indicators since 1990, a fact many attribute to the work of international aid agencies and the enormous flow of remittances into the country from the countrys one million or more diaspora members.20 About half of Somalias population is pastoral, and though this group has well-developed mechanisms for negotiating access to pasture, wells, and markets, growing pressure from rangeland degradation, enclosures by private interests, restricted mobility due to armed conflict, and recurring drought are pushing some pastoralists into destitution and generating conditions of desperation that can fuel fights over access to resources. Scarcity in urban areas has also produced clashes over resources contracts, jobs, militia roadblocks, and others. Any introduction of resources into the country has the potential to lead to disputes that can turn deadly and expand into wider communal wars.
19

UN OCHA, Somalia Humanitarian Overview 4, 1 (Dec. 2010-Jan 2011) p. 1. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/ASAZ-8DMKCS/$File/full_report.pdf

20

BBC, Somalia: Twenty Years of Anarchy, (26 January 2011) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12285365

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Land, identity, and rights. Basic questions of citizenship, identity, and rights especially with regard to land have never been adequately addressed in Somalia and are often a powerful, silent sub-text for political and communal clashes. Three discourses exist on this rights by citizenship (all Somalis enjoy full rights everywhere in the country), rights by birth (Somalis enjoy special rights to land and other resources in the area where they were born; others are guests or galti); and rights by blood (ones rights to land and resources depends on ones clan and that clans claim on territory). In practice, most Somali communities invoke blood rights to determine who may reside, work, and make claims to political rights in a specific location. The result is the rise of a whole category of Somalis living as second class citizens in cities where they are viewed as guests or even foreigners. This in turn raises the stakes immeasurably over clan claims over towns and districts, and makes it much more difficult to broker co-existence in cosmopolitan towns hosting multiple clans. The problem is most severe where valuable real estate has come under the control of new clans via military conquest in 1991-92. Kismayo has been the site of two decades of warfare fueled by this dispute between the three main Darood clans. Expulsions of southern Somalis from Puntland are also animated by this logic. And unresolved questions about the status of Mogadishu as a capital where all enjoy full rights, or as a city dominated by the Hawiye clan was a major dimension of tensions over the TFG in 2005-08. Clannism. There are many ways to misunderstand this complex identity issue in Somali politics, including claiming it is of no importance; overstating it as the sole source of political organization; demonizing it as the source of all of Somalias problems; and romanticizing it (and by extension clan elders) as the only viable source of representation, legitimacy, and protection. Somalia does not offer such simple answers. Clannism is unquestionably a major source of division and one of the most easily manipulated fault-lines in Somalia, mobilized by political and militia leaders to advance their own interests, and misused by foreigners in divide and rule tactics. As such, it must take a front row in any inventory of conflict drivers. At the same time, one of the reasons that clannism endures and has arguably become stronger in Somali identity politics is because it serves a useful role for Somalis in the current context of war and state collapse. It is a principal source of physical protection the threat of clan retaliation is a form of deterrence. It can be the only source of law and justice in stateless parts of the country customary law, applied by clan elders, is often able to maintain impressive levels of peace, and dispenses compensational justice that most Somalis know and prefer to formal justice systems. And lineage is a critical form of social security and mutual obligations to assist, a vital safety net in an insecure and unpredictable environment. More than any other conflict driver, clannism has the potential to play both a destructive and a constructive role in Somalia. This puts a premium on understanding under what conditions clannism is likely to take on its pathological rather than benign tendencies. For foreign actors, clannism is especially challenging because it is at the center of debates over representation in governments and peace talks, as well as more mundane

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but consequential decisions regarding contracts and the composition of national staff. Somalis and others are increasingly critical of approaches that attempt to institutionalize proportional clan representation such as the 4.5 formula. At the same time, inattentiveness to clan composition can produce serious conflict. Small arms proliferation. Somalia is believed to be one of the most heavily armed societies on earth, and the flow of semi-automatic weapons into the country has meant that once manageable conflicts now have the potential to explode into much more lethal clashes. The weaponry is not such much a cause as an amplifier of armed conflict. It also increases the number and capacity of spoilers seeking to undermine peace or state-building. Risk aversion and the experience of the state. Older Somalis those over the age of 35 have a historical experience of the central government under Siyad Barre that predisposes many of them to fear and distrust the state. Barres regime was very predatory and brutal to those its leaders viewed as rivals. This has produced among that generation of Somalis a split personality regarding state-building. They crave law and order, but can be ambivalent about state-building, and can become situational spoilers resorting to armed violence -- when the state appears to be falling into the hands of individuals or groups they do not trust. The younger generation of Somalis has no living memory of a functional state at all, and has been politically socialized to navigate the much more complex (but for them, familiar) environment of state collapse. Whether of the younger or older generation, Somalis have good reason to embrace risk-averse, survival strategies toward peacebuilding and state-building. But peace-building and conflict prevention often require risk-taking. The destruction of political trust. One of the many bitter ironies of the Somali crisis is that the explosion of economic entrepreneurism in stateless Somalia the hawala and telecommunication companies, cross-border transit trade, and other large and medium scale enterprises requiring cross-clan partnerships has been built on the endurance and reliability to pragmatic trust relations. That same degree of trust at the national (though not local) political level has been very scarce, with the notable exception of Somaliland, and to a lesser extent Puntland. Control of the national government is seen as a strictly zero-sum game, and little political space has been accorded for a loyal opposition. Instead, one is either a part of a governing coalition or a rejectionist front. Poor leadership. Somalia has not generated political leaders at the national level able to rise above the war and build a sense of public confidence in peacebuilding and statebuilding initiatives. Many Somalis emphasize poor or venal leadership as a major underlying cause of conflict, arguing that a combination of a polarized and violent domestic environment and illinformed external policies have deterred better Somali leaders from emerging at the national

