With specific reference to Somalia, discuss the challenges facing conflict resolution.

INRODUCTION
Conflict resolution in this context refers to efforts to prevent or mitigate violence resulting from intergroup or interstate conflict as well as efforts to reduce underlying disagreements Here I look at the challenges faced by those who are seeking to mitigate violence within the context of complex humanitarian emergencies. These emergencies arise from violence inflicted by one group against another within the confines of a state, from the capture of state institutions by one group, or by the collapse of these institutions and the failure of governance.

The land claimed by the Somalis stretch from the current rump of Somalia to the breakaway republic of Somaliland, Djibouti, into the North Province of Kenya, and the Ogaden across the Ethiopian border.
There are large pockets of ethnically distinct population groups especially among the sedentary, agricultural peoples, some of whom claim to pre-date the Somali migrations, others of Bantu origin followed in later and often forced migrations. These are often affiliated to, if not incorporated into, the clan system, and though racially divergent form part of Somali culture.
Somalia’s political history is therefore determined by the conflicting dynamics of charismatic leadership and non-conformist individualism. Political leaders can build alliances and attract followings on the strength of shared culture, language, and ancestry, but they have to adopt the awkward means of modern statehood to institutionalize their authority. This often backfires, driving people away from the modernizing project to seek refuge and support in their regional or sub-clan identities. As individual charisma exuded by leaders such as Siad Barre and Hassan Farah Aideed fade away, the inspired assertion of power has to be replaced by routine administration.
This can only function as long as followers are rewarded, and in as poor an economy as Somalia’s the need for a surplus distributed by the patrimonial state made the external connection to an outside power always very important. When this prop was knocked away under the regime in the 1980s the only recourse left was redistribution of internal resources, which inevitably means expropriation and displacement. In the late 1980s it spelled civil war.
The categorical subordination of traditional forms of organization, such as the huurt (the meeting of clan elders) was completed in the 1880s when Somali lands were divided among Britain, Italy, France and Ethiopia. Arbitrary border delineation, a dilemma across the African continent, was especially restrictive for nomadic herders, dependent upon free movement towards pasture and water holes. Thus colonialism resulted in the shift of power towards the urban areas, the centres of administration, production and consumption, and broke up formerly extensive clan territories through the imposition of borders. The push factor of regulatory intervention, including the closure of migration routes and the expropriation of clan lands, was accompanied by the pull of opportunities and development benefits prospects of in the cities, especially the ports of Mogadishu, Kismayo and Berbera. In spite of this significant change in livelihoods, many of the forms of association and the fissiparous organization into clans continued. People strengthened their ties with their clans and families, even though they had increasing contact with other Somalis.
There are several challenges facing conflict resolution in Somalia as here under presented;
First and foremost is the challenge of colonialism which introduced the Somalis to modern warfare, including Africa’s first experience of aerial bombardment. Armed resistance to British rule in north-eastern Somaliland under the leadership of Mohammed Abdulle Hassan lasted until the 1920s. In the Italian colony of Somalia, meanwhile, soldiers were recruited to participate in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and fought on both sides in the Second World War. With the de facto unification of all Somali territories under British rule in 1942 peace was established, but the transfer of power from the allies to the UN was a prologue to the far more extensive UN involvement in the early 1990s. This has remained a challenge to peace up to date.
It should also be remembered that Somalia refused to sign the OAU charter accepting the validity of colonial borders and embarked upon a policy of national expansion. The rumble of gunfire could be heard as early as 1964, with clashes along the Ethiopian border, and a shifta (bandit) war in northern Kenya, the civilian government coalition led by prime minister Abdirazaqu Haji Husseyn pulled back from the brink of warfare. Following the military coup of 1969, however, a very different regime took the reins of power. General Siad Barre first consolidated his authority at home by replacing multi-party democracy with the single Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party (SRSP), dressed in the ideological garb of the left. The state, however, moved centre stage as the engine of modernization and development and the focus of social organization. It also secured support from the Soviet Union, mainly in the form of military aid, which in turn satisfied the army, extended the power of Barre’s clan, and allowed him to entertain dreams of regional expansion. This kind of arrangement has since remained a challenge to peace in Somalia.
The challenge to Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) of engagement where civilians are deliberately targeted is made far more difficult by the repeated unwillingness or incapacity of the major powers to act through the UN Security Council, regional organizations, or through other appropriate instruments, to provide security first for endangered civilians and then for NGO personnel who are in the field offering protection. Somalia was the exception at one stage of its emergency, but so negative were the experiences of the UN and particularly the U.S. “military humanitarian” missions in Somalia, and so limited the strategic goals in comparison to the apparent costs, that Somalia set a “Mogadishu line” of active engagement that the U.S. and other Western forces were thereafter unwilling to cross in the African context.
Almost everywhere else the nongovernmental sector has found itself working in a political/ security vacuum created by a decline of interest on the part of the major powers. It is the absence of an adequate security envelope, I argue, that creates many of the observed negative externalities of assistance and relief and creates unprecedented challenges for conflict resolution.

