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Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

STATE COLLAPSE, INSURGENCY, 

AND COUNTERINSURGENCY:

LESSONS FROM SOMALIA

J. Peter Pham

November 2013

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iii
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ISBN 1-58487-594-1
v

FOREWORD

For almost a generation, Somalia has been a byword 

for state failure, defying the combined efforts of diplomats and soldiers to restore some semblance of order, 

to say nothing of a functional national government. In 

the absence of an effective sovereign, the country is 

a backdrop for multiple humanitarian crises, as well 

as the emergence of an epidemic of maritime piracy 

that threatened vital sea lanes in the Gulf of Aden and 

the western Indian Ocean. Even worse, notwithstanding a military intervention by the army of neighboring 

Ethiopia and the subsequent deployment of an African Union force operating with a mandate from the 

United Nations Security Council, an al-Qaeda-linked 

militant group, al-Shabaab, managed to seize control 

of most of central and southern Somalia and confined 

the internationally-recognized government and the 

peacekeepers protecting it to little more than a few besieged districts in the capital of Mogadishu.

Consequently, in the space of months, the tide was 

turned against the insurgents, and a new Somali authority, appointed in late 2012, presents what appears 

to be the most promising chance for a permanent government in recent memory. It is not surprising that 

many policymakers have sought to tease out lessons 

from the apparent success of the “Somali model” that 

might be applicable to similar situations, both in Africa and beyond, where weak governments face Islamist 

insurgents, including the Sahel, in particular where alQaeda-affiliated fighters and their allies have posed 

severe challenges to embattled governments.

In this monograph, however, Dr. J. Peter Pham 

adopts a different approach. Beginning with a keen 

appreciation for the intricacies of Somali culture and 
history, he argues that the key is to understand political legitimacy among the Somali and then examines 

how both al-Shabaab and the different local polities 

that have emerged in Somalia have, to varying degrees, acquired it—as well as how successive Somali 

regimes have not. He also explores how weakness of, 

and divisions among, the insurgents can be better exploited by engaging and empowering alternative centers of legitimacy. What emerges from his analysis is a 

rather nuanced picture of the counterinsurgency strategy that, following several frustrating years, finally 

achieved its objectives, as well as several provocative 

suggestions. 

For these reasons, the Strategic Studies Institute 

is pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution 

to not only regional knowledge about the social, 

political, and security challenges faced in a geostrategically sensitive part of the African continent, 

but also the broader literature on insurgency and 

counterinsurgency.

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

vi
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. PETER PHAM is Director of the Africa Center at the 

Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. Previously, he 

was tenured Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science, and African Studies at James Madison 

University in Harrisonburg, VA, where he directed the 

Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs. 

He has also regularly lectured at the Foreign Service 

Institute, the Joint Special Operations University, the 

Defense Institute of Security Assistance Management, 

and other U.S. Government professional education institutions. Dr. Pham has testified before the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions and conducted briefings or consulted for U.S. and foreign governments as 

well as private firms. In May 2008, at the invitation of 

General William Ward, he gave the keynote address 

at the first Senior Leaders Conference of the United 

States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Mainz, Germany, and subsequently served on AFRICOM’s Senior Advisory Group. Dr. Pham is the incumbent Vice 

President of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), an academic organization chaired by Professor Bernard Lewis representing 

over 1,300 scholars of Middle Eastern and African 

Studies at more than 300 colleges and universities in 

the United States and overseas. He regularly appears 

in numerous national and international media outlets. 

Dr. Pham is also Editor in Chief of ASMEA’s flagship 

Journal of the Middle East and Africa. A specialist on U.S. 

foreign and defense policy, African politics and security, and terrorism and political violence, Dr. Pham is 

the author of over 300 essays and reviews and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books—most 

recently, Somalia: Fixing Africa’s Most Failed State, coauthored with Greg Mills and David Kilcullen. 

ix

SUMMARY

For more than 2 decades, Somalia has been the 

prime example of a collapsed state, thus far resisting 

no fewer than 15 attempts to reconstitute a central government, while the 16th such undertaking, the current 

internationally-backed but struggling regime of the 

“Federal Republic of Somalia,” just barely maintains 

a token presence in the capital and along the southeastern littoral—and that due only to the presence of 

a more than 17,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force. In fact, for much of the period, insurgents 

spearheaded by the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen

(Movement of Warrior Youth, al-Shabaab), a militant 

Islamist movement with al-Qaeda links, dominated 

wide swathes of Somali territory and operated more 

or less freely in other areas not under their de facto 

control. Despite the desultory record, the apparent 

speedy collapse of the insurgency since late-2011 has 

made it fashionable within some political and military 

circles to cite the “Somalia model” as a prescription 

for other conflicts in Africa, including the fight in Mali 

against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and 

its allies. 

In contrast, this monograph argues that the failure 

for so long of any of Somalia’s successive governmental entities to prevail over their opponents and bring 

an end to conflict has little to do with the lack of outside assistance, especially of the military variety, often 

cited by way of explanation and more to do with other 

factors on which external actors can have little positive 

effect. Specifically, if the regime fighting an insurgency is unable or unwilling to take the steps to achieve 

internal political legitimacy, no outside intervention 

will be able to help it to “victory.” In examining how 
x

such has been the case in Somalia, the nature of political legitimacy in Somali society is closely examined, 

deriving pointers not only from the success of al-Shabaab and its allies, but also those of relatively stable 

new polities that have emerged in various parts of the 

former Somali state in mobilizing clan loyalties and 

local community sensibilities. Both the implications of 

engaging these alternative centers of legitimacy—an 

approach the international community only reluctantly and hesitantly came around to embracing—and 

the potential to exploit the opportunity presented by 

the weakness of and divisions among the extremists 

to not only clear a space for humanitarian action, but 

also to ensure a modicum of stability and security in 

the geopolitically sensitive Horn of Africa, are then 

discussed.

Among the lessons thus drawn, which are applicable to other insurgency and conflict situations in 

Africa, is that the repeated failure of internationallybacked attempts to reestablish a national government 

in Somalia underscores the limitations of top-down, 

state-centric processes that are structurally engineered 

with a bias in favor of centralization, rather than bottom-up, community-based approaches better adapted 

to the local sensibilities.
1

STATE COLLAPSE, INSURGENCY, 

AND COUNTERINSURGENCY:

LESSONS FROM SOMALIA

J. Peter Pham

Introduction.

It has been 2 decades since the day in late January 

1991 when dictator Muhammad Siyad Barre packed 

himself inside the last functioning tank belonging 

to his once-powerful military and ignominiously 

fled Mogadishu. He left behind a capital in ruins. 

Caught in the throes of uncontrolled street violence, 

Somalia has been the prime example of what Robert 

Rotberg has termed a “collapsed state”: a “rare and 

extreme version of the failed state” that is “a mere 

geographical expression, a black hole into which a 

failed polity has fallen,” where: 

there is dark energy, but the forces of entropy have 

overwhelmed the radiance that hitherto provided 

some semblance of order and other vital political 

goods to the inhabitants (no longer the citizens) embraced by language or ethnic affinities or borders.1

The country has stubbornly resisted no fewer than 

15 attempts to reconstitute a central government, 

and the 16th such undertaking, the internationallybacked,2 but struggling regime of the Federal Republic of Somalia (FRS), barely manages to maintain a 

token presence in the capital and along parts of the 

southeastern littoral—and that much only thanks to 

the presence of the more than 17,000 predominantly Ugandan, Burundian, and Kenyan troops that make 

up the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).3
2

For a number of years, insurgents spearheaded

by the Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Movement 

of Warrior Youth, al-Shabaab), a militant Islamist 

movement that was declared a “specially designated 

global terrorist” by the U.S. State Department in 

2008,4 a “listed terrorist organization” by the Australian government the following year,5 a “proscribed 

organization” by the British government in its 2010 

Terrorism Act,6 and a “listed terrorist group” by the 

Canadian government,7 dominated wide swathes of 

Somali territory and operated more or less freely in 

other areas not under their de facto control—with the 

exception of the Somaliland and Puntland regions, 

which will be discussed later. In fact, if the insurgents 

suddenly suffered several major reverses beginning 

in 2011, the explanation would seem to lie more with 

the effects of the drought that struck that year—and 

to their contribution to and poor management of the 

resulting famine—as well as the splintering within 

al-Shabaab ranks, than to any significant battlefield 

losses by the group. 

Nevertheless, the apparent speedy collapse of the 

insurgency has made it fashionable within political 

and military circles to cite the “Somalia model” as a 

prescription for other conflicts in Africa, including the 

fight in Mali against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb 

(AQIM) and its allies. General Carter F. Ham, thencommander of the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM), hailed the performance of African militaries in Somalia as “extraordinary,” noting that “they 

really have degraded the capability of al-Shabaab,” 

which was “really diminished . . . because of the role 

of the Africans.”8

 In his valedictory address, retiring 

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson celebrated that “one of Africa’s most en-
3

during, intractable, and seemingly hopeless conflicts” 

has been transformed “into a major success story and 

a potential model for the resolution of other conflicts 

on the continent.”9 For his part, Michael A. Sheehan, 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations 

and Low-Intensity Conflict, has declared, “You can 

see in our strategies, our policies and programs in [Somalia], some of the components of how our strategy 

might look in the months and years ahead.”10

In contrast, this monograph argues that the failure 

for so long of any of Somalia’s successive governmental entities to prevail over their opponents and bring 

an end to conflict has little to do with the lack of 

outside assistance, especially of the military variety, 

and more to do with other factors on which external 

actors can have little positive effect. Specifically, if 

the regime fighting an insurgency is unable or unwilling to take the steps to achieve internal political 

legitimacy, no outside intervention will be able to 

help it to “victory,” as even a cursory review of the 

relationship between legitimacy and military force in 

civil wars will confirm. In examining how such has 

been the case in Somalia, it will also be necessary to 

look at the nature of political legitimacy in Somali 

society, deriving pointers from not only the Islamist 

insurgents of al-Shabaab and their allies, but also the 

successes of relatively stable new polities that have 

emerged in various parts of the former Somali state 

in mobilizing clan loyalties and local community 

sensibilities. Both the implications of engaging these 

alternative centers of legitimacy—an approach the 

international community only reluctantly and hesitantly came around to embracing—and the potential 

to exploit the opportunity presented by the weakness of and divisions among the extremists are then 
4

discussed, thus not only clearing a space for humanitarian action, but also ensuring a modicum of stability and security in the geopolitically sensitive Horn 

of Africa. Finally, lessons are drawn that might have 

more realistic applicability to other insurgency and 

conflict situations in Africa. 

Identity and Legitimacy among the Somali.

Somali identity is historically rooted in paternal 

descent (tol), which is meticulously memorialized in 

genealogies (abtirsiinyo, reckoning of ancestors) and 

determines each individual’s exact place in society. 

At the apices of this structure are the “clan-families.” 

According to the most generally accepted division, 

the major “clan-families” among the Somali are the 

Darod, Dir, Hawiye, Isaq, Digil, and Rahanweyn. The 

first four, historically predominantly nomadic pastoralists, are identified as “noble” (bilis) clans, while 

the Digil and Rahanweyn, also known collectively 

as “Digil Mirifle,” were traditionally cultivators and 

agro-pastoralists and occupy a second tier in Somali 

society. The latter also speak a dialect of Somali, afmaymay, which is so distinct from the af-maxaa dialect 

of the former that it is “properly a not-mutually-intelligible language.”11 A third tier also exists in this 

Somali social hierarchy, consisting of minority clans 

whose members, known collectively as Sab, historically carried out occupations such as metalworking

and tanning that rendered them ritually unclean in 

the eyes of the nomadic “noble clans.”12 This social 

hierarchy likewise has implications for political life. 

It is noteworthy, for example, that the vice president 

and defense minister (and sometimes prime minister) 

in Siyad Barre’s regime, Mohamed Ali Samantar, was 
5

a Sab of metalworking background (Tumal). This 

particular individual who, thanks to a potentially 

far-reaching unanimous 2010 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court,13 is currently the defendant in a lawsuit 

in the U.S. federal courts brought under the Torture 

Victim Protection Act of 1991 on behalf of victims of 

the regime. This undoubtedly was related to the fact 

that his origins made it highly unlikely that he could 

ever lead a coup against his benefactor.

Because these genealogical groupings have traditionally been too large and too widely dispersed to 

act as politically cohesive units—although in modern 

times, the advent of instantaneous mass communications has rendered the segmentary solidarity of their 

members a significant factor in national politics—the 

clan-families are now subdividing into clans and subclans by descent in the male line from an eponymous 

ancestor at the head of each clan lineage. Within the 

clan, the most clearly defined subsidiary group is an 

individual’s “primary lineage,” which also represents 

the limits of exogamy, and within which an individual’s primary identification is with what has been described as the “diya-paying group” (from the Arabic 

diya, “blood-wealth”). This most basic and stable unit 

of Somali social organization consists of kinsmen with 

collective responsibility for one another with respect 

to exogenous actors. The unity of the group is founded not only on shared ancestry traced to a common 

ancestor four to eight generations back, but also on a 

formal political contract (heer) between its members. If 

a member of a diya-paying group kills or injures someone outside the group, the members of his group are 

jointly responsible for that action and will collectively 

undertake the task of making reparation. Conversely, 

if one of its members is injured or killed, the diya-pay-
6

ing group will either collectively seek vengeance or 

share in whatever compensation may be forthcoming. 