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level, and has led instead to national level figures who foment divisions, stoke conflict, or seek short-term gains while in office rather than committing to long-term peace and reconstruction. Domestic spoilers. Protracted civil wars often generate a host of interests which find ways to thrive and benefit from conditions of warfare, division, and lawlessness, Many of these are economic, and contribute to the rise of war economies and spoilers who earn a livelihood, and sometimes fortunes, off of criminal activities that can best be pursued in a state of war and collapse. Examples in contemporary Somali range from illegal charcoal exports to lucrative militia roadblocks to piracy, which is now netting over $80 million annually in ransoms. Others are political warlords and other conflict entrepreneurs whose power base depends on heightened social fear and tensions. Still others are war criminals who fear the prospect of revived systems of justice, jihadists who fear they will be arrested or killed by the US, or regional administrations who fear a return to peace and central governance will marginalize them. Somalia has all of these types of domestic spoilers, cutting across every clan, region, and occupation. Shabaab is currently the largest and most effective spoiler, but even in its absence others would pose a potential problem. Put another way, armed opposition to the TFG cannot be reduced to Shabaab. Importantly, many Somali spoilers are interest-driven, not total spoilers. Interests can and do change over time, and in some cases Somali actors who at one point fomented armed conflict became a force for peace. Close attention to the interests of key Somali spoilers is critical to successful peacebuilding strategies. Somalia-Ethiopia tensions. Underlying much of the insecurity in Somalia and the wider region of the Horn is the Somalia-Ethiopia security dilemma. Ethiopia has legitimate security concerns along its long border with Somalia, made more acute by a past history of Somali irredentism directed at Somali-inhabited eastern Ethiopia. Ethiopia has taken steps to improve its own security which have made large sections of the Somali population feel less secure. For their part, some Somali political and military figures have sought to mobilize domestic support with antiEthiopian rhetoric and campaigns, and have been reluctant to take clear steps to reassure its neighbors it respects their borders and their need for security. Ethiopian and Somali competing narratives tell a dramatically different story of who is to blame, but the net effect is that Somalia is chronically vulnerable to conflicts partly rooted in the unresolved Ethiopia-Somali conflict. The regional conflict complex. The Somali crisis is deeply entangled in a wider regional conflict complex that includes the unresolved Ethiopia-Eritrea war and the ongoing insurgency and counter-insurgency pitting the Ethiopian military against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). Until those two crises are resolved, Somalia remains very susceptible to spillover from those conflicts. Radicalism and the globalization of the Somali conflict. The literature on armed conflict posits that ideology, and especially intolerant strains of religious ideology, tends to enflame

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conflict because these wars of ideas leave little room for compromise and co-existence.21 For years, Somalias civil war and state collapse was surprisingly devoid of radical ideologies unless one counts the extreme clan chauvinism of some of the armed factions a form of radicalism. One armed Islamist group, al Ittihad al Islamiyya (AIAI), suffered constant setbacks in a Somali society that seemed uninterested in its vision of an Islamic state. Over the past decade, the rise of jihadist Islamism in Somalia a movement given a dramatic boost by the Ethiopian occupation of 2007-08 has created conditions in which continued armed conflict is much more likely, as this worldview generally views compromise and negotiation as a betrayal. That was precisely the position taken by shabaab when it openly declared the ex-ICU leadership in Djibouti apostates for agreeing to form a common front with secular nationalists and moderate Muslims in the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) in 2007. The extent to which Somalia has now become an arena for a global contest pitting Al Qaida affiliates against the West raises the countrys vulnerability to armed conflict even more. Chauvinistic media. Somalia has developed some excellent news sources, including radio and electronic media. Unfortunately those have suffered greatly in the violence and polarization since 2007. More parochial and inflammatory sources of news continue to thrive. The expansion of electronic media news websites, chat rooms, and email means that rival Somali political and social groups are now increasingly holding conversations and hearing interpretation of news in isolation from one another, reinforcing negative stereotypes and hostilities. Large diaspora. The general literature on civil wars links large diasporas to a greater propensity for armed conflict. Diasporas can serve as important source of funding for armed groups, and can often embrace more hard-line, extremist positions than their countrymen back home. Somalias large diaspora has played both a role in sustaining armed conflict and supporting peace. In two periods the early 1990s and in 2007-08 the diaspora were especially active in fund-raising in support of armed groups. Today, the most important observation is that all of Somalias politics and civic life the TFG, the Somaliland and Puntland governments, shabaab, and business community, civil society groups are, in varying degrees, dominated by diaspora leadership. This diasporization of Somali political life has meant that matters of war and peace are also increasingly an intra-diaspora matter. This is a war of the diaspora one local Somali observed, and the rest of us are caught in the middle.22 Spiraling armed conflict. One of the pathologies of protracted war is that conflict begets conflict. Protracted wars reinforce conflict dynamics, grievances, and distrust, all of which can make it much harder to broker and maintain a durable peace ( as opposed to the rival claim that a longer war produces war weariness and eventually a hurting stalemate conducive for a
21

David Little, Religious Militancy, in Managing Global Chaos, ed. By Pamela Aall et al (Washington DC: USIP).
22

Interview by the author, Nairobi, 2009.

