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From the introduction
The prominence of 'traditional' leaders and institutions in Somaliland's 'success story' of political (re)construction is the object of interest in the PhD dissertation by Marleen Renders, titled "Traditional leaders and institutions in the building of the Muslim republic of Somaliland".
The text below is taken from the introduction to this dissertation.
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Places that don't exist
In the summer of 2005, the BBC broadcasted a series of features called Holidays in the danger zone: places that don't exist by the 33-year old reporter Simon Reeve (BBC, 2005). The idea behind the series was to visit a number of places that exist as 'countries', without being recognised by the international community as 'states'. All the countries featured declared independence after violent conflict and have been surviving for some time now: some only just, but peacefully, others as havens for terrorists, weapons smugglers and militia or armies ready for a fight. On his journey, Reeve made brief, light-hearted, entertaining filmed sketches of obscure places such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabach and Trans-Dniestria. Quite less obscure, but still an unrecognised state, Taiwan featured too. Yet, his main inspiration to make the series, he insisted, had been the phenomenon of "Somaliland".
On his way to Somaliland, Reeve takes the viewer to Mogadishu first. The capital of what the international community of states still recognises as "Somalia" is a very dangerous place. One can only get around surrounded by heavily armed guards. The situation is hostile and threatening. Lawlessness is at the order of the day: there is no law, no legality. Reeve proves it by procuring himself a Somali diplomatic passport from one of the professional private passport-makers who have set up shop in Mogadishu. There is no national authority to issue passports. Neither is there a national authority to check passports: a sure sign of the absence of state authority. Then Reeve and his crew proceed to Hargeysa, the capital of "Somaliland". There, the situation is very different. Reeve marvels at the traffic lights in the Hargeysa streets and the cars stopping when the lights are on red. There are uniformed policemen taking care of law and order in the streets. A sure sign of the presence and the effectiveness of government in Somaliland. Apparently, from the ruins of Somalia, a new, organised and governed polity has arisen. All by itself.
Somaliland counts - and is marketed as - a case of successful postwar political reconstruction (1). In contrast to other instances which were characterised by a more or less pervasive international intervention (e.g. Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan or indeed Iraq) Somaliland's political reconstruction was driven by indigenous initiative, indigenous capital and indigenous political leaders. Moreover, the success of political reconstruction in Somaliland is associated with the involvement of 'traditional' leaders and institutions. This is what sets Somaliland apart from the much less successful attempts in the south of Somalia. No descent into chaos here, no fierce competition between warlords and guerrilla commanders, no mindless fratricide, no scramble for economic assets, but (allowing for the occasional setbacks) a careful, balanced process of peace building and state building leading to legitimate and accountable government. A booklet published by the 'Somaliland Government' in 2001 identified its recipe for success as 'participatory democracy':
The lesson was that the modern sector, armed and apparently omniscient, could not do without the support of the traditional sector (…) This succeeded and developed into a new concept unpracticed by previous Somali governments (…) meaning an elected civilian government working in parallel with elders of the traditional sector. (Somaliland Government, 2001)
The prominence of 'traditional' leaders and institutions in Somaliland's 'success story' of political (re)construction is the object of interest in this dissertation. The main question addressed amounts to: "Can 'traditional' leaders and institutions help to build more legitimate, accountable and effective government in polities or 'states' under (re)construction?" In response to this question, the results of the conducted research point to a number of caveats that policy makers may wish to ponder carefully before enthusiastically launching a new model for state reconstruction. More specifically, the research shows that one can not actually simply 'use' 'traditional' leaders or institutions. They are not a-political entities or concepts. They are adaptable and have a dynamic of their own. The 'traditional' order is profoundly connected with 'non-traditional' orders, i.e. 'modern' political leaders and institutions. How both develop and interact is contingent upon an aggregate of factors which develop over a long period of time. This set of factors includes so-called 'structural' ones as well as factors that are more 'agency'-related. However, the fact that it is an aggregation of factors determining the eventual outcome, makes the 'Somaliland experience' very difficult to replicate. The case is historically, time and space-specific. What seems to have worked for Somaliland is not necessarily (by far) to work for other cases. In sum, 'traditional' leaders and institutions are not a magic bullet, not a one-fits-all in cases of 'problematic statehood'. They should not be viewed as a-political components of some kind of appropriate 'governance' technology that will provide leaders and institutions supposedly adapted to a timeless 'African situation and culture'.
