SOMALIA: TERRORIST HAVEN AND PROXY WARS
Laura Khor
PhD Candidate
University of St Andrews
Arts Faculty Building, Library Park
The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland
KY16 9AX
E-mail:
Work in Progress
Introduction
Anarchy. Chaos. Terrorists. Safe havens. Warlords. Ungoverned Spaces. Arc of Instability. Humanitarian problems. All of these words have been used to describe the phenomenon of “Failed States”. The reality of “Failed States” poses a challenge for conceptual frameworks, political norms and social construction and reconstruction of the amorphous term and idea. Failed states are hard to categorize, as numerous studies and debates have highlighted the problem of state weakness, failure and collapse. These are all terms used to describe anomalies in the state system. One country in particular, Somalia, can be considered a failure among failed states for the length and durability of its failed state status. Somalia is a country that has been in a state of collapse since 1991 with the complete disintegration of the central government. The political rhetoric and images of insecurity associated with the term “Failed States” are often images of violence and complete anarchy. Images from the movie Black Hawk Down and the everyday chaos reported in Somalia, the casebook example of a “Failed State”, are the first associations of the “Failed States” for American Foreign Policy makers.[1] Lawlessness and crime rule in failed states where governments, judiciary, and laws once operated and reigned. Public policy, particularly the United States, was affected by a “Mogadishu effect” that lasted for several years until transnational security issues and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 prompted a rethinking of failed states and security.[2]
Methodology
The methodology utilized in this paper will be focused on second hand resources, interviews with military personnel from UNISOM 1 and UNISOM 2. In particular, interviews with military personnel and policymakers, such as Brigadier General Latiff who headed the Malaysian troops for the United Nations in UNOSOM 1 and 2 will highlight the conceptualization and engagement with “Failed States”. The use of process-tracing key events and American foreign policy responses will focus on the post-9/11 security environment and the rise and fall of the Islamic Courts Union. There are several challenges to the use of the case study of Somalia, as few researchers have been to the state and information can be sporadic due violence and other security issues and concerns.
Constructing a Definition
The term “failed states” is a relatively new analytical term used to describe a state, but the term and its definition and theory may not reflect political reality. These terms have been used to describe virtual states in the international state system. The definitions of “Failed States” are amorphous in academia and public policy, presenting a contested issue for scholars, researchers and political actors. The complexity of defining and constructing the threats “Failed States” become and pose is the foundation for the broader issue of state failure and (in)security. The conceptualization of “Failed States” is necessary to understand why the highly securitized construction of failed states represents a shift in assessing and understanding transnational security threats. Author Robert I. Rotberg argues that state failure is described as,
Nation-states fail when they are consumed by internal violence and cease delivering positive political goods to their inhabitants. Their governments lose credibility, and the continuing nature of the particular nation-state itself becomes questionable and illegitimate in the hearts and minds of its citizens.[3]
This definition does not define “failure” in delivering positive political goods. In other words, how do we interpret a level for failure?
The Causes of State Failure
The use of the politically constructed term “Failed States” entered policy and political rhetoric in the early and mid-1990s to describe the post-Cold War world.[4] In particular, the mainstream International Relations concept of “Failed States” is not an analytically effective tool for fully comprehending the dynamism of state failure. The dynamic causes and consequences of state failure and policy responses have been limited to neorealist and neoliberal thinking which has resulted in mixed policy responses.
This short introduction to classifying such causes and indicators leading to state failure hopes to highlight the complexity behind this terminology. The variety of indicators used to determine state failure can vary from the simple to the complex. The Failed State Index by Foreign Policy Magazine and the Fund for Peace utilizes 12 indicators as part of a Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) when ranking 148 states.[5] The 12 social, economic and political indicators for state vulnerability range from “Chronic and Sustained Human Flight” to “Criminalization and/or Delegitimization of the State”[6] The variety of indicators to identify a weak, failing, failed and collapsed state illustrates the depth of the challenge of defining state failure.
