Bosaso standoff coming to an end.

The Rise of “Peaceocracy” in Africa

• Gabrielle Lynch

• Published online: 28 August 2019

Summary

The term “peaceocracy” refers to a situation in which an emphasis on peace is used to prioritize stability and order to the detriment of democracy. As such, the term can be used to refer to a short-lived or longer-term strategy whereby an emphasis on peace by an incumbent elite is used to close the political space through the delegitimization and suppression of activity that could arguably foster division or conflict. At the heart of peaceocracy lies an insistence that certain actions—including those that are generally regarded as constituting important political and civil rights, such as freedom of speech and association, freedom of the press, and freedom to engage in peaceful protest and strike action—can spill over into violence and foster division and must therefore be avoided to guard against disorder. Recent history suggests that incumbents can effectively establish a peaceocracy in contexts where many believe that widespread violence is an ever-present possibility; incumbents have, or are widely believed to have, helped to establish an existing peace; and the level of democracy is already low. In such contexts, a fragile peace helps to justify a prioritization of peace; the idea that incumbents have “brought peace” strengthens their self-portrait as the unrivaled guardians of the same; and semi-authoritarianism provides a context in which incumbents are motivated to use every means available to maintain power and are well placed—given, for example, their control over the media and civil society—to manipulate an emphasis on peace to suppress opposition activities. Key characteristics of peaceocracy include: an incumbent’s effective portrait of an existing peace as fragile and themselves as the unrivaled guardians of order and stability; a normative notion of citizenship that requires “good citizens” to actively protect peace and avoid activities that might foster division and conflict; and the use of these narratives of guardianship and disciplined citizenship to justify a range of repressive laws and actions. Peaceocracy is thus a strategy, rather than a discreet regime type, which incumbents can use in hybrid regimes as part of their “menu of manipulation,” and which can be said to be “successful” when counter-narratives are in fact marginalized and the political space is effectively squeezed.

Keywords

• peaceocracy
• hybrid regimes
• peace
• order
• stability
• African politics

What’s In Blue

Posted Sun 14 Nov 2021

Tomorrow afternoon (15 November), the Security Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution on the 751 Somalia sanctions regime, renewing for one year the partial lifting of the arms embargo on Somali security forces, the authorisation for maritime interdiction to enforce the embargo on illicit arms imports and charcoal exports, and humanitarian exemptions to the regime. The draft resolution also renews the mandate of the Somalia Panel of Experts until 15 December 2022.

As has been the case in the past several years, the sanctions measures themselves were not a matter of controversy during the negotiations. However, divergences persisted on other parts of the resolution that do not have direct impact on the implementation of the sanctions regime, such as references to the ongoing dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea.

It seems that the UK, the penholder on Somalia, sought to maintain the core measures of the sanctions regime and to extend the mandate of the Panel of Experts without changes—an approach apparently supported by Council members. The draft text in blue renews for one year, until 15 November 2022, the main elements of the sanctions regime—including the partial lifting of the arms embargo and the humanitarian exemptions—which were most recently outlined in resolution 2551 of 12 November 2020.

The UK convened one round of virtual negotiations on an initial draft text on 8 November. It then circulated a revised version for comment until 11 November. Several Council members submitted comments and a second revised version was then placed under silence until Friday (12 November) morning. Silence was broken on the text, and subsequently the vote on the draft resolution, which was initially scheduled for Friday (12 November), was postponed to Monday (15 November) to allow for further deliberations. The draft resolution was then put in blue on Friday (12 November) afternoon.

The penholder reorganised the draft resolution in blue under new concise headings, adding new sections which reflect a focus on countering the threat posed by the militant group Al-Shabaab and on supporting state- and peace-building in Somalia. In this regard, the draft text in blue notes in its preambular part that the objective of the resolution is to “support state- and peace-building in Somalia including by reducing the threat to peace and security posed by Al-Shabaab and by reducing the destabilising impact of Al-Shabaab’s activities”. New language is included in the operative section of the draft in blue emphasising the need to “target Al-Shabaab’s finances, improve maritime domain awareness, prevent illicit revenue generation, including from the sale of charcoal, and reduce the threat posed by IEDs [improvised explosive devices]”. Regarding Somali institution-building, the draft text in blue underscores the importance of improving weapons and ammunition management and of increasing the capabilities of Somali security forces, with the aim of bolstering the Somali authorities’ resilience and their ability to address the threat posed by Al-Shabaab.

It seems that, as in previous years, the most divisive topic of discussion during the negotiations was references to the relationship between Djibouti and Eritrea. The penholder proposed language in an earlier iteration of the draft resolution underscoring the importance of confidence-building measures between Eritrea and Djibouti and “encouraging the Secretary-General and African Union to use their good offices…in this regard”, as well as requesting the Secretary-General to report on improvements of their bilateral relations “as deemed necessary”. This proposal was apparently unacceptable to some Council members and was not retained in the draft text in blue.

The relationship between Djibouti and Eritrea has been addressed in Somalia-related sanctions resolutions since the adoption of resolution 1907 of 23 December 2009, which linked Djibouti-Eritrean relations to the peace process in Somalia. The reference has been divisive, causing abstentions by China and Russia on several past Somalia-related resolutions.

In resolution 2444 of 14 November 2018, the Council lifted sanctions on Eritrea, terminated the mandate of the Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG), and established a Panel of Experts focused solely on Somalia. The Council’s decision in 2018 to lift the sanctions imposed on Eritrea was based on the recognition that for five consecutive reporting cycles, the SEMG had not found conclusive evidence that Eritrea supported Al-Shabaab. The decision was also informed by the positive political developments after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed a peace agreement in Asmara on 9 July 2018.

Difficult regional dynamics have persisted since 2018, however, and relations between Djibouti and Eritrea remain strained because of their unresolved border dispute. Therefore, several Council members, including France, apparently believe that it is important for the Council to continue monitoring confidence-building measures between the two countries. It seems that these members maintain that the Somalia sanctions resolutions are a means for the Council to address Djibouti-Eritrea relations.

Other Council members, including China and Russia, opposed having a reference to Djibouti-Eritrea relations, arguing that the focus of the resolution should be assisting Somalia. These members apparently maintain that it is unusual for a country-specific resolution to refer to relations between other countries. It seems that China and Russia also argue that Djibouti-Eritrea tensions are strictly a bilateral matter, which is not a threat to international peace and security. In light of these positions, China and Russia broke silence over references to Djibouti-Eritrea relations during the negotiations.

It seems that several Council members, including the “A3 plus one” (Kenya, Niger, Tunisia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines) held discussions with Djibouti and Eritrea about the reference in the resolution in order to find language that would be agreeable to all parties involved. However, Council members were not able to agree on compromise language on the matter. As a result, the penholder retained in the draft text in blue existing language from resolution 2551, which reaffirms the Council’s intention to follow developments towards the normalisation of relations between Eritrea and Djibouti and, as in previous Somalia sanctions resolutions, requests the Secretary-General to submit a report on the matter, in this case no later than 31 July 2022.

It seems that discussions on cross-cutting issues were also contentious during the negotiations. In the first draft of the resolution, the penholder, following a recommendation by the Panel of Experts, added a reference highlighting the potential for Al-Shabaab to exploit the effects of climate change. This reference was not retained in the draft text in blue, apparently due to objections from China and Russia. In addition, it seems that Mexico wanted additional language requesting the Panel of Experts to include gender issues in its investigations and reporting. Although this request faced opposition from some Council members, it was ultimately retained in the draft text in blue.