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negotiated peace). The tendency for war dynamics to produce mutually reinforcing conflict drivers is well known. A seminal World Bank study concludes succinctly that the single greatest predictor of a civil war is a previous civil war.23 Somalia is no exception in this regard. This is a partial explanation for the dramatically different trajectories that south-central Somalia and Somaliland have taken in terms of armed conflict. Whatever the factors that initially (in the early to mid-1990s) enabled Somaliland to limit and manage armed conflict while south-central Somalia fell into devastating civil war, once the south was subjected to serious levels of fatalities, displacement, and destruction and theft of property, the pursuit of a negotiated end to the war became exponentially more difficult. This factor must not be interpreted in fatalistic or deterministic terms countries can and do emerge from warfare and forge a durable peace -- but the task is clearly more difficult when protracted wars produce deep reservoirs of grievances. Conflict drivers precipitating causes A review of the long record of armed conflicts both large and small in Somalia reveals that a few triggers have been responsible for starting most of the clashes. While they are easy to identify in the abstract, it is exceptionally difficult to predict when these potential triggers will actually spark an armed conflict. They include: Crimes and spiraling revenge killings. An extraordinary number of communal clashes, some spiraling into prolonged local and regional armed conflicts, are triggered by a criminal incident a stolen vehicle, an assault, or a murder. Usually clan elders intercede and work out payment of compensation to the victims diya (blood payment) group, but when talks are delayed or stall, revenge killings can quickly escalate into major armed clashes. In most cases, tensions between the two groups need to be high already, as a result of feuds over political representation or resource access.24 The most infamous case of a crime leading to a war was the real estate dispute between two rival Mogadishu businessmen that led to a gunfire exchange in early 2006 but which quickly escalated into the war between the Islamic Courts union the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism. The war would have probably broken out anyway, but the real estate dispute touched it off. Introduction of new resources disputes over allocation. Somalia is replete with examples of armed clashes triggered by the introduction of new resources and a lack of agreement over how those resources are to be controlled and allocated. International actors are usually though not always the bearers of new resources, in the form of contracts, arms, employment, development projects, and humanitarian aid. As noted below, even very careful, well-informed strategies for
23

Paul Collier et al, Breaking the Conflict Trap (World Bank 2003).

24

No survey research inside Somalia is available on this topic yet, but an Afro-barometer survey in Somali-inhabited areas of northeast Kenya found that Somalis listed revenge killings as the top cause of armed conflict.

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negotiating resource allocation can easily set off communal clashes. When outsiders are not wellinformed or rushed, the odds on assistance in its wake armed clashes increases. Generally, one off or short term infusions of resources are more likely to touch off armed violence than longterm, routinized resources. Resources introduced into Somalia also have the potential to help finance and perpetuate war, even if that is not the intent of the provider. Indeed, virtually any introduction of resources into Somalia humanitarian aid, contracts, remittances, business investments, piracy ransom is likely to be indirectly complicit in funding armed conflict. This is so because Somali armed groups derive most of their revenues from local taxation, extortion, diversion, and fundraising. The vast majority of funds flowing inside Somalia originate from outside the country. Remittances constitute an estimated $1.5 to $2 billion into Somalia annually; other major sources of capital flows into Somalia include piracy ransoms ($82 million in 2010); Somali business investments (unknown, probably in the tens of millions annually), and foreign aid ( variable, typically estimated about $200 million per year). Even when resources are directly target at one armed group, they often end up leaking to rival groups, as has periodically been the case with financial and military support to the TFG. The exceptional fungibility of money across social and political lines in Somalia, and the high rates of leakage of funds from organized political and military groups, makes it difficult and perhaps pointless to try to distinguish which types of external resources are especially culpable in helping to underwrite armed conflict. Formation of or change in formal local political representation. Local and external efforts to create formal local administrations are risky; some have succeeded, while others have touched off clashes as groups and political elites vie to gain control of the administration. This was especially a problem in UNOSOM in 1993, when district councils were hurriedly formed in districts that had been the site of heavy armed conflict only months before. Local administrations are sensitive in that their composition is viewed as a crystallization of the relative power and importance of clans and other groupings to one another. Groups that have co-existed when allowed to retain informal governance structures can go to war when asked to quantify their relative importance to one another. Formation or revision of formal governance structures and representation at the national level. The stakes are exceptionally high in national reconciliation talks designed to produce revived central government. The proceedings ultimately beg the fundamental question who rules? They also set the rules of the game for representation, legitimize and enshrine key decision-making over the creation of a political order to a group of unelected representatives, set precedents (like the 4.5 formula) that are difficult to reverse, and give the first incumbent a lengthy opportunity to consolidate his power and enrich himself if he so chooses. Not surprisingly, the history of external sponsorship of national reconciliation conferences has typically been accompanied by an upsurge in political violence.

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External proxy wars. Foreign interests use local proxies in Somalia either in indirect struggles against other external actors (for example, Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2006-08; most recently, US and al Qaida) or as a tool to defeat or frustrate a Somali group it perceives as a threat. These are marriages of convenience, in which both the external state and its local proxy are using one another for mutual advantage but in pursuit of different goals. External military occupation. No single act by an external player is more likely to produce substantial armed resistance in Somalia than a military intervention and occupation. UNOSOMs humanitarian intervention in 1993 became embroiled in a four month war with General Aideeds SNA militia; Ethiopias two year occupation of Mogadishu in 2007-08 triggered a major jihadi insurgency; and AMISOMs current protection force is the main target of shabaabs ongoing armed operations. As noted below, armed responses by foreign forces to attacks have had a marked tendency to mobilize more armed opposition, especially when civilian casualties occur. The current drought. The current drought gripping the eastern Horn of Africa the worst in living memory requires special consideration as a driver of conflict now and into the future. It is not only producing predictable intensification of communal clashes over the meager remnants of available pasture and water; it is also expected to produce a wave of destitute pastoralists and agro-pastoralists into towns and cities across Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti, accelerating an already worrisome level of urban drift. Most of these destitute migrants will remain unemployed in the cities, creating an even larger pool of disaffected young men with few prospects for the future. They will be easily recruited into criminal gangs, clan militias, and possibly radical armed groups. Capacities for peace The above inventory highlights the extraordinary vulnerability of contemporary Somalia to armed conflict. And yet much of the country has, for most of the past twenty years, managed to prevent, contain, or resolve dangerous disputes. Local communities have devoted most of their political energies to conflict management. These conflict management practices tend to get attention when they fail and communal or political violence flares up, but in fact have been a bulwark for peace in Somalia, allowing nine million Somalis to enjoy at least modest levels of basic security and order in a broader context of war and state collapse. An extensive literature exists on local and informal sources of peace-building in Somalia.25 What follows below is a summary of the findings of that research:
25

Among the many studies, see the series of studies of peace produced in 2009 by Interpeace, at http://www.interpeace.org/index.php/Somalia/Somalia.html. See also Joachim Gundel, The Predicament of the Oday (Oxfam-Novib, 2006).

