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The Colonial Legacy in Somalia, Rome and Mogadishu: From Colonial Administration to Operation Restore Hope
... Islamic law directly derived from the Qur'an and the Hadith are considered the most reliable. Sharia laws are divided into five categories: Fard (something required), Mandub (something recommended), Mubah (something permissible), Makruh (something despised), and Haram (something forbidden) 8 Sharia covers worship, dietary laws, slaughtering of animals, family life, crime and punishment. The Sharia law, in its totality, inflicts so much harm on Christians whether they were born to Christian or Muslim parents. ...
... Another word which quickly raised the alarm bells for me was xaasid (meaning spiteful or envious and not jealous) when it came to improve KQA (not a full translation revision) we used masayr. 8 Even this did not satisfy the Somalis who were helping us. For them, God was not jealous like a first wife when her husband took a second wife! ...
... Yet, God in his grace brought them back to the land, although the physical kingdom was never really what it once was. All through Israel s past though, even in the glory days of King David, God s prophets had been pointing forward to a coming anointed one who would establish God s eternal rule over the whole earth [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. The Messiah, literally translated as Anointed one or Christ in Greek. ...
The Somali Bible Society Journal. Volume I, Issue 1. December 2020. Version 2
... Ainda que o presidente Bush não tenha seguido o conselho de Hempstone de deixar a Somália à sua própria sorte, ele optou por um envolvimento limitado por meio do qual os Estados Unidos seriam guiados pelo propósito humanitário mínimo de, apenas, alimentar os somalis. O objetivo era o de garantir um ambiente seguro para a distribuição de ajuda humanitária para que a Somália pudesse vencer a fome (Tripodi 1999 to open the supply routes, to get the food moving, and to prepare the way for a U.N. peacekeeping force to keep it moving. The operation is not open-ended. ...
... Diante desse quadro, o desafio de reconstrução do Estado somali foi deixado para a UNOSOM II que substituiu a UNITAF por meio da resolução 814, de março de 1993. Como nos mostra Tripodi (1999), a posição de Boutros-Ghali divergiu da posição de Bush desde o início, já que o Secretário-Geral insistiu na necessidade de uma força internacional voltada para a tarefa de desarmar as facções somalis e de promover o "nation-building". Todavia, tais demandas não foram acolhidas pelo Secretário de Defesa, Dick Cheney, para quem o desarmamento ativo não deveria ser parte da UNITAF (Tripodi 1999). ...
... Como nos mostra Tripodi (1999), a posição de Boutros-Ghali divergiu da posição de Bush desde o início, já que o Secretário-Geral insistiu na necessidade de uma força internacional voltada para a tarefa de desarmar as facções somalis e de promover o "nation-building". Todavia, tais demandas não foram acolhidas pelo Secretário de Defesa, Dick Cheney, para quem o desarmamento ativo não deveria ser parte da UNITAF (Tripodi 1999). Essa disputa de visões entre os Estados Unidos e a ONU foi o que permitiu que os primeiros tivessem considerado a operação um sucesso, já que, segundo o discurso dominante sobre a UNITAF, ela conseguiu, de fato, "vencer" a fome somali. ...
O artigo aborda os dilemas enfrentados pelos atores internacionais nas operações de
paz levadas a cabo na Somália na década de 1990. Busca-se evidenciar as narrativas
divergentes articuladas pelos Estados Unidos e pelas Nações Unidas vis-à-vis o
"Outro" somali. Sugere-se que os principais dilemas experimentados pela ONU e pelos
Estados Unidos na Somália não foram de natureza técnica, concernente a problemas de
coordenação entre as principais forças envolvidas, como usualmente se argumenta.
Diferentemente, argumenta-se que existiu uma disputa de natureza política entre os
Estados Unidos e a ONU na Somália, amparada por discursos distintos sobre o "Outro"
somali.
... After a further study, they were reduced to 10 candidate projects of irrigation. The master 40 Managing Shared Basins in the Horn of Africa -Ethiopian Projects on the Juba and Shabelle Rivers and Downstream Effects in Somalia plan, which was finalized and presented in 2007, identified 22 dam projects for potential hydropower development. After further screening, 9 dam projects were shortlisted. ...
... The relations between Ethiopia and Somalia is complex particularly in view of their long history of animosity, mistrust, conflict and border dispute, which resulted from the demarcations by the European Colonialists during 19 th and 20 th centuries. During that period, Ethiopia played a key role in the colonial division of the Somali Plateau into five areas [38,39,40]. As a result of colonial border demarcations, large population and communities of ethnically Somali origin live in Ethiopia and Kenya. ...
