Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding by Afyare Abdi Elmi (review)

Afyare Elmi probes the Somalia conundrum to discover a solution. Such an academic journey might be improbable, given that Somalia proved unique in challenging efforts at ending three decades of armed conflict either through a military engagement or negotiated settlement. Elmi’s effort to diagnose and interpret the syndrome afflicting Somalia therefore requires assembling an adequate conceptual, theoretical, and epistemological framework. Drawing upon approaches and theories of the subaltern, coupled with writing from multiple Islamist and nationalist perspectives, Elmi utilizes both constructivist and postcolonialist paradigms, though favoring the latter. His aim is to present a context- based discussion that contributes to peacebuilding literature on Africa–and perhaps globally.

From the outset, the author seems critical of what he labels “a liberal peace” (a Western- imposed peace settlement), favoring what may be termed an “Islamist state”–the one adopted by the Union of the Islamic Courts (UIC) in 2006, which he sees as an “indigenous” initiative. With a detailed description of the UIC’s brief rule, he repetitively reminds us of the fact that the Islamists now run most private schools in Somalia, granting social services where the government otherwise cannot. Since the conflict has become interminable, the notion of Somalia under a UN trusteeship has been appealing among some distressed Somalia analysts. Elmi nonetheless writes that no Somali group “or major civil society group has formally called for placing Somalia under a UN trusteeship” (p. 132). In fact, in late 1994, a letter was sent to the former UN Secretary- General by several Somali factional leaders demanding a UN trusteeship, though the UN turned down the offer.

True, the Somali conflict is not a one-way street; the Somali peninsula is buffeted by clan conflict, extremist Islamism and sea piracy, as well as myriad external actors, most notably two “front line” states–Ethiopia and Kenya– and the United States. Many peace conferences failed because of a mixture of internal and external factors, but the main factor, argues Elmi, was external intervention. He does outline Ethiopian meddling in Somali affairs, but does not adequately address Kenya’s. He declares that the only Somali conflict in which Kenya was implicated was the military uprooting by Ethiopian forces, supported by the US, against the UIC–the group of Islamists that restored peace to South-Central Somalia. More disturbing is his contention that “there is no evidence that Kenya has been sending weapons to Somalia” (p. 98). By contrast, one empirical study that comes to mind is Donovan Chau’s “The Fourth Point: An Examination of the Influence of Kenyan Somalis in Somalia” (2010). Chau observed that, as early as 1992, Kenya sent guns and other military equipment to specific warlords at the border.

Elmi pinpoints that the two main Somali identities–clan and Islamic– should be represented within the political system of governance in Somalia, if (or when) a cohesive state is to be reconstituted. But which identity should take priority? He does not elaborate. Despite the discrepancy between the two identities, Elmi provides no theoretical and practical framework that could mediate or sustain both identities within the state system, but he seems to favor Islamic one. It should be noted here that the Islamist groups are in conflict and could not apparently agree on the type of Islamic identity applicable to contemporary Somalia. The author explores consistency between clan and Islam as two workable ideologies, given that the former relies heavily upon the latter in terms of survival. Clan identity–or clanism as its sheer face–is a social factor one could hardly ignore, especially in the contemporary Somali climate of “clanizing” the state. Clan pride, so states Elmi, is the cause of the “civil” war. He, however, does not define clan pride, but by using the term, he seems to mean clan chauvinism–the notion that one’s clan is superior to others, which is a perception...