These arguments are built on an in-depth empirical analysis of the Somaliland case. Throughout the (more or less) chronological set-up of the text it will be demonstrated how the Somaliland polity ended up becoming what it is today and how the respective actors have worked and interacted through 'traditional' as well as 'non-traditional' institutions ultimately resulting in the emergence of a new 'state'. In the process, the dissertation addresses several issues, reflected in the different narratives woven into the account: it attempts to contribute to the ongoing debates about the 'African state' (and the concept of 'state' as such), postwar (political) reconstruction and the thorny issue of 'state' and 'institution' building in general, as well as to the revived debate about 'traditional' leaders and institutions as vital intermediaries between an exogenous 'state' and local, more 'traditionally' inclined populations, which are - paraphrasing Hydén - difficult to 'capture'.
To be sure, concepts such as 'traditional' or 'tradition' suffer from notorious analytical fuzziness. "Tradition" is far from an uncontested concept. In the better part of scientific or policy discourse it is one of the two components of a dichotomy still largely inspired by modernisation theory: "tradition" is put in contrast to "modernity", where "tradition" equals stagnation and "modernity" equals dynamic change. Höhne points out that as such, both have been very broadly used and both have become highly value-laden, leaving very little potential in terms of analytical value. Höhne suggests however, that some of it can perhaps be restored by rethinking and specifying "tradition" as a dynamic concept - by looking at "tradition" as something active. Following Finnegan , Höhne points out that a "tradition" has to be used by people for it to continue to exist: as such they are open to adaptation, modification and change or - following Hobsbawm - even invention. However, not only Western (-trained) scientists or policy makers are involved in conceptualisation. Indeed, as argued by Hagmann concepts such as "tradition" or "modernity" may suffer from analytical fuzziness,
the actors we observe constantly use these notions in their quest to understand, explain and modify reality (…). Traditions (…) are objective and subjective social facts. Yet, actors do not merely reproduce, but also alter them.
Empirical evidence presented in this dissertation confirms this. Therefore, other concepts will be approached following the same empirically driven method. Notably in contributing to the debate about the 'state' (especially in considering the question: "what is it?") I will look at how political actors go about it, what content they attribute to the concept, rather than look in detail at various schools of thought in search of a definition. Indeed, upon arrival in Somaliland I was told that: "Somaliland is a 'tradition'-based 'state' 'built from the bottom-up'". What does this mean?
When asking (in Somaliland) about the origins of Somaliland, the traveller, the journalist or the researcher is almost invariably served an account amounting to: Somaliland emerged from the ruins of the in 1991 collapsed Somali Republic which had for about two decades been under the dictatorship of Siyyad Barre. As a former British protectorate, Somaliland had been briefly independent for five days in 1960, before it entered into a union with the former Italian Somali Trust Territory. It was an unhappy union. The Isaaq, the majority clan family in northwestern Somalia (former British Somaliland) were disadvantaged and marginalised and soon singled out for repression. Siyyad Barre started a war on the Isaaq, who reacted by starting a guerrilla movement called the Somali National Movement (SNM). Other clans started guerrilla movements too. The SNM guerrillas were recruited from the Isaaq clans and supported by the Isaaq traditional clan leaders. When finally the Barre regime collapsed, the Somali National Movement took control over the Northwest and - while the rest of Somalia descended into chaos -set up a provisionary government which included the traditional clan leaders who had made the war against Siyyad Barre possible, logistically and financially. The provisionary government also included politicians and traditional leaders from the defeated northwestern clans who had been siding with Siyyad. As a polity, Somaliland started out as an agreement between the different clans and subclans of the Northwest. After two spells of intra-Isaaq civil war and elder-brokered peace agreements, Somaliland remained peaceful and proceeded to introduce a modern political system, while holding on to a formal political role for the traditional leaders as well. Somaliland has issued its own currency, set up a national police force and collects taxes to provide its citizens with basic public services. It is the role of the traditional clan leaders that has made the difference after the collapse of the Somali Republic: without them Somaliland would not have escaped the dire fate of southern Somalia.