... Even though there hasn't been much research on federalism in Somalia, the few studies that have been done so far have produced a variety of conflicting results; there are a few first-hand academic studies on Somalia in general and Somalia federalism in particular since the overthrow of the Siad Barre dictatorship in 1991 (Mohamed 2023;Hersi 2004;Mohamoud 2015;Böckenförde 2012;and Zoppi 2013). Before the contemporary Somalia state was created, clan, rather than national citizenship was used as a political tool by the Somalia leadership (Tripodi 1999). This instrumentality of clan has persisted throughout Somalia's political history and only gained prominence after the country attained independence. ...
Federalism is regarded as the ideal strategy for Somalia in forming a power-sharing agreement among Somali clans and a workable solution to the national unity, peace and security. Despite the adoption of federalism in Somalia, the reality on the ground is different as Somalia has continued to be in a state of political quandary. Available literature says little about the Inter-Governmental Relations (IGR) and civic state building as a possible cause of political quandary. This study explores Somalia’s Federal-state Inter-Governmental Relations and civic state building. It seeks to answer the question, how and to what extent have the intergovernmental relations between the federal government and federal member states affect civic state building in Somalia? Utilizing a qualitative approach specifically, synthesis of literature, in-depth interviews and guided questionnaire, the study suggests that despite the existence of a federal structure, intergovernmental relations between the federal government and the member states have been characterized by tensions and conflicts; the federal and state apparatuses lack appropriate provisions in the constitution and that the minimal federal-state IGR laws that are now in place are not honored and applied by both levels of the federal government. This study also suggests that there is no effective, agreed-upon model of IGRs and power sharing in Somalia between the federal government and member states, thus constraining any kind of progression in the federal institutions. This study also shows how dangerous it is to neglect indigenous approaches of state building that take into account Somali culture, religion, and customs. The findings of this study contributes to the scholarly discourse on civic state-building, federalism, and IGRs in post-conflict settings. This study recommends a review of the federal-state intergovernmental relations laws paying attention to cultural and religious significance, to strengthen federal-state IGRs.
... 460 According to Venanzio Francesco Filippini, the RCC Bishop of Mogadishu, there were 40,000 Somali Catholics in southern Somalia by 1940. 461 The entire Somali population in Somalia proper was estimated in 1940 to be about 1,150,000 according to the Italian colonial authority and 1, 200,000 in 1950. 462 This makes the Somali Christians in 1940 to be about 3.5% of the population; this is a significant growth in a Muslim country where local Christians have not been statistically crucial in the last several decades. ...
Writing about the Somali Church has been both challenging and rewarding at the same time. I found the whole process to be surreal since this church is little known compared to the churches in Ethiopia and Kenya. This is strange since the history of the modern Somali Church goes back to 1881 when the first Western missionaries settled near Berbera, British Somaliland. Hence, this is a book like no other. Despite its 140 years history, very little has been written about the Somali Church. Subjects covered include the religious heritage of the Somalis (Waaqism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam), mission work, missionaries and their fruits, the benefits of denominationally based ministries, challenges and blessings of persecution, the relationship between persecution and church growth, utilizing the Somali clan system for the glory of God, and the role of poetry in the Somali ministry. The following chapters were previously published as papers by three different publications and are now included as book chapters. Some of the papers, in repurposing them as book chapters, have been slightly edited for space and clarity.
... Somalis first encountered Christianity in a significant manner through the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in 1881 (Fahlbusch and Bromiley, 1991 (Tripodi, 1999). The Italian colonial government estimated the Somalia proper population in 1940 to be around 1,150,000 and updated it to 1,200,000 in 1950according to Catholic Hierarchy (2019. ...
