Somalia background
Conflicts in Somalia find their causes both at the regional, national and local level. Regionally, the country finds itself situated in a bad neighbourhood marked by porous borders, bad governance, poverty, humanitarian crisis and a lack of human rights. Nationally, conflicts over territory contribute to the overall
conflict situation but more important is the ongoing struggle for power.
Somalia has been without an effective government for the last 20 years. In the meantime, the imagined state itself has become a main source of violent tensions within Somali society. In a highly fractured society with relatively scarce resources and where the state has been and continues to be the main resource provider, the control of a revived state and power distribution becomes the focus of conflicts.
At the local level, resources such as land, pasture and water are the most common cause of conflict, in combination with the increased demand for security. The sale of security by certain armed factions has become a contributing factor to conflict as the restoration of security in itself is seen to be the most sought-after commodity by many actors in Somalia. From the second half of the 1990s to 2006, the trend was that conflicts in Somalia were relatively short-lived, locally based and less deadly. This pattern was reversed in 2006 due to confrontations between the Council of Islamic Courts and the US backed Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism. Since then the violence has continued to escalate within Somali society as different factions have come to fight over power in the country.
Somalia's current context
Somalia has been without a functioning central government since 1991. Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of the country the same year and since 1998 Puntland has been functioning as a semi-autonomous state. The Life & Peace Institute works through national partner organisations in South-Central Somalia, which is marked most heavily by fighting between pro-government and rebel forces.
The political situation in South-Central Somalia remains unstable and continuous fighting has, together with displacement, several years of drought, high food prices on the world market and global recession, led to an extensive humanitarian crisis.
The Transitional Federal Government (TFG), supported by the international community, has had little progress in the steps outlined in the Djibouti agreement (2008) including the establishment of a new constitution, national elections and the set up of a reconciliation process. The TFG has been largely caught up in internal power struggles, more than in fighting in an attempt to extend and consolidate its territorial control. Islamic political entities, and especially Al Shabab, still control most of the territory in South-Central Somalia, in a complex relationship with clan structures and interests.
Despite the TFG’s lack of progress towards increasing its control, corruption charges and its inability to deliver public services and security for its citizens, its mandate was prolonged one year in July 2011. TFG is supported by the African Union peacekeeping mission, AMISOM.
Click here for information about LPI's work with Somalia.