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295 F I F T E E N Peacebuilding without a State The Somali Experience C H r i S t o P H e r C l A P H A m t H e S o M A L i S tAt e H A S b e e n C o M P r e H e n S i V e LY d e S t r o Y e d . t H i S is no temporary breakdown of public institutions, such as occurred in uganda in the dying days of the tito okello regime before yoweri museveni ’s national liberation movement took power in January 1986. it is not a collapse of public order, such as that from which the former belgian Congo had to be rescued by a united nations (un) intervention shortly after independence in June 1960. Somalia cannot even properly be characterized as a “failed state”: there is simply no state that could be said to have failed. the nonexistence of the state goes well beyond the absence of anything that could be described as a government, since mohamed Siad barre fled from mogadishu in his last operational tank in January 1991. the elements out of which a state must be constructed are equally nonexistent. the shells of the burnt-out ministry buildings of what used to constitute the Somali government contain no bureaucrats , nor is there any cadre of qualified people, waiting in the wings, who could be organized into any new machinery of government. there is no tax collection system. there is no army or police force. Such government -like functions that continue to be performed are accomplished outside any hierarchical structure of order, and are organized through local-level clan structures, through the networks of Somali islam, or by businessmen operating outside either the constraints or the protection that the state provides. the mobile telephone system, catering to an essential need of one of the world’s most garrulous peoples, works far 296 CHriStoPHer CLAPHAM more efficiently without a state than in almost any other part of the world where it works with one. the condition of statelessness poses challenges at many levels. for the people who manage the international system, it poses an affront to what that system ought to be: it is taken for granted that this system is composed of states, which form the essential building blocks of global public order, and an area of inhabited territory that lacks such a structure is not just anomalous but permits the existence of “pirates” or “terrorists ” who operate outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. for Somali people, though the state’s absence (given some of its activities when it did exist) is not an entirely unmixed curse, the lack of public order leads to massive numbers of deaths (not only directly through conflict, but indirectly through the absence of effective distribution networks, medical facilities, and other services), imposes restrictions on movement, and prevents any form of “development” that might eventually provide the foundation for a better life. for the purposes of this volume, the absence of a state in Somalia poses a particularly stark challenge to the idea of “peacebuilding,” and to the processes through which peace might plausibly be built. Peacebuilding, as devon Curtis makes clear in the introduction of this volume, involves setting priorities and “establishing legitimate institutional hierarchies at the level of the state.” throughout the literature, it is broadly assumed that peacebuilding is about forming a state in which the conflicting parties have a share, and which in turn can then furnish the essential infrastructural basis for continued peace, notably in terms of order and development. even much of the literature on Somalia, indeed, starts from the premise that the first step on the road back to peace must be to reestablish the Somali state—in a form characterized by all the desiderata of the “good governance” agenda beloved of aid agencies—because there is simply no conception of how “peace” can exist without one.1 if, as is all too clearly the case, this premise cannot be met, then the desired outcome that the state is intended to achieve cannot be provided either. What happens, therefore, when there is no state, and precious little chance of forming one? this chapter starts by examining the tangled relations between Somalis and the states that have been imposed on them, which provide the essential background to the sources of statelessness and the problems of peacebuilding...

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