For many people, “Somali” and “Christian” are oxymoron but history is littered with enough evidence that this assumed oxymoron is one big fallacy. The purpose of this brief history is to highlight the long and consistent engagement of Christian missions among Somali people in the Horn of Africa. This work will review few of the most prominent mission organizations among Somali people, the challenges and success of these organizations in Islamic Somalia. This review will also elaborate the rebirth of the Protestant mission work in Somalia in the 1950’s and the impact the collapse of Somalia’s central government in 1991 still has on the church in Somalia. Somalia has 128 years of continuous Christian presence which started in 1881. Unbeknownst to many, there are numerous established Christian house-churches in Somalia today. While the exact number of these Somali Christian congregations in Somalia is hard to know, estimates range from few dozens to several dozens. There are also thriving Somali Christian congregations in the Somali inhabited regions of Kenya and Ethiopia. Sustained missionary work among Somalis started in northern Somalia in 1881 when Roman Catholic fathers opened an orphanage in what was then British Somaliland. The first Protestant mission work was established in southern Somalia in 1896 when Swedish Overseas Lutheran Church (SOLC) opened mission work in what was then Italian Somaliland. While the Roman Catholic mission quickly faced intense objections from the local Somalis, the SOLC encountered minimum opposition from the local people. Through their orphanage ministry, the Roman Catholics witnessed the conversion of many children while the ministry of SOLC produced numerous adult believers in a short span of time. Both mission organizations were eventually expelled from the Somali lands by the colonial powers but some of the local Christian communities they left behind hung onto the faith despite the intense persecutions they faced from the Somali Muslims
(PDF) A Brief History of Christian Missions in Somalia. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349870794_A_Brief_History_of_Christian_Missions_in_Somalia [accessed Mar 08 2021].
... The 'arifa' in Southern Somalia is a family or a larger group, even a sub-clan, which was assimilated with another clan in the territory of the latter, this was a very old and established tradition, especially in the Juba region. In the 1950s, the arifa-system caused considerable problems for the Italian mandated administration in its attempt to establish a clanbased representative system, as the arifa could not have their own representatives, but had to accept those of the main ethnic group of the region and could not join with other groups that lived as arifa with other clans (Tripodi 1999). These problems are very similar to those described here among the Gerire. ...
In the light of current knowledge and after a visit to the area, the author of this paper presents an annotated English translation (and in some places an interpretation) of the previously unpublished report of an Italian multidisciplinary expedition in 1937 to the Gerire Hills. At
that time, these hills were part of the Governato della Somalia in the Italian East African Empire, but they are now part of the Somali Regional State of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The 1937 expedition included specialists in mapping and topography, geology and hydrology, ethnography, agronomy, vegetation and indigenous flora, the latter documented by collections now at the Centro Studi Erbario Tropicale (Herbarium FT), University of Firenze. The report, signed by the leader of the expedition, was submitted to the Governor of Somalia in February 1938. A brief summary was published in a journal in the same year, but otherwise the rich information in this report remains virtually unknown and hardly utilised or cited anywhere. An exception is the botanical material, which has been discussed in a number of later publications, but, due to lack of knowledge of the information available in the original report, the ecology of the Gerire Hills was not well understood. The most important observations in the report relate to the detailed topographical mapping; the ethnological observations, according
to which the Gerire language and culture are predominantly Somali, although also with significant Oromo influence; observations on the practices and long history of local agriculture; and the preliminary survey of the vegetation and flora, where the past importance of Juniperus procera woodland is documented.
... ICPE 1983, 28ff.). While the military reign from 1969 to 1991 has frequently been denounced with sweeping statements-failing to acknowledge the distinct trajectories prior to and after the 'watershed event' of the Ogadeen War of 1977/78 (Tripodi 1999, 1)-Mohamed Siyad Barre's takeover has, at times, been portrayed as the beginning of the state's collapse (e.g. Compagnon 1995, 428). ...
Having been top of the agenda for the past two decades, debates on state fragility have recently witnessed the emergence of pluralist concepts. While the concept of ‘hybrid political orders’ has invigorated our thinking about fragile states, it yields to the fallacy that pluralism constitutes the birth certificate of statehood. This article introduces an alternative concept to better grasp state trajectories, proposing an understanding of state developments in terms of institutional and identity standardization. Rooted in existing accounts of state-making, the analytical prism of ‘rule standardization’ is original in that it conceptually bridges the gap between statebuilding and nation-building as well as between state-making and state-breaking. Substantiating the theoretical discussion with three case studies from the Somali territories, the paper fundamentally proposes that what is required to sustain states should not be confused with what is required to initiate them.
This article analyses the campaign in Italian East Africa from an Italian point of view. It starts by setting out the grim strategic situation the commander in chief, the Duke of Aosta, was facing at the outbreak of hostilities. It then proceeds to cover the three phases of the campaign: the period from June 1940 until the end of the year, the second phase between January and May 1941, including the fall of Keren and Addis Ababa, and the third and final period until November 1941. This contribution will highlight the problems the Italian military struggled with, its shortcomings, but also its dogged defence, e.g. at the battle of Keren. The second part of this article looks at how the memory of the campaign was formed after the Second World War and how it related to more general aspects of Italian colonial history.