Of course, the nature of the clan system is itself very 

nuanced and, while rooted in blood relationships, 

is also historically a consequence of nomadic pastoral life, with its need to defend scarce resources, that 

results over time in an openness to the formation of 

new alliances and, even later, of new identities.14 British anthropologist I. M. Lewis, arguably the foremost 

living authority on Somali history and culture, has observed that: 

the vital importance of this grouping, in an environment in which the pressure of population on sparse 

environmental resources is acute, and where fighting 

over access to water and pasture is common, can hardly be overemphasized

since it is: 

upon his diya-paying group, and potentially on wider 

circles of clansmen within his clan-family, that the 

individual ultimately depends for the security of his 

person and property.15

The pervasiveness of the clan system distinguished Somalia from the vast majority of postindependence African states, where the principal 

problem was the formation of a viable transcendent 

nationalism capable of uniting widely divergent ethnic groups who found themselves grouped together 

in “states” created by colonialism. The Somali were 

different. They consisted of a single ethnic group 

with only one major internal division—the divide 

that separated the members of the four “noble clans” 

and the Digil Mirifle—and “considered themselves 
7

bound together by a common language, by an essentially nomadic pastoral culture, and by the shared 

profession of Islam.”16 Nationalism was already part 

of their experience insofar as national culture is 

concerned, since they “spoke the same language, 

shared the same predominantly nomadic herding 

culture, and were all adherents of Sunni Islam with a 

strong attachment to the Sufi brotherhood”; all they 

lacked was political unity at the level of the culturally defined nation.17 Thus, Somalis formed an ethnic 

group or nation but not, traditionally, a single polity. Despite 50 years of state-building, urbanization, 

civil war, state collapse, and emigration, the bonds of 

kinship remain the most durable feature of Somali social, political, and economic life. While ethnicity is a 

category that has applicability vis-a`-vis non-Somalis, 

within Somali society, clan is the focus of identity, 

notwithstanding the fact that the latter, unlike the 

former, does not exhibit readily apparent formal 

“markers” but relies instead on genealogical criteria, 

which, until fairly recently, were orally transmitted. 

From Union to Fragmentation: 

A Brief History of Modern Somalia.

Modern Somalia itself, which historically had 

never been a unified political entity, was born out of a 

union between the British Protectorate of Somaliland, 

which became the independent state of Somaliland on 

June 26, 1960, and the territory then administered 

by Italy as a United Nations (UN) trust that had, 

before World War II, been an Italian colony (Somalia Italiana). The latter received its independence on 

July 1, 1960, and the two states, under the influence 

of the sort of African nationalism fashionable during 
8

the period, entered into a union, even though they 

had never developed a common sense of nationhood and had very different colonial experiences, 

common language and religion notwithstanding. 

Consequently, by the time army commander Siyad 

Barre seized power in October 1969: 

it had become increasingly clear that Somali parliamentary democracy had become a travesty, an elaborate, rarefied game with little relevance to the daily 

challenges facing the population.

18

A year after taking over, Siyad Barre proclaimed 

the “Somali Democratic Republic” officially a Marxist state and tried to stamp out clan identity as an 

anachronistic barrier to progress that ought to be replaced by nationalism and “Scientific Socialism.” The 

non-kinship term jaalle (“friend” or “comrade”) was 

introduced to replace the traditional term of polite 

address ina’adeer (“cousin”). The positions of traditional clan elders were abolished or, at the very 

least, subsumed into the bureaucratic structure of 

the state. At the height of the campaign, it became a 

criminal offense to even refer to one’s own or another’s clan identity.19 Given how deeply rooted the clan 

identity was, it was not surprising that Jaalle Siyad 

Barre failed in his efforts to efface the bonds. Ironically, he evolved over time from a Soviet client into a 

U.S. ally after President Jimmy Carter broke with the 

Ethiopian regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam over the 

latter’s increasingly repressive human rights record.20

Ultimately, the regime itself simply dissolved in 

January 1991, when Siyad Barre was caught between 

popular rebellions led by the Isaq and Darod in the 

north and a Hawiye uprising in central Somalia and 
9

chased out of Mogadishu altogether. By the time of 

the dictator’s flight, Somalia had fallen apart into the 

traditional clan and lineage divisions that, in the absence of other forms of law and order, alone offered 

some degree of security. The general situation now 

vividly recalled the descriptions of Richard Francis 

Burton and other 19th century European explorers: a 

land of clan (and clan segment) republics where the 

would-be traveler needed to secure the protection of 

each group whose territory he sought to traverse.21

Although Siyad Barre had adopted “Scientific Socialism” with the professed goal of uniting the nation by eliminating its ancient clan-based division, the 

dictator soon fell back on calling on kinship ties in 

order to maintain power—another example of these 

bonds’ continuing relevance. With the exception of 

his previously mentioned defense chief Samantar, 

Siyad Barre’s most trusted ministers came from his 

own Darod clan-family: the Marehan clan of his paternal relations; the Dhulbahante clan of his son-in-law 

Ahmed Suleiman Abdulle, who headed the notorious National Security Service; and the Ogaden clan of 

his maternal kin. Siyad Barre’s “MOD” coalition first 

led him into the disastrous Ogaden War (1977–78), 

a clumsy attempt to exploit the chaos of the Ethiopian Revolution to seize the eponymous territory 

in the Haud plateau that the dictator’s irredentist 

kinsfolk viewed as “Western Somalia.” The influx of 

over a million Ogadeni refugees following the Somali military’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the 

Ethiopians and their Soviet and Cuban allies created enormous problems for the Somali state. These 

challenges were only exacerbated when half of the 

Ogadeni refugees were placed in refugee camps in 

the middle of the northern regions of Somaliland, 
10

the historical territory of their traditional rivals, the 

Isaq. This led to the formation of the Somali National Movement (SNM) by the Isaq. Another result 

of the failed war was an abortive coup attempt by 

disaffected officers from the Majeerteen clan, another 

Darod group; those who escaped arrest went on to 

form the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, with the 

backing of their clansmen. Over the next decade, the 

two new opposition groups, both born of a conflict 

that had its origins in Siyad Barre’s own complicated 

political management strategy, would light the fuses 

that would ultimately explode not just the dictatorship, but the Somali state itself.22

After the collapse of the Siyad Barre regime, 

the Hawiye leaders whose forces held sway over 

the abandoned capital, Muhammad Farah ‘Aideed 

and Ali Mahdi, fell out with one another. The fighting and subsequent cutoff of food supplies brought 

about a humanitarian crisis that provoked global 

outrage, leading to no fewer than three successive international military interventions that aimed 

to secure the flow of humanitarian assistance: the 

United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM 

I, April–December 1992), the U.S.–led Unified Task 

Force (UNITAF, December 1992–May 1993), and the 

United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM 

II, March 1993–March 1995).23 Ultimately, however, 

central and southern Somalia reverted to the age-old 

pattern of armed clan factions mobilized by powerful 

figures—referred to by Somalis with the traditional 

title formerly reserved for battle leaders, abbaanduule,

and thus quickly dubbed “warlords” by foreign journalists. These factions were sustained by the spoils of 

conflict, vying with each other for control of territory, and such economic assets as could be found amid 
11

the ruins of the collapsed state, including bananas for 

export.

24

Meanwhile, in the absence of effective political 

structures of any kind, Islamic authorities arose in 

response to increased crime, with shari’a being a 

common denominator around which different communities could organize. As the Islamic legal authorities gradually assumed policing and adjudication roles, those authorities who enjoyed access to 

greater (that is, external) resources acquired greater 

influence. It should be noted that, although the Somali traditionally subscribe to Sunni Islam, they also 

follow the Shāfī’s school (madhab) of jurisprudence, 

which, although conservative, is open to a variety of 

liberal views regarding practice.25 Throughout most 

of the historical times up to independence in 1960, 

even though different movements existed within 

Sunni Islam in Somalia, the most dominant among 

the populace were the Sufi brotherhoods (tarīqa, 

plural turuq), especially that of the Qadiriyya and 

the Ahmadiyya orders, introduced into Somali 

lands in the 19th century.26 While traditional Islamic 

schools and scholars (ulamā ) played a role as focal 

points for rudimentary political opposition to colonial rule in Italian Somalia, their role in the politics 

of the Somali clan structure was historically neither 

institutionalized nor particularly prominent. In part, 

this is because shari’a was not especially entrenched 

in Somalia: being largely pastoralist, the Somali relied more on customary law (xeer) than on religious 

prescriptions.27 Hence, Somali Islamism is largely 

a post-colonial movement that became active in the 

late 1980s; in the absence of the state’s collapse and 

the ensuing civil strife (and, some authors would add, 

somewhat polemically, the renewed U.S. interest in 
12

potential terrorist linkages in the aftermath of the 

September 11, 2011, attacks on the American homeland28), it is doubtful that militant Islamism would be 

much more than a marginal force in Somali politics.

Religion’s increased influence has been largely a 

phenomenon of small towns and urban centers, although increased adherence to its normative precepts is a wider phenomenon. Islamic religious leaders have helped organize security and other services, 

and businessmen in particular have been supportive 

of the establishment of shari’a-based courts throughout the south, which were precursors to the Islamic 

Courts Union established in Mogadishu in June 2006. 

Suffice it to say, the Islamists attempted to fill certain 

voids left by state collapse and otherwise unattended

to by emergent forces like the warlords. In doing 

so, they also made a bid to supplant clan-based and 

other identities, offering a pan-Islamist identity in 

lieu of other allegiances.29

Contemporaneously, in the absence of anything 

resembling a functioning state and amid the multiplying divisions of a society returning to clan solidarity as the basis for organization, Islam came to be 

seen by some Somalis as an alternative to both the 

potentially Balkanizing clan-based identities and the 

newly emergent criminal syndicates led by so-called 

“warlords.”30

The Failure of the Transitional 

Federal Government.

Since the collapse of the Somali government and 

state in 1991, regional and international actors repeatedly have tried to find ways to reconstitute the 

Somali state by sponsoring lengthy peace processes 
13

aimed at establishing a functioning government 

in Mogadishu.31 The embattled Transitional Federal 

Government (TFG) was the result of the 14th and 15th 

such attempts, the “Nairobi” (or “Mbagathi”) and 

“Djibouti” processes.

The Nairobi Process began in October 2002 under the patronage of the sub-regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)32 and with 

international support, especially from the European 

Union (EU) and the United States. The discussions 

were so protracted that it took just over 2 years to 

establish the TFG using the “4.5 formula.” According to this framework, power was to be shared between four of the clan-families—Darod, Dir, Hawiye, 

and Digil Mirifle (the Isaq, centered in Somaliland, 

declined to participate)—with some space (the “0.5”) 

granted to minority clans. The Transitional Federal 

Charter, agreed to in October 2004, gave the Transitional Federal Institutions of government a 5-year 

mandate. Heading up this structure was Darod 

warlord Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad, who launched his 

national political career with the proceeds of a $1 

million ransom he had extracted from the Taiwanese after his militia seized the trawler MV Shen Kno II

in 1997.

Not until June 2005—and then only under heavy 

pressure from the Kenyan government, which tired 

of footing the bill for guests who had long overstayed 

their welcome—did the TFG finally relocate to Somali 

territory. Even then, the putative government could 

not enter its capital—Prime Minister Mohamed Ali 

Ghedi, who, to his credit, at least made the attempt, 

narrowly escaped assassination for his trouble—and 

settled instead in Jowhar, a provincial town safely 

north of Mogadishu, under the protection of a local 
14

warlord who was a fellow Hawiye clansman and 

patron of the prime minister. When relations with 

the warlord eventually soured, the TFG was forced 

to move on and, in a turn of events that is particularly humiliating in the Somali cultural context, take 

shelter among the Rahanweyn in the backwater of 

Baidoa, some 250 kilometers southwest of the capital. So undesirable was the location and so reduced 

the government’s circumstances that it was February 

2006 before the TFG could muster a quorum to convene its parliament in a converted barn.33

Meanwhile, a new force was emerging in Somalia, the Union of Islamic Courts, which was made 

up of the militias of the various local tribunals set up

by the Islamists that took control of Mogadishu in 

June 2006 after defeating a ragtag coalition of warlords and business leaders hastily thrown together 

by the United States (presumably acting through the 

Central Intelligence Agency) under the rather ironic 

banner of the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace 

and Counter-Terrorism.” The American intervention 

achieved the exact opposite of what was intended: 

far from being checked, the Islamists actually prevailed and, for the first time since the fall of Siyad 

Barre, Mogadishu was united under a single administration. Moreover, the Islamists, who reorganized 

themselves into a governmental structure called the 

Council of Islamic Courts (CIC), quickly extended 

their control over much of southern and central 

Somalia, from the southern border of Puntland in 

the north to the Kenyan frontier in the south, leaving 

the TFG cowering in Baidoa beneath the cover of a 

protection force provided by Ethiopia.34
15

The CIC was, in many respects, a mixed blessing 

for most Somalis. The Islamists cleared away the 

roadblocks that had been set up by rival militias 

over the years and reopened the port of Mogadishu. They organized some rudimentary services, 

including the first municipal garbage collection in 

nearly 2 decades. On the other hand, these improvements went hand in hand with the imposition of Islamic strictures that were largely alien to the Somali 

experience, including a ban on watching the 2006 

FIFA World Cup (deemed “un-Islamic behavior”).35

Given their own earlier experiences with Somali 

Islamism, especially al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (the Islamic 

Union), a group established in the early 1980s that 

sought to create an expansive Islamic Republic of 

Greater Somalia and eventually a political union embracing all Muslims in the Horn of Africa,36 it was not 

surprising that, after many of the same extremists 

assumed positions of authority in the CIC, neighboring Ethiopia would be alarmed by the rapid Islamist rise in Somalia. When a CIC attack on the 

TFG in Baidoa, where the remnants of the TFG were 

being protected by units from the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), provided the casus belli, 

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi launched 

a full-scale military intervention on Christmas Eve 

2006. The heavily armed and well-trained Ethiopians quickly routed the CIC’s forces, many of whose 

commanders made the mistake of deploying units 

in open country, where they were slaughtered by the 

invaders. “On the coat-tails of the Ethiopian forces 

rode the TFG”37 which, with the help of the ENDF 

expeditionary force, assumed control over key government buildings in Mogadishu.
16

As the populace’s sullen acquiescence to the new 

regime turned into resentment of what amounted 

to a de facto foreign occupation, an insurgency gathered steam. Seeming impervious to his increasingly 

tenuous position, Abdullahi Yusuf was finally forced 

to resign as president of the TFG in late 2008, with 

his intransigence increasingly viewed by Somalia’s 

neighbors as an obstacle to the peace process they 

had launched earlier that year by reaching out to the 

regime’s supposedly “moderate” opponents, led by 

former Islamic Courts leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh 

Ahmed. Sharif Ahmed was himself installed as the 

new TFG president in January 2009 by an electoral 

assembly packed for that purpose, which convened 

in Djibouti under the sponsorship of the Nairobibased UN Political Office for Somalia and its head, 

the special representative of UN Secretary General 

Ban Ki-moon, former Mauritanian politician Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah. The mandate of the new regime 

was extended until August 201138 and then, as that 

date drew near, until August 2012 in a deal between

the TFG president and parliamentary speaker,39 although the legal authority under which they acted 

could not be ascertained.

