A New Somalia? Time to Face Reality

Somali president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed chose to mark the recent fiftieth anniversary of his country's independence with a striking gesture. Picking up an AK47 assault rifle, the president jumped on a tank and went to join his men fighting Islamist insurgents. He did not have far to go. The frontline is only a few blocks from his office in downtown Mogadishu.

The United Nations-approved Transitional Federal Government (TFG) controls only a small part of Somalia's capital. Yet the international community persists in seeing this powerless administration as the only body capable of bringing peace and stability to the country, building a new Somalia.

Most of southern and central Somalia, including most of Mogadishu, remains under the control of Islamist militants. The principal groups are Hizbul Islam and Al-Shabab, with the latter having openly declared its allegiance to Al-Qaeda. In the north of the country, however, are two states, Puntland and Somaliland, which have achieved a degree of stability unknown in the rest of Somalia.

Puntland has its own government, but it has promised to rejoin a united, federal Somalia if and when it is created. The area is the principal base for the infamous Somali pirates, but the Puntland government has made efforts to curb their activities. This has been done in spite of the fact that the annual income of the Somali pirates (at least US $50 million in 2009) vastly exceeeds that of the Puntland administration. The pirates rule the Indian Ocean coast of Puntland, but the local government has had some success in reducing their use of the region's coast along the Gulf of Aden.

West of Puntland is the self-declared independent state of Somaliland, which has enjoyed comparative peace since the collapse of Somalia's central government in 1991. Neither pirates nor Islamist militants have a foothold in Somaliland where the local government has achieved a high level of order and stability. Recently a democratic election has taken place and led to the victory of the opposition party. International observers declared the election largely free and fair. No other part of Somalia has witnessed such an election for decades.

Thus, contrary to the picture of war-torn Somalia usually presented in the Western media, the north of the country consists of two states enjoying a measure of stability. Neither Somaliland nor Puntland is hostile to the United States and its allies, unlike the Islamist insurgents who plague southern Somalia, and both states have at various times appealed for support from the international community. Anyone hoping to restore a functioning national government embracing the whole of Somalia would want to use Somaliland and Puntland as basic building blocks to achieve that aim.

However, rather than use existing governments, the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union seem determined to pursue the fantasy of re-creating a national government of Somalia from scratch. In this fairy tale the national government, once established in the capital Mogadishu, will use its Western-trained soldiers to defeat the Islamist insurgents and reduce the regions of Puntland and Somaliland to obedience, restoring law and order throughout Somalia.

The problem is that the TFG can barely survive in Mogadishu let alone move out into the rest of the country. The TFG's own forces are weak and ineffective, and it relies for survival on military support from the African Union peacekeeping troops in the capital, some five thousand men from Uganda and Burundi. The United States has funded training of TFG soldiers in Uganda and Djibouti. Currently the European Union is spending large sums on training two thousand TFG soldiers in Uganda. (In reply Al-Shabab has now carried out suicide bombing in Kampala, the capital of Uganda.) Judging by past experience with such training efforts, once the soldiers return to Somalia most will desert the TFG to join the Islamist insurgents or to take up well-paid service with other Somali warlords.

It is often said that the Somali pirates cannot be beaten at sea, no matter how many foreign warships are cruising off the coast of Somalia. The only solution is a return to law and order on land in Somalia. The only realistic possibility of this happening is if the international community provides support to the existing governments in Somaliland and Puntland rather than wasting time and money on a hopelessly ineffective government in Mogadishu.