Copyright © 2021 Security Council Report

Somaliland’s authoritarian turn:
oligarchic–corporate power and
the political economy of de facto states
CLAIRE ELDER*
International Affairs 97: 6 (2021) 1749–1765; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiab174
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is
an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work
is properly cited.
The prevailing narrative of Somaliland’s democratic successes has to date stressed
the pre-eminent role of bottom-up statebuilding, the strength of social institutions
and the absence of foreign aid.1 This research identifies Somaliland as one of the
most effective entities in the Horn of Africa, even when compared to its neighbours—
de jure recognized states such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti.2 This
depiction of Somaliland as a safe haven of security and stability—as opposed to
the warlord- and terrorist-ridden Somalia—has, however, for decades downplayed
internal political dynamics and complex crises.3 A political economy perspective
provides new insights that challenge certain underlying assumptions and dominant
discourses about Somaliland’s processes of democratization and development.
While democracy has been demanded and fought for from below since it declared
independence in 1991, original findings unveil how cross-border oligarchic–corporate
networks, linked also to the Djiboutian patron state, as well as dependence on
trade and security rents, have restricted democratization, leading to the formation
of an ‘oligopolistic state’ and a ‘peaceocracy’. In putting forward this argument,
this article focuses attention on the distinct challenges de facto states face in balancing
political control and financial hardship, and the unique and uneven development
trajectories, including creative governance structures, that are not captured
by Weberian state models and path-dependent understandings of democratization.
While the study of de facto states has gained increasing prominence in International
Relations, political economy research is notably absent from these discussions.
4 This is partly because these jurisdictions are not researched in terms of

