Proxy Wars: the Intrigues Leading to Kenya's Invasion of Somalia,Trust

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah

To my daughter I will say, ‘When the men come, set yourself on fire’. –Warsan Shire

The gang rape and murder of 12-year-old Aisha Ilyas Adan, whose body was found outside her family’s house in the town of Galkayo in central Somalia last month, has galvanised Somali women to fight against a vice that has often been described as a “normalised” epidemic. Under the hashtag #WeAreNotSafe, Somali activists are demanding that the authorities take rape cases more seriously.

Rape is one of the unspoken taboos in war-torn Somali society that few in the international development community, and Somalis themselves, have been reluctant to confront – even though it has become a constant feature of Somali women’s lives since the collapse of the Somali state in 1991. Anarchy and lawlessness have embedded a culture of violence that allow men to rape with impunity.

Women paid a double price during Somalia’s civil war: not only were they expected to become breadwinners, they also became casualties of conflicts as clans fought each other for supremacy and as the country’s institutions collapsed. Rape was often used as a weapon of war. A survey by Trust Law, a project of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has stated that Somalia is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.

Most rapes in Somalia go unreported and unpunished. The few women who dare to report their cases to the authorities face a hostile audience. There have been cases of women being ostracised and even killed when they report being raped.

Women and children living in camps for internally displaced people are particularly vulnerable. In 2013, the United Nations reported nearly 800 cases of sexual and gender-based violence in Mogadishu’s IDP camps within the space of just 6 months. While human rights organisations have been documenting an alarming number of rape cases in camps for refugees and IDPs, rapes in the wider Somali society go largely unrecorded. In reported cases, clan elders resort to customary law (known as xeer) to dispense justice, which often involves the perpetrator paying a fine or the victim being forced to marry her attacker. Now women are demanding that customary law not be applied to rape cases and that there should be laws to bring rapists to justice.

How the clan system affects women

The clan system, Somali society’s main organising institution – which gained traction during the civil war when law and order broke down and when public institutions collapsed – represent a nightmare for women, say researchers Judith Gardner and Judy El-Bushra in their study titled “The Impact of War on Somali Men and its Effects on the Family, Women and Children”. The corollary of this clan- centred siege mentality is an extreme imbalance in the power relations between Somali men and women.

Somali women enjoy few rights in a society where clan identity is passed down through male lineage. A woman who marries a man from another clan, for example, cannot pass down her clan identity to her children. It is for this reason that Somali women’s rights activists often refer to Somali women as the invisible “fifth clan”. (There are four major clans in Somalia – Darod, Hawiye, Diir and Rahanweyne.)

Yet it is this “invisible clan” that has sustained Somali society during the nearly three decades of civil war. While much emphasis has been placed on harmful practices endured by Somali women and girls, such as female genital mutilation (FGM), which is widespread in Somalia (it is estimated that 98 per cent of women aged between 15 and 49 in Somalia have undergone the procedure), little attention is given to Somali women’s role in feeding and protecting their families during the civil wars years and beyond.

During the conflict, women developed a deep resilience and a practical business acumen, partly because they had no other choice, and also because they could more easily cross and access enemy territories than men, and therefore, were more likely than men to be able to trade and do business across clan lines. Woman-headed households in Somalia’s war-torn society, and even in the diaspora, became more common, mainly because physical and social disruptions caused by the conflict had eroded men’s gender roles as providers and protectors. Women became the main breadwinners during a conflict where battles between clans and “revenge killings” had decimated the male population. In cities such as Mogadishu and Hargeisa, it is common to see small-scale female traders selling khat, vegetables and even petrol.

However, while women have been running businesses and holding their families together, they still do not have decision-making powers, which are largely in the hands of clan elders and men. Somali women are expected to be strong and resilient, yet they do not enjoy the same rights as men, nor do they have real economic power even though the civil war forced women to take on a more important economic roles within the family. In the context of civil war, gender roles became confused and distorted, with women taking on greater financial responsibilities but with little authority within the family.

Gardner and El-Bushra found no evidence that the dominant patriarchal ideology underpinning Somali society has been substantially damaged by the civil war or state collapse, despite the increasingly important economic role of women. However, they note that not all clans in Somalia have similar attitudes towards women. Obedience to a wife is valued among the largely agriculturalist “Bantu” clans, for instance, but considered anathema amongst pastoralists.

Absentee fathers

While much attention has been focused on the impact of the civil war on Somali women, particularly their changing gender roles as breadwinners, the impact of the war on Somali men has not been investigated as much. Ironically, United Nations and international NGO interventions to empower Somali women might have ended up disempowering Somali men, who are not only denied services (such as welfare benefits in which only female heads of households qualify as recipients) but who are less likely than women to seek psychological treatment or social support services, which are crucial for people dealing with trauma.

Somali women were literally left holding the baby. In Somalia’s urban centres, men tend to while away their time in coffee and tea shops (a phenomenon I have also witnessed in coffee shops in Nairobi) while their wives and daughters go off to work and take care of their families. A phenomenon observed among Somali communities living in places such as London and Minnesota is that of jobless or absentee fathers; they say that Somali women adjust better to their new environments in Europe and America, and are, therefore, more easily absorbed in the labour market. Men, especially those who held high positions in Somalia or who hold advanced degrees, find it much harder to adjust to working in low-paid or low-status jobs that are available to refugees or new immigrants. Hence, many remain jobless or resign to becoming recipients of the welfare state. The resulting marital discord has led to high divorce rates, particularly among Somalis is the diaspora.

Others desert their families out of shameful pride, leaving their wives to take care of the children. Researchers have found that the most common absentee fathers are those who may remain married but who are not physically present in their children’s lives, those who abandon their families by re- marrying or those who are so addicted to khat that they become completely dependent on their wives.

Khat addiction and mental illnesses emerge both as causes and effects of male failure to fulfil family responsibilities. Khat dens are full of young married men who can’t find jobs or who have simply become addicted to the habit. Medium- and long-term use of khat, the mild stimulant that is widely consumed in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, has been associated with depression, aggression, paranoia, insomnia and mouth cancers; it has also contributed to parental absenteeism.

Khat has also been known to deaden emotions, such as guilt or shame. Some observers claim that it could have even contributed to prolonging the civil war in Somalia and might be a factor in the alarming cases of sexual violence. The negative social consequences of khat on Somali families and societies have not been widely acknowledged but they are gaining prominence, which has forced an increasing number of European countries to ban its importation.

‘Bravery and dry eyes’

Most Somali men will not admit to being addicts or emotionally traumatised, even by war, as “bravery and dry eyes” are considered crucial markers of a Somali man. Admitting that one is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or mental illness is one of the biggest taboos in Somali society, as I came to learn. Most Somalis don’t talk about or openly admit that they might be suffering from trauma, yet, as any psychologist or medical doctor would tell you, it is not possible for people who have endured prolonged conflict and forced displacement to not exhibit the anxieties and psychoses that sustained violence breed.

“When instability and conflict and mayhem have gone on for as long as they have in Somalia, not only is everyone suffering from some sort of mental illness, mostly chronic post-traumatic disorder, but there are certain habits that people develop as a result of the events,” says Mulki Ali, a Swedish Somali blogger. Among these habits and attitudes are feelings of powerlessness, cynicism and a learned helplessness, also known as “victim mentality”. Violence thus becomes a “self-fulfilling prophesy” and rape is normalised. In such a scenario, says Ali, traumatised young men and boys become susceptible to “cults” like Al Shabaab, which provide a sense of belonging and restore “manhood” among youth who feel otherwise powerless to change their situation.

“When instability and conflict and mayhem have gone on for as long as they have in Somalia, not only is everyone suffering from some sort of mental illness…but there are certain habits that people develop as a result of the events,” says Mulki Ali, a Swedish Somali blogger. Among these habits and attitudes are a feeling of powerlessness, cynicism and a learned helplessness, also known as “victim mentality”. Violence thus becomes a “self-fulfilling prophesy” and rape is normalised.

The civil war eroded and distorted men’s raganimo (roughly translated as “manhood”), which in a highly patriarchal society, can be devastating for male self-esteem and dignity. In their inception study, Gardner and El-Bushra found that the definition of raganimo in Somali society is inextricably linked to men’s ability to not just protect the family, but the clan as well:

“Boys from pastoral clans are taught at a young age to show fearlessness and never publicly cry or show other signs of emotional weakness. To do otherwise is un-manly and humiliating, for the individual and by extension for his clansmen and women. A male’s raganimo is enhanced if he survives an attempt to humiliate or intimidate him without showing fear… Findings also make clear that a ‘real man’…is one who excels in fulfilling both his family and clan responsibilities…How successfully an individual is able to attain and sustain his manhood depends on many factors but two conditions stand out as critical: his access to livestock or other forms of wealth, and being married with children, particularly sons.”

Inability to fulfil one’s family or clan responsibilities deepens frustration, exacerbates trauma and can lead to depression and violent behaviour.

Women’s resistance

However, as researchers are quick to point out, even with women’s relatively new status as breadwinners, the basic values attached to gender identity among Somalis remain unchanged; in Somalia’s deeply patriarchal society, women are still believed to be inferior to men in all aspects, particularly in the political sphere, where women are discouraged from participating in public affairs.

Some younger Somali women, particularly those living in Western countries, are beginning to question Somali society’s deeply patriarchal clan structures, and becoming more vocal about sexism. New female voices, such as the UK-based poet Warsan Shire and the writer Nadifa Mohamed, are redefining Somali literature with a female-centric slant. Others are openly questioning traditional practices that impact women’s sexuality, a taboo subject among most Somalis. The prominent Somalilander, Edna Aden Ismail, for instance, has gained global recognition for establishing a maternity hospital in Hargeisa that treats women and girls who suffer from FGM-related ailments or who have been victims of sexual violence.

Yasmin Maydhane, a London-based human rights advocate, among others, are particularly critical of FGM, which is often portrayed as a Somali or Islamic practice, even though it has its roots in the pre-Islamic Egypt of the Pharaohs. While all religions are about controlling women’s sexuality, she says, in Somalia “men use religion to police our vaginas, to control what it looks like, what it feels like and who is allowed to access it…Our brand of patriarchy is built around sexual control…Everything and everyone is silenced with deference to ‘God’s plan’, a phrase that indicates that we are done thinking and talking,” wrote Maydhane in a July 2015 edition of Media Diversified.

Yet many forget that before the civil war, Somali women enjoyed more freedoms than they do today. President Siad Barre enlarged women’s rights; women were not expected to stay at home or to cover their bodies from head to toe. During his “secularist” dictatorship (which he claimed was a form of “scientific socialism”), women held important positions in public life and as professionals. Until the full-body veil for women was introduced to Somalia in the early 1990s – when the deeply conservative Wahhabism imported from Saudi Arabia gained more influence – Somali women wore their veil “lightly”; they only partially covered their heads with scarves and wore long colourful skirts and blouses.

Imported Wahhabism also entrenched a Sharia-focused mentality that shunned secular institutions. Al Shabaab, which purports to be carrying out an Islamic jihad in Somalia, has not made women’s lives any easier; its strict code of conduct in the areas the group controls has significantly curtailed women’s freedom and choices.

However, with growing resistance to a male-centric society, it is possible that a nascent women’s movement will emerge in Somalia in the near future. Many Somali women have privately expressed to me their frustration with dealing with male-dominated politics in Somalia that is focused on political power rather than on addressing the many challenges the country faces, including high levels of illiteracy and alarming rates of maternal mortality. One woman told me, “Since our men have made such a mess of our country, maybe it’s time for women to take over.”

Somali women may finally get their #MeToo moment, which may encourage more women to demand the rights that they have been denied for so long, and to forcefully reject the notion that gender- based violence is “normal”. Aisha Ilyas Adan’s brutal rape and murder might just be the trigger that ignites this revolution.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah

Early this month, dozens of people gathered outside the Claridge’s Hotel in central London to protest against the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS)’s decision to award oil exploration licences to foreign companies later this year. The hotel was the venue for the International Conference on Somalia Oil and Gas that was hosted by Spectrum, a leading seismic data processing company. The conference was aimed at showcasing possible locations in Somalia where crude oil reserves can be exploited.

Last year, the FGS announced a first round of bidding on 206 offshore oil blocks, mainly in southern Somalia. The decision by President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s government to put Somalia’s oil reserves on the predatory oil and extractive industries’ market is being viewed by many as a recipe for disaster in a country that has suffered from more than two decades of civil war and which has few or no regulatory frameworks or laws in place to manage its oil in the interest of the Somali state and its people.

Jamal Kassim Mursal, who was the permanent secretary in Somalia’s petroleum ministry until last month, when he resigned, told the Voice of America that Somalia was not yet ready for any oil exploration because “nothing has changed – petroleum law is not passed, tax law is not ready, capacity has not changed, institutions have not been built”.

The decision by President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s government to put Somalia’s oil reserves on the predatory oil and extractive industries’ market is being viewed by many as a recipe for disaster in a country that has suffered from more than two decades of civil war

A study published in 2014 by the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute of Policy Studies cautioned that it was still too early for Somalia to be venturing into the oil industry because the country faces a host of challenges and obstacles that need to be addressed before any viable oil exploration and production can start. These challenges and obstacles include scant infrastructure for the transport and processing of oil, political volatility, institutional fragility, physical insecurity and ambiguous property rights.