Somalia is a fragile economy in which conflicts have impeded the country's overall economic performance and fiscal capacity after the fall of the central government in 1991. With an objective to study the fiscal capacity of Somalia including reforms in taxation, spending and challenges, this study utilised the available fiscal data from 2012 to 2021, with a little preview of historical fiscal data where it makes a meaning. Furthermore, reviewing literature and interviewing fiscal experts were additionally utilised to support the descriptive data. The mixed methodology was employed to capture the depth of contemporary revenue collection and expenditure management, challenges of fiscal reforms and key policy areas to address. The study finds that the government has made remarkable progress towards rebuilding fiscal policy, but mostly in Mogadishu, in the last decade. This progress includes revenue mobilisation, public financial management reforms, execution of the budgets, and auditing financial governance. However, many areas of the country's fiscal policy still remain weak and fragile as chronic security challenges hinder the reach of many parts of the country for revenue collection. To strengthen these weaknesses, the study makes several policy recommendations-also applicable to other post-conflict economies with similar situations-to strengthen the foundation of the fiscal sector in Somalia.
Severe persecution has been an on-going phenomenon in Somalia since the disintegration of Somalia‘s central government in 1991. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the persecution of Christians and its influence on the growth of the Church in Somalia. The objectives of the study were to: examine selected episodes of persecution of the church throughout history and their effect on church growth, discover the challenges that persecution poses to the Church in Somalia, determine if the Church in Somalia has a locally developed distinctive theology of persecution, assess the role ministers play in this church during severe persecution, and draw conclusions that could contribute to the understanding of the relationship between Christian persecution and church growth in Somalia. The study employed a descriptive survey research design. A sample of 220 respondents who included Christian clergy, Christian lay leaders, Christian elders, Christian lay members, and Muslims was selected using non-probability sampling methods, namely purposive and convenience sampling methods. Data was collected using open-ended questionnaires. Content and construct validity were ascertained by incorporating the experts‘ opinions, consisting of university supervisors and examiners.
This paper centres on a methodological approach that drew together postcolonial feminist theory with arts-based methods, as well as learning from Indigenous methodologies. The methodology developed over 2 years with two groups of women from refugee and newly arrived migration contexts. This paper focuses on the co-created research process with one of the groups: six Somali women who attended a family literacy class at a third sector organisation in Birmingham, UK. An exploratory literacy space was established, with no set curriculum or links to school-based assessment measures, as a purposeful diversion from the researcher-teacher’s previous teaching practice in government-funded family literacy provision. Using artefacts, the women mobilised the methodological direction of the research into affectual and sensory aspects, culminating in a ‘pedago-Vis-ual’ assemblage. The research contributes theoretical and methodological aspects to the fields of family literacy, literacy, and practice-based research. Theoretically, the paper expands understanding of family literacy teaching and learning in the ‘posts’: transitioning from Western-dominated definitions of family literacy from its traditional humanist roots towards post-human ways of knowing, the latter led by women who are potentially isolated from traditional educational provision. Methodologically, the paper mobilises ways that arts-based methods can be combined with learning from Indigenous principles to foreground the voices of politically marginalised groups and the reciprocity and respect that must accompany this.
Severe persecution has been an ongoing phenomenon in Somalia since the disintegration of Somalia’s central government in 1991. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of persecution of Christians and its influence on the growth of the Church in Somalia. The objectives of the study were to: examine selected episodes of persecution of the church throughout history and their effect on church growth, discover the challenges that persecution poses to the Church in Somalia, determine if the Church in Somalia has a locally developed distinctive theology of persecution, assess the role ministers play in this church during severe persecution, and draw conclusions that could contribute to the understanding of the relationship between Christian persecution and church growth in Somalia. The study employed a descriptive survey research design. A sample of 220 respondents who included Christian clergy, Christian lay leaders, Christian elders, Christian lay members, and Muslims was selected using nonprobability sampling methods, namely purposive and convenience sampling methods. Data was collected using open-ended questionnaires. Content and construct validity were ascertained by incorporating the experts’ opinions, consisting of university supervisors and examiners.