• Funding for this article was facilitated by the Cyril Foster Peace Fund at Oxford University (2018) and the
  Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), project ES/P008038/1, ‘CPAID: Centre for Public Authority
  and International Development’ at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 2019 to 2021.
  1 Yaniv Voller, ‘Contested sovereignty as an opportunity: understanding democratic transitions in unrecognised
  states’, Democratisation 22: 4, 2013, pp. 610–30; Sarah G. Phillips, ‘When less was more: external assistance
  and the political settlement in Somaliland’, International Affairs 92: 3, 2016, pp. 629–45.
  2 Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (Oxford: James Currey, 2008).
  3 Roland Marchal, ‘Warlordism and terrorism: how to obscure an already confusing crisis? The case of Somalia’,
  International Affairs 83: 6, 2007, pp. 1091–106.
  4 James Harvey and Gareth Stansfield, ‘Theorizing unrecognized states: sovereignty, secessionism and political
  economy’, in Nina Caspersen and Gareth Stansfield, eds, Unrecognised states in the international system (Abingdon:
  Routledge, 2011), pp. 1–26. Magdalena Dembinska and Aurélie Campana, ‘Frozen conflicts and internal
  dynamics of de facto states: perspectives and directions for research’, International Studies Review 19: 2, 2017,
  pp. 254–78.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1750
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  expectations of effective developmental performance. Instead, homogenizing,
  singular and linear narratives of de facto statehood see these entities as deviations
  from western institutional frameworks and as hot-spots of terrorism, criminality
  and corruption.5 I set out here to fill this gap, examining at close range how crossborder
  oligarchic–corporate interests brought stability but also limited democratization.
  This perspective includes assessing the canny political manoeuvrings of
  Somaliland officials and oligarchic–corporate structures in creating a ‘paper leviathan’
  or hollow state, 6 and how western donors and the politics of foreign aid, by
  means including the securitization of aid, have empowered dominant clientelistic
  networks and hindered democratization efforts for decades. This article also details
  how the ‘oligopolistic state’ in Somaliland was rooted in a revolutionary ideology
  of privatized governance that motivated Somalia National Movement (SNM)
  in the 1980s to resist Siad Barre’s socialist and predatory military regime. After
  independence, this revolutionary system sought to overturn colonial hierarchies
  of power and protect market-led development. It brought elements of stability for
  a time, but also lessened the bargaining power of the state vis-à-vis domestic firms
  and hindered the formation of a professional bureaucracy and legitimate central
  authority, and weakened popular mobilization. This system was tolerated (even
  encouraged) internationally in line with commitments to depoliticized economic
  development models until the formation of a crony capitalist system under President
  Mohamed Mohamoud ‘Silanyo’ that threatened Somaliland’s premier role in
  the fight against global terrorism.
  Following his election in 2010, President Silanyo sought to accelerate state
  capture of the political economy—implementing a model of Djiboutian-style
  presidentialism—and he rewarded loyal business associates with new opportunities
  in Islamic finance and business. Yet, Silanyo was never able to rebalance the
  bargaining power of the state vis-à-vis domestic firms nor limit the opposition’s
  access to political finance. What was described as a ‘decentralized kleptocratic
  system’, of affiliated oligarchs and ‘deniable authoritarianism’,7 rather exposed the
  depths of collusion between business and government officials, and the nature of
  the corrupt and exclusive statebuilding enterprise also aided by foreign aid and
  security rents that empowered oligarchic–corporate structures.
  While Somaliland has always received less aid than Somalia,8 the 2013 special
  arrangement, awarded as part of the New Deal Compact with the federal government
  of Somalia, provided access to funding from the EU and other donors
  earmarked for security, trade and resilience. Important was that minimal aid
  was directed for ‘state effectiveness’ due to political sensitivities and the region’s
  5 See Laurence Broers, ‘Resourcing de facto jurisdictions: a theoretical perspective on cases in the south Caucasus’,
  Caucasus Survey 3: 3, 2015, pp. 269–90; Scott Pegg, ‘Twenty years of de facto state studies: progress,
  problems, and prospects’, Oxford research encyclopedia of politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
  6 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, The narrow corridor: states, societies, and the fate of liberty (New York:
  Penguin Publishers, 2019).
  7 These concepts, although not in the public discourse on Somaliland, were repeated in interviews and focus
  group discussions conducted from 2015 until 2020.
  8 Federal Government of Somalia, Ministry of Planning, Investment and Economic Development, Aid flows in
  Somalia (Mogadishu, May 2019).
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1751
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  ambiguous status within the 2012 provisional federal constitution. This had
  deleterious implications. Democratization has always been a subordinate issue
  for donors who paid lip service to bottom-up statebuilding activities but made
  few attempts to support or maintain these systems. Like elsewhere in Africa, and
  indeed globally, the securitization of aid has entrenched illiberal and authoritarian
  states by promoting the state as donors’ preferred ‘partner’ in development,9
  creating aid flows no longer accountable to citizens and providing states with the
  machinery to repress opponents and democracy.10 In Somaliland the securitization
  of aid and access to new resources propped up the state’s security apparatus and
  a military–logistics complex that reinforced the power of oligarchic–corporate
  structures rather than a national, democratic state.
  In 2017, the international community and population widely endorsed Musa
  Bihi Abdi not as a supporter of democracy but as an antidote to corruption and
  political instability. He used his military credentials to re-confirm commitments
  to security, but he failed to assert political control over the economy. Kulmiye
  Party’s tenure in power (2010–21) came to symbolize the fierce power struggle over
  how to balance financial hardship and ‘supranational’ corporate interests (that had
  fought for and singlehandedly financed the liberation movement and independence
  project) with political control and the nation-state agenda. By examining
  Somaliland’s political economy and its effects on internal politics, this study
  provides new insights for understanding governance structures and outcomes
  within de facto states. It offers strong evidence of how collusive cross-border elites,
  regional patron states and western donors have limited democratization in Somaliland
  through the creation of a ‘peaceocracy’ and ‘oligopolistic state’.11 This study
  also raises important questions about how new donors in the Gulf and in Asia,
  and opportunities for recognition through Islamic finance and business, affect de
  facto states’ relationship with the international system, including commitments to
  democratization.12 It argues that the prevailing democratic-success narrative, as it
  has been constructed and reproduced, has not served the interests of Somalilanders
  but those of elites and donors keen to maintain the status quo.
  Analysing the political economies of de facto states raises a number of methodological
  and political challenges, including poor availability of data. This study
  draws on a number of robust sources, including 110 interviews with politicians,
  former liberation fighters, business actors, senior government officials and international
  organizations, and archival work conducted in Somaliland from 2015 to
  2021.13 Original data gathered from the chamber of commerce, business accounts
  9 Jonathan Fisher and David Anderson, ‘Authoritarianism and the securitization of development in Africa’,
  International Affairs 91: 1, 2015, pp. 131–51; Will Jones, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira and Harry Verhoeven,
  Africa’s illiberal state-builders, working paper no. 89 (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, 2013).
  10 Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens, eds, Aid and authoritarianism in Africa: development without democracy
  (London: Zed, 2016).
  11 Rita Abrahamsen, ‘Africa and international relations: assembling Africa, studying the world’, African Affairs
  116: 462, 2017, pp. 125–39.
  12 Davinia Hoggarth, ‘The rise of Islamic finance: post-colonial market-building in central Asia and Russia’,
  International Affairs 92: 1, 2016, pp. 115–36; Lena Rethel, ‘Whose legitimacy? Islamic finance and the global
  financial order’, Review of International Political Economy 18: 1, 2011, pp. 75–98 at p. 94.
  13 Many interviewees (particularly senior government officials and those working for international organiza-
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1752
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  and intelligence reports, as well as interviews with business actors, enables an
  analysis of hitherto hidden corporate ownership (including around Islamic finance
  and banking institutions). Additional data is drawn from government and media
  archives (including leaders’ published and unpublished statements, speeches and
  policy agendas) and donor surveys. Participant and non-participant observation of
  public debates on leadership and economic development plans also provides invaluable
  insights on how de facto states balance the challenges of financial hardship,
  political control and democratization. Together, these data sources provide a rich
  account of Somaliland’s development since independence, and particularly of the
  transformations that unfolded after 2010.
  The next section first outlines the analytical and conceptual framework
  surrounding the concepts of ‘oligopolistic states’ and ‘peaceocracy’. The following
