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Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
http://www.pinr.com [email protected]
+1 (312) 242-1874
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24 May 2007
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Somalia: The Dynamics of Post-Intervention Political Failure
Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
http://www.pinr.com
(...)
"Conclusion
"After a year's political roller coaster ride attended by many casualties, Somalia now and for the foreseeable future appears to be running along a bumpy track that has become familiar in Afghanistan and Iraq, on which a weak and dependent central government imposed by external powers and insufficiently supported by them attempts to preserve itself against a fragmented opposition and disparate local power centers, and strives to concede as little as possible to its protectors and donors, each of which has its own interests and none of which has the political will to change the situation."
(((Okay, there needs to be a name for this political situation, since there are so many examples of it and it's clearly spreading. "Occupied Failed State." "Permanent
Insurgency." "Globalized Civil War Zone." Something like that, but punchier.
It's what happens when major powers send or cajole guys with bayonets to restore law and order and, in response crime and terror skyrockets and institutionalizes.
"The Global Terror On War," where you've got a war-on-terror and the terror just blatantly and obviously has the upper hand and nobody wants to admit it.)))
"With no strong unifying domestic force on the horizon, PINR expects continued devolution accompanied by half-hearted efforts to arrest it. At present, the hopes of the West rest on the N.R.C., which will be the 15th attempt in as many years to bring stability to Somalia through a clan-based formula. If the conference actually comes off and it is "inclusive," it will initiate a protracted process with uncertain results. If it is not held or it is not broadly representative, Somalia's political collapse will persist.
(((Well, it doesn't take genius to predict failure number 16.)))
"From the perspective of the West, the presence of radical Islamism in Somalia makes it more difficult to abandon the country as the great powers did after the fall of Siad Barre's dictatorship and the failure of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s. Yet there is no sign that the new danger will trigger sufficient commitment to overcome it." (((How much extra "commitment" is there after Iraq and
Afghanistan, not to mention Chechnya, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip? And any other place that really interests John Robb of "Brave New War.")))
"During the first three weeks of May, factional and inter-clan conflict continued to break out in various regions of Somalia, accompanied by crime and a spike in piracy (((yum))) that has imperiled the delivery of humanitarian aid. Tensions between the executive and parliament, as well as clan conflict, also surfaced in Somaliland and Puntland. PINR simply notes these developments without going into details, because they continue a pattern that has been documented in previous reports. [See: PINR's Africa Archives]
"The T.F.G.'s protectors – Addis Ababa and Kampala – are in a bind and out on a limb, respectively. Their limited efficacy will diminish over time. Donor powers will not open their purse strings widely unless they see progress, but their caution will help ensure that progress is not forthcoming." (((Addis Ababa, Kampala, Washington, London, same story all over really.)))
"The problem is that Somalia is too strategically important for too many actors to be left to work out its own political destiny, yet not important enough to call forth whole-hearted commitment to its future."
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