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Sources. Local capacities for peace are housed in a wide variety of practices and organizations. The most ubiquitous is customary law, and the role of traditional elders and other peacemakers (nabadoon). In some locations, religious leaders and sharia courts have played an important role in conflict prevention and management. Civil society groups especially womens groups, but also professional associations and local NGOs -- have emerged since the mid-1990s as important actors in conflict prevention and management. Local protection units and neighborhood watch groups provide a degree of deterrence of armed criminality that can spiral into armed violence. And business figures have also been an important source of conflict management where war threatens commerce. In some cases, communities have organized themselves into municipalities or even regional administrations, developing more formal roles in enforcing law and order and mediating disputes. Most local capacities for peace are the result of alliances and cooperation among some or role of these interests, forming fluid, hybrid governance arrangements that vary from place to place. Because they often do not present themselves as a formal authority, these practices are largely invisible to outsiders. Roles. Informal authorities play a range of distinct roles that can contribute to conflict prevention, management and resolution. One role is as a source of local rule of law, either in the form of customary clan law (xeer), sharia law, or civil law administered by regional polities such as Puntland. The ability of sub-national governance systems to provide a means of handling crimes is critical in reducing cases of revenge killings that spiral into communal war. It also can provide a vehicle for routinized communication and trust-building across conflict lines. Another role is diplomatic as negotiators on behalf of communities in conflict, or as third party mediators. This role is usually assumed after a conflict has broken out, but occasionally assumes a preventive role as well. Previously this was the domain of clan leaders and nabadoon, but in recent years formal civic organizations have played a more active mediating role. A third role is as a form of deterrent to criminal or political violence. Community protection forces, clan militia, business security forces, and neighborhood watch groups can act as a disincentive to escalate armed violence though they can just as easily serve as a source of armed conflict. Limits. Local capacities for peace in Somalia are impressive, but their role can be overstated or romanticized. To date they have been much more effective at the local and sometimes regional level, but much less so at the level of national-level political conflict. They are fragile and vulnerable to powerful spoilers. They are relatively effective at managing and ending communal conflict, but less well-equipped to address wider political violence and internationalized conflict. The law and order they dispense is typically illiberal in nature and can fall well short of international standards of rule of law in the case of shabaab-controlled areas of southern Somalia, sometimes shockingly so. Finally, they are also susceptible to cooperation and

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venality, and so at times clan elders, local civic actors, clerics, and businesspeople can be mobilizer or instigators of war rather than peace.

Section II: Armed Conflict and External Interventions

All forms of external involvement in Somalia, regardless of intent, face a fairly high risk of producing unintended consequences, including the inadvertent triggering of armed conflict. This is so for three reasons. First, as the above analysis underscores, the country at present is very susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict. Second, the international communitys engagement in Somalia typically involves the very actions identifying or recognizing (and hence privileging) local authorities, and allocating resources (from humanitarian aid to jobs and contracts to weapons and ammunition) that touch on the most dangerous triggers of armed conflict. Third, prevailing insecurity in Somalia has severely restricted external presence in the country, which in turn has compromised the ability of external actors to possess accurate contextual knowledge, thereby increasing still further the likelihood of errors which can produce unintended consequences. Under these circumstances, an approach which privileges the do no harm principle is at once self-evidence and problematic. External engagement in Somalia must clearly proceed with great care and sensitivity to the possibility of provoking conflict; yet current circumstances are so fraught with conflict tripwires that external actors have no choice but to accept a certain level of risk that their actions may produce new armed conflicts they did not want or intend. This includes external actions which seek to harness armed conflict to achieve a political end in Somalia, such as AMISOMs aspirations to drive shabaab out of Mogadishu. Armed conflict and statebuilding. Revival of functional central government is a critical component of Somalias recovery, yet is one of the most conflict-producing enterprises external actors have undertaken.26 This is hardly surprising, since the fundamental question who rules? is at the heart of negotiations over state revival. Even when state revival is framed as a powersharing exercise, as has consistently been the case in Somalia, the exercise is viewed locally as a strictly zero-sum game. State revival has been the central goal of the 1993-94 UNOSOM intervention, the building block approach of the late 1990s, the Djibouti-sponsored Arte talks which produced the 2000-02 Transitional Federal Government, and the Kenyan peace talks which results in the Transitional Federal Government. All were accompanied by armed conflict. Indeed, the most serious, destructive clashes in Somalia since 1990 the war between rival
26

Matt Bryden and Jeremy Brickhill, Disarming Somalia: Lessons in Stabilisation from a Collapsed State, Conflict, Security, and Development 10, 2 (2010) pp. 239-262.

