Moral Economies of Mass Violence: Somalia 1988–1991

Abstract

The focus in the article is on the beginning and expansion of the Somali war between 1988 and 1992. Three patterns and dynamics of mass-mobilisation are comparatively examined: the relatively sudden transformation of the northern guerrilla struggle in a civil war 1988, the expansion of the war to the southern region after 1989 and the mass-upheaval in Mogadishu 1990/91. Although clan-affiliation became a prominent tool to mobilising violence and to framing friends and foes throughout Somalia, the patterns of organising clan-relations within the insurgent movements and between the movements and the non-armed population differed and laid the basis for the different trajectories of violence in the Somali regions.

Notes

 1. For recent developments, cf. Human Right Watch, Shell-Shocked. Civilians under Siege in Mogadishu (New York: HRW 2007); Human Right Watch, ‘So Much to Fear.’ War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia (New York: HRW 2008); International Crisis Group, Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State (Nairobi/Brussels: ICG 2008); Kenneth Menkhaus, Somalia. A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare (Washington, DC: ENOUGH Strategy Paper 2008).

 2. In spite of its success, the Somaliland Republic is internationally not recognised.

 3. According to the World Bank, the import and export trade in Somalia reached a record high in 2004, see The World Bank, Somalia: From Resilience Towards Recovery and Development. A Country Economic Memorandum for Somalia, Report No. 34356-SO (Washington, DC: World Bank 2006).

 4. See among others, Kenneth Menkhaus and John Prendergast, Political Economy of Post Intervention-Somalia (1995), online at < http://www.asylumlaw.org/docs/somalia/95_somalia_menkhaus.pdf>, accessed 16 Nov. 2009; Roland Marchal, Final Report on The Post Civil War Somali Business Class (Nairobi: European Commission/Somali Unit 1996); Roland Marchal, Lower Shabelle Region Study on Governance, Unpublished report (Nairobi: United Nations Development Office for Somalia 1997); Peter D. Little, ‘Conflictive Trade, Contested Identity: The Effects of Export Markets on Pastoralists of Southern Somalia’, African Studies Review 39/1 (1996) pp.25–53; Peter D. Little, Somalia: Economy Without State (Oxford/Bloomington, IN: James Currey/Indiana University Press 2003); Maria H. Brons, Somalia. Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State. From Statelessness to Statelessness? (Utrecht: International Books 2001); Kenneth Menkhaus, ‘State Collapse in Somalia: Second Thoughts’, Review of African Political Economy 30/97 (2003) pp.405–22; Kenneth Menkhaus, Somalia. A Situation Analysis and Trend Assessment (Nairobi: UNHCR – Protection Information Section, Department of International Protection 2003); Jutta Bakonyi and Kirsti Stuvoy, ‘Violence and Social Order Beyond the State: Somalia & Angola’, Review of African Political Economy 104/5 (2005) pp.359–82; Ken Menkhaus, ‘Governance without Government in Somalia. Spoilers, State Building, and the Politics of Coping’, International Security 31/3 (2006/7) pp.74–106.

 5. Of course, some scholars have contributed significantly to our understanding of the early organisation of violence in Somalia as well as of the dynamics of war and the patterns of destruction, among them Gerard Prunier, ‘A Candid View of the Somali National Movement’, Horn of Africa XIII–XIV/3-4; 1–2 (1990/91) pp.107–20; Daniel Compagnon, ‘The Somali Opposition Fronts: Some Comments and Questions’, Conflict Quarterly XIII/1–2 (1990) pp.29–54; Roland Marchal, ‘La guerre à Mogadiscio’, Politique Africaine 46 (1992) pp.120–25; Daniel Compagnon, ‘Somali Armed Movements’ in Christopher Clapham (ed.) African Guerillas (Oxford: James Currey 1998) pp.73–90; Alex de Waal, ‘Dangerous Precedents? Famine Relief in Somalia 1991–93’ in Joanna Macrae, Anthony Zwi, Mark Duffield and Hugo Slim (eds) Dangerous Precedents? Famine Relief in Somalia 1991–93 (London/New Jersey: Zed Books in association with Safe the Children Fund 1994) pp.139–59; Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes. Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Oxford/Bloomington, IN: James Currey, Indiana University Press 1997); Roland Marchal, ‘Forms of Violence and Ways to Control It: The Mooryaan in Mogadishu’ in Hussein M. Adam and Richard Ford (eds) Forms of Violence and Ways to Control It: The Mooryaan in Mogadishu (Lawrenceville/Asmara: The Red Sea Press 1997) pp.193–208.

