Stabilization, Extraversion and Political Settlements in Somalia

RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE | PSRP
Stabilization, Extraversion
and Political Settlements
in Somalia
Tobias Hagmann
RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE | PSRP
Stabilization, Extraversion and

Political Settlements in Somalia
TOBIAS HAGMANN
Published in 2016 by the Rift Valley Institute
26 St Luke’s Mews, London W11 1DF, United Kingdom
PO Box 52771 GPO, 00100 Nairobi, Kenya
THE RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE (RVI)
The Rift Valley Institute (www.riftvalley.net) works in eastern and central Africa to bring
local knowledge to bear on social, political and economic development.
THE POLITICAL SETTLEMENTS RESEARCH PROGRAMME (PSRP)
The Political Settlements Research Programme, made up of a North-South Consortium
of five organizations, examines how political settlements come into being, how open and
inclusive they are, and how internal and external actors shape them.
THE AUTHOR
Tobias Hagmann is an associate professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Business
at Roskilde University in Denmark.
RESEARCHER
Naima Elmi contributed to the research for this report. She bears no responsibility for its
contents.
DISCLAIMER
This report is an output from the Political Settlements Research Programme (PSRP), funded
by the UK Aid from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the
benefit of developing countries. However, the views expressed and information contained in
it are not necessarily those of or endorsed by DFID, which can accept no responsibility for
such views or information or for any reliance placed on them.
CREDITS
RVI ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Philip Winter
RVI HORN OF AFRICA & EAST AFRICA REGIONAL DIRECTOR: Mark Bradbury
RVI GREAT LAKES PROGRAMME MANAGER: Michel Thill
RVI PROGRAMME MANAGER, PUBLICATIONS: Tymon Kiepe
EDITORS: Jason Mosley and Kate McGuiness
DESIGN: Lindsay Nash
MAPS: Jillian Luff, MAPgrafix
DIGITAL PRODUCTION: Connor Clerke
ISBN 978-1-907431-44-9
COVER: A woman at a gate decorated with the Somali flag inside Villa Somalia in
Mogadishu, the office and residence of the President of Somalia.
RIGHTS
Copyright © Rift Valley Institute 2016
Cover image © AU/UN IST 2010
Text and maps published under Creative Commons License
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Printed copies are available from Amazon and other online retailers, and from selected
bookstores.
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Map 2. Somalia
Contents
Summary 6
1. Introduction 8
2. Statebuilding in Somalia, now and then 16
3. Selected political elites and settlements 27
4. Somali statebuilding by extraversion 37
5. Conclusion 57
6. Policy implications 60
Glossary of acronyms, words and phrases 62

Bibliography 64
Map 1. Horn of Africa 3

Map 2. Somalia 4
Summary
Past and present attempts to stabilize war-torn Somalia through military,

diplomatic and humanitarian interventions highlight the entanglements
and interplay between local and foreign elites in policies and practices that
have frequently and effectively undermined statebuilding in south-central
Somalia. Existing analyses have focused predominantly on local actors
and internal dynamics to account for the continuous political disorder
in the former Somali Democratic Republic since 1991. In contrast, this
study highlights the role of external aid in dysfunctional statebuilding
efforts in Somalia. Rather than assuming that foreign actors are outside
the local and national political settlements, such actors should rather
be seen as an integral part of these processes. Consequently, the power
and interests of both Somali and international actors must be taken into
consideration in order to understand the shortcomings of stabilization
policies. Persistent tactics by Somali elites—mobilizing, appropriating
and redirecting foreign resources and agendas—have been at the core
of failed statebuilding. Such tactics form part of what French Africanist
Jean-François Bayart has described as ‘extraversion’. Because Somali
elites have regularly turned their participation in transitional govern-
ments into a resource appropriation tactic, statebuilding has become an
end in itself rather than the outcome of a more profound process of actual
state formation that would have entailed the centralization of coercion,
the generation of public revenue or the building up of popular support.
The report highlights four findings that partly echo existing scholarship
but also offer new insights for statebuilding and political settlements.
Firstly, in south-central Somalia a recurrent negative relationship between
external stabilization attempts and peaceful political settlements can
be observed. More significantly, coercive external statebuilding has
encouraged violent attempts to produce a political settlement within the
country. This holds particularly true for the time periods of 1991–1995 and
2006–2016 in south-central Somalia—and inversely, also for Somaliland
after 1991, where external statebuilding efforts were minimal. Secondly,
6
summary 7
while both political settlements and international interventions in

Somalia have changed over time, some of the forms of extraversion have
remained constant. The use of coercion, the appropriation of external
resources, flight and trickery have been obstacles to more peaceful
political settlements. They have led statebuilders to favour the creation
of formal institutions as a prerequisite—rather than an outcome—of
actual state formation. Thirdly, selective or partial recognition is the key
foreign policy mechanism by which authority and resources are bestowed
upon Somali constituencies in particular times and particular places.
This recognition has fueled political competition, rewarded abuse and
ineffective governance, and repeatedly encouraged the creation of brief-
case organizations—including, most recently, federal member states.
Lastly, the extraversion of foreign aid and external stabilization has been
so long-standing and entrenched that donors and the range of external
actors aiming to influence political developments in Somalia have become
an integral part of these processes.
1. Introduction
Since 1991, Somalis and foreigners have tried periodically to reconstruct

some form of centralized state authority in Somalia, with the intention
of reducing violence and insecurity and improving lives and livelihoods.
These attempts to stabilize and pacify war-torn Somalia have evolved
considerably over the past two and a half decades. Interventions have
included humanitarian relief, capacity-building, statebuilding, peace-
building, security sector support, and direct external military support for
counterterrorism and anti-piracy activities.1 Yet these efforts have been
undermined by a number of factors: evolving conflict dynamics from
warlord politics to militant Islamism; profound distrust, grievances and
trauma; the sheer number of people with a stake in Somali politics; and
repeated political and humanitarian crises. A broad range of factors has
contributed to the recurring political instability in post-1991 Somalia.
The most prominent among these are the segmentary social fabric of
Somali society—clannishness, tribalism—Somali distrust of centralized
and, more often than not, predatory state authority, constituencies that
benefit from armed conflict and ill-informed donor assistance and foreign
policy initiatives.
What accounts for the failure and limited success of external stabiliza-
tion policies in Somalia in terms of producing their desired outcomes?
What impact did these statebuilding interventions have, or not have,
on political actors, processes and events in war-torn Somalia? And to
what degree did they transform existing or potential political settle-
ments in the country? These questions can be addressed by focusing
both on the broader conditions in which stabilization policies have been
implemented in south-central Somalia and the recurrent patterns that
have characterized relations between select powerful elites. In examining
1 Somalia ‘has been the scene of some of the most ambitious, precedent-setting external
stabilization operations in the post-Cold War period’. Source: K. Menkhaus, ‘Stabilisation
and humanitarian access in a collapsed state: the Somali case’, Disasters 34/3 (2010),
320–41 (320).
8
introduction 9
these questions, this study pays particular attention to what the existing
area studies literature reveals, often implicitly, about evolving political
settlements in Somalia. Despite the establishment of the Federal Govern-
ment of Somalia (FGS) in August 2012, south-central Somalia remains in
a state of profound political fragmentation and state failure.
A political settlement means different things to different people.2 In
its most commonsense form, it refers to the process by which domestic
political and economic elites compete for power and, eventually, settle
on an agreement.3 More recently, political economists studying how
institutions govern violence and economic growth have further devel-
oped the concept.4 With particular reference to developing countries
characterized by clientelism,5 a political settlement can be defined as ‘a
combination of power and institutions that is mutually compatible and
also sustainable in terms of economic and political viability’.6 At the
macro level, a political settlement resembles a social order, capturing how
a given society at a given time manages violence, maintains stability and
produces welfare. At the micro level, a political settlement can be defined
as ‘an institutional structure that creates benefits for different classes and
2 See J. Di John and J. Putzel, ‘Political Settlements’, GSDRC Issues Paper, June 2009.
3 Hence the notion of ‘negotiated political settlement’, of which post-apartheid South
Africa is a good example.
4 Much of this literature draws on new institutional economics, which explains the role
of social and legal norms—institutions—in producing economic outcomes and public
goods. For example, see D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship
and Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 and D. C. North et al.,
Violence and Social Orders. A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
5 Clientelism describes patron-client relations in political decision-making and resource
allocation characterized by personal rule, coercion and the co-existence of legal-rational
and more informal rules. See R. Lemarchand and K. Legg, ‘Political clientelism and
development: a preliminary analysis’, Comparative Politics 4/2 (1972), 149–78 and G.
Erdmann and U. Engel, ‘Neopatrimonialism reconsidered: critical review and elaboration
of an elusive concept’, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 45/1 (2007), 95–119.
6 M. H. Khan, Political Settlements and the Governance of Growth-Enhancing Institutions,
London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2010, 4.
10 Stabilization, extraversion & political settlements in SOMAlia
groups in line with their relative power’.7 No stable political settlement

has emerged in post-1991 Somalia, since formal institutions are neither
functioning nor growth-oriented and significant power holders are not
aligned with formal institutions.8 Political settlements in Somalia have
thus been unstable, marked by coercion and a heavy dependence on inter-
national support. Consequently, this study refers to political settlements
not as a theoretical model or policy goal, as apparent in the 2013 Somali
Compact,9 but to capture evolving interactions between competing elite
groups, both domestic and foreign, which bargain over the distribution
of political power and economic rents.10
How have external stabilization efforts affected political settlements
in post-1991 Somalia? This study argues that ‘elite extraversion’11 is a
key causal mechanism and regular pattern that has continuously tied
external interventions to local and national Somali politics. Extra-
version is the process by which groups or individuals ‘employ their
7 Khan, Political Settlements, 20. Khan’s description of political settlements bears some
similarity to the idea of ‘political marketplace’ proposed by de Waal. See A. de Waal,
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power, Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2015 and A. de Waal, The Political Marketplace: Analyzing Political Entrepreneurs and
Political Bargaining with a Business Lens, Cambridge, MA: World Peace Foundation, 2014.
8 Somalia thus represents a ‘political settlement in crisis’ in which ‘most informal
“economic” activity is supported by or based on the threat of violence’. Source: Khan,
Political Settlements, 49.
9 For instance, the Somali Compact makes use of political settlements terminology.
The first priority of its peace and statebuilding goal is to ‘settle relations between the
federal government and existing and emerging administrations’ and work towards ‘the
emergence of a national political settlement’. Source: Federal Republic of Somalia, ‘The
Somali Compact’, Mogadishu: Somali Federal Government, 2013, 5.
10 Political settlements may also be described as ‘on-going processes of bargaining whose
[sic] end goals are often contested among elites, between elites and other internal actors,
and between elites, internal interveners and external interveners’. Source: C. Bell, ‘What
We Talk About When We Talk About Political Settlements. Towards Inclusive and Open
Political Settlements in an Era of Disillusionment’, PSRP Working Paper, University of
Edinburgh, 2015, 7.
11 J-F. Bayart, ‘Africa in the world: a history of extraversion’, African Affairs 99/395 (2000),
217–67.
introduction 11
dependent relationship with the external world to appropriate resources

and authority’.12 The term extraversion was first proposed by depen-
dency theorist Samir Amin in 1974 to describe the under-development
of peripheral economies in a global economy of unequal exchange.13
Jean-François Bayart further developed the concept to argue that Africa
had never been disconnected from the world but that, on the contrary,
its ruling elites had accustomed themselves to make their dependence
on the colonial metropoles and donors both productive and advanta-
geous.14 This observation fits squarely with present-day Somalia. While
the 1990s saw the use of extraversion strategies in Africa based on either
democracy or war,15 the 2000s have been marked by extraversion tactics
based on statebuilding, security and counterterrorism.16 In other words,
Somali and other elites convert the very ‘dynamics of dependence’ within
which they operate into assets.17 Bayart identifies six recurrent modes of
extraversion in the African continent: coercion, trickery, flight, interme-
diation, appropriation and rejection.18
Bayart’s concept of extraversion is particularly insightful for under-
standing not only Somalia’s relations with the external world but also the
frequent failures of successive stabilization attempts and their impacts
on local and national political settlements. The bulk of this report illus-
trates this point empirically and discusses it analytically by identifying
12 C. Peiffer and P. Englebert, ‘Extraversion, vulnerability to donors, and political

liberalization in Africa’, African Affairs 111/444 (2101), 355–78 (361), referring to Bayart,
‘History of extraversion’.
13 Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment,
New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1974.
14 Referring to Bayart’s ‘History of extraversion’, Kelsall writes, ‘the tendency of Africans
to seek outside support in their internal struggles, even going so far as to render their
own subjection and dependence into a deliberate strategy or mode of action’. Source:
‘Going with the Grain in African Development?’, Discussion Paper No. 1, Africa Power
and Politics Programme, London: Overseas Development Institute, 2008, 9.
15 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’.
16 S. Suri, ‘Barbed Wire on our Heads’: Lessons from Counter-terror, Stabilisation and Statebuilding
in Somalia, London: Saferworld, 2016.
17 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 234.
18 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 254–55.
recurring extraversion strategies that have marked statebuilding and