Not surprisingly, given its path to power, the 

new iteration of the TFG has basically been “unable to expand its authority beyond Villa Somalia in 

Mogadishu, seat of the presidency” and “ had little 

relevance.”40 In the summer of 2009, when the insurgents attempted to encircle the TFG in Mogadishu, 

a number of analysts were surprised by the effectiveness of the Islamist push through territory controlled by Sharif Ahmed’s own Harti sub-clan of 

the Abgaal clan—the reluctance of even his closest 

kinsmen to defend him was a strong indicator of 
17

his near-total lack of legitimacy. The promising alliance in early 2010 between the regime and the new 

Sufi movement, Ahlu Sunna wal-Jama’a ([Followers 

of] the Traditions and Consensus [of the Prophet Muhammad], or ASWJ), whose militias had opposed the 

Islamist insurgents in the central regions of Somalia, 

collapsed when Sharif Ahmed reneged on the terms 

of the power-sharing agreement. Since then, with little 

reference to the TFG, the various clan militia loosely 

grouped together under the banner of ASWJ gained 

control of significant parts of the central Somali region of Galguduud in late-2010 through early-2011 

and made modest but appreciable progress toward 

achieving local security and stability.

Meanwhile, the TFG president became as unwilling as his predecessor to engage in the sort of deal 

making that would co-opt key stake holders, extend 

his regime’s political base, and possibly prepare the 

ground for security operations that might break the 

continual stalemate.41 A March 2010 report by the 

UN Monitoring Group on Somalia was, for a diplomatic document, unusually candid in its assessment 

of the regime and was, for all intents and purposes, 

a scathing indictment not only of the TFG, but also 

of any policy built on it:

The military stalemate is less a reflection of opposition strength than of the weakness of the Transitional Federal Government. Despite infusions of foreign 

training and assistance, government security forces 

remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt—a 

composite of independent militias loyal to senior 

government officials and military officers who profit 

from the business of war and resist their integration under a single command. During the course of 

the mandate, government forces mounted only one 
18

notable offensive and immediately fell back from all 

the positions they managed to seize. The government owes its survival to the small African Union 

peace support operation, AMISOM, rather than to its 

own troops. . . .42

The security sector as a whole lacks structure, organization and a functional chain of command—a problem that an international assessment of the security 

sector attributes to ‘lack of political commitment by 

leaders within the Transitional Federal Government 

or because of poor common command and control 

procedures.’ . . . To date, the Transitional Federal 

Government has never managed to deploy regimental or brigade-sized units on the battlefield.

The consequences of these deficiencies include an 

inability of the security forces of the Transitional 

Federal Government to take and hold ground, and 

very poor public perceptions of their performance 

by the Somali public. As a result, they have made 

few durable military gains during the course of the 

mandate, and the front line has remained, in at least 

one location, only 500 meters from the presidency.43

In early 2011, the International Crisis Group also 

issued an indictment of the TFG, declaring that members of the regime were “not fit to hold public office 

and should be forced to resign, isolated, and sanctioned.”44 The document bemoaned the fact that the 

TFG “has squandered the goodwill and support it 

received and achieved little of significance in the 2 

years it has been in office,” and that “every effort to 

make the administration modestly functional has become unstuck.”45 This harsh assessment was echoed 

by the judgment in the most recent report of the UN 

Monitoring Group, released by the Security Council 

in July 2011:
19

The principal impediments to security and stabilization in southern Somalia are the Transitional Federal 

Government leadership’s lack of vision or cohesion, 

its endemic corruption and its failure to advance 

the political process. Arguably even more damaging 

is the Government’s active resistance to engagement with or the empowerment of local, de facto 

political and military forces elsewhere in the country. 

Instead, attempts by the Government’s leadership to 

monopolize power and resources have aggravated 

frictions within the transitional federal institutions, 

obstructed the transitional process and crippled the 

war against Al-Shabaab, while diverting attention 

and assistance away from positive developments 

elsewhere in the country.46

Moreover, international efforts to bolster the regime proved not only ineffective, but also counterproductive. A review of the TFG’s books for the 

years 2009 and 2010 revealed that although bilateral 

assistance to the regime during this period totaled 

$75,600,000, only $2,875,000 could be accounted for. 

The regime’s auditors—imposed by representatives 

of weary donors, especially the European Commission’s special envoy to Somalia, Belgian diplomat 

George-Marc Andre ́—determined that the missing 

money, which represents more than 96 percent of 

direct international aid to the TFG, was simply “stolen” and specifically recommended forensic investigations of the Office of the President, the Office 

of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance, and 

the Ministry of Telecommunications, the most egregious offenders.47 Out of the roughly 9,000 troops 

that the three separate military missions headed by 

the United States, the EU, and France have trained 

and armed for the regime, no more than 1,000 re-
20

mained in Somalia.48 Efforts to supply this miniscule 

force actually increased the threat to regional security, with the UN Monitoring Group citing reports 

that between one-third and one-half of armaments 

supplied to the regime ended up in the illicit market 

and concluding that: 

diversion of arms and ammunition from the Transitional Federal Government and its affiliated militias has been another significant source of supply 

to arms dealers in Mogadishu, and by extension 

to al-Shabaab.49

The investigators even highlighted one case in 

which a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and associated munitions, purchased for the regime under a U.S. State Department contract to DynCorp 

International, found their way into a stronghold of 

al-Shabaab that AMISOM captured in early 2011.

50

AMISOM: Peacekeepers with No Peace to Keep.

Since the TFG “failed to generate a visible constituency of clan or business supporters in Mogadishu,” the regime’s very survival depended “wholly 

on the presence of AMISOM forces.”51 The question 

became whether or not the “peacekeeping” mission 

was sustainable as a military operation, much less 

viable as a strategy.

To its credit and that of its international partners 

like the United States—which indirectly financed 

the use of private contractors to train, equip, and, 

in some cases, guide the African troops in operations52—the progress made by AMISOM over time 

was undeniable. Nonetheless, AMISOM’s capacity 

was consistently hampered by its lack of manpower 
21

and materiel. It took 4 years for the force to reach 

its original authorized strength of 8,000 peacekeepers, with almost all the troops coming from Burundi 

and Uganda.53 While additional deployments from 

those two countries in the first half of 2011 brought 

the total AMISOM troop strength to just about 10,000, 

there were considerable difficulties in bringing the 

numbers up to the new ceiling of 12,000 authorized 

by the UN Security Council in December 2010. Even 

if the troops had been raised and the international community, acting through the UN, the African 

Union (AU), or IGAD, been able to adequately equip 

the enlarged force in an expeditious amount of time, 

it was hardly realistic to expect that a 12,000-strong 

contingent would succeed where the infinitely more 

robust and better trained and armed UNITAF and 

UN Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) II forces, with 

their 37,000 and 28,000 personnel respectively, failed 

just a decade and a half earlier against a far less capable opposition than the current crop of Islamist 

insurgents.54

In a successful model of counterinsurgency, the 

2006–07 Iraq “surge,” the United States committed 

more than 160,000 troops to Iraq, backed by a further 

100,000 servicemen and women deployed elsewhere 

in the region to provide rear support.55 These numbers translate into one pair of boots on the ground 

for every 187 Iraqis. AMISOM, in contrast, was tasked 

with doing much the same job with one soldier for 

every 500 Somalis—if it limited its ambitions to just 

southern and central Somalia. AMISOM’s problem 

was, unfortunately, an all-too-familiar one: its political architects gave very little thought to what they 

hoped to achieve in Somalia, how they intended 

to achieve those aims, and what their exit strategy 
22

might be. Instead, the result has been nothing more 

than a charade, whereby the international community pretended to be doing something while it really 

did very little, all the while throwing increasing, but 

nonetheless inadequate, numbers of African soldiers into a conflict that they cannot hope to win.56

One of the few factors aside from ideology that unites 

the various Shabaab factions among themselves was 

opposition to the TFG and its AMISOM protectors. 

While instances of the sort of indiscriminate shelling 

that characterized the TFG’s response to insurgent 

attacks early in the mission have decreased with 

training, improved targeting, and the identification 

of no-fire zones,57 the mere presence of the AU force 

and deeply ingrained Somali resentment of foreign 

intervention in the country has enabled al-Shabaab 

to rally support from a Somali populace that otherwise has little time for its alien strictures, much less 

its ham-fisted management of the famine.

The Islamist Insurgents.

While the 2006 Ethiopian intervention ended 

the rule of the Islamic Courts, the latter’s al-Shabaab militia not only survived, but later emerged 

as the dominant force opposing the TFG and its international supporters. Al-Shabaab itself was born 

earlier under the leadership of one of the CIC’s 

more hard-line leaders, Sheikh Hassan Dahir ‘Aweys, who wanted to create a military wing for the 

Islamist movement whose members would be not 

only well-trained, but also indoctrinated to a panIslamist identity that transcended clan allegiances. 

Dahir ‘Aweys entrusted this initiative to one of his 

young deputies, Adan Hashi Farah (“Ayro”), who 
23

had travelled to and been trained in Afghanistan 

before the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States 

and the subsequent American-led invasion in 2001. 

Other prominent leaders of the group had also had 

experience in Afghanistan and Kashmir, including Mukhtar Robow Ali (“Abu Mansur”), Ibrahim 

Haji Jama (“al-Afghani”), and Ahmed Abdi Godane, 

(“Abu Zubair”), who eventually succeeded Ayro as 

the group’s nominal leader after the latter was killed 

in a U.S. airstrike in May 2008.58

After the Ethiopian invasion destroyed the CIC, alShabaab began to operate as an independent entity. 

Over time, the group—insofar as its various units 

and factions can be said to share commonalities—

has shifted its emphases from a purely local focus on 

driving out foreign forces to an increasingly international agenda that has produced both a twin bombing in Kampala, Uganda, in July 2010, and formal 

proclamations of its adhesion to al-Qaeda. Gradually gaining control over much of southern and central Somalia—in January 2009, it even took control of 

Baidoa, an objective that eluded its former parent organization, the CIC—al-Shabaab has established local 

governments in those areas that administer its harsh 

version of shari’a, as well as adjudicating more prosaic 

disputes. Since early 2009, al-Shabaab forces have not 

only attacked the TFG, but also battled with AMISOM 

forces, drawing the peacekeepers deeper into the conflict and causing them to suffer increasing casualties 

from terrorist attacks such as the September 17, 2009, 

suicide bombing that killed 17 peacekeepers, including deputy force commander Brigadier General 

Juvenal Niyoyunguruza of Burundi, and wounded 

more than 40 others.59 Al-Shabaab has also enjoyed 

some success reaching out to the Somali diaspora 
24

elsewhere in Africa and in Europe, North Africa, the 

Middle East, and Australia. Although the number of 

Somali recruits is tiny compared to the estimated 

two million Somalis in the diaspora, the relative success of the recruitment program has focused considerable international attention—from both terrorist 

networks and law enforcement officials—on al-Shabaab’s capabilities, especially the extremist group’s 

reach into diaspora communities. One young recruit, 

Shirwa Ahmed, perpetrated what was the first 

known suicide attack by an American citizen when, 

in October 2008, he detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in Puntland. Others in the 

diaspora have been indicted by U.S. prosecutors for 

sending funding to the insurgency.60 Al-Shabaab has 

also provided training camps for foreign Islamist 

militants, as well as safe haven for some highranking al-Qaeda operatives in East Africa, including Abu Taha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, 

who were subsequently killed by Ethiopian and U.S. 

special operations forces, respectively.61

Regarding al-Shabaab and its place among international terrorist networks, considerable confusion and misinformation about the group exists. Most 

analysts did not believe that al-Shabaab was, for most 

of its history, a branch of or under the operational 

control of al-Qaeda.62 However, most—including the 

U.S. State Department’s congressionally mandated 

Country Reports on Terrorism—acknowledged that 

there are many links between the two organizations.63 Certainly, there was evidence dating back to 

at least 2007 of operational links—including transfers of knowledge and equipment—between alShabaab in Somalia and what eventually emerged 

as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 
25

Yemen. Those same links seem also to be at work 

in the case of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a midlevel al-Shabaab militant captured by U.S. forces 

in early 2011 while traveling between Somalia and 

Yemen, whose nine-count indictment on terrorism 

charges by a grand jury in the U.S. Federal Court of 

the Southern District of New York was unsealed in 

early July 2011; the evidence obtained from his questioning by the High-Value Interrogation Group is 

said to have provided some of the clearest evidence 

to date of a deepening relationship between alShabaab and AQAP.64 So while unlike the other major 

violent Islamist extremist group in Africa, AQIM,65

al-Shabaab was never formally admitted as a branch 

of al-Qaeda during Osama bin Laden’s lifetime, its 

status changed as his successors sought to establish 

a name for themselves by carrying out attacks—or, 

at the very least, apparently expanding the network—

wherever they could. Thus, in February 2012, al-Shabaab leader Godane released a video announcing the 

group’s merger with the remnant of al-Qaeda headed 

by al-Zawahiri.66

Generally allied with al-Shabaab—although occasionally also competing with it for control of key 

towns and strategic resources like the port of Kismayo—is Hizbul Islam (Islamic Party), formed by ‘Aweys and other exiled former CIC hard-liners after the 

“moderates” acceded to the Djibouti Process with the 

TFG in 2008. The group’s primary difference from alShabaab is that it does not place as much emphasis 

on global jihadist objectives; rather, its two principal 

demands are the implementation of a strict version 

of shari’a as the law in Somalia and withdrawal of 

all foreign troops from the country. Although it lost 

control of the strategic central town of Beledweyne to 
26

al-Shabaab forces in June 2010, Hizbul Islam still 

controlled some territory in the southern and central 

Somali regions of Bay and Lower Shabelle. Subsequently, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the two groups cooperated on a joint offensive 

against TFG and AMISOM forces in Mogadishu.