If not handled with caution, warned the report, Somalia’s oil could prove to be a curse. Given the high levels corruption within the Somali government, and in light of the country’s fledgling state institutions, the absence of checks and balances, as well as nascent democratic structures, the hydrocarbon sector’s economic spoils are likely to also ruin politics, said the study’s author Dominik Balthasar. Lack of oversight and transparency could lead to conflict as competing forces seek to control the lucrative, but highly opaque, sector. “The problem arises in light of the fact that Somalia not only needs to counter the standard challenges arising from the resource curse, but must do so in the context of fragility.”

In his book, The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth, Tom Burgis describes how the discovery and exploitation of oil and other resources by foreign companies have left many African countries poorer and more conflict-ridden than they were before. From Nigeria to the Congo and South Sudan, the “resource curse” has left populations embroiled in violent conflicts and/or in debilitating poverty. Resources such as oil also distort economies, breed corruption and foster poor governance. Burgis explains: “More often than not, some unpleasant things happen in countries where the extractive industries, as the oil and mining businesses are known, dominate the economy. The rest of the economy gets distorted, as dollars pour in to buy resources. The revenue that governments receive from their nations’ resources is unearned: states simply license foreign companies to pump crude or dig up ores. This kind of income is called ‘economic rent’ and does not make for good management. It creates a pot of money at the disposal of those who control the state. At extreme levels the contract between the rulers and the ruled breaks down because the ruling class does not need to tax the people to fund the government – so it has no need for their consent.”

Burgis shows how resource-funded regimes are “hard-wired for corruption” and that an economy based on just one pot of resources leads to “Big Man” dictatorial politics, as has been witnessed in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. And whereas before, Africa’s resources were often extracted at gunpoint or through violent colonisation, today “the looting machine has been modernized” through “phalanxes of lawyers representing oil and mineral companies” who “impose miserly terms on African governments and employ tax dodges to bleed profit from destitute nations”.

Dodgy deals

Mursal, the former petroleum permanent secretary, is also against an agreement that gives the first choice for exploration blocks to Soma Oil and Gas, one of the companies that has been embroiled in several controversies with regard to Somalia in the past. The agreement allegedly gives Soma Oil and Gas 12 blocks to conduct oil exploration.

The controversy around Soma Oil began around the tenure of Yussur Abrar, Somalia’s first female Central Bank Governor. Abrar resigned in November 2013 after just seven weeks in the job on the grounds that she was being continuously asked to sanction deals and transactions that violated her responsibilities as governor.

In her resignation letter, Abrar stated that she had “vehemently refused to sanction the contract with the law firm Schulman & Rogers regarding the recovery of the Somali financial institutions’ assets frozen since the fall of Siad Barre’s regime”. She said that the contract did not “serve the interest of the Somali nation” and “put the frozen assets at risk” while opening the door to corruption. She also stated that the Central Bank she had been assigned to manage was in a poor state, with payroll processing being the only semi-functioning unit.

Abrar’s woes also had something to do with the fact that the then President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was at the time making secretive deals with foreign oil companies. Barely a year after President Mohamud took office, stories began to emerge that the FGS had entered into a deal with Soma Oil. Apparently the Somali government had also held talks with Shell, Exxon, Mobil Corp and BP to revive pre-1991 oil contracts that were put on hold when the civil war broke out and when the government of Siad Barre collapsed. Observers were surprised that President Mohamud in the first year of his term agreed to an oil exploration deal after having earlier expressed fears that the country was too fragile to risk further conflict. Many observers warned that these oil deals would ignite further divisions and civil strife in oil-producing regions of the country, especially in the absence of legislative and regulatory provisions.

There were also concerns that oil deals would pave the way for more corruption in a country that has already gained the reputation of being amongst the most corrupt countries in the world. These concerns were so widespread that in July 2015 the UK’s Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation on Soma Oil’s dealings with the Somali government. Soma Oil, which was chaired by the former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, dismissed the investigation, claiming that the British company’s conduct with the Somali government was “completely lawful and ethical”. Through its PR agency FTI Consulting, Soma Oil insisted that “broad terms” of the deal had been made public. (Interestingly, FTI Consulting is the same firm that was given a contract to “unfreeze” Somali assets abroad, the very contract that led to the resignation of Abrar.)

UN monitors reported that the deal would give Soma Oil the right to apply for up to 12 oil licences, covering a maximum of 60,000 square kilometres. In May 2015, Bloomberg Business revealed a draft production-sharing agreement between Soma Oil & Gas and the Somali government that indicated that Somalia could end up paying up to 90 per cent of its oil revenue to the British company, thereby conferring unusually high benefits to the latter. Barnaby Pace, a campaigner with the watchdog Global Witness, described the agreement as a “terrible deal for the Somali people”. In a private conversation with yours truly, a Somali MP asked, “How can you sign a deal with a patient who is in ICU? Does an ICU patient have the capacity to sign anything?”

Although there has been more funding in the recent years, from the World Bank and the European Union to introduce public finance reforms and to provide budget support to the FGS, these efforts have not yet borne fruit. The FGS still has little authority over large chunks of Somalia where clan- based fiefdoms and Al Shabaab rule with impunity and even collect “taxes” from the local population.

In May 2015, Bloomberg Business revealed a draft production-sharing agreement between Soma Oil & Gas and the Somali government that indicated that Somalia could end up paying up to 90 per cent of its oil revenue to the British company, thereby conferring unusually high benefits to the latter. Barnaby Pace, a campaigner with the watchdog Global Witness, described the agreement as a “terrible deal for the Somali people”

And despite attempts by Kenyan columnists like Peter Kagwanja to depict Somalia as “the poster child of an ‘Africa rising from the ashes of civil war’”, most analysts would agree that the FGS is ill- equipped to govern and that most state institutions in the country are not only severely degraded, but in many cases are completely absent. The idea of a Somalia being run from the capital Mogadishu is a myth that only comforts the international community that created the FGS. The FGS simply does not have the capacity to manage the entire country or to enforce its will and laws on the various clan-based federal states and the majority of the Somali people.

It is estimated that there could be as many as 110 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in Somalia – equal to Kuwait’s reserves and nearly half of those of Saudi Arabia. It is no wonder that Britain, along with Norway, Australia, Qatar and Turkey, among other countries, have been eyeing Somalia’s oil and gas reserves for some time.

However, exploiting natural resources in an environment of fragility and near-anarchy can spell doom for a country that barely has functioning ministries and other public institutions and which does not have the regulatory frameworks that could protect the country from local and foreign predatory forces. In addition, the looting spree precipitated by oil could lead to further in-fighting between factions and clan-based rivalries and competition could be further aggravated in regions where oil reserves are found. Al Shabaab could also find another reason to rally its troops against the FGS in regions it controls.

The auctioning off of Somalia’s oil could also lead to feuds with neighbouring countries like Kenya, which has a dispute with Somalia over a maritime boundary along its border – a triangular chunk of sea in the Indian Ocean of about 100,000 square kilometres. Kenya has already recalled its ambassador to Somalia because since the dispute remains unsettled at the International Court of Justice, Somalia has no right to auction off the territory, which is believed to have vast amounts of oil and gas reserves.

The heavy presence of oil exploration teams and infrastructure in the Indian Ocean could also lead to more piracy, especially if coastal communities feel disenfranchised and left out of the deal. This could reverse all the gains made by the international community in stopping piracy along Somalia’s coastline, which at 3,300 kilometres, is the longest in Africa.

The heavy presence of oil exploration teams and infrastructure in the Indian Ocean could also lead to more piracy, especially if coastal communities feel disenfranchised and left out of the deal.

Somalia is simply not ready to enter into any oil agreements with foreign companies; the costs are simply too great and any economic benefits derived will most likely accrue to individual politicians and businesspeople rather than to the majority of the Somali people who have suffered from poverty, underdevelopment, lack of basic services and poor governance for nearly thirty years.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

By Rasna Warah

Somaliland’s 2017 elections, which were generally hailed as successful, have prompted some to wonder whether the democracy model used in this self-declared independent state could be exported to Somalia. With its hybrid system of tri-party democracy and traditional clan-based governance, Somaliland could, in fact, be held up as an example that could work in societies that are deeply divided along clan lines. While clan, tribe, ethnicity, race or religion should ideally not form the basis of a democratic state, given the protracted conflict in Somalia, there are some elements of the Somaliland model that might just work in Somalia.

Somaliland has adopted a unique hybrid system of governance, which incorporates elements of traditional customary law (known as xeer), Sharia law and modern secular institutions, including a parliament, a judiciary, an army and a police force. The Guurti, the upper house of Somaliland’s legislature, comprises traditional clan elders, religious leaders and ordinary citizens from various professions who are selected by their respective clans. The Guurti wields enormous decision-making powers and is considered one of the stabilising factors in Somaliland’s inclusive governance model.

Michael Walls, the author of A Somali Nation-State: History, Culture and Somaliland’s Political Transition, has described Somaliland’s governance model as “the first indigenous modern African form of government” that fuses traditional forms of organisation with those of representative democracy. According to Walls, Somaliland “represents a strong counter-argument to the preoccupation with state failure and corrective external intervention, while also holding out the hope that an accommodation is possible between the discursive politics of tradition and a representative system more suited to the Westphalian state.”

However, Somaliland’s governance model is far from perfect: the consensual clan-based politics has hindered issue-based politics, eroded individual rights and led to the perception that some clans, such as the dominant Isaaq clan, are favoured over others. Tensions across its eastern border with Puntland also threaten the future stability of this former protectorate that opted to became part of Somalia following independence from the British in 1960 and then declared independence from Somalia in 1991.

In addition, because it is still not recognised internationally as a sovereign state, Somaliland is denied many of the opportunities that come with statehood. It cannot, for instance, enter into bilateral agreements with other countries, get multinational companies to invest there or obtain loans from international banks. (Some argue that this lack of official recognition may actually be a blessing as Somaliland is spared the arm-twisting and conditionalities of donors and international financial institutions, plus the exploitation of its resources by predatory foreigners, a phenomenon that has plagued so many African countries.)

Nonetheless there has been some debate about whether Somaliland’s hybrid governance model, which incorporates both customary and Western-style democracy, can be exported to its southern neighbour. What type of governance system is most suitable for Somalia, which is not just divided along clan/regional lines, but where political/militant Islam and lack of functioning secular institutions threaten nation-building?

The perils of federalism

Federalism, that is, regional autonomy within a single political system, has been proposed by the international community as the most suitable system for Somalia as it caters for deep clan divisions by allocating the major clans semi-autonomous regional territories. The 4.5 formula for federal states proposed by the new constitution, which is based on the four largest clan groups (Darod, Hawiye, Dir and Rahanweyne), and (0.5) minorities does acknowledge the reality of a clan-based society, but as Somalia’s recent history has shown, clan can be, and has been, manipulated for personal gain by politicians. (The 4.5 formula is itself contentious as some Somalis claim that the Isaaqs, who are dominant in Somaliland in the northwest of the country, are part of the Dir family of clans, while Isaaqs claim that they are a separate clan.)

As dominant clans seek to gain power in a federated Somalia, there is a danger that the new federal states will mimic the dysfunction that has prevailed at the centre, which will lead to more competition for territories among rival clans and, therefore, to more conflict. “As new lines are drawn on the map, new opportunities for clan, business and political networks to capture State resources have emerged,” stated the 2015 UN Monitoring Group Report on Somalia.

Besides, the various federal states that have emerged in Somalia under the new constitution are beginning to look like clan enclaves that are disconnected from the centre, and which actually work to undermine the national government in Mogadishu. Fears that entrenched clan interests will dominate the future political landscape in Somalia have generated heated debates about whether a unitary system is more suited to a country that is so divided along clan lines and where minority groups have been denied a say in national politics for decades.

The bitter reality, however, is that the majority of Somalia’s people have not experienced the benefits of a functional central or decentralised government for nearly thirty years; the concept of a state that provides services and protects the citizens is unknown to the majority of the country’s youthful population, especially those in remote areas who are governed by customary law or the Sharia. In fact, it has been argued that with its strict codes and control over populations through systems of “tax collection” or “protection fees” combined with service delivery, Al Shabaab is the only form of “governance” the majority of Somalis have known since Somalia collapsed and descended into civil war in 1991.

This means that even when Amisom forces liberate regions from the clutches of Al Shabaab, they essentially leave behind a power vacuum which neither the Federal Government of Somalia nor the emerging regional administrations can successfully fill. This has made these regions more prone to clan-based conflicts, which area are already apparent in Jubaland, where some members of the marginalised Bantu/Wagosha minority group have taken up arms in response to what they perceive to be a form of “ethnic cleansing” by both Al Shabaab and the new Ogaden-dominated administration of Ahmed Madobe.

Moreover, as the Qatar-based Somali scholar Afyare Elmi argues, in a country that suffers from a “trust deficit”, and which has experienced dictatorship, people do not want to risk having the kind of highly centralised government that was prevalent during Siad Barre’s regime. He proposes a “decentralised unitary system”, rather than what he calls the “clan-federalism” proposed and supported by the international community. In this system, sovereignty and constitutional powers would remain within the central government, while administrative, political and fiscal powers would devolve to different entities and regions. This would lead to a “de-concentration of authority” that is more responsive to local needs. (However, to accommodate this governance model, the constitution would need to be changed.)

