From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sun Sep 20 2009 - 04:31:01 EDT
Somalia - Puntland : The Trouble with the I.C.G.
Sep 20, 2009 - 5:05:10 AM
Report Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
As the only recent comprehensive analysis of the political situation in the
Puntland State of Somalia, the International Crisis Group's (I.C.G.) August
12 "Policy Briefing," "Somalia: The Trouble with Puntland," is likely to be
more influential on the perspectives of Western actors than it would be were
it not the only game in town. That is unfortunate, because the briefing is
deeply flawed methodologically.
The briefing has been widely enough disseminated and sufficiently critiqued,
in terms of its factual errors, misinterpretations following from those
errors, and bias in favor of particular interests, by Somali intellectuals,
that no effort will be expended here to summarize the briefing or to pick it
apart any further. Instead, the purpose of the present analysis is to
diagnose the failings of the briefing in terms of the criteria of sound
political analysis. A methodological critique reveals that the briefing is
simply bad political science.
The present analysis will proceed in two steps. First, the methodological
faults of the briefing will be addressed. Second, two recent developments in
Puntland's political situation will be analyzed to show what a more
disciplined methodology discloses.
Methodological Faults
The briefing, which argues that Puntland's political system has entered a
cycle of fragmentation that, if not arrested, might end in "the violent
break-up of Puntland, as rival clans seeking autonomy from Garowe carve out
their own enclaves," paints a picture that had genuine plausibility in the
last months of former president Adde Muse's administration in 2008, before
the peaceful transfer of power to the new president, Abdirahman Muhammad
Farole, in early 2009, which was facilitated by the clan elders. Since then,
the political picture in Puntland has changed, rendering the I.C.G.'s
briefing out of date. It is as though, having completed their research
before the transition, the I.C.G. decided to stick with its interpretation
and turn a blind eye to later developments.
Not being up-to-date vitiates one of the purposes of political analysis,
which is to provide a current reading of a developing situation. Of what use
is a briefing that describes and projects from a situation that no longer
exists?
That the Puntland of Farole is not Adde Muse's Puntland will be indicated
later when two recent developments are considered. For now, suffice it to
say that the briefing does not address what Farole has done since assuming
office, not even to dismiss it.
Having sounded the alarm bell, the I.C.G.'s briefing proceeds to deliver to
Farole a laundry list of major structural constitutional and political
reforms that it argues must be undertaken to save Puntland. The
methodological flaw here runs even deeper; it is not a matter of the
substance of the proposed reforms, but of the lack of any consideration of
Farole and his administration as actors with their own perceived interests,
quantum of resources, and strategies for applying resources to achieving
interests. The I.C.G. tells Farole what to do without even considering what
he believes he is trying to do and why.
By failing to honor the most fundamental principle of political analysis -
know each actor in terms of its own interests, power, and strategy - the
I.C.G.'s dicta hang in the air without any connection to the ground.
Apparently, caught in the idea that desperate times call for desperate
measures, the I.C.G. does not consider whether its requirements are at all
realistic in reference to Farole's actual political situation. That
oversight eventuates in a deep and destructive tension in the report: If the
situation in Puntland is so fragmented, if clans are at such cross purposes,
and if trust is so meager, then where would Farole find the necessary
support to undertake major reforms?
Out of date and out of touch, the I.C.G.'s briefing was gathering dust
before it was released.
Recent Developments
When one looks at Puntland from Farole's position, one must first understand
that Farole is aware that he inherited a nest of nearly intractable problems
from the previous administration, including an entrenched criminal industry,
a legacy of corruption and self-dealing, and a measure of clan resentment
that the I.C.G. emphasizes. He also knows that his election was achieved by
a complex process of bargaining that hedges him between various
consituencies that he must at least mollify. He can only move so far and so
fast without upsetting the balance.
Within his restricted field of maneuver, Farole sees Puntland's vital
interests as keeping the state intact as a political community and
preserving its self-governing status in Somalia. In order to achieve these
two aims most effectively, Farole also desires foreign aid for economic and
social development, and for strengthening the security sector. Finally,
Farole must attempt to satisfy donors that he is taking steps to serve their
interests - most notably, curbing piracy. Those are Farole's perceived
interests for Puntland - his agenda. He did not need the I.C.G. to warn him
about Puntland's problems and he has his own ways of addressing them that do
not involve massive structural reform - he is a pragmatist, not a visionary,
and he prevailed in the transition by virtue of his centrism.
Two developments over the month from mid-August to mid-September show how
Farole is pursuing the vital interests that he perceives for Puntland -
keeping the regional state intact and preserving its provisional autonomy
within Somalia.