The researcher, after pretesting the questionnaire in the pilot survey in a city code-named L0, conducted reliability testing using interrater reliability testing since the questionnaire had many open-ended questions. After carrying out the study in three cities code-named L1, L2 and L3, the results so obtained being predominantly qualitative were analysed using Microsoft Excel and Maxqda 2020. The quantitative results were analysed using SPSS 26. Based on the findings of the study, the null hypothesis of this research which states that persecution of Christians is not related to the numerical growth of the targeted Church in Somalia was rejected. On the contrary, the results of the study proved that persecution contributes to the numerical growth of the Church in Somalia. The findings of the study indicated that the church in Somali is a Creative Access Christian (CAC) model with no expatriate and non-Somali membership. The study further indicated that the period between 1994 and 1996 was the period when the church experienced the greatest persecution (65%); and there was evidence that this persecution led to a period of sustained growth, as reported by 6.7% of believers who reported coming to faith between 1900 and 2000; 26.3% between 2000 and 2010, and 67.5% of respondents who were believers for less than ten years.
The data collected suggest that an understanding of extreme persecution, martyrdom, and the way in which those events gave birth to their community of faith is a foundational part of the identity and the collective memory of the Somali CAC believing community. The research recommendations are that the Somali Church must live a Christ-like life, facilitate an effective interfaith dialogue, harness the provisions of the clan system, and have a good relationship with the government. The study recommends the use of interfaith dialogue (IFD) to create an IFD movement of all people in Somalia. This IFD incorporates active nonviolence with inclusivity which reduces exclusivity of the Muslim majority allowing religious pluralism in the context of IFD. This study will therefore contribute to the understanding of the relationship between persecution and church growth in the Somali context.
The Somali Bible Society Journal is the official biannual journal of the Somali Bible Society.
This issue is: Volume II, Issue 1, June 2021
Over the past decades, Somalia has experienced civil wars, inter-clan conflicts, militias warlords, terrorism, and other several violent conflicts. These conflicts resulted in the deaths of many innocent civilians and destroyed the state institutions, structures, and trust in governance and consequently affected the agricultural production of the country, which resulted to nationwide famine. Thus, this article aims to critically understand the causes and consequences of the conflict in Somalia. It also aims to discuss opportunities and strategies for peacebuilding and reconstruction of Somalia. The article reveals that clan and clannism are the leading causes of Somalia’s destabilization. Furthermore, the article argues that radical extremism, corruption, the militarization of clan members, inequalities and extreme poverty, and massive youth unemployment are the most common factors that lead to Somalia's never ending conflict. On the other hand, this article examined that mass migration, extremism, the emergence of piracy, and the loss of Somali unity and nationalism are the results of the prolonged conflict. Moreover, the article found that the previous peacebuilding approaches such as the promotion of democracy, elections, free market-based reforms, and building local institutions combined with modern state standards adopted from the international community have failed to promote peace and stability in Somalia. Thus, this article recommends that social reconciliation should be held and led by the local people. This in return, we believe will help Somalia to restore peace, the rule of law and ensure long term stability.
This chapter addresses secession and Africa’s responses to the breaking of European-constructed nations, challenging the OAU’s 1964 Cairo Declaration that retained colonial borders and reaffirmed the principle of uti possidetis—retaining pre-independence borders. Africa experienced some interstate conflict, but internal conflict was far more insidious and as Rwanda’s 1994 genocide showed. However, secessionist wars have caused copious numbers of deaths, challenged territorial integrity and the OAU’s ability to broker peace, and the splitting of African nations. The chapter further examines Kenya’s Northern Frontier District (NFD), the Greater Somalia project, former Coastal Sultanates, Nigeria’s Biafra War and Sudan’s conflicts. The First and the Second Sudanese Civil Wars are addressed as are the circumstances leading to South Sudan’s secession in 2011, after the series of Comprehensive Peace Agreements and a referendum, capping 40+ years of conflict and close to 3 million deaths. It examines OAU responses to secession attempts, showing the organization itself to be beholden to Uti possidetis, challenging the OAU’s ability to be a neutral arbiter, but also exposing divisions among African countries—for example, in the Biafra War, 6 countries abstained or voted against reaffirming Nigeria’s territorial integrity. Biafra also mirrored other secession attempts such as Katanga and the Ogaden regions. OAU’s stance appeared to give carte blanche to countries unwilling to deal with internal conflicts even with legitimate causes, sustaining the internal conflicts.
