Mary Harper’s informed, perceptive and empathetic  book on Somalia could not be coming out at a more apt time, with the country  back in the news and now the scene of a major Kenyan military incursion. This is a work that demonstrates the importance of  engaged but impartial journalism and clear, uncluttered thought expressed  simply  but effectively.  It deserves to make a big impact on the  understanding of what is happening in Somalia and why – something that is  clearly needed.

 

 

A journalist with the BBC African Service for more  than 20 years and one who had reported from Somalia and regularly visited the country  since 1991, Harper demonstrates in her book the qualities that made the World  Service the world’s most balanced, fair-minded but courageous news service.  Above all else she tries and succeeds in  conveying understanding and where understanding is difficult or impossible to  convey why.

 

 

Starting with a short but clever section on how  British children react to the word Somalia, Harper describes the negative  images that fight each other to get on TV screens or newspaper pages when  events in Somalia are reported – drug-crazed teenagers with guns, cut-down Land  cruisers with guns mounted on the back, pirates, skeletal women and children.  She rightly says of Somalia that ‘these images act as barriers to other ways of seeing Somalia” (p.2) and so dominate the news at the expense to the exlucison of all alese, especially the signs  that amid the conflict and crisis, Somalis are themselves inventing alternative economic and political systems and effective survival strategies.

 

 

 

Somalia is the ultimate image, for many, of the failed  state.  It has seen almost constant  conflict since the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991.  It has also seen, as the author patiently and  clearly explains, a series of ill-conceived, poorly executed and severely  damaging foreign interventions.  These have been negative rather than positive factors in Somalia’s evolution – from the disastrous US intervention ending after the now infamous Black Hawk Down episode, via the brutal US-backed Ethiopian invasion to overthrow the Union of Islamic Courts (for a brief period a source of stability) to the endless and largely pointless peace conferences held in plush hotels around the Horn and East Africa. 

 

These are described clearly in their historical,  political and international contexts and show how a total lack of understanding of Somalia, its history, culture  and political development led to attempts to force change that were doomed from  the start.  They amply demonstrated that interventions not based on knowledge of how Somalia works (which it does when left to itself, as Harper’s account of the development of politics in the Somaliland area shows) works against reality. As she explains (p.12), ‘Outsiders tend to find it a hard place to understand, and there is generally a wide gap between the various attempts made to introduce solutions to its problems and the reality lived by
its population’.

 

 

This gap  in understanding is not just a European or American phenomenon.  Somalia differs hugely in its culture,  traditional structures, economy and informal but lasting political/social institutions  from much of Africa.  The clan-based  pastoral system that encompassed the economic, social and political spheres makes  Somalia a poor environment for centralised government on a Western or hybrid Western/African  pattern – so attempts to achieve this have failed.

 

 

Siad Barre  failed to forcibly centralise the state – though of course it can be argued, as  Harper does, that he was attempting both the diminution of clan influence and  the hegemony of his own clan at one and the same time.  Peace conferences based on the participation  of elites distanced from the grassroots, trying to hammer out Western-backed  deals involving centralised transitional governments have produced weak  governments that have not only failed to end conflict but have all too often  (through outside interventions) worsened it.
 

These attempts are described, picked apart and roundly and cogently criticised by the author, as is the tendency to view Somalia through the prisom of the “War on Terror”.

 

 

For me,  the most valuable section in what is a readable and very well-informed study,  is that dealing with Somaliland and its slow,  careful and, above all, Somali-generated progress from a break-away state beset  by competing clans or movements to one of the most stabe and inventive polities  in Africa.  Denied international  recognition but also largely free of outside interference, Somaliland has developed  a working economy and an indigenous hybrid system of representative government  that involves but doesn’t just centre on the clans and which is increasingly  accountable – (p.133) ‘Because Western models of peacemaking and state-building  have not been imposed from the outside, Somaliland has in many ways saved  itself from the fate of Somalia.  The example of Somaliland has demonstrated that when left to themselves, Somalis can form a viable nation state’.

 

 

The book  deals with politics, economic, culture and society in a clear and uncluttered  way.  It is written, as you’d expect from  an experienced World Service journalist, in a clear and impartial manner and is  not littered with jargon that inhibits understanding.  The section on piracy is particularly good – not falling for any of the simple and beguiling solutions or explanations but talking to those involved and analysing why it is happening.

 

 

If there is one criticism it is perhaps that the author did not foresee the scale and planned nature of the current Kenyan intervention,though she does set out well the threat events in southern Somalia posed to Kenya and the Kenyan desire to find a solution.

 

 

That minor criticism apart, this is a book that must be read by those who want to understand Somalia, those involved in any way with the country whether as policymakers, security “experts”, in NGOs or those seeking to do business there.  It is engaged but balanced and very clear in its well-founded belief  that (p.13)‘until Somalia is more clearly understood  and a different approach is found, it will continue to perplex, alarm and threaten the international community, and it will be very difficult to find a way forward for the counter which works for the Somalis themselves and for the outside world.’  And, as Mary Harper rightly concludes, the world needs to be more creative, like the Somalis themselves, in its dealings with the country and its people and (p.200) ’ torecognize that Somalis can be very good at doing things for themselves’.