Another insurgent group that has been prominent in Somalia was the Mu’askar Ras Kamboni (Ras 

Kamboni Brigades), led by Hassan Abdullah Hersi 

(“al-Turki”), a former military commander for the 

Islamic Courts. Based in Middle and Lower Jubba 

Valley, where it gained control of several strategically located towns that control access to the Kenyan 

border, including Jilib Afmadoow and Dhoobley, the 

Ras Kamboni Brigades were aligned with Hizbul Islam until the beginning of 2010, when the group announced it was joining forces with al-Shabaab. Subsequently, the two groups proclaimed their adhesion 

to “the international jihad of al-Qaeda.”67

Over time, the insurgents’ attacks have progressively increased in both ambition and sophistication. 

For example, whereas the September 2009 suicide 

bombing of AMISOM headquarters and the December 3, 2009, assault that killed three TFG ministers 

and 16 people attending a graduation ceremony at 

Mogadishu’s Shamu Hotel, both relied solely on 

explosives to inflict damage.68 The August 24, 2010, 

attack on the Muna Hotel, a location just blocks 

from Villa Somalia that was frequented by TFG officials, involved al-Shabaab fighters dressed in government uniforms who went through the building, 

room by room, killing their victims. They then fought 

incoming security forces for some time before finally 

detonating their suicide vests.69
27

In the aftermath of its losses in the Ramadan offensive of 2010, al-Shabaab reshuffled its leadership, 

with Ibrahim Haji Jama, a militant who trained and 

fought in Afghanistan and Kashmir before returning 

to Somalia, emerging as the nominal leader of the 

group. More significantly, al-Shabaab has apparently 

formally adopted a decentralized system in which 

various leaders assume command in their home areas where they are most likely to garner support 

from fellow clansmen: the erstwhile emir Godane 

assumed control of operations in Somaliland; Fuad 

Mohamed Qalaf (“Shongole”) was put in charge in 

Puntland; Abu Mansur assumed command of the 

Bay and Bakool regions of southern Somalia; Hassan 

Abdullah Hersi (“al-Turki”) continued to hold sway 

over the Middle and Lower Jubba Valley, albeit with 

greater integration of his Ras Kamboni Brigades into 

the al-Shabaab organization; and Ali Mohamed Raghe (“Dheere”) overseeing Mogadishu with the assistance of the Comoros-born al-Qaeda in East Africa 

chief Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (until the latter’s 

June 2011 murder).70 In this respect, the insurgents 

essentially combined and exploited the advantages 

of both clan ties and Islamic identities.

The Somalia that Works: “Bottom-Up” versus 

“Top-Down.”

The most damning aspect of the utter failure of 

the 14 different attempts to rebuild the national-level 

institutions of the Somali state before the TFG and 

the struggles of the latter to survive the daily assaults of the Islamist insurgency was the presence 

of ready examples elsewhere in Somali territory of 

what is possible when a “bottom-up” or “building-
28

block” strategy is adopted instead of a continual 

default to a “top-down” approach in conflict resolution, peace building, or counterinsurgency. These 

examples illustrate how a process that is viewed as 

legitimate and supported by the populace can also 

address the international community’s interests concerning issues ranging from humanitarian concerns 

to maritime piracy to transnational terrorism.71

Although they differ significantly in their political 

development and the courses they have charted 

for themselves, the northern Somali regions of Somaliland and Puntland have both been relatively 

successful in avoiding not only embroilment in the 

violence that has consumed most of southern and 

central Somalia, but also major internal conflict.72

After the collapse of the Somali state, elders representing the various clans in the former British Somaliland Protectorate of Somaliland met in the ravaged city of Burao and agreed to a resolution that 

annulled the northern territory’s merger with the 

former Italian colony and declared a reversion to the 

sovereign status it had enjoyed after its achievement 

of independence from Great Britain. Unlike other 

parts of Somalia, conflict in the region was averted 

when the SNM, the principal opposition group that 

had led the resistance against the Siyad Barre dictatorship in the region, and Isaq clan leaders purposely 

reached out to representatives of other clans in Somaliland, including the Darod/Harti (Dhulbahante 

and Warsangeli sub-clans) and Dir (Gadabuursi and 

Ise sub-clans). Chairman of the SNM Abdirahman 

Ahmed Ali (“Tuur”) was appointed by consensus at 

the Burao conference to be interim president of Somaliland for 2 years. In 1993, the Somaliland clans 

sent representatives to Borama for a national guur-
29

ti, or council of elders, which elected as president 

Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, who had briefly been 

prime minister of independent Somaliland in 1960, 

as well as the democratically elected prime minister of Somalia between 1967 and the military coup 

in 1969. Interestingly, while the apportionment of 

seats at the two conferences was conducted along 

clan lines in a rough attempt to reflect the demographics of the territory, the actual decisionmaking 

was carried out by consensus.73

Egal’s tenure saw the drafting of a permanent constitution, approved by 97 percent of the voters in a 

May 2001 referendum, which established an executive 

branch of government consisting of a directly elected 

president and vice president and appointed ministers; a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected 

House of Representatives and an upper chamber of 

elders, the guurti; and an independent judiciary. After 

Egal’s unexpected death in 2002, his vice president, 

Dahir Riyale Kahin, succeeded to the presidency. Kahin, in turn, was elected in his own right in a closely 

fought election in April 2003—the margin of victory 

for the incumbent was just 80 votes out of nearly half 

a million cast, and, amazingly, the dispute was settled 

peaceably through the courts. Multiparty elections for 

the House of Representatives were held in September 

2005, which gave the president’s party just 33 of the 82 

seats, with the balance split between two other parties.

Although the report of a 2005 AU fact-finding mission led by then-AU Commission Deputy Chairperson Patrick Mazimhaka concluded that:
30

the fact that the union between Somaliland and Somalia was never ratified and also malfunctioned when 

it went into action from 1960 to 1990 makes Somaliland’s search for recognition historically unique and 

self-justified in African political history,

and recommended that “the AU should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case,”74

no country has yet recognized Somaliland’s independence. This apparent snub, while grating to Somalilanders, has not prevented them from building 

a vibrant polity with a strong civil society sector.

Left to their own devices, the Somalilanders discovered that the demobilization of former fighters, the 

formation of national defense and security services, 

and the extraordinary resettlement of over one million 

refugees and internally displaced persons fostered 

the internal consolidation of their renascent polity, 

while the establishment of independent newspapers, 

radio stations, and a host of local nongovernmental 

organizations (NGOs) and other civic organizations 

reinforced the nation-building exercise. The stable 

environment has facilitated substantial investments 

by both local and diaspora businessmen, who have 

built, among other achievements, a telecommunications infrastructure that is more developed than that 

of some of Somaliland’s neighbors.75 Coca-Cola has 

even opened a $10 million bottling plant in Hargeisa.76

In this context, one needs to single out the educational sector not only as a bridge between Somalilanders in the diaspora and their kinsmen at home, but 

also an important impetus for the reconstruction and 

development of the region. The showcase of this link 

is Amoud University, the first institution of its kind in 

Somaliland, which opened its doors in Borama in 1997. 
31

The school took its name from an eponymous high 

school that was the first institution of its kind under 

the British Protectorate and had been the alma mater 

for many distinguished Somalilanders. The university 

was founded as a modest joint effort by local citizens, 

who assumed responsibility for the initiative, and their 

relations abroad, especially in the Middle East, who 

raised money and sent textbooks and other supplies. 

The institution opened with just two academic departments, education and business administration—the 

former because of the dire need for teachers in the 

country and the latter because of the opportunities it 

provided for employment in the private sector and entrepreneurship. Even a noted Somali critic of Somaliland’s quest for independence has praised Amoud for 

having “under-scored the preciousness of investing in 

collective projects that strengthen common values and 

deepen peace” and “given the population confidence 

that local resources can be mobilized to address development needs.”77 Subsequently, universities have 

been established in Hargeisa (2000), Burco (2004), and 

Berbera (2009), although the latter institution has its 

origins in an older College of Fisheries and Maritime 

Management.

Unfortunately, Somaliland’s political progress 

has stalled in recent years as a result of the repeated 

postponement of presidential and legislative elections 

beginning in 2008. Based on my firsthand observation, 

it would appear that while the crisis is home-grown, 

outside actors, especially the European Commission 

(EC) and the NGO Interpeace, have exacerbated the 

situation, however unintentionally. First, the nomination of the National Election Commission (NEC) by 

the president and the opposition-controlled parliament took longer than expected. Then the government 
in Hargeisa, the EC, and Interpeace reached an agreement to undertake a new round of voter registration 

throughout Somaliland that would result in the issuance of a combination voter and national identification card—an admittedly important symbolic goal 

for a nascent state. Complicating the exercise further, 

the NEC, with the agreement of Somaliland’s political 

parties, decided that the card would carry, in addition to a photograph of the bearer, biometric data. The 

whole process only began in October 2008 and was 

soon thereafter interrupted by the suicide bombings 

carried out by al-Shabaab. When the process resumed, 

it was carried out with great enthusiasm and dispatch 

by both government and donors, so much so that fingerprint data were not collected from more than half 

of those registered, and multiple registrations clearly 

took place in a number of localities. 

Eventually, an internal compromise worked out 

in late September 2009 by all three of the region’s political parties, with encouragement from Ethiopia and 

the United Kingdom (UK), postponed the terms of the 

president and vice president until 1 month after the 

elections—the date of which was not specified—thus 

preventing the escalation of the crisis into violence but 

still not carrying out the elections. While the election 

problem is rooted in Somaliland’s internal politics, 

the outside actors have done their local partners no 

favors by backing a process that was highly problematic from the outset and then, in the case of Interpeace, 

becoming embroiled in the expanded conflict. Fortunately, good sense and some timely mediation by the 

traditional clan elders won the day, and the internationally monitored presidential election in June 2010 

that resulted in the defeat of incumbent Dahir Riyale 

Kahin, the election of Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud 

32
33

(“Silanyo”), and a smooth transition between the 

two—an unheard-of occurrence in the region—reinforced Somaliland’s case for the international recognition that has thus far eluded it. As one report by a 

group of Africanist experts concluded:

Recognition of Somaliland would be a most costeffective means to ensure security in an otherwise 

troubled and problematic region. Moreover, at a time 

when “ungoverned spaces” have emerged as a major 

source of global concern, not least in this region of 

the world, it is deeply ironic that the international 

community should deny itself the opportunity to extend the reach of global governance in a way that 

would be beneficial both to itself, and to the people 

of Somaliland. For Africa, Somaliland’s recognition 

should not threaten a “Pandora’s box” of secessionist 

claims in other states. Instead it offers a means to 

positively change the incentives for better governance, not only for Somaliland, but also in southcentral Somalia.78

One of the leading experts on the Somalis has put it 

in even starker terms: 

For both Somalia and Somaliland, separation is viable 

in that there is no economic interdependence between 

them, but an enforced union against the will of the majority would become a serious liability, possibly leading to war.79

The Darod territories in the northeastern promontory of Somalia have also demonstrated the success of the building-block model and the wisdom 

of working with the Somali’s deeply ingrained clan 

identities.80 In 1998, tired of being held back by the 

constant violence and overall lack of social and po-
34

litical progress in central and southern Somalia, traditional clan elders of the Darod clan-family’s Harti 

clan—including its Dhulbahante, Majeerteen, and 

Warsangeli sub-groups—met in the town of Garowe 

and opted to undertake a regional state formation 

process of their own in the northeast, establishing an 

autonomous administration for what they dubbed 

“Puntland State of Somalia.” After extensive consultations within the Darod/Harti clans and sub-clans, 

an interim charter was adopted that provided for a 

parliament whose members were chosen on a clan 

basis and who, in turn, elected a regional president, 

the first being Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who went 

on to become president of the TFG in 2004.81

Following Yusuf Ahmed’s departure for what 

was to be his disastrous tenure at the head of the TFG, 

Puntland legislators chose General Mohamud Muse 

Hersi (“Muse Adde”) as the new head of the regional 

administration. After serving one 4-year term of office, Muse Adde lost a reelection bid to Abdirahman 

Mohamed Mohamud (“Farole”), who was elected in 

January 2009 from a field of over a dozen candidates. 

Unlike Somaliland, which has opted to reassert its independence, Puntland’s constitution simultaneously 

supports the notion of a federal Somalia and asserts 

the region’s right to negotiate the terms of union with 

any eventual national government. In late 2009, in a 

sign that secessionism nonetheless is gaining some 

traction, the regional parliament voted unanimously 

to adopt a distinctive flag, coat of arms, and anthem.

The region has, of course, become the center of Somali maritime piracy.82 The towns of Eyl and Garaad 

in Puntland, together with Hobyo and Xarardheere in 

central Somalia, have emerged as the principal pirate 

ports. Analysts believe that senior Puntland officials 
35

are abetting the piracy networks—the UN Sanctions 

Monitoring Group has charged that President Farole 

and members of his cabinet have received some of the 

proceeds of piracy83—and that the region is moving 

in the direction of “becoming the pirate version of a 

narco-state.”84 This development should not be surprising given that in 2008—a year in which an estimated $100 million was paid in ransom to the pirates 

operating there—the entire budget for the Puntland 

State amounted to $11.7 million.85 Nevertheless, one 

report by the Council on Foreign Relations suggests 

the possibility of a “grand bargain,” in which Puntland reins in its piracy-inclined citizens in return for 

political and economic engagement by the international community.