political settlements in Somalia since 1991. This study demonstrates that
extraversion strategies are central to any understanding of stabilization
and statebuilding in Somalia. In so doing, this report uses a historical
and contextual approach that adopts some critical distance from the
current stabilization policy rhetoric. It also adopts a methodological
standpoint according to which a priori, clear-cut distinctions between the
terms ‘local’, ’national’ and ‘global’ make little sense when observing a
noticeably transnational space, such as contemporary Somalia, which is
marked by a multiplicity of state and non-state actors who exert de facto
sovereignty. Much of the general peace and statebuilding literature has
prioritized international causal factors in its analyses.19 The interpret
ation in this study shifts the focus towards the relation between local
and national elite settlements and their interaction with external actors.
The main argument is that local political settlements in Somalia cannot
be studied independently of foreign actors and their agendas, because
political rule in the country has been strongly internationalized.20
Some disclaimers are warranted to delimit the geographical and
analytical scope of this argument. Firstly, the bulk of this study and
the political processes reviewed refer to south-central Somalia, where
external intervention and concomitant extraversion tactics have been
most prominent.21 The report does not provide an account of the signifi-
cantly different political trajectories of Somaliland and Puntland. These
two entities emerged not primarily on the basis of extraversion but rather
19 O. Tansey, ‘Evaluating the legacies of state-building: success, failure, and the role of
responsibility’, International Studies Quarterly 58/1 (2014), 174–86 (176).
20 See K. Schlichte, ‘Uganda, or: the internationalisation of rule’, Civil Wars 10/4
(2008), 369–83. A political settlement may be described as ‘transnationalized’ if
and when external forces have significant influence over its resources, actors and
dynamics of interaction. Source: P. Yanguas, ‘The influence and responsibility of aid in
transnationalized political settlements’, paper presented at the International Studies
Association annual convention, New Orleans, 18–21 February 2015, 5.
21 South-central Somalia does not represent a coherent political entity but is used
to denominate the territory encompassing the regions of Lower Jubba, Middle Juba,
Gedo, Bay, Bakool, Lower Shaballe, Banaadir (Mogadishu), Middle Shabelle, Hiraan and
Galguduud.
introduction 13
were driven by local elite bargaining and pacts, revenue generation and
statebuilding that produced durable—if not entirely stable—political
settlements.22 In many ways Somaliland represents the perfect counter-
example to south-central Somalia in terms of the ability of the former
to achieve peace and statebuilding with minimal external involvement.23
Secondly, Bayart’s concept of extraversion should not be understood as
a normative one that demonizes, in this case, Somalis for the failures of
state reconstruction. Rather extraversion is used in this study to describe
the processes by which international interventions are locally embedded
via the strategic use that actors make of them.24 This approach highlights
the room for manoeuvre available to those involved in transforming
external recognition and resources into local clout. To emphasize the
agency of local political entrepreneurs does not downplay the fact that
they operate in a state of dependence vis-à-vis the outside world. Extra-
version only takes place because of the paramount role of international
actors, resources and agendas in state-centric stabilization, which
ultimately accounts for this dependency. While there is a tendency to
either blame local actors—Somalis—or external interveners—the inter-
national community—this analysis is premised on the assumption that
the agency of both must be taken into account.25
Finally, stabilization is used both in its narrower and broader sense. In
its narrower sense, stabilization refers to the ongoing counter-insurgency
and statebuilding attempts by the Federal Government of Somalia, its
donors and its allies. In its broader sense, stabilization refers to more
22 This applies to Somaliland more than to Puntland, which has drifted towards
extraversion in the past.
23 See T. Hagmann and M. V. Hoehne, ‘Failures of the state failure debate: evidence from
the Somali territories’, Journal of International Development 21/1 (2009), 42–57.
24 This may also be understood as ‘selective adoption’. See J-P. Olivier de Sardan,
Anthropology and Development: Understanding Contemporary Social Change, London: Zed
Books, 2006, 145.
25 This point is made in J. Trapido, ‘Africa’s leaky giant’, New Left Review, 92 March–April
(2015), 5–40 (8). Although in ‘History of extraversion’, Bayart describes extraversion as
typically African, it really has been and is practised to different degrees by societies and
governments around the globe.
generic peace and statebuilding efforts pursued by Somalis and external

actors. Although the implementation of stabilization policies and
programmes in Somalia is intrinsically linked to and affected by local
and sub-national clan dynamics, this is a phenomenon this study does
not document empirically. The everyday political effects and workings
of the visible and invisible boundaries that result from Somali society’s
segmentary genealogy, commonly referred to as ‘clan’, thus require
further analysis.
This report draws predominantly on existing published materials,
namely academic and policy analyses by authors with an established
track record of data collection in and outside of Somalia, who all publish
in English.26 These experts are predominantly Western anthropologists
and political scientists who typically conduct fieldwork either as indepen-
dent researchers or consultants.27 Because of long-standing problems of
access and security, the existing literature on Somali and international
politics is often fragmentary. It also has a bias towards studying impor-
tant and male-dominated political events or processes, which are of
interest to donors and diplomats. As is characteristic for such area
studies, they tend to be primarily empirical and at times use categories or
labels—for example, the terms ‘warlords’, ‘terrorists’ or ‘elders’—rather
uncritically. A solid body of literature exists on the tumultuous and ever
changing political history of present-day Somalia, as well as its political
and economic elites. Yet authors often favour the use of occupational
categories—for example businesspersons, government officials—or,
importantly, clan or geographical affiliations to identify particular elite
groups. Overall, Somali studies scholarship has a limited track record
of providing meaningful explanations for the emergence of particular
social, cultural, economic and political elites in the country. This reflects
26 Reports published by influential watchdogs like the International Crisis Group,
Human Rights Watch and the UN monitoring group are usually authored by experts who
match this profile.
27 This report also draws on selected interviews with aid officials working for NGOs and
international organizations who are currently involved in stabilization in Somalia. These
interviews were conducted in Nairobi in July and August 2015.
introduction 15
one of the enduring legacies of British colonial anthropology, which

has been preoccupied with clan genealogy, familial ties and, ultimately,
belonging, more than with processes of class formation, social stratifi
cation or capital accumulation.
The next section outlines contemporary statebuilding policies
in Somalia, dissects the stabilization policy paradigm and highlights
some of the past paradoxes of externally supported statebuilding in
the country. The third section identifies and discusses a select number
of elite groups—warlords, the business class and donors—that have
played important roles in shaping political bargains and unstable political
settlements since 1991. The fourth section introduces a range of persis-
tent extraversion strategies that have accompanied different phases of
statebuilding and stabilization in south-central Somalia. It illustrates
how entrenched extraversion has become in civil war Somalia, and also
demonstrates historical continuities with the pre-war period and, impor-
tantly, how extraversion has been an obstacle to more durable political
settlements among local and national elites. The conclusion discusses
the major findings of this study in view of the broader literature as well
as a number of policy considerations.
2. Statebuilding in Somalia,
now and then
Since 2013 stabilization has been the overarching policy goal of the Federal
Government of Somalia (FGS) led by President Hassan Sheikh Moham-
oud.28 The government’s Somali Compact in 2013, which grew out of the
2011 Busan New Deal principles, puts a premium on the need to stabilize
security institutions, territory and populations in Somalia.29 Unsur-
prisingly, this emphasis on stability reflects the FGS’s wish to survive
politically by expanding security and government control in Somalia’s
south-central regions.30 It also expresses donors’ renewed willingness
to support and bolster the fledging Mogadishu-based administration
against its violent competitors, particularly al-Shabaab.31 By adopting the
stabilization agenda, donors sought to move away from project based
interventions to a more comprehensive engagement that seeks to bolster
the search for a more durable political settlement in Somalia. Previous
transitional governments lacked international recognition and funding.
Donors have now aligned themselves with the FGS’s security agenda to
28 See L. Hammond, ‘Somalia rising: things are starting to change for the world’s longest
failed state’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7/1 (2013), 183–93.
29 The words ‘stabilize’, ‘stability’ and ‘stabilization’ are mentioned 16 times in the
Somali Compact. While it is possible that a particular area is stable under insurgent
administration, stabilization essentially is a euphemism for the need to expand a state
monopoly of violence.
30 Upon his nomination, President Hassan Sheik Mohamoud described his first three
priorities as ‘security, security, security’. Source: New Statesman, ‘President of Somalia
sets up three priorities: security, security, security’, 25 September 2012. The FGS built on
the TFG’s ‘National Security and Stabilization Plan’ between 2011 and 2014, which served
‘as the main conduit for alignment of both national and international assistances for the
implementation of prioritized, coherent, harmonized and sustained security, access to
justice and stabilization interventions in Somalia’. Source: Somalia Transitional Federal
Government, ‘National Security and Stabilization Plan’, Mogadishu: Somalia Transitional
Federal Government, 2011, 3.
31 R. Marchal, ‘A tentative assessment of the Somali Harakat Al-Shabaab’, Journal of
Eastern African Studies 3/3 (2009), 381–404.
16
statebuilding in somalia, now and then 17
such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish which is the driving force

behind current stabilization programmes in Somalia. The basic premise
of these programmes is that territory conquered by the African Union
Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and the Somali National Army (SNA)
must be stabilized in order to bring it permanently under government
control and prevent a renewed loss to al-Shabaab.
The Somali Minister of Interior and Federalism, working with donors
and consultants, is at the helm of the stabilization of what are referred
to as the ‘newly accessible areas’.32 How did the FGS and donors envision
the stabilization of south-central Somalia? On paper, stabilization was
to proceed in linear fashion, with district-level caretaker administrations
and peace and stability committees providing basic governance in the
first two months after liberation, followed by the formation of interim
district administrations.33 In reality, tensions between Mogadishu and
the regions, local conflicts, boundary disputes, infighting within the FGS
and the slowing down of the AMISOM offensive against al-Shabaab in
2015 thwarted stabilization in most of the regions.34
Current state-centric stabilization policies and measures implemented
by the FGS and the international community are an awkward mixture
of technocratic and political motifs. On the one hand, stabilization has
succumbed to the management logic of international aid as it has been
translated into project log-frames, deliverables, budgets, infrastructure
and capacity-building—giving it a technocratic and somewhat apolitical
32 Ministry of Interior and Federalism (MoIF), ‘Stabilization of the Newly Accessible
Areas Through Local Administrations’, Mogadishu: Federal Government of Somalia, 2013.
33 MoIF, ‘Stabilization’. MoIF documents on file with the author put the infrastructural
price tag of 25 districts to be recovered at USD 300,000 per district, covering the costs
for building an administration building, a court and a police station. The MoIF budgeted
an additional USD 242,000 per district for the running of the caretaker and interim
administration.
34 See International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia: Al-Shabaab—It Will Be a Long War’, Africa
Briefing no. 99, Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 26 June, 2014; M. Bryden
and T. Thomas, Somalia’s Troubled Transition: Vision 2016 Revisited, Nairobi: Sahan, 2015.
touch.35 On the other hand, stabilization activities motivated by counter-

terrorism concerns are by definition partisan. Donors who side with
the FGS’s counter-insurgency do so beyond the classic humanitarian
principles of impartiality and neutrality.36 Interestingly, this alliance
with the federal government is accompanied—in official rhetoric and
policy papers—by a terminology that emphasizes the need for dialogue,
reconciliation and inclusiveness.37 Another feature of current stabi-
lization efforts in Somalia is that it allows donors and implementing
agencies to articulate and promote their interventions as contributing to
stabilization, even though there is no agreement as to what exactly that
means.38 One reason donors approve of or commit themselves to stabil
ization is because it allows for ‘flexibility in both funding and character
of programmes’.39 As a result, ‘there are too many actors doing the same
thing under this umbrella of stabilization’, explains a UN staff member.40
The political nature of stabilization interventions is most obvious in
the quick impact and other projects that accompany the entry of AMISOM
and the SNA into newly recovered territories. In an attempt to win over
local communities and stop them backing al-Shabaab, these projects
aim at producing a peace dividend for local populations. In particular,
the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union have
35 In this sense, stabilization underwent a similar process of bureaucratization, just

as civilian peacebuilding did before it. See L. Goetschel and T. Hagmann, ‘Civilian
peacebuilding: peace by bureaucratic means?’, Conflict, Security & Development 9/1 (2009),
55–73.
36 Interview with senior NGO official working in partnership with the FGS, Nairobi,
22 August 2015.
37 While donors share FGS rejection of al-Shabaab, they took a less partisan position
with regards to the relationship between the FGS and the federal states, attempting to
broker agreements between the two.
38 Others argue that donors know what they want to achieve with stabilization in south-
central Somalia but that the prospects for achieving these goals have been unrealistic
from the onset.
39 P. Schouten and J. Bachmann, Mapping Stabilization in Policy and Practice. An overview of
stabilization as a concept and instrument in international interventions in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, South Sudan and Somalia, Nairobi: Rift Valley Institute, 2014, 3.
40 Interview with UN staff member, Nairobi, 21 August 2015.
funded projects in south-central Somalia in support of the ongoing

counter-insurgency. For instance, the Somali Stability Fund (SSF), a
multi-donor initiative financed by Denmark, the EU, the Netherlands,
Sweden, the UK and the United Arab Emirates, funds grassroots conflict
resolution, institution-building and governance projects in line with the
government’s stabilization policy.41 The United States created its own
stabilization programme in Somalia with the six-year (2010-2016) United
States Agency for International Development (USAID)–led Transition
Initiatives for Stabilization (TIS), which aims to ‘increase confidence in
all levels of government through targeted, strategic interventions that
improve service delivery and government responsiveness’.42 AMISOM
also implements high visibility quick impact projects, including the
construction of schools, health centres and police stations, with funding
from the EU and the UK Department for International Development
(DFID).43 The absence of systematic and independent assessments of
these stabilization projects makes it difficult to judge their effectiveness
and durability.44 While projects might deliver much-needed infrastruc-
tural or capacity-building results, their ability to deliver desired political
goals of stabilization is questionable.45
41 The SSF also works with Puntland and the Interim Jubba Administration, which was
created in February 2012 as an outcome of the London conference on Somalia. The SSF is
administered by the private consultancy firm Adam Smith International. DFID is both its
founder and major contributor. See www.stabilityfund.so.
42 United States Agency for International Development, ‘Transition Initiatives for
Stabilization (TIS)’, factsheet, Washington, DC: United States Agency for International
Development, 2014. The US embassy in Nairobi also funds the stabilization unit
within the Somali Ministry of Interior and Federalism and other activities such as the
rehabilitation of al-Shabaab defectors, dispute resolution, community development
projects, local governance and youth employment. Source: Interview with TIS
representative, Nairobi, 10 July 2015.
43 ‘Quick Impact Projects’, AMISOM. Accessed 28 February 2016, http://amisom-au.org/
quick-impact-projects/.
44 The same applies to most aid programmes in Somalia.
45 An interlocutor describes stabilization in Somalia as ‘stability on the cheap’,
referring to many programmes as ‘half-baked interventions’. Source: Interview with an
implementing partner official of the US embassy’s stabilization programme, Nairobi,
20 July 2015.
Stabilization as a global policy paradigm

