Some Considerations on State Building in Divided Societies and the Role of the "International Community": Somaliland and Somalia Compared

Abstract

Some Considerations on State Building in Divided Societies and the Role of the "International Community":Somaliland and Somalia Compared Federico Battera After the 2001 collapse of the Taliban regime, state-building theory regained momentum since the vacuum left by the Taliban in Afghanistan had to be filled by the international community under U.S. leadership. State/nation-building theorists and international organizations devoted their attention to explaining to the public how a nation and a state could be reconstructed under external supervision and the fundamental role of aid flows. From the beginning of the 1990s, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) dedicated several reports to the construction of a new model of approaching state crises, indicating the essential tenets that link democracy and crisis management—that is, (re)building institutions, achieving the rule of law, and achieving demobilization.1 But realities sometimes differ from theoretical constructions. As far as the Afghanistan reality is concerned, recent reports are moving far from the initial optimism and a new, Somali, case seems to be coming into view.2 The obstacles to state-building in Afghanistan are above all identified as the absence of a strong national identity, the existence of factionalism, the lack of an effective state culture, the incapacity to absorb economic assistance, and the conflicting interests of the neighboring powers, which are likely to destabilize Karzai's government. [End Page 225] These obstacles sharply contrast with state-building theory's assumptions. State/nation-building theory came into vogue among political scientists during the 1960s,3 describing processes of national integration that developed primarily in western Europe. The major object of state-building was to fuse disparate population elements into a coherent whole, forging new loyalties and identities at the national level at the expense of particularistic loyalties and identities, and turning subjects into citizens. State/nation-building was, of course, a process that took several centuries to be completely achieved in Western Europe. Its extension to non-European contexts inevitably led to failures and stoppages. In the 1960s, increased interest in the making of new states was due to the decolonization process, which extended during that period to Africa.4 Political scientists were conscious of the risks involved in this process, though such departures from the theory were attributed to a time factor. The African state crisis of the 1980s led to a growing interest in state and nation in non-Western countries; an interest in what the concepts of state and nation implied and meant in a fragmented context, but the new wave of democratization of the 1990s led to greater, albeit prudent, optimism. Africa appeared to be a very particular context in which some countries failed dramatically (Somalia, the former Zaire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Central African Republic, and so forth) and others succeeded in passing through several election periods (Benin, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, and so forth). The Ivorian crisis of 1999 drew attention again to the African continent, showing how fragile the state-making process is and the risks that a state has to face before being completely achieved. The present article will focus on the issue of state-building in divided societies,5 starting from the Somali and the Somaliland cases. Somalia is an interesting case since it has been the target, with little success, of several peace-keeping and state-making efforts since its collapse in 1991. Furthermore, Somalia presents the same characteristics as Afghanistan, characteristics that resist the successful implementation of state-building: the lack of a strong national identity; a historical political inclination to fragmentation; a feeble unitary state experience; and the misfortune of suffering due to the desires of more powerful neighbors. However, Somalia's "misfortunes" suggest to us what can be achieved [End Page 226] and the main obstacles to state-building operations, both when they are directly supported by the international community and when state-building processes have had little assistance from the outside. As far as the case of Somalia is concerned, the record of international involvement in the crisis reveals the lack of success of state-building efforts. The UN-led operation that started in 1992—"Restore Hope"—ended in 1995 after a dramatic failure and the withdrawal...