Development agencies should also seek to create 

a partnership with Puntland’s legitimate business 

community—probably the only social segment currently strong enough to challenge the pirate networks. 

The international community could focus on organizing the professional community in Puntland into 

a professional association, providing capacity-building support, and engaging the group in discussions 

about what can be done to reduce piracy. A program 

that explicitly ties development incentives in the 

coastal zones to antipiracy efforts could effectively 

mobilize a population tiring of pirate promiscuity 

and excess.86

The problem, of course, is getting members of the 

international community to actually engage a nonstate entity like Puntland and to do so in a consistent 

and sustainable manner. In 2002, for example, the 

Puntland Intelligence Service was established with 

American and Ethiopian assistance, but this organization has focused almost exclusively on counterter-
36

rorism, while largely ignoring wider human security 

concerns. The regular police, however, on those occasions when they have been willing to confront pirates 

and other organized criminals, have more often than 

not found themselves outgunned.87

In addition to this well-known example, other 

less-developed political entities are also emerging 

out of processes currently at work elsewhere among 

the Somali. In the central regions of Galguduud and 

Mudug, for example, the local residents set up several years ago what they have dubbed the “Galmudug 

State,” complete with its own website.88 Last year, they 

elected a veteran of the old Somali military, Colonel 

Mohamed Ahmed Alin, to a 3-year term as the second president of what describes itself as “a secular, 

decentralized state.” An analogous process is taking 

place in Jubaland, along the frontier with Kenya, apparently with the encouragement of that country’s 

government, which wants a buffer zone between its 

territory and the areas controlled by al-Shabaab in 

southern Somalia. In April 2011, the state announced 

that a new autonomous authority, “Azania,” had 

been inaugurated by the TFG’s own resigned defense 

minister, Mohamed Abdi Mohamed (“Gandhi”), as 

its first president.89 Meanwhile, another self-declared 

administration, “Himan Iyo Heeb,” originally established in 2008 by Habar Gidir clansmen in central Somalia, north of Mogadishu,90 has apparently become 

active again.91 Similar stirrings are occurring among 

the Hawiye in the Benadir region around Mogadishu 

and among the Digil/Rahanweyn clans farther south.

Whatever their respective shortcomings, by leveraging the legitimacy enjoyed by virtue of deeply rooted kinship and geographic bonds—to say nothing of a 

very personal political consent—traditional leaders in 
37

Somaliland, Puntland, and other Somali regions have 

managed to deliver to their constituents a relatively 

high degree of peace, security, economic progress, 

and rule of law, despite the lack of international recognition or involvement. Put another way, they have 

combined Weber’s “traditional legitimacy” and “legal 

right” with service provision in order to establish a 

sustainable political arrangement, “an order beside 

the state.”92 As counterinsurgency theorist David Kilcullen has noted:

Somalia is virtually a laboratory test case, with the 

south acting as a control group against the experiment in the north. We have the same ethnic groups, 

in some cases the same clans or even the same 

people, coming out of the same civil war and the 

same famine and humanitarian disaster, resulting 

from the collapse of the same state, yet you see completely different results arising from a bottom-up 

peace-building process based on local-level rule of 

law versus a top-down approach based on putting 

in place a “grand bargain” at the elite level.93

Vital to Somaliland, Puntland, and other areas’ 

relatively successful efforts to avoid both major internal conflict and embroilment in the violence affecting most of southern Somalia has been the role 

played by their clans. Traditional clan elders have 

negotiated questions of political representation in key 

forums. In circumstances under which elections were 

impossible, representatives were designated by clan 

units from among their members through a deliberative process in which all adult males had an opportunity to participate, and decisions were made on a 

consensual basis. In stark contrast to the TFG process, 

which emphasizes the individual actor, the resulting 
38

social contract is created between groups with deeply 

rooted legitimacy in kinship and geographic bonds.

Interestingly, another trait that the authorities in 

Somaliland and Puntland share with each other but 

not with the TFG in Mogadishu is the fact that they 

have largely been self-supporting with respect to governmental finances. It has been argued that one of the 

most significant factors undermining state formation 

in Africa has been a limited revenue base—that is, a 

dependence on foreign aid and/or natural resource 

extraction for revenue. Throughout the world, the experience has demonstrated that taxation as a means 

of raising revenue not only provides income for the 

state, but also facilitates a greater cohesion between 

the state and its stakeholders. In contrast, the virtual 

absence of taxation in post-colonial Africa has resulted 

in regimes that are largely decoupled from their societies.94 From this perspective, it is most telling that the 

most advanced state-building project among the Somalis has been in Somaliland, where the government 

collects taxes and license fees from business and real 

estate owners and imposes duties on the trade in khat, 

the mildly narcotic evergreen leaf chewed by many 

in the region, as well as on imports and exports that 

flow through the port of Berbera. The government 

of Somaliland has actually adopted a “supply-side” 

approach by managing to increase revenue by more 

than halving the rates sales and income taxes (from 

12 to 5 percent and from as much as 25 to 10 percent, 

respectively). Responding to this success, the World 

Bank has undertaken to train tax officials and the U.S. 

Agency for International Development has agreed to 

build 10 inland-revenue centers across the region.95

Furthermore, the funds raised have been spent in a 

manner that could hardly be more transparent: the 
39

introduction last year of universal free primary and 

intermediate schooling through the elimination of 

school fees. Likewise, what is arguably the second 

most successful state-building exercise is occurring in 

Puntland, where the reliance on customs duties and 

an occasional fisheries license is perhaps more remote 

than direct taxes, but nonetheless requires that the 

government maintain certain minimum levels of efficiency (yet another reason why revenue flows from 

piracy, which is centered in Puntland, are so pernicious). In contrast, the TFG and its predecessors 

have relied exclusively on foreign aid—when they 

were not stealing it.

Perhaps most important in the context of the rising tide of Islamist militancy in southern and central 

Somalia is the fact that, as one of the most astute observers of contemporary Somali society has observed, 

this reliance—especially in Somaliland, but also in 

Puntland—on the older system of clan elders and the 

respect they command “has served as something of 

a mediating force in managing pragmatic interaction 

between custom and tradition; Islam and the secular 

realm of modern nationalism,” leading to a unique 

situation where “Islam may be pre-empting and/or 

containing Islamism.”96 The consequence of the development of an organic relationship between Somali 

culture and tradition and Islam appears to ensure a 

stabilizing, rather than disruptive, role for religion in 

society in general and religion and politics in particular. In Somaliland, for example, although population 

is almost exclusively Sunni Muslim and the shahāda, 

the Muslim profession of the oneness of God and the 

acceptance of Muhammad as God’s final prophet, is 

emblazoned on the flag, shari’a is only one of three 

sources of jurisprudence used in the region’s courts, 
40

alongside secular legislation and Somali traditional 

law (xeer). However, given the limited resources of 

the Somaliland government, Quranic schools play 

an important role in basic education. Yet alongside 

these popular institutions stand equally well-received 

secular charities like the Hargeisa’s Edna Adan Maternity Hospital, founded in 2002 by Edna Adan Ismail, 

the former foreign minister of Somaliland, which 

provides a higher standard of care than is available 

anywhere else in the Somali lands for maternity and 

infant conditions, as well as diagnosis and treatment 

for HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and 

general medical conditions. Thanks to this integrative 

approach, the northern clans have largely managed 

to “domesticate” the challenge of political Islam in 

a manner that their southern counterparts would do 

well to emulate.

Although they were a long time in coming, there 

have been indications that the international community has finally begun to arrive at the same realization. 

In September 2010, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State 

for African Affairs Johnnie Carson announced a “second-track strategy” that included greater engagement 

with government officials from Somaliland and Puntland, with an eye to “looking for ways to strengthen 

their capacity both to govern and to deliver services 

to their people.”97 Likewise, the following month, after long refusing to even acknowledge their existence, 

the AU’s Peace and Security Council directed thenAU Commission Chairperson Jean Ping to “broaden 

consultations with Somaliland and Puntland as part 

of the overall efforts to promote stability and further 

peace and reconciliation in Somalia.”98
41

Famine Changes the Game?

The sheer magnitude of the 2011 famine ensured 

that the humanitarian crisis would have a significant 

geopolitical impact. While there is blame enough to 

go around, al-Shabaab was particularly culpable because of the role that its policies and actions played in 

exacerbating the consequences of the disaster.

While most analysts view al-Shabaab as a far from 

monolithic organization,99 its leadership had a history 

of arbitrarily denying relief organizations access to 

the areas under its control.100 In early 2010, several 

international agencies, including the World Food Program, and NGOs pulled out of certain militant-dominant areas after several aid workers were killed and 

the group began imposing strict conditions on their 

remaining colleagues, extorting “security fees” and 

“taxes.”101 Moreover, because al-Shabaab had been 

designated as an international terrorist organization 

by the United States and a number of other countries, 

funding for UN operations has been restricted, while 

NGOs have avoided working in areas the organization controls for fear of running afoul of laws against 

providing material support to terrorist groups.102

While fears of leakage from aid are not entirely 

misplaced, a far more important source of income 

for al-Shabaab was, in fact, more directly related to 

the drought and famines—that is, the industrial production for export of charcoal. While people living 

between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in southern Somalia have gathered charcoal for their own use from 

the region’s acacia forests since time immemorial, it is 

only in the last few years that production has reached 

its present unsustainable levels. It is estimated that 

somewhere around two-thirds of the forests that used 
42

to cover some 15 percent of Somali territory have been 

reduced to chunks of “black gold,” packed into 25-kilogram bags, and shipped to countries in the Persian 

Gulf, which have themselves banned the domestic 

production of charcoal.103 In the year before their export was finally embargoed by the Security Council in 

2012, the UN Monitoring Group conservatively estimated that up to 4.5 million of these sacks are exported each year, primarily through the port of Kismayo, 

which has been controlled by al-Shabaab or other 

forces allied to its cause since September 2008, earning 

the group millions of dollars in profits.104 Meanwhile, 

where old-growth acacia stands once grew, thorn 

bushes now proliferate, rendering the areas useless 

to the Somali people, whether pastoralists or agriculturalists (the former graze their livestock in the grass 

that flourishes where the root systems of acacia groves 

hold in ground water and prevent erosion, while the 

latter grow staple crops in neighboring lands as long 

as there are tree stands holding in top soil), and contributing further to the desertification that is always 

a persistent threat in a land as arid or semi-arid as 

Somalia. Thus, it was both simultaneously tragic and 

ironic that when a heavy rain briefly passed through 

the region that was formerly the country’s breadbasket in 2013, the result was not deliverance, but disaster, as, in the absence of any foliage to help absorb the 

precipitation, flash floods compounded the misery 

in several places.

Al-Shabaab also operated a complex system of 

taxation on residents within areas subject to its domination and imposed levies not just on aid groups, but 

also on businesses, sales transactions, and land. The 

tax on arable land in particular has had the effect of 

changing the political economy of farming commu-
43

nities that previously eked out a living just above 

subsistence. For example, in Bakool and Lower Shabelle—not coincidentally, the first two areas where the 

famine was declared—communities once grew their 

own food and, whenever possible, stored any surplus 

sorghum or maize against times of hardship. However, when al-Shabaab imposed a monetary levy on 

acreage, farmers were pushed into growing cash crops 

like sesame, which could be sold to traders connected 

with the Islamist movement’s leadership for export in 

order to obtain the funds to pay the obligatory “jihad 

war contributions.”105

As if all this were not bad enough, once the famine 

set in, al-Shabaab leaders alternated between denying 

the crisis—arguing instead that accounts of hunger 

were being “exaggerated” to undermine their hold 

over the populace—and preventing affected people 

from moving in search of food. Whether it is a formal policy of the group or not, al-Shabaab forces have 

used force or the threat of force to prevent displaced 

people from leaving its territory to find help in Lower 

Shabelle106 and the Gedo and Bay regions.107

 For a long time, despite the extremist ideology 

espoused by its foreign-influenced leaders, which set 

them outside the mainstream of Somali culture and 

society, al-Shabaab could present itself as being better (albeit harsher) rulers than the corrupt denizens of 

the TFG. The brutal hudud punishments its tribunals 

meted out, for example, may have been utterly alien 

to the Somali experience, but they represented justice 

nonetheless and were a better alternative than the chaos and lawlessness that was the experience of many 

Somalis in the 1990s. Moreover, the group managed to 

wrap itself up in the mantle of Somali nationalism by 

portraying the AU peacekeepers as foreign occupiers, 
44

and the fact that AMISOM troops were propping up 

the despised TFG and, in the process, causing civilian casualties made this narrative all the more credible. However, as discussed previously, within the 

last year, AMISOM has improved its capabilities and 

managed to lower civilian casualties while pushing alShabaab forces back within Mogadishu. In addition, 

the famine, and al-Shabaab’s clumsy response to it, 

have damaged the movement’s already questionable 

reputation for “good governance.” Not only have the 

effects of famine been exacerbated by al-Shabaab, but 

also the disaster exposed divisions within the movement, with some local councils and militias expressing a willingness to accept help from outside sources, 

even as the central leadership continued to spurn 

it.108 Furthermore, actions such as the refusal to allow 

people to escape the famine will sap al-Shabaab of 

what remains of its popular legitimacy. While there is 

undoubtedly some risk in sending aid to areas where 

al-Shabaab operates, it is likely that whatever negative 

effects may result from the assistance will fall largely 

on the group as some of its local leaders defect or populations are weaned from their reliance on it.109

Of course, if one is seeking to use this opportunity 

to undermine al-Shabaab, the attempt would be more 

likely to succeed if a prospect more attractive than 

domination by the venal TFG was offered to communities just freed from the militants’ yoke. For example, 

on August 6, 2011, weakened by the famine both politically and financially, al-Shabaab abruptly withdrew 

from Mogadishu under cover of darkness. Although 

its spokesman insisted that the pull-out was merely 

for “tactical reasons” and that the group had decided 

to change its strategy to “hit-and-run attacks,” the Somali capital was nonetheless left, for the first time in 
45

years, entirely within the potential grasp of the TFG.110

Instead of seizing the opportunity, however, the regime continued to rule as if nothing had changed. 