 6. Descent is among the important principles of social organisation in Somalia. The Somali society is divided into six main descent groups or clan-families, respectively, i.e. Dir, Isaaq, Hawiye, Darood, Digil and Rahanweyn (or Mirifle). These clan-families are further subdivided along patrilineal lines in clans, sub-clans and so on, see Ioan M. Lewis, The Modern History of the Somali. Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, revised, updated and expanded edition (Oxford/Hargeisa/Athens: James Curry/Btec Books/Ohio University Press 2002 [1965]) p.6.

 7. Somalia was not exceptional in this respect. Most literature on collective violence as well as on rioting elaborates on their patterned character, see Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux 1984); Veena Das, ‘Anthropological Knowledge and Collective Violence: The Riots in Delhi, November 1984’, Anthropology Today 1/3 (1985) pp.4–6; Stanley J. Tambiah, Leveling Crowds. Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press 1996); Donald E. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (London/Berkley/Los Angeles: University of California Press 2001).

 8. The term culturalisation was coined by Bayart and does not imply that violence is no longer political. Violence is, however, expressed and fighters are mobilised with reference to cultural affiliation. The organisational features of the insurgents or militias are therefore reflecting more and more cultural rather than political affiliations, cf. Jean-Francois Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity (London: C. Hurst & Co. Ltd. 2005).

 9. The term social figuration was coined by Norbert Elias, Was ist Soziologie? [What is Sociology?] (München: Juventa 1991) esp. pp.139–45.

10. Genealogical connections are marked with a dash. For example, if written Darood/Mareexaan, Darood refers to the clan-family and Mareexaan to the lower segment of the clan.

11. With the goal of annexing the eastern Ethiopian Ogaadeen region, the Somali army invaded Ethiopia in 1977, but was defeated in 1978.

12. The SSDF was reorganised after 1991 and was soon again among the key players in the Somali war. In 1998, it founded the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in the north-east of Somalia. The long-term leader of the SSDF, Abdullahi Yussuf, became the first president of Puntland and was elected president of Somalia in 2004 during a peace conference in Kenya. He resigned at the end of 2008.

13. Ahmed I. Samatar, Socialist Somalia. Rhetoric and Reality (London: Zed Books 1988) p.155.

14. Yahya Xaaji Ibraahiim, interview in Hargeysa in November 2002.

15. Numbers vary. It was, however, ‘one of the fastest and largest forced population movements ever recorded in Africa’, see United Nations Development Programme UNDP, Human Development Report. Somalia 2001 (Nairobi: UNDP Somali Country Office 2001) p.58.

16. Christopher Clapham, ‘Introduction: Analysing African Insurgencies’ in Christopher Clapham (ed.) Analysing African Insurgencies (Oxford: James Currey 1998) p.14.

17. Africa Watch published a detailed account on state repression and violence in the north-western regions of Somalia, see Africa Watch, Somalia. A Government at War with its Own People. Testimonies about the Killings and the Conflict in the North (New York/Washington/London: Africa Watch 1990).

18. Interestingly, the state particularly suspected the nomads would support and fight for the SNM, and therefore the nomads were often harassed by the security forces, see ibid.Africa Watch, Somalia. A Government at War with its own People. Testimonies about the Killings and the Conflict in the North (New York/Washington/London: Africa Watch 1990) pp.87 et seqq.

19. Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York: W.W. Norton 1959); E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present 50 (1971) pp.76–136; James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven/London: Yale University 1976); James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven/London: Yale University Press 1985).

20. A repertoire is the historically developed, culturally sanctioned and therefore rather limited ‘set of means that a group has for making claims of different kinds on different individuals or groups’, see Charles Tilly, As Sociology Meets History (New York: Academic Press 1981) p.161; Sidney Tarrow, ‘Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of Contention’, Social Science History 17/2 (1993) pp.281–307.

21. Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1986) pp.387 et seqq.

22. Ioan M. Lewis, Blood and Bone. The Call of Kinship in Somali Society (Lawrenceville: The Red Sea Press 1994) pp.181 et seqq.

23. For the history of Uffo, see Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (London: Progressio 2008) pp.57 et seqq.

24. Jeffrey Herbst, ‘Migration, the Politics of Protest, and State Consolidation in Africa’, African Affairs 89/355 (1990) p.184. The trend towards exit options is no African peculiarity, but rooted in the available repertoire and social realities of a pre-capitalist peasantry, see, for example, Gerd Spittler, ‘Abstraktes Wissen als Herrschaftsbasis. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte bürokratischer Herrschaft im Bauernstaat Preussens’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 32 (1980) pp.574–604.

25. In the past, the organisation of the Somali nomads had required strong leadership, the threat of a common enemy and shared economic needs, see Lee V. Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society. Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600–1900 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 1982) p.188.

26. Differences in the organisation of material support and their repercussions on the insurgents were already stressed by William Reno, Somalia and Survival in the Shadow of the Global Economy, QEH Working Paper No. 100 (2003), online at < www3.qeh.ox.ac.uk/RePEc/qeh/qehwps/qehwps100.pdf>, accessed 5 July 2004.