The first major challenge to Farole's ability to manage domestic conflict
and insecurity came on August 5, when Puntland's information minister,
Warsame Abdi Sefta Bananka, was assassinated in the town of Galkayo, a major
trading and transport hub that is split between a northern section governed
by Puntland, and a southern section governed by the autonomous Galmudug
authority. Through the summer, political instability had been rising in
Galkayo, with assassinations, political infighting, clan conflicts, tensions
between the north and south, and apprehensions that the civil war in
southern and central Somalia would spill over into Puntland through the
town.
Sefta's assassination posed a threat to the strength and credibility of
Farole and his administration, and represented a surfacing of the kinds of
divisions of which the I.C.G. had warned, forcing Farole to respond. Almost
immediately, Farole moved his presidency to Galkayo, and remained there with
other high-ranking Puntland officials until mid-September, taking a hands-on
approach and assuming responsibility.
Having taken his high-profile initiative, Farole and his delegation entered
into protracted negotiations with businessmen, elders, scholars and
politicians to find a formula for stability. Pressure to reach a resolution
mounted when, on August 12, five foreign preachers of the Tabliq missionary
group were executed at a mosque on the Puntland side of Galkayo. Farole was
quick to blame Galmudug for the crime and Galmudug was quick to blame
Puntland. Farole removed the governor of the Puntland portion of the Mudug
region, of which Galkayo is the capital.
After a tense two weeks following the executions, Farole and Puntland's vice
president, Gen. Abdisamad Ali Shire, vowed to remain in Galkayo until a new
and "representative" district council was elected there. On August 28, the
town's district council elected a businessman and political newcomer,
Abidrahman Mohamoud Haji Hasan, to the post of mayor in a 22-9 vote over
ex-mayor Ahmad Ali Salad. The reformulated administration also included the
new position of district council chairman, providing a check on the mayor's
power. Farole promised that he would appoint a new governor, security
committee and police comander for the Mudug region.
On August 31, women's groups and some clan leaders held a demonstration
protesting Hasan's election and claiming that he was an "Islamist
hardliner." Hasan responded that he was aware that the security situation in
Galkayo was "imperfect," and called upon women's groups to "work for peace
and stability." Voice of Mudug radio quoted elder Ali Ka'an as saying that
the election of Hasan was a "coup against democracy." Hasan accused Voice of
Mudug of "exaggerating the situation." Since then, open-source monitoring
has yielded no further reports of post-election backlash. On September 4,
Farole named Ahmed Ali Salad, the losing candidate in the mayoral election,
as governor of Mudug, along with a new police commander.
The purpose of the foregoing account was not to show that Farole was good or
evil, right or wrong, or successful or unsuccessful in restoring Galkayo's
stability; but to show that, when faced with a crisis, he took immediate
responsibility, moved to the center of the conflict, and was instrumental in
negotiating a settlement based on consultation. One of the major points of
the I.C.G.'s briefing is that the Puntland political class has abandoned
traditional methods of consultative conflict resolution. That was certainly
not the case in Galkayo, where Frarole attempted to balance local interests
in a pragmatic fashion. Although he beefed up security forces in the town
and the local security committee declared a state of emergency and a curfew,
the situation was at least temporarily resolved by bargaining. Most
importantly, Farole did not seek to insulate himself from the crisis and to
let it fester, nor did he impose a solution by main force - he took a fully
engaged middle way and did not seek cover by relying on proxies.
While he was in Galkayo attempting to ease political tensions there, Farole
moved to pursue the second of his vital interests for Puntland - securing
its autonomy as a self-governing state in Somalia, pending a national
political reconstitution based on a federal system of government that would
maximize Puntland's self-rule.
Farole's bid for Puntland's autonomy came as a result of the crisis in
Somalia's internationally recognized bit ineffective Transitional Federal
Government (T.F.G.), which had lost control of southern and central Somalia
to an armed Islamic opposition, and was under pressure from Western donors
to reach out to as many interests in Somalia as it possibly could. Farole
had distanced himself from the T.F.G. due to the latter's commitment to a
more centralist political formula, but he was ready to deal when the
opportunity arose.
On August 8, the T.F.G.'s prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke,
paid his first official visit to Puntland, where he met for two weeks with
Farole to negotiate an agreement on Puntland's relations with the T.F.G. and
its status in Somalia. On August 23, the two leaders signed a fifteen-point
accord that fulfilled Farole's essential aims and gave little, if anything,
to the T.F.G.
Most importantly, the Galkayo agreement affirmed the T.F.G.'s recognition of
Puntland as "a stable and self-governing part of Somalia," and, indeed, as
a "model for the Federal system in Somalia;" and committed the T.F.G. to
forming "more autonomous states in Somalia," and encouraging "the only
existing State in Somalia, which is Puntland." In addition to the T.F.G.
signing on to Farole's conception of federalism, the accord stated that the
commision for finalizing a permanent constitution for Somalia would be
based in Puntland's capital Garowe; that Puntland would be "allowed to
participate as an administration in all meetings regarding the State's
interests;" and that the command of anti-piracy forces would be established
in Puntland.