All states are not the same in capacity, capability and political will. The variety of states in the international system illustrates the difference between strong, weak, collapsed and failed states. These labels are not interchangeable as they denote different levels of states in the international political system. Authors Pinar Bilgin and Adam David Morton argue that, “[T]he notion of a ‘failed’ state, for instance, is used to describe the internal characteristics of a state, whereas ‘rogue’ states are labeled as such because of their foreign policy behaviours.”[7] A variety of terms, referring to a continuum of troubled states in the international state system.
States are the “building blocks of world order”[8] and are why the concept of state failure is troubling to conceptualize and resuscitate. Throughout human history, nations, regimes and empires have risen and fallen. Nation-states are the normative framework in international relations theory and are the political reality that governs people, law, and security. Nation-States are the political actors that are ascribed with specific rules and expectations associated with sovereignty, but not all states have the political will or capacity to fulfill their state obligations, political goods or sovereignty expectations.
State capacity and capability differ from country to country. Author Robert H. Jackson introduced the concept of “quasi-states” to highlight the global political systems dependence on such a unit of analysis and paradigm. Jackson was concerned with weak states that did not fulfill the traditional concept of state sovereignty. Jackson argues that, “[T]he problem is that underdeveloped states claim both security rights and development rights and the international community desires to acknowledge both claims but classical rules of sovereign states-systems get in the way.”[9] States that should not be considered states, in the classical legal sense, are operating on two different definition levels of a nation-state and are surviving due to stronger states aid and the flexibility of the “new sovereignty game.”[10] A “Failed State,” then, is a member of the international system but the political reality is strikingly different from conceptual reality. State security is complicated with the security issues and failure indicators of patrimonialism, warlordism, poor economies, lack of or deteriorating civil society, and weak government institutions exploited by elites.
State performance based on deliverance of political goods is pivotal to understanding the difference between failing, failed, and collapsed states. States and state performance should be conceptualized as a continuum of government effectiveness described as strong states, weak states, failing states, failed states, and collapsed states. Strong states and weak states have key differences. Author Robert I. Rotberg articulates that strong states outperform weak states in performance of political will by delivering political goods.[11]
Strong states unquestionably control their territories and deliver a full range and a high quality of political goods to their citizens. They perform well according to indicators like GDP per capita, the UNDP Human Development Index, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, and Freedom House’s Freedom of the World Report. Strong states offer high levels of security from political and criminal violence, ensure political freedom and civil liberties, and create environments conducive to the growth of economic opportunity. The rule of law prevails. Judges are independent. Road networks are well maintained. Telephones work. . .Overall, strong states are places of enviable peace and order.[12]
Strong states provide security within their borders to their citizens. In comparison, weak states do not provide such levels of political will. The defining characteristics of weak states, articulated by Rotberg, are:
Weak states (broadly states in crisis) include a broad continuum of states: they may be inherently weak because of geographical, physical, or fundamental economic constraints; or they may be basically strong, but temporarily or situationally weak because of internal antagonisms, management flaws, greed, despotism, or external attacks. Weak states typically harbor ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other intercommunal tensions that have not yet, or not yet thoroughly, become overtly violent . . . In weak states, the ability to provide adequate amounts of other political goods is diminished or is diminishing . . . Weak states usually honor rule of law precepts in the breach. They harass civi society. Weak states are often rules by despots, elected or not.