Efforts to stabilize south-central Somalia with a combination of
counter-insurgency and short-term development interventions must be
understood within the broader context in which stabilization emerged as
a global policy paradigm. Since 2001, the United States, the UK and the
UN have been at the forefront of developing and implementing stabiliza-
tion policies in response to security crises in Afghanistan, the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Iraq and Somalia.46 The term ‘stabilization’ may
be described as ‘a combination of military, political, development and
humanitarian resources’ that seeks to ‘mitigate perceived security threats
posed by weak and fragile states’ such as Somalia.47 The adoption of
integrated approaches and the combination of civil and military elements
are often described as characteristic of ‘stabilization thinking’.48
Real-life stabilization programmes range from more conserva-
tive security interventions targeting terrorist and insurgent groups or
aiming to curb illicit flows of goods and people to those with poten-
tially transformative goals that include peacebuilding, reconstruction
and development.49 Moreover, it has proven notoriously difficult to
pinpoint what stabilization is—and is not—as the ‘concept itself remains
the subject of explicit and implicit contestation’.50 While stabilization
appears as self-explanatory, what its actual goals, methods and practices
46 See J. Bachmann, ‘Policing Africa: the US military and visions of crafting “good
order”’, Security Dialogue 45/2 (2014), 119–36; D. Balthasar, ‘Somaliland’s best kept secret:
shrewd politics and war projects as means of state-making’, Journal of Eastern African
Studies 7/2 (2013), 218–38; S. Barakat et al., ‘“A tradition of forgetting”: stabilisation
and humanitarian action in historical perspective’, Disasters 34/3 (2010), 297–319; and
Schouten and Bachmann, Mapping Stabilization.
47 S. Collinson et al., ‘States of fragility: stabilisation and its implications for
humanitarian action’, Disasters 34/3 (2010), 275−96 (281, 276).
48 R. Muggah, introduction to Stabilization Operations, Security and Development: States of
Fragility, ed. R. Muggah, London: Routledge, 2014.
49 Collinson et al., ‘States of fragility’, 276–78. The objective of stabilization is, of course,
stability, a goal that again amalgamates a broad variety of different policy interventions—
from counter-insurgency to good governance and improvement of the target population’s
general well-being.
50 Barakat et al., ‘A tradition of forgetting’, 298.
consist of is often vague. This is also the case with current stabilization
efforts in Somalia. In other words, who or what is to be stabilized, what
is stability and how can it be achieved or measured remain unclear.
The harshest critique of stabilization to date likens it to an ‘essentially
… conservative doctrine that lowers the horizons of peace and normalises
a military role in peace-support operations’.51 A cross-comparison of
historical stabilization programmes finds no evidence that security is
enhanced by the combination of military and development interven-
tions.52 Along with academics, practitioners agree that stabilization
‘although clearly defined in … handbooks and mission statements, has
been vaguely conceptualised’.53 Among some aid officials working in and
on Somalia, confusion reigns as to the exact meaning of stabilization. For
instance, a coordinator working for a Somali peacebuilding NGO admitted
that ‘we really don’t understand much of the stabilization strategies that
are being employed’ and ‘most of the interventions like stabilization
are only understood by the donors’.54 Stabilization discourse thus falls
into the category of buzzwords in international development, such as
‘participation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘resilience’, ‘sustainable development’
or ‘rights-based approach’.55 As a buzzword, the term ‘stabilization’ is
intuitively understandable and has a seemingly uncontested norma-
tive goal but it covers so many potential activities that it allows almost
everyone to be involved in stabilization, ultimately rendering it apolitical
51 R. Mac Ginty, ‘Against stabilisation’, Stability, 1/1 (2012), 20–30 (28).
53 W. Carter, ‘War, peace and stabilisation: critically reconceptualising stability in
Southern Afghanistan’, Stability 2/1 (2013), Art. 15, 1–20 (1).
54 Interview with a coordinator for a local peacebuilding NGO, Nairobi, 10 August 2015.
Similar sentiments were also expressed by participants at a conference on stabilization in
East Africa, held by the Rift Valley Institute in March 2014.
55 A. Cornwall and K. Brock, ‘What do buzzwords do for development policy? A critical
look at “participation”, “empowerment” and “poverty reduction”’, Third World Quarterly
26/7 (2005), 1043–60.
and meaningless.56 Consequently, stabilization is ‘as much a form of

branding’ as ‘a distinctive process’.57
In lieu of a concise definition of stabilization, this particular type
of external intervention may be understood along the lines of three of
its fundamental characteristics. Firstly, stabilization in Somalia—and
elsewhere—represents the present day donor response to failed states
and their accompanying ‘insecurity-underdevelopment problematic’.58
Secondly, stabilization as a practice is not entirely new but echoes
coercive colonial and postcolonial counter-insurgency and pacification
tactics, which in their contemporary form—as stabilization—bring
together civil and military efforts and thus involve a greater number of
actors, including, sometimes, private security companies.59 In essence,
stabilization is ‘about powerful states seeking to forge, secure or support
a particular political order, in line with their particular strategic objec-
tives’.60 Thirdly, stabilization is a fundamentally state-centred intention
that goes hand in hand with statebuilding, as it seeks to eliminate violent
competitors to the central state while increasing the loyalty to the state
of populations living in contested territories. In Somalia, as in Afghani-
stan, stabilization that serves the purpose of statebuilding ‘essentially
entails centralising power away from its current de facto and fragmented
distribution across regional and local powerbrokers to a “formal” state
governance system’.61
56 An official from the SSF describes stabilization as ‘a buzzword that is being constantly
used to refer to the work being done in Somalia’. Interview with SSF official, Nairobi,
6 August 2015.
58 Carter, ‘War, peace and stabilisation’, 7.
59 Barakat et al., ‘A tradition of forgetting’. Barakat et al. also point out that stabilization
rests on a key assumption; that is, a government that can control its territory and
contribute to the fulfilment of basic human needs—such as education, food, health care,
shelter and water—has the capacity to gain popular support and hence discourage or
defeat counter-insurgent actors.
60 Collinson et al., ‘States of fragility’, 280.
61 Carter, ‘War, peace and stabilisation’, 13.
Paradoxes of past statebuilding in Somalia

While stabilization is a relatively new policy concept, its objective and
modalities are reminiscent of past international statebuilding efforts in
Somalia. Current attempts to rebuild a Somali state can thus be gauged
on the basis of past experiences with similar exercises. The political
literature on stateless Somalia provides important insights into recur-
rent paradoxes of statebuilding, which can be summarized under three
broad headings. A first and major finding of the area studies literature
pertains to the unintentional consequences of external stabilization and
statebuilding in post-1991 Somalia. Analysts agree that efforts by the
international community to either initiate or support the restoration of
a centralized government in (south-central) Somalia have either sparked
more conflict or have proven ineffectual. Already during the UNOSOM
(United Nations Operations in Somalia) period that began in 1992,
centralized government was ‘the very thing that many Somalis have
been fighting against’.62 While state restoration in Somalia was both ‘an
apparent solution to the crisis and its most obvious underlying cause’,
‘externally driven stabilization efforts may in fact play in [sic] the prolon-
gation and exacerbation of the conflict—especially where they aspire to
disarmament and demobilisation’.63 A central problem in contemporary
Somalia is ‘the persistent international effort to re-establish a govern-
ment based on external rents’.64 In short, ‘formal state structures have
rarely been effective in independent Somalia’.65 Moreover, ‘the fixation
of the international community on state governance has inhibited the
development of other, more feasible, forms of governance’.66 Somalia may
62 M. Bradbury, The Somali Conflict. Prospects for Peace, Oxford: Oxfam UK, 1994, 4.
63 M. Bryden and J. Brickhill, ‘Disarming Somalia: lessons in stabilisation from a
collapsed state’, Conflict, Security & Development 10/2 (2010), 239–62 (240).
64 de Waal, Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, 110.
65 K. Menkhaus, ‘Somalia and the Horn of Africa’, background case study, World
Development Report 2011, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011, 11.
66 D. K. Leonard, with M. S. Samantar, ‘What does the Somali experience teach us about
the social contract and the state?’, Development and Change 42/(2 (2011), 559–84 (561).
be seen as a paradigmatic case study of ‘how large-scale international

intervention … perpetuates state failure’.67 In sum, foreign intervention
in Somalia has been as much a part of the problem as it has been a part
of the solution.68
A second insight concerns the significant role of foreign resources
and aid flows in Somalia’s postcolonial history, particularly after 1969.
The Siyad Barre government was a major recipient of both military and
humanitarian aid.69 By the mid-1980s, foreign aid accounted for 58 per
cent of Somali Gross National Product (GNP) while, by 1987, more than
70 per cent of government expenditure was funded by foreign aid.70
Although bilateral foreign aid came to a halt with the collapse of the
Siyad Barre regime in January 1991, external resources continued to flow
into the country, first in the form of relief aid, and later as part of military,
diplomatic and development programmes.71 For instance, between 2000
and 2008 Somalia ranked ‘among the top recipients of humanitarian
aid and has been the subject of eight CAPs [UN Consolidated Appeals
Process], more than any other country’.72 Humanitarian aid in Somalia
‘is the story of how external resources have been used as one of the
67 A. Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or budget for war? Evaluating the economic impact of
international intervention in Somalia’, International Journal, Spring (2012), 313–31 (314).
68 Some Somali intellectuals are deeply skeptical of these findings, which they perceive
as yet another postcolonial enterprise that aims to consign Somalia to a permanently
weak status.
69 O. Mehmet, ‘Effectiveness of foreign aid—the case of Somalia’, Journal of Modern
African Studies, 9/1 (1971), 31–47.
70 P. T. Leeson, ‘Better off stateless: Somalia before and after government collapse’,
Journal of Comparative Economics 36/4 (2007), 689–710, citing United Nations Development
Programme, National Human Development Report Somalia 1998, New York: United Nations
Development Programme, 1998, 57; and J. Mubarak, From Bad Policy to Chaos: How an
Economy Fell Apart, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
71 The UN spent USD 1.68 billion for UNOSOM I and II while US expenditure for
UNITAF totaled USD 2.2 billion. Source: Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or budget for war?’,
315.
72 M. Bradbury, State-building, Counterterrorism, and Licensing Humanitarianism in Somalia,
Medford, MA: Feinstein International Center, 2010, 14.
primary economic and political prizes in a resource-scarce country’.73

Because of this longstanding history of resource inflows, Somali political
and economic elites have employed numerous strategies of extraver-
sion centred on the appropriation of external rents and resources. The
constant inflow of resources as part of stabilization and statebuilding
interventions has generated an incentive structure that motivates elites
to fashion their rhetoric and actions in response to it.
The appropriation of external resources is not a purely material or
monetary process but also involves the spread and adoption of particular
discourses—for example, on federalism, democracy and counter-terrorism.
More importantly, resource allocation to and competition among Somali
groups reflects acts of selective recognition by which external actors—
whether an aid agency or a foreign government—formalize their working
relationship with a particular Somali constituency, such as a government,
a clan militia or a local NGO.74 Processes of recognition and exclusion are
thus at the heart of extraversion strategies in post-1991 Somalia as local
elites vie for greater recognition and, ultimately, more resources from
external actors. Somali elites both in the country and the diaspora are
not simply passive victims of state collapse but have actively mobilized
outside resources that are part of the political economy of statebuilding.
In other words, they have made their dependence productive by appropri-
ating external resources and adopting discourses that are part of external
state reconstruction efforts.
The third finding of existing political analysis of Somalia concerns the
multitude of actors and relationships—local, foreign and transnational—
that characterize Somali politics. Stabilization is thus not limited to,
for example, Western donors and local Somali communities or a partic-
ular Somali sub-national administration, but it occurs within a global
73 L. Hammond and H. Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space in Somalia: a scarce

commodity’, Humanitarian Policy Group Working Paper, London: Humanitarian Policy
Group, Overseas Development Institute, 2012, 14.
74 With regard to how this works in relation to the economy, see P. D. Little, Somalia:
Economy without State, Bloomington and Oxford: Indiana University Press and James
Currey, 2003, 167.
network of relations that includes the Somali diaspora, African troops,

foreign donors and local NGOs. The transnational character of the Somali
conflict thus brings into interaction a broad range of Somali interest
groups and regional countries—not just Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti,
Sudan, Uganda and Burundi but also Arab Gulf States, the United
States, various European countries and new donors such as Turkey. These
interactions are not only present in a regional conflict system but they
translate into a complex and constantly evolving network of relations of
both dependence and domination that connect Somali and non-Somali
actors. Consequently, strategies of extraversion—the conversion of
dependence into resources and authority—occur not only in a bilateral
fashion but all along the different links in this network. Political settle-
ments in Somalia thus reflect the often competing alliances, agendas and
actors that confront each other in what amounts to a transnational but
fragmented network of statebuilders in Somalia.
3. Selected political elites and
settlements
As external stabilization and local extraversion proceed in Somalia, who

are the elites that take part in the constantly evolving political settle-
ments? Political analysis is often focused on male-dominated elite politics
in Somalia, in particular governments, donors, clan leaders, politicians
and traditional authorities. But the term ‘elite’ is frequently used without
a proper theory or deeper understanding of the multiple processes behind
the formation of particular social, cultural, economic or political elites.
During the colonial period, elite status was predominantly achieved in
the sphere of administration, where one could obtain prestige, power
and wealth.75 After independence, a small urban bourgeoisie emerged
in parallel with the expansion of the Somali state.76 The increasing
commodification of the pastoral economy was a major driver of social
stratification and the emergence of merchant capital.77 Elite formation
is thus a long-term process that started before the civil war but was
strongly transformed and reconfigured by the war.78 It is also a distinctly
urban phenomenon that, again, is linked to global networks of trade and
aid but also to the flow of ideas, education and diaspora experiences.79
75 A. A. Castagno, ‘The Somali Republic’, in Political Parties and National Integration in
Tropical Africa, eds. J. Coleman and C. Rosberg, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1964.
76 R. Marchal, ‘The Post Civil War Somali Business Class’, Nairobi: European
Commission/Somalia Unit, 1996.
77 Samatar (1992, 1987) draws on pre-war empirical material to make this argument; see
A. I. Samatar, ‘Merchant capital, international livestock trade and pastoral development
in Somalia’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 21/3 (1987), 355–74 and ‘Social classes and
economic restructuring in pastoral Africa: Somali notes’, African Studies Review 35/1 (1992),
101–27.
78 Marchal, ‘Somali Business Class’.
79 For instance, ‘more than 60 percent of the country’s foreign aid in the 1980s ended
up in Mogadishu’ and that by 1990 ‘up to 95 percent of the country’s negotiable assets
[were] controlled by residents of Mogadishu’. Source: Little, Economy without State, 47.
27
Elites are conventionally identified by reference to their superior