Government troops fired on internally displaced persons lined up to receive corn rations from the World 

Food Program, killing at least seven people, and then 

tried to steal the food.111 Journalists subsequently 

discovered that thousands of sacks of food aid meant 

for famine victims were being sold at markets around 

Mogadishu by local businessmen with connections to 

government officials.112

AMISOM Turns the Tide, al-Shabaab Mutates. 

The 2011 famine coincided with the long-awaited 

progress of AMISOM. At the beginning of that year, at 

not insignificant sacrifice, the AU force had managed 

to extend its operational reach to 13 of Mogadishu’s 

16 districts and, according to its commander, Ugandan Major General Nathan Mugisha, to “dominate” 

in “more than half of these.”113 The strategic effect 

was even more impressive in that it meant that about 

80 percent of the city’s estimated two million people 

were in areas controlled by the force. Then, during the 

height of the famine in the first week of August, alShabaab announced its withdrawal from Mogadishu. 

While the combined effect of the famine destroying the 

militants’ hitherto lucrative “taxation” rackets and the 

populace’s growing exasperation with their brutality 

left al-Shabaab at its weakest point in years,114 credit is 

also due to the efforts of Nathan Mugisha and his successor, Major General Fred Mugisha, in adapting their 

troops to fight a counterinsurgency campaign in an 

urban setting—and with limited resources at that.115
46

 While many of the Ugandan and Burundian soldiers who, until quite recently, made up almost all of 

the AMISOM force, have experience fighting and even 

counterinsurgency operations in their own countries, 

these mostly took place in rural settings, not the urban 

sprawl of a city like Mogadishu. Early in the mission’s 

deployment, AMISOM was widely criticized for the 

civilian casualties that resulted from its often hamfisted response to insurgents who fired from populated areas. Under the new doctrine, the use of indirect 

fire weapons was curtailed and otherwise limited to 

depopulated areas, while no-fire zones were established in the most densely populated areas. Moreover, 

civil-military cooperation units were established to 

investigate such incidents of civilian casualties, which 

still occurred. Pre-deployment training for AMISOM 

troops was also bolstered to include counterimprovised explosive device fighting in built-up areas tactics as well as improved communications and medical 

instruction. Despite these improvements, AMISOM 

commanders continued to lack combat aircraft and a 

maritime capability—the latter a significant handicap, 

given the control of the port of Kismayo by al-Shabaab.

In October 2011, the conflict dynamic in Somalia 

shifted significantly with the intervention of Kenyan 

military forces, ostensibly acting in response to alShabaab attacks on Kenyan territory, including the 

kidnapping of several foreigners, although Kenyan 

domestic political considerations also contributed 

to the decision.116 Shortly after that, Ethiopian forces 

entered Somalia’s Bay, Bakool, and Hiraan regions. 

While the Kenyan Operation Linda Nchi (“PROTECT 

THE COUNTRY”) was literally bogged down for several months, having been initiated in the middle of 

the rainy season, the pressure it brought to bear on 
47

al-Shabaab forces in the south allowed AMISOM to renew the offensive, capturing territory on the outskirts 

of Mogadishu, including the strategic “Afgooye Corridor” linking the capital with the eponymous agricultural center in the Shabelle Valley. The Kenyan troops 

formally joined AMISOM in July 2012, although the 

extent to which they are actually under the operational 

command and control of the AU forces commanders is 

uncertain. Three months later, the Kenyans and their 

Somali militia allies—themselves officially rebranded 

as Somali government forces—succeeded in forcing 

al-Shabaab to withdraw from Kismayo.117

By early 2012, as al-Shabaab faced attacks on three 

separate fronts by AMISOM, Kenyan, and Ethiopian 

forces, a divide emerged between the militant leadership.118 On the one side was a “nationalist” faction 

consisting of clan-based militia leaders who were 

mainly determined to oust the TFG and expand the 

power of their own clans, while on the other was a 

smaller group of hardliners who, with their foreign 

supporters, emphasized a transnational jihadist 

agenda. In February 2012, the latter faction formally 

affiliated with al-Qaeda. While the merger did little 

to forestall the loss of Kismayo and the collapse of alShabaab’s control of wide swaths of southern and central Somalia, under their new branding, the hardline 

militants have refocused their efforts on sustaining a 

protracted asymmetric fight involving hit-and-run attacks on AMISOM and Somali government positions, 

the planting of improvised explosive devices, assassinations of government officials, terrorist (including 

suicide) bombings, and the execution of suspected 

spies. While such attacks may not be able to shift the 

tide of the war in al-Shabaab’s favor, they “are ca-
48

pable of disrupting enemy forces and preventing the 

transition to a more stable security and political 

environment.”119

Another Somali Government.

The TFG’s repeatedly-extended mandate expired 

on August 20, 2012, by which time the regime was so 

discredited that its international backers were unwilling to see it continue any longer. Consequently, following the London Conference on Somalia hosted by 

British Prime Minister David Cameron in February, 

the TFG set into motion a complicated process whereby a group of elders representing the clans and subclans, which all now acknowledged remained the permanent framework of Somali society, were supposed 

to pick a broadly representative constituent assembly. 

The constituent assembly, in turn, was supposed to 

prepare a permanent constitution and give way to a 

parliament, which would elect the president.

Unfortunately, the process was vitiated from the 

start, with more than half of the supposed “elders” 

not being elders at all. The vetting process, which was 

supposed to weed out puppets of the TFG officials 

and other imposters—as well as those with a history 

of violence or lacking basic literacy—was predicated 

on political rivals serving as a check on each other. 

Instead, TFG President Sharif Ahmed, Prime Minister 

Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, and Parliamentary Speaker 

Sharif Hassan Sheikh Hassan put aside their difference 

and colluded to pack the elders and, consequently, the 

constituent assembly.120 Subsequently, it was widely 

reported that seats in the new 275-member parliament 

were put on sale for as much as $25,000.121
49

When the new legislature met on September 11, 

2012, under AMISOM’s protection at the Mogadishu 

airport to elect a president, the widely-discredited 

incumbent, Sharif Ahmed, actually won the largest 

number of votes from the parliamentarians in the first 

round and fell just shy of the majority needed for another term in office. In fact, what may have caused his 

loss of the next round of balloting was his own greed: 

he was reportedly given $7 million dollars from Gulf 

sources to buy his reelection and yet, until the desperate second round of the vote, he doled out stingy 

payments in the $10,000 range to the electors, many 

of whom, when they learned the sum he had at his 

disposal, turned on him.122 Instead, they elected a civil 

society activist and educator with close ties to the 

moderate Islamist movement al-Islah (“Reform”), Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, to head the “Federal Republic 

of Somalia” (FRS), the failed state’s 16th transitional 

entity since 1991, with a 4-year mandate.

A Lesson about Legitimacy and the 

Limits of Military Force in Counterinsurgency.

The failure of successive Somali regimes to prevail 

over their opponents and bring an end to the 2-decadeold conflict has little to do with the complaints often 

voiced about lack of outside assistance, especially of 

the military kind, than other factors over which external actors can have little positive effect. Specifically, if 

the regime fighting an insurgency is unable or unwilling to achieve internal political legitimacy, no outside 

intervention will be able to help it to “victory,” as even 

a cursory review of the relationship between legitimacy and military force in civil wars will confirm.
50

It is a principle that, in civil wars, while military 

force is vital for insurgents—without it, they pose no 

threat to the state—it is less important to the governments that oppose them. For the latter, while having capable armed forces and the political will to use 

them is not unimportant, unless the governments 

achieve legitimacy, their counterinsurgency operations will ultimately fail. As for the sustainability of 

any peace, it depends less on a government’s military 

strength than on its ability to convince the population 

of its legitimacy, deriving just powers from those it 

proposes to govern and providing them with reasonable opportunities for political, economic, and social 

development.123

 At a very simplified level, there are three types of 

parties in any civil conflict: the core group that supports any given faction, whether high-minded principle or mere material interest; those who support 

the opposing faction; and those, often in the majority, 

who are disinterested in or indifferent to the competing claims of the rival factions.124 The factions contend 

with each other to convince the disinterested populace 

of their legitimacy, which has been defined as: 

the belief in the rightfulness of a state, in its authority to issue commands, so that those commands are 

obeyed not simply out of fear or self-interest, but because they are believed in some way to have moral 

authority, because subjects believe that they ought 

to obey.125

The classic distinction by Max Weber listed three 

grounds legitimating any rule: traditional legitimacy 

(“the authority of the eternal past”), juridical right 

(“rule by virtue of legality”), and charisma (“the authority of the exception”).126 For a government, the 
51

provision of goods and services to the population offers another form of legitimacy, or is at least often the 

first step to creating a system in which its legitimacy 

is accepted. Conversely, the failure to meet basic expectations weakens the same claim of legitimacy. For 

its part, insurgents can use terror to underscore an incumbent regime’s inability to protect its own population, thus delegitimizing it. More positively, rebels can 

garner support and legitimacy from the populace by 

providing it with the very political and social goods 

that the government has proven unable or unwilling 

to supply.

In this context, especially for governments, military 

power has its limits. While military action can remedy 

some of the symptoms of diminished legitimacy, force 

alone cannot restore it. It needs to be recalled that the 

very existence of an insurgency implies a base of support that, if it does not actively aid the insurgents, at 

least tolerates them and, in so doing, implicitly denies 

the government’s claim to legitimacy. Consequently, 

the military components of a counterinsurgency must 

be carefully calibrated to avoid adding to the numbers 

of the disaffected and “all actions, kinetic or nonkinetic, must be planned and executed with consideration of their contribution toward strengthening [the 

government’s] legitimacy.”127

The effect of external interventions, whether to assist governments in defeating insurgents or to merely 

hasten the end of conflicts, also needs to be carefully 

weighed since they may actually exacerbate a regime’s crisis of legitimacy by drawing attention to its 

weakness and even making it seem to be but a pawn 

of the intervening force. Just winning, in purely military terms, “may not be enough and, often, may be 

a mistake or deflect one from grasping the prize of 

legitimacy itself.”128
52

There is little that a foreign actor can do to buttress 

an allied regime’s domestic legitimacy unless the latter 

is truly committed to taking the necessary measures 

to maintain—if not enhance—political, economic, and 

social development not only for its core supporters, 

but the disinterested portion of the population as well. 

If, on the other hand, the government under challenge 

manages to maintain its legitimacy with these two 

groups, the rebels will be reduced to struggling just 

to survive. All of this, of course, requires the commitment of considerable amounts of time and resources. 

As Henry Kissinger succinctly framed it, while “the 

guerrilla wins if he does not lose,” the regime he 

opposes “loses if it does not win.”129

Conclusion.

The 2-decades-old crisis in Somalia may have at 

its origin the collapse of a “failed state,” but blame 

for the prolongation of its misery could be more accurately attributed to a wholesale failure of imagination on the part of the international community and 

the local actors beholden to it. First, these parties have 

focused almost exclusively on southern and central 

Somalia, continually repeating the mistakes of their 

successive “top-down” attempts at state-building, 

while obstinately refusing to even acknowledge the 

largely positive experiences that have unfolded in 

other parts of the country.130 Second, their approach 

has been almost entirely centered upon the state, 

while ignoring traditional clan and religious leaders, 

members of the vibrant Somali business community, 

and civil society actors—the very people whose efforts have prevented statelessness from degenerating into complete anarchy and disorder. Third, when 
53

they do deign to intervene through proxies like the 

brave but, for the longest time, undermanned and 

poorly resourced Ugandan and Burundian troops deployed in “peacekeeping” where there was no peace, 

they expend these scarce resources in the vain attempt 

to prop up an unpopular regime whose legitimacy, in 

the eyes of many Somalis, is dubious at best. Rather, 

they should husband scarce resources to contain the 

spread of instability and prevent additional foreign 

fighters and supplies from further fueling the conflict.

The creation of the “second edition” of the TFG 

at the beginning of 2009 was an exercise in political 

management that was primarily designed to impose 

a certain preconceived notion. Since an Islamist insurgency was perceived to be the chief challenge, a 

supposed “moderate” Islamist was installed at the 

head of the TFG through the extralegal machinations 

of a group of ersatz parliamentarians designated for 

that purpose by the representative of the UN Secretary General, doubling the size of the already bloated 

legislature. As it turns out, Sharif Ahmed’s sponsors 

failed to take into account the clan dynamics and 

soon learned that the new president would have 

trouble even rallying his own Abgaal kinsmen. By 

the end of his first year in office, the TFG president 

controlled even less of Mogadishu than his highly 

unpopular predecessor, despite the presence of an 

AMISOM force that was repeatedly reinforced. As he 

begins what is supposed to be his final year in office, 

even supporters of the Djibouti Process have publicly cast “an acceptable alternative” to the TFG.131 In 

this regard, it would have been helpful if someone 

had recalled the insight of I. M. Lewis:
54

If further progress is to be achieved in state-formation, Somali politicians will surely have to come out 

of “denial” and start seriously exploring how clan 

and lineage ties can be utilized positively. Perhaps 

they could learn from their nomadic kinsmen who 

unashamedly celebrate these traditional institutions. 

