78). As noted by the US State Department, Islamist activities thrive and there is a wide availability of small arms in the hands of unemployed youths. This growing concern that the governance vacuum in Somalia renders the territory a potential terrorist haven has not abated, rather it increases by the day. The following chapters are focused on Somalia, assessing the protracted failure and investigating the extent to which this condition (protracted statelessness) impacts on Somalia‟s global security significance.
CHAPTER THREE
THE FAILED STATE OF SOMALIA AND ITS PREDISPOSING ENVIRONMENT
geographic parts of a state may result automatically in its cessation, as in the case of Bosnia, it was not the case with the break-up of the constituting parts of the former Soviet Union, which only resulted in the abolishment of the entity and the emergence of some new sovereign states. In the latter instance, the Russian Federation retained and maintained all the institutions of the former Soviet Union without any disruption of the institutions of governance or breakdown of law and order.
Quaranto (2008: 8) opines that underpinning the concept of state failure is the definition of
“what a state entails or does”. In definitions of, and discussions on, failed states, most experts agree on focusing on governance and social, economic and legal institutions as being of primary importance for a territory to retain its “stateness”. Dorff (1999: 63), in his definition of failed states, highlights the basic characteristics of state failure thus: “the state loses the ability to perform the basic functions of governance, and it loses legitimacy … the inability of political institutions to meet the basic functions of legitimate governance is also accompanied by economic collapse”. Agreeing with Dorff, Susan Rice defines state failure as the inability of a central government to “maintain control over its territory and provide basic services to its citizens” (2003: 2). Dempsey (2006: v) defines the security characterization of state failure as including (among other things) “the disintegration and criminalization of public security forces, the collapse of the state administrative structures responsible for overseeing these forces, and the erosion of infrastructure that supports their effective operation”. Rotberg (2002: 130) associates state failure with the “collapse of the local justice system and the criminalization of the security services”. He makes a distinction between state failure and state collapse where the latter is characterized as “extreme failure” (Rotberg 2005: 10).
Zartman (1995: 1) argues that state collapse results in “a situation where the structure, authority (legitimate power), law, and political order have fallen apart and must be reconstituted in some form, old or new”. The state, therefore, can be said to have failed or collapsed when it has suffered institutional collapse, giving rise to the break-down of law and order, collapse of the rule of law and moderating influence of any sort, even with the territory intact such as the case of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The Somali state failure has not led to debate on its level of collapse and the possible security implications of the territory as a congenial terrorist safe haven. Most experts have presented Somalia as a clear example of a completely failed state. Rotberg (2002:131) describes Somalia as “the model of a collapsed state: a geographical expression only, with borders but
with no effective way to exert authority within those borders”. Jhazbhay (2003: 77) quoted Ali Mazrui as saying that „the situation in Somalia now is a culture of rules without rulers, a stateless society‟. Menkhaus (2003: 27) has singled out protracted and complete state collapse, protracted armed conflict and lawlessness as aptly representing the Somali situation.
“Somalia‟s inability to pull together even the most minimalist fig-leaf of a central administration over the course of twelve years places the country in a class by itself among the world‟s failed states”. In Somalia: state of collapse and the threat of terrorism, Menkhaus labeled Somalia “a failure among failed states” (2004: 17). Even Little (2003:123), who points out that Somalia has not slid into anarchy, agrees that it is stateless. It is difficult to place the Somali political situation into any other known category, other than that of a territory in anarchy. The clans that were united around the single project of the removal of Siad Barre, who to them personified the Darod clan, could not collectively take over the power to establish authority over the country.
The fall of Barre was followed by the collapse of the alliance and the factionalization of the groups and clans, leading to the balkanization of the entire Somali territory. The clans and sub-clans were becoming „self-governing entities‟, each carving out its own sphere of influence (Lewis 1994: 230; Vinci 2006: 77). The political environment in Somalia became very „volatile‟ (Little 2003: 150). Service delivery collapsed and the security situation continued to deteriorate. Fundamentalist Islamist organizations operate inside Somalia without any internal security monitoring, following the collapse of the institutions of law and order. The administration of the Somali territory had changed hands at different periods from one warlord to another, to a Transitional National Government, to a coalition of warlords, to the radical Islamic Courts Union, and to the Transitional Federal Government, with each lacking the legitimacy to assert authority over the population and to be recognized as their government by the Somali people. State collapse does not suggest the absence of any form of organizational system in its totality, but the absence of any legitimate power monopoly.
Quaranto (2008: 9) stresses that “there may be other forms of governance within a collapsed state, but they do not have a monopoly in the given territory”. This is the situation in Somalia. The environment created by this situation tends to predispose Somalia as an attractive terrorist destination. It readily presents an enabling environment for domesticating terrorists and a very attractive staging ground for international terrorists as a hiding place, a recruiting and training ground and a transit gateway to the region. This enabling environment is characterized by the lingering civil conflict, porous borders, the absence of institutions of
governance, the indiscriminate availability of arms and the prevalence of young unemployed independent militiamen. The synergy of these factors produces a Somalia that looks very vulnerable to terrorism.