In 1999, the Somalia expert Matt Bryden predicted that the “building block approach” – first proposed in 1998 by the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – whereby the country would be divided into six “local administrative structures”, would eventually “resemble a patchwork of semi- autonomous territories defined in whole or in part by clan affiliation”: the Isaaq clan would dominate Somaliland in the northwest; the Majerteen in Puntland would dominate the northeast; the Jubaland and Gedo regions bordering Kenya would have a mixture of clans (though there are now fears that the Ogaden, who are politically influential along the Kenya-Somalia border, would eventually control the region); a Hawiye-dominated polity would dominate central Somalia; the Digil-Mirifle would centre around Bay and Bakool; and Mogadishu would remain a cosmopolitan administrative centre.

The bigger question, which no one has yet been willing to honestly confront is: Why should clan determine how Somalia is federated? How can Somalia emerge as a strong and united nation if clan forms the basis of state- and institution-building? How can Somalis convincingly argue that neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya are supporting clan-based regional entities within Somalia when Somalis themselves implicitly support the creation of these entities based on clan domination? How can democracy advance in a country held back by parochial clan or individual interests?

There has been some debate about whether Somaliland’s hybrid governance model, which incorporates both customary and Western-style democracy, can be exported to its southern neighbour.

Some analysts argue that the proposed federalism will eventually lead to the balkanization of Somalia as clan-based fiefdoms start competing for more resources and territories. Other critics, such as the Somali scholar Abdi Samatar, have argued that federalism will lead to “institutionalised discrimination” against minority clans and groups, which would undermine national unity, citizenship and meritocracy.

There is also a concern that the larger (armed) clans could manipulate the system, entrench corruption and pursue their elites’ agendas at the expense of the Somali people. One of the biggest dangers of an exclusionary political system is that rent-seeking and the grabbing of the spoils of war that have dominated Somali politics for decades may be replicated at the federal state level.

A game of musical chairs

Much of the UN-supported transitional governance period was devoted to drafting a new constitution that would set the parameters for statehood and citizenship. However, Somalia’s UN- supported constitution-making process faced resistance, even before it was adopted in 2012, mainly because it was viewed by many as inconsistent, incoherent and difficult to implement.

Some say the constitution tries to unsuccessfully merge Sharia laws with democratic principles. For instance, the constitution precludes the prospect of religious freedom and tolerance in Article 2, which categorically states that “Islam is the religion of the state”, that “no religion other than Islam can be propagated in the country” and that “no law can be enacted that is not compliant with the general principles and objectives of Shari’ah”. (Somalia’s Minister of Constitutional Affairs, Abdurahman Hosh Jibril, told me that the insertion of this article in an otherwise secular constitution was a strategy to “buy in” the support of Islamic religious institutions, which had to be accommodated if the constitution-building process was to be a success.)

Moreover, while the constitution recognises the president as the symbol of ultimate government authority, his relationship with his prime minister, who selects the cabinet, is not clearly defined. In- fighting in all of Somalia’s transitional and post-transitional governments has led to the resignation or removal of several prime ministers and ministers, which has undermined governance. The general high turnover of ministers and public officials, both within the transitional and post-transitional governments, has led to other problems; with so many different prime ministers and ministers rotating, it is difficult to carry out long-term economic development plans or to ensure accountability. This has allowed opportunities for corruption.

Corruption within the government is partly due to the fact that the brief tenures of most presidents, prime ministers, ministers and senior government officials encourage them to make money through corrupt means in the shortest period of time. They enter public service with a “here today, gone tomorrow” attitude, which makes long-term planning difficult, and severely diminishes the government’s ability to be transparent about its finances, including donor funding. Critics have also noted that political leadership in Somalia is like a game of musical chairs; ministers who are sacked are often re-appointed in another ministry shortly afterwards, which makes the gravy train of corruption harder to track or derail.

In addition, unlike Somaliland, Somalia has been unable to hold a one-person-one vote election both during its transitional phase (2004-2012) and in its post-transitional period since 2012, mainly because the country is not yet equipped to carry out such an election, given the countless challenges facing the country, including lack of a voter registration system and insecurity.

Critics have also noted that political leadership in Somalia is like a game of musical chairs; ministers who are sacked are often re-appointed in another ministry shortly afterwards, which makes the gravy train of corruption harder to track or derail.

Elections in Somalia are also usually marred by vote buying, intimidation and violence. Prior to the 2017 election, for example, a Somali official claimed that the more than 14,000 so-called “Electoral College” delegates who were voting for members of parliament were voting for the highest bidder; votes were apparently being bought for between $5000 and $30,000 each. The election of Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo last year raised hopes that he would succeed in eradicating both clannishness and corruption within government, but these hopes are increasingly being dashed by in-fighting and myriad other challenges.

The Italian connection

Some say that Somalia will take years before it has a functioning government because the country has little experience in representative democracy and because recent attempts to revive a democratic culture are coming a little too late. Many blame Italy, Somalia’s colonizer, for failing to leave a legacy of functioning governance structures and institutions in its Somali colony.

Very little is known about the Italian colonial period in Africa because the Italian government restricted access to colonial records for most of the post-Second World War period, which led to a widely circulated myth that Italian colonisation of Eritrea in 1890, of Somalia in 1908 and of Libya in 1912 was much more gentle and inclusive than the colonisation of Africa by Britain, France, Belgium or Portugal.

Some historians believe that Italy’s fascist doctrines of colonial racism, its emphasis on prestige (rather than on institution-building) in both the liberal and Fascist eras, and the country’s lack of experience in colonial administration, led the Italians to adopt anti-assimilationist policies in their colonies that forestalled the formation of an educated labour force that could take over the reins of power once the colonialists left.

Italy’s intentions in Somalia were to create a settlers’ colony, which were in sharp contrast to Britain’s intentions in Somaliland, which were to protect the vital sea trade routes in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and not to settle as such. Thus in the south, “Italians pursued a policy of social engineering, including an education system and missionary work intended to prepare the territory for Italian settlement”, rather than a policy of “civilising” and training the colonised people who could be relied on to provide skilled labour to the colonial project. Although many of Italy’s Somali subjects learnt to speak Italian, formal teaching of Italian, and indeed all schooling, was very limited, unlike in neighbouring Kenya, also a settlers’ colony, where the colonial project was accompanied by – and indeed, propped up by – the many missionary and other schools that were set up to educate not just the white settlers’ children, but also the “natives”, who were expected to become future colonial administrators.

Some historians believe that Italy’s fascist doctrines of colonial racism, its emphasis on prestige (rather than on institution-building) in both the liberal and Fascist eras, and the country’s lack of experience in colonial administration led the Italians to adopt anti- assimilationist policies in their colonies that forestalled the formation of an educated labour force that could take over the reins of power once the colonialists left.

Under Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, Somalia was governed by a fascist colonial government that failed to install democratic structures and institutions that would carry the country forward to independence. Italy’s rule over Somalia was also disrupted after World War Two when Somalia became a UN-administered trusteeship. After Italy lost the Second World War, the Italian colonisers were replaced by a British military administration. In 1950, Britain transferred authority over what was known as the Trust Territory of Somalia back to Italy. However, because Italy’s colonies in Africa were seized by other European powers after the Second World War, they did not undergo a successful “decolonisation” process that would entail a smooth transfer of power to local elites and to the establishment of institutions that would govern the newly independent states.

The Siad Barre era and its aftermath

From 1950 till independence in 1960, there were attempts to “Somali-ise” governance. The first municipal elections were held in 1954, where 20 parties competed for 318 seats in 35 councils; 281 of these seats were held by Somalis, 23 by Arabs, 10 by Italians, 3 by Pakistanis and 1 by an Indian.

However, one decade of democratic governance was not enough to prevent Somalia from descending into political turmoil. Somalia’s relatively peaceful and democratic first ten years after independence were abruptly disrupted by the assassination of President Abdirashid Sharmake in 1969, just two years after he had taken over from the first post-independence president, Adan Abdulle Osman (also known as Adan Adde).

Barely a week later, Siad Barre gained control over Somalia through a bloodless military coup. Barre suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, banned political parties and nationalised the economy. Parliament was replaced by the Supreme Revolutionary Council, the ultimate decision- making authority in the country.

Although Barre’s “Scientific Socialism” experiment is credited with many progressive reforms, such as the promotion of women’s rights and the introduction of the Latin script for the Somali language, he failed to bring about democracy in Somalia, and is also blamed for pitting clans against each other through favouritism, political patronage and the persecution of certain clans.

In 1977, when Barre ordered his army to invade Ethiopia in a bid to claim the ethnic Somali- dominated Ogaden region in Ethiopia, Soviet-backed Cuban troops marched in to support the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Maryam. The Soviet Union, which had been supporting Barre militarily until then, quickly switched sides, which proved to be a major blow for Barre’s government. (Soviet withdrawal of support to Somalia gave an opportunity to the Unites States to play a more influential role in Somali affairs.)

After losing the Ogaden war, Barre became more hard line and paranoid, and began arresting, torturing and killing his opponents, including the Isaaq in Somaliland who responded to his repressive tactics by declaring independence from Somalia. By the time he was ousted in 1991, the country was fragmented, and no one, not even the Americans, could prevent the mayhem and destruction that followed. This set the stage for Barre’s ouster in 1991 by the United Somali Congress (USC) led by Mohammed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi, who, depending on who you ask, are seen as either heroes who liberated Somalia from the clutches of a dictator, or brutal warlords who unleashed violence and lawlessness in the country.

When a power struggle between Aideed and Mahdi ensued, UN peacekeepers were brought in to stabilise the situation, but they too withdrew after American soldiers were killed in the infamous “Blackhawk Down” incident in October 1993. Lawlessness and anarchy reigned supreme as Somalia returned to what Somali-Canadian commentator Mohamud Uluso calls a “precolonial fragmentation”, where clan warfare and predatory competition over scarce resources (particularly foreign aid) became the norm and where people sought safety in kinship and clan affinity.

After more than a decade of anarchy and increasing religious extremism, a transitional government backed by the United Nations was instituted in 2004. But, as we have seen, even it could not deliver the much-needed peace and stability as it proved to be weak and ineffectual. The ouster of the Islamic Courts Union (a conglomeration of Muslim clerics and businesspeople who were keen to restore security in Somalia and who sought to replace the Transitional Federal Government) by US- backed Ethiopian forces in 2006 made the situation worse; its recalcitrant offspring, the terrorist group Al Shabaab, gained control of most of southern and central Somalia, making governance difficult, if not impossible.

Some argue that state-building efforts in Somalia have been hampered by a “pastoral ethos” characterised by competition, inter-clan rivalry, disdain for authority (except for traditional elders or religious leaders) and a deep mistrust and suspicion of outsiders. In his seminal book A Pastoral Democracy, first published in 1961, I.M. Lewis claimed that Somali society lacked “judicial, administrative, and political procedures which lie at the western conception of government.” While acknowledging the importance of kinship and clan loyalty in the political organisation of traditional Somali society, Lewis was pessimistic about whether these could deliver Western-style democracy to Somalia. In Somalia’s lineage politics, he argued, “the assumption that might is right has overwhelming authority and personal rights…even if they are not obtained by force, can only be defended against usurpation by force of arms”. Are the current clan-based leaders with their own armed militias a manifestation of this thinking, where political power, once obtained, must be secured through the threat of violence?

While acknowledging the importance of kinship and clan loyalty in the political organisation of traditional Somali society, Lewis was pessimistic about whether these could deliver Western-style democracy.

Critics of this “Somali exceptionalism” thesis argue that Lewis and other Western anthropologists fail to recognise that other pastoralist societies have successfully adopted modernisation and democratic forms of government and that by blaming pastoralism for Somalia’s woes is to assume that Somali society is stagnant and incapable of reinventing itself.

Donors and foreign interests

One of the challenges facing Somalia, which the international community is reluctant to admit, is that any government that is put in place in Mogadishu under the current circumstances will remain a puppet government with no real authority and little capacity to carry out governance functions or to provide services. Manipulation of Somali politics by foreign countries, such as Kenya, Ethiopia and some Arab countries, has hindered the development of a national vision on the way forward and generated suspicion and resentment.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and increasingly Turkey, have been financially supporting various factions and politicians in Somalia for their own political and economic interests. (The recent rift between Qatar and its neighours Saudi Arabia and UAE also spilled over to Somalia, where President Farmajo was expected to take sides.) It has also been claimed that some of these countries have exported religious fundamentalism to Somalia to appease radical factions within their own territories.

Some donors, particularly Turkey, have done a commendable job in rebuilding Somalia’s broken infrastructure and institutions. However, overall, donor support to Somalia has had a mixed record – much of the donated funds have found their way into individual pockets or gone towards supporting the donor countries’ Somalia operations in Nairobi, not in reconstructing Somalia. While security is currently being provided by Amisom forces, this support is also likely to dwindle in the near future.

There is also the issue of vested commercial interests of donor countries, such as Britain, that are keen to exploit Somalia’s largely untapped oil reserves and the United States, whose “war on terror” has Somalia at its epicentre; these interests often play out in the politics of the country. In 1999, Matt Bryden wrote that attempts by foreigners to fix Somalia have ranged from the “mediocre” to the “disastrous”. Some of these attempts, he said, have been sinister, some benign, others simply incompetent, but all have been ultimately unsuccessful.