Also levels of support far less demanding than military engagement to provide security for beleaguered populations are dropping. The substantial increase in what the humanitarian community calls the “internally displaced” is telling; it reflects an increasing inability of populations in distress to seek asylum across borders and become officially recognized “refugees” with access to the political and humanitarian rights of refugees.1The growth in the numbers of internally displaced persons reflects the growing tendency for the international community to disengage politically and economically from these conflicts, to attempt to contain their effects, and to ensure that the costs are “internalized” in the affected communities. This strategy of containment gives relief priority over protection of the basic rights of displaced populations. Containment also constrains and limits available strategies of conflict resolution.
Drawing on the experience of humanitarian intervention in complex emergencies in Africa in the past several years, critics have concluded that the relief effort can jeopardize conflict resolution and, at worst, prolong and even fuel war and conflict through the diversion of assistance. They identify several interrelated ways in which the unintended consequences of humanitarian assistance can impede conflict resolution.

The evidence is strong, though not determining, that in recent complex humanitarian emergencies the assistance that NGOs have provided to endangered populations has at times become the fuel for continued and renewed warfare. In Somalia, for example, food was extraordinarily scarce as a result of drought and civil conflict and, consequently, its absolute value rose to unprecedented levels. Its high price, in the context of economic collapse, mass unemployment, and a dramatic drop in family income, increased the relative value of food. Therefore, food brought into Somalia through the relief effort was plundered by merchants, by organized gangs of young men profiteering from the black market, and by militia leaders who used the wealth that the food brought to buy weapons and the loyalty of followers. In Rwanda and Sierra Leone, as well as Somalia and Sudan, assistance has been “taxed” or stolen to fuel processes of conflict escalation rather than promote conflict resolution
Conflict over grazing and watering rights had been part of Somali life since time immemorial. The contraction of the state’s patrimonial capacity resulting from reduced aid-flows was compounded by adverse developments in the private sector. Migration to the Gulf, known in Somalia as the ‘muscle drain’, and the livestock trade, had become the principal forms of economic activity and been instrumental in financing canters of political power outside the control of government.
With no external regulation, nomadic pastoralists were left to their own devices to manage their herds and negotiate the allocation of the limited natural resources vital to livestock raising: water, pasture and migration routes. This has remained a challenge to conflict resolution in Somalia for along time.
Once integrated into the money economy, albeit on unequal terms, Somali herders became capitalists whose economic outlook was determined by the maximization of short-term profit. This shift in herd management patterns resulted in the rapid deterioration of rangelands and the increasing competition over a dwindling natural resource base. Fighting between two factions, the SSDF and the USC, for example, originated in clashes between Majerteen and Hawiye pastoralists over watering rights in the Mudug region of central Somalia in 1988. Yet, for the private sector, livestock exports had become an indispensable source of foreign exchange. The precipitous decline in livestock trade in the early 1980s, caused by Australian competition and a Saudi import ban, had devastating effects upon herders, traders and the entire port economy, which had grown around it. The fall in earnings was catastrophic, from $123m in 1982 to $47m in 1984. Though many herders recovered by redirecting their trade to Kenya and Ethiopia the national economy sustained a severe shock during a period of gathering political crisis. This has remained a threat to conflict resolution till today.


