Somaliland: State and/or Stability

For the past two years I have been highly engaged in working on my MA thesis. I believe that my thesis is of value to anyone working with international development aid. The thesis is based on empirical data collected during a seven-month field research in Somaliland, and an opinion survey reaching wider segments of the local society.

My conclusions questions some rather well-established truths, for instance, the idea of the inherent productiveness of helping develop and strengthen the state institution. Perhaps it is a better idea for external interventions to work with so-called traditional institutions? I will certainly argue that my findings highlight how essential it is to understand national, regional, and local histories and cultures when engaging with social contract theories in international development and humanitarian practices.

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Peace in Somaliland: A Clan Creation

It is likely that many people know little to nothing about Somaliland; the unique nation located at the top of the horn of Africa. Somaliland declared its independence back in 1991, when the Siad Barre-regime in Somalia collapsed at the end of the long brutal conflict, where the Mogadishu regime persecuted certain Somali clans from the beginning of the 1980’s.

Since then, the history of Somaliland has begun to significantly diverge from the rest of Somalia, especially the southern regions. While the current Somalia can be categorized as a top-down project, where elites and warlords have been sponsored by the international community to “re-establish” a functional state (a project which it must be said, is still very much in progress), Somaliland can to a much higher degree be seen as a bottom-up project.

In Somaliland, it was the use of the traditional and in some ways highly democratic clan conferences facilitated and conducted by the clan elders that made it possible to create peace and stability (especially in the central and western regions). The international community was only involved in a very minor way in these years-long and continuous conferences. For ten years, the clans were officially intertwined with the executive, judicial and legislative powers of the self-declared independent nation.

However, in 2001 Somaliland established a new constitution, ratified at a national referendum, which changed the governance system largely to that of a western style representative democracy, apart from that the upper house of parliament is composed of clan elders (and some continuous cooperation with the clan functionaries, the Caqiils). It would be a long digression to fully explain the story of the upper house, so suffice to say that the members of the upper house have never stood for election and that a large part of the population views them as corrupt, illegitimate and without mandate from their clan constituencies (although many of course still view the elders of the Guurti view respect for their past accomplishments in negotiating peace).

A lot of the rationale behind the consent to the agreement that led to the current state-construction in Somaliland was based on the desire to achieve international recognition, and hence the access to the international markets and the possibility for international travel and migration.

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State: The western mould has not produced a western democracy

Since then, the government of Somaliland has grown in size and influence, while the elders and the clans have been side-tracked, continuously loosing influence, importance and power. Or at least this is the most prominent story that I have noted, depicted by many researchers and development aid professionals.

However, it’s just not that simple, although it is understandable, because many from the west focus on the more or less functional democracy and the “rational” state; many of the most easily available sources for researchers, such as politicians, businessmen and many of the western educated citizens have a vested interest in presenting the state as being sovereign. This interest is in fact found amongst large segment of the population, as the idea of a having a functional nation state is tightly bound to prevalent discourses on what Somaliland needs to do, and why it deserves international recognition and hence the economic benefits. But this does not mean that there is neither trust nor believe in the necessity of a strong and Weberian state amongst the population.

As was recently highlighted at a DIIS-event in Copenhagen, Hobbes ideas of the sovereign state are so prevalent in the west that we are often blind to anything but that conceptual framework. But the governmental and social contract that was negotiated through the 1990’s was not Hobbesian in nature. It was an agreement between the clans, the population, and later between the clans and the government. This is a great divergence from Hobbes idea about the direct contract between state and citizen.

The “specific” state construction that was agreed upon, had to share the power between the clans, distribute resources, improve economic opportunities, be the guarantor between clan-groups, and above all not be capable of growing into a dictatorial state that commits abuses and crimes against humanity like what the Siad Barre regime had done prior to the formation of Somaliland.

Despite the formal appearances of the post-2001 state, my research concludes that it is not constructive to categorize and analyse Somaliland as a more or less functional western style representative democracy. Arguably it is more fitting to conceptualize Somaliland as a modern “pastoralist” democracy, here borrowing the term used by the late I. M. Lewis.

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Stability: The clans guarantee security, status, and social services

Traditional clan politics has to a large extend been funnelled into parliamentary- and state politics in Somaliland. The predominant mentality to governance in the country can be perhaps best described as a clan-mentality, which puts negotiations, relative power relations, and compromises, over “formal” laws and process.

