Somalia: Creating Space for Fresh Approaches to Peacebuilding

yne clos
12 Ibid, p. 390.
13 Debra Javeline discusses just
how crucial framing is to the
success of social movements in
her analysis of the failure of wage
arrears protesters in Russia. Debra
Javeline, Protest and the Politics
of Blame: The Russian Response to
Unpaid Wages, (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press,
2003), pp. 194-197.
14 Mohammed Ayoob echoes this
line of thought in his argument
that in the countries of the global
South, there are limited viable
discourses of resistance to this
Northern imposition: in these
countries, nationalism is affiliated
with the revanchist state apparatus
which governs by oppression.
Socialism is an impoverished
term lacking in credibility, and
the human rights discourse is
sterile, static, and ineffective due
to its institutionalization within
the current global paradigm.
Islamism has emerged as a
discourse of resistance to the
North par excellence, as a way
to frame the rejection of and
challenge to imposed forms
of governance and economics.
Ayoob, “Challenging Hegemony:
Political Islam and the North-
South Divide”, pp. 629-632.
15 There are several scholars
who write about this discursive
battle prolifically. See for example
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd,
Armando Salvatore, Mark Levine,
John Esposito, and Francois
Burgat.
16 Statebuilding should here
be understood in its most basic
and skeletal form, the definition
preferred by political scientists
rather than the dynamic process
referred to by historians. Political
scientists utilize this term to
mean the literal crafting of an
institutional authority apparatus
in a given territorially-bound
society. Such institutional apparati
possess three basic principles
of control: popular legitimacy
granted via the social contract,
meaning that they rule with the
consent of the governed; territorial
sovereignty, as recognized by
international law and a monopoly
on the use of violence. This more
basic meaning of the term is the
one that I am granting to it in
this essay.
17 For an example of the
obstinacy with which this solution
is pushed forward, refer to UN
Security Council Resolutions 1725
(6 December 2006) and 1964 (22
December 2010).
22
As the dust settled following the series of battles resulting from the invasion,
al-Shabaab came to control three of the eighteen seats of the Executive Council of
the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) administration. Three more seats went to other
Islamists within the al-Shabaab umbrella. 12 This is an example of how al-Shabaab
exploits and/or acquires resources to its own advantage.
Utilizing social mobilization literature sheds some light on the success of al-
Shabaab and its current high level of influence within Somalia. This is a direct
consequence of the masterful way that al-Shabaab apportions its resources so
as to exploit them to the fullest amount, as well as an attribute of the superior
framing performed by the group in order to recruit sympathy for its programs
from the people of South-Central Somalia. Its successful framing is the key to the
proliferation of al-Shabaab. To understand this, it is important to examine how
al-Shabaab came to interpret the national psychology of Somali society by explaining
its own movement dynamics and in apportioning blame for the problems
faced by Somalia today. 13
It is also necessary to analyze the underlying discursive battle between al-
Shabaab and the various Islamist movements around the world on one side, and
the hegemonic war-on-terror language from an international community dominated
by the military prowess of the United States, on the other. This is a duel
of competing frames, where Islamists have adopted their “religious” vocabulary
as the only remaining viable challenge to a neoliberal, selectively secular North
driven by globalized capital and bloated defense budgets, exported with a narrowly
defined type of democracy. This is seen as the paragon of the “modernity”
that the developing world needs for the establishment of peace and stability. 14
Islamism is a counter hegemonic vocabulary that has proliferated from Hassan
al-Banna in Egypt to encompass a global alternative to such modernization
theories from the North. This is not to reduce Islamism, a dynamic and varied
amalgam of ideologies of change to a single category or definition. As a multinational,
multicultural phenomenon, Islamism defies a single demarcation. But for
the purposes of study may be reduced to a single frame of direct discursive challenge.
15 What unites its myriad currents is the persistent voice of rejection toward
the imposed forms of the North. Islamist movements elucidate their own version
of modernity as a way of framing the issues in their societies. Al-Shabaab is no
different and is actually an example of this trend.
Framing in the Somali context
The international community has insisted on statebuilding 16 as the panacea to
the various issues plaguing Somalia, demanding the propping up of the Transitional
Federal Government (TFG) in spite of its complete failure to establish itself
within the country. 17 The original attempt to impose a state was a consequence of
the Djibouti peace process, which created the Transitional National Government
(TNG). After the September 2001 attacks in the US, this government came to be
vilified as an Islamic front because of the successful propaganda of Ethiopia and
a few warlords, who framed it as being run by religious fanatics (a nonviolent Is-