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factions of the United Somali Congress in Mogadishu in late 1991, the UNOSOM clashes with General Aideeds Somali National Alliance, and the war in Mogadishu since 2007 have all been animated in whole or in part by disputes over how a government is to be formed and who rules. It is a matter of speculation whether Somalia might have been better off had the international community and regional states not pushed so hard for the accord that produced the TFG in 2004. Whether true or not, the very posing of the question is a reminder that state-building efforts have the potential to leave Somalia worse off than before in the case of the TFG, still without a functional state seven years later, but now with a level of armed violence, displacement, and radicalization that would have been unthinkable in 2004. State-building in Somalia can trigger armed conflict in several ways and at several points in the process. The convening of national reconciliation talks (which have to date been conflated with state-building as the primary objective) is a particularly dangerous point, as that is the moment when critical decisions related to representation are made. Who is convened to speak on behalf of the Somali community, and on the basis of what criteria? External actors who opt to privilege armed groups in negotiations reduce the risk of armed spoilers upending the process but at a cost of legitimacy; marginalization of warlords in talks may result in more legitimate representation but increases the likelihood spoilers will use violence to undermine the resulting government. Structuring representation based on local administration is an alternative, but runs the risk of encouraging rivals to undermine one anothers local polities. In the past, the kind of violence most often associated with preliminary phases of peace talks has been what Somalis call remote control clashes, in which disgruntled elites often at or near the talks orchestrate communal clashes back in country to undermine a rival. In two instances in Somalia statebuilding initiatives have resulted in the declaration of a transitional authority that is nominally a government of national unity. But in both instances the government is perceived by many Somalis as being dominated by one faction and set of clans. The result is the use and threat of violence by rejectionists as a way of preventing the government from expanding its physical authority and gaining legitimacy. This has been done with remarkable ease both the TNG and TFG were unable to exert control over more than a portion of the capital thanks to armed rejectionists. The rejectionists have a considerable advantage they need only play for a draw in order to win. Their goal is to prevent the aspiring government from becoming operational, not to defeat it outright. Armed violence is used to intimidate and demoralize government officials and to deny the government control of physical space. In the case of the TFG the only state-building effort in Somalia that has become operational in the past twenty years -- the security forces it stood up in 2007 and 2008 actually undermined rather than advanced state-building. The TFGs security forces operated as autonomous, clanbased para-militaries, preying on what it viewed as a hostile local population. This was a

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disastrous episode, in that it reinforced in many Somalis a fear of state revival, and drove some Mogadishu residents to support the armed insurgencies fighting the government. For external donors providing support to the security sector, it was a painful reminder that state building cannot be reduced to capacity-building -- it must also be accompanied by accountability measures. It was also a reminder that external state-building in a context of ongoing armed hostilities, in which the nascent state is a party to the conflict, unavoidably involves donor states in the armed conflict, compromising any other role such as mediation and humanitarian relief which requires neutrality. For external actors like the UN, which wears multiple hats, this inevitably creates internal tensions. Armed conflict and peace-building. Paradoxically, peace-building efforts in Somalia have occasionally been the source of armed conflict. This has occurred at the national level, when local armed groups have viewed an externally sponsored peace-building initiative (the Hawiye Peace Consultations of summer 2007, for example) as an attempt at divide and rule. This same dynamic has occurred at the local level, when external mediators and facilitators have innocently sought to broker a peace between two warring clans only to have a third clan view it as an emerging coalition at their expense.27 When peace-building efforts are piecemeal or less than comprehensive, and a third party feels threatened or marginalized as a result, peacebuilding efforts are at greater risk of triggering armed conflict. In the current situation, peace talks designed to bring together the TFG and other regional or armed groups in an alliance or powersharing accord will be seen by third parties shabaab and potentially others as a coalition at their expense. Likewise, peace-building that seeks to reach out to moderate elements of the armed opposition will almost certainly elicit violent response from hardliners who understand that it is an attempt to divide and weaken them. This is not a reason to avoid such strategies, only a cautionary note that external actors should view their peace initiatives through the eyes of all potential spoilers. The quiet success of local-level authorities in managing conflict has led to questions about their possible utility in building peace at the national level. Can sub-state and non-state actors which help to provide peace at the local level be tapped as partners by external actors also seeking to promote peace? This has long been a pre-occupation of advocates of grass-roots peacebuilding; in more recent time, it has been given new prominence thanks to the call by the United States government for a dual track approach in Somalia. The unsatisfying answer is it depends. The impulse to build on what already works in the country, especially in a context of prolonged frustration with efforts to build peace and a functional central government at the national level, is understandable. But it has risks as well. Local, informal sources of peace-building are fragile and can easily be overwhelmed by external
27

Ken Menkhaus, International Peacebuilding and the Dynamics of Local and National Reconciliation in Somalia, International Peacekeeping 3, 1 (1996), pp. 42-67.

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resources and agendas; international support and partnership from the UN and the West can place these local partners in harms way if seen by shabaab as tools of outside enemies; and aid to and recognition of sources of rule of law and security can inadvertently create a problem of moral hazard, by rewarding groups whose primary raison detre is dependent on continued state collapse. Careful, surgical support to local groups through international partner with deep knowledge of local context is essential. Armed conflict and peace operations. International peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations have been deployed four times to Somalia since 1991 UNOSOM I, UNITAF, UNOSOM II, and AMISOM. In addition, Ethiopian forces intervened in Somalia in 2007 and 2008 and sought to stabilize the capital and protect the TFG. In three of these five interventions, international forces have been drawn into heavy armed clashes with a local armed group. If AMISOM succeeds in employing armed force against Somali insurgents to accomplish its mission, it will be the first to do so. In the other two cases, use of armed force against Somali insurgents actually produced the opposite result intended. For UNOSOM II, its aspirations of demonstrating the viability of a more muscular UN peace enforcement capacity was shattered, and UN peace operations set back badly in Mogadishu. For Ethiopia, an intervention intended to rid Somalia of what it concluded was a dangerous Islamist threat instead accelerated the rise of a far more radical, al-Qaida affiliated jihadi group. Perhaps no other external intervention in Somali is as prone to unintended consequences as the recourse to military hostilities. That is not necessarily a reason to forego the use of war as a tool of statecraft in Somalia, but it is another cautionary note. UN and African Union peace operations have been deployed to Somalia for a variety of reasons for protection of a transitional government, protection of humanitarian aid, and promotion of broader stabilization and state-building initiatives. In all instances, the peace missions have meant to serve the Somali people as well as broader international interests. The fact that they have nonetheless consistently generated armed resistance from some Somali quarters is sobering, and the fact their armed response has not produced a quick victory despite their overwhelming military superiority is a reminder of the limits of power in a context like Somalia. Recourse to military response in Somalia by international actors most often runs into problems because of the powerfully negative reaction Somalis have to seeing foreigners attack fellow Somalis on their soil. Attacks on Somali insurgents even when fully justified or in self-defense have triggered angry backlashes among Somalis, and play into the hands of insurgents for purposes of fund-raising and recruiting. Civilian casualties resulting from peacekeepers armed responses to attack produce even greater outrage. Not surprisingly, a favorite tactic of Somali insurgent fighting foreign forces has been to fire from densely populated neighborhoods.

