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ABSTRACT
This article examines the entanglement of insecurity profiteering and the emergence of the profitable violent political marketplace in southern Somalia. Reinforcing the recent research into secretive dealings of the securitisation of the Somali capital city of Mogadishu, it is argued that the war economy has prolonged armed conflict and insecurity in Somalia in a way that is more complicated than has been assumed. Given the internal/external dimension of the Somali conflict which tends to tailor internal actors with external actors in a deeply entrenched modus operandi, the economisation of southern Somalia’s insecurity has created a politically profitable space that prolongs the armed conflict and exacerbates insecurity to generate income and excavate revenues from international aid. As the state collapsed, powerful money-oriented ‘business’ people who have been determined by the ambition to profit from conflict carved out profitable spaces to generate illicit income out of the prolonged insecurity. Whilst the government authorities claim credit for growing societal development projects, Mogadishu has nominally recovered mainly because of the economic activities carried out by diasporic Somalis. Drawing from a long durée approach, the article introduces the various ways in which the contemporary war economy started from the Cold War experience and influenced the insecurity in Mogadishu. The article is devoted to deepening our understanding of why the war-torn capital city remains fragile and volatile in terms of security for a long time. It proposes an alternative understanding of the complicated security situation in conflict-ridden southern Somalia by contextualising the nuances of what is currently happening in Mogadishu. The article finally contributes to the existing studies of armed conflicts and war economies in the context of failed states and war profiteering.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Mohamed Haji Ingiriis, DPhil (PhD) Candidate at the Faculty of History, the University of Oxford, is now CRP Fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also Research Associate at the African Leadership Centre, King's College London. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of Somali Studies and Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society. He is the author, The Suicidal State in Somalia: The Rise and Fall of the Siad Barre Regime, 1969-1991 (Lanham, MD: University of America, 2016).
Notes
1 As Ehrhart and Petretto (Citation2014, 187) pointed out: ‘Those Somalis who have been involved have mostly either been proponents of the violent conflict devastating the country or representatives of the diaspora that was able to establish a sound financial base and a close-knit support network internationally’.
2 On the second week of my stay in Mogadishu at the end of April 2016, a suicide attack on the Mogadishu traffic police headquarters woke me up from sleep. Altogether I witnessed more than seven suicide bomb attacks between 2015 and 2018. However, non-Somalis are more prone to danger than to Somalis. As Harding (Citation2016, 17) noted: ‘Visiting Mogadishu, particularly as a foreigner, is a risky, expensive, and, above all, logistically complicated process. Who guards you–a particular clan, foreign peacekeepers, the UN, or private security contractors?’.
3 For the ambivalent roles of the private sector during the 1990s, see Cassanelli (Citation2015, 42). For a more recent context, see Ingiriis (Citation2015).
4 With self-reflexivity, Chabal noted elsewhere in Africa, ‘we outsiders could do worse than listen to Africans when they press us to think more carefully about the implications of our political interpretations for the well-being of the continent: supporting dictators or justifying structural adjustment all have immediate consequences for the lives of ordinary men and women’ (Citation1996, 32).
5 For how the Cold War exacerbated their precarious situations, see Besteman (Citation2016, 42).
6 Little (Citation2003), who provided the most detailed political economy of this period, discusses and describes less about the post-1991 economy than pre-1991. However, the 1991 public uprising against the Siad Barre regime constitutes a course changing watershed in the Somali political conflicts.
7 I used to fly some of these airports: Dayniile (October 2002, August 2003 and October 2003), Esaleey (December 2001), Jasiira (December 2001) and Number Konton or No. 50 (November 2001 and July 2002).
8 Western observers tend to refer to each other to authenticate their assumptions. For instance, no single Somali author has ever been invited to contribute to the UN Somalia human development reports.
9 In Hargeysa, Renders (Citation2012, 7) came across a Chinese restaurant called Ming Sing.
10 The antagonism that emerged out from influence and control between Islam and the West did not start with the collapse of the Cold War, but it was something that has been simmering since the World War I and before (Mamdani Citation2004; Said Citation1981).
11 As Tripp (Citation1997, 4) argued on the whole African continent: ‘The growth of the informal economy is probably one of the most important developments in Africa in the 1980s’.
12 The Turkish aid has decreased after allegations of corruption against the Somali government authorities (Hürriyet Daily News Citation2014). For a critical assessment of the Turkish role in Somalia, see also International Crisis Group (Citation2012).
13 According to the IMF (Citation2017): ‘The Somali economy is sustained by donors’ grants, remittances, and foreign direct investment mostly by the Somali diaspora. Since 2013, the donor community has given over $4.5 billion in humanitarian and developmental grants, which is essential in contributing to finance Somalia’s trade deficit of nearly 55 percent of GDP (average during 2013–2016)’.
14 Anten, Briscoe, and Mezzera (Citation2012, 23) observed elsewhere in a similar setting that ‘access to formal institutional power provides important opportunities to draw on sovereign rents, such as aid money, and must be defended against competitors by force if necessary. At the same time, a certain level of lawlessness and lack of territorial control enhances the chances of accessing natural and other illegal resources’.
15 Kinsey, Hansen, and Franklin (Citation2009) and Staff (Citation2017) offer detailed studies on the emergence and impact of the security companies in Somalia.
16 As Maxwell and Majid (Citation2016:, 45) highlighted: ‘The diversion of aid has long been a part of the war economy in Somalia’.
17 Most recently, the Turkish news agency published this news item: ‘Somali aid workers said Monday Turkey’s government had delivered over 8,500 tons of food -- including sugar, wheat and oil -- to relieve drought-hit areas of the country. Mohamed Yaqub, a local worker for the al-Manhal aid group, which is a partner of the Turkish Red Crescent, said the aid would be distributed in areas such as the Sol, Nugal, Bari Awdal and Banadir regions of northern Somalia. Turkey also delivered at least 11,100 tons of food to the capital Mogadishu, where thousands of displaced people are living. The Turkish mission in Somalia tweeted on Monday that food aid would go to people living in the capital, Somaliland and Puntland. A ship carrying thousands of tons of humanitarian aid for the East African country arrived in Somalia last week from the southern Turkish port city of Mersin. This came after the United Nations said last month more than five million people -- 40 percent of the country's population -- did not have enough to eat’ (Anadolu Agency Citation2016).
18 The UN Monitoring Group report of 2010 also noted an exponential level of food aid diversion. See UN Monitoring Group, ‘Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1853 (2008), (2010, March 10). UN Security Council (S/2010/91’, New York, UN 2010. This report does not substantially different than the recent UN Monitoring Group reports. See, for example, United Nations (UN), Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to Security Council resolution 2244 (2015): Somalia, UN doc.S/2016/919, 31 October 2016.
19 For a detailed study on Al-Shabaab, see Hansen (Citation2013). Numerous other groups profiting from the war such as businessmen hired armed youths to provide protection to foreign international aid agencies.
20 The ‘traditional donors’ is meant Western donors, whether state or non-state NGOs). The ‘non-traditional donors’ implies the non-Western donors, whether state or non-state NGOs.
21 For an overview, see Kamwende (Citation2014).