economic, political and symbolic capital.80 In particular, an elite is ‘a
relatively small group within the societal hierarchy that claims and/or
is accorded power, prestige, or command over others’.81 Possession of
fixed and mobile resources, political clout and cultural distinction are
key indicators for determining who belongs to the dominant social strata.
These indicators can be measured empirically if the required statistical
and survey data are available. In the case of Somalia, however, such data
have been lacking for the past quarter century. Important questions
with regard to the nature of political and other elites in contemporary
Somalia thus remain partly unanswered. For instance, who is part of the
elite? Who partakes in elite bargains that shape political settlements?
What is the longevity of a particular elite individual or group? And what
does it take to be a member of the elite, however defined, in Somalia
today? This is likely to differ from place to place. As Somali society
experienced war-induced localization, privatization and globalization,82
so local governance arrangements have involved different sets of local,
national and international actors and coalitions in different localities.83
This then raises a new set of questions. If for instance elders, religious
leaders, neighbourhood associations, NGOs, diaspora returnees and
security forces, including al-Shabaab, shoulder the everyday governance
of a town or region, can they then be labeled as local elites? Or are
they instead elites of their respective clan lineage? Or maybe they are
80 P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, London: Routledge,
1984.
81 T. Salverda and J. Abbink, ‘Introduction: an anthropological perspective on elite
power and the cultural politics of elites’, in The Anthropology of Elites: Power, Culture, and the
Complexities of Distinction, eds. J. Abbink and T. Salverda, New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012, 1.
82 United Nations Development Programme, National Human Development Report Somalia
2001, New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2001.
83 Menkhaus, K. ‘Governance without government in Somalia: spoilers, state building,
and the politics of coping’, International Security 31/3 (2007b), 74–106. While it is often
argued that clan or clan elders are the primary guardians of local peace and security in
rural Somalia, clan designations hide the fact that members of the same lineage may
differ dramatically in terms of capital, education, gender, age or locality.
selected political elites and settlements 29
simply a pillar of the local political settlement without having real elite
status? Such questions suggest that in a place such as Somalia where
no national statistics exist, where mobility, displacement and political
flux are recurrent and where genealogy constantly blurs and hides other
social markers, the identification of local elites is difficult. While turbu-
lent political settlements have frequently led to changes in political
leadership—for instance, the dismissal and nomination of prime minis-
ters—some influential politicians and warlords have managed to recycle
themselves.84 Adjectives such as ‘local’, ‘national’, ‘political’, ‘economic’
or ‘religious’ all need to be lightly weighted when ascribing elite status
to any particular actor. Furthermore, Somali elites often wear multiple
hats—as elders, businesspeople, politicians, civil society leaders and so
on. In spite of these disclaimers, the following functional elite groups
are frequently mentioned in the literature.85
Warlords
Leaders of armed clan-based factions in south-central Somalia—particu-
larly in the 1990s—have commonly been referred to as ‘warlords’. Media
and popular accounts portray them as the politico-military elites that
ruined Somalia, after Siyad Barre’s defeat and the United Somali Congress
fell apart, and their militias embarked on a looting spree targeting other
clans and international organizations alike.86 Despite its popularity,
the warlord label is misleading as it glosses over important differences
between, on the one hand, faction leaders who once were ‘political
84 P. Chabal and J-P. Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument, Bloomington and
Oxford: Indiana University Press and James Currey, 1999, chapter 3. Examples of recycled
politicians are: Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, former speaker of parliament and since 2014
president of South West State; Ali Khalif Galaydh, former prime minister in the TNG
and now president of Khatumo state; and Muhammed Ibrahim Egal, prime minister of
independent Somalia and later on second president of the Somaliland Republic.
85 Other important elite groups that shape political settlements are civil society leaders,
politicians and Islamists, discussed in detail below. A more thorough review and
discussion of the role of specific sub-national elites in the various federal states is beyond
the scope of this report.
86 L. Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991, Philadelphia:
Pennsylvania University Press, 2013.
leaders with large constituencies’ and, on the other hand, those who
were ‘defecting military commanders with no political background’.87 As
violent entrepreneurs operating in a ‘market of violence’,88 they oversaw
militias that looted private and public property, operated protection
rackets and checkpoints, forced the business community to pay them and
provided security to visitors, including humanitarian agencies.89 Warlords
recruited and paid fighters from their own or closely related clan lineages.
At times they ‘emerged as the means by which a group of interests (often
rallying behind the name of a clan) could make a point, get recognition
from the international community (always in need of interlocutors), or
show autonomy or resistance towards another warlord’.90
The trajectory of Mogadishu-based warlords evolved from protectors of
clan interests91 to predators of weaker clan groups and security providers
for businesses. Although they were and are well known, none of the
warlords faced legal persecution in or outside of Somalia for the atroci-
ties committed by their militias. To the contrary, up to the mid-2000s,
external stabilization interventions sought to co-opt them into power-
sharing agreements and transitional governments. Already at the end
of United Nations Operations in Somalia II (UNOSOM II), the UN had
tried to appease some warlords through hand-outs and other favours.92
87 R. Marchal, ‘Warlordism and terrorism: how to obscure an already confusing crisis?
The case of Somalia’, International Affairs 83/6 (2007), 1091–106 (1093).
88 G. Elwert, ‘Markets of violence’, in Dynamics of Violence. Processes of Escalation and De-
escalation in Violent Group Conflicts, eds. G. Elwert et al., Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1997.
89 R. Marchal, ‘Les mooryaan de Mogadiscio. Formes de la violence dans un espace
urbain en guerre’, Cahiers d’Etudes africaines XXXIII/2 (1993), 295–320 and A. Ahmad, ‘The
security bazaar: business interests and Islamist power in civil war Somalia’, International
Security 39/3 (2014), 89–117.
90 Marchal, ‘Warlordism’, 1099. Warlords such as Ahmed Omar Jess or General
Mohamed Said Hersi Morgan ‘manipulated and aggravated’ clan rivalries. Source: Little,
Economy without State, 57.
91 I. M. Lewis explains that in Mogadishu in the early 1990s ‘only those who belonged
to strong clans and lineages could protect their lives and property successfully’. Source:
I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: nation and state in the Horn of Africa, Oxford,
Hargeisa and Athens: James Currey, Btec Books and Ohio University Press, 2002, 279.
92 Lewis, Modern History, 275.
In reality, the military clout of warlords has eroded since the mid-1990s
as their fiefdoms decreased in size because clan factions ‘fragmented
into smaller and smaller parts’.93 While the Arta peace and reconciliation
conference that led to the Somali Transitional National Government
(TNG) in 2000 excluded warlords, the subsequent Eldoret–Mbagathi
process recycled several warlords as members of parliaments and cabinet
ministers.94 The political settlement that emerged during this time was
one in which warlords ‘straddl[ed] … political and economic positions’
and at the same time managed to extort resources from foreign donors.95
The alliance between warlords and business was based on protection
and taxation. It lasted for about a decade until major Somali business
companies either took security into their own hands or contracted local
Shari’a courts for security provision. This compact between warlords
and influential businessmen lay at the core of Mogadishu’s political
settlements in the 1990s. It explains why beneficiaries of the war
economy—warlords who were able to provide protection in exchange
for taxes—had little interest in the revival of central state institutions.96
As interviews with dozens of elite business community members and
warlords active during UNOSOM reveal, ‘virtually all of the biggest
businesspeople in Mogadishu made their first fortunes from inter-
national aid contracts during the UNOSOM mission’.97 Because they
paid off warlords, they were able to transport relief aid across insecure
territories without risking their goods. Extraversion—the presence and
93 S. J. Hansen, ‘Civil War Economies, the Hunt for Profit and the Incentives for
Peace: the case of Somalia’, AE Working paper no. 1, Department of Economics and
International Development, University of Bath, 2007, 48.
94 For instance, Osman Hassan Ali ‘Atto’, a businessperson and former financier of
Aideed, who later became his opponent and then joined the TFG. See C. Webersik,
‘Mogadishu: an economy without a state’, Third World Quarterly 27/8 (2006), 1463–80
(1470).
95 R. Marchal, ‘A few provocative remarks on governance in Somalia’, Nairobi: United
Nations Development Office for Somalia (UNDOS), 1998, 3.
96 K. Menkhaus, ‘State collapse in Somalia: second thoughts’, Review of African Political
Economy 39/97 (2003), 405–22 and C. Webersik, ‘Fighting for the plenty: the banana trade
in Southern Somalia’, Oxford Development Studies 33/1 (2005), 81–97 (95).
97 Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or budget for war?’, 323.
appropriation of foreign aid—was crucial in the emergence of ‘a marriage

of convenience between warlords and the new business elite’ and this
‘elite pact continued long after UNOSOM and has kept Somalia in a state
of perpetual failure’.98 While warlords no longer dominate Somalia’s
political settlement as they did in the 1990s, they nonetheless shaped
elite bargains in ways that continue to be effective today.99
Business class
State collapse triggered the emergence of a private business class that
has subsequently asserted itself as a dominant political force in political
settlements in all parts of Somalia.100 The privatization of goods and
services, as well as the absence of public tariffs and taxes, gave rise to
risky but profitable business opportunities for importers, investors and—
later on—producers of consumer goods.101 The net result was capital
accumulation in the hands of a few very influential businesspeople
and companies that have a dominant market share. In the early 1990s,
the export of primary goods such as livestock, bananas and charcoal
grew significantly.102 In return, businesspeople imported consumer
goods, including textiles, sugar and cigarettes but also khat—a mildly
narcotic plant—and weapons.103 When the war in south-central Somalia
de-escalated in the mid-1990s, major financial companies from other
regions started to invest or reinvest in Mogadishu, collaborating with
98 Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or budget for war?’, 326. As proof of her argument, she also
cites the fact that southern Somalia’s major food aid contractors in 2009 had all made
their fortune in the early 1990s through ‘elite-level security arrangements with local
warlords’. Source: Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or budget for war?’, 323.
99 For example, see United Nations, Security Council, ‘Report of the Monitoring Group
on Somalia pursuant to Security Council resolution 1853 (2008)’, New York: United
Nations Security Council, 2010.
100 For an in-depth account of this development, see Marchal, ‘Somali Business Class’
and R. Marchal, ‘A Survey of Mogadishu’s Economy’, Nairobi: European Commission/
Somalia Unit, 2002.
101 Marchal, ‘Somali Business Class’.
102 Hansen, ‘Civil War Economies’, 58.
103 Webersik, ‘Economy without a state’.
warlords to ensure the protection of their property.104 Between the middle

and the end of the 1990s, many businesses re-established themselves in
Mogadishu, changing the structure of their businesses.105 This period
saw the establishment of more advanced sectors, including the spread
of telecommunication companies and the opening of small factories.106
To pursue business across clan fiefdoms and political boundaries, many
businesspeople adopted shareholder-based companies drawing on
religious and old student networks, creating ‘a potential for expansion
beyond areas dominated by a single clan’.107 The globalization of the
Somali diaspora—and henceforth of Somali capital—aided the rise of
business, with Mogadishu, Dubai and Nairobi acting as major hubs.108
Politically, the elite stratum of Somali business owners gradually
emancipated itself from the clan politicians and warlords who had
dominated the political settlement in the 1990s. While at first business-
people financed armed factions in return for protection,109 they began to
fund their own security forces and, later on, turned to local Shari’a courts
for protection.110 This allowed them to reduce security expenses, which
had diminished profitability. By 1999, the ‘business class had become an
independent political force’ as leading businesspeople stopped paying
104 Marchal, ‘Survey of Mogadishu’s Economy’.