Here a less Eurocentric and less evolutionary view of 

lineage institutions by Western commentators, social scientists, and bureaucrats might help to create 

a more productive environment for rethinking clanship (i.e., agnation) positively.132

Since that advice has not been taken, the international community is left with the inescapable 

conclusion drawn from the evidence exhaustively 

assembled by the Monitoring Group that about the 

only thing the TFG did well was to engage in criminal activity ranging from simple theft of resources 

to complex visa fraud schemes. While in its first few 

months in power, the FRS, headed by Hassan Sheikh 

Mohamud, has shown itself to be considerably less encumbered than its predecessor by allegations of corruption. However, its writ still barely extends beyond 

the municipal boundaries of Mogadishu, and its efforts to lift the embargo on the export of charcoal from 

Somalia have raised concerns.133

A more viable course than the one hitherto adopted by the international community would be one that 

adapts to the decentralized nature of Somali society 

and privileges the bottom-up approach. The new 

course should be better suited to buy Somalis the 

time and space needed to make their own determinations about their future political arrangements, 

while also being flexible enough to allow their neighbors and the rest of the international community the 
55

ability to protect their legitimate security interests. 

Supporting governance at the level where it is accountable and legitimate—whether in the context 

of nascent states like Somaliland and Puntland in the 

northern regions or in local communities and civil 

society structures in parts of the south—is the most 

effective and efficient means of both managing the 

societal fault lines and countering the security threats 

that have arisen in the wake of the collapse of the 

Somali state.

The repeated failure of internationally-backed 

attempts to reestablish a national government in Somalia underscores the profound error of privileging 

top-down, state-centric processes that are structurally engineered with a bias in favor of centralization, rather than bottom-up, community-based approaches better adapted to the clan sensibilities of 

the Somali and viewed by them as legitimate. As one 

analyst has summarized it: 

The UN, Western governments, and donors have 

tried repeatedly to build a strong central government—the kind of entity that they are most comfortable dealing with—in defiance of local sociopolitical 

dynamics and regional history.134

This has occurred despite the fact that the contemporary experience of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan—confirmed by the 

different outcomes in southern and central Somalia 

and in Somaliland and Puntland—clearly suggests 

that bottom-up efforts, especially when they reinforce the connection between legitimate local nonstate structures and state institutions, have a greater 

chance of success. They are more likely to be viewed 
56

as legitimate by the populations most directly impacted. The fact is, as one scholar has noted: 

At the dawn of the 21st century, the Somali clans do 

not appear at all to occupy a place all that fundamentally different from that which they had at the 

time of colonization.135

The stubborn refusal to acknowledge this reality 

results in the repeated capture of otherwise wellintended efforts by the very spoilers whose lack of 

legitimacy, originating in their lack of connection 

to the deep roots of a society’s identity, provoked 

the crisis in the first place. The real tragedy is that 

the failure to learn this lesson has, in recent years, 

not only wasted billions of dollars and the lives of 

hundreds of peacekeepers, but also prolonged the immense human suffering and permitted what is now an 

al-Qaeda affiliate to entrench itself in one of the most 

vulnerable corners of the globe. It would be an even 

greater tragedy if not absorbing this real lesson from 

Somalia meant that the same error is to be repeated 

elsewhere in Africa and beyond.

ENDNOTES 

1. Robert I. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of NationStates: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair,” Robert I. Rotberg, 

ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 9-10.

2. The United States formally recognized the FRS as the country’s government in early 2013, a move announced by Secretary 

of State Hillary Rodham Clinton following a meeting with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. See Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud after Their Meeting,” January 17, 2013. The action was significant because while 
57

the FRS’s predecessor, the TFG, and the multiple entities before 

it received various expressions of support from the international 

community, other states have been reluctant to accord the regime 

formal recognition. While the United States, for example, never 

formally severed relations with Somalia after the state’s collapse 

in 1991, it has also never officially recognized any of the 15 transitional governments, through the TFG. For years, the State Department website merely states: “The United States maintains 

regular dialogue with the TFG and other key stakeholders in Somalia through the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.” In fact, the 

lack of affirmative de jure recognition of the TFG is presumed by 

the introduction in October 2009 of a congressional resolution by 

the then-chairman of the Africa Subcommittee of the U.S. House 

of Representatives urging the Barack Obama administration “to 

recognize the TFG and allow the opening of an official Somali 

embassy in Washington.” The clear implication of this resolution 

was that the U.S. Government accorded the TFG something less 

than normal diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state. In fact, 

this point was formally conceded by the Obama administration 

in early 2010, when, in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, 

the Solicitor General of the United States and the Legal Advisor 

of the State Department acknowledged that “since the fall of the 

government, the United States has not recognized any entity as 

the government of Somalia.” Similarly, the British Foreign and 

Commonwealth Office’s website states: “Since the fall of Siad 

Barre regime in 1991 there have been no formal diplomatic links 

between the UK and Somalia.” See Mohamed Ali Samantar v. Bashe 

Abdi Yusuf et al., Brief of Amici Curiae Academic Experts in Somali 

History and Current Affairs [Lee Cassanelli, J. Peter Pham, I. M. 

Lewis, Gérard Prunier, and Hussain Bulhan] in Support of the 

Respondents, January 27, 2010. 

3. In February 2012, the UN Security Council increased 

AMISOM’s authorized strength to 17,731 uniformed personnel, 

a figure that was reached in December 2012. In November 2012, 

the Council also added 50 additional civilian personnel to the mission. See UN Security Council, S/Res/2036, February 22, 2012; 

and idem., S/Res/2073, November 7, 2012. As of the beginning 

of 2013, the major troop-contributing countries were Uganda (approximately 7,000), Burundi (approximately 5,000), Kenya (approximately 4,000), Djibouti approximately 950), and Sierra Leone 

(approximately 850). Uganda and Nigeria also each contributed a 

formed police unit of 140 officers each. 
58

4. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for 

Counterterrorism, “Designation of Al-Shabaab as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” Public Notice 6137, February 26, 2008, 

available from www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/102448.htm.

5. Commonwealth of Australia, “Listing of Al-Shabaab as a 

Terrorist Organisation,” media release, August 21, 2009, available 

from www.foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2009/fa-s090821.html.

6. Terrorism Act 2000, Proscribed Organisations, Amendment) Order 2010, No. 611, March 4, 2010, available from www.

opsi.gov.uk./si.si2010/uksi_20100611_en_1.

7. Government of Canada, Ministry of Public Safety, “The 

Government of Canada Lists Al Shabaab as a Terrorist Organization”, news release, March 7, 2010, available from www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/nr/2010/nr20100307-eng.aspx.

8. Carter F. Ham, quoted in Donna Miles, “Ham Reports Progress Against Al-Shabab in Africa,” American Forces Press Service, 

August 22, 2012, available from www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.

aspx?id=117595. 

9. Johnnie Carson, “U.S.-Africa Partnership: The Last Four 

Years and Beyond,” Remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, January 16, 2013, available from www.

state.gov/p/af/rls/rm/2013/202943.htm.

10. Michael A. Sheehan, quoted in Karen Parrish, “‘SmallFootprint’ Operations Effective, Official Says,” American Forces 

Press Service, January 31, 2013, available from www.defense.gov/

News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=119150.

11. See I. M. Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: 

Culture, History, Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 

2008, p. 3.

12. See I. M. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy, London, UK: Oxford 

University Press, 1961.
59

13. See Supreme Court of the United States, Samantar v. 

Yousuf et al., June 1, 2010, available from www.supremecourt.gov/

opinions/09pdf/08-1555.pdf.

14. See Maria H. Brons, Society, Security, Sovereignty and the 

State in Somalia: From Statelessness to Statelessness? Utrecht, The 

Netherlands: International Books, 2001, pp. 99-113.

15. I. M. Lewis, Making and Breaking States in Africa: The Somali 

Experience, Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2010, pp. 8-9.

16. I. M. Lewis, “Visible and Invisible Differences: The Somali 

Paradox,” Africa, Vol. 74, No. 4, November 2004, p. 492.

17. See I. M. Lewis, Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali 

Society, Princeton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994, p. 221. 

18. Terrence Lyons and Ahmed I. Samatar, Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political Reconstruction, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995, p. 14. 

19. See David D. Laitin, “The Political Economy of Military 

Rule in Somalia,” Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3, 

September 1976, pp. 449-468.

20. See Peter Woodward, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Horn of 

Africa, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 22-27. 

21. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 4th Ed., Oxford, 

UK: James Currey, 2002, p. 263. 

22. See I. M. Lewis, “Nazionalismo frammentato e colasso 

del regime somalo” (Fragmented Nationalism and the Collapse 

of the Somali Regime), Politica Internazionale, Vol. 20, No. 4, 

1992, pp. 35-52. 

23. See John L. Hirsh and Robert Oakley, Somalia and Operation 

Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and peacekeeping, Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1995. 

24. See Virginia Luling, “Come Back Somalia? Questioning 

a Collapsed State,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, June 

1997, pp. 287-302. 
60

25. Lewis, Blood and Bone, p. 167.

26. See I. M. Lewis, Saints and Somalis: Popular Islam in a ClanBased Society, Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1998.

27. See Michael van Notten, in Spencer Health MacCallum, 

ed., The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa, Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2006. 

28. See, inter alia, Roland Marchal, “Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War: Before and After September 11,” Alex 

de Waal, ed., Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa, Addis 

Ababa, Ethiopia: Shama Books, 2004, pp. 114-145.

29. See Shaul Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, New 

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007, pp. 93-127; also see 

Kenneth J. Menkhaus, “Somalia and Somaliland: Terrorism, Political Islam, and State Collapse,” Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution 

Press, 2005, pp. 23-47; and “Risks and Opportunities in Somalia,” 

Survival, Vol. 49, No. 2, Summer 2007, pp. 5-20. 

30. Abdurahman M. Abdullahi, “Recovering the Somali State: 

The Islamic Factor,” A. Osman Farah, Mammo Muchie, and Joakim Gundel, eds., Somalia: Diaspora and State Reconstitution in the 

Horn of Africa, London, UK: Adonis and Abbey, 2007, pp. 196-221.

31. See J. Peter Pham, “Somalia: Where a State Isn’t a 

State,” Fletcher Forum on World Affairs, Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer 

2011, pp. 133-151. 

32. IGAD was founded in 1986 by Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, 

Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. Eritrea joined following its independence in 1993 but has since come and gone as a member, according to the state of its relations with its neighbors. 

33. See Lewis, Making and Breaking of States in Africa, 

pp. 188-194.

34. See Ken Menkhaus, “The Crisis in Somalia: Tragedy in Five Acts,” African Affairs, Vol. 106, No. 424, July 

2007, pp. 357-390.
61

35. See Oscar Gakuo Mwangi, “The Union of Islamic Courts 

and Security Governance in Somalia,” African Security Review, 

Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2010, pp. 88-94. 

36. See Medhane Tadesse, Al-Ittihad: Political Islam and Black 

Economy in Somalia: Religion, Money, and the Struggle for Supremacy over Somalia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopa: Addis Ababa Publishers, 

2002, pp. 16-24.

37. Menkhaus, “The Crisis in Somalia,” p. 382. 

38. See Ken Menkhaus, “Somalia: What Went Wrong?,” RUSI 

Journal, Vol. 154, No. 4, August 2009, pp. 6-12; also see J. Peter 

Pham, “Peripheral Vision: A Model Solution for Somalia,” RUSI 

Journal, Vol. 154, No. 5, October 2009, pp. 84-90.

39. The text of the June 9, 2011, “Kampala Agreement” signed 

by President Sharif Ahmed and Parliamentary Speaker Sharif 

Hassan Sheikh Aden and witnessed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and special representative of the UN Secretary General Augustine Muhiga is available from www.garoweonline.com/

artman2/publish/Somalia_27/Somalia_The_Kampala_Accord.shtml.

40. Apuuli Phillip Kasaija, “The UN-led Djibouti Peace Process for Somalia 2008-2009: Results and Problems,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 2010, p. 278.

41. See Andre Le Sage, “Somalia’s Endless Transition: Breaking the Deadlock,” Strategic Forum, Vol. 257, June 2010, available 

from www.ndu.edu/inss/docUploaded/SF%20257.pdf. 

42. UN Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1853, 2008, S/2010/91, 

March 10, 2010, p. 4.

43. Ibid., p. 12.

44. Somalia: The Transitional Government on Life Support, Africa 

Report No. 170, Brussels, Belgium: International Crisis Group, 

February 21, 2011, p. i. 
62

45. Ibid.

46. UN Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on 

Somalia and Eritrea pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1916, 

2010, S/2011/433, July 18, 2011, p. 16.

47. Public Finance Management Unit, Audit Investigation 

Report Covering Accounting Years of 2009 and 2010, May 

2011, p. 3. 

48. See Elizabeth Dickinson, “How Much Turf Does the Somali Government Really Control?” ForeignPolicy.com, September 

23, 2010, available from www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/23/

how_much_turf_does_the_somali_government_really_control.

49. UN Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on 

Somalia and Eritrea, p. 43.

50. Ibid., p. 233. 

51. Bronwyn E. Bruton, Somalia: A New Approach, Council Special Report 52, New York/Washington, DC: Council on Foreign 

Relations, 2010, p. 10.

52. See Jeffrey Gettleman, Mark Mazzetti, and Eric Schmitt, 

“U.S. Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict,” New York Times, 

August 11, 2011, p. A1. 

53. Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, and Senegal have sent a token 

soldier apiece to join AMISOM, while Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and 

Sierra Leone have also sent personnel to man the peacekeeping 

force’s four-dozen-strong police unit. 

54. See Jonathan Stevenson, Losing Mogadishu: Testing U.S. 

Policy in Somalia, Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1995. 

55. See Steven N. Simon, After the Surge: The Case for U.S. 

Military Disengagement from Iraq, Council Special Report No. 

23, New York/Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, 

2007, p. 37. 
63

56. See J. Peter Pham, “Somalia: Insurgency and Legitimacy 

in the Context of State Collapse,” David Richards and Greg Mills, 

eds., Victory Among People: Lessons from Countering Insurgency and 

Stabilizing Fragile States, London, UK: RUSI, 2011, pp. 111-134. 

57. See Human Rights Watch, “You Don’t Know Who to Blame”: 

War Crimes in Somalia,” August 15, 2011, pp. 16-18, available from 

www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/somalia0811webwcover.pdf. 

58. See Roland Marchal, “A Tentative Assessment of the Somali Harakat Al-Shabaab,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, Vol. 3, 

No. 3, November 2009, pp. 381-404. 