Donor-dependency is unlikely to diminish as domestic revenue collection remains a challenge. Since the UN-backed transitional government was installed in 2004, no transitional or post-transitional Somali government has had a credible revenue collecting authority or well-functioning ministries. Most Somalis rely on charities (many of which are based in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates) or local entrepreneurs for services such as water provision, healthcare and education. Somalia does not even have a national curriculum for its schools; donor countries supporting schools introduce their own curricula, which had led to the bizarre situation where Somali children are sitting for exams set in Doha, Ankara or Riyadh, not at Somalia’s Ministry of Education.

Oil discoveries have made these foreign interventions more complicated in recent years. There is widespread suspicion that oil looms large in Britain’s dealings with the Somali government, and that the former may be willing to overlook corruption and bad governance in the latter in order to preserve its economic interests. Somaliland and the semi-autonomous Puntland, have already been granting licences to oil companies. Competition over an oil block that stretches across Somaliland and Puntland has increased tensions in these regions. In the absence of agreed-upon legal frameworks, the oil factor is likely to be a source of conflict in Somalia’s oil-producing regions in the near future.

While it is becoming increasingly apparent that foreign interests are to blame for much of the mayhem in Somalia, laying the bulk of the blame on foreigners is unfair and insincere. If the Somali government had used foreign aid and its vast natural resources to rebuild the country and taken it to the next level, Somalia might have emerged from the ashes.

Many people within and outside Somalia also prefer to maintain the status quo because they profit from protracted conflict, informality and the absence of regulations. A strong and well-governed state with in-built checks and balances would threaten their business and personal interests.

What’s worse, none of Somalia’s notorious warlords and corrupt politicians have been made to account for the atrocities and plunder that they carried out. No national or international institution has charged them with any crime. The International Criminal Court, which has vigorously pursued suspects in other African countries, is mute about the crimes against humanity that have been occurring in Somalia for the last three decades. Its silence lends credence to the assertion that the ICC is only interested in selective justice.

Ultimately, the Somali people themselves have to fight for the government they desire. Having experienced only nine years of peaceful democracy from 1960-1969, maybe it is too much to ask Somalia to be fully fledged functioning nation when it barely has the institutions or the resources to run a government, and where clan rivalries and fiefdoms have entrenched a culture of “winner takes all”.

Islam could have been a unifying factor in Somalia, but it is unlikely that an entity like the Islamic Courts Union will be allowed to take root again, especially because it would be associated with Al Shabaab (which is generally loathed by the majority of the country’s citizens who blame the group for carrying out attacks that have resulted in the death of hundreds of innocent Somalis in Mogadishu and other places) and also because the United States and its allies will not allow it.

Is the current Western- and internationally-supported political dispensation that is emerging from nearly five decades of dictatorship and anarchy a “fake democracy”? Can Somalia be salvaged through more home-grown solutions, like the ones in Somaliland, which has managed to deliver relative peace and stability to its citizens for almost 30 years? These are the million-dollar questions no one has been able to answer adequately.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah On 13 November 2017, the people of Somaliland went to the polls to choose their fifth president since breaking away from Somalia in May 1991. Despite a delay of 28 months, international and local observers described the election as credible and peaceful. The fact that the election finally took place, and did so in a calm and orderly manner, was welcomed with a tangible sigh of relief, at home and internationally, and with pride on the part of Somalilanders.

A number of “firsts” added to this sense of achievement. Voters were registered using iris recognition technology to preclude double voting, making Somaliland an early pioneer in embracing biometric technology in elections. Unlike in the past, the incumbent was not a candidate, paving the way for a more robust campaign that featured, for the first time, a televised debate between the three presidential candidates, and the three vice-presidential candidates. It was also the most inclusive election, with all six regions taking part. The government made its largest financial contribution to an election, underlining how seriously Somaliland was taking its political future. For the first time, the government agreed to a code of conduct with the media to ensure balanced coverage by the state-owned media.

The advances in the 2017 electoral process took place against a background of widespread and profound frustration within Somaliland with a hybrid system of government that combines clan- based representation with Western political institutions. Over time, the merger became a fusion of weaknesses, incorporating neither the integrity and clarity of the traditional system nor the institutions and levers of accountability that underpin Western norms of governance. The multiple delays in holding the presidential elections also led to the gradual erosion of public trust in government institutions and to diminishing international goodwill. By November 2017, there was a convergence between domestic dissatisfaction and international pressure, making the election a defining moment in Somaliland’s political trajectory.

From remote villages to big towns, everyone from nomadic pastoralists across Somaliland to the elites in the capital, Hargeisa and in the large Diaspora communities, followed the election closely even if they did not vote. While they had different views of what they hoped for, there was a strong consensus that the political landscape needed an overhaul after seven years of the same administration. Voters’ priorities

Desire for tangible improvements in their living standards dominated voters’ expectations. In our conversations with both urban and rural voters, the provision of water and enhancing the quality and coverage of educational and health services was repeatedly emphasised. The urgency of tackling crippling inflation, which has increased food prices and made poor people feel even more impoverished, was underlined across the board. Employment among youth and the development of road networks, electricity and other public utilities were also high on the list of priorities for most people. Rural communities, reeling from the effects of a severe drought in which they lost most of their livestock, the main source of their livelihood, called for investment in agriculture.

Voters in urban areas, particularly young people, view political favouritism as one of the major impediments to their employment prospects and the reason so many of them embark on the treacherous journey to Europe ((known as tahrib). Consequently, the role of government in creating a fair and equitable environment for employment, business opportunities, economic investments, the distribution of resources, access to government services and political appointments, mattered to all voters. Fighting corruption, making the legal system work for everyone, curbing the powers of the police and putting an end to the arrest and detention of journalists also carried weight with voters.

However, these priorities did not, for the most part, shape the decisions made when voters actually cast their ballots.

Official party programmes and campaigns

To guarantee the formation of political associations with cross-clan representations, the Constitution of 2001 imposed a limit of three political parties. In addition to Kulmiye, the party of the sitting President, two other parties, Waddani and the Justice and Welfare party (UCID), joined the contest in 2017. While Kulmiye and UCID were participating in a presidential election for the third time, Waddani, registered in 2012, was a newcomer to the political arena. The leader of UCID had sought the presidency in earlier elections, but Waddani and Kulmiye fielded new candidates.

All three political parties had written programmes, popularly referred to as manifestos. Those of the opposition – Waddani and UCID – were largely a response to what were described as the shortcomings of the ruling party. They pledged major changes across all sectors. The party in power, Kulmiye, spelt out what it saw as its achievements and promised continuity while making further improvements.

Economic and social issues, international recognition and good governance all featured prominently in the manifestos. With the use of social media and increased media coverage, more voters than ever had access to party manifestos. Some of the parties held presentation sessions across all six regions to give voters the chance to question senior officials about their stated plans.

The manifestos, however, were not intended for all voters, especially given the high levels of illiteracy, particularly outside the main towns. Target audiences were the slim minority of educated voters, mainly young people, seen as independent of clan interests and who might, therefore, be swayed by a party’s stance and ideology. But they constituted an insignificant proportion of voters, their impact further undermined by the fact that they are scattered.

Illiteracy, reinforced by a strong oral culture, meant that a large percentage of voters were influenced by what they heard at rallies and in private meetings and what they witnessed on television. An official for Waddani said his party put at 65% the voters “who are not interested in the programme.” Their recruitment, he added, required using what he called traditional methods to get their support. This largely consisted of bringing party officials from their area “to show where their clan fits in the party hierarchy and probably in the next government”, as well as discussions about the sharing of power and resources.

One civil servant blamed constituents for letting politicians get away with making “blank statements about impossible deliverables which lack the how part.” People, she said, never asked the parties for concrete solutions and preferred instead to listen to speeches about “heavenly rivers flowing through their neighbourhoods.” At the same time, she acknowledged that voters know, from experience, that party programmes are not implemented after elections precisely because “parties are built on the foundation of clan interests and not ideologies.”

Yusuf Osman Abdulle, a poet known as Shaacir, said it was unrealistic to expect the population in Somaliland to choose between political parties based on written documents. “Given the low literacy rate and the very poor quality of our educational system, you don’t expect our society to be where they can choose parties based on what they are promising or what they have done in the past,” he explained. “The thing everyone understands is: Who are the candidates? What clans do they belong to? What is the relationship between his clan and my clan?”

And that indeed was what mattered. The heartbeat, and heat, of the campaigns was not about policies.

Forging alliances

As happens with elections the world over, 2017 revealed the patronage system at work. In Somaliland, the politics of vote-seeking is directly tied to the clan-based social structure. Far more significant and decisive than the large public rallies held during the official 21-day campaign period were the numerous behind-the-scenes meetings between party leaders and traditional elders, politicians and businessmen, which had kicked off during the previous six months.

As in previous elections, parties found it easier to maximise votes by securing the loyalty of clan elders who then become responsible for bringing the vast majority of their constituents on board. The campaigns that mattered were outsourced to elders, often from the same clan as the candidates, to meet with other clan leaders and build coalitions. Historical relationships between their respective clans and forging new relationships going into the future became the focus of discussions.

At the same time, party leaders also met with the elites of clans – elders, politicians and businessmen – to give clan-specific assurances in exchange for garnering political support, including political posts and development projects. At times, these pledges were captured in written documents signed by the party leadership. Party officials from those clans were given centre stage to show how well they were represented in the party, photo opportunities which were then broadcast through the media.

An official involved in the youth wing of Kulmiye in Hargeisa was straightforward about the political calculations at play.” A key winning strategy both for the ruling party and the main opposition party [Waddani],” he said, “was to bring in as many known figures as possible in the party from a certain clan. You can then expect more votes from that clan.”

Saying it was too simplistic to argue that parties go out and seek votes from clans, he underlined the importance of “intermediaries” between the parties and the clans, or what others referred to as political brokers. These are men [always], close to both elders and the party leaders, who work hard to implement the elders’ decisions. Parties, he commented, make either personal or group promises to them in exchange for influencing their clan or constituency. “When we talk about political parties spending millions of dollars in election campaigns, this is where the bulk of it goes to. And perhaps these elites distribute a fraction of that money to their followers.”

A party official in Borama, the capital of Awdal region, contrasted his “official” responsibilities and his true mission. As a regional official, he was charged with overseeing different offices and addressing crowds. But what he defined as the more important task “took place behind the scenes and it was to mobilise voters from my sub-clan.”

His counterpart in the small town of Salahley, 60 kilometres from Hargeisa, said elders had more powers over the community. He conceded that they, and not he as a party official, attracted the most votes. He attributed their hold over people to the fact that “everyone knows they will need the elder at some point.”

In the small town of Abdaal, in Sahil region, a young Waddani supporter worked with other members of football teams to oppose the elders, most of whom were behind Kulmiye. He said people did not take the challenge of competing with elders for votes seriously and “they were right”. Asked about politicians and elders who were not strong advocates of clan solidarity, an elder in the same town, Abdaal, was quick in dismissing their relevance. “There were very few of them and they had almost no influence over voters since they had defied the position of their clans,” he said.

The task of the elders, supported by their politicians, is to persuade, or pressure, their clan members to fall in line with the party of their choice. The lure of public service jobs for the youth and commitments to develop the region are stressed. Financial contributions are made for ongoing activities in the area, such as the construction of roads, schools and clinics, and money and khat are liberally distributed to men during campaign periods. In rural areas, affected by the 2016/2017 drought, the distribution of water, food and non-food items made a crucial difference to the outcome.

The blend of the traditional clan structure with modern governance institutions is reflected in the fact that the clans of the three presidential candidates were the stable base of support for their parties. Success, therefore, depended on establishing as broad an array of partnerships as possible with other clans. This is demonstrated, for example, in the parties’ choice of their vice-presidential candidates.

Practical considerations deepen the dependence of parties on the political clout of elders. Political parties do not have permanent offices at the district or regional levels, as became apparent when we visited a number of regions in February and March. They are, instead, concentrated at their headquarters in Hargeisa. Without grassroots branches, there is little to bring parties close to communities and foster a sense of belonging to, and ownership of, the parties. By the time senior officials visit the districts, usually close to elections, elders have already laid the groundwork. “The thing everyone understands is: Who are the candidates? What clans do they belong to? What is the relationship between his clan and my clan?”

The difficulties parties face in raising their own funds currently makes it nearly impossible for them to keep their distance from elders. The three parties are closely associated with their founders and/or individuals who occupy key positions. Consequently, they become dependent on businessmen and contributions from their clans, including households. One observer commented: “If they campaigned purely on policies, they will not generate funds.”

The political influence of clan elders

An academic in Hargeisa described the election as “a clan project run by elders, politicians and the economic class.” Despite its many encouraging aspects, the last election was seen as inimical to Somaliland’s future as a democracy. No election has been so openly clan-based and so visibly steered by elders.

The campaigns featured inflammatory speeches, ugly rhetoric and defamation of individuals and clans – messages that were spread by the traditional media and extensive use of social media. Since clans were the deciding factor, the messages were designed so as to attract a specific clan and unite some against others. Since clans tend to reside in the same localities, even in the same neighbourhoods in towns, it was easier to hone messages and target particular groups.

Having co-opted clan elders as their principal vote-gatherers, party leaders gave them unfettered power to guide voters. Elders did not mince their words or moderate their actions, threatening reprisals against those who did not toe the line. Several party offices for both Waddani and Kulmiye were attacked and vehicles stoned.