108 N. Carrier and E. Lochery, ‘Missing states? Somali trade networks and the
Eastleigh transformation’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 7/2 (2013), 334–52 and P. D.
Little, Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives, Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014.
109 Hansen’s account of the Mogadishu business class in the early 1990s differs starkly
from Ahmad’s findings. While Ahmad describes a private sector that benefited from
political turmoil due to the above-mentioned alliance with the warlords, Hansen
highlights how most businesses lost property and financial capital between 1991 and
1993. See, respectively: Hansen, ‘Civil War Economies’ and Ahmad, ‘Agenda for peace or
budget for war?’
110 Hansen, ‘Civil War Economies’ and Ahmad, ‘The security bazaar’.
protection money to militia leaders of their clans.111 Many of these

Mogadishu-based businesspeople played prominent roles in the Arta
peace conference, the subsequent formation of the TNG and, later on,
in support of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).112 While the relationship
between the business elite and violent entrepreneurs, as well as the
nature of Somali business, changed over time, the partnership with inter-
national aid agencies that continue to sub-contract goods and services to
major Somali companies has remained constant—albeit with fluctuating
levels of contracts and financial transactions.
The political position of the rising Somali business class towards state-
building has thus evolved considerably over time. Earlier on, critics had
pointed out that ‘the scrap merchants’ could only lose from a peaceful
political settlement113 and consequently ‘actively promoted’ a ‘protracted
state collapse’ that ‘serves [their] interests and objectives’.114 Business
owners also suffered from insecurity—particularly theft—and success-
fully embraced legitimate business activities. They thus do not reject the
rebuilding of a Somali state altogether115 but rather seek, as is currently
the case in Somaliland, to limit its authority by ‘block[ing] higher
taxes and greater regulation’116 that threaten to diminish their profits.
Moreover, the creation of effective multi-clan shareholder companies that
allowed the private sector to overcome clan and territorial fragmentation
offers important lessons for statebuilding which are not primarily based
on extraversion but on cooperation and mutual benefits.117
111 International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia: Countering Terrorism in a Failed State’, Africa
Report no. 45, Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 23 May 2002, 3. Also see
Menkhaus, ‘State collapse in Somalia’, 417, who writes, ‘They bought the militiamen
away from the warlords, and sub-contracted out management of the militia to sharia
courts.’
112 See Webersik, ‘Economy without a state’.
114 Menkhaus, ‘State collapse’, 406, 414.
115 Hansen, ‘Civil War Economies’.
116 International Crisis Group, ‘Strains of Success’.
117 See E. Lochery, ‘Generating Power: Electricity Provision and State Formation in
Somaliland’, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 2015.
Donors
Because of their prominent and longstanding role in funding and directing
humanitarian, development and reconstruction aid in Somalia, donors
have both shaped and partaken in elite bargains in Somalia. This has
occurred in spite of the typically short periods of expatriate postings in
diplomatic missions, international organizations or NGOs. Managing
and attempting to control resources has positioned them as impor-
tant intermediaries between Somali elites and the broader world, as
they ‘negotiate the links between broader international dynamics and
local context’.118 Much of this intermediation occurs through processes
and relations of sub-contracting by which local actors—NGOs, private
companies and public administrations—implement aid programmes.
With the rise of the stabilization agenda, aid has increasingly been
channeled through multi-donor funding mechanisms like the SSF or
the Somali Development and Reconstruction Facility (SDRF).119 Despite
commitments to participation, partnership and empowerment ‘relations
between donors, international NGOs, and local civil society remain
asymmetrical and strained’.120 Somalia’s donors are not a homogenous
group but marked by competition and conflicts of interest. While the
UN was the most prominent funder in the early 1990s, the EU—then the
European Commission—played a prominent role in directing aid policy
in Somalia from the mid-1990s onwards.121 Following a phase of relative
withdrawal between the end of the 1990s and the mid-2000s, the UN,
the United States and various European donor agencies increased their
assistance to Somalia again after 2010.
118 A. Schmidt, ‘Coordinating development in conflict states: donor networks in

Somalia’, IDS Bulletin 44/1 (2013), 54–71 (59).
119 With the exception of Turkey and the Gulf States, donors have been reluctant to
directly fund the Somali government’s treasury. Turkey became an influential donor after
the 2011 famine.
120 K. Menkhaus et al., ‘Somalia: civil society in a collapsed state’, in Civil Society and
Peacebuilding: a critical assessment, ed. T. Paffenholz, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2010, 333–34.
121 Bradbury, State-building, 4.
Increased aid levels following the formation of the FGS have accentu-
ated relations of dependence but also highlighted practices of extraversion
between Nairobi-based agencies and local implementers.122 They have also
raised concerns that externally funded institution-building in Somalia is
overly dirigiste (directed by a central authority) because it is dominated by
international aid agencies and donors.123 The establishment of the SDRF in
November 2013—the main financing mechanism for the Somali Compact—
occurred with little input from Somali actors.124 The elite alliance between
donors and the FGS that informs the New Deal, the Somali Compact and
the SDRF have led to criticism among some aid professionals. Asked about
the New Deal, a stabilization advisor remarks on the exclusion of societal
actors from current statebuilding in the country: ‘The deal is supposed to
[involve] the government, the donors and civil society. But in Somalia, the
only partners are the government and the donors.’125 Another aid official
describes how the New Deal connected particular donors to particular
Somali government officials and local NGOs, giving way to a ‘powerful elite
group that has monopolized implementation’.126 Many Somalis perceive
these connections between donors and particular groups in the light of clan
politics; that is, as a preferential relationship between particular donors and
particular clan lineages. With regard to current stabilization programmes
in Somalia, a UN worker observes that decision-making power not only
lies with local Somali elites ‘but within NGO elite circles where jobs and
opportunities circulate amongst themselves’.127
122 Sub-contracting entails complicated power relations between donor and local NGOs
because the latter enjoy considerable autonomy in a situation of ‘remote management’.
Source: Hammond and Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space’, 12.
123 K. Menkhaus, ‘Aid and Institution-building in Fragile States: the case of Somali-
inhabited eastern Horn of Africa’, WIDER working paper 2014/002, Helsinki: United
Nations University, 2014, 8. This view is contested by observers who insist that donor
coherence towards Somalia remains very limited, giving Somalis room for manoeuver to
pursue their own interests and projects.
124 Schmidt, ‘Coordinating development’, 61.
125 Interview with stabilization advisor, Nairobi, 8 August 2015.
126 Interview with stabilization official, Nairobi, 6 August 2015.
127 Interview with UN staff member, Nairobi, 21 August 2015.
4. Somali statebuilding by extraversion
This section highlights recurrent modes of extraversion at the nexus

between local Somali political settlements and international stabilization
attempts, using Bayart’s six modes of extraversion—coercion, trickery,
flight, intermediation, appropriation and rejection.128 Two clarifications
should be borne in mind. First, these modes of extraversion are not
mutually exclusive but may draw on other modes or combine. Second,
extraversion modes are not equally distributed through time. They have
a life of their own. Some are more durable than others and some are
more prominent at particular times and in particular places. Nonetheless,
it is possible to pinpoint persistent extraversion mechanisms for each
of these six modes in order to highlight which among them have been
particularly powerful in shaping political settlements.
Coercion
Coercion has been a staple extraversion strategy for powerful Somali
elites with a stake in internationalized forms of statebuilding. It may
be seen as an integral part of political life in post-colonial Africa and
as a ‘means of regulating the imported state and of laying hold of its
resources’.129 Siyad Barre’s aid-dependent administration relied on
an oppressive security apparatus—initially established with support
from the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic—using
the national army and the infamous National Security Service to crack
down on domestic political opposition, namely the Majerteen (1979–1981)
and the Issaq (1981–1991) rebellions in the north-east and north-west
respectively.130 With the disintegration of the central state, the power
of coercion was no longer restricted to a government. Instead it spread

130 J. Bakonyi, ‘Moral economies of mass violence: Somalia 1988–1991’, Civil Wars 11/4
(2009), 434–54 and Human Rights Watch, ‘Somalia: A Government at War With its Own
People’, Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 1990.
37
among clan-based armed groups of variable size, durability and ability

to generate revenue or hold territory. Among south-central Somalia’s
factions, military strength allowed them to defend clan interests and to
appropriate resources through taxation, looting and violence. Signifi-
cantly, this in turn increased the likelihood of their being included in
the repeated ceasefire agreements, reconciliation conferences and peace
accords brokered by the UN, the Inter-Governmental Authority on
Development (IGAD) and regional countries between the early 1990s
and 2009.131 In these crucial moments of internationally sponsored peace-
making, coercion guaranteed armed factions access to a future political
settlement which was supposed to revive state authority.
More importantly, external stabilization policies have repeatedly
involved arming and training of Somali groups as part of proxy warfare,
counterterrorism or centralized statebuilding, aided by international
military missions.132 Time and again, Somali political groups have
managed to garner foreign military assistance in pursuit of their political
projects. To cite a few examples: Ali Mahdi was supported by UN troops
in his power struggle against Mohammed Farah Aideed (1993); Ethiopia133
backed the Rahanweyn Resistance Army militarily in Bay and Bakool
(1998–2002), along with the former Puntland and Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) president Abdullahi Yusuf (2002, 2004–2008), and
the current FGS. In 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency funded a group
131 For instance, examples of this include the Addis Ababa Agreement (1993), the
Ethiopian (1996) and Egyptian (1997) peace initiatives and, later, the creation of the
Transitional Federal Government (2002–2004 and 2009) under IGAD and UN auspices.
For an overview of important peace conferences, see Interpeace, A History of Mediation in
Somalia Since 1998, Nairobi: Interpeace, 2009.
132 While UNOSOM did not entertain direct military alliances with Somali politico-
military groups, its legacy in terms of contributing to coercion is highlighted by the
conjecture that ‘UNOSOM probably left Somalia more heavily armed than it had found it’
after equipping and arming a Somali police force that would soon disintegrate and hand
over ‘containers full of weapons to the faction leaders’. Source: Bryden and Brickhill,
‘Disarming Somalia’, 255.
133 In March 2001, Ethiopia sponsored the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration
Council, an alliance of warlords opposed to the Transitional National Government
(TNG). Its members figured prominently in the first Transitional Federal Government
(TFG) created in November 2002.
somali statebuilding by extraversion 39
of prominent Mogadishu warlords as part of covert counterterrorism

operations against foreign al-Qaeda members and radical Islamists
associated with the ICU.134 After 2007, AMISOM’s peacekeeping troops
from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Kenya
have carried out most of the day-to-day fighting against al-Shabaab, in
coalition with TFG and FGS forces and allied militias.135 Over the years,
Eritrea has supported various warlords and, later on, the ICU in its proxy
war against Ethiopia.136 Al-Shabaab also practises military extraversion
as foreign fighters have joined its ranks and it allied itself with al-Qaeda
in early 2012.137 Furthermore, Islamist insurgents have purchased arms
from Somali government forces. Recent reports controversially point
to commercial relations between AMISOM, namely Kenyan forces, and
al-Shabaab—centred on the charcoal and sugar trades.138 Such military
interventions, on behalf of or in support of a particular Somali party,
are associated with some of the most violent episodes in the post-Barre
period.139 More often than not, coercion as a method of extraversion
has undermined peace and statebuilding in south-central Somalia. It
134 Menkhaus, ‘Stabilisation and humanitarian access’, 336. Also see P. J. Quaranto,
Building States while Fighting Terror: Contradictions in United States Strategy in Somalia from 2001
to 2007, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2008, 40–46.
135 P. Albrecht and C. Haenlein, ‘Fragmented peacebuilding: the African Union in
Somalia’, RUSI Journal, 161/1 (2016), 50–61. Between April 2013 and December 2014, a
contingent of 850 Sierra Leonean troops was part of AMISOM.
136 K. Menkhaus, ‘The crisis in Somalia: tragedy in five acts’, African Affairs 106/204
(2007a), 357–90.
137 At the end of 2015, a split occurred within al-Shabaab, with one faction pledging
allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
138 Journalists for Justice, Black and White: Kenya’s criminal racket in Somalia, Nairobi:
Journalists for Justice, 2015.
139 Menkhaus, ‘Stabilisation and humanitarian access’, 327. Most notably, the Ethiopian
military campaign against the ICU was accompanied by abuses of civilians, in particular
indiscriminate bombardments of residential areas in Mogadishu in 2007. Source: Human
Rights Watch, ‘Shell Shocked. Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu’, Washington, DC:
Human Rights Watch, 2007. Up to two third of the population of Mogadishu temporarily
fled the capital in 2007 and 2008. Source: A. Lindley, ‘Leaving Mogadishu: towards a
sociology of conflict-related mobility’, Journal of Refugee Studies 23/1 (2010), 2–22.
has permitted political competitors to resort to violence rather than to

negotiate a new political settlement with their opponents.
With the decision of UN-mandated AMISOM peacekeeping force
and Western donors to secure the survival of the TFG in 2007 and,
after 2012, the FGS against al-Shabaab, statebuilding in south-central
Somalia became an essentially ‘partisan project supporting one side
of the conflict’.140 The return of international peacekeeping troops to
Somalia in 2007 was followed by the TFG’s 2011 National Security and
Stabilization Plan, which committed donors to backing various Somali
state security forces, in particular the Somali Police Force (SPF)141 and the
SNA. Since the mid-2000s, the United States has irregularly conducted
covert operations and drone attacks on targets in south-central Somalia
in collaboration with government intelligence officials.142 Meanwhile in
Somaliland, donors have supported the coastguard and the counterter-
rorist Rapid Reaction Unit, a special police unit tasked with protecting
diplomatic personnel.143 Military support to the FGS has been comple-
mented by quick-impact stabilization projects intended to increase
popular support for the government in areas liberated from al-Shabaab.144
140 Hammond and Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space’, 9. While different external

actors supported different factions in Somalia up to the mid-2000s, after 2006 the UN
and the international community aligned themselves more overtly with the TFG–FGS. In
2012, the United States lifted its arms embargo in support of the current government.
141 The SPF was previously trained and funded under a UNDP programme despite its
dismal human rights record and reputation for ineffectiveness. See A. Hills, ‘Somalia
works: police development as statebuilding’, African Affairs 113/450 (2014), 103–104 and
K. Menkhaus, ‘Somalia: ‘They created a desert and called it peace(building)’, Review of
African Political Economy 36/120 (2009), 223–33 (231).
142 ‘Somalia: reported US covert actions 2001–2015’, Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
22 February 2015. Accessed 28 February 2016, https://www.thebureauinvestigates.
com/2012/02/22/get-the-data-somalias-hidden-war/.
143 Bryden and Brickhill, ‘Disarming Somalia’, 260. Also see L. W. Moe, ‘The
strange wars of liberal peace: hybridity, complexity and the governing rationalities of
counterinsurgency in Somalia’, Peacebuilding (2015), doi: 10.1080/21647259.2015.1094907
and Schouten and Bachmann, Mapping Stabilization.
144 For a detailed breakdown of military and security assistance to various Somali
parties, see Suri, ‘Barbed Wire on our Heads’, who indicates that between 2007 and 2015,
the US government spent USD 1.4 billion in support of African forces fighting against
al-Shabaab; the EU provided EUR 800 million to AMISOM in the same period.
The key insight here is that violence has recurrently been practised and
actively invited by Somali constituencies in defence of what has been
referred to as the ‘imported state’.145 The TFG/FGS perfectly fits this label,
as it was forged, with heavy external involvement, in Djibouti and Kenya
before it moved to Mogadishu. Its survival appears to require constant
externally funded, and often externally implemented, coercion against
its domestic competitors, indicating a lack of domestic acceptance and
credibility.146 This said, donors have been torn between strengthening the
FGS’s coercive capacity and restraining it. Many Somalis on the other
hand view the armed forces as a source of employment to be shared
among clan lineages.
Trickery
Deception and trickery represent a second type of extraversion that
may be described as ‘attempts to mislead the foreign master [sic], his
representatives and indeed his successors’.147 In essence, trickery allows
individuals and groups to make a living by circumventing the law, policies
or rules imposed by foreign authority. While trickery might be considered
immoral, illegal or at least informal, it also attests to the agency of local
populations or the striving for self-improvement and a better future, as
in the case of Somali migrants who undertake tahriib.148 State collapse has
allowed for the proliferation of various forms of trickery and deception in
Somalia. These include but are not limited to the importation of fake or
expired goods, the counterfeiting of the Somali shilling, the widespread
use of forged identity documents, diplomas and certificates, and the