One could argue that this account amounts to Somaliland's own 'founding myth'. The purpose of the following chapters is to investigate and unravel that myth. What is the actual content of notions such as 'tradition' or 'state' for different political actors? How do they interact? What do they mean? In fact how 'traditional' was the basis for the foundation of the 'Somaliland 'state'? How exactly did Somaliland come into being? What did it grow to become? How?
The first chapter sets the stage for discussion. It looks at Somali 'traditional' leaders and institutions, the imported 'modern' state and their respective historical, sociological and ideological contexts. An idealised precolonial statelessness is juxtaposed with a apparently problematic postcolonial statelessness, setting up the debate about whether the former may at all contain elements to remedy the latter.
Chapter two digs into the case, pointing out how the social, economic and political factors that were crucial to make the particular development of Somaliland possible, were already formed before the collapse of the Somali state. More specifically, the chapter focuses on the origins of the Somali National Movement. SNM started out as an undertaking driven by excluded elites - mostly, yet not exclusively Isaaq. The chapter shows how SNM's evolution towards the Isaaq clan-based popular movement that it ultimately became was to a considerable extent a result of Siyyad Barre's choice of tactics against his opposition.
Chapter three investigates the consequences of SNM's changed nature for the movement itself and for any prospects of government after the Somali civil war. 'Traditional' clan leaders and institutions became highly visible, both within SNM and in the Northwest, where the Somali state retreated and ultimately imploded. 'Traditional' leaders reaffirmed themselves as leaders of their local communities. At the same time political actors in the Northwest redefined 'traditional' institutions by transposing them to new political contexts. On this 'transposed' level, the new 'traditional' institutions politically displaced the old 'modern' political structures of SNM in the newly independent Somaliland.
The fact that the initial Somaliland 'state' formation had been clan-based and driven by political actors who worked through transposed 'traditional' institutions, allowed to incorporate non-Isaaq clans into the new polity as well. Somaliland's further development however, was characterised by ever increasing incorporation of and control over 'traditional' leaders and institutions, as shown in chapter four. It analyses how a new Somaliland president, as a political leader elected by representatives of the Somaliland clans was able, through skilful manipulation of loyalties, allegiances and incentives, to renegotiate and reconfigure power relations between political players to the advantage of the presidency.
The outcome, i.e. the peculiarity of the Somaliland 'state', is discussed in chapter five. While the state apparatus extended, deploying activities and establishing control in spheres that had previously been regulated by 'traditional' leaders, the extension had limits. The government was not in a position - in terms of capacity, legitimacy or military means - to enforce public order. This problem was solved though through what I propose to call an 'institutional bypass'. Peace and security are as it were subcontracted to 'traditional' leaders acting according to their own insights, albeit ultimately resorting under government tutelage.
The extension of 'state' and consequently 'government' activities and control, replacing the non-interventionist clan-agreement Somaliland was at first, exposed important differences between western Somaliland (inhabited by the Isaaq and the smaller Iise and Gadabuursi clans) and the east, inhabited by the Darood clans. Chapter six investigates why and how 'traditional' leaders in the eastern regions have played a much less constructive role than those in the west and looks at the consequences for the local and 'national' situation as well as for the 'traditional' institutions as such.
Chapter seven finally, shows how and why the Somaliland president, in his drive to extend control even further, pushed for the introduction of a multi-party system to replace the clan-based representation system. The account of the run-up to Somaliland's first elections provides an analysis of the episode where opposition forces concluded an alliance with 'traditional' leaders against the introduction of a multi party system. The chapter will finally address the question whether and how 'traditional' leaders and institutions are relevant in the Somaliland polity today.
The following section of this introduction will situate and contextualise this research exercise, giving an indication as to its wider relevance in current political and social science debates and discussing the earlier work it is built on.
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