  section then examines how the oligopolistic state emerged out of a revolutionary
  liberation agenda committed from the outset to business autonomy, market-led
  development and self-sufficiency in the shadow of Siad Barre’s predatory regime,
  and to overturning power structures inherited from the colonial state. The
  remaining sections then examine how attempts by President Silanyo to rebrand
  Somaliland as a player in the global political economy and to capture control of
  the economy presented new security concerns, a rupture in the political settlement,
  and laid the foundations for the rise of a populist authoritarian. The ruling
  Kulmiye Party, under President Musa Bihi Abdi after 2017, tried to implement
  stringent ‘monopolistic’ control over the country’s political economy and its territorial
  boundaries—efforts that continued to reveal the weak bargaining power of
  the state vis-à-vis domestic firms.
  Somaliland’s ‘oligopolistic state’ and ‘peaceocracy’
  Somaliland constitutes what we can call an ‘oligopolistic state’, referring to the
  small number of firms and elites which, after independence—and through discreet
  cross-border business networks and unaccounted financial flows—colluded,
  either explicitly or tacitly, to limit competition and restrict the authority of
  the state in order to achieve above-normal market returns and protections.14 In
  particular, the deep entanglements of Somaliland’s finance and politics with
  neighbouring Djibouti, and the polity’s dependence on trade and security rents,
  have since underlain poor elite commitment to democratization as well as the
  enduring legacy of the SNM over politics. Where other de facto states may be
  either subsistence economies (relying on local forms of production and taxation)
  or rentier states (dependent on natural resources or a primary patron for formal
  loans),15 Somaliland has limited potential for industry, little agriculture and is
  tions) requested anonymity, given the nature of the sensitive issues discussed.
  14 On how such oligopolies emerge in conflict-affected contexts, see Antonio Giustozzi, The resilient oligopoly:
  a political-economy of northern Afghanistan 2001 and onwards (Kabul: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit,
  Dec. 2012), pp. 4–5.
  15 Broers, ‘Resourcing de facto jurisdictions’, p. 273. See also Michael Ross, ’Does oil hinder democracy?’, World
  Politics 53: 3, 2001, pp. 325–61.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1753
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  heavily reliant on import–export industries and the expansion of financial and
  business services (and to a lesser extent remittances).16 Pritchett et al. emphasize
  the ‘bad politics’ that emerge when such powerbroker industries dominate, as they
  fuel corruption and business-government collusion.17 Others have highlighted the
  risks of ‘small states’ relying on financial and business services as supporting the
  formation of undemocratic, offshore tax havens.18
  By exerting excessive influence over policy-making and politics as the region’s
  major lenders, employers and taxpayers—using in-kind loans to support political
  campaigns—Djiboutian oligarchs and sectoral-specific rent relationships
  have limited forms of economic liberalization and democratization that would
  challenge structures of accumulation and power. In these oligopolistic systems,
  elites are not entirely autonomous and independent of society, as in rentier
  states,19 but they are not compelled to structure their relationship with society
  in such a way as to construct common projects around productive and inclusive
  development. While these states may exercise the functions of a state, and can
  create stable environments and mimic compliance with regulatory and governance
  structures, they also come into confrontation with the political–bureaucratic
  machinery of the nation-state and thrive in conditions of state regulatory failure,
  porous borders and the privatization of redistributive institutions. States of this
  type, such as Somaliland, lurch between the solidification of public–private ties
  and a more opaque rentierism, that create uneven development and governance
  and complicate external assessments of governance and political outcomes. For
  instance, corporate taxation is notoriously low (even lower than in Somalia) as
  successive governments have feared the risk of business flight to other regions (as
  businesses frequently threaten).20
  The oligopolistic state, in turn, also created a ‘peaceocracy’ that was necessary
  for business and external legitimacy. Holding frequent, peaceful elections adheres
  to certain minimal requirements for international legitimacy but also inherently
  restricts core tenets of democratization linked to freedoms and civil liberties.21
  The concept of peaceocracy has been used in other post-conflict contexts to
  refer to the formation of limited electoral democracies and access orders,22 where
  peaceful elections are secured through the use of ‘peace-at-all-costs’ narratives,
  16 ‘Somaliland’s private sector at a crossroads: political economy and policy choices for prosperity and job creation’
  (Washington DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank, 2016).
  17 Lant Pritchett, Kunal Sen and Eric Werker, Deals and development: the political dynamics of growth episodes (Oxford:
  Oxford University Press).
  18 See Ronen Palan, The offshore world: sovereign markets, virtual places, and nomad millionaires (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
  University Press, 2005); Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Researching Africa and the offshore world, working paper
  (Oxford: Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance, 10 June 2021).
  19 Peter Evans, ‘Predatory, developmental, and other apparatuses: a comparative political economy perspective
  on the Third World state’, Sociological Forum, vol. 4, 1989, pp. 561–87.
  20 World Bank, Somalia economic update: edition no. 2, mobilizing domestic revenue for Somalia’s economic reconstruction
  (Washington DC, 2015), p. 35, fig. 1.13. Author interviews with more than 30 business actors, Hargeisa, Nov.
  2017 and April 2018.
  21 See Gabrielle Lynch, Nic Cheeseman and Justin Willis, ‘From peace campaigns to peaceocracy: elections,
  order and authority in Africa’, African Affairs 118: 473, 2019, pp. 603–27.
  22 For definition of ‘limited access orders’, see Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis, Steven B. Webb and Barry
  R. Weingast, Limited access orders in the developing world: a new approach to the problems of development, policy research
  working paper no. 4359 (Washington DC: World Bank, 2007).
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1754
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  the stifling and criminalizing of dissenting views and open political debate, and a
  heavy security presence, but are nonetheless greeted internationally as legitimate
  and secure favourable aid relations.23 Somaliland’s peaceocracy, which has been in
  existence since its transition to multiparty democracy in 2002, has recorded some
  of the highest rates of election turnout on the continent (80 per cent of registered
  voters turned out for the presidential elections of 2016).24 Yet every election
  since 2002 has also seen high rates of state interference, intimidation, rigging,
  and the stifling of opposition activity and media freedom, which often go underreported
  where public criticism of corrupt officials and authorities is also criminalized.
  25 Elites have for decades used the restrictive three-party system (effectively
  frozen since 2002),26 along with constitutional provisions and electoral laws, to
  stay in power and prevent any genuine oppositional pole from emerging. The
  recent municipal and parliamentary elections of 2021 were no exception: at least
  seven candidates were detained to pre-empt any challenge to the ruling Kulmiye
  party.27 These heavy-handed tactics just proved less effective this time around.
  As such, rather than serving the population as a whole, Somaliland’s peaceocracy
  has protected the interests of a select group of financial and political elites
  for decades. These interests have deliberately kept civil society organizations and
  formal offices and ministries weak,28 and repeatedly postponed important parliamentary
  elections,29 in turn restricting the space for alternative political projects
  to emerge.30
  For decades, high rates of electoral participation, relative peace and stability, and
  economic self-sufficiency have been mistakenly construed as markers of democratization.
  A political economy perspective, by contrast, reveals weak elite commitments
  to democratization and the technologies of power that have been used to
  undermine genuine democratic reform and weaken popular mobilization. The
  following section examines the origins of Somaliland’s oligopolistic state within
  23 Somaliland has frequently been characterized as a ‘hostage to peace’: see Human Rights Watch, Hostages to peace:
  threats to human rights and democracy in Somaliland (New York, 2009), https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/07/13/
  hostages-peace/threats-human-rights-and-democracy-somaliland. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation,
  all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 26 Sept. 2021.)
  24 Michael Walls, Conrad Heine, Andrea Klingel, Carrie Goggin and Ahmed Farag, The limits of consensus? Report
  on the Somaliland presidential election (London: University College London International Election Observation
  Mission, 13 Nov. 2017).
  25 ICG, Somaliland, p. 20; International Crisis Group (ICG), Somaliland: the strains of success, Africa Briefing no.
  113 (Brussels, 2015), pp. 14–15.
  26 Author in-person interview, former member of Somaliland parliament (1997–2005), Hargeisa, Sept. 2016.
  Oisin Tansey calls the three-party system one of the most problematic aspects of Somaliland’s political transition:
  ‘Does democracy need sovereignty?’, Review of International Studies 37: 4, 2011, pp. 1515–36.
  27 See Human Rights Centre, A quarterly report April 2021 (Hargeisa), http://hrcsomaliland.org/hrc-quarterlyreport-