146 Already in 2007, the TFG was not trusted by the population nor did it represent the
powerful interest groups in Mogadishu. Source: C. Barnes and H. Hassan, ‘The Rise and
Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts’, Africa Programme Briefing Paper, London: Chatham
House, 2007, 7.
148 The Arabic word tahriib refers to a specific form of illegal emigration involving a large
number of young Somali men and women leaving for Europe via Ethiopia, Sudan and
Libya, and then across the Mediterranean Sea. This word now has widespread currency in
the contemporary Somali lexicon.
use of false identities for obtaining asylum or residence abroad—often

in connection with family reunion programmes. While many of these
tactics are harmful to others, they are also practical coping mechanisms
when the boundary between the legal-formal and the illegal-informal is
blurred. In terms of stabilization—both in its more political variant of
statebuilding and its more classical variant of development—trickery
and deception have accompanied foreign interventions. Two prominent
examples are the opportunistic creation of ‘briefcase NGOs’149 and ficti-
tious public administrations. Both reflect Somali elite preoccupation with
attracting foreign resources and the established practice of re-hatting
themselves in whatever form facilitates access to foreign patronage.
Fake NGOs flourished in the early 1990s during UNOSOM. The massive
inflow of humanitarian and development aid, the absence of a govern-
mental counterpart and donor commitment to working with civil society
incentivized some Somalis to fabricate local NGOs. These ‘frequently
turned out to be designed simply to attract foreign money rather than to
accomplish their declared aims’.150 Donor demands for local counterparts
in Somalia led to ‘the rapid formation of thousands of NGOs, most of
which only had a single member’.151 This type of deception was only
possible because external stabilizers desperately required implementing
partners who could absorb aid money. For example, UNOSOM has been
criticized for ‘unintentionally distort[ing] the concept of the local NGO’,
for ‘produc[ing] an epidemic of hundreds of bogus NGOs’ and thereby
‘contribut[ing] to a culture of corruption and lack of accountability’.152
Corruption and different types of financial misappropriation have not
been limited to the NGO sector in Somalia but have also been regular
features of the various transitional governments. In many ways, they
149 The term ‘briefcase organization’ refers to a fraudulent organization set up by

one or two people for the sole purpose of obtaining money from donors but having no
programmes on the ground.
151 B. Helander, ‘Is there a Civil Society in Somalia?’, Nairobi: United Nations
Development Office for Somalia, 1998, 7.
152 Menkhaus et al., ‘Civil society in a collapsed state’, 330.
reflect a historic type of extraversion based on corruption and grandiose

but ultimately unrealistic projects promoted by Italian colonialists
between the 1930s and 1960s.153 A large informal economy already existed
during the Siyad Barre years, ultimately contributing to state collapse, as
people pursued business outside the heavily regulated formal economy.154
Deception, pretension and trickery in Somalia’s development sector have
also been aided by the fact that a large part of international aid to the
country since 1995 is controlled remotely from Nairobi.155 As a review of
donor networks in Somalia indicates, ‘Few donors have actually seen the
institutions they debate, and rumours about their Potemkin-like nature
abound (and are frequently confirmed).’156 In recent years, donors have
sought to counter corruption and increase accountability by strength-
ening the monitoring and evaluation components of their programmes.157
Trickery has thus extended into the realm of statebuilding, more so in
south-central Somalia than in Somaliland and Puntland. Because external
stabilization has been state-centric, propping up weak, unpopular and
ineffective administrations, some Somali political entrepreneurs have
produced what may be best described as fictitious, ceremonial, theatrical
or even counterfeit ministries and offices. They present themselves with
official titles, organigrams and letterheads but have or have had little
meaning or substance other than absorbing aid rents—a phenomenon
of which donors are well aware. A telling example of this trend is the
2005 TFG administration under then President Abdillahi Yusuf, which
‘sported over 80 cabinet ministers, including a minister of tourism’.158
153 G. Prunier, ‘Benign neglect versus “La grande Somalia”: the colonial legacy and the
post-colonial Somali state’, in Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Society, and
Politics, eds. M. V. Hoehne and V. Luling, London: Hurst, 2010.
154 Mubarak, From Bad Policy to Chaos.
155 Hammond and Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space’, 12.
156 Schmidt, ‘Coordinating development’, 61. The metaphor of Potemkin (or Potemkin
village) refers to an elaborate show or construction that aims at disguising an undesirable
fact or condition.
157 For example, DFID funds a six year accountability programme in Somalia
(Implementation and Analysis in Action Accountability Programme).
158 Menkhaus, ‘Somalia and the Horn of Africa’, 11.
Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s administration (2009–2012) continued

this practice. A scathing analysis by the International Crisis Group
describes the internal workings of the administration as a ‘caricature’
and an ‘illusion of a government’ but one that enjoyed ‘the virtually
unqualified backing’ of the international community.159
Most of the post-1991 Mogadishu-based governments have, to a greater
or lesser degree, been illusory. Rather as in Hans Christian Andersen’s
fairytale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, this type of political trickery was
only made possible by a naïve belief in these institutions.160 This can
be taken even further, with one review of the TFG proposing that ‘the
international community appeared to need a revived central government
more than the Somalis themselves’.161 Briefcase administrations also
proliferated locally in the form of sub-national administrations, or mini-
states, that were created across the Somali territories, in particular in
2010 and 2011. Those who established such mini-states were motivated
by the hope that the federal government would recognize them as
regional entities, as part of the decentralization and federalism move
that the international community had prescribed to the TFG. Many of
these mini-states possessed a very small constituency and some lacked
even a presence on the ground.162 Like the fake local NGOs created in
the early 1990s, these pseudo-local administrations were projects that
lacked genuine local anchorage, political capital or significant popular
support.163 Tellingly for the extraversion strategy that lies at the heart
159 International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia: The Transitional Government on Life Support’,
Africa Report no. 170, Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 21 February 2011, 1,
11. President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s first cabinet consisted of 36 ministers and twice as
many assistant ministers. Source: International Crisis Group, ‘Transitional Government
on Life Support’, 2.
160 T. Hagmann and U. Terlinden, ‘Somalias fiktive Friedensprozesse: Neue
“Briefkasten”—Regierung statt Konfliktregelung’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 3 March 2005, 9.
161 Menkhaus, ‘Aid and Institution-building’, 8.
162 International Crisis Group, ‘Transitional Government on Life Support’, 7–8.
163 Trickery has not been limited to the executive branches of transitional governments
but can also be seen in some of the legislatures, for example the federal parliament,
which suffers from absenteeism. Source: ‘Somali MPs fined for absenteeism’, Shabelle
Media, 22 December 2015.
of these entities, many of them were announced abroad or initiated by

diaspora groups.164
Trickery has been a recurrent feature in the formation of local and
national administrations across the Somali territories. Essentially, it
illustrates how Somali political entrepreneurs have made creative and
calculated use of external stabilization funds by either pretending to rule
or by cashing in on international recognition of the various transitional
governments.165 External rents have thus been attracted on the basis
of ‘legal command’166—the fact that internationally backed transitional
governments can claim de jure authority for Somalia. Stabilization that
involves the emergence of illusory governments does little to transform
local political settlements. It awards those who can claim to be in office
with rents and does occasionally allow for power-sharing and political
inclusion. The Djibouti process in 2009 that resulted in the reformed
TFG is an example of this. But it has failed to produce a durable political
settlement that produces governance by local efforts rather than outside
budgets.
Flight
Flight has been another continuing and prominent mode of extraversion
in conflict-ravaged Somalia. It may be described as ‘a strategy which the
weak are more or less obliged to take in the face of the strong’.167 Flight
manifests itself in forced displacement and migration but also in more
164 For example, this was the case with Azania state (formed in Kenya in April 2011),
Jubaland (announced in London in March 2011), Ceelbur (London, June 2011), Hamar
iyo Hamardaye (Nairobi, April 2011) and Greenland State of Juba (Nairobi, November
2010). For a compilation of flags and names of some 21 quasi-independent and semi-
autonomous regions, see ‘Quasi-independent and semi-autonomous regions in Somalia
(A–G), Flags of the World. Accessed 10 December 2015, http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/
FLAGS/so-ind1.html.
165 This is known in international relations theory as ‘judicial statehood’ as opposed to
real or ‘empirical statehood’. See R. H. Jackson and C. G. Rosberg, ‘Why Africa’s weak
states persist: the empirical and the juridical in statehood’, World Politics 35/1 (1982), 1–24.
166 P. Englebert, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty and Sorrow, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009.
personalized forms of escapism and escape.168 Although flight refers to a

movement away from a particular place, it contributes to people’s inser-
tion into a globalized world. Flight is also important for understanding
the relationship between the governed and those who govern as the
movement of people ‘turns the state into a political space which is both
relative and highly contested’.169
Once again, a historical precedent must be noted when contrasting
this particular mode of extraversion between pre and post-1991 Somalia.
Some 700,000 refugees had fled to Somalia after the disastrous 1977–1978
Ogaden war with Ethiopia. Emergency aid and resettlement schemes run
by the government’s National Refugee Commission then gave way to
an international relief industry that benefited the Somali government.170
Since the end of the 1980s, a large proportion of relief aid has targeted
war-displaced Somalis in the country and in neighbouring Ethiopia171
and Kenya.172 Humanitarian aid to Somalis fleeing war and famine saved
thousands of refugees through feeding programmes and the provision
of shelter, water, sanitation and other services. While not considered
to be stabilization in the contemporary sense, refugee aid has been
instrumental in stabilizing the lives of those recently displaced and,
subsequently, of maintaining large refugee populations in camps like
Dadaab or Kakuma in north-eastern Kenya.173
168 The widespread addiction to the mildly narcotic khat leaf among male Somalis is an
indicator of escapism.
171 K. van Brabant, Bad Borders Make Bad Neighbours: The Political Economy of Relief and
Rehabilitation in the Somali Region 5, Eastern Ethiopia, London: Overseas Development
Institute, 1994.
172 C. Horst, Transnational Nomads: How Somalis Cope with Refugee Life in the Dadaab Camps of
Kenya, Oxford: Berghahn, 2006.
173 M-A. Perouse de Montclos and P. M. Kagwanja, ‘Refugee camps or cities? The socio-
economic dynamics of the Dadaab and Kakuma camps in Northern Kenya’, Journal of
Refugee Studies 13/2 (2000), 205–22 and B. J. Jansen, ‘“Digging aid”: the camp as an option
in East and the Horn of Africa’, Journal of Refugee Studies, doi: 10.1093/jrs/fev018, 2015.
Mass population displacement might not immediately appear relevant

as a factor that determines how external stabilization affects local political
settlements. Yet from a longer term perspective a connection between
these two phenomena emerges. Forced migration has mostly been the
result of coercion, as well as droughts and famines.174 In the first quarter
of 2016, the registered Somali refugee population in the greater Horn of
Africa region alone was nearly one million.175 Longstanding out-migra-
tions of Somalis—from guest workers in Saudi Arabia during the early
1970s to the mid-1980s, to refugees fleeing government oppression and
clan militias in the late 1980s and early 1990s and, more recently, the
fighting between AMISOM, the FGS and al-Shabaab176—has led to the
creation of a global Somali diaspora. In recent years, this diaspora has
become part of Somalia’s political settlement by actively engaging in stabi-
lizing and destabilizing the country. In the past decade, Somali diaspora
groups have reinserted177 themselves into humanitarian aid, political
brokerage and statebuilding across the Somali territories.178 Diaspora
groups have positioned themselves as ‘agents of development’.179 They
‘enthusiastically provide assistance to various political authorities back
home’180 and also engage in peacebuilding and mediation.181 Diaspora
174 A. Lindley, ‘Displacement in contested places: governance, movement and settlement

in the Somali territories’, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 7/2 (2013), 291–313.
175 ‘Refugees in the Horn of Africa: Somali displacement crisis’, United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees. Accessed 11 December 2015, http://data.unhcr.org/horn-of-
africa/regional.php.
176 Lindley, ‘Leaving Mogadishu’.
177 This term is from Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’.
178 At times, reinsertion was of limited duration; for example, see the case of former
Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed’s short-lived tenure in J. Leland, ‘After a
break to run Somalia, back at his cubicle’, New York Times, 6 December 2011.
179 N. Kleist, ‘Mobilising “the diaspora”: Somali transnational political engagement’,
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34/2 (2008), 307–23.
180 M. V. Hoehne et al., ‘Differentiating the Diaspora: Reflections on Diasporic
Engagement “for Peace” in the Horn of Africa’, Working Paper No. 124, Max Planck
Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany, 2010, 10.
181 N. Majid, ‘Livelihoods, Development and the Somali Diaspora’, PhD thesis,
University of Bristol, 2013.
returnees have figured prominently in consecutive TFG, Somaliland

