By Faisal Roble

Introduction

The Istanbul conference on Somalia, February 23-24, 2016, came at an inopportune time with the perfect storm for Villa Somalia hitting it in the face. Since the first New Deal conference in Brussels in 2013, positive developments took place here and there, of course, thanks to the tenacity of the residents of Mogadishu. But much has been missed. For example, the Federal Government missed important timelines and forfeited key deliverables intended to present them at this conference.

Also, political conditions in the country are as discouraging as they were at the start of the journey; to date, the country is less unified and more fragmented; Somaliland’s secessionist position has hardened; Puntland is reassessing its relationship with Mogadishu; and a loosely affiliated and thinly-glued South Central Somalia is under the shadow of over-confident Al-shabab militia, not to mention that terror rules supreme in Mogadishu. Villa Somalia also failed to stump out a culture of corruption at all levels in the government.

Somalis overwhelmingly doubt the capacity of the government to implement its own ambitious plan. In July 2014, Sarah Hearn and Thomas Zimmerman of the Center on International Cooperation, New York University, critically evaluated the promises and prospects of the Somali New Deal Compact. They came to the shocking conclusion that the Mogadishu-based government has neither the capacity nor the will to implement the Plan, adding that Villa Somalia is suspicious of anyone else implementing the Plan. That “anyone” includes peaceful regions such as Somaliland and/or Puntland.

The timing of the conference also coincided with a time when a particular terrorist attack, anticipated with a healthy dose of certainty for weeks, eventually rocked Villa Somalia’s neighborhood one day after the conference had ended. Meanwhile, at the time of such an unprecedented blast by Al-shabab, about two hundred of the most senior officials, including the President, the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, senior ministers, army officers and top businessmen were out and still remain out of the country. Several employees in the Prime Minister’s office are reported to have been killed in this latest unusually large blast.

Moreover, the Istanbul conference came at a time when Turkish and EU attention was diverted away from Somalia to other hot spots such as the Syrian conflict and the refugee crisis in Europe.

Much optimism was placed in the past on what the New Deal might do for Somalia. It was hoped that “a new political, security and development architecture framing the future relations between Somalia, its people, and the international community” will materialize in time;” rapid donor alignment and “on-budget” support to the Federal Government of Somalia was supposed to enhance political and security priorities.” Alas, none of the optimistic goals cited in the New Deal compact is realized.

After three years of holding hands out not to its Allah but to the lords of international aid, Somalia has widespread corruption and less real human and infrastructural development to show. There is little, if any, debate about open theft of the paltry aid that reaches the docks of Mogadishu. Much consensus, however, is emerging that Somalia’s problems stem from its leadership and from the ideology that they adopted.

Leadership and Ideology

Somalia’s reconstruction problems emanate from two sources: leadership and poor ideology. With the election of Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud in August 2012, the Somali populace was ready for a national campaign to rebuild the country. Somalia media at the time ran ablaze with enthusiastic endorsements of his election. Positive editorials flowered major Somali websites. A familiar concept Somalis knew well, self-help (Iska-wax u qabso), was about to be collectively invoked. The beautiful scent of national revival was in the air.
However, all that political capital and national enthusiasm were short-lived mainly because of weak leadership in Villa Somalia.
Predatory external forces that consist of EU members, IGAD countries, and a consortium of NGOs are also culprits in the lack of progress. To date more of the decisions impacting Somalia, including security, airspace and financial management, are crafted elsewhere and overseas. The objectives of predatory neighboring countries in particular, which are also members of the AMISOM peacekeeping forces, are believed to be a source of the erosion of any hope for the normalization of the political climate. Sources close to Villa Somalia suggest that, in fear of jeopardizing his rule, which is widely unpopular throughout the country, President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud often takes subservient postures in his own country’s national affairs.

Somaliland, on the other hand, has to a large extent managed to control outside influences. In an upcoming study, Nick Eubank, a PhD student in Political Economic Business at Stanford University, writes that, in the case of Somaliland, less outside money as well foreign influence have brought political normalization and a healthy dose of democratization. The lesser outside involvement there is, the quicker the normalization of the country could be attained.

Such a theoretical framework is a well-established school of thought in African Political Science literature. Colin Lyse who extensively studied Kenya’s dysfunctional state in the 1970s and 1980s maintained that external monies corrupt national ideologies. He suggested that in a market economy external aid, often a conduit to domination, reduces national polities to subsidiary profiles.

Read more: Istanbul Conference: Leadership and Ideology

Faisal Roble
WardheerNews contributor
Email: faisalroble19@gmail.com
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Faisal Roble, a writer, political analyst and a former Editor-in-Chief of WardheerNews, is mainly interested in the Horn of Africa region. He is currently the Principal Planner for the City of Los Angeles in charge of Master Planning, Economic Development and Project Implementation Division.