Pirates of Puntland

The region’s warlords, who operated as a kheer onto themselves, formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, or ARPCT, to stem the tide. President Bush, against the advice of his own State Department, bankrolled the formerly bête noire brigade.

The Islamic Courts Union (ICU), supported by the multi-clan jihadist militia, Al Shabaab, and funded by the anti-jihadist government of Eritrea, prevailed.

The ICU was a practical arrangement for restoring law and order that brought Islamic civil society actors from moderate organisations like Al Islah and a clutch of radical jihadis under the same umbrella.

The ICU model foreshadowed similar political developments occurring in Kenya and Zimbabwe, and its brief six-month rule is now regarded as Mogadishu’s Golden Age.

But like Afwein before them, they miscalculated their capacity to take on a superpower-backed Ethiopian state. The Ethiopians escorted President Abdullahi Yusuf’s beleaguered Transitional National Government back to Mogadishu.

Despite the support of the Ethiopian army, the TFG’s political legitimacy is compromised and its ability to govern is severely constrained by a Taliban-Iraqi style insurgency ostensibly spearheaded by Al Shabaab militants.

Meanwhile, the force of African Union peacekeepers that are supposed to replace the Ethiopians and the small Uganda contingent is unlikely to materialise.

If the Bush regime’s “Long War on Terror” (LWOT) has effectively maintained a focus on internal events in Somalia, its narrow focus on the several individuals linked to Al Qaeda, like the quest to neutralise Aideed, has proved disastrous for governance across the Horn of Africa.

Although US air strikes have vaporised at least two of the prominent Islamicist outlaws, their colleagues survived to scuttle the political dialogue offered by the Djibouti accord.

There is no reason to expect a change in the contemporary status quo — itself a product of misguided interests, bungled interventions, and naked opportunism — or incentive for the international community to meaningful engage.

But this has changed since the Pirates of Puntland waltzed on to centrestage.

The return of the tanks

Compared with other Somali inhabited regions, conditions in the semi-autonomous state of Puntland are in many ways exceptional.

Large expanses of Puntland are true desert, yielding pasture during short and unpredictable bursts of rain that, in some places, may only appear twice a decade. The maritime plains and low mountain on their fringe are called guban, the burnt land.

As in the case of Kenya’s overcrowded Central Province, these conditions pushed the predominantly Majertain clan inhabitants to seek education and employment in the colonial administration.