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Peacekeeping forces brought in to Somalia as a neutral or impartial force such as UNITAF and UNOSOM II have found it very difficult to maintain neutrality in a context where every decision they make benefits some and harms the interests and power base of others. Where peacekeepers are brought in to protect a transitional government that is at war with rejectionists, the peacekeepers are in no way able to maintain neutrality, and are seen locally as active parties to the war. Despite these problems, international peacekeeping forces have some record of success in maintaining peace and order in areas they patrol. UNITAF and much of UNOSOM II, for instance, were very effective in halting a devastating civil war and bringing stability to most of the Somali countryside. These accomplishments are often forgotten because of the armed clashes peace operations have been bogged down in in the capital Mogadishu. In general, however, international peacekeeping has not kept the peace in Somalia, but has tended to be drawn into the very armed hostilities it is meant to prevent. This is justifiable if the international community concurs that a military solution to the Somali crisis is required, and that only outside forces can achieve it. In that instance, armed conflict is not understood as a problem to avoid but as part of the solution. Armed conflict and development/humanitarian aid. Somalia has been the recipient of enormous quantities of humanitarian aid since the late 1970s, as well as significant flows of development assistance (since 1990, mainly to more stable region of the northeast and northwest). These aid flows are highly compartmentalized, amounting to thousands of transactions between any one of hundreds of international aid agencies and thousands of local NGOs, contractors, and local or national administrations. The vast majority of these aid flows are routinized transactions between international and local actors with established relations, based on careful calculations to ensure all local parties are satisfied with the allocation of resources. In practice, this often means an implicit apportioning of resources including contracts and jobs -- along clan lines to keep the peace. This is a controversial conflict prevention practice; some Somalis find it offensive and claim it reinforces clan divisions that need to be transcended. The general consensus in the development community is that development aid should be and usually is a contributor to peace, not war, for all of the reasons that are well-known to us. It promotes development, creates jobs, provides new opportunities for functional cooperation across old conflict lines, and in the process helps to build peace constituencies. It can also build up the capacity of local and national governments to maintain rule of law (This logic is less embraced with regard to humanitarian aid, which is seen as focusing exclusively on life-saving

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measures). This claim is generally true, but it is also the case that under some conditions development and humanitarian aid have inadvertently served as triggers of armed conflict.28 One of the clear lessons of development and humanitarian aid in Somalia over the past twenty years is that regardless of whether the provider of the assistance is exceptionally careful or exceptionally careless in aid allocation and the country has had ample experience with both delivery of aid is always a potential flashpoint for armed conflict, and many instances of communal violence over the years can be traced back to a dispute over allocation of projects, contracts, employment, or rent. In many locations in Somalia, international aid agencies have constituted the largest employer in the town or village, and in a context of great poverty every dollar spent is a matter of contestation that can easily turn violent, especially if a local spoiler is actively looking to exploit tensions. Short-term or one-off humanitarian aid is more likely to set off armed conflict because it typically lacks a routinized history of allocation that reassures local populations they will get their turn. Perhaps the single most vivid example of this was the dumping of food aid at Bardhere in September and October 1992 during the US Operation Provide Relief airlift; that food aid ended up attracting armed militia from across the region and produced violence which worsened displacement and famine. But even well-established, routinized humanitarian and development projects, implemented in close partnership with local authorities and with close knowledge of local context, can trigger armed clashes. In one instance in 1999, clans in the southern Somali town of Saakow went to war, and destroyed much of the town, over a dispute over who secured the contract to change money for the international NGO that had successfully and carefully operated there for decades. A second link between armed conflict and development and humanitarian aid is the possibility that aid resources help to underwrite belligerent groups, who divert aid resources in order to purchase weapons and ammunition and pay fighters. As discussed in an earlier section of this paper, any introduction of resources into Somalia food relief, salaries, remittances, ransoms -has the potential to help finance and perpetuate war, even if that is not the intent of the provider. It is by no means an exclusive problem for development and humanitarian agencies. Finally, the rise of what routinized humanitarian emergencies in Somalia has in some locations created a political economy of aid delivery in which powerful local players mainly contractors come to have a vested interest in the perpetuation, not the resolution, of humanitarian crisis. In some parts of Somalia, local contractors have been accused of doubling as some of the most powerful militia backers, and of instigating local conflicts to produce displacement and hence the need for more aid flows. This claim is difficult to prove, but is widely believed in Somali circles. It is worth adding that those same Somali circles understand that this analysis also extends to international actors benefiting from ongoing humanitarian operations in Somalia. This line of
28

Ken Menkhaus, Stabilisation and Humanitarian Access in a Collapsed State: The Somali Case. Disasters vol. 34, supplement no. 3 (October 2010), pp. 320-41.

