Pirates of Puntland

Ethnic capital and Social transition

Somalia has remained stateless for over 15 years and life somehow goes on, even in “the Mog,” despite periodic eruptions of civil strife and all-out war in the capital and its environs.

During this span, the notion that clans represent both the main problem and central variable determining the ultimate outcome of the unresolved crisis, has become strongly rooted among Somalis and non-Somali observers alike.

Several countervailing developments during this prolonged period of transition, however, warrant serious attention: The blossoming of the Somali Diaspora; the rise and fall of the Islamic Courts Movement; and the progress realised by the unrecogised Republic of Somaliland.

While territorial Somalia remains mired in poverty, Diaspora Somalia, only recently established on new soil, is prospering. Somalis are building a reputation for being peaceful and law-abiding citizens abroad, especially compared with other immigrant communities.

They are accumulating capital at a remarkable rate. Somalis based in Dubai are the free port’s second largest exporters after the Iranians.

They have transformed the former low-income residential ward of Nairobi’s Eastleigh into a major commercial centre, and the same process is underway in the Rwanda Somalia suburb of Addis Ababa, and in other diverse and sundry cities across the globe where the jalle cluster.

The Somali Diaspora are tired of remitting money, they want to invest it. This ethnic capital is already beginning to flow into Somaliland, where clan elders committed to negotiating the peace through political means at an early point in the post-state crisis.

When President Riyaale Kahin won the 2002 national elections by a mere 50 votes, Somaliland’s political parties resolved the potential crisis amicably. Successful completion of the national polls later this year is likely to see the rate of investment take off.

Diaspora capital flows into Mogadishu too, but several caveats apply.

Southern Somalia is an environmentally benign land where rain falls and rivers run year round, making it a magnet for clan in-migration. The region is ethnically diverse and home to a complex mix of large and small, nomadic, agro-pastoral, and sedentary clans.

Because the kheer, customary clan law, is more difficult to administer in these circumstances, Sharia law helps bridge the divide.

Pre-colonial southern governance was based on this synthetic Islamic-Somali justice system, and through the agency of the business community, it resumed in the south after the state collapsed.

When the Salafi Al Ittihad movement, in contrast, tried to take over Kismayu, the salafi Islamicists were run out of town.

But the spread of the Islamic Courts model to the even more jumbled social microcosm of Mogadishu provided an opportunity for the failed leaders of Al Ittihad to re-enter the game.