27. The concrete practice of Qaaraan differs among the clans and the regions.

28. Anna Simons, Networks of Dissolution. Somalia Undone (Boulder/Oxford: Westview Press 1995).

29. Anna Simons, Networks of Dissolution. Somalia Undone (Boulder/Oxford: Westview Press 1995)

30. The Somali state deeply penetrated the society by establishing patron-client relationships and a prevailing ‘economy of favour’. In Somalia, as in many other African states, social and political ties to holders of offices were openly used for accumulating wealth, and the state's resources were re-distributed in order to gain political support and to sustain power, see Jutta Bakonyi, Instabile Staatlichkeit. Zur Transformation politischer Herrschaft in Somalia (Hamburg: Hamburg University 2001).

31. Before 1988, the SNM fighters depended largely on food donations by their pastoral Isaaq relatives. After the mass displacements in 1988, the refugee camps in Ethiopia became increasingly important with refugees donating their daily food rations for the combatants; interviews with SNM members in Somaliland 2002, 2003; Prunier (note 5).

32. Ibrahim Megag Samatar, ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel: Some Reflections on the Struggle of the Somali National Movement’ in Hussein M. Adam and Richard Ford (eds) Light at the End of the Tunnel: Some Reflections on the Struggle of the Somali National Movement (Lawrenceville/Asmara: The Red Sea Press 1997) p.43.

33. Eng. Maxamad Xashi Elmi, interview conducted by my field assistant in Hargeysa in November 2006.

34. Marcel Mauss, Die Gabe. Form und Funktion des Austauschs in archaischen Gesellschaften [The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1990 [1923/24]); Pierre Bourdieu, Praktische Vernunft. Zur Theorie des Handelns [Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1998) chap.6.

35. In the Bay and Bakool regions, elders who supported the local Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) simply requested the RRA to loot a certain amount of animals needed if their clan fellows refused to donate livestock. Interviews with RRA members and elders in Bay/Bakool, 2005.

36. Qaaraan is usually collected among married men, i.e. the heads of the families. However, if a man is absent, his eldest son or his wife may pay in his place. In some cases, depending on status and wealth, widows are also requested to pay.

37. Interviews with SNM combatants, Hargeysa, 2002 and 2003.

38. Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt and Luis Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends. Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984) pp.35, 169.

39. With 12 non-Isaaqs among its 41 members, the SNM central committee had the highest representation of non-Isaaqs between 1984 and 1987, see Compagnon, ‘The Somali Opposition Fronts’ (note 5) p.33; Patrick Gilkes, Two Wasted Years. The Republic of Somaliland 1991–1993 (London: Save the Children Fund 1993) p.5.

40. Omer Salad Elmi, The Somali Conflict and the Undercurrent Causes (Mogadishu: Beeldeeq 1992) p.30.

41. Jama Mohamed Ghalib, The Cost of Dictatorship. The Somali Experience (New York: Lilian Barber Press 1995) p.190 et seqq.

42. Ahmed Yussuf Farah and I. M. Lewis, Somalia: The Roots of Reconciliation. Peace-Making Endeavours of Contemporary Lineage Leaders: A Survey of Grassroots Peace Conferences in ‘Somaliland’, Research report commissioned by ActionAid (London 1993) pp.18–19.

43. Daud Maxamad Gelle, interview in Hargeysa November 2002.

44. Compagnon, ‘Somali Armed Movements’ (note 5) pp.77, 79.

45. The SPM was the only anti-governmental militia which was established inside Somalia. The article, however, concentrates on the USC.

46. Somalis often know, or refer to, each other by nicknames. These nicknames are indicated by single quotation marks when first mentioned.

47. P.J. DiMaggio and W.W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, American Sociological Review 48/2 (1983) pp.147–60. The concept of mimetic isomorphism was already used by Markus Höhne to analyse state-building processes in northern Somali regions; see Markus Höhne, ‘Mimesis and Mimicri in Dynamics of State and Identity Formation in Northern Somalia’, Africa 79/2 (2009) pp.252–81.

48. Elmi (note 40) p.29.

49. ‘Showdown in the North’, Africa Confidential, 29 July 1988.

50. This brief description could be applied to several other states, and not only in Africa, see Klaus Schlichte and Boris Wilke, ‘Der Staat und einige seiner Zeitgenossen. Zur Zukunft des Regierens in der “Dritten Welt”’, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 7/2 (2000) pp.359–84; Crawford Young, ‘Deciphering Disorder in Africa. Is Identity the Key?’, World Politics 54/4 (2002) pp.532–57.

51. Marchal, ‘Forms of Violence’ (note 5).

52. Abdisalam M. Issa-Salwe, The Collapse of the Somali State. The Impact of Colonial Legacy (London: Haan 1994) pp.109–10; Ghalib (note 41) p.211.