The Galkayo agreement represented a symbolic victory for Farole rather than
a practical gain. Not only is it ineffective and embattled; the T.F.G. is
also severely divided. Indeed, the agreement has already begun to unravel,
with factions in the T.F.G. opposed to it reportedly moving to unseat
Sharmarke. On September 13, the T.F.G.'s deputy prime minister and fisheries
minister, Abdirahman Ibbi, and Djibouti's transport minister, Ali Hasan
Bahdon, signed an agreement to establish an anti-piracy training center in
Djibouti in return for Djibouti's promised military aid to the T.F.G. Ibbi
remarked that Djibouti's president, Ismail Omar Guelleh had requested the
provision on the training center in meetings with the T.F.G.'s president,
Sh. Sharif Sh. Ahmad. The Farole administration predictably saw the Djibouti
agreement as a violation of the provision of the Galkayo accord that
specifies Puntland as the site of the anti-piracy command. It did not help
that Ibbi told Somaliweyn Media that putting the anit-piracy command in
Puntland would be like trusting "a hyena to take goats to the grazing
field."
To repeat, the point here is not to argue that Farole gained a practical
success with the Galkayo agreement; the T.F.G. is too weak and divided to be
a genuine negotiating partner - rather, he succeeded in gaining recognition
of his position on Somalia's future political formula. That recognition can
be used as a marker by Puntland if and when a constitutional process for
Somalia gets underway.
As fpr the anti-piracy center, Farole would like to get closer to the
donors, who would pay for the base, but he knows that Djibouti is fast
becoming a dependency of the donors and has abandoned its traditional
neutrality and role as a presumptive honest broker (France and the United
States have military bases there , and Djibouti hosted the conference in
which Sh. Sharif Sh. Ahmed became president of the T.F.G., has promised
troops to support the T.F.G., and is providing training facilities for
T.F.G. security forces). Djibouti expects pay-back for doing the donors'
bidding. It remains to be seen which faction of the T.F.G. wins out in the
battle over the location of the base, and whether Sharmarke, who comes from
Puntland, will be able to hold his post as prime minister in the ongoing
power struggle. As analyst Liban Ahmad points out, the T.F.G. would suffer
a further loss if Puntland becomes disaffected.
The Galkayo agreement is also an indication that another of the I.C.G.'s
judgments - that secessionist tendencies are growing in Puntland's political
class - should at least be put in question. If there are such tendencies,
Farole's move is an effort to blunt them.
Conclusion
The I.C.G. concludes its briefing with the following judgment: "To halt the
precipitous decline in security and political stability, Puntland must
improve governance and re-establish the intra-clan cohesion it enjoyed at
its inception. Recent moves by the Farole government are not encouraging."
Without going into the details of Farole's efforts to bolster security and
achieve stability, which are abundant, one would be hard pressed to find
evidence of a continued "precipitous decline" in Puntland during the first
nine months of his administration; indeed, there is no evidence to that
effect. If that is so, it is neither here nor there whether Farole has made
"encouraging" moves from the viewpoint of the I.C.G.'s structural-reform
agenda, since the crisis/problem that it is meant to address does not exist.
Farole's victory in a peacful transition of power was already evidence that
Puntland's political community had arrested the cycle of fragmentation that
had become acute before the bargaining process that made the transition
possible. It is not Farole who arrested the cycle, but the very political
class that the I.C.G. indicts. After the election, Farole moved to
incorporate his rivals into his administration, achieving sufficient success
to form a governing coalition that has held together.
As the leader of a coalition, Farole needs to be a consensus builder, rather
than a radical reformer, in order to achieve the aims of holding Puntland
together and preserving its autonomous status. Confronted by instability (to
say the least) to the south, and now to the west in Somaliland, his first
task is to insulate Puntland from surrounding conflicts that might upset the
domestic balance of interests. That in itself is a tall order.
The I.C.G. report paints a drastic picture of fragmentation and then expects
Farole to act boldly to change Puntland's political system - this is an
example of policy pushing that has run off the rails and into a field of
fantasy.
The yawning chasm between the I.C.G.'s definition of Puntland's situation
and its policy recommendations can be bridged by attending to Farole's
perception of Puntland's interests and his strategy for achieving them. From
that viewpoint, the situation is fraught with difficulties and dangers, but
not so dire as to demand a desperate stab in the darkness of structural
reform.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein, Professor of Political Science, Purdue
University
<mailto:weinstem@purdue.edu> weinstem@purdue.edu
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