Somalia: Creating Space for Fresh Approaches to Peacebuilding

yne clos
44 Marchal, “A Tentative Assessment
of the Somali Harakat
Al-Shabaab”, p. 394.
45 Ibid, pp. 397 and 399.
46 For a discussion of Al-
Shabaab’s intimidation tactics,
refer to Marchal, “A Tentative
Assessment of the Somali Harakat
Al-Shabaab”, pp. 398-399.
47 Monica Duffy Toft, “Getting
Religion? The Puzzling Case of
Islam and Civil War”, International
Security 31 (4) Spring 2007:
pp. 97-131, with the discussion of
outbidding taking place on pp.
102-103.
48 Marchal has a detailed and
brilliant analysis on this point.
See Marchal, “A Tentative Assessment
of the Somali Harakat
Al-Shabaab”, pp. 392-395.
49 Anonymous Somali. “Islam
and Somali Social Order”, in
Whose Peace Is It Anyway?: Connecting
Somali and International
Peacemaking, eds. Mark Bradbury,
Sally Healy, Accord: An International
Review of Peace Initiatives,
Issue 21, on pp. 94-97, (London:
Conciliation Resources, 2010),
pp. 96-97.
50 There are many authors
who could be cited to back up
this statement. For example, see
Shakman Hurd, The Politics of
Secularism in International Relations,
p. 54.
51 Oliver Richmond is one prominent
scholar on this topic who
posits an alternative approach,
arguing that it is important for
the international community to
include local voices and perspectives.
Such inclusion will provide
flexibility to an otherwise unbending
frame that is much needed in
efforts at establishing sustainable
peace worldwide. See Richmond,
“Conclusion: Strategic Peacebuilding
beyond the Liberal Peace”, in
Strategies of Peace: Transforming
Conflict in a Violent World, eds.
Daniel Philpott and Gerard F.
Powers, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), pp. 353-368,
citation from 362-365, for a more
detailed version of this argument
that I am merely mentioning here.
52 Quoted in Armando Salvatore
and Mark Levine,“Introduction:
Reconstructing the Public Sphere
in Muslim Majority Societies,” in
Reconstructing the Public Sphere
in Muslim Majority Societies, eds.
Armando Salvatore, Mark Levine,
1-25 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), 16.
53 Raymond William Baker,
“Building the World’ in a Global
Age”, in Reconstructing the Public
Sphere in Muslim Majority Societies,
eds. Armando Salvatore, Mark
Levine, pp. 1-25 (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p.
110. > > >
26
the international interventionists trying to impose a foreign order. It carried out
dichotomous framing of “us versus them”, which easily promotes violence while
preventing a more nuanced view of the role of international actors in Somalia
from impacting the frame of the conflict. 48 Now al-Shabaab can point to outsiders
as dangerous, marginalize its own moderate voices, and utilize the trans national
network of resources afforded to Islamist groups by the outgrowth of al-Qaeda
and the alienating maneuvers of the US in the war on terror.
The US, by adopting an equally stark frame of friends and enemies that makes
Ethiopia the paragon of purity in the Horn of Africa and any violent challenges to
it illegitimate religious extremism, has magnified the truly dangerous aspects of
the al-Shabaab organization and alienated the positive effects of it that present a
model for the solution to Somalia’s problems. The terror designation is actually
preventing the transformation of al-Shabaab away from hardened dogmatism
and toward more pragmatic deal brokering, with consequences that seem dire for
peacebuilders within Somalia.
Some Somalis, as in the article in Accords from 2010 pertaining to Somalia by
the anonymous Somali, believe the presence of terrorists in authority positions,
negatively impacts the country’s current situation. 49 Such views are both myopic
and unfair. They do not understand the fundamental reality of current international
politics, where the hegemony of the North imposes its standards upon the
South. All groups that are outside the clearly delineated, and in the case of Somalia,
imported rules of acceptable behavior, are a priori criminal and to be rejected
as barbaric, pre-modern, and/or dangerous. 50
The global North has a framework for how to end civil wars through negotiations,
which it then imposes upon every conflict situation as the best solution
without truly studying the singular demands of each context. 51 Any challengers to
this cookie-cutter methodology are discredited as gotiations, which it then imposes
upon every conflic narrow lens. The sociologist Talal Asad avers that all outside
voices, which include Islamist ones in this scheme, must “disturb the peace” to
be heard. 52
As Raymond Baker tells us, Islamism demonstrates that excluded people will
employ whatever means they have available to “slow” things down to the point
where they are permitted to join in. 53 Francois Burgat puts this reality of unfairness
most succinctly: In order to avoid having to recognize the legitimacy of
any calling into question of their respective hegemony and having to share their
power accordingly, the well-heeled of world politics are thus often content to discredit
the resistances with which they are confronted merely by using the slur of
“exoticism” against the lexicon employed by those who are voicing them. 54
The position taken by the anonymous Somali is, in this manner, shortsighted.
He/she overlooks the important demonstration effect that al-Shabaab may have
in Somali politics as other social actors examine their cross clan makeup and
their political dynamism. Al-Shabaab is able to be pragmatic to an extent and to
present a new way of “being political” in its society. This should not be simply
dismissed as an Islamist terrorist aberration to be avoided. Despite its numerous