All weak states do not necessarily slide into failing, failed or collapsed categories. The threshold between state weakness transforming into state failure has additional indicators tipping a state into failure. There are significant differences between a failed and a collapsed state. “Failed States” do not remain fixed in their status or history and can exhibit more than one failed state characteristic at once.[13] Specific indicators identify “Failed States”. Author A.J. Christopher highlights the disintegration of central and local administrations as one cause leading to state failure.[14] “Failed States” may have regimes that target their own citizenry, encourages or is even the cause of conflicts, which results in escalating criminal violence within state borders. The legitimacy of the state is lost as the state infrastructure deteriorates or is completely destroyed; the economy falters then collapses, key indicators to identifying state failure.[15] Overall, “Failed States” are either unable or unwilling to carry on with the Hobbesian Social Contract. The collapse of the state infrastructure and societal failure are viewed on a continuum that are interconnected and interrelated to one another. One stage of failure inevitably leads to the other.[16] All failed states cannot be researched as the same entities. State failure can be understood not as one level, rather a variety of levels. Scholar Jean Germain Gros proposed five types of failed state categories or stages:
Five types of failed states are thus identified. First, there are anarchic states, which by definition have no centralized government whatsoever . . . A close cousin of the anarchic state is the phantom or mirage state, of which today’s Zaire is an excellent example. The difference between an anarchic state and a phantom one is that while all anarchic states are ipso facto phantom states, not all phantom states are anarchic. . . Third, there are anaemic stats whose status stems from two sources. States may be anaemic because their energy has been sapped by counter-insurgency groups seeking to take the place of the authority that is formally in power. . . States may also be anaemic because the engines of modernity were never put in place; as a result as population growth puts increasing demands on archaic structures, state agents are in no position to assert effective control. . . Fourth, there are captured states, which typically have a strong centralized authority but one that is captured by members of insecure elites to frustrate—and in the extreme eradicate—rival elites. . .Fifth, and finally, there are states that are failed in vitro (they are called aborted states), meaning that they experienced failure even before the process of state formation was consolidated.[17]
Gros’ failed state typology argues that state failure is subtly nuanced and occurs in different stages.[18] States can simultaneously exist within the five stages described by Gros or go through various stages rapidly or begin an agonizing descent. State weakness and failure are not terminal definitions. States can become strong states and reverse the causes and indicators of their security situation.
Collapsed states have a variety of explanations from scholars, but the theoretical framework to explain this phenomenon has also challenged academics and politicians.
Robert I. Rotberg describes a collapsed state as,
. . . is a rare and extreme version of a failed state. Political good are obtained through private or ad hoc means. Security is equated with the rule of the strong. A collapsed state exhibits a vacuum of authority. It is a mere geographical expression, a black hole into which a failed polity has fallen. There is a dark energy, but the forces of entropy have overwhelmed the radiance that hitherto provided some semblance or order and other vital political goods to the inhabitants (no longer citizens) embraced by language or ethnic affinities or borders.[19]
Rotberg emphasizes the lack of or excess of political goods to explain a collapsed state. This is one perspective on state collapse. Author I. William Zartman defines state collapse as,
State collapse is both the cause and the result of internal or civil wars, as weak and illegitimate order permits violence and violence consumes legitimacy and order. Although no two cases of state collapse are the same and “collapse” can take on a variety of specific manifestations, the fundamental fact of the disappearance of state institutions, law, and order creates inhumanities and insecurities that affect the surrounding countries.[20]
Zartman focuses on state violence as the main impetus to cause state collapse. While Author Douglas Dearth describes the shift from a weak state to a collapsed state as,
[f]irst institutions fail to provide adequate services to the population. Second, improperly channeled ethnic, social and ideological competitions erode the effectiveness of these weak institutions and even more. Finally, the cumulative effects of poverty, overpopulation, rural flight and rapid urbanization, as well as environmental degradation, overwhelm the weak state to the point of collapse.[21]
All of these definitions and conceptions of the causes of state collapse illustrate the variety in approach and construction of state weakness, failure and collapse.
In order to understand state failure, one must understand the structure that allows such states to exist. States are the units of power and sovereignty for a people. A state has a clear definition and function. Quasi-states, those states with “limited empirical statehood”, have been operating in an international system that allows them to operate without fulfilling the bare basics of positive sovereignty.[22] In the Westphalian system, all states are treated equal even though many states are stronger than others in delivering positive goods to their citizenry. Author Timothy Raeymaekers argues that,