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Can anarchism save Somalia?

“Good government” is a paradox. Any people so decent as to be capable of implementing it would be better off without it, and any people so rotten as to need it would be incapable of implementing it.
—unknown

Somalia’s condition, its history, and the attempts by the U.N. and U.S. to impose an external, military, governmental solution to its problems fascinate me. I wish I could become a Somalia scholar. I just might. As it stands, however, my knowledge of the nation and its history is somewhat lacking.

That said, I have a strong desire to offer my input on the subject. This desire was triggered by two Newsweek articles I read recently: A familiar tragedy, about how a lot of Somalia resembles Baghdad now; and Dilemmas of the Horn, about how the United States military’s attempts to prevent Somalia from becoming another Afghanistan have turned it into another Iraq.

You’d probably be better off just reading the articles, but in case you don’t, I’ll start by quoting at length some important passages from them:

In Somalia clashes between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces are constant—and underreported. They started in December 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts (in power in south and central Somalia for just six months) was ousted by the current Transitional Federal Government, with support from the Ethiopian military, and with more than a tacit blessing from the United States. …

Last February the United Nations authorized the deployment of an 8,000-strong AU force to Somalia. Six months later only 1,800 peacekeeping troops from Uganda are on the ground. But is there a peace for them to keep? A National Reconciliation Conference, the 13th such effort in a decade, ended Aug. 30 after a month and a half of deliberations in Mogadishu, with no peace and no reconciliation in sight. …

From a humanitarian point of view the Somali tragedy may have even more dramatic consequences than the Iraqi tragedy, for two reasons. First, owing to the geopolitical situation of Somalia, its people have nowhere to flee and the country is like a pressure cooker. The second reason is that Somalia does not have even the basic infrastructure to fall back on, unlike what Iraq had before the U.S. intervention. This is why the international community must step in. …

International humanitarian organizations can try to help those who suffer from the combined effect of violence and drought…but this will merely treat the symptoms of the crisis whereas ultimately the solution must be political. …

In post-9/11 American foreign policy, the Global War on Terror in Somalia was at first outsourced to local warlords, some of whom were supported financially because they were thought to oppose Al Qaeda. Last December’s proxy Ethiopian intervention was aimed at ousting the Islamic Courts but has not as yet achieved its goal. The stakes for the United States are understandably higher in Iraq and Afghanistan, where American troops are on the ground, than in the Horn of Africa.

That was the first article, “A familiar tragedy.” Here are some excerpts from the second article, “Dilemmas of the Horn”:

In late 2006 the United States backed Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia, designed to oust the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist coalition that had taken over much of the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country. …Washington accused the Islamists of harboring Qaeda operatives involved in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. But the Courts had also brought more stability than Somalia had enjoyed in years. Somalis could walk the streets and do business again, and many welcomed the Islamists just as war-weary Afghans hailed the Taliban in the 1990s.

Now, by trying to prevent another terrorist haven like Afghanistan from developing, America may have helped create another Iraq, this one in the volatile Horn of Africa. “Every year this fighting continues, the situation worsens,” says Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Abdul Salaam of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. The Islamists’ eviction in 2006 left a power vacuum that the U.N.-backed government still hasn’t managed to fill. Ethiopian troops are loathed as occupiers and rarely leave their heavily fortified bases. And al-Shabaab has broken off from the Courts to wage a brutal and effective insurgency. …

Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers are hunkered down behind sandbags, concrete barriers and heavy artillery. …

Shabaab fighters say being targeted by America only helps their cause. …

They have advocated dialogue and emphasized that their fight is with the Ethiopian invading force, not all “infidels.” …

Notice one of the first things that should stand out from these articles. “Ethiopian-backed government forces…support from the Ethiopian military…blessing from the United States…the United Nations authorized the deployment of an 8,000-strong AU force…peacekeeping troops from Uganda are on the ground…the Global War on Terror in Somalia was at first outsourced to local warlords…Last December’s proxy Ethiopian intervention…the United States backed Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia…The Islamists’ eviction in 2006 left a power vacuum that the U.N.-backed government still hasn’t managed to fill…Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers….” All of these are governmental—specifically, military—interventions from other countries that have served only to make Somalia’s situation worse.

Before anyone thinks I’m going to claim Somalia’s anarchic state was just fine and dandy and skyrocketing towards prosperity and freedom in the mid-1990’s, I’m not. Lack of a central government alone is not sufficient to engender the economic and political environment I advocate. For one, a lot more time than a decade is probably required, especially in an impoverished and war-torn region like the African Horn or pretty much anywhere else in Africa. A culture of respect, private property rights, the honoring of contracts, and low time-preferences in general are required for any society to prosper, and especially to lift itself out of poverty into prosperity. Though states are (supposedly) founded on the basis of protecting and promoting those things, it is clear that the larger they grow, the more they actively violate them instead of uphold them. And since it is counterintuitive to think that founding a government that will violate people’s property rights and encourage high time-preferences will lead to a situation where the sanctity of property rights and low time-preferences emerge, it is probably harmful rather than helpful to impose a monopolistic government (democratic or otherwise) on the Somali people. Look at what the other governments of Africa have done to their people.