Il conflitto civile in Somalia, ormai uno dei più vecchi ancora in corso in Africa e nel mondo, ha radici lontane. I primi scontri che hanno dato il via all’escalation di violenze sono certamente databili alla fine degli anni ’80, ma esiste una concatenazione di eventi precedenti che ha portato il regime di Siad Barre, e con esso l’intero Stato somalo, al collasso. In questa scia di cause ed effetti che appare ancora difficile da fermare, di mezzo c’è l’Italia. Inevitabile, in quanto ex potenza coloniale in questo lontano lembo di Continente Nero, ma comunque genitrice di un destino che probabilmente mai avrebbe messo in conto. E da cui, oggi, appare assai lontana, assillata da situazioni altrettanto spinose come quella libica, scoppiata alla porta di casa.
Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh warisan kolonisasi Inggris di perbatasan antara Kenya dan Somalia yang mengakibatkan keberadaan kelompok etnis Somali di North Eastern Province. Aktor yang terlibat adalah Pemerintah Kolonial, Pemerintah Kenya dan Etnis Kenya-Somali. Fokus dari penelitian ini adalah menjelaskan kekerasan struktural terhadap kelompok Etnis Kenya-Somali pasca kolonisasi di Kenya. Peneliti menggunakan structural violence dari Johan Galtung dan pendekatan Post-Colonialism dari Frantz Fanon untuk dapat menerapkan teori tersebut ke dalam fenomena kekerasan struktural yang terjadi pada etnis Kenya-Somali. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menerapkan pendekatan structural violence sebagai pisauanalisis pengidentifikasian permasalahan kesenjangan sistem yang kerap terjadi di negara dunia ketiga akibat warisan sistem kolonisasi.
The series Diaspore. Quaderni di ricerca originates from the desire to investigate the human being’s diasporic dimension, in its various forms. In the mechanisms implemented by the globalisation’s processes, which tend to assimilate the diversity and to blend the inevitable conflicts arising from the difference, the diasporic and migratory phenomenon can paradoxically be the original element to safeguard an individual and a culture in a new territory, providing a peculiar reflection area in which the conservation of that starting culture, but also the interstitial territories and the hybridism phenomena between this and the target culture can be preserved. Research laboratories of these realities will be mainly the cultural, literary, and artistic productions, generated in particular historical contexts, in territories including Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Americas, regions where the culturally-composite identities, on heterogeneous bases, reveal the vitality of moving cultures.
The series Diaspore. Quaderni di ricerca originates from the desire to investigate the human being’s diasporic dimension, in its various forms. In the mechanisms implemented by the globalisation’s processes, which tend to assimilate the diversity and to blend the inevitable conflicts arising from the difference, the diasporic and migratory phenomenon can paradoxically be the original element to safeguard an individual and a culture in a new territory, providing a peculiar reflection area in which the conservation of that starting culture, but also the interstitial territories and the hybridism phenomena between this and the target culture can be preserved. Research laboratories of these realities will be mainly the cultural, literary, and artistic productions, generated in particular historical contexts, in territories including Europe and Africa, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Americas, regions where the culturally-composite identities, on heterogeneous bases, reveal the vitality of moving cultures.
This book is a critical reading of contemporary interventionism, exploring how interventions shape the course of conflicts and reconciliation processes in Somalia.
In a critical departure from the state-capacity consensus that has dominated the debate on terrorism and state failure, this book argues that conflict and sovereignty transformations in Somalia cannot be understood as the result of a gap in state-capacity, as multiple interventions have compromised the autonomy of the target state and society to act as sovereign.
Destabilising Interventions in Somalia focuses on the humanitarian intervention of the mid-1990s, the Ethiopia–Eritrean regional proxy war in the late 1990s and the Global War on Terror in the 2000s. Examining the politics and mechanisms of multiple interventions, this book shows how interveners complicate and amplify existing conflicts, how they reiterate the international dimension of the conflict itself, and how they orient the target state towards the outsourcing of sovereignty functions. Key to this process has been the violent and exclusionary nature of interventions grounded in the aspiration of transforming existing political orders.
Destabilising Interventions in Somalia will be of interest to students of African peace and conflict studies, international intervention and International Relations.