Likewise, I found that the clans also functions as a check-and-balance against the state and president. This, I find, is a reasonable explanation to why although every President of Somaliland so far has managed to have their mandates extended beyond their constitutional term limit, no President has as of yet managed a limited or full entrenchment of power, or even a state capture in the most extreme end of that line of thought. Elections are held, albeit with by now habitual and expected delays and the abuses of the government aren’t worse than they are.

With this perspective in mind, it becomes clearer why it is problematic that so many projects and initiatives are geared towards strengthening the state and increasing its capabilities whilst ignoring or directly opposing the clan institutions.

Admittedly, clans have stepped into the background since their primary position in the 1990’s, especially with regards to events that draw the eyes of the international community. However, it did not seem to me that the clans are fading away, although they are changing. The longer I stayed in Somaliland the more apparent it became to me that clans are a paramount social and political force, affecting not just the daily lives of individuals but also being deeply embedded into the state apparatus.

I interviewed many people in Somaliland that said one’s security, both legal and social, is directly tied to his or her position in the clan system. Your family history is essentially your ID, and it is only possible to obtain a national ID card through one’s clans “functionary”. Somaliland has both a police force and formal court system, but for a citizen to truly utilize it, they had better know how to utilize their family/clan network (and/or have sufficient financial resources). By and large it can be said that all significant economic redistribution in Somaliland happens through the clan system.

Furthermore, I will argue that the impressive resilience that Somaliland shows against the recurring and increasingly devastating droughts and other societal crises is due to the remittance from the large diaspora, and the further redistribution of these resources to increasingly distant clan-relatives. With the continued functionality of the clan system, with the cultural imposed expectations of taking care of relatives, the climate crisis in Somaliland might well reach the famine levels seen elsewhere in the Horn.

The Clans are decidedly not unproblematic. There are infused with values and practices that are significantly at odds with the international human rights declaration. They don’t have a straightforward decision-making structure, they promote their own members above those of the nation as a whole, and they can be said to be a conflict escalating factor even as the traditional elders are famed for negotiating peace and compromises. They furthermore have inbuilt expectations of supporting their clan-members no matter how little those members might deserve that support.

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Build on what works

But the clans are functional. They are by and large the reason why there is peace in the largest parts of Somaliland, and why there despite the habitual climatic disasters and deep pervasive poverty aren’t widespread suffering and explosive crime in the unrecognized nation.

It will take a long, long time before a central state will be able to fulfil the functions of the clan-system, - if a state without a long cultural-historical foundation ever will be able to do so.

In the short run, there is the risk that an empowered state will become powerful enough to potentially carry out a direct or indirect take-over of the state and so completely destroy the social contract and hence the social-cohesion and stability of the polity. The social contract is based on maintaining a balance which is so heavily dependent on power sharing and rotations of office incumbents, and the absence of long periods of repression and political violence.

The clans have to remain strong enough to potentially oppose the state in a significant way, and the clans have to remain legitimate and pervasive enough in society for agreements made beyond the state to remain meaningful, for Somaliland to remain a stable polity. The above points underscore why it is worrying to me to observe so many projects being aimed at strengthening the state whilst neglecting to work with and improve the Clan institutions.

As a note I have similar worries about rapid economic growth, if no agreements about resource sharing exist. Likewise, it is worthwhile to consider whether changing behaviour in the diaspora constitute a move towards professionalization of aid at the expense of the day to day remittance, which can endanger the resilience of the nation and legitimacy of the clan system.

There are likely many that are working with development who are hesitant at the thought of working with traditional institutions such as the clans of Somaliland, and it is absolutely easier to say it should be done than to make it happen.

Traditional institutions rarely share terminology, concepts, visions, and practices with donors and practitioners of aid, and it is possible that the state will oppose such projects. Another real question is whether it even is possible to develop and change traditional institution without causing them to be delegitimized in the process. There are plenty of challenges, but luckily there are plenty of solutions and common ground to be found, if one is working with sufficient knowledge about the local context and cultural practices.

Even though traditional structures by and large are conservative, this does not mean that they aren’t willing to change if it is apparent that it is necessary, useful, and approachable. There are significant amounts of evidence of changes in structures of the clans in Somaliland.

For practitioners I would like to highlight that it is far easier and more beneficial to work with existing legitimate structures, than it is to oppose those systems in order to empower a competing and potentially destabilizing order.

Although my reflections and conclusion here are highly centred on Somaliland, I will dare to claim that the idea of working with the locally legitimate and culturally entrenched institutions will be a beneficial approach in a far wider context than just Somaliland. This approach definitely deserves more attention in these days where states again and again are exposing their inherent weaknesses.?