59. See “21 Killed in Suicide Attack on African Union Base 

in Somalia,” CNN, September 18, 2009, available from edition.cnn.

com/2009/WORLD/africa/09/18/somalia.suicide.attack/index.html. 

60. See Evan Perez, “Case Shows Rise of Non-Bank Transfers 

to Fund Terror,” Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2010, available 

from online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703628204575618841

265233312.html. 

61. Jonathan Stevenson, “Jihad and Piracy in Somalia,” Survival, Vol. 52, No. 1, February/March 2010, pp. 27-38. 

62. See, inter alia, David Shinn, “Al Shabaab’s Foreign Threat 

to Somalia,” Orbis, Vol. 55, No. 2, Spring 2011, pp. 27-38. 

63. See Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, 

Country Reports on Terrorism 2010, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, August 18, 2011, available from www.state.gov/

documents/organization/170479.pdf. 

64. See Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. to Prosecute Somali Suspect in Civilian Court,” New York Times, July 5, 

2011, p. A1. 

65. See, inter alia, J. Peter Pham, “Foreign Influences and Shifting Horizons: The Ongoing Evolution of Al Qaeda in the Islamic 

Maghreb,” Orbis, Vol. 55, No. 2, Spring 2011, pp. 240-254; also 

see J. Peter Pham, “The Dangerous ‘Pragmatism’ of Al-Qaeda in 

the Islamic Maghreb,” Journal of the Middle East and Africa, Vol. 2, 

No. 1, January-June 2011, pp. 15-29. 
64

66. “Al-Shabaab Joining al-Qaeda, Monitor Group Says,” 

CNN, February 10, 2012, available from www.cnn.com/2012/02/09/

world/africa/somalia-shabaab-qaeda.

67. Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled, “Somalia Rebels Unite, 

Profess Loyalty to al Qaeda,” Reuters, February 1, 2010, available 

from www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6102Q720100201.

68. Stephanie McCrummen, “Bombing Kills 19 in Somali Capital,” Washington Post, December 4, 2009, p. A19. 

69. “Members of Somali Parliament Killed in Bombing Are 

Identified,” CNN, August 25, 2010, available from edition.cnn.

com/2010/WORLD/africa/08/25/somalia.

70. Abdi Sheikh, “Somalia Says Killed Top African Al Qaeda 

Operative,” Reuters, June 11, 2011, available from uk.reuters.com/

article/2011/06/11/uk-somalia-alqaeda-idUKTRE75A12F20110611.

71. See J. Peter Pham, “The Somali Solution to the Somali Crisis,” Harvard Africa Policy Journal, Vol. 6, 2010, pp. 71-84. 

72. See J. Peter Pham, “The Somaliland Exception: Lessons on 

Postconflict State Building from the Part of the Former Somalia 

That Works,” Marine Corps University Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 

2012, pp. 1-33.

73. See Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland, Oxford, UK: 

James Currey, 2008, pp. 77-136. 

74. African Union Commission, Report of the AU Fact-Finding 

Mission to Somaliland, April 30-May 4, 2005. 

75. See Izbal Jhazbhay, Somaliland: An African Struggle for 

Nationhood and International Recognition, Johannesburg, South Africa: South African Institute for International Affairs/Institute 

for Global Dialogue, 2009; also see J. Peter Pham, “Review of Somaliland: An African Struggle for Nationhood and International 

Recognition, by Iqbal D. Jhazbhay,” Journal of the Middle East and 

Africa, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2010, pp. 139-144. 
65

76. See Sarah McGregor, “Coca-Cola Invests $10 million 

in Somaliland Bottling Plant,” Bloomberg Business Report, 

May 31, 2011.

77. Abdi Ismail Samantar, “Somali Reconstruction and Local 

Initiative: Amoud University,” World Development, Vol. 29, No. 4, 

April 2001, p. 654. 

78. Christopher Clapham et al., African Game Changer? 

The Consequences of Somaliland’s International, Non Recognition, 

Brenthurst Discussion Paper, June 2011, available from www.the

brenthurstfoundaton.org/Files/Brenthurst_Commissioned_Reports/

BD-1105_Consequences-of-Somalilands-International-Recognition.pdf.

79. John Drysdale, What Happened to Somalia? A Tale of Tragic 

Blunders, London, UK: Haan Associates, 1994, p. 148.

80. See Martin Doornbos, “When Is a State a State? Exploring 

Puntland, Somalia,” Global Forces and State Restructuring: Dynamics of State Formation and Collapse, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 

2006, pp. 175-194.

81. See Kinfe Abraham, Somalia Calling: The Crisis of Statehood 

and the Quest for Peace, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Ethiopian International Institute of Peace and Development, 2002, pp. 445-463. 

82. See J. Peter Pham, “Putting Somali Piracy in Context,” 

Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, July 2010, 

pp. 325-341; and J. Peter Pham, “The Failed State and Regional Dimensions of Somali Piracy,” Frans-Paul van der Putten and Bibi 

T. van Ginkel, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, eds., The International 

Response to Somali Piracy: Challenges and Opportunities, 2010, pp. 

31-64; also see Martin N. Murphy, Somalia, the New Barbary? Piracy 

and Islam in the Horn of Africa, New York: Columbia University 

Press, 2011.

83. See UN Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group on 

Somalia, p. 39.

84. Ken Menkhaus, “Dangerous Waters,” Survival, Vol. 51, 

No. 1, February-March 2009, p. 24.
66

85. See Brian J. Hesse, “Lessons in Successful Somali Governance,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, 

January 2010, p. 79. 

86. Bruton, Somalia: A New Approach, pp. 33-34. 

87. See Matt Bryden and Jeremy Brickhill, “Disarming Somalia: Lessons in Stabilisation from a Failed State,” Conflict, Security 

and Development, Vol. 10, No. 2, May 2010, pp. 251-253. 

88. See www.galmudug.com. 

89. See Richard Lough, “Kenya Looks to Somali Troops, Militia to Create Border Buffer,” Reuters, August 16, 2011, available 

from af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE77F0D320110816. 

90. See Ramadan Haji Elmi, “Himan and Heeb—from Hardship to Harmony,” Madasha, November 2, 2011.

91. “Himan Iyo Heb Calls for Participating in Ending to Inter-Clan Hostilities,” AllAfrica.com, July 5, 2011, available from 

allafrica.com/stories/201107050714.html. 

92. See Dustin Dehéz and Belachew Gebrewold, “When 

Things Fall Apart—Conflict Dynamics and an Order Beside the 

State in Postcollapse Somalia,” African Security, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 2010, pp. 1-20. 

93. David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, Oxford, UK: Oxford 

University Press, 2010, p. 156. 

94. See Jeffrey Herbst, “War and the State in Africa,” International Security, Vol. 14, No. 3, Spring 1990, pp. 117-139.

95. See Sarah McGregor, “Somaliland Government Plans 

to Enforce Compliance on Tax, Double Revenue,” Bloomberg Business Report, March 31, 2011, available from www.

bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-31/somaliland-government-plans-toenforce-compliance-on-tax-double-revenue.html. 

96. Iqbal Jhazbhay, “Islam and Stability in Somaliland and 

the Geo-politics of the War on Terror,” Journal of Muslim Minority

Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 2, August, p. 198. 
67

97. Johnnie Carson, Remarks to the Press from the UN General 

Assembly, September 24, 2010, available from state.gov/p/af/rls/

spbr/2010/147922/htm. 

98. African Union, Communiqué of the 245th Meeting of the Peace 

and Security Council, October 14, 2010, p. 3.

99. A notable exception is Roland Marchal, who has argued 

that, notwithstanding different conceptions that have been publicly expressed, the group’s leadership has maintained a tight control on the apparatus, and that “betting on any splits is an illusion 

under the current circumstances despite divergent agendas on the 

military strategy, policies towards the population and attitude in 

front of the international humanitarian community.” See The Rise 

of a Jihadi Movement in a Country at War: Harakat al-Shabab al Mujaheddin in Somalia, unpublished report for H. M. Government, Department for International Development, March 2011, p. 3. 

100. See “Ban on Aid Agencies Condemned,” IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis, August 10, 2010, available from www.

irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=90120. 

101. See Neil MacFarquhar, “Threats Lead Food Agency to 

Curtail Aid in Somalia,” New York Times, January 6, 2010, p. A6. 

102. See Jeffrey Gettleman, “U.N. Criticizes U.S. Restrictions 

on Aid to Somalia,” New York Times, February 18, 2010, p. A8. 

103. See “Charcoal Trade Booming Despite Ban,” IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis, January 20, 2011, available from 

www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=91679. 

104. See UN Security Council, Report of the Monitoring Group 

on Somalia and Eritrea, pp. 181-184. 

105. See Gabe Joselow, “Perfect Storm—Why Famine 

Hit Southern Somalia First,” Voice of America, July 25, 2011, 

available from www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/PerfectStorm-Why-Famine-Hit-Souhtern-Somalia-First-1261 19038.html. 

106. Interviews with Somali sources, August 2-3, 2011.
68

107. Interview with international relief officials, August 

18, 2011. 

108. See Leela Jacinto, “Famine Weakens and Divides al 

Shabaab Militants,” France 24, July 29, 2011, available from 

www.france24.com/en/20110729-somalia-al-shabaab-famine-weakensdivides-qaeda-linked-militants; also see Michele Kelemen, “Opportunity in Famine’s Toll on Somali Insurgency,” NPR, August 13, 

2011, available from www.npr.org/2011/08/14/139612682/faminein-somalia-also-taking-toll-on-al-shabaab. 

109. See J. Peter Pham, Testimony before the U.S. Senate, 

112th Cong., 1st sess., August 3, 2011, available from foreign.

senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Pham%20testimony.pdf. 

110. See Jeffrey Gettleman and Mohamed Ibrahim, “Rebels 

Cede Control of Capital to Somali Government,” New York Times, 

August 7, 2011, p. A6. 

111. See “Gunfire Kills Seven Somali Refugees as Famine Aid 

is Looted, Witnesses Say,” Associated Press, August 5, 2011.

112. See Katherine Houreld, “Somalia Food Aid Stolen, UN 

Investigating,” Associated Press, August 15, 2011.

113. Nathan Mugisha, “The Way Forward in Somalia,” Rusi 

Journal, Vol. 156, No. 3, June/July 2011, p. 26.

114. See Bronwyn Bruton and J. Peter Pham, “How to End the 

Stalemate in Somalia,” Foreign Affairs, September 30, 2011, available from www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68315/bronwyn-brutonand-j-peter-pham/how-to-end-the-stalemate-in-somalia.

115. Interview with Major General Fred Mugisha, AMISOM 

Force Commander, December 6, 2011.

116. Interview with senior Kenyan official, December 3, 2011.

117. “Al-Shabab Rebels Pull Out of Key Somali Town,” 

Al-Jazeera, September 29, 2012, available from www.aljazeera.com/

news/africa/2012/09/20129295415328148.html.
69

118. See Bronwyn Bruton and J. Peter Pham, “The Splintering 

of Al Shabaab,” Foreign Affairs, February 2, 2012, available from 

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137068/bronwyn-bruton-and-j-peterpham/the-splintering-of-al-shabaab.

119. Christopher Anzalone, “Al-Shabab’s Tactical and Media 

Strategies in the Wake of Battlefield Setbacks,” CTC Sentinel, Vol. 

6, No. 3, March 2013, p. 13.

120. Interview with Ambassador Boubacar Gaoussou Diarra, 

African Union Special Representative for Somalia, July 10, 2012.

121. “Somalia’s Government: Baby Steps,” The Economist, August 25, 2012, available from www.economist.com/node/21560905.

122. “Somali MPs Elect Hassan Sheikh as President,” 

Al-Jazeera, September 11, 2012, available from www.aljazeera.com/

news/africa/2012/09/201291083927688186.html. 

123. See Eliot Cohen, Conrad Crane, Jan Horvath, and 

John Nagl, “Principles, Imperatives, and Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, March-April 

2006, pp. 49-53.

124. See John A. Lynn, “Patterns of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 4, July-August 

2005, pp. 22-27.

125. Rodney Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State, Oxford, 

UK: Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 11.

126. Max Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs, eds., Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 311-312.

127. Cohen et al., p. 50.

128. Timothy J. Lomperis, “Vietnam’s Offspring: The Lesson of Legitimacy,” Conflict Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Winter 

1986, pp. 26-27.
70

129. Henry A. Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign 

Affairs, Vol. 47, No. 2, January 1969, p. 214.

130. See J. Peter Pham, “Somalia and Somaliland: Statebuilding amid the Ruins,” Jeffrey Herbst, Terence McNamee, and Greg 

Mills, eds., On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies, London, UK: Profile, 2012, pp. 69-87.

131. See David Shinn, Testimony before the Subcommittee on 

Africa, Human Rights, and Global Health and the Subcommittee 

on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, 112th Cong., 1st sess., 

available from foreignaffairs.house.gov/122/shi070711.pdf. Shinn, 

former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and onetime head of the Somali office in the U.S. State Department, noted: 

Many in the Somali-American diaspora and a number of American scholars who follow the situation in Somalia have already 

given up on the TFG . . . . [I]f the TFG continues its internal 

squabbles and fails to make progress, I may find myself joining 

this group in August 2012 when there would hopefully be an 

acceptable alternative.

132. Lewis, “Visible and Invisible Differences: The Somali 

Paradox,” p. 508.

133. See Louis Charboneau, “U.N. Resisting African Calls 

to End Somalia Arms Embargo,” Reuters, October 31, 2012, 

available from www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/us-somaliaun-idUSBRE89U1SZ20121031.

134. Seth Kaplan, “Rethinking State-building in a Failed 

State,” Washington Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1, January 2010, p. 82.

135. Christian Bader, Le sang et le lait: Bréve histoire des clans Somali (The Blood and the Milk: Brief History of the Somali Clans), 

Paris, France: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1999, p. 227. 
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Anthony A. Cucolo III

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

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Author

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