53. Some sources label General Galaal as leader of the riot, for example Mohamoud M. Afrah, The Somali Tragedy. The Gang-Rape of a Nation (Scarborough: UTM Press 1997) p. 47; ‘Where do we go from here?’, Africa Confidential, 14 Feb. 1991.

54. The groups mentioned by Galaal – i.e. Habr Gedir, Abgaal, Murosade, Xawaadle – are all Hawiye clans. There were, however, other clan members participating in the urban masses.

55. Maxamad Nuur Galaal, interview in Mogadishu, August 2003.

56. Such catchwords indicating widespread chaos are very common in descriptions of crowds.

57. The general assumption on depoliticised violence, and the equation of looting with theft, is also found in the ‘New Wars’ thesis, see Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999); Herfried Münkler, Die neuen Kriege [The New Wars], 4th edn (Reinbek: Rowohlt 2002).

58. Scott has already elaborated that theft may be driven by a combination of motives, such as immediate individual gain and the wish to express protest or to resist an established order, cf. Scott, ‘The Moral Economy of the Peasant’ (note 19) p.232.

59. Donald Crummey, ‘Introduction: “The Great Beast”’ in Donald Crummey (ed.) Introduction: ‘The Great Beast’ (London: James Currey 1986) p.3. The term was coined by Hobsbawm (note 19) and further developed by Scott, Weapons of the Weak (note 19).

60. The conflation between the public and the private is among the main features of the African state, see among others; Jean-Francois Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou (eds) The Criminalisation of the State in Africa (Oxford: James Currey 1999); Patrick Chabal and Jean-Paul Daloz, Africa Works. Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1999).

61. John Drysdale, Stoics without Pillows. A Way Forward for the Somalilands (London: Haan 2000) p.19.

62. Maria H. Brons, Somaliland. Zwei Jahre nach der Unabhängigkeitserklärung (Hamburg: Institut für Afrika-Kunde 1994) p.51. Of course, the army officers did not reduce their looting activities to public properties. There was also widespread appropriation of the ‘enemy's’ properties. Representatives of the state also organised trade with the looted goods, which were often sold among the regime-friendly clan groups (interviews/talks with people in Borama, 2002).

63. Gerard Prunier, Somalia: Civil War, Intervention and Withdrawal 1990-1995, online at < http://www.asylumlaw.org/docs/somalia/country_conditions/Prunier.pdf#search = %22prunier%20writenet%22>, accessed Sept. 2006, p.7.

64. Anna Simons, ‘Somalia: The Structure of Dissolution’ in Leonardo A. Villalón and Phillipe A. Huxtable (eds) Somalia: The Structure of Dissolution (Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner 1998) p.64.

65. Horowitz (note 7) pp.74 et seqq.

66. The following description of a gathering crowd also meets Canetti's observations of a crowd's unlimited desire to grow and expand, see Canetti (note 7).

67. Afrah (note 53) pp.13–14.

68. Nurrudin Farah, Yesterday, Tomorrow. Voices from the Somali Diaspora (London/New York: Cassell 2000) p.11.

69. Tilly, As Sociology Meets History (note 20) p.161.

70. Horowitz (note 7); Canetti (note 7) p.18.

71. Tambiah (note 7).

72. Tambiah (note 7) p.280.

73. Günther Schlee, Wie Feindbilder entstehen. Eine Theorie religiöser und ethnischer Konflikte (München: Beck 2006) p.44–5.

74. Horowitz (note 7) pp.222, 565.

75. Horowitz (note 7) p.79. According to Vena Das, rumours create conditions of fear and mutual hatred, and often allow aggressors to interpret and experience themselves as if they were victims, see Veena Das, ‘Specificities: Official Narratives, Rumour, and the Social Production of Hate’, Social Identities 4/1 (1998) pp.109–31.

76. Canetti (note 7) pp.54 et seqq.

77. Human Right Watch, Somalia. No Mercy in Mogadishu. The Human Cost of the Conflict & the Struggle for Relief (26 March 1992), online at < http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/somalia/>, accessed 26 June 2005, p.4.

78. Field notes in Mogadishu, December 2002 and August 2003.

79. The discursive construction of hate produces ‘images of self and other from which the subjectivity of experience has been evacuated’, cf. Das (note 75) p.109.

80. Canetti (note 7) pp.59 et seqq.

81. Mohamed Sheikh Abdulle in Farah, Yesterday, Tomorrow (note 68) p.16; emphasis added.

82. The slogan ‘to die a tribe to be born a nation’ was used by the South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) to mobilise fighters.

83. This argument is elaborated in Stig Jarle Hansen and Mark Bradbury, Somaliland: A New Democracy in the Horn of Africa Review of African Political Economy 34/113 (2007) pp. 461–76.