Whether they would have eventually become better off with a self-formed democratic government or with their anarchic state, I hope it is clear that American foreign policy, specifically its war on terrorism and its support of U.N. and Ethiopian military intervention, is the primary reason Somalia is in such bloody disarray now.

Maybe non-libertarians would argue that a government is the lesser of two evils, with a militant, war-torn, warlord-dominated region being the worse of two evils; and that if I’m so concerned with protection of person and property, economic progress, honoring of contracts, and overall freedom and decency and security, then I should at least support the implementation of something stable and authoritative and legitimate, to secure some level of property protection and economic progress, lest I be accused of promoting a situation that leads to war and genocide simply to be consistent.

Well, obviously I accept almost nothing in the preceding paragraph. But let me go through why. Consider these two possibly biased columns written for the Ludwig von Mises Institute: Stateless in Somalia (and loving it) by Yumi Kim and The rule of law without the State by Spencer Heath MacCallum. They are quite interesting reads. The only reason I say they are possibly biased is that they may or may not omit gruesome details of the Somalis’ lives, instead trying to paint an overly-rosy picture of anarchy in this impoverished and war-torn region.

Like it or not, I’m going to quote at length two articles again. First, from Yumi Kim’s piece, which is essentially a review of a book written by Michael van Notten, a Dutch lawyer who lived the last decade of his life in anarchic Somalia:

Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming.

As even the CIA factbook admits:

Despite the seeming anarchy, Somalia’s service sector has managed to survive and grow. Telecommunication firms provide wireless services in most major cities and offer the lowest international call rates on the continent. In the absence of a formal banking sector, money exchange services have sprouted throughout the country, handling between $500 million and $1 billion in remittances annually. Mogadishu’s main market offers a variety of goods from food to the newest electronic gadgets. Hotels continue to operate, and militias provide security.

To understand more about the country without a government, turn to The Law of the Somalis, written by Michael van Notten (1933-2002) and edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum, sheds light on the little known Somali law, culture and economic situation. Somalia is often cited as an example of a stateless society where chaos is the “rule” and warlords are aplenty.

The BBC’s country profile of Somalia sums up this view as widely publicized by the mainstream media: “Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Fighting between rival warlords and an inability to deal with famine and disease led to the deaths of up to one million people.”

The first sentence is indeed true: when the president was driven out by opposing clans in 1991, the government disintegrated. The second sentence, however, depicts Somalia as a lawless country in disorder. As for disorder, Van Notten quotes authorities to the effect that Somalia’s telecommunications are the best in Africa, its herding economy is stronger than that of either of its neighbors, Kenya or Ethiopia, and that since the demise of the central government, the Somali shilling has become far more stable in world currency markets, while exports have quintupled. …

The traditional Somali system of law and politics, [van Notten] contends, is capable of maintaining a peaceful society and guiding the Somalis to prosperity. Moreover, efforts to re-establish a central government or impose democracy on the people are incompatible with the customary law. …

Customary laws develop in a country like Somalia in the absence of a central legislating body. Rules “emerge spontaneously as people go about their daily business and try to solve the problems that occasionally arise in it without upsetting the patterns of cooperation on which they so heavily depend” (Van Notten, 15: 2005). Van Notten contends that the Somali customary law closely follows the natural law and therefore should be preserved. …

An important discussion centers around democracy. In 1960, when the British and Italian colonizers withdrew from Somalia, they formed the government of the Republic of Somalia as a democratic entity. Nine years later, the country was under a dictatorship. Through these events, according to van Notten, many Somalis realized that they could return to their traditional form of governance founded on independent clans.

Nevertheless, since 1991, the United Nations has made efforts to promote the establishment of a democratic government in Somalia. Van Notten strongly argues that such government is incompatible with the Somali customary law, which prizes life, liberty, and property. He asserts that democracy is not even a viable option:

When the electorate is composed of close-knit tribal, religious, linguistic or ethnic communities, the people invariably vote, not on the merits of any issue, but for the party of their own community. The community with the greatest numbers wins the election, and the minority parties then put rebellion and secession at the top of their political agenda. That is nothing but a recipe for chaos. (van Notten, 127; 2005)

Van Notten contends that the argument that a central government is a prerequisite for making treaties with foreign government agencies is flawed because the Somalis have long dealt with foreign governments and their agencies on a clan-by-clan basis. A common ministry of foreign affairs would pose a grave danger because it would undermine the customary law. He suggests that clans sharing a common interest could appoint a private company as their common agent. Van Notten and MacCallum further dispute that a central government is needed to provide “public” services. They propose the establishment of freeports, land-leasing, and commercial insurance companies. Certain sectors such as telecommunications have been thriving in Somalia’s free market and government regulation could only hinder their growth.

