Somalia: Current Conflicts and New Chances for State-Building

Somalia: Current Conflicts and New Chances for State-BuildingSTUDY

In January 2009, the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from South-Central Somalia and the election of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as new president opened a window of opportunity for creating peace and a functional government in Somalia. The "Djibouti peace process", initiated by the UN's Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, in 2008, has borne some fruit: After months of difficult negotiations, the Transitional Federal Government and parts of the armed opposition organised in the "Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia" agreed on a ceasefire and an expansion of the transitional parliament to include opposition members.

The new political arrangement was welcomed by most international actors (including the U.S., much of whose Somalia policy of recent years seem to have been informed by the tunnel vision of the "war against terror"), even though the international community's readiness to support the new government remains limited, due to past negative experiences. At the same time, it remains unclear how much support the new president – a "moderate Islamist" and co-founder of the Union of Islamic Courts against which Ethiopia had intervened in late 2006 – can muster among the armed groups and militias on the ground. The radical Islamists of the "al-Shabaab" are likely to continue their fight even against the new president. Much will depend on the capacity of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to integrate as many militant groups as possible into the peace process.

The book "Somalia – Current Conflicts and New Chances for State-Building", edited and published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in mid-2008, analyses the history and present reality of prolonged state collapse in Somalia, focusing specifically on the reasons for the failures of the many attempts to rebuild the state so far. It analyses the largely successful peace-making process in Somaliland (the northwestern part of the country, striving for independence), takes a closer look at internal and external actors taking part in peace-making and rebuilding efforts and suggests paying more attention to Somali civil society and gender dynamics.

Contents:

• Dirk Spilker: Somalia on the Horn of Africa. National and Regional Lines of Conflict in the Past and Present
• Ken Menkhaus:  Understanding State Failure in Somalia: Internal and External Dimensions
• Mohammed Hassan Ibrahim & Ulf Terlinden: Making Peace, Rebuilding Institutions: Somaliland – A Success Story?
• Jabril Ibrahim Abdulle: Civil Society in the Absence of a Somali State
• Shukria Dini: Gender, Society, and Politics in Somalia
• Axel Harneit-Sievers: The Heinrich-Böll-Foundation in Somalia: Engagements and Experiences
• Appendix: Timeline; Persons, Organisations, Institutions

Somalia - Current Conflicts and New Chances for State Building
edited by Axel Harneit-Sievers and Dirk Spilker
Berlin: Heinrich Böll Stiftung 2008
(= Promoting Democracy under Conditions of State Fragility, Vol. 6)
ISBN 978-3-927760-87-5

Download the complete publication (132 p., 2.1 MB, PDF)