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reasoning can quickly degenerate into a conspiracy theory, but the general premise that external flows of development and humanitarian resources into Somalia can quickly create interest groups with incentives to perpetuate the conditions prompting the assistance is unassailable. This same logic can extend to counter-terrorism and anti-piracy assistance, wherein local leaders have a strong vested interest in addressing, but not resolving, a crisis which attracts foreign assistance. Armed conflict and counter-terrorism. Somalia has since 2005 been a major site of US-led counter-terrorism efforts, focusing on al Qaida operatives in Somalia, the home-grown jihadist group Shabaab, and a third category Somali diaspora members who have been recruited into or who support financially Shabaab. Counter-terrorism has involved a wide range of policies, from hearts and minds campaigns to financial sanctions to use of lethal force. It is intended to ultimately reduce the threat of a particular type of armed violence, terrorism, that threatens the security of neighboring states and the wider international community. This particular form of external intervention in Somalia has involved significant flows of support to armed non-state actors and to autonomous, para-military groups loosely affiliated with existing state authorities in Somalia. These local allies have been indispensable in the absence of an effective and coherent central government security sector. As in Afghanistan and elsewhere, counter-terrorism partnerships with armed non-state actors comes at a cost. Those actors develop a vested interest in undermining state-building, since their value to the external actor hinges on the continued ineffectiveness of government security forces. These local partners can and do appropriate the war on terror to secure aid which they use for more parochial agendas, including waging war against local rivals or engaging in war economy profiteering. And, because these local partners answer to no one, they can at times engage in predatory behavior against local populations that drives them to support the insurgents. All of these dynamics can contribute to the perpetuation of armed conflict and insurgency rather than resolving it. This problem of blowback in counter-terrorism operations in Somalia was most in evidence during 2007-08, but remains a concern today. Armed conflict and international private sector activities and investment. Somalia has not been a major site of foreign investment and activities, but in the few instances it has, the results have been a major trigger of, or source of financial backing for, armed violence. Illegal international fishing off of the coast of Somalia was initially responsible for the rise of piracy which has since taken on a life of its own. International fishing interests have also been a lucrative source of funds for militia leaders demanding licenses for the right to fish off the Somali coast. International energy companies have sought to secure concessions to explore and exploit oil and natural gas in contested areas of the country, in the process creating tensions between competing government authorities Somaliland, Puntland, and the TFG (with further disputes within these governments) over who has the right to extend concessions to foreign

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companies. This is likely to grow as a source of conflict because the financial stakes are potentially so high and the issues at stake control over local energy resources so unresolved in Somalia.

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Section III. Assessment and Policy Implications

Though Somalia has been and remains the site of chronic and varied levels of armed conflict for twenty years, it also hosts a remarkable proliferation of informal systems of conflict management and mitigation. Put another way, for as bad as the situation has been in Somalia, it could have been much worse, were it not for the determined efforts of local community leaders to manage disputes and devise informal systems of governance and security. Naturally, external actors are attracted to support this local resiliency and peace-building capacity. Doing so, however, requires a degree of care and surgical support that some external aid agencies have difficulty achieving, especially when forced to operate from remote in Nairobi Kenya. How then can diplomacy, stabilization, development aid, and humanitarian assistance be effectively conflict sensitive? This is an especially thorny question in a location as high risk as Somalia, where failure rates of external interventions and aid of all sorts have been high, and where the law of unintended consequences is the norm, not the exception. What follows are a few suggestions based on the above analysis: High risk external interventions (of any sort) in Somalia must clearly lay out in advance who shoulders the costs of failure. If local partners are at risk, they must clearly assent to taking on the risk. Somalia is not an environment where a do no harm approach is feasible, but this places a powerful burden on external actors to maximize the extent to which their intervention is not likely to enflame conflicts. moral hazard acts which are intended to address a problem but which inadvertently reinforce and reward the very behavior which caused the problem is real in Somalia and can perpetuate conflict. Diplomatic, development, and humanitarian support must assess critically the possibility it is rewarding bad behavior, especially when in involves powerful elites and cartels with a vested interest in perpetuating armed conflict and instability. The international community today embraces a policy in Somalia in which use of lethal force is a central pillar in combatting shabaab. Taken collectively (direct military presence, support to TFG security sectors, support to other armed groups), this constitutes one of the more militarized international policies of any country in Africa. International diplomats need to clearly articulate to the Somali people the justification of this policy and the vision for transitioning, as rapidly as possible, to non-violent strategies to stabilize Somalia. Otherwise, conflict sensitivity as an objective will come across as disingenuous to Somali observers. Quests to completely eliminate the diversion of development and humanitarian aid to local armed groups are laudable but untenable and unrealistic at this time. The political economy of aid diversion is entrenched in southern Somalia. Whatever armed group controls a piece of territory, be it shabaab or a clan militia, will exact tribute, one way or

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another, over aid and other external activities in its areas of control. The more useful question is to determine at what point this diversion becomes unjustifiable at what point it underwrites an armed group that is the source of insecurity in an area. This is a terrible calculation that relief and development agencies are often loathe to consider, but which is essential in todays Somalia. State-building at any level from the TFG to local administrations runs a high risk of triggering conflict, especially where extensive levels of foreign aid can be captured by the victor. Modest and carefully targeted aid to local or national authorities, with a high emphasis on accountability and transparency, are essential components of conflict sensitive state-building in Somalia. Once public trust grows that funds are not systematically diverted, fewer conflicts over the state are likely to occur. State-building should under no circumstances encourage governments to lay claim to resources or activities which threaten powerful local actors. That is a recipe for armed conflict and spoilers. Instead, local and national governments should be strongly encouraged to conceive of their job as that of an enabler or the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and others. This can include desirable regulation, but in full consultation with affected parties, not as edicts. The single most important conflict-sensitivity lesson from Somali-inhabited regions of the Horn of Africa actually emanate from Somaliland and northeastern Kenya. In both of those areas, a high and durable level of peace has been forged, despite daunting obstacles. It has been crafted via partnerships between coalitions of civic and social authorities (clan elders, womens market groups, religious leaders, business leaders) and a local government authority that is willing but not able to govern, and which views civic engagement in conflict mitigation and governance as an opportunity, not a threat. That in turn makes local communities active stakeholders in their own governance and security, and produces an organic and effective set of systems of community policing that are unquestionable the most powerful source of peace and security in the Eastern Horn of Africa.