and Puntland administrations but also in the running of local political
entities and businesses. The current attraction of tahriib and migration
for young Somalis is partly motivated by a quest to find education and
income abroad, in the hope of a future return to Somalia as successful
businessmen or women.182 Consequently, flight has left its marks on
statebuilding both indirectly—by inviting humanitarian relief—and
directly—by creating a class of often more educated professionals and
activists who reinsert themselves in local political settlements.183
Intermediation
The archetype of institutionalized intermediation was British indirect
rule, which delegated everyday governance to newly created or co-opted
chiefs. Intermediation is a mode of extraversion practiced by a wide
range of social categories that position themselves to take advantage of
colonial and postcolonial relations of dependence. For example, promi-
nent examples of colonial intermediaries include African ‘catechists,
interpreters, school-teachers, nurses, clerks and traders’ but also ‘foreign
or transnational imperial elites’, such as Asians or Lebanese, prophets
and religious movements.184
In contemporary Somalia intermediation takes different forms. It
manifests itself in the donor-dependent FGS, local and international
NGOs, civil society actors and advocacy groups, which often pursue
parochial, clan-based agendas. Intermediation was also produced
during the UNOSOM period when the international community collab-
orated with and promoted traditional leaders, encouraging ‘political,
business or factional entrepreneurs’ to create customary authorities.185
182 P. Hansen, ‘Revolving returnees: meanings and practices of transnational return

among Somalilanders’, PhD thesis, University of Copenhagen, 2007 and N-I. Ali, Tahriib:
Somali Youth and the Precarious Journey to Europe, Nairobi: Rift Valley Institute, 2015.
183 Diaspora experience has increasingly become a prerequisite for attaining (political)
elite status in Somalia.
185 Marchal, ‘Warlordism’, 1099.
Senior positions in many humanitarian and development organiza-

tions continue to be occupied by expatriates, with educated Somali aid
workers—another example of intermediaries of external stabilization—
taking mid-level management jobs in these organizations. In refugee
and Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps throughout Somalia, local
camp managers who control access to land and local power holders act
as gatekeepers—to the detriment of the displaced. These gatekeepers
effectively intermediate between foreign humanitarian aid and refugee
populations.186 Both Somalis and non-Somalis have also been mediating
Western counterterrorism policy since 2001. Among them is the coalition
of Mogadishu warlords who formed the Alliance for the Restoration of
Peace and Counterterrorism in February 2006, tendering their services
to the US intelligence community. The TFG, AMISOM, Somaliland and
Puntland187 have made use of private security companies against piracy
and radical Islamists.188 This reflects a broader trend. Somali private
security companies, another intermediary, have replaced local militia
and individual security guards in securing international organizations’
compounds and infrastructure in Somalia.189
Since 2007, AMISOM soldiers have mediated global stabilization
efforts, namely Western counterterrorism concerns, as well as the FGS’s
security agenda.190 AMISOM initially had a limited protection mandate
but developed into a ‘conventional military counterterrorism force’ and,
in 2011, adopted a more comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy
186 Human Rights Watch, ‘Hostages of the Gatekeepers. Abuses against Internally
Displaced in Mogadishu, Somalia’, Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2013, 21.
187 These private security companies were mostly paid by foreign sponsors—e.g. the
Gulf States.
188 S. J. Hansen, ‘Private security and local politics in Somalia’, Review of African Political
Economy 35/118 (2008), 585–98. On Bankcroft Global Development, see Moe, ‘The strange
wars of liberal peace’, 10.
189 In times of widespread political violence, the mediation of foreign policy interests
invariably becomes involved in coercion, which is the first mode of extraversion.
190 Major offensives by AMISOM and the Somali National Army (SNA) dislodged al-
Shabaab from many parts of Mogadishu (November 2010 and February 2011), Badhaade
(February 2012), Kismayo (September 2012), and Afmadow and Afgoye (May 2014).
Source: International Crisis Group, ‘It Will Be a Long War’.
that includes ‘multi-stakeholder dialogue and reconciliation’, stabili-

zation, disarmament, humanitarian protection work and even human
rights training.191 Financed by the EU, the United States and the UN but
operationalized by African soldiers, AMISOM represents a classic case
of intermediation. As part of AMISOM, troop-contributing countries
Ethiopia,192 Uganda and Kenya can pursue their own security agendas
and economic interests in Somalia, where they have soldiers on the
ground.193 Concomitantly, their participation in AMISOM makes them
reliable partners in the global war against terror for Western donors,
which no longer send their own troops to African conflict zones.194
Counter-insurgency and the expansion of the federal government’s
territorial presence is thus—with the exception of some government-
affiliated Somali militias—predominantly shouldered by foreigners. That
is, fought by African neighbours and assisted by foreign security firms
and Western counterterrorism specialists.
What is the significance of foreign intermediaries in implementing
the TFG and FGS’s military operations and stabilization policy? Firstly,
they demonstrate the multi-layered and nested strategies of extraversion
present in contemporary Somalia. State-centric processes of statebuilding,
stabilization and counter-insurgency are heavily internationalized—to
the point that external actors take pre-eminence over Somalis. Secondly,
the prominence of external forces and funding in fighting al-Shabaab
partly undermines the very statebuilding it is supposed to assist. Not only
191 Moe, ‘The strange wars of liberal peace’, 8–9.

192 Ethiopia formally joined AMISOM in January 2014, providing some 4,000 troops.
Since 1996, Ethiopia has regularly dispatched its troops to south-central Somalia,
first against al-Ittihad al-Islaam (The Islamic Union) in Gedo Region and later, backing
particular clan factions in Bay and Bakool from 2006 to 2008, as part of a broader
occupation following the ouster of the ICU and more recently as part of AMISOM. Also
see M. Bryden, ’No quick fixes: coming to terms with terrorism, Islam and statelessness
in Somalia’, Journal of Conflict Studies 23/2 (2003), 24–56.
193 Albrecht and Haenlein, ‘Fragmented peacebuilding’.
194 On Uganda and AMISOM, see J. Fisher, ‘Managing donor perceptions:
contextualizing Uganda’s 2007 intervention in Somalia’, African Affairs 111/444 (2012),
404–23 and Marchal, ‘Warlordism’.
does the presence of so many foreigners play into al-Shabaab propaganda

but abuses by AMISOM troops—indiscriminate shelling of residential
areas in Mogadishu after attacks on their soldiers and highly publicized
sexual violence against women and girls—are reminders of preda-
tory state authority rather than the democratic promise of the federal
government.195 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the outsourcing
of violence to AMISOM by the FGS is unlikely to stabilize the country’s
political settlement because it hinges on continued external funding and
the contradictory security interests of Ethiopia and Kenya.196
Appropriation
Appropriation is at the centre of any extraversion activity that garners
authority and resources from dominant outside powers. It includes
non-material elements, for instance learning a new language or new
religious practices, the adoption of Western lifestyles, tastes, goods
and clothes, or socialization in new milieus.197 In the realm of the polit-
ical imaginary, appropriation includes the transfer and adaptation of
meanings and thus the authentification of new ideas and discourses.198
Clearly, both in colonial Africa and present-day south-central Somalia,
the imported state, which was and is so often governed with coercion,
needed first to be appropriated. In civil war Somalia, this has occurred
not once but repeatedly. Political leaders embraced juridical statehood—
and accompanying external recognition—when they formed a series of
195 Human Rights Watch, ‘“You Don’t Know Who to Blame”: War Crimes in Somalia’,
Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2011 and Human Rights Watch, ‘“The Power
These Men Have Over Us”: Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by African Union Forces in
Somalia’, Washington, DC: Human Rights Watch, 2014.
196 Albrecht and Haenlein, ‘Fragmented peacebuilding’. The FGS may also be described
as an ‘internationally sponsored plan for a vertically integrated cartel to manage the
Somali political marketplace’. Source: de Waal, Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, 124.
197 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 262. On the broader significance of appropriation
and adaptation as debated in cultural studies and postcolonial theory, see P. Nicklas and
O. Lindner, Adaptation and Cultural Appropriation, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012 and J. Sanders,
Adaptation and Appropriation, London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
198 J-F. Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity, London: Hurst, 2005.
transitional governments from 2000 onwards. State-centric stabilization

that entails the creation of Somali national transitional governments has
‘often privilege[d] some groups and systems of governance over others’,
creating ‘a political economy of prestige and resources around the newly
built or reformed state’.199
Numerous examples of illegal appropriation of foreign resources
occurred in Somalia after the downfall of the Siyad Barre government.
During the UNOSOM–UNITAF (Unified Task Force) period, rival
factions fought over aid resources, leading to ‘criticisms that humani-
tarian agencies were fuelling a war economy’.200 The diversion of aid,
such as the theft of food aid by armed groups and contractors, continues
to be a headache for humanitarian agencies.201 Extraversion by appropria-
tion is not limited to material resources or physical assets, such as food
aid, vehicles, buildings, materials or weapons. Somalis have actively
appropriated the humanitarian, development and diplomatic rhetoric,
paradigms and blueprints that have accompanied consecutive external
stabilization attempts. Western discourses centered on secular political
concepts such as ‘democracy’, ‘federalism’ and ‘human rights’ or military
vocabulary such as ‘counterterrorism’ and ‘stabilization’, quickly find
currency among Somali leaders who use them to their own ends.202 Spiri-
tual and religious beliefs have also been appropriated from Saudi Arabia,
the Gulf States, Egypt and Sudan by a new Salafi business elite, whose
ascendancy in Somali politics has reconfigured the political settlement
over the past 15 or so years.203
The intimate connection between internationalized political stabiliza-
tion and local appropriation cannot be stressed enough when accounting
for the failures of state-centric statebuilding in south-central Somalia. In
199 Mac Ginty, ‘Against stabilisation’, 28.

200 Bradbury, State-building, 16.
201 United Nations, Security Council, ‘Report of the Monitoring Group’.
202 N. O. Elmi, ‘Making democracy work: tools, theories and templates of vernacular
democracy in Somalia’s rebuilding’, MA thesis, University of Oslo, 2014.
203 R. Marchal and Z. M. Sheikh, ‘Salafism in Somalia: coping with coercion, civil war
and its own contradictions’, Islamic Africa 6 (2015), 135–63.
sum, formal state structures ‘have been used to attract aid, and as a useful
source of patronage … but seldom as providers of essential services and
public goods’.204 Consequently, ‘Political elites in newly declared govern-
ments have devoted most of their energies toward securing foreign aid
in the name of statebuilding.’205 Because Somali elites have regularly
turned their participation in transitional governments into a resource
appropriation tactic, statebuilding has become an end in itself rather
than the outcome of a more profound process of actual state formation
that would have entailed the centralization of coercion, the generation
of public revenue, the provision of public services and the building up of
popular support. Since 2000, Somali transitional governments that have
claimed to be the sovereign successor of the former Somali Democratic
Republic have increasingly suffered from this self-defeating dynamic.
The TNG, for instance, did not enjoy international recognition but its
leadership obtained around USD 50 million from Arab Gulf States in
the two years of its existence between 2000 and 2002.206 Successive
TFG cabinets managed to increase their hold on foreign aid as donors
refocused their efforts on strengthening a central government after
the rise of al-Shabaab and the end of the Ethiopian occupation. This
ongoing effort to breathe new life into the TFG included, among other
things, direct salary payments to members of parliament and its security
forces.207 In many ways, the extraversion strategies pursued by political
figures who were part of the transitional and now of federal governments
are not a surprise. They are the logical consequence of the commodifica-
tion that had occurred in their formative stages, during the peace and
reconciliation conferences that created them.208

207 See Hills, ‘Somalia works’.
208 C. Webersik, ‘Bargaining for the spoils of war: Somalia’s failing path from peace to
war’, African Security 7/4 (2014), 277–302 (278). This pattern was already present during
the brokerage of the 1994 peace agreement between Ali Mahdi and Mohammed Farah
Aideed, during which the UN paid participants’ hotel bills ‘running at USD 150,000
One of the most problematic extraversion strategies in peace and

statebuilding is the appropriation, both by Somali political leaders and
the international community, of fixed definitions of clan identity as a
parameter for power-sharing. In the flux and confusion that so often
characterizes interactions between competing armed and political groups
in Somalia, the word ‘clan’ is often assumed to be the fundamental
category that informs Somali political life. The international community
often fails to account for the ‘diversity of local social groups’, instead
treating clans as ‘fixed entities’, and thus ‘contribut[ing] to the prolifera-
tion of clan and sub-clan identities’.209
The suggestion that the fragmentation of Somali society along clan
lineages is primarily the result of colonial anthropologists and foreign
interventions appears far-fetched.210 International statebuilding and extra-
version, however, certainly contribute to the spread, entrenchment and
reproduction of political representation based on a problematic notion
of fixed clan identities. Faction leaders, politicians, elders and business-
people use their family ties not only to mobilize support internally but
they also appropriate the idea of clan as the predominant criterion for
determining power-sharing and representation in statebuilding. The
adoption of the famous 4.5 formula, during the formation of the first
TNG in August 2000, marks the highpoint of this appropriation strategy
by which kinship is made productive by interaction with external stabi-
lizers.211 Considered to be a pragmatic way of attaining power-sharing
a day’. Source: Lewis, Modern History, 274. Stories abound about corruption and the
payments made during the Eldoret and Mbagathi peace processes that led to the creation
of the first TFG.
209 Little, Economy without State, 155, making an observation about the UN intervention.
210 This argument was made by Abdi I. Samatar in a lecture held at the Chr. Michelsen
Institute, Bergen, Norway, 8 May 2014.
211 The 4.5 formula for clan representation ‘envision[ed] 400 seats divided evenly
between the four major clan groups, and minority groups collectively receiving half as
many seats as a major clan’. Source: International Crisis Group, ‘Salvaging Somalia’s
Chance for Peace’, Africa Briefing n. 11, Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group,
9 December 2002, 5. The formula was repeatedly used in bargaining power-sharing
agreements and for allocating seats for legislative and executive positions in the
among Somalis, the 4.5 formula encouraged the nomination of officials

who—apart from being members of particular clan networks—often had
little political clout or personal credibility and lacked a track record of
actual political achievements.212 Precisely because state-centric stabiliza-
tion entails a centralization of power, it encourages the proliferation and
hardening of clan lineage identity that is instrumentally appropriated by
elites who seek to increase their role in bargaining processes. Conse-
quently, the politicized use and abuse of the idea of clan in post-1991
Somalia is not merely the result of local tradition or culture, as primordi-
alists suggest, but has been co-produced by extraversion under conditions
of external stabilization.
Rejection
Even though extraversion has been an ingrained pattern of stabilization
and statebuilding in post-1991 Somalia, not all actors have succumbed to
it. Rejection of external resources and agendas, rather than appropria-
tion, has also taken place. A telling case of partial opposition to external
intervention can be found in the Somaliland government’s dealings
with international organizations, particularly its fraught relationship
with various UN agencies dating back to the early 1990s.213 Al-Shabaab’s
position has consistently been characterized by marked rejection of the
international community’s statebuilding agenda and of interference by
frontline states Ethiopia and Kenya. Conversely, al-Shabaab arguably
pursues its own, predominantly immaterial, extraversion by positioning
itself as part of a global Islamic movement. Its declaration of allegiance
transitional governments. Other administrations, such as in Somaliland and Puntland,