Questions arise as to rampageous warlords when discussing a country without a central government. Van Notten explains that warlords exist because of the efforts to form a central government, not because of its absence:

A democratic government has every power to exert dominion over people. To fend off the possibility of being dominated, each clan tries to capture the power of that government before it can become a threat. Those clans that didn’t share in the spoils of political power would realize their chances of becoming part of the ruling alliance were nil. Therefore, they would rebel and try to secede. That would prompt the ruling clans to use every means to suppress these centrifugal forces… in the end all clans would fight with one another. (van Notten, 136; 2005)

Spencer Heath MacCallum, the editor of van Notten’s book, wrote the second piece.

A number of recent studies address this question, including one by economist Peter Leeson drawing on statistical data from the United Nations Development Project, World Bank, CIA, and World Health Organization. Comparing the last five years under the central government (1985–1990) with the most recent five years of anarchy (2000–2005), Leeson finds these welfare changes:

• Life expectancy increased from 46 to 48.5 years. This is a poor expectancy as compared with developed countries. But in any measurement of welfare, what is important to observe is not where a population stands at a given time, but what is the trend. Is the trend positive, or is it the reverse?
• Number of one-year-olds fully immunized against measles rose from 30 to 40 percent.
• Number of physicians per 100,000 population rose from 3.4 to 4.
• Number of infants with low birth weight fell from 16 per thousand to 0.3 — almost none.
• Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9.
• Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100.
• Percent of population with access to sanitation rose from 18 to 26.
• Percent of population with access to at least one health facility rose from 28 to 54.8.
• Percent of population in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1 per day) fell from 60 to 43.2.
• Radios per thousand population rose from 4 to 98.5.
• Telephones per thousand population rose from 1.9 to 14.9.
• TVs per 1,000 population rose from 1.2 to 3.7.
• Fatalities due to measles fell from 8,000 to 5,600.

Another even more comprehensive study published last year by Benjamin Powell of the Independent Institute, concludes: “We find that Somalia’s living standards have improved generally … not just in absolute terms, but also relative to other African countries since the collapse of the Somali central government.”

Somalia’s pastoral economy is now stronger than that of either neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia. It is the largest exporter of livestock of any East African country. Telecommunications have burgeoned in Somalia; a call from a mobile phone is cheaper in Somalia than anywhere else in Africa. A small number of international investors are finding that the level of security of property and contract in Somalia warrants doing business there. Among these companies are Dole, BBC, the courier DHL, British Airways, General Motors, and Coca Cola, which recently opened a large bottling plant in Mogadishu. A 5-star Ambassador Hotel is operating in Hargeisa, and three new universities are fully functional: Amoud University (1997) in Borama, and Mogadishu University (1997), and University of Benadir (2002) in Mogadishu. …

Like most of precolonial Africa, Somalia is traditionally a stateless society. When the colonial powers withdrew, in order to better serve their purposes, they hastily trained local people and set up European-style governments in their place. These were supposed to be democratic. But they soon devolved into brutal dictatorships.

Democracy is unworkable in Africa for several reasons. The first thing that voting does is to divide a population into two groups — a group that rules and a group that is ruled. This is completely at variance with Somali tradition. Second, if democracy is to work, it depends in theory, at least, upon a populace that will vote on issues. But in a kinship society such as Somalia, voting takes place not on the merit of issues but along group lines; one votes according to one’s clan affiliation. Since the ethic of kinship requires loyalty to one’s fellow clansmen, the winners use the power of government to benefit their own members, which means exploitation of the members of other clans. Consequently when there exists a governmental apparatus with its awesome powers of taxation and police and judicial monopoly, the interests of the clans conflict. Some clan will control that apparatus. To avoid being exploited by other clans, each must attempt to be that controlling clan.

The turmoil in Somalia consists in the clans maneuvering to position themselves to control the government whenever it might come into being, and this has been exacerbated by the governments of the world, especially the United States, keeping alive the expectation that a government will soon be established and supplying arms to whoever seems at present most likely to be able to “bring democracy” to Somalia. …

Hence the most violent years in Somalia were the years following 1991 when the United Nations was physically present, attempting to impose a central government. When the United Nations withdrew in 1995, the expectation of a future central government began to recede, and things began to stabilize. But the United Nations continued it [sic] efforts to re-establish a government through a series of some sixteen failed “peace conferences.” In 2000 it set up a straw government, the Transitional National Government (TNG). However, not only did the northern Somali clans not recognize the TNG, it was unable to control its intended capital city of Mogadishu. Today a combined “peace-keeping mission” of United States–backed troops from Ethiopia, Somalia’s traditional enemy, and Uganda under the aegis of the African Union is in Mogadishu attempting to prop up the TNG and secure its control over the rest of Somalia. Violence soars.

MacCallum then goes into intricate and glorious detail about the Somali customary law