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Appendix: Conflict assessment update, October 2011

In the seven months since this paper was drafted in February 2011, dramatic changes have occurred in the Somali political landscape. Some, like the worsening drought, were anticipated in the initial analysis, while others, like shabaabs withdrawal from Mogadishu, constitute wild cards that were not foreseen. Many reflect mounting use of or preparation for armed conflict. This appendix provides a brief update of the main events that have transpired since February, their impact on Somali conflict dynamics, their implications for conflict sensitive programming in the country. Among the most important events in Somalia from March-October 2011 that have an impact on conflict trends include the following: Increase in AMISOM deployment; successes against shabaab. Reinforced AMISOM forces enjoyed growing success in battles with shabaab in the spring of 2011, pushing the group back in parts of the capita, imposing significant losses on the insurgency, and prompting a shift in tactics by shabaab. Death of **** Fazul. A top foreign al Qaeda advisor in shabaab, ***** Fazul, died in May *** in a firefight when he mistakenly drove into a TFG checkpoint. Rumors circulated that he was set up by Somali shabaab leader Godane, reflecting a power struggle between Somali and non-Somali shabaab leaders and possibly even a power struggle within al Qaeda itself. Shabaab withdrawal from most of Mogadishu. In June, shabaab embarked on an orderly, planned withdrawal from most of the areas of Mogadishu under its control. The move took AMISOM, the TFG, and the international community by surprise. The tactic was born of weakness shabaab was losing battles with AMISOM forces but sought to expose the TFGs inability to hold the newly liberated territory and to overstretch AMISOM forces. Shabaab leaders vowed to move into a new phase of insurgency emphasizing urban ambushes and terrorist attacks against the TFG and AMISOM. Some in the international community viewed the withdrawal as a victory over shabaab; others feared it was a trap. Resurgence of clan militias. Neighborhoods vacated by shabaab mainly fell under the control of local clan militias as the TFG struggled to extend direct authority there, raising concerns about a revival of warlordism. Kampala Accord. A power struggle between TFG President Sheikh Sharif and Speaker of Parliament Sharif Hassan over the dispensation of the transitional government after the August end of the transitional mandate is averted when Uganda brokers an accord that results in a one year extension of the mandate and the formation of a new government. As part of the deal, Prime Minister Formaggio sets down and is replaced by *** Abdiweli, and a portion of the cabinet is replaced.

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Declaration of famine, late July. The worsening humanitarian crisis forecast in late 2010, exacerbated by the worst drought in decades, reached a tipping point in summer 2011, producing famine conditions in which 750,000 Somalis were at immediate risk of famine and 4 million in need of emergency relief. Challenges of humanitarian response problems of access, inability to monitor distribution, chronic insecurity, restrictions imposed by counter-terrorism laws, difficulties of scaling up relief operations at short notice, and inexperience of the wave of new, mainly Islamic NGOs -- became a major international pre-occupation. Refugee crisis. The flow of refugees from famine zones into Kenya and Ethiopia jumps dramatically in 2011, at one point reaching 1,500 Somalis per day into the overcrowded refugee camps at Dadaab, Kenya. By September 2011, the total number of Somali refugees in neighboring countries exceeded 770,000, while about 1,000 new refugees mainly badly malnourished women and children continued to arrive in Kenya each day. Shabaab famine policy. Five hundred thousand of the 750,000 famine victims live in areas controlled by shabaab. Shabaab leaders took extremist and seemingly counterproductive positions on the famine, denying the scope of the crisis, blocking food aid from most international relief agencies, insisting on control over distribution of aid in cases where food relief was permitted, blocking famine victims from fleeing to Mogadishu or Kenya, and forcibly disbursing families back to their farms to prepare the land for planting in October. Shabaabs gross mishandling of the famine further alienated most Somalis, and caused serious rifts within the movement, but as of mid-October no defections. ICRC shouldered most of the burden of large scale food aid distribution, hoping to reach 1.2 million Somalis under an agreement with shabaab. Even so, high numbers of famine-related deaths were predicted for the last months of 2011, mainly from disease spread by the dheere season rains among badly malnourished populations. Shabaab forced recruitment and other policies. Its mishandling of the famine and refugee crisis was by far its worst error, but shabaab leadership made a series of other missteps in 2011, alienating it still further from the Somali public. It also embarked on heavy taxation of farmers and forced conscription in parts of southern Somalia. TFG and militia clashes over famine relief in Mogadishu. Famine relief flowing into Mogadishu, where 200,000 of the famine victims were located, became the target of intense and occasionally lethal armed struggles between rival politicians, TFG security forces, and autonomous clan militia all vying to control and divert the food aid. Aid agencies expressed deep frustration that access and monitoring of food relief remained so difficult even in areas of TFG control. Road map. A plan to complete the transition in one year, with specific benchmarks for the TFG to meet, is drawn uop and agreed upon by the UN donors, and the TFG. Shabaab terrorist bombing. On October **, Shabaab launched its most deadly terrorist attack to date, a truck bomb that exploded in front of a TFG building that killed *** people, mainly students lining up for information on scholarships to Turkey. The suicide

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bombers video-taped message specifically refers to targeting of the students, condemning them for seeking education that will distract them from their religion. The attack prompts outrage from Somalis, and represents what appears to be yet another serious miscalculation by shabaab. At the same time it serves as a reminder that shabaab is still able to operate easily behind TFG and AMISOM security perimeters. Increased drone strikes. An increase in drone strikes against shabaab targets in the Kismayo and the Jubba areas is reported in September and October. Tensions and clashes between militias backed by Kenya. Brief clashes break out between and within the Kenyan-backed Somali militias of Ras Kamboni and the Isiolo militia (see above for description of the armed groups). This reinforces concerns over command and control in these groups and their viability as anti-shabaab militaries in the event of an offensive. Build up and advance of Ethiopian backed militias in Gedo region. Kidnappings across Kenya border Kenya military offensive Assessment: fragmentation Possibility of Islamo-warlordism. Tensions within shabaab that could produce splinter groups, combined with changes in shabaab behavior most notably a growing preoccupation with predatory taxation of locals and the use of kidnapping (discussed below) raised concerns about the possibility of Islamo-warlordism emerging in Somalia.