have adopted similar proportional clan representation mechanisms.
212 The problem of politicians and parliamentarians who are part of formal statebuilding
exercises but ‘represent … themselves rather than anyone else’ was already noted during
the Arta conference. Source: Lewis, Modern History, 293. This is partly the result of a
decentralized patriarchal pastoral political culture in which, historically, every man was
allowed to speak and participate in politics.
213 Somaliland’s strained relations with the UN is motivated by the latter’s refusal to
fully recognize the self-declared republic. These strained relations continue to persist;
e.g. Somaliland’s rejection of the UN population census in May 2015.
to al-Qaeda in February 2012 is evidence of this. Although rejection is

the opposite of appropriation, it often goes hand in hand with extra-
version.214 Two brief examples illustrate this. First, while TFG soldiers
appropriate external resources provided by foreign donors, they simul-
taneously reject or undermine stabilization when they mistreat civilians.
Second, while bandits may loot the property of a humanitarian organiz
ation—which could be seen as rejection of extraversion—at the same
time they ‘assimilat[e] the symbolic forms or the military technology of
the contemporary world’.215
214 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 263-265. Accordingly, ‘forms of rejection can also be
modes of appropriation and reinvention, just as nationalist movements were in matters
of state institutions and the imagery of the state in the years after the Second World
War’.
5. Conclusion
Extraversion has been a frequent cause and feature of failed interna-

tionalized statebuilding in south-central Somalia over the past quarter
century. Evidence points towards an inverse relationship between
external stabilization and peaceful elite bargaining in post-1991 Somalia.
Statebuilding that is more coercive has increased rather than reduced
violent conflict. Recurrent extraversion strategies such as the use of
violence, the appropriation of external resources, flight and trickery have
been obstacles to both peace and statebuilding. They have led Somali
and external statebuilders to prefer the creation of formal institutions
to actual state formation. External recognition bestowed on particular
domestic political actors, policy processes or institutions has fuelled
competition between and among local and national elites. It has also
encouraged abuses and ineffective governance, while also undermining
important liberal and democratic statebuilding objectives. The dysfunc-
tional effects of internationalized statebuilding in south-central Somalia
are the result of both external and elite Somali agendas.
Donors’ current stabilization programmes and their alignment with
the Federal Government of Somalia resemble a ‘peacebuilder’s contract’
by which external actors, state and sub-national elites produce state-
building that is either compromised or captured.216 As donors and the FGS
enter into a statebuilding alliance, their interactions centre once again
on extraversion and the production of formal—but largely fictitious—
statehood. Even if a concerted political and military effort succeeded in
pacifying Somalia and expanding the government’s degree of statehood,
it is unlikely to transform the type of state it represents.217 The reason for
this is that external actors are themselves part of a political settlement
that includes domestic elites who have co-opted statebuilding resources
216 M. Barnett and C. Zürcher, ‘The peacebuilder’s contract: how external statebuilding
reinforces weak statehood’, in The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of
Postwar Peace Operations, eds. R. Paris and T.D. Sisk, London: Routledge, 2009, 24.
217 Barnett and Zürcher, ‘The peacebuilder’s contract’, 6.
57
and rhetoric for their own survival.218 If history is an indicator for the
future, current stabilization policies and the international community’s
support of the FGS are unlikely to be either sustainable or effective.
The overwhelming evidence of past statebuilding in civil war Somalia
points to a sobering conclusion. External stabilization that affords local
and national elites extraversion opportunities has often reproduced
political instability. It has encouraged the formation of political admin-
istrations that are unaccountable at best, predatory at worst, and usually
ineffective. From the colonial period until now, centralized state authority
in Somalia has been dependent on external rents, fostering political
elites whose survival has depended and continues to depend on external
recognition. While a future state must be and will be built in Somalia, it
cannot simply be rebuilt, as neither colonial nor postcolonial administra-
tions serve as models to emulate. Nor will a working state emerge as a
result of liberal Western blueprints transposed—both by foreigners and
by Somalis—to local political realities. Instead, state formation is likely
to proceed on the basis of more stable political settlements that are not
primarily geared towards the outside world but result from domestic
bargaining, resource mobilization and, ultimately, recognition.
Conversely, statebuilding in places such as Somaliland has been
successful because it was based on ‘peace contracts’219 among local constit-
uencies, contracts that were renegotiated over time, were predominantly
funded by the participants themselves and did not follow predefined
templates or outcomes. Importantly, the negotiation of these agreements
was not based on converting external resources into local authority,
although Somaliland’s claim to international recognition clearly follows
a strategy of extraversion. Instead they were locally initiated, funded and
implemented.220 While political settlements have simply been reshuffled
218 Also see Menkhaus, ‘Aid and Institution-building’, 1.

219 Farah and Lewis, ‘Roots of Reconciliation’.
220 A telling example of this is the fact that Somaliland clan elders were instrumental
in disarming and demobilizing their own militias in the early 1990s, while armed groups
in Mogadishu repeatedly refused to hand over their weapons to the government of the
moment. See Bryden and Brickhill, ‘Disarming Somalia’.
conclusion 59
in south-central Somalia—at times involving rather arbitrary appoint-

ments of officials and the recycling of leaders—in Somaliland, and to a
lesser degree in Puntland, political settlements have survived because
locally driven stabilization was proceeded by negotiation, compensation
and trust-building among key constituencies.221 In summary, under
external state-centric stabilization, local elites convert financial and
social capital into social relations that are beneficial for them. Under
locally owned statebuilding, social relations are transformed into polit-
ical capital which benefits broader segments of society while resources
such as tax revenue and foreign aid are redistributed.
221 It also involved traditional institutions and a particular relation of local elites to the
economy. See W. Reno, Somalia and Survival in the Shadow of the Global Economy, Oxford:
Queen Elizabeth House, 2003.
6. Policy implications
The policy implications of these observations suggest a rethinking and

redesigning of statebuilding strategies in Somalia. Complete political
disengagement from Somalia is neither a realistic nor a desirable policy
option. But interventions will have to find a way to reduce the negative
effects of statebuilding by extraversion. Future policy should consider
the following.
Reorienting financial resources for statebuilding

Statebuilding budgets should be reoriented in order to limit extraversion
opportunities. Policies and programmes should consider changing their
incentive structure. Instead of rewarding elite promises that bank on
external funding, aid could be given to actors, institutions and processes
that have a proven track record of creating social contracts and public
goods. Where this is absent, statebuilding resources could be withheld.
Finding statebuilding partners with capacities for domestic resource

and political mobilization
More effort is required to identify formal and informal institutions, both
in Somalia and abroad, which have existed before and independently of
external funding opportunities and which might become partners for
joint statebuilding interventions at local and national levels. Policies
should consider encouraging local actors to create a realistic and more
durable political settlement that is based on domestic resource and polit-
ical mobilization. Although in principle the existing aid structure already
adopts these aims, the geopolitical, security and strategic considerations
of donors regularly lead them to disregard these.
Creating space for an alternative trajectory for state formation

In light of the ongoing counter-insurgency operations against al-Shabaab
and shared donor willingness to defend the FGS, urgency and improvi-
sation are likely to preoccupy statebuilders more than anything else. In
60
policy implications 61
spite of these pressing matters, arguably there is a need for Somalis to

debate and develop long-term visions and strategies for the creation of
a new Somali state that minimizes external dependence, draws upon
domestic resources, popular support and locally negotiated political
settlements. It is this hard work of envisioning and realizing an alterna-
tive trajectory to state formation in south-central Somalia that is perhaps
the most important.
Glossary of acronyms, words
and phrases
AMISOM African Union Mission to Somalia, African Union-

led peacekeeping mission in Somalia begun in
2007
briefcase NGO/ a fraudulent organization set up for the sole

organization purpose of obtaining money from donors but
having no programmes on the ground
DFID UK Department for International Development
FGS Federal Government of Somalia, established in

August 2012; also known as the FSG
ICU Islamic Courts Union
IDP Internally Displaced Person
IGAD Inter-Governmental Authority on Development,

headquartered in Djibouti
khat mildly narcotic plant (catha edulis) native to the

Horn of Africa
SNA Somali National Army
SPF Somali Police Force
SSF Somali Stability Fund, a multi-donor initiative

financed by Denmark, the EU, the Netherlands,
Sweden, the UK and the United Arab Emirates
TFG Transitional Federal Government, established in

November 2004 and ended in August 2012, when
it was replaced by the Federal Government of
Somalia
TNG Transitional National Government, established in

August 2000 and replaced by the TFG in 2004
62
glossary of acronyms, words and phrases 63
tahriib (Arabic) term referring to a specific form of illegal

emigration that involves a large number of young
Somali men and women leaving for Europe via
Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya, and then across the
Mediterranean Sea
TIS Transition Initiatives for Stabilization
UNOSOM United Nations Operations in Somalia, started in

1992 and ended in 1995; consisted of UNOSOM I
(April 1992–March 1993) and UNOSOM II (March
1993–March 1995)
UNITAF Unified Task Force, a US-led multinational force

operating in Somalia (December 1992–May 1993);
code-named Operation Restore Hope
USAID United States Agency for International

Development
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‘This study uses the concept of extraversion to show how different Somali
actors—who do not share the statebuilding vision of international donors—
have successfully used externally driven peacebuilding and statebuilding
projects to their advantage. Moving away from established narratives on the
tribulations of such projects, this approach not only transfers agency back to
Somalis in internationally engineered interventions, but also demonstrates the
need to rethink statebuilding strategies. In doing so, it provides fresh insights
to policymakers and academics working on Somalia.’
—Asnake Kefale, Department of Political Science and
International Relations, Addis Ababa University
‘In critically exploring 25 years of internationalized statebuilding in south-

central Somalia with Bayart’s concept of extraversion, this report brings a
thought-provoking perspective on how and why statebuilding efforts have
repeatedly failed. It also establishes a much needed link between Somali
political processes and a broader literature on the state in Africa.’
—Faduma Abukar Mursal, Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale
Why is Somalia still far from achieving a lasting political settlement, after decades
of international military, diplomatic and aid interventions to stabilize the war-
torn country? This study argues that international aid and the interplay between
local and foreign elites in policies and practices has frequently undermined
state-building efforts in Somalia. Rather than assuming that foreign actors
are external to the evolving conflict dynamics of warlord economies, militant
Islamism or political settlements, Stabilization, Extraversion and Political Settlements
in Somalia concludes that they should instead be understood as integral to them.
Consequently, the power and interests of both Somali and international actors
must be considered in order to understand the shortcomings of stabilization
policies.

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RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE | PSRP

Stabilization, Extraversion and

Khartoum Massawa Y EMEN

Setit Aksum D Hanish n

Sob G h Degehabur Eyl

SUDAN Abaya Hayk

Godey beele Dhuusa

Beled Weyne Xarardheere

Dodoma Zanzibar Selected river

Map 1. Horn of Africa

Hargele Beledweyne Ceel Buur Xarardheere

Dolo Adow Xuddur

Bu’aale Disputed boundary

Baraawe National capital

Buur Gaabo © Rift Valley Institute 2015

Glossary of acronyms, words and phrases 62

Map 1. Horn of Africa 3

Past and present attempts to stabilize war-torn Somalia through military,

while both political settlements and international interventions in

Since 1991, Somalis and foreigners have tried periodically to reconstruct

groups in line with their relative power’.7 No stable political settlement

dependent relationship with the external world to appropriate resources

12 C. Peiffer and P. Englebert, ‘Extraversion, vulnerability to donors, and political

recurring extraversion strategies that have marked statebuilding and

generic peace and statebuilding efforts pursued by Somalis and external

one of the enduring legacies of British colonial anthropology, which

such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish which is the driving force

touch.35 On the other hand, stabilization activities motivated by counter-

35 In this sense, stabilization underwent a similar process of bureaucratization, just

funded projects in south-central Somalia in support of the ongoing

Stabilization as a global policy paradigm

and meaningless.56 Consequently, stabilization is ‘as much a form of

Paradoxes of past statebuilding in Somalia

be seen as a paradigmatic case study of ‘how large-scale international

primary economic and political prizes in a resource-scarce country’.73

73 L. Hammond and H. Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space in Somalia: a scarce

network of relations that includes the Somali diaspora, African troops,

As external stabilization and local extraversion proceed in Somalia, who

Elites are conventionally identified by reference to their superior

appropriation of foreign aid—was crucial in the emergence of ‘a marriage

warlords to ensure the protection of their property.104 Between the middle

104 Marchal, ‘Survey of Mogadishu’s Economy’.

protection money to militia leaders of their clans.111 Many of these

118 A. Schmidt, ‘Coordinating development in conflict states: donor networks in

This section highlights recurrent modes of extraversion at the nexus

128 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 254–55.

among clan-based armed groups of variable size, durability and ability

of prominent Mogadishu warlords as part of covert counterterrorism

has permitted political competitors to resort to violence rather than to

140 Hammond and Vaughan-Lee, ‘Humanitarian Space’, 9. While different external

145 Bayart, ‘History of extraversion’, 258.

use of false identities for obtaining asylum or residence abroad—often

149 The term ‘briefcase organization’ refers to a fraudulent organization set up by

reflect a historic type of extraversion based on corruption and grandiose

Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s administration (2009–2012) continued

of these entities, many of them were announced abroad or initiated by

personalized forms of escapism and escape.168 Although flight refers to a

Mass population displacement might not immediately appear relevant

174 A. Lindley, ‘Displacement in contested places: governance, movement and settlement

Map 1. Horn of Africa 3