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Last
week Foreign Secretary William Hague made a surprise visit to Somalia's
capital, Mogadishu, ahead of an international conference on Somalia
taking place in London this month. The visit comes at an important
juncture for Somalia's internal politics and its relations with the rest
of the world.
Twenty one years without functioning state institutions has left the
country ravaged by violence, food insecurity, terrorism and extreme
poverty. The current political authority, the Transitional Federal
Government (TFG), is internationally-recognized but ineffectual,
controlling only a few kilometers within the capital city in a country
more than twice the size of the UK. The TFG is supposed to be temporary,
and is mandated to prepare the way for a democratically elected
government to eventually take power, but it has become increasingly
entrenched.
Somalia's status to use William Hague's words, 'the world most failed
state', has thus far proved frustratingly difficult for the Somali
people and the international community to change. However the Foreign
Secretary's meetings with Somalia's president, prime minister, and the
mayor of Mogadishu highlight Britain's ambition to galvanize a renewed
international focus on finding a solution to Somalia's interlinked, and
seemingly intractable, problems.
On 23 February, the London
Conference on Somalia will
involve high-ranking ministers from forty governments and
representatives from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the
United Nations to discuss the next steps for Somalia. There is no clear
idea of what Somalia's political landscape will look like following the
expiry of the TFG's mandate in August, and the looming political
uncertainty is a concern for politicians internationally and within
Somalia. What role the burgeoning number of self-declared regional
entities within Somalia should play in efforts to find a stable
political solution is one of the key items on the agenda.
It is the inclusion of this factor which offers hope for this latest
effort by the international community. Since 1991, a number of sub-state
entities have emerged within Somalia, establishing governments and a
semblance of stability and security within their regional territories.
There is increasing international recognition that the governments of
these smaller entities offer valuable examples of how a 'bottom-up'
process of establishing governance could happen in Somalia. Major
international players are adopting a 'dual-track' strategy, liaising
with the central government in Mogadishu but also with the established
governments of these entities. Representatives from the governments of
Somaliland in the north-west, Puntland in the north-east and Galmudug in
central Somalia have been invited to participate in the London
Conference.
At Chatham House last year, a meeting was held with members of the
Somali diaspora and policy-makers to discuss the role which sub-national
entities could play in Somalia’s political transition. A report
from the event suggests
that authority and legitimacy must be earned from the population, which
is an advantage some of these entities have over the TFG.
William Hague is not the only high-ranking international official to
have visited Somalia in the last year. Visits by the Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and
Iran's Foreign Minister demonstrate the increasing number of players,
with differing foreign policy objectives, who are taking an interest in
Somalia. This growing international interest makes it all the more
important that it is the voice of Somalis themselves which predominates
in the joint effort to establish stability, security and development for
a country which has long lacked all three.
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More on International
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Source:
Chatham House.
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