Issue No. 584

What Somalia needs is Strong Institutions

Today's editorial in The Somali Wire is written by Ahmed Awad. This is the first part of a two-part series of editorials written by the former Foreign Minister of Somalia, the second will be published in Wednesday's edition of the Somali Wire.
 
We would like to extend an invitation to others who may wish to contribute to the Somali Wire in the future. We appreciate insightful perspectives on topics concerning Somalia crafted as editorials.
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Somalia can seem like an enigma, and Somalis have perplexed the world. We have become a mystery that defies explanation, provoking both sympathy and admiration in the minds of our partners.

Outside of Somalia, Somalis have shined. The diaspora has proven resilient, daring, creative, and resourceful, often in the most testing circumstances. Somalis have excelled in business overseas, as well as in Sub-Saharan Africa in countries like Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. Across Europe and the US, Somalis have built impressive mosques and schools. And diaspora Somalis have seen considerable success in the politics of their new countries. Last year, in the US mid-terms alone, 14 Somali Americans won legislative seats.
 
Yet our people continue to suffer inside Somalia. The country remains a poster child for state collapse. Civil war, poor governance, clanism, corruption, violent extremism, recurrent droughts and flooding, and starvation have characterised the Somali nation over the past 30 years. For decades, many have wrestled with this juxtaposition of diaspora success and state collapse.
 
At the heart of Somalia’s dilemmas lie failed institutions, from health services to security forces. In other nations, well-functioning state institutions have provided Somalis with the rights and freedoms to successfully pursue their aspirations.
 
The most serious obstacle to Somalia’s political progress, and its fledgling institutions, is a culture that has given primacy to personality-driven politics. This is the painful legacy of decades of exploitative and destructive military dictatorship. The decrees of the ‘all-knowing’ and ‘all-powerful’ leader hollowed out Somalia’s state institutions. Siad Barre’s regime corroded the separation between private and public sectors, from justice to education, as cronies assumed in key positions in Somalia. This corrosion, and the enfeebling of institutions, drove the collapse of the Somali state in the early 1990s. Today, informal political and clan relationships still dominate a fragile state. And the still-unaddressed institutional void has been filled by a raft of other actors, including Al-Shabaab.
 
The concentration of political power in the hands of a single ruler and his cronies is far from unique to Somalia, nor are its shell-like institutions. Other countries, including Yemen, Libya and Sudan, were similarly governed at the whim of a single man, also for decades. Like Somalia, these countries' post-colonial history has been dominated by fragmented societies and sectarianism. In large part, this is due to past colonial exploitation, co-opted local leaders, political oppression, and the imposition of institutions alien to their indigenous populations by the British and the Italians.

Many political leaders today mimic similarly corrosive behaviours, entrenching pervasive nepotism and corruption that allows institutional weakness and poor governance. Patron-client networks have coalesced across the country as Somalis struggle for access to essential resources or political favour. Good governance is often an afterthought.

Somalia’s clientelist politics has also generated innate insecurity. Rather than standardised and accountable behaviour by officials and civil servants, the weakness of Somalia’s institutions allows bribery and patronage to dictate many engagements. And instability from political and armed conflict over resources and influence has driven years of upheaval. Somalia’s peripheries-- geographic, ethnic, and political-- have been the most brutally exploited for years, undermining the relationship between the state and its people.
 
We must demystify the ‘big man’ at all levels of government and society. Genuine sovereignty is rooted in the people, not unaccountable politicians and officials. A modern state cannot be managed by whims and patronage. It requires well-resourced institutions with competent bureaucracies accountable to the country and its constituents.

Somalia must pursue a new political culture of institutions, one that enshrines the people as sovereign and the government as servants. This is the only way to mend the deep fissures between many Somali communities and the state. Pursuing greater clarity of mission and accountability in Somalia’s primary federal institutions would render the state legitimate in the eyes of its people. This is the fastest and surest way of realising stability, economic development, and a more hopeful future for a united and modern Somali state.

Ahmed Awad is a former Foreign Minister of Somalia and current Puntland Presidential candidate.