The fact that all three candidates came from the largest clan family in Somaliland, the Isaaq, amplified inter-clan dynamics, pushing people into further sub-sub-clan classifications. Small villages and towns, populated by the same clans or sub-clans, were divided into the smallest possible units, sometimes reaching household levels. A Kulmiye organiser in Salahley spoke of several sub-clan assemblies with each setting up meeting places for their party.

The media – print, television and websites – and especially the privately-owned outlets, contributed to the charged political atmosphere in countless ways, through selective reporting, fake news and endless reportage of elders and politicians insulting each other. The huge number of events hosted by parties, whereby people speaking in the name of a certain clan had deserted another party to join theirs, were given extensive exposure by virtually all news outlets. One TV network, in an effort to paint Waddani as a pro-Somalia party that planned to impose federalism on Somaliland, showed a false photo of the Waddani leader meeting with the current President of Somalia who was at the time a candidate for that office.

The toxic nature of these campaigns inevitably created a pernicious political environment that threatened Somaliland’s most treasured asset – a long reign of peace.

The moment of truth

Unfortunately, and to the detriment of Somaliland, the near exclusive emphasis on clan considerations, channelled through the media, social media and clan gatherings, swayed many voters, including the youth. Discussions with those who voted show they had, for the most part, positive expectations of candidates from their clan or the candidate supported by their clan, and voted to express support for the clan’s position. They also paint an entirely negative picture of the opposing candidates from other clans, out of fear and/or animosity. A young university student in Hargeisa spoke of her mindset when she voted: “I was influenced by what I saw as a threat that can personally affect me should the candidates from other clans win the election. It was a battle between clans.”

Underlining the extent to which voting along clan lines is inextricably linked with perceptions of self- interest and fairness, she added: “You have better chances of getting employed if the President or a Minister is from your clan. I know it is not a healthy feeling, but it is just a reality.”

Angry about what he saw as the political marginalisation of his clan, a young and educated employee of an NGO said resolving social and economic problems did not figure in his calculations. His sole aim was to see his candidate triumph even though he considered the other two candidates “way better on most issues.”

Some voters, while admitting they voted in line with their clan, believe this was in the broader interests of Somaliland. A man living in the small town of Dilla in Awdal region argued that voting in step with his clan “was for the good of Somaliland so as to prevent two clans establishing dominance.”

Amal said that politicians only come to her village of Tuli in Awdal during elections and she expects nothing in return. Nevertheless, she found herself vulnerable when politicians descended on Tuli in 2017 and “labelled us as sub-clan X and sub-clan Y.” Amal, along with her neighbours, succumbed to the messages the intensified as 13 November, the date of the election, approached. Speaking in late February, she said a united community had been torn apart and people no longer communicated as easily as in the past.

Bucking the trend

Not everyone, of course, bowed to the wishes of their elders and local politicians. Some voters made independent choices. But many of those who stood their ground, particularly women who were expected to vote as decreed by their menfolk, said they paid a heavy price for their position.

Many of those who did not vote, despite the insistence of close relatives relaying messages from elders, said they based their decision on what they regarded as the absence of realistic and feasible programmes by the parties. A staff member of a human rights group in Hargeisa said he failed to find “timelines or convincing details of exactly how they would carry out their commitments.” A long- term civil servant in Hargeisa said she had seen ministers come and go over the years without any attention paid to election manifestoes. So why, she asked, “should I spend my energy for nothing?”

Khadar, a driver in Dilla, said his income had doubled, and his life had become easier and safer since a tarmac road was built by the previous administration connecting Dilla, Borama and Hargeisa. When it came to the elections, the construction of this road, he said, and not the opinion of his elders, determined which party he voted for.

Maimuna in Dilla held out against intense pressure, including being labelled a traitor. Elders, her own children and her in-laws failed to convince her when she refused to support one of the opposition parties. Her customers boycotted her business but she would not budge. Calling her position “odd and 100% personal because women’s choices are strongly affected by their husbands and male community elders”, she cited an aversion to change as the reason she went with the ruling party. Describing 2017 as “a very divisive election”, she said “it ruined relationships between individuals and families.”

In Salahley, Rahma had initially agreed with her elders to back Waddani. But when the head of UCID announced the Quran would guide the actions of his party, she switched to UCID and refused to back down despite entreaties from her local elders.

Regardless of internal divisions, voters in Somaliland see elections as an important step towards the prospects of international recognition.

Aspirations for international recognition

Asked about the most vital issue at stake in November 2017, Mustafa Awad, who follows Somaliland’s political fortunes closely, did not hesitate to say it was “the same as every other election since the 2001 referendum – international recognition.” The pursuit of Somaliland’s recognition by the international community is of course intensely political, not only domestically, but also in the region and internationally. It is also a practical issue, in terms of greater diplomatic and commercial ties with the outside world, acceptance of Somaliland passports to ease the current nightmare of travel and an increase in foreign aid.

The feeling of being a voiceless and invisible people, of not belonging to the community of nations, has left a deeply felt psychological wound. Commitment to the electoral process, and consolidating Somaliland’s position as a democratic oasis in a region not known for free, fair and peaceful elections, is regarded as “the gateway to this much-coveted recognition” in the words of Mustafa.

The aftermath

It is imperative for Somaliland to reflect collectively over the recent elections, particularly because elections for both parliamentary and local government councils will be held in less than a year. To move forward and capitalise on its achievements, every society needs self-analysis in order to correct mistakes, assess weaknesses and improve on its successes.

Some of the key challenges mentioned by voters, and those who abstained, include healing the rifts created or magnified by the elections. The extent to which relationships between clans, between communities living in close proximity and even within families were disrupted, entrenching old divides and creating new political and social fault lines, is uppermost in the minds of most people. The consequences of the unparalleled level of discord are still felt across Somaliland, especially because the animosity was intimate, between people who know each other and interact on a daily basis.

Other issues of common concern include how to hold the new government accountable from a non- political perspective and as ordinary citizens and the absence of opportunities for remaining politically engaged outside the existing parties. Dissatisfaction with the role and performance of parliamentarians and local councils, the absence of sufficient platforms for political debate and discussion and a host of problems related to the mechanics of voting were also mentioned repeatedly.

The transition of elders from politically neutral peacemakers to powerful politicians is an acute and widely shared source of disquiet. The pivotal role of elders in enabling Somaliland to overcome the internal conflicts of the 1990s, precisely because of their detachment from political squabbles and their prioritisation of peace above all else, has been well-documented. The loss of this neutrality has worrying implications for the resolution of future conflicts and for democratisation.

Safia, a civil servant, wants to see elders confined to their traditional role, and banned from speaking on behalf of voters, in the hope that people will then organise themselves into groupings of their choice. The difficulty of coaxing people to demand public action over a common cause, such as poor roads or the absence of water, underlines for many the dangerous and debilitating encroachment of clan politics in everyday life.

Focusing on the larger public interest, however, requires room for manoeuvre, which parties in Somaliland currently do not have, given their dependence on their clan constituencies. Cutting ties with elders and prominent clan figures risks loss of support and creates resistance, a prospect no politician with an eye on the next election is likely to welcome.

Unless voters can hold a government to account, it is impossible to compel a new administration to deliver on its election commitments. The space for accountability in Somaliland is already limited. This is further constrained by the low level of rights awareness among both the public and government officials, and by the nature of a system where most people voted out of clan allegiance. Successive governments have promoted a perception of demands for accountability as an opposition- fuelled process, leading to controversy and pitting pro-government and anti-government supporters against each other, often along clan lines. This situation will persist as long as politics is trapped in its current form.

The irony, as pointed out by Khaled Ismail Abdi, who works with media groups, is that people who voted for change then wait for the government to solve all their problems, imposing an unrealistic burden on an administration with few resources. When the hoped-for-changes fail to materialise, there are few avenues, outside of the clan, to seek redress. Addressing the government, as an expression of civic responsibility and a right, is not seen as an option.

Two decades is a very short period, particularly in the wake of war and conflict, to institutionalise the norms of a full-fledged democracy. In that time, Somaliland has indeed made strides that can be built upon to strengthen its political infrastructure and, for the sake of future generations, move away from being a clan-based polity. This requires an engaged citizenry to encourage the emergence of political leaders and parties independent of clan identity and committed to reinforcing Somaliland’s nascent democratic institutions. –

Note: Pseudonyms have been used throughout this article.

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The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah

~In memory of Senior Private Antonio Centenio Kaseyani~ [In the previous instalment of Remembering Kolbiyow: When a village loses a son, the funeral service of Senior Private Antonio Centenio Kaseyani begun early and the celebration of his last funeral rites and mass are about to be conducted by Father Makau, the Army Chaplain.]

Unfortunately, the public address system started giving way. The electricity interruptions signalled an imminent power blackout, going by how the speakers were sputtering. However, the choir’s singing, together with the congregation’s clapping, saved the situation.

Father Makau, the army chaplain, had been walking about but I only realised who he was when he donned his uniform. My initial impression was this was some top army brass here to ensure the send-off for this young man went according to script. I assumed he would probably be giving orders for crowd control if the villagers decided to riot.

My reading of him was partially right. Once mass began and the initial rituals were done, he demanded that the selfie types and photographers should stop taking pictures out of respect for the deceased.

Leaders were urged to be responsible and to stop dividing people. Soldiers were presented as peacemakers, wapatanishi, and the young folk were being persuaded to join up.

While it was peculiar in this village to see combat fatigues under those robes, it was that limp in the chaplain’s stride that betrayed a story he soon revealed. He too had served in Somalia for six years and had been shot three times. He said he would go again if he was called to serve.

Father Makau spoke of how we are witnesses of our times; he tackled the fatalism of our ways; he humorously juggled the tribal questions we face. His Kamba accent allowed him to weave through these themes seamlessly with ethnic jokes.

“In Giriama land there is a story of two dogs that were given ugali dipped in soup but they decided to fight over it. Meanwhile a cockerel that passed by ate it all up as they scuffled.” Being a soldier who was obviously politically neutral, I think that was the only way he could criticise the politicians and their provocative fitina, gossip.

Leaders were urged to be responsible and to stop dividing people. Soldiers were presented as peacemakers, wapatanishi, and the young folk were being persuaded to join up. Tony’s sub-unit commander was asked to stand up for all to have a look at him in his khaki officers’ uniform. There was something of a swashbuckler in him because of the way he carried the ceremonial sword appended to his waist.

My thoughts had again drifted; I was thinking of the Daily Nation report of one soldier who had single-handedly shot at an oncoming vehicle filled with explosives driven by a suicide bomber, with an 84mm anti-tank gun…

Throughout the ceremony, the crowds grew; some of the mourners kept trampling on the wires of the electrical system, which interrupted the priest’s sermon. “People ask me, Father have you killed anyone in Somalia. I tell them I trained to use a gun and shoot but it’s the bullets that kill not me.”

We learned that Tony became Gunner class 3 following a course taken in the military and that he had served for three years and one month. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a soldier attending to the coffin, spraying on the wooden box and cautiously stamping his foot around it to make the ground flat. The soil had become a bit uneven following light showers and cows had left behind hoof prints as they plodded around the compound.

A wailing baby whipped emotions as the ceremony was coming to a conclusion. We were then warned by the priest that pregnant women, children or those with ailments like heart disease or high blood pressure should stand at a safe distance because the loud firing sound from the gun salute could affect them.

My thoughts had again drifted; I was thinking of the Daily Nation report of one soldier who had “single-handedly shot at an oncoming vehicle filled with explosives driven by a suicide bomber, with an 84mm anti-tank gun. According to survivors, the soldier risked his life as he shot at the driver of the vehicle with the bomb, which exploded after breaching the perimeter.”

I wondered if this was Tony.

I walked towards two elderly gentlemen to avoid the surging crowds moving towards the grave to watch Tony lowered into his grave and witness the military razzmatazz. The old men were very clearly not from around here. I welcomed them and discovered that one of them was Rispah’s father and the other an uncle.

Trotting along the village road back to the bridge that I needed to cross to get back home, I met a Somali-looking fellow in army uniform walking up towards the family homestead.

We mused over how the school children, who had come to console their teacher, would definitely fall off the rock where they were perched once the guns blasted. A bugle tune, followed by three shots. Suddenly a young man, who I later presumed was either Rispah’s cousin or brother, rushed towards us saying she was unconscious. She had fainted and they needed to rush her to the nearest health centre.

A lady offered to direct them as they bundled Rispah into a bus driven by her father. I prayed they wouldn’t get the normal lethargic service offered at the health centre but the strike was still on so one would really know. I headed off home. Trotting along the village road back to the bridge that I needed to cross to get back home, I met a Somali-looking fellow in army uniform walking up towards the family homestead. I said hello, the normal Karibu greetings. He did the characteristic “Aye” Somali greetings and thanked us for the hospitality. At that moment I noted how far he was from his own home in Kenya’s northeastern region.

I figured he had found a spot to say his Friday prayers. If someone had exercised some quick thinking, he would have been directed to our local mosque.

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By Rasna Warah

~In memory of Senior Private Antonio Centenio Kaseyani~

News of Mwalimu Miriam’s son’s death spread in our little cosmopolitan village in Bungoma County late in the afternoon of the 28th of January 2017. I had arrived home the previous day to support my family in the burial preparations for my uncle who had passed away during the week as Kenya’s doctors’ strike persisted.