After the fall of Said Barre, the unity of the opposition fragmented into factions as the removal of the common enemy dissolved the bonds of co-operation. An attempt by the Djibouti government to set up the USC commander Ali Mahdi as the leader of a provisional government was rejected by his archival Aideed and competition degenerated into violent conflict between former allies throughout Mogadishu. In the fighting between the two warlords Aideed, head of the Somali National Alliance (SNA) and Ali Mahdi of the USC, from November 1991 to February 1992 an estimated 14,000 lives were lost. The formation of these factions has remained a challenge to conflict resolution up to today.
The breakdown in security led to the intervention of a UN-sponsored peace-keeping force in 1992. While Aideed reluctantly accepted their arrival given the prospect of economic opportunities, his rivals Ali Mahdi and Mohamed Abshir Musa welcomed the presence of UN troops as a much needed counter-weight to Aideed’s military strength. The various interventions by the United Nations departments of UNITAF, UNISOM I and UNISOM II, and a myriad of non- governmental agencies, have been the subject of much controversy within and outside Somalia ever since. It can be safely said that while the relief programme in 1992 did much to mitigate the impact of famine, it also played into the hands of the warlords who became the main contractors to the agencies. Thus, self-declared faction chiefs with little control over their militias could without any mandate, and risible popular support, share out jobs and benefits among themselves, with little concern for the absence of a functioning administration. This situation has been a challenge to conflict resolution there.
The presence of an ever-growing international military force, based on US military power, failed to enforce peace during the Aideed regime. The position of the UN peacekeepers became untenable in the aftermath of the Somali attack on a unit of Pakistani soldiers, when Commander Aideed was singled out as the public enemy of the international community. The UN, and behind particularly the US military, were seen as abandoning their neutrality by becoming involved in factional politics. In Somalia Aideed, the paramount warlord was elevated into a national hero. The UN or more specifically the US intervention failed to establish a clear winner, and by moving against one particular faction accelerated the pattern of violence. At the point of UN withdrawal in 1994, the security situation was comparable to that of 1992. the situation has not challenged since then hence a challenge to conflict resolution.


The election of Colonel Abdullahi Yussuf Ahmed, the former leader of the SSDF as the first president of the federal state of Pundland was not welcomed by all the Somalis and has remained a challenge to conflict resolution in Somalia.
At the helm of a 69-member parliament based at the capital of Garowe, the president has the difficult task of steering the region into the calm and mildly prosperous waters through which neighbouring Somaliland has been cruising over the past few years. Ironically, Mohamed Egal, the president of Somaliland, has warned of border conflicts as two of the principal clan groupings of Pundland, the Dolbahunta and the Warsengeli, also occupy parts of Somaliland. It is also likely that the return of a functioning administration will divert some of the Somaliland livestock export and some of Berbera's shipping to the port of Bosoa in Pundland.
Following the same example, General Morgan of the SDF has voiced his intention of turning the Juba-valley into a federal region. This latest development appears as the first concerted attempt at manipulating the initiatives arising from the grass roots and wider civil society to reconstruct a system of political order in Somalia. The prominence of Morgan in the new state of Jubaland is in itself indicative of the character of this particular political configuration. Morgan has not emerged out of the peace-making efforts undertaken by traditional authorities, but as a result of his wresting of control of the port of Kismayo in 1992. The inflicted by Morgan’s rampaging troops was largely responsible for the famine that haunted this rich, agricultural region. His current attempt at setting up an administration serve as a warning that yesterday's war-lords may now seek to assume the garb of quasi legitimate, civilian authority.
Internal fragmentation is intensified by foreign pressure. The Somali crisis has spilled over into neighbouring countries who had to absorb refugees in their hundreds of thousands, and who have become drawn into the vortex of violence and instability. This has been indeed a challenge to conflict resolution in Somalia and its neighbours.
Somalia provides a base from which groups opposing the governments in Ethiopia and Kenya can operate freely. Ethiopia has therefore taken the authority to launch military raids into Somalia. Somalis fear that Ethiopia, if unable to establish a stable Somali State will settle for a weak one. Worried about the incursion into the Ogaden by fighters affiliated to Al Itahad al Islami, Ethiopia has been trying to build up an anti-Itahad coalition in Mogadishu comprising the SNF (Somali National Front) under the leadership of Morgan, the Rahenweyne Resistance Army and Ali Mahdi. While this has been ineffective, the Ethiopian arms shipments have poured oil on the flames of Somali conflict. Repeated incursions by Ethiopian forces into Somali territory in the southern Gedo region have incited Somali nationalists against the invader which remains a challenge to conflict resolution.