  april-2021/; author phone interview, former member of SNM, Ali Guray, Hargeisa, June 2021.
  28 Sarah G. Phillips argues the weakness of formal institutions in When there was no aid: war and peace in Somaliland
  (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2020). Interviews and non-participant observation of
  bureaucracy reveal that this is a deliberate strategy pursued to exercise social and political control.
  29 Prior to the 2021 elections, the parliament elected in 2005 for five years had served 15 years; the Guurti or
  House of Elders has not faced elections since 1997. See Centre for Policy Analysis, Somaliland: the extensionbased
  democracy (Hargeisa, 2019), https://somalilandelection.com/reports/somaliland-the-extension-baseddemocracy/.
  30 Author interviews and focus group discussions, 2015 and 2018, and with local activists and party officials,
  Hargeisa, Nov. 2016.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1755
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  the liberation movement as these structures of power and ideologies of privatized
  governance continue to shape contemporary politics and power struggles.
  The revolutionary origins of Somaliland’s oligopolistic state
  Under colonial rule, and in contrast with the more interventionist policies of
  Italian colonizers in Somalia, Somaliland’s business community appreciated
  considerable autonomy from the ‘state’, developing a stronger orientation towards
  the Gulf countries.31 However, during Somaliland’s long union with Somalia
  (1960–91), and particularly under Siad Barre’s scientific socialism after 1969,
  Somaliland traders faced heavy restrictions as the government violently seized
  northern assets. The experience of political and economic marginalization,32 as
  a consequence of southern domination, generated two movements within the
  Somaliland region: religious nationalism, including the rise of organizations such
  as ‘Waxda’ (Unity of Muslim Youth); and capitalist mobilization against socialism,
  which was bad for business.33 Not well understood in the study of Somaliland
  is how capitalists during this time viewed their longer-term interests as aligned
  with a nationalist struggle against broader waves of socialism in the region (under
  leaders including Haile Selassie in Ethiopia and Al Nasir Muhammed in Yemen),
  and how this resulted in mutual commitments to Islamic ideals of self-sufficiency,
  market-led development and entrepreneurship as the foundations of the national
  project.34 These capitalists, represented initially by the Saudi group, dominated
  the more liberal ideas of the London group and the local grassroots Uffo group in
  the founding of the SNM, 35 and these hierarchical structures of power continued
  to influence political developments post-independence. Capitalists along with the
  military fighters decisively pushed for independence when it was evident that
  southern groups would continue to dominate the politics and economy of any
  newly liberated Somali state, and equally quickly moved against attempts by the
  SNM executive committee to establish a central army and government.36
  By independence, the SNM was deeply divided among different factions with
  fundamental disagreements over the nature of state power, the role of Islam, and
  how to balance the distribution of resources between clans—this would in turn
  spark a civil war. The single most important driver of the civil war was the fact
  that, at independence, the SNM was under the command of Abdirahman Ahmed
  Ali Tuur, who was to lead the two-year transitional government until a civilian
  government could take over. Yet Tuur represented the Garhajis clan, who were
  widely seen as beneficiaries of British indirect rule, landowners and more populous
  than other groups, having also commanded more fronts than other clans in the
  31 Roland Marchal, Final report on the post-civil war Somali business class (Paris: Sciences Po, 1996), p. 15.
  32 Hussein A. Bulhan, Politics of Cain: one hundred years of crises in Somali politics and society (Bethesda, MD: Tayosan,
  2008).
  33 Author in-person interviews with members of the Saudi group, Hargeisa, Nov. 2018 and Nov. 2019.
  34 Author interviews with members of the Saudi group, Hargeisa, Nov. 2018 and Nov. 2019.
  35 On the dominant authority of the Saudi group within the SNM, see Marleen Renders, Consider Somaliland:
  state-building with traditional leaders and institutions (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
  36 Author interviews with ex-SNM officials and intellectuals, Hargeisa, May and June 2020.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1756
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  liberation fight. There was widespread concern among factions within the SNM
  that the Garhajis would dominate the post-independent state.37 At the 1991 Burco
  conference, Ahmed Silanyo and Saleban Gaal (two key actors within this faction
  of the SNM) even worked actively against recognition, ‘calling for the international
  community not to recognise Somaliland and [not to give it] any aid …
  saying that Somaliland was in conflict amongst its people’.38 What emerged was a
  ‘second liberation’ of Somaliland—an internal civil war (1992–4)—through which
  a new coalition of capitalist and non-dominant clan interests would seek to redistribute
  assets from the former colonial beneficiaries but also cement a new political
  order with strong commitments to market-led development as a preferred alternative
  to hegemonic state power.39 These synergies between corporate and national
  interests, backed also by an anti-colonial and anti-socialist ideology, would not
  easily bring to power a national, democratic government.
  Corporate sponsorship of the statebuilding project after independence in 1991
  has featured prominently in the study of Somaliland. Scholars have, for instance,
  documented how a group of ten or so Djibouti-based traders from the Isaaq clan,
  known as the ‘exclusive club’,40 gave the young Somaliland credit and financed the
  peace,41 leading to what Alex de Waal called ‘a profit-sharing arrangement amongst
  livestock traders’.42 Yet no scholarship has looked at the deep entanglements of the
  Djiboutian patron state, affiliated oligarchs and Somaliland officials (as far back
  as the SNM), and how these cross-border networks of ‘business–state–clan relations’
  together overturned the inherited colonial state,43 became stakeholders in the
  civil war of 1992–4 and created an oligopolistic state opposed to democratization.
  Immediately after independence, these cross-border networks seized control of
  strategic outposts, trade corridors, ports and imports, sidelining groups previously
  aligned with the statebuilding enterprise (in particular the Garhajis, who had previously
  dominated livestock, import/exports and the aviation sector).44 Djiboutian
  oligarchs and affiliated banks used credit to the Somaliland polity to secure free
  economic rein (without taxation). Somaliland also committed itself to security and
  intelligence-sharing with Djibouti. In this collusive and coercive relationship, it
  would be frequently reported that ‘Djibouti de facto owned Somaliland’ and could
  cut off the polity from internet and financial services at any point.45
  From this perspective, the development of President Mohamed Haji Ibrahim
  Egal’s ‘shrewd, authoritarian politics’ and one-party state (from 1993 to 2002) was
  37 Author interviews with ex-SNM officials and intellectuals, Hargeisa, May and June 2020.
  38 Author interview with former member of the Uffo group and local activist, Hargeisa, 25 Oct. 2017.
  39 Author interview with former member of the Uffo group and local activist, Hargeisa, 25 Oct. 2017.
  40 Marchal, Final report, p. 28.
  41 Dominik Balthasar, ‘Somaliland’s best kept secret: shrewd politics and war projects as means of state-making’,
  Journal of Eastern African Studies 7: 2, 2013, pp. 218–38.
  42 Alex de Waal, ‘The wrong lessons: the vanishing legacy of Operation Restore Hope’, Boston Review, Jan. 2004,
  https://bostonreview.net/world/alex-de-waal-wrong-lessons; Phillips, When there was no aid.
  43 This conceptualization was used in an author interview with an ex-parliament member, June 2020.
  44 Claire Elder and Annette Hoffman, ‘Somalia’s business elites: political power and economic stakes across
  the Somali territories and in four key economic sectors’, Clingendael CRU report for World Bank and IFC
  (internal) (The Hague, 17 Feb. 2017). See also Balthasar, ‘Somaliland’s best kept secret’, p. 220, on the sidelining
  of the Garhajis from statebuilding.
  45 Author interviews with businessmen and local activists, Nov. 2018 and Nov. 2019.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1757
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  less a reflection of the strength of a single charismatic leader or unitary state, as has
  frequently been reported, but more an indication of the growing power of new
  oligarchic–corporate structures tied to the ‘rainbow coalition’ or jeegan.46 More
  than his successors, and understanding the implications for economic and political
  sovereignty, Egal would resist Djibouti’s oversized influence. This expansion of
  power was further halted for a time following the sudden death of Egal; this
  unexpectedly brought Dahir Riyale, who was closely aligned with the Garhajis,
  to power, and the rainbow coalition moved into the opposition pole. However,
  the election of President Silanyo in 2010 solidified the control of the rainbow
  coalition and its cross-border networks; he then set about defying the post-Burco
  political settlement, committing to only very marginal power-sharing and distribution
  of economic assets.
  Silanyo’s decentralized kleptocracy
  Once elected in 2010, President Silanyo championed national transformation
  through the rapid expansion of military bases, critical infrastructure, and Islamic
  financing and banking, with the aim of positioning Somaliland as a key player in
  the global political economy of logistics and trade.47 Silanyo rebranded himself
  as a reformed SNM hero, wooing donors as ‘a diaspora leader more pragmatic
  than his predecessors’.48 In courting new private financiers in the Gulf and Asia
