From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2008 - 09:38:38 EDT
Defining a failed state
Turmoil in Somalia
August 25, 2008
Somalia has no functioning central government, no judicial system
and last year, an estimated 700,000 of its people became refugees.
There are daily gun battles involving a bewildering array of rag tag militias, smugglers, Ethiopian troops and clan warlords.
Around 8,000 people — mostly civilians — died in 2007 alone.
Most chillingly, the United Nations says more than three million
Somalis, just under half of the population, require regular food aid
just to survive.
The respected U.S. magazine, Foreign Policy, gives Somalia top ranking on a list of "failed states."
A report by the UN's Food Security Analysis Unit says drought,
violence and inflation are worsening, and making it impossible to
provide assistance.
"Somalia is now facing the worst security situation in the past 17
years, with increased armed conflict and fighting, targeting of
humanitarian aid workers, military build up, increased sea piracy and
political tension," the UN report says.
What passes for middle and upper middle classes are among the hardest hit, according to the UN.
In short, Somalia is a mess and its people face the worst
humanitarian crisis in Africa — a state of affairs that they're all too
grimly familiar with. The collapse of a country In the
late 1980s, the 22-year dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre was
beginning to collapse and the general-turned-president focused his
wrath on rebellious factions in northern Somalia, his own home area.
A civil war took 50,000 lives and led to the partition of Somalia into two separate entities.
Barre was toppled in 1991 but his departure from power in the capital, Mogadishu, led to even more violence.
Tens of thousands were killed by fighting and the effects of a
humanitarian crisis that blocked food supplies and devastated public
health and education.
Pushed to intervene by media reports of starvation and brutality,
the United States led a UN military mission that was supposed to impose
peace but clan militias resisted, fighting each other and international
forces by turns.
U.S. troops paid a steep price. On a single day in October 1993, 18
U.S. soldiers were killed during intense combat in events later
immortalized by the book and film, Black Hawk Down.
Bloodied, the U.S. withdrew from Somalia in ignominy barely three months later.
UN 'blue berets' from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries
continued to take casualties and the United Nations pulled out in 1995,
shutting down aid and assistance and putting even more lives at risk. Clan loyalties predominate Throughout the 1990s, clan battles continued and Somalia grew more destitute, lawless and primitive.
What had been a poor but partially functional state was a
battleground, a hodgepodge of clan fiefdoms and warring slivers of
territory.
Somaliland, a British protectorate in colonial times, broke away from the southern half of the country, around Mogadishu.
Increasingly, the country became a no-go area for foreigners with
clan fighters targeting outsiders whether they were journalists or
brave aid workers.
An economy almost entirely reliant on smuggling, growing the mild narcotic plant khat, and extortion shrunk even further.
Already the paramount form of social organization, clans became
Somalia's sole functioning institution with the collapse of government
in the 1990s.
Ancient structures based on family and birthplace, clans dictate the loyalties of Somali men.
They also limit internal migration by members of warring clans, even when faced with catastrophic droughts or crop failures. Islamic law brings calm .... and invasion Some
see rejection of the clan system as being behind the rise of Islamic
groups in Somalia in recent years. Muslim preachers called for a
restoration of order through Sharia, Islamic law, and a system emerged
that offered quick justice through courts that used the Qur'an as the
basis of judgments and punishment.
This eventually became a movement calling itself the Islamic Courts
Union (ICU) and it won support from many business owners in Mogadishu
who welcomed the relative restoration of order that the group's version
of Sharia seemed to bring.
But the ICU also began to project itself as the legitimate
government of Somalia, and that put it at odds with the country's
internationally recognized transitional administration based in Kenya.
Washington viewed the ICU's rise with alarm and accused the group of links with al-Qaeda.
When troops from Ethiopia invaded Somalia to fight the ICU in 2006,
the U.S. was firmly behind them. U.S. aircraft and missiles were also
used to attack suspected ICU leaders.
Outnumbered and out gunned, ICU fighters fled, first to remote corners of the country, and then to Eritrea.
The UN arranged a peace deal between some leaders of the ICU and the
transitional government in June 2008 but the Islamist group's armed
wing, al-Shabaab, fought on and even took over the key port city of
Kismayo in August 2008. Chaos continues Meanwhile,
international human rights groups have accused the Ethiopian forces of
summary justice and even massacres of civilians. In other words,
Somalia remains as chaotic and wracked by bloodshed and hunger as ever.
No Western countries maintain embassies there. Aid agencies have
pulled out all foreign personnel and their Somali colleagues are
continually threatened and targeted by fighters.
Visiting foreign journalists need to pay huge sums for armed guards
and must travel in convoys bristling with weapons. Local reporters face
constant threats and attacks.
Offshore, pirates harass food deliveries and international shipping.
A Canadian warship, HMCS Ville de Quebec, is part of international
efforts to deter attacks on maritime traffic in the Horn of Africa.
The UN maintains political and humanitarian missions to stabilize
Somalia but they're based in neighboring Kenya because it's too
dangerous to live in Mogadishu.
Plans to deploy foreign peace keepers are making slow progress
because few countries are willing to send troops into such a dangerous
situation.
Signs of hope are rare on the ground in today's Somalia.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/08/25/f-somalia-analyze.html
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