February26, 2007:
Somalia is going back to its roots. It was never a unified country,
and a few generations of British and Italian colonialism did little to foster a
sense of national identity. But then, outside of India, colonialism didn't do
that very well anywhere.
In
Somalia, no tribe or clan is able to dominate the others sufficiently to impose
unity on a country-wide basis. In the breakaway northern regions of Somaliland
and Puntland, however some of the tribes have been able to form federations
that have done a reasonable job of imposing order and a degree of normalcy that
the rest of the country lacks. But for most of the country, over two dozen
major clans have been unable to form the same kind of coalition. The
Transitional National Government (TNG) was an attempt at that, and the TNG
found itself outgunned by the larger number of clans that had formed the
Islamic Courts Alliance (ICA). With the ICA smashed by last Decembers Ethiopian
invasion, the TNG has another shot. But many of the defeated ICA clans are
proving to be poor losers, and continue to resist.
This
presents incoming African Union peacekeepers with a serious problem. Basically,
there's no peace to keep, and attempts at peace making put the African Union in
the colonialism business. That's how the British and Italians managed the
clans, with the standard tools of colonial rule, including large applications
of violence as needed. It's unlikely that the African Union or the UN will have
any stomach for that. The prospects for successful peacekeeping in Somalia are
dim.