  he also hardened the moral boundaries around a self-sufficient, stable Somaliland
  in contrast to the aid-dependent and chaotic south. He made highly symbolic
  appeals to his progress towards achieving inclusive development, as represented
  by projects including the 400-kilometre Burao–Erigavo road. In an escalated bid
  for recognition by way of economic development, he expanded opportunities in
  Islamic finance and banking. In 2012 he signed the Islamic Banking Bill, allowing
  privately owned banks—including the Mogadishu-based Premier Bank and Amal
  Bank—to open and expand business in Somaliland, and also attracted the Islamic
  Development Bank. WorldRemit, led by the Somaliland–UK diaspora figure
  Ismail Ahmed, also opened up operations in Hargeisa in 2010, and would become
  a leading global player in fintech.49 Similarly, Silanyo’s patronage would aid the
  rapid expansion of Dahabshiil, which would become one of the largest remittance
  transfer companies in the world—operating in 126 countries and expanding
  domestically, with interests in telecommunications and utilities, as well as housing
  and construction—through rapid privatization efforts supported by the government.
  Other large businesses groups—including GSK Group, Deero Group,
  46 The Isaaq consist of eight sub-clans; five of them have formed an alliance under the banner of the Habar
  Jeclo (Tol Je’lo, Muuse, Sanbuur Ibraan) and Habar Awal (Sacad Muse and Isse Muse) in order to balance the
  Garhajis dominance (Idigale and Habar Yonis). Jeegan is a pejorative term used in political discourse to refer to
  the rainbow coalition.
  47 Andres Schipani, ‘Somaliland gears up for “healthy” battle of ports’, Financial Times, Sept. 2021, https://www.
  ft.com/content/f928ecda-2c96-4957-ae3c-94be56385fcf.
  48 Author interviews with UK and EU representatives in Hargeisa, Oct. and Nov. 2016.
  49 Nabila Ahmed and Crystal Tse, ‘WorldRemit adds Spotify CFO Vogel to board as it mulls 2021 IPO’, Bloomberg,
  23 Nov. 2020.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1758
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  OMINCO Group and MSG Group (all Isaaq-owned)—would expand power
  while paying minimal taxes that could be converted into public services or local
  development.50
  In his sights, he had the model of President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s Djibouti.
  Guelleh, known as Africa’s ‘most friendly little dictator’, had been able to establish a
  ‘commercial state–city’ while deflecting any international criticism or sanctions.51
  To this end, Silanyo expanded the influence of key Djiboutian oligarchs—for
  instance, Mohamed Aw Saed’s SomCable secured an exclusive 30-year agreement
  granting it control of fibre optic cables throughout Somaliland in return for financial
  support to Silanyo’s campaign.52 SomCable would be accused of repeatedly
  shutting down websites, intimidating competitors, paying off parliamentarians
  and falsely claiming to have made philanthropic contributions.53 More than any
  of his predecessors, Silanyo had set out to directly challenge the economic domain
  of the Garhajis by courting foreign capital, and by disseminating public contracts
  and licenses for natural resources to loyal jeegan business associates.54 His moves
  to privatize the state were revealed most clearly by how he absorbed Dahabshiil’s
  core management into his government. The ministries of foreign affairs, the presidency,
  telecommunications and energy were all headed by former managers in
  Dahabshiil’s international corporate empire.55 The expansion of the kleptocratic
  system included the involvement of Silanyo’s close family. For instance, Silanyo’s
  son-in-law Bashe Awil Omar (then Ambassador to the UAE) brokered large infrastructure
  projects and the privatization of public assets (including electricity grids,
  cement production, the port and livestock quarantine).56 Widespread corruption
  allegations would engulf Silanyo’s administration and the provision of licences
  and contracts around the DP World deal and oil exploration.57
  Silanyo had also virulently used narratives of self-sufficiency and economic
  development to disparage democratization.58 While his rebranding around
  50 Elder and Hoffman, ‘Somalia’s business elites’, p. 43.
  51 President Guelleh would go on to win his sixth term in office in May 2021 with 99 per cent of the vote: see
  Aly Verjee, ‘A friendly little dictatorship in the Horn of Africa: why the world doesn’t care about Djibouti’s
  autocracy’, Foreign Policy, 8 April 2011, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/08/a-friendly-little-dictatorshipin-
  the-horn-of-africa-2/; Daher Ahmed Farah, ‘In Djibouti, a dictator clings to power and extends suffering’,
  Vanguard Africa, 19 April 2021, http://www.vanguardafrica.com/africawatch/2021/4/19/in-djibouti-a-dictator-
  clings-to-power-and-extends-suffering.
  52 Elder and Hoffman, ‘Somalia’s business elites’, p. 41.
  53 Aly Verjee, Adan Abokor, Haroon Yusuf, Amina Warsame, Muhammad Farah and Mohamed Hersi, The
  economics of elections in Somaliland: the financing of political parties and candidates (Nairobi: Rift Valley Institute,
  2015), https://riftvalley.net/publication/economics-elections-somaliland.
  54 Elder and Hoffman, ‘Somalia’s business elites’, p. 35.
  55 Author in-person interviews with businessmen and government officials, Hargeisa, June and Nov. 2017 and
  Nov. 2019.
  56 Emma Lochery, ‘Generating power: electricity provision and state formation in Somaliland’, DPhil, University
  of Oxford, 2015. See also Mohamoud Hashi, former minister and chief Kulmiye strategist, confessing
  Kulmiye’s blatant use of state power in a press conference: https://youtu.be/DmcwT51R-FQ.
  57 In May 2016, DP World signed a 30-year US$442 million agreement with the government of Somaliland to
  develop and operate a regional trade and logistics hub at the Port of Berbera. Contracts were also allocated for
  the Berbera Oil Terminal. See Bashir Ali, ‘How an unrecognised state’s port deal could shift dynamics across
  the Horn’, African Arguments, 1 May 2018, https://africanarguments.org/2018/05/how-an-unrecognised-statesport-
  deal-could-shift-dynamics-across-the-horn-berbera-port-dpworld-somaliland/.
  58 Author in-person interviews with ex-SNM officials and intellectuals, Hargeisa, May and June 2020.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1759
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  economic development certainly attracted donors who elsewhere in Africa have
  supported ambitious developmental state models over democratization,59 the red
  line was any perceived threat to security. Western donors refrained from making
  any negative statements about the quality of governance in Somaliland until after
  2015, when there was an uptick in security events and Silanyo simply stopped
  ‘showing up to aid meetings’.60 Unbeknownst to Silanyo at the time, the expansion
  of economic opportunities through Islamic banking and finance had also
  empowered opposition and political liberalization against his administration.61 As
  he began to lose control over his kleptocratic system, Silanyo jailed journalists and
  deployed paramilitary forces against political opponents and groups,62 while also
  ‘resuscitating’ the militant SNM legacy through the reconstruction of monuments
  and the excavation of mass graves attributed to Barre-era war atrocities. He also
  sought to re-establish political control by using internationally sponsored ‘talks
  with Somalia’ to reinforce the dominant ‘national’ framing narrative of external
  threats and internal unity.63
  Consistent with Silanyo’s lukewarm engagement with western donors, corporate
  actors also started to promulgate a narrative of ‘philanthrocapitalism’ as an alternative
  development model to aid.64 Through philanthrocapitalism, the private sector
  would assume some responsibility for filling the gaps in state provision of public
  services through corporate charity and donations, in exchange for low taxation.
  This form of governance has been widely criticized by Linsey McGoey and others
  for entrenching powerful financial elites and eliminating the social welfare state.
  During Silanyo’s tenure, this model constituted minor financial commitments in
  exchange for large tax breaks, where ‘community-led projects’ and support for
  conflict mediation largely aided business expansion plans in the region rather than
  leading to national transformation or poverty reduction.65 There are also reports
  of companies falsifying reports of philanthropic activities altogether, leading to
  erroneous notions of business contributions to development.66 This model has
  continued to gain prominence, expressed most recently by Ismail Ahmed, the
  founder of World Remit, who—having been a ‘whistleblower’ in a large corruption
  case against the UN—denounced the model of aid dependency and outlined
  59 Thomas Carothers and Diane de Gramont, Development aid confronts politics: the almost revolution (Washington
  DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2013), p. 3.
  60 Author in-person interviews with UK and EU representatives in Hargeisa, Oct. and Nov. 2016.
  61 Author in-person interviews with business actors, Hargeisa and London, Jan. 2017 and Nov. 2018.
  62 ICG, Somaliland, pp. 20–22.
  63 See Silanyo’s speech at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for a monument to honour SNM struggle at
  Balligubadle (in Somali): https://youtu.be/aM-9KqaOtQw, accessed on 8 June 2021.
  64 Linsey McGoey, Darren Thiel and Robin West, ‘Philanthrocapitalism and crimes of the powerful’, In Politix
  121: 1, 2018, pp. 29–54.
  65 For instance, while Sompower, a Dahabshiil majority-owned entity, supplies lights and electricity to police
  stations free of charge, the cost of this provision does not equal the profits they received from tax cuts and
  rapid expansion: J. Meester, A. Uzelac and C. Elder, Transnational capital in Somalia: blue desert strategy, CRU
  report (The Hague: Clingendael Institute, 2019); author in-person interview with Somaliland government
  officials, Hargeisa, Feb. 2019.
  66 ‘False advertising—Somcable chairman lies about his philanthropic activities in Somaliland’, Somaliland
  Chronicle, 8 Nov. 2019, https://somalilandchronicle.com/2019/11/08/false-advertising-somcable-chairmanlies-