This chapter emphasizes the enduring internationalism of postwar Italy that was, in part, the legacy of its anti-fascist struggle. The years after 1945 witnessed the culmination of decolonization movements in various parts of the world. Influential anti-colonial theories emerged in these years, developed by Third-World intellectuals attempting to chart a future course of action for nations fighting for their independence against colonial rule. The liberation movements in Algeria, Vietnam and Cuba demonstrated the ever-increasing fault-lines between orthodox, Eurocentric communism and what came to be known in those years as “Third-Worldism”. In this chapter, I examine the fertile connections Italian intellectuals made between anti-colonialism and anti-fascism in the postwar period, and explore the ways in which perceived analogies between these two positions and the influence of Third-Worldism led to a renewal of Italian radical culture, especially in the realms of literature and film. I delineate a group of diverse texts that are all, however, characterized by a “resistance aesthetics”, as I call it here. But this chapter also emphasizes the point that Italian attitudes to colonialism have varied significantly in the course of its national history, and draws attention to the ambivalence of the Italian left. While Italian leftists stood alongside supporters of the Algerian struggle for independence, they also made no comment on Italy’s own colonial history, which had seemingly been erased from public memory after the Second World War. Moreover, the PCI campaigned for trusteeship of Somalia in the post-war period, arguing that this was Italy’s due “as just moral compensation” for the anti-fascist forces’ contribution to the war effort.
Postwar politics in British-occupied Somalia is usually reduced to the activities of the Somali Youth League, the foremost anticolonial nationalist movement. However, by 1947, smaller associations, pejoratively nicknamed the pro-Italia , came together in an effort to return Somalia to Italy under international mandate. Drawing upon new archival sources, the article argues that this movement did not stem from arguments supporting colonial rule, but rather from objections to the nationalist agenda and military occupation. Closer attention to these voices sheds light on the deeper meanings of political alignment during the change of regime and enhances our understanding of political developments in postwar Somalia.
In a seminal essay that emphasizes the “dubious spatiality” and “problematic temporality” of the term “postcolonial,” Ella Shohat asks, “When exactly, then, does the ‘post-colonial’ begin?” (103). This question is particularly relevant for Italy, as the beginning of the decolonization process did not coincide with the beginning of the postcolonial era. In the period between 1890 and 1943, Italy claimed colonial rights over Eritrea, Somalia, parts of Libya, Ethiopia, the Dodecanese Islands, and Albania, but the postindependence period did not begin simultaneously for these territories. Italy officially renounced its colonial empire with the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947, but the colonies had already been lost following its defeat by the British Army in East Africa in 1941 and in Libya in 1943 and the take-over of the Italian colonies in Albania and the Dodecanese Islands by the German Army in 1943. Italy, however, sustained new kinds of colonial relations even after the loss of the colonies, both at a political level, as in the case of the Italian Trusteeship Administration in Somalia (Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della Somalia, AFIS) from 1949 to 1960, and at an economic level, as occurred in Libya up until the mass exodus in 1970. Finally, the process of decolonization was not the outcome of colonial wars of independence, in which the periphery rebelled against the metropole; rather, it was the result of the weakening, and later the defeat, of Fascism. For all these reasons, the case of Italy—as a national paradigm rarely understood within a postcolonial framework—compels us to evaluate postcolonialism under a new light.
Perhaps not surprisingly, since the end of the Cold War Italian foreign policy has experienced a discernible degree of volatility, which affected Italy's position in at least two of its main frameworks of reference, namely Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Suffice it to point out here how the second Berlusconi government has most recently turned Italy's traditional Europeanism into a convinced Euro-realism, if not outright Euro-scepticism, and how Atlanticism has arguably become the overriding principle of the centre-right's 'new foreign policy course'. While these changes have been variously interpreted as a product of external dynamics (war on terror, 11 September, etc.), of the change in leadership (the 'Berlusconi effect') or in the coalition in power (centre-right vs. centre-left), the paper would like to draw attention to the role of 'policy paradigms'. Drawing on Colin Hay's work on strategic-relational models, the paper begins by sketching out Italy's pendulum trajectory vis-à-vis Europe and the US over the last fifteen years. Then, it highlights the role of policy paradigms, defined as those intersubjectively agreed-upon cognitive templates through which decision-makers interpret the world. Against a background analysis of Italy's field of production of foreign policy expertise, and IR epistemic community at large, the paper will argue that the continuities and discontinuities in the foreign policy of Italy over the last decade and a half can be usefully read as the result of a complex, dialectical process in which different paradigms about foreign policy played an important part. Ironically enough, precisely in a country where strong materialistic political traditions such as realism and Marxism still hold sway, it is ideas that should command more attention, even in the realm of foreign policy.
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