Summary

For more than a decade since the 11 September 2001 terror attacks in the United States, western and regional powers have viewed Somalia from the prism of counterterrorism. State-building processes and political strategies have been dictated by the imperative of containing, countering and defeating Somali groups deemed to be or formally designated as terrorists. By dividing Somali political actors into two categories, extremists and moderates, this approach has produced a distorted understanding of the conflict and undermined the political and military effort to resolve it and rebuild the Somali state.

This project to explore Alternatives for Conflict Transformation in Somalia (ACTS) was conceived to address the distorting effect of the counterterrorism discourse. The research design and methodology did not seek to exclude any group or administration based on its ideological or religious orientation and worldview. An attempt was made to have a dialogue with representatives and members of as many major political movements and organisations as it was possible in the fluctuating and unpredictable Somali context. Still, given the fragmentation of Somali polity and constantly shifting alliances, this report does not purport to be a comprehensive catalogue of all Somali political actors, administrations and movements.

A key finding of the research for ACTS is that Somalia – particularly south-central Somalia – is much more diverse politically than the binary terrorism–counterterrorism categorisation suggests. Even though almost all Somali political actors profess allegiance to Islamic values and intend to enforce Sharia, the faith-based Islamist movements themselves display a wide range of ideologies, opposing political objectives and divergent plans to achieve those objectives. An insistence on seeing the Somali conflict as between extremists Islamists like Harkatul al-Shabab al-Mujahideen (or al-Shabab, in the report) and the rest has made western and regional policymakers lose sight of the complex ground realities and led to flawed plans to find a solution to the Somalia problem.

Another side-effect of the counterterrorism discourse is that it tends to ignore the latent conflict dynamics in the country. The assumption that excluding and defeating al-Shabab will somehow resolve the Somalia conflict and bring peace is clearly not informed by the history of Somali’s civil war. The Islamists have been a marginal force in a conflict that had begun as clan-based violence and, by and large, retains its clan dimension till today. In short, the Somali conflict had existed much before the extremist Islamists became a central force and would still be far from over if al-Shabab disappears from the scene. The conflict is much more multi-layered and multidimensional than the picture painted by the counterterrorism narrative.

The research also questions the continued labelling of the conflict in Somalia as a civil war. The presence of African Union and other foreign forces, their mandate to protect the internationally recognised central and regional administrations and fight against al-Shabab make it a regional and international conflict rather than a civil war. The non-Somali armies are now as much entrenched in the local conflicts as the Somali militias. In fact, intervention by armed foreign forces and even international development and humanitarian organisations has itself become a factor in the conflict.

The ACTS project, therefore, went beyond these simplistic presumptions about the cause and implications of the violence in Somalia. It tried to capture the political views and strategies of major actors across the southcentral regions and Puntland. The report represents voices from the ground and relies on information gathered from primary sources. It is a contribution towards a better understanding of the intractable cycle of organised violence in Somalia.