Conclusion
The search for conflict resolution in Somalia remains problematic as each time a peace agreement seems within the grasp of the negotiators the spoils of such peace provide the incentive for a fresh round of violence. As such violence is mostly inconclusive the prestige of faction leaders suffers and their authority diminished.
In turn, cleavages open up at increasingly lower levels, weakening further the claims to national leadership put forward by particular clans such as the Hawiye. Their fortunes may mirror the example of the Darod clan’s claim to leadership put forward at Sodere, which in the absence of a concrete plan to implement authority, ended up in a round of vicious in-fighting between Marehan and Majerteen at Kismayo.
It appears to many observers that the attempts at resurrecting the Somali states are going in circles. The lack of trust between factions makes any agreement difficult, particularly when it comes to the sensitive question of political office. The contest for the governorship of Mogadishu is the most urgent issue to be settled at current, and Ali Mahdi’s supporters have already clashed with those of Ali Ugass, the former mayor, and those of Muuse Sudi. As of old, the winning candidate may well turn out to be the man who can field the largest militia.
But violence can only achieve a hollow victory, as the demands of large groups of armed followers cannot be met from the meagre resources available to a reconstituted government. Dissatisfied militias are by now acculturated into a violent mode of acquisition, which can easily escape the control of political leaders. At Cairo, for example, the head of the Rahenwyne Resistance Army, Abdulkadir Mohamed Adan Sobe agreed to the cease-fire, but the men on the ground rejected the deal and continued in their attempt to oust Aideed’s militia.
At the same time there is a realization that the warlord economy is doomed to short-circuit, which gives hope to the peace process in Somalia. There are already signs of a reviving civil society in Mogadishu where independent newspapers have resurfaced and economic recovery is under way. Whether these first shoots of the Somali recovery will be allowed to blossom in national reconstruction will depend on the wisdom of faction heads, the inclusion of clan elders, and the control exercised over the armed gangs.
In the face of the history of the unitary state in Somalia, the future does seem to lie with some form of a federal structure where the aspirations of local people can be readily conveyed to the institutions of state. These institutions, their personnel and the constitutional framework must, however, be carried by the consensual approval of the population. Somali society is so deeply fatigued by the incessant insecurity that genuine attempts at reconstruction can count upon a large stock of goodwill. But there has to be a clear dissociation of tomorrow’s leaders from the violent turmoil of the past.








REFERENCES
Allan,T & A. Nichol, (1998): Water resources, prevention of violent conflict and the consistence of EU policy in the Horn of Africa. Saferworld: London.
Baechler, G., S. Bellwald, M. Suliman,(1996): Environmental Conflict Management Approaches and Implementation in the Horn of Africa. ETH: Zurich.
Besteman, C. and L. Cassanelli(1996): The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia. Westview/Haan.
Duffield, M. (1994): ‘Complex Emergencies and the Crises of Devlopmentism.’ IDS Bulletin 25 (3).
Drysdale, J. (1994): Whatever happened to Somalia. Haan: London
Economist Intelligence Unit, Eritrea-Somalia-Djibouti: Country profile 1997-98, Eritrea
Hogg, R. (1997): Pastoralists, Ethnicity and the State in Ethiopia. London: Haan.
Homer-Dixon, T, (1991): "On the threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict." International Security, 16(2):76-116;
Human Rights Watch/Africa (2004): Behind the Red Line.