The immediate reaction of my aunt, as we digested the village’s misfortune in having two funerals in one week, was that the young man’s last sacrament had come too soon. She had attended the thanksgiving service when he had just joined the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF). I gathered that this must have been around 2014.

Soon after, word got around that there was a possibility that 14 men from our constituency could have died in the Kolbiyow attack. I had no way of verifying this. However, understanding the place of gossip in rural areas such as this, I took it to mean that the folks here must have equated this one death to the rumoured number.

I made a point to attend the funeral after we buried my uncle. This was the first time a man on active duty had been buried in this village. The spectacle of a twenty-one gun salute would surely attract many from far and wide.

As the day of the burial approached, I made small mental notes. Mwalimu Miriam is a fellow congregant of the budding Catholic community of which I am a member. I received my confirmation sacrament here. However, many years of travel – for study and work – have turned me into somewhat of a guest there.

Soon after, word got around that there was a possibility that 14 men from our constituency could have died in the Kolbiyow attack.

Mwalimu Miriam is member Saint Lwanga, a small Christian community that my family was once a part of. We are now members of Saint Kizito, following an administrative split due to growing numbers as the church transformed into a parish. I wondered if Lwanga, the Ugandan saint, would receive Mama Miriam’s son in heaven as a fellow martyr.

Word was that Miriam was the last person to speak to her son. He told her they had been attacked. He asked her to pray for him and asked God to bless his family. Later I learned his phone went dead after this. Follow-up calls from his family went through but nobody answered.

Villagers were initially confused about which burial to attend but luckily our committee picked a day earlier for my uncle so that there would be no confusion that weekend. Ambrose had village elder status there but Senior Private Antonio Centenio Kaseyani would have the day on Friday 3rd of February 2017.

In the evening after my uncle’s burial, the tents and plastic chairs borrowed from Saint Peter’s Catholic Church were picked and moved onwards to our hero’s home. I was told his body would be arriving that evening, the first day of the month.

From about 9 to 10:30 at night, loud hooting broke the silence of the evening. The vehicles’ honking announced the hero’s arrival and wailing began. I picked out, from a great distance, the shrieking of a woman shouting for her husband. Was he married?

On the slated day I arrived late for the funeral. My body was still aching from all the chores I had done over the past few days. The ceremony had begun uncharacteristically early. The army wanted to conduct the ceremony and be on their way in good time as well, since they had come all the way from Gilgil.

Various people were giving speeches, as per the programme. The gist was obviously to console the bereaved but I picked out that the community was also in awe of the servicemen. They knew that these young men and women worked under very difficult conditions. All they could do now was pray for the soldiers.

Looking at the burial programme, I noticed it said very little: name; sunrise and sunset; 25 years old; a faded colour picture of the deceased sitting on top of an army truck wheel in combat fatigue trousers and a black Duracell T-shirt. The local Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) officials came out in full force to support their colleague. Mama Miriam’s son was their son. Solidarity between these public servants was palpable. Teachers and soldiers communed over what it meant to serve this country. It was the best public expression of familial bonds I had witnessed in a long time.

The testimonies fit well because, according to the history provided, Tony came into manhood at 10 years of age, following his circumcision during Riambuka, the millennium year. It seems he then exhibited unprecedented responsibility in his behaviour from then onwards and took pride in being the disciplined son of a school teacher. Another visible sign of his responsibility was evident from the house he had helped build for his parents and other small improvements he had made on the property.

Family members and friends spoke of anxious moments: a cousin could not reach him; the hope for his safe return; the dismay at his demise: questions to God and self-blame. A role model was lost that day, yet there was no anger expressed by the family. Maybe it’s because they still have relatives who are still in the security forces. Their prayers turned to his surviving comrades.

Every community has its lingo and the word “protectors” emerged when describing the servicemen and women in attendance. Ezekiel, Tony’s father, spoke to the growing numbers of fellow mourners. He thanked the military for their courteousness. The information they received as a family was clear and so his mind was at rest.

Tony had been supporting his father and his family in whatever way he could ever since the old man had a near fatal accident some years back. The father walked with a crutch but it was clear that the loss of his son was hurting him more than anything else.

Family members and friends spoke of anxious moments: a cousin could not reach him; the hope for his safe return; the dismay at his demise: questions to God and self-blame.

I had the opportunity to meet Lieutenant Colonel Paul Njuguna, the Kenya Military Spokesman, at a seminar on countering violent extremism. He is a tough intellectual cookie and knows how to handle information in the wake of a tragedy. At the service, he was adamant that the military’s improved communication strategy was primarily to: maintain operational security during the occurrence of an event; to preserve the morale of troops since others would still be sent into dangerous theatres either to rescue or replace comrades, among other roles; and to show concern for affected families whose members have either been injured or killed in action. For him, no amount of social media white noise could derail this mission. He believes that soldiers are not politicians and they have work to do. It dawned on me that sometimes it is so easy to infuse our politics in all manner of events without any hint of compassion.

Mzee Ezekiel revealed the love of Tony’s life. His relationship with Rispah had not been known to the family but as the old man got to Nairobi it came to light that his son even had a six-month- old child named after his mother. He had mixed emotions: the pain of losing a son and the joy of having a grandchild. He blessed the KDF soldiers and introduced Rispah.

Rispah’s relatives had come to terms with the nature of their daughter’s relationship and were patiently waiting for the young man’s return from Somalia before formalities could be initiated. This loss was a shared pain with their daughter that obligated them to travel beyond all the ridges and rivers of Tetu in Nyeri to say farewell.

Elder uncle Maina introduced the family. A retired soldier with 15 years of experience under his belt, he spoke of the oath to defend Kenya’s internal and external interests. He acknowledged the deceased as his son’s age-mate. Rispah did not say a word but her sister spoke of phone conversations over two days before the Kolbiyow attack. It was heart-wrenching to fathom how this blossoming friendship would now be a sad memory. Tony’s friends followed. Their youthfulness failed to disguise their hidden fury as they gave tributes. They wanted to go get back at “them”. A younger cousin now wants to join the army.

A colleague, an instructor at the KDF Nairobi School of Transport, took the opportunity to urge others within the constituency to join a welfare group they had conceptualised with Tony for those under the age of 35 years. It was clear that mine was a war generation.

The oath in defence of the country came up time and again. It was obvious that enlisting in the army for these people was more a duty than a burden.

Tony’s other cousin turned out to be the young man who came to pick the tents and chairs from our home. He mentioned how he encouraged Tony to join the military and how they subsequently became part of the same artillery unit 155. He is stationed in Garissa.

The oath in defence of the country came up time and again. It was obvious that enlisting in the army for these people was more a duty than a burden.

The village “headman” – who happened to be a woman –urged people to register as voters. I found it interesting that her speech followed the speech by Tony’s friend who served with him in Mombasa and lived near his place in Nairobi. She wanted to kick ass too.

To be continued….

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By Rasna Warah

On 15 January 2016 and 27 January 2017, Al Shabaab fighters stormed Kenyan military bases at El Adde and Kulbiyow, respectively. Despite promising full accounts of the battles, the Kenyan government still hasn’t released comprehensive details of the dead and wounded and whether the terrorists took prisoners of war. As a consequence, speculation in the media persists. A recent newspaper article, for instance, claimed that 234 Kenya Defence Force (KDF) troops were based at El Adde when al-Shabaab attacked and that 173 were killed, with another 13 taken hostage.

My research suggests these figures for the Kenyan troops killed and captured at El Adde is plausible, while around 30 died at Kulbiyow. I suspect that the battle at El Adde was the deadliest encounter in the history of modern peace operations. The full truth is unlikely to be revealed because the African Union has adopted a policy of not publicly divulging how many of its peacekeepers have died or been wounded in Somalia. The Union leaves that decision to the mission’s troop-contributing countries, which have refused to do so.

The anniversary of these attacks is a good time to reflect on the achievements of more than a decade of Kenyan military operations against Al Shabaab. It is also a good time to think about Kenya’s future options as the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) starts its gradual transfer of security responsibilities over to Somali forces.

The International Crisis Group referred to Linda Nchi as “the biggest security gamble Kenya has taken since independence.”

This article provides a brief overview of Kenya’s initial military intervention into Somalia in October 2011, its subsequent decision to join AMISOM, the reasons behind Al Shabaab’s successful attacks on the bases at El Adde and Kulbiyow, an assessment of the KDF operations, and a brief discussion of Kenya’s future options regarding Somalia.

Kenya’s 2011 intervention

On 16 October 2011, the KDF launched Operation Linda Nchi. Some 2,000 troops were deployed to Somalia along three primary axes: a push towards Kismaayo along the coast via Ras Kamboni; from the border crossing at Liboi through the Somali border town of Dhobley, toward Afmadow; and from the northern Kenyan border town of Elwaq into Somalia’s Gedo region.

The International Crisis Group referred to Linda Nchi as “the biggest security gamble Kenya has taken since independence.” In part, this was because it represented the KDF’s first expeditionary warfare campaign. Until then, Kenya’s approach to stabilising southern Somalia revolved around its Jubaland initiative—basically, an attempt to dislodge Al Shabaab from the Juba and Gedo regions by supporting local clan militias with funding and weapons. It also followed a series of earlier operations dating back to December 2006, when the KDF embarked on Operation Linda Mpaka “to deter any incursion into Kenya by Al Shabaab and Islamic Courts Union.” This transitioned into Operation Linda Mpaka II in November 2007 to identify and deter extremist activities and prevent the infiltration of Al Shabaab sympathizers into Kenya. On 8 November 2010, Operation Mamba was conducted, which aimed to deter piracy along the Kenyan coastline and the Exclusive Economic Zone.

One of the official stated aims in launching Linda Nchi was to cripple Al Shabaab attacks inside Kenya by creating a buffer zone up to the settlement of Afmadow, an Al Shabaab stronghold. Why Kenya launched the operation, however, remains a source of debate. The Kenyan government subsequently claimed it was an act of self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

The official KDF account—Operation Linda Nchi: Kenya’s Military Experience in Somalia (Ministry of Defence, 2014)—lauded the operation as an unequivocal military success, noting that it displaced Al Shabaab from several key towns in southern Somalia, including via an unprecedented amphibious assault to capture Kismaayo. Independent analysts, however, pointed to a range of challenges that awaited the KDF in Somalia, including how to translate military power into political effects and how to prevent “blowback” in the form of increased Al Shabaab attacks back home. The Kenyan intervention, like the Jubaland initiative before it, also generated tensions with Ethiopia because it empowered the Ogaden clan. This clan had powerful connections among Nairobi’s political elite and Ethiopia’s government worried that Kenyan support would strengthen the Ogaden National Liberation Front’s (ONLF) rebellion in its own Somali-dominated region. (In 1977, Siad Barre had even invaded this region in a bid to liberate it from Ethiopia to form what is known as the “Greater Somalia”.)

Kenya joins AMISOM

As it turned out, Linda Nchi didn’t last long. In early December 2011, Kenya decided to join AMISOM. But President Mwai Kibaki’s government didn’t sign an official Memorandum of Understanding with the African Union to that effect until June 2012. My research suggests that while the Kenyan government initially sought to address the security and economic problems raised by Al Shabaab unilaterally – without joining AMISOM – it changed this position for two principal reasons: to gain the mantle of multilateral legitimacy for continued operations, and to ease the financial burden of its military operation.

Since then, the KDF operated mainly in AMISOM’s Sector 2 and Kismaayo. For about eighteen months from mid-2013, the KDF were co-deployed with a battalion of troops from Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leonean contingent subsequently withdrew in January 2015 because of the Ebola pandemic back home. More recently, a small number of troops from other AMISOM- contributing countries have also been deployed alongside the KDF in Kismaayo. But it is fair to say that within these two sectors the KDF continued to call the shots. Indeed, this was the KDF’s plan all along – to create areas of responsibility for each of AMISOM’s troop-contributing countries where they could operate as they saw fit.

My research suggests that while the Kenyan government initially sought to address the security and economic problems raised by Al Shabaab unilaterally – without joining AMISOM – it changed this position for two principal reasons: to gain the mantle of multilateral legitimacy for continued operations, and to ease the financial burden of its military operation.

In addition to its activities within AMISOM, KDF also subsequently undertook other operations against Al Shabaab. Some of these were conducted inside Kenya, including operations at the Westgate Mall, Garissa University, and in Boni Forest. However, all of these activities raised some important, and as yet unresolved, domestic legal issues.

Kenyan military aircraft have also engaged in intermittent air strikes in Somalia since 2011. Importantly, these air operations were not conducted as part of AMISOM. It was not until mid- December 2016 that AMISOM received its first military helicopters, despite being authorised an aviation component of twelve in February 2012. These three Kenyan MD-500 helicopters were supposed to be AMISOM mission assets for use by the Force Commander. In practice, however, these helicopters operated almost entirely within the KDF’s areas of operations within AMISOM.

