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Ian S. Spears
Review of African Political Economy No.95:89-98
© ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2003
ISSN 0305-6244
This article examines the arguments for and against reforming the African state system in order to create more viable and peaceful states. It argues that while such a process has the potential to be enormously disruptive, selective recognition of some ‘states-within-states’, such as Somaliland, does offer promising approaches to more effective governance and more viable and coherent states.
[Continued from our previous issue]
The Case of Somaliland
It is ironic that processes of state formation in Somalia should have undergone such a dramatic reversal since the time of independence in 1960. In superficial terms, given that its commonalities in language, ethnic identity and religion make it unique among developing states, Somalia might once have been regarded as one of the least likely African countries to experience state breakup.4 This is not to say that Somalia’s political leadership was satisfied with the colonial borders it inherited or that there is no regional variation among Somalia’s peoples. On the contrary, the political and military energies of its leadership, particularly in the first two decades after independence, were more likely to be directed towards fulfilling irredentist, rather than secessionist, ambitions.
Many Isaq, the predominant clan family in Somaliland, argue that it was precisely the failure to achieve a broader unity among all Somalis in the Horn which led to a renewed desire to embrace a state based on the original colonial boundaries. The independent Somali Republic was formed by the union in 1960 of the former British Somaliland in the north and Italian Somalia in the south. Somalis in the neighbouring Ogaden region of Ethiopia, in Djioubti and in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya were left out of the new state. The failure to achieve the larger more ambitious objective of uniting all Somalis led some Somalilanders recently to embrace a more parochial national identity. According to one prominent Somalilander:
the dream was that every Somali had to seek to bring the five parts together politically. And our union with the south was the first step in that direction. It was not a desired union per se. It was a means to an end. If you take away the end, why should the means be pushed together again. The international community has taken away the end.5
The reluctance of the great powers to accept Somalia’s irredentist ambitions was most evident during the 1970s when the army of Mohamed Siad Barre invaded eastern Ethiopia and was thwarted in its effort to incorporate Ogaden regions into the existing Somali state. The Soviet Union rescued the Ethiopian regime in November 1977 and the United States warned against a feared subsequent Ethiopian invasion of Somali territory. An unstated message, however, was that, while extra-state ambitions would have to be set aside, Addis Ababa and Mogadishu were free to crush secessionist movements in Eritrea and Somaliland respectively. The willingness of Washington to underwrite the actions of an increasingly besieged and brutal Siad Barre regime then became an embarrassment in 1989 when a report by the United States General Accounting Office (1989) observed that small amounts of military aid were being supplied to Mogadishu at the very moment that Hargeisa was being bombed by government aircraft. The brutality with which the Siad Barre regime attacked centres in Somaliland has been well documented (Africa Watch, 1990).
More recently, scholars and politicians have re-emphasised the historical roots which distinguish Somaliland from the south. Some scholars have decried the fact that so little attention has been paid to a more varied developmental experience among Somalis. As M.J. Fox has recently argued:
Somalia is presumed to have been colonized as an undifferentiated whole, an utterly shared historical experience. … But the northern and southern areas of Somalia did not have a shared colonial or pre-colonial experience, and as such, were bound to manage subsequent events differently as well (1999:11).
Indeed, among other things, Somaliland’s northern orientation, its proximity to the Gulf States, the trading patterns it consequently embraced, and its colonial history distinguished Somaliland from the south. Not surprisingly, Somalilanders and sympathetic observers regard this history as a means of highlighting the region’s distinctiveness. Government publications emphasize the pre-colonial origins of Somaliland and, consequently, that Somaliland was ‘not an entity which was born after the disintegration of the Siad Barre dictatorship.’ Noted in particular are traces of ‘the ruined cities of Somaliland’ – evidence, which apparently proves ‘that in ancient pre-historic times a country existed in Somaliland which had its own identity and its own geographic contours’ (Government of Somaliland, 1997).
Somaliland’s colonial history under Britain was clearly different from that of southern Somalia under the Italians – a fact which is used to explain contemporary political advantages over their southern brethren. While noting that they governed their colonies with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Gerard Prunier has observed that ‘British Somaliland, like southern Sudan, [belonged] to the no-government category.’ Since Britain was interested in Somaliland largely as a means of keeping other colonial powers out of the region, Somalilanders suffered only from Britain’s ‘benign neglect’.
Consequently, Prunier writes,
at independence in 1960 the territory was economically underdeveloped but blessedly untampered with at the level of native political institutions. The Somali system of peacemaking, vital in a conflictual nomadic society, remained largely intact (Prunier, 1998:225).
Certainly, Somalis speak proudly of their more
recent accomplishments in coping with their own internal conflicts during
peace conferences in Berbera and Burao in 1991 and in Borama in 1993 at
which time relative stability was established in the north. But while
Somalilanders have achieved a measure of internal peace, this solidarity was
also a product of war.
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