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Abstract
International efforts to resolve the Somali crisis have foundered on one central paradox: the restoration of state institutions is both an apparent solution to the conflict and its most important underlying cause. Somalis tend to approach disarmament and demobilisation—two central pillars of the ‘state-building’ process—with the fundamental question: who is disarming whom? If the answer threatens to entrench unbalanced and unstable power relations, then it may also exacerbate and prolong the conflict. In this paper, the authors examine disarmament and demobilisation initiatives from southern Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland. In southern Somalia, externally-driven disarmament and demobilisation initiatives in support of successive interim ‘governments’ have been widely viewed with suspicion and alarm. In Somaliland and Puntland, Somali-led, locally owned efforts have achieved a degree of success that can be instructive elsewhere. The authors conclude that conventional international approaches to ‘state-building’ in Somalia must be reassessed—notably that security sector issues must be treated not as a purely ‘technical’ issue, but as an integral part of the political process.
Notes
Matt Bryden is an analyst and author who specialises in peace and security issues in the Horn of Africa, with a focus on Somali affairs. Over the past two decades, he has been engaged in various capacities by a range of governments, United Nations organisations and NGOs. Since June 2008, he has served as Co-ordinator of the United Nations Monitoring Group for Somalia, investigating violations of the UN arms embargo and related threats to peace and security.Jeremy Brickhill is a former officer of the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). He has written widely on conflict and post-conflict issues in Africa, and has conducted assessments, evaluations and training for a wide range of international organisations and governments, and made several documentary films on national liberation struggles, guerrilla warfare and peace-building. He is currently Director of a new security sector initiative in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Peace and Security Programme (ZPSP).
1. CitationBradbury, ‘A Synthesis Report’, 60.
2. CitationNelson, Somalia, 241–2.
3. CitationNelson, Somalia, 240.
4. CitationWSP Somali Programme, Rebuilding Somaliland, 61.
5. CitationBradbury, ‘The Somali Conflict’, V.2.1.
6. CitationBrickhill, ‘Disarmament and Demobilisation in Somaliland’, 3. Emphasis in original.
7. CitationDanish Demining Group, ‘Community Safety and Small Arms’, viii.
8. CitationUnited Nations Security Council, ‘Report of the Monitoring Group’, 13–14
9. CitationHowe, ‘Relations between the United States and United Nations’, 176.
10. CitationDrysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?, 88.
11. CitationKennedy, ‘Relationship between the Military and Humanitarian Organisations’, 111.
12. CitationKennedy, ‘Relationship between the Military and Humanitarian Organisations’, 111
13. The CSIC was sufficiently identified with the Habar Gidir Ayr sub-clan that this generated friction with other Hawiye sub-clans, but not enough to sustain armed opposition.
14. United Nations Security Council, ‘Report of the Monitoring Group’, 12.
15. CitationUnited Nations, ‘International Assistance Framework’.