El Adde and Kulbiyow

El Adde was one of dozens of remote AMISOM forward operating bases spread across south-central Somalia garrisoned by about a company of troops. AMISOM spent considerable time, effort and resources trying to secure the main supply routes connecting these bases. It was not just KDF bases that were vulnerable. In June and September 2015, for example, Al Shabaab overran two AMISOM bases garrisoned by Burundian and Ugandan troops at Leego and Janaale, respectively. In both these cases, Al Shabaab fighters stormed the base just before dawn using a combination of vehicle- borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), armoured pick-up trucks (also known as “technicals”) and massed light infantry. Al Shabaab cameramen filmed the attacks and later produced propaganda videos of them.

On 15 January 2016, the fighters used the same tactics to storm the KDF base at El Adde. I suspect nearly 170 KDF soldiers were killed and perhaps a dozen were taken hostage. In an earlier report, I argued that Al Shabaab’s success at El Adde exposed a number of problems hindering KDF operations. These included: the vulnerability of newly deployed rotations of troops; failure to adapt to known Al Shabaab tactics, notably the use of VBIEDs; failure to provide timely support to friendly units; AMISOM’s lack of a secure military communications system; poor relations with the local Somali security forces and civilian population; failure to detect Al Shabaab preparations for the attack; as well as poor base defences.

At Kulbiyow, about 120 KDF troops were attacked on 27 January 2017 in precisely the same way as the earlier attacks on AMISOM bases. Once again, after some resistance, the KDF defenders retreated from the base, Al Shabaab looted it, and then Kenyan reinforcements were able to recapture it later. Both battles were the subject of Al Shabaab propaganda videos and both generated controversy and confusion back in Kenya, in part because of the lack of official clarity about the details and casualties.

Assessing KDFs operations

How successful have Kenya’s military operations in Somalia been? Apart from the obvious loss of life and financial cost, the record is mixed and debatable.

KDF’s actions have shown that the military is a blunt instrument for dealing with political problems. We must remember that Al Shabaab is first and foremost a political problem stemming from poor Somali governance and the grievances associated with it. Nor has Kenya’s intervention fundamentally altered the clan dynamics and conflicts which Al Shabaab exploits to retain relevance.

On the positive side, KDF operations initially weakened Al Shabaab by becoming part of a three- pronged offensive with AMISOM pushing out of Mogadishu and Ethiopian troops advancing across central Somalia. These operations displaced Al Shabaab from dozens of urban settlements, thereby reducing the group’s ability to govern large numbers of Somali civilians and to obtain economic revenues. They also killed the idea that Al Shabaab was invincible.

The Somalia campaign has also given the KDF its first taste of war-fighting, which is usually a painful but necessary experience in the development of all armed forces.

On the other hand, there are more negative consequences. First, the KDF’s actions have shown that the military is a blunt instrument for dealing with political problems. We must remember that Al Shabaab is first and foremost a political problem stemming from poor Somali governance and the grievances associated with it. Nor has Kenya’s intervention fundamentally altered the clan dynamics and conflicts which Al Shabaab exploits to retain relevance.

Second, the KDF’s operations have failed to achieve their principal objective: to help create an effective buffer zone to keep Al Shabaab out of Kenya. Indeed, the severity of Al Shabaab attacks inside Kenya increased after the 2011 intervention. However, this may not be directly because of the intervention but rather due to characteristics of Kenyan domestic politics and Al Shabaab’s opportunistic recruiting strategies.

Third, as noted above, Kenyan support for members of the Ogaden clan in Jubaland caused tensions with Ethiopia, which resented how this might embolden the rebel ONLF. Tensions have flared intermittently when Nairobi and Addis Ababa support competing local Somalis to advance their national priorities.

Fourth, the KDF operations have generated several controversies beyond the battles at El Adde and Kulbiyow. Among the most notable are persistent allegations that the KDF has played an unhelpful role in maintaining the illicit trade in various commodities, including charcoal and sugar. Some of the revenues are said to benefit Al Shabaab and charcoal has been under UN Security Council embargo since Resolution 2036 (22 February 2012). KDF forces both within and operating outside of AMISOM have also been accused of causing harm to civilians, including through unilateral air strikes conducted outside of AMISOM.

Finally, KDF failed to mount an effective strategic communications campaign to counter Al Shabaab’s propaganda. The secrecy has usually been defended as necessary for national security and the morale of the troops. Critics have been derided as unpatriotic and Al Shabaab sympathizers. Ironically, some of al-Shabaab’s most effective videos and other propaganda media have used the lies and obscurantism of Kenyan leaders to boost their own false narratives.

Future options

The KDF’s Somalia campaign has periodically gained the spotlight in Kenyan domestic politics, although understandably, it has lately taken a back seat in the aftermath of the controversial 2017 presidential election. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s usual position is that KDF must stay in Somalia until the job is done. But he has also threatened to withdraw his forces from AMISOM, following the European Union’s reduction of allowances payments and criticism from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia. Some members of the opposition had also called for the KDF’s withdrawal well before the disaster at El Adde. The issue still divides Kenyans more broadly. However, neither side of the debate has a convincing plan to defeat Al Shabaab. This is the key problem – Kenyan forces, no matter how effective, cannot defeat this group; this is a job only Somalis can finish.

This debate is likely to intensify once again now that AMISOM has started thinking more seriously about the details of its conditions-based exit strategy. As set out in UN Security Council Resolution 2372 (30 August 2017), AMISOM and its partners are trying to build “a capable, accountable, acceptable, and affordable Somali-led security sector” to enable the mission to gradually transfer security responsibilities to Somali forces and eventually leave. Resolution 2372 specified that AMISOM should withdraw 1,000 troops by 31 December 2017 but deploy an additional 500 police officers. AMISOM’s leadership worked out a deal whereby each contributing country would withdraw 4% of its troops, which for the KDF would mean about 160 soldiers.

Given that the Somali federal government is currently in turmoil on a range of issues and its security forces remain in a dire state, AMISOM’s transition will not be rapid. There is simply no quick or easy way for AMISOM to leave Somalia responsibly. Instead, the mission faces a number of difficult dilemmas, including when and how to leave, how to finance its operations in the interim, and how to transfer security responsibilities to a set of Somali forces that remain divided by clan politics and which are woefully equipped. These challenges are further complicated by endemic corruption at the highest levels of Somali politics.

At the strategic level, Kenya’s government should push the Somali federal government and the regional states to implement the new national security architecture and London Security Pact signed in May 2017.

For Kenya, the stakes are considerable but there are no great options. Obviously, the status quo isn’t ideal, with Al Shabaab attacks persisting and regular casualties among both the KDF and Kenyan citizens. But it could be worse. The KDF operations are still supported financially by the European Union and receive logistics support from the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS). The KDF also continues to receive significant security assistance from the US, UK and other partners, in part because of its role in AMISOM. However, following the European Union’s decision to reduce the amount of allowances it pays to AMISOM troops by 20% from January 2016, KDF soldiers aren’t receiving fair compensation for the risks they are assuming while fighting against what both the UN Security Council and the African Union have identified as a major threat to international peace and security.

On the other hand, if the allegations are true that the KDF’s leadership is profiting from the illicit trade in charcoal, sugar and other commodities, then there is a strong financial incentive to stay put. The Kenyan contingent has become less popular with local Somalis, according to opinion polls conducted between 2014 and 2016, and several partners have expressed their concerns. But so far, the KDF has largely brushed off the negative publicity.

So, if the KDF stays put, the key question becomes how it can help build effective Somali security forces. At the strategic level, Kenya’s government should push the Somali federal government and the regional states to implement the new national security architecture and London Security Pact signed in May 2017. At the operational level, given their areas of deployment, the KDF can really only play a significant role with the Jubaland forces since the Somali National Army has a minimal presence in this region. The alternative is for Kenya to cede any role in this area to another actor that might step forward to take the lead in developing the Somali army.

There’s also an additional dilemma: If AMISOM and its partners manage to build an effective set of Somali security forces and subsequently withdraw, will the Al Shabaab threats facing Kenya disappear? And even if Kenya was to withdraw from AMISOM, would it leave without its envisaged buffer zone and still have to address a range of domestic issues that explain how and why many Kenyan citizens join or support Al Shabaab?

In sum, there are no great future options for Kenya’s engagement in Somalia. Kenya took a security gamble in 2011 which hasn’t entirely paid off.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah

“To my daughter I will say, ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’.” – Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

In July 2011, while the world’s attention was focused on the famine in Somalia, a plot was being hatched in Nairobi to cross the Kenya-Somalia border and wage a war against the terrorist group Al Shabaab.

Kenya had been spoiling for a fight with Somalia for some time. Cables released by WikiLeaks indicate that the Kenyan government had intentions to militarily intervene in Somalia as early as 2009, and had been trying to convince the United States government about the wisdom of its plan. At that time, the Mwai Kibaki coalition administration had big plans for Kenya’s northeastern and coastal regions, including a large deep-sea port in Lamu and a new transport corridor known as the Lamu Port and South Sudan Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) that would link the port to Ethiopia and to the oil wells of the newly independent state of Southern Sudan. Creating a safe buffer zone within Somalia to protect Kenya’s ambitious project was part of the plan. Dubbed the “Jubbaland Initiative”, the ultimate goal was to install a Kenya-friendly regional administration in Kismaayo, the capital of Somalia’s Juba region that borders Kenya. According to a newspaper report published in the Daily Nation, in December 2009, Kenya’s then Foreign Minister, Moses Wetang’ula, told a sceptical senior US official that if the Kenyan military invaded Somalia, its success was guaranteed – it would be like “a hot knife through butter”.

However, Kenya’s opportunity for military intervention in Somalia only came in the last quarter of 2011 when David Tebbut, a British tourist, was killed and his wife Judith kidnapped while on holiday at the Kenyan coast. What at first appeared to be the work of pirates or criminal gangs was quickly attributed by the Kenyan government to Al Shabaab, which controlled large swathes of south and central Somalia. (The extremist group denied being involved and, according to the BBC, the British government concluded that “those holding her were Somali pirates, purely after money, and not the extremist insurgency group, Al Shabaab”).

Kenya’s then Foreign Minister, Moses Wetang’ula, told a sceptical senior US official that if the Kenyan military invaded Somalia, its success was guaranteed – it would be like “a hot knife through butter”.

The official reason for Kenya’s mission was to seize control of the port of Kismaayo in order to cut off Al Shabaab’s economic lifeline. The Kenyan forces were assisted in their mission by the Ras Kamboni militia led by Sheikh Ahmed Mohammed Islam, popularly known as Madobe. Interestingly, Madobe had at various stages of his career as an insurgent been a member of the extremist organisation Al Itihad, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that took control of Mogadishu in 2006, and also of Al Shabaab. Prior to joining the Kenyan forces, he had fallen out with the Ras Kamboni Brigades founded by his brother-in-law Hassan Turki, a career jihadist who had joined forces with Al Shabaab to lay claim over Kismaayo. American journalist Jeremy Scahill, in his book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, says that Madobe’s change of heart vis-à-vis Al Shabaab came about after he spent two years in an Ethiopian prison after he was captured while fleeing Ethiopian and American forces when the ICU fell in 2006.

In the early part of 2011, prior to joining forces with Madobe’s militia, the Kenyan government had plans to support Mohamed Abdi Mohamed “Gandhi”, the former minister of defence and an Ogadeni from the Juba region, to administer a potential Jubaland regional authority called “Azania” that would serve as a buffer zone between Kenya and Somalia. It is believed that the Ethiopian government opposed the creation of an Ogadeni-dominated authority in Jubaland (though Madobe also belongs to the Ogadeni clan) because it believed that such an entity had the potential to embolden secessionist sentiments in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, and so Kenya – an important ally of Ethiopia – abandoned the plan.

Contradictory US policies towards Somalia

Contrary to popular belief, Kenya’s decision to invade Somalia was a “proxy war” that the US government was not willing to engage in. Wikileaks cables indicate that while the Kenyan government had been pitching the invasion to the US government for some time, it had always met resistance and scepticism. US officials were concerned that the mission could turn out to be more complicated and expensive than Kenya predicted.

It is possible that the US government realised that its support for the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that led to the ouster of the Islamic Courts Union from Mogadishu had led to more, not less, instability; hence it did not want to repeat the same mistake. Initially, the United States had mixed feelings about the rise of the ICU, which consisted of groups of businesspeople, Muslim clerics and others who had united to bring about a semblance of governance in a dysfunctional state. The former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, told Scahill that some Somalia experts within the US administration welcomed the expulsion of murderous warlords in Mogadishu by the ICU. However, fears that the ICU (which had gained legitimacy through religion rather than the clan, which has been a divisive factor in Somalia) could morph into something more sinister led to a decision to remove it from power. The then US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, is widely credited for convincing the US government to support Ethiopian forces to oust the ICU, an action that the BBC journalist Mary Harper describes as “one of the most counterproductive foreign initiatives towards Somalis in recent years”.

The potential “Talibanisation” of Somalia was probably what prompted the United States to back the Ethiopian forces that pushed the ICU out of Mogadishu in December 2006, just six months after the latter had taken control of the city. The ICU then broke up into factions, the most extreme of which was Al Shabaab, which took control over most of south and central Somalia.

An advisor to the US military told Scahill that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 was a classic proxy war coordinated by the United States government, which provided air power and paid for the roughly 50,000 Ethiopian troops that ejected the ICU from Mogadishu. The invasion was in line with the US “no boots on the ground” policy, whereby the US financially supports African forces on the ground without actually sending US military personnel to the conflict zones.