  about-his-philanthropic-activities-in-somaliland/.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1760
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  a ten-year plan for Somaliland through the Sahamiye Foundation, pledging $500
  million (£365 million) for health and education.67
  This is important, as the rise of philanthrocapitalism was born in the absence of
  aid and through the revolutionary ideologies of privatized governance. It symbolized
  a creative governance structure not born out of state weakness but also not
  consistent with national, democratic government. It also became a convenient
  narrative through which oligarchic–corporate structures could disguise the ‘true
  agenda’ of elites in power—demanding the protection of business autonomy while
  restricting legitimized central authority and democratization. President Musa
  Bihi’s overt hostility towards domestic capitalists voiced an emerging popular
  opinion about oligarchs as corrupt agents who exploited the population at large.
  This would, however, also raise questions about the foundations of the national
  project. The election of Musa Bihi represented more generally the paradoxical
  ways in which the expanding power of global financial elites confront the violent
  resuscitation of the nation-state.68
  Bihi’s ‘populist’ authoritarianism
  Musa Bihi emerged within Kulmiye as the antidote to Silanyo’s poor leadership
  and economic mismanagement. He was ultimately able to win the presidential
  elections thanks to support from western intelligence and security personnel for
  his anti-terrorist stance, and ‘his accessibility, efficiency, and commitments to
  stability’,69 as well as to popular support for his military capital (having been a
  former liberation fighter) and appeals to order and stability, and for his undeniable
  loyalty to the cause of Somaliland statehood. Musa Bihi cultivated the image
  of a populist authoritarian leader (a man ‘of the people’ because of the role he had
  played as a liberation fighter, and because he was not from the diaspora). His access
  to state and corporate coffers certainly also helped. The main opposition party,
  Waddani, which represented the Garhajis, also faced many challenges including
  poor leadership and lack of originality. Kulmiye had previously pioneered a
  revolutionary narrative of progress and transformation, captivating the diaspora,
  and Waddani struggled to compete with this and also to shake off an image of
  being ‘from the establishment’ and even pro-union.70 Waddani denounced the
  incumbent Kulmiye as the ‘engineers of corruption’ and called for the ‘removal
  of SNM entrenched power’ and the exposure of the ‘deep state’.71 Waddani’s
  chief strategist, Ismail Bubba (also one of the founding fathers of the SNM),
  denounced what he called Somaliland’s ‘democratic militancy’, recharacterizing
  67 Sarah Johnson, ‘Aid agencies can be harmful, says Somaliland tycoon’, Guardian, 9 April 2021, https://www.
  theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/09/aid-agencies-can-be-harmful-says-somaliland-tycoon.
  68 Philip G. Cerny and Alex Prichard, ‘The new anarchy: globalisation and fragmentation in world politics’,
  Journal of International Political Theory 13: 3, 2017, pp. 378–94.
  69 Author in-person interview with FCDO official, Hargeisa, Nov. 2017.
  70 Author in-person interviews and participant observation of 2016 election process, Hargeisa, Nov. 2016.
  71 Author in-person interviews with opposition leaders from Waddani and civil society, Hargeisa, 16 and 17 Oct.
  2016.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1761
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  the quality of Somaliland’s widely acclaimed democracy since independence. As
  he explained:
  For decades being democratic has meant being tied to SNM-type leadership that is based
  on clan imbalance and is militaristic and stagnant. We need to move beyond that, close
  that chapter: Hargeisa is still armed (gun culture is still with us)—we need to establish
  a political leadership that is non-militaristic and progressive. SNM is continuing the old
  war. We cannot have peace with ourselves and progress with that liberation mentality.72
  Waddani’s new national agenda and alternative political project tied to Somaliland
  lawada leeyahay—a charter based on inclusion, social justice, and equitable
  distribution of resources and power—would gain further momentum after the
  2017 elections.73 Yet no one was under the illusion that he would be a democratic
  leader. He was selected in the interests of security and nationalism—both of
  which had come into disarray under Silanyo. Musa Bihi’s ‘imperial presidency’, as
  some have called it, would quickly reconfirm commitments to Somaliland’s role
  as a security protectorate and was even less tolerant of public criticism.
  In a clear display of his vision of state power, at the October 2020 party congress,
  Bihi—flanked by army leaders—refused to relinquish his role as chairman of the
  Kulmiye Party (a position he has held since 2010).74 This also extended to the
  international community, escalating the tone and rhetoric around Somaliland’s
  territorial sovereignty and independence. His numerous press releases and public
  appeals demanded recognition no longer on the basis of injustices, self-determination
  and human rights, nor on progress towards democratization, but now on
  Somaliland’s geostrategic value (its indispensability as an ally in the Red Sea and
  counterterrorism).75 In October 2020, Musa Bihi suspended Somaliland’s relations
  with the United Nations ‘until further notice’ demanding the UN deal with
  Somaliland on its own terms.76 In an unprecedented move he also announced
  that no external funds were to be used to conduct the upcoming municipal and
  parliamentary elections in 2022: the whole amount, he said, was coming from the
  national budget.77
  Like his predecessors, he actively sought external resources, including by
  sending a high-level trade delegation to Malaysia to discuss trade and development
  cooperation, and engaging the Islamic Bank of Thailand and the Islamic Development
  Bank (IsDB). Unlike his predecessor, he was hostile to domestic capitalists.
  72 Author in-person interview with Ismail Bubba, former SNM official and strategist for Waddani, Oct. 2016.
  73 Author phone interviews with the originator of the motto Somaliland lawada leeyahay, Abdikarim Mooge,
  Hargeisa, June 2020; and with Abdirashid Jeeni, one of the authors and signatories of the Baaq-shacab or
  ‘People’s Declaration’, https://youtu.be/AY0UZiHpt6Q, Dec. 2020.
  74 Author interviews and participant observation, Hargeisa and Mogadishu, Dec. 2020.
  75 Tom Wilson, ‘Somaliland steps up push for international recognition’, Financial Times, 1 November 2018,
  https://www.ft.com/content/331521ba-dc24-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c.
  76 The UN was last expunged from Somaliland last in 1993; this occurs under the calculation that the UN will
  continue with its projects. Robert Kluijver, ‘Somaliland suspends relations with the United Nations amidst
  rising tensions’, Democracy in Africa, 20 November 2020.
  77 ‘President Bihi reveals government was bankrolling twin election bill’, MENAFN, 8 Feb. 2021, https://
  menafn.com/1101567786/Somaliland-President-Bihi-Reveals-Government-Was-Bankrolling-Twin-Election-
  Bill.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1762
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  Musa Bihi quickly sought to nationalize public assets under a campaign of state-led
  development, launching a war against the private sector which he saw ‘as having
  worked across borders for decades’, interpreting their unwillingness to pay taxes
  as proof of disloyalty to the Somaliland project.78 He cancelled previous contracts
  awarded under Silanyo, including a 20-year contract concerning ownership of
  the Berbera Oil Terminal (favouring Trafigura) that had allowed six domestic
  companies to import oil jointly.79 Bihi also cancelled Somaliland’s contracts
  with low-cost carriers between Dubai and Hargeisa (Fly Dubai and Air Arabia)
  which were owned and managed by opposition groups.80 One way in which he
  sought to maintain control was by demanding majority shares for himself and his
  associates in companies doing business in the country, including in Dahabshiil’s
  fibre optic initiative.81 Yet many of these initiatives, particularly those perceived
  as overt concessions to the Djiboutian state, were unsuccessful. As the rainbow
  coalition began to fracture, Musa Bihi began to rely even more on external legitimacy,
  most importantly from Djibouti. For instance, Bihi tried (but failed) to
  expand the Djibouti-based conventional bank La Banque pour le Commerce et
  l’Industrie—Mer Rouge (also known as BCIMR, a company in which he holds
  a stake) to challenge the authority of Islamic finance.82 He also ultimately failed
  to extradite from Somaliland to Djibouti one of the most powerful businessmen,
  Ahmed Geele of GSK holdings, whom Djibouti accused of escaping with loans
  and money from BCIMR.83
  The rallying of popular support to protect business autonomy from state intervention
  raises a number of interesting issues about Somaliland’s democratization
  processes and future development trajectories. First, these developments clearly
  demonstrate the fallibility of Musa Bihi’s image of strength and monopolistic
  control over the state, security and territorial boundaries, and the challenges of
  any leader ever mounting an authoritarian project in Somaliland. But they also
  equally strongly emphasize the state’s poor bargaining power vis-à-vis domestic
  firms. Musa Bihi had alienated business interests within his coalition. Second, these
  events also highlight the extent to which questions about the role of the private
  sector and market-led development are deeply embedded in questions about the
  viability of the national project, the authentic legacy of the liberation movement
  and relations with the international system.
  78 Author in-person interviews with officials in Ministry of Finance and Chamber of Commerce, Hargeisa, Nov.
  2019.
  79 See also ‘Trafigura to invest in improving Berbera Oil Terminal to become a regional supply hub with the