However, the advisor also admitted that there were some US forces, including the CIA, on the ground in Somalia. Prior to the Ethiopian invasion, the US had started supporting a new group comprising pro-government leaders and warlords under the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism, which accepted US support in exchange for handing over key Al Qaeda members. US support for groups that were perceived as criminals or illegitimate by a large number of Somalis gained the ICU many converts.

The Ethiopian invasion was extremely costly in terms of the number of lives lost and the large scale displacement. Reports began to emerge of Ethiopian soldiers slaughtering Somali men, women and children “like goats”. Ethiopia, which has had historical and bitter disputes with Somalia for decades, and which is feared and loathed in equal measure by Somalis, was beginning to look like a brutal occupying force. Al Shabaab eventually drove out the Ethiopians in 2008. In other words, the Ethiopian invasion succeeded in replacing the ICU with a virulent and lethal force of its own making. And the United States was caught, once again, with egg on its face.

Political scientist Michael J. Boyle says that just as US efforts to eliminate Mohammed Farah Aideed had backfired in 1993, the US decision to remove the ICU was equally disastrous because it succeeded in overthrowing the only force that was capable of restoring a semblance of order on the streets of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia. During its short reign, the ICU is credited with flushing out warlords from Mogadishu and with successfully resolving land and other disputes, which Somalia’s weak and highly corrupt Transitional Federal Government (TFG) had been unable to do since it assumed power in 2004.

Having failed to root out extremist groups from Somalia, the United States then embarked on a strategy to include the same groups within the UN-backed TFG, a move that astounded even the most die-hard critics of US foreign policy. It is rumoured that in 2008 a senior US diplomat convinced Abdullahi Yusuf, the TFG’s first president, to resign in order to pave the way for a TFG leadership comprising members of the ousted ICU, which had splintered into various groups, including Al Shabaab, that were opposed to the TFG. Having invested so heavily in Ethiopian forces to remove the ICU from Somalia, it appeared extraordinary that the United States would now be planning for its inclusion in the transitional government.

The then US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, is widely credited for convincing the US government to support Ethiopian forces to oust the ICU, an action that the BBC journalist Mary Harper describes as “one of the most counterproductive foreign initiatives towards Somalis in recent years”.

President Abdullahi Yusuf finally ceded to US government pressure and resigned in December 2008, eight months before his tenure was to end. Subsequently, a meeting was held in Djibouti, where there is a sizeable US military presence and where Sharif Sheikh Ahmed (the leader of the ICU), Nur Adde and Maslah Siad Barre (the former Somali president Siad Barre’s son), among others, were gathered to vie for the presidency of Somalia under the auspices of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS). Although the elections seemed to favour Barre, UNPOS, headed at that time by the Mauritanian Ould Abdallah, proposed and selected 275 additional parliamentarians drawn mainly from the ICU to the already bloated 275-member parliament. This skewed the election in favour of the ICU leader who the US government now viewed as “a moderate Islamist”. “To veteran observers of Somali politics, Sharif [Sheikh Ahmed]’s re-emergence was an incredible story,” wrote Scahill. “The United States had overthrown the ICU government only to later back him as the country’s president.”

This hoodwinking and double-dealing would later manifest itself in the Barack Obama administration’s 2010 “dual-track” policy in Somalia whereby the US government dealt with the transitional government in Mogadishu while also engaging with regional and clan leaders, including warlords. Under Obama, covert operations, such as drone attacks, targeted killings and wiretapping, also escalated. Scahill claims that while Obama appeared to be scaling down operations in Guantanamo Bay, illegal detentions were being “decentralised” and “outsourced” to secret prisons in other places, including Mogadishu.

KDF blunders at home

It was against this background that the US Secretary of State for African Affairs, Johnnie Carson, told a high-powered Kenyan delegation attending an African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in January 2010 that if the Kenyan troops were defeated, there would be negative domestic repercussions. Carson wanted a more “conventional” method of addressing the Al Shabaab menace and was deeply pessimistic about Kenya’s ambitions to create a buffer zone along its border. Some neighbouring countries also expressed fears that the invasion could have the unintended consequence of strengthening Al Shabaab and making Kenya more insecure.

As the critics predicted, retaliatory terrorist attacks in Kenya escalated after Kenyan forces entered Somalia in October 2011, and particularly during the first few months after the new government of President Uhuru Kenyatta was elected in 2013. An analysis by Nation Newsplex showed that there were nine times more terror attacks in the 45 months after the invasion than the 45 months before it.

The most shocking attack took place in September 2013 at the up-market Westgate mall in Nairobi where 67 people were killed. What stood out in this and subsequent attacks was the inept response by the Kenyan security forces, including the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF). In an article published in the local press immediately after the attack, a retired military officer, Lieutenant-General Humphrey Njoroge, said that the rescue mission suffered from a broken command structure, poor screening of people fleeing the mall and outright incompetence, which may have handed the terrorists an upper hand. The blunders began in the first hours of the attack. By mid-afternoon, some three or four hours after the terrorists began their shooting spree, the US-trained anti-terrorist Recce squad seemed to have isolated and cornered the terrorists. However, the subsequent arrival of KDF soldiers may have contributed to disrupting the chain of command.

In an article published in Foreign Policy on the second anniversary of the attack, Tristan McConnell, a foreign correspondent based in Nairobi, claimed that by the time the Recce squad and KDF entered the mall, most of the so-called “hostages” in the mall had already been evacuated safely, thanks to the courage of a few uniformed, plainclothes and off-duty police officers who responded to emergency calls. “Far from a dramatic three-day standoff, the assault on the Westgate mall lasted only a few hours, almost all of it taking place before Kenyan security forces even entered the building,” wrote McConnell. “When they finally did, it was only to shoot at one another before going on an armed looting spree that resulted in the collapse of the rear of the building, destroyed with a rocket-propelled grenade. And there were only four gunmen, all of whom were buried in the rubble, along with much of the forensic evidence.”

Meanwhile, a judicial commission of inquiry on the three-day siege of the mall promised by President Uhuru Kenyatta has yet to materialise.

The following year, in June, more than 60 men were killed in a horrific terror attack in Mpeketoni in Lamu County. As during the Westgate attack, the security services were again implicated in bungling the rescue operation. There were stories of police stations in Mpeketoni abandoned prior to the attack and villagers left on their own to deal with the terrorists. Their frantic phone calls to the police requesting for reinforcements were apparently ignored. Many spent several nights in the bush waiting for help to arrive. Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority blamed the police for failing to heed to warnings about an imminent threat and for not responding to the villagers’ cries for help in time.

The worst attack – in terms of numbers – took place in April 2015 when 147 students at Garissa University College were butchered by Al Shabaab. Again, the security forces’ response was a little too late. According to media reports, soldiers from a military barracks in the vicinity of the university cordoned off the campus but failed to go in and rescue the students. The alarm at the base of the specially-trained Recce squad on the outskirts of Nairobi was sounded at 6 a.m. on the morning of the attack but the squad was put on standby as the military said it could handle the situation. As a result, its members arrived in Garissa nearly eleven hours later, long after a majority of the victims had been killed. Even though a core team had arrived in Garissa by 2 p.m., the rescue operation did not begin till around 5 p.m. It took the officers only half an hour to corner and kill the terrorists. If they had arrived earlier, many lives could have been saved. Most of the students’ parents blamed the delayed security response for the death of their children.

Kenyans thought that President Kenyatta’s stand on Kenya’s military presence in Somalia would soften after these attacks. However, this did not happen. Kenyatta said that Kenyan forces would remain in Somalia until the government there was stable. Those demanding for a withdrawal of Kenyan troops from Somalia were labelled as “talking the language of the terrorists” and admonished as unpatriotic. KDF blunders in Somalia

Four months after KDF entered Somalia – when it became apparent that the forces were not making substantial headway, and after the Somali government sent out feelers that it was not happy with a foreign force within Somali territory – a deal was made for the Kenyan forces to join the other African forces enrolled under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

Under the new arrangement, Kenyan troops were “re-hatted” as AMISOM, and were allowed to continue with their mission in southern Somalia. The agreement also allowed the KDF to claim compensation for equipment lost or destroyed during the invasion. According to official sources, the military operation had been costing the Kenyan government about 200 million shillings (about $2.3 million) per month. The new arrangement, funded mainly by the United States and European countries, alleviated this heavy financial burden on the Kenyan taxpayer and also gained the mission legitimacy.

In September 2012, almost one year after the Kenyan invasion, Kismaayo, the prized port that was Al Shabaab’s main economic base, fell to the Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces. It was a major victory for the Kenyans, but one that would soon be marred by rumours of Kenyan and Ras Kamboni soldiers exporting charcoal from the port, despite a UN Security Council ban.

It is estimated that before the Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces pushed out Al Shabaab from the port of Kismaayo, the militant group was exporting about one million bags of charcoal to the Middle East and Gulf countries every month. (Slow-burning charcoal is a much sought-after cooking fuel in the Gulf states, where it is used to roast meat and also to light fruit-flavoured waterpipes called shisha). When the Kenyan and Somali forces entered Kismaayo, they discovered an estimated four million sacks of charcoal with an international market value of at least $60 million lined up ready for export. The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea alleges that the Kenyan and Ras Kamboni forces continued exporting the charcoal despite the UN ban, and that the export of charcoal more than doubled under their watch.

In its 2014 report to the UN Security Council, the UN Monitoring Group also made the astonishing claim that revenue from the port of Kismaayo – which was being collected through taxes, charcoal exports and the importation of cheap sugar – was equally divided between the Kenyan forces, the Interim Jubaland Administration headed by Ahmed Madobe and Al Shabaab. There were also rumours of KDF and Al Shabaab entering into mutually beneficial financial partnerships at roadblocks where “taxes” were collected from vehicles.

There were stories of police stations in Mpeketoni being abandoned prior to the attack and villagers being left to their own devices to deal with the terrorists.

All these allegations, however, have been denied by the Kenyan government, but they do not surprise many Kenyans, who have still not got over the fact that Kenya’s security forces indulged in a massive looting spree during the Westgate mall attack; until this attack, the Kenyan military was generally viewed as being more disciplined and less corruptible than the country’s notoriously corrupt police force. As the Kenyan opposition leader Jakoyo Midiwo, who has for some time been advocating for the withdrawal of Kenya troops from Somalia, commented, “When citizens of Somalia come to realise what our soldiers are doing on their soil, they are bound to retaliate. When this happens, it is the ordinary Kenyan who will suffer.”

None of these allegations affected how the KDF was viewed at home. In fact, the then Chief of the Defence Forces, General Julius Karangi, who has the look and demeanour of a chubby teddy bear rather than that of a military commander, was celebrated as a hero by the country’s leadership and reports about KDF’s involvement in the charcoal trade in Somalia were largely dismissed.

Part of the reason why the Kenyan forces might have got away with their alleged misdemeanours is because of the lack of a clear and strong command structure within AMISOM. Its headquarters in Mogadishu, dominated largely by Ugandan soldiers, appears to be operating independently, with little collaboration with foreign intelligence agencies or sufficient oversight by donor countries. In fact, when the allegations about illegal charcoal sales appeared in the press, there was no response or threats of withdrawal of funding for Kenyan troops from European Union countries, AMISOM’s largest funders, which surprised many. This could be because the government in Mogadishu, which has the backing of the international community, is almost entirely dependent on AMISOM for security, though there are plans underway to strengthen the Somalia National Army.

In its 2014 report to the UN Security Council, the UN Monitoring Group also made the astonishing claim that revenue from the port of Kismaayo, which was being collected through taxes, charcoal exports and the importation of cheap sugar, were equally divided between the Kenyan forces, the Interim Jubaland Administration headed by Ahmed Madobe and Al Shabaab.

Writer Velda Felbab-Brown, in an article published in Foreign Affairs in June 2015, explains why, despite some success in routing out Al Shabaab, the African Union forces have so far been unable to completely subdue the terrorist organisation. The main reason, she says, is because “offensive operations are decided mostly on a sector bases, with the forces in each area reporting and taking orders from their own capitals”. Because of this fragmented and uncoordinated approach, there is a perception that AMISOM is politically manipulated by troop-producing countries, especially Kenya and Ethiopia. When Ethiopia joined AMISOM in 2014, some Somali analysts even wondered how a country that had invaded Somalia in 2006 could be allowed to re-enter it militarily under the banner of the African Union.

Meanwhile, more than six years after Kenyan boots entered Somalia, there seems to be no stabilisation plan for the region, nor any exit strategy for the Kenyan forces. KDF is still in Jubaland and Madobe is its president. Like the Ethiopians, who invaded Somalia in 2006 and stayed on for two years, the Kenyans have started to look and feel like an occupying force.

Because of this fragmented and uncoordinated approach, there is a perception that AMISOM is politically manipulated by troop-producing countries, especially Kenya and Ethiopia.

For now, it appears that any decision President Uhuru Kenyatta makes regarding Kenya’s presence in Somalia will be guided by what his military commanders and security experts advise him – and to a certain extent, by the countries funding AMISOM – not by a well thought-out policy to bring about long-term stability in Somalia and to forge stronger ties with the government in Mogadishu.

Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

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The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.

The Invisible Clan: Is Somalia Ready for a Women’s Revolution?

By Rasna Warah Published by the good folks at The Elephant.

The Elephant is a platform for engaging citizens to reflect, re-member and re-envision their society by interrogating the past, the present, to fashion a future.