  support of the Government of Somaliland’, press release, 7 Sept. 2020 https://www.trafigura.com/pressreleases/
  trafigura-to-invest-in-improving-berbera-oil-terminal-to-become-a-regional-supply-hub-with-thesupport-
  of-the-government-of-somaliland.
  80 ‘See Somaliland: politicians accuse President Bihi of sacrificing sound leadership for personal, familial interest’,
  MENAFN, 15 Oct. 2020, https://menafn.com/1100965266/Somaliland-Politicians-Accuse-President-Bihi-of-
  Sacrificing-Sound-Leadership-for-Personal-Familial-Interest.
  81 Author phone interviews with The Justice and Welfare Party (Somali: Ururka Caddaalada iyo Daryeelka,
  UCID) party official, May 2021; with Dahabshiil officer, June 2021.
  82 Author phone interview with local activists and ministerial officials, May 2021.
  83 Author phone interviews with businessmen and ministerial officials, June 2020.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1763
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  What next for Somaliland?
  The watershed win for the opposition in the June 2021 parliamentary and municipal
  elections was widely revered as a win for democracy—an image reinforced by
  the fact that Somalia is still unable to hold popular elections—and even more so by
  the fact that Bihi had tried, but failed, to orchestrate election results in his favour.84
  The opposition win in the 2021 election marked a protest vote against incumbency
  and a repudiation of Musa Bihi’s vision of state-led development, and marked a
  renewal of long-stagnant institutions, namely parliament and local councils. Yet,
  the opposition win was also emboldened by the fracturing of the former coalition
  and the realignment of core business interests with the opposition. Bihi (and
  his imperial presidency) had evoked Siad Barre-style militant socialism that had
  been bad for business.85 Waddani’s new national agenda and alternative political
  project tied to Somaliland lawada leeyahay does offer promise.86 But enduring issues
  remain a closed political space (dominated by old SNM-era elites) and key dimensions
  of the oligopolistic state—including the dominance of powerbroker sectors,
  the securitization of aid and the political economy of quasi-recognition. Both
  continue to hinder democratization.
  New partnerships with Taiwan, now Somaliland’s most outspoken critic in
  terms of governance and corruption, could encourage much-needed fiscal and
  political reforms and provide opportunities for building development cooperation
  treaties and mutual defence and banking agreements.87 Yet in the immediate term
  aggressive politicking by Somalia of non-Isaaq communities at the peripheries
  of Somaliland’s statebuilding enterprise, along with Great Power rivalries over
  military bases, hydropolitics and economic free trade zones in the Red Sea and the
  Gulf of Aden, have generated a multitude of issues for Somaliland’s democratization
  process.88 The passing of the free trade zone law in January 2021 by Musa
  Bihi solidified Somaliland’s commitment to becoming a ‘market-dominant small
  jurisdiction’ based on ‘chokepoint’ sovereignty,89 in a bid for independence with
  non-western allies.90 This route does not follow the ‘developmental state’ models
  84 See Human Rights Centre, A quarterly report, April 2021, p. 3.
  85 Author phone interviews with Dahabshiil Bank officers, June 2021. Opposition victories included a mayoral
  seat won by the originator of Somaliland lawada leeyahay, Abdikarim Mooge. See ‘Somaliland elections: opposition
  parties win majority of seats’, Al Jazeera, 6 June 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/6/
  somaliland-opposition-wins-first-parliamentary-polls-since.
  86 Author phone interviews with the originator of the motto Somaliland lawada leeyahay, Abdikarim Mooge,
  Hargeisa, June 2020; with Abdirashid Jeeni, one of the authors and signatories of the Baaq-shacab or ‘People’s
  Declaration’, Dec. 2020, https://youtu.be/AY0UZiHpt6Q,
  87 Taiwan is also a leading player in the region in Islamic finance. See ‘Taiwan and Somaliland risk China’s
  ire with bilateral ties’, Financial Times, 1 July 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/a85c82f7-ed5a-4c78-b494-
  620addc03fd8.
  88 Zach Vertin, ‘Red Sea rivalries: the Gulf states are playing a dangerous game in the Horn of Africa’, Foreign
  Affairs, 15 Jan. 2019, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-africa/2019-01-15/red-sea-rivalries.
  89 Jatin Dua, ‘Chokepoints and corridors: ordering maritime space in the Western Indian Ocean’, Rift Valley
  Institute Report (Nairobi: Rift Valley Institute and X-Border Local Research Network), 2021.
  90 ‘Somaliland passes law paving way for launch of free trade zone’, Horn Diplomat, 8 Jan. 2021, https://www.
  horndiplomat.com/2021/01/08/somaliland-passes-law-paving-way-for-launch-of-free-trade-zone/. Christopher
  M. Bruner, Re-imagining offshore finance: market-dominant small jurisdictions in a globalizing financial world
  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Claire Elder
  1764
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  of Ethiopia and Rwanda,91 nor the route of the east Asian tigers of the 1970s and
  1980s, which relied on a smooth transition to more open and inclusive—and hence
  legitimate and stable—political systems. Seminal research has looked at how ‘small
  states’ in Africa and beyond have become some of the best and worst-performing
  democracies. In terms of the latter, many have become attractive tax havens for
  unscrupulous businesses and corporations where the lack of international recognition
  has not eliminated these options for de facto states. While challenges exist
  as Somaliland remains outside the formal financial economy, it offers the added
  advantage of stability, openness and proximity to Gulf allies, compared to other
  de facto tax havens in the region (including Djibouti and Somalia).
  With this perspective, it is not yet clear whether Islamic finance and banking
  will serve as Somaliland’s ticket out of peripheralization, even if it has in the shortterm
  aided political liberalization. What is clear is that Somaliland’s renewal of
  democratization will rely on local momentum as donor concerns remain directed
  elsewhere. This will require larger structural transformation to reduce the power
  of oligarchic–corporate structures—economic diversification (investing in labourintensive
  industries), the regulation of business and campaign finance, and state
  commitments to the provision of public services.
  Conclusion
  This study of Somaliland’s political economy since independence challenges core
  arguments about the country’s democratic successes. Using theories of ‘oligopolistic
  state’ and ‘peaceocracy’, it presents key arguments about how structures of
  oligarchic–corporate power have limited democratization. The holding of routine
  elections without extending broader rights and public services has not generated a
  thriving democracy in the absence of progressive leadership. Rather, an oligopolistic
  state has formed around an exclusive statebuilding agenda that serves the
  interests of a select group of financial and political elites who represent the Isaaq
  clan. A critical political economy lens emphasizes the key challenges faced by
  Somaliland, along with other de facto states, in balancing financial hardship and
  political control and in designing development models. These financial troubles
  may place these states at the mercy of patron states and oligarchic–corporate structures
  in ways that affect political development and have been under-researched to
  date. As such, this article establishes an important comparative research agenda
  for examining de facto states’ political economies as they affect elite strategy and
  uneven and uncertain development trajectories, and makes a number of contributions
  to the study of Somaliland. First, it provides an account of how business–
  state relationships may develop in contexts of financial hardship and de facto
  statehood. It demonstrates how oligarchic–corporate systems and ideologies of
  privatized governance may emerge as forms of post-colonial market-building.
  Second, this article shows how quasi-recognition (special relationships and the
  91 Stephen Brown and Jonathan Fisher, ‘Aid donors, democracy and the developmental state in Ethiopia’, Democratization
  27: 2, 2020, pp. 185–203.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021
  Somaliland’s authoritarian turn
  1765
  International Affairs 97: 6, 2021
  securitization of aid without necessary contributions to institution-building) can
  empower oligopolistic state systems and erode national, democratic government.
  This occurs by empowering the security apparatus and oligarchic–corporate structures
  that benefit from these rents. Third, it details how conflicts play out between
  traditional forces and global financial elites around the hollowing out of the state
  by privatization and around the viability of the nation-state.
  Somalilanders’ ambitions for democratization have for decades greatly suffered
  under the oligopolistic state and peaceocracy—a reality that has not been
  adequately captured by prevailing discourses and narratives on Somaliland to date.
  This oversight is due at least in part to a culture of silence that has pervaded the
  study of Somaliland—produced both by donors keen to justify and protect their
  security and strategic interests, and by the Somaliland state itself rallying behind a
  duty of collective national interests to protecting prospects for recognition. This
  article has sought to start the process of unveiling some of the dynamics that have
  safeguarded private sector actors and public authorities and created a culture of
  impunity, undermining democratization. It has also highlighted the importance
  of developing more flexible tools and frameworks in which to understand the
  uneven and uncertain development paths of de facto states. The challenge for
  Somaliland’s viability now is how to reconcile foundational elements that include
  business autonomy and market development with democratic principles.
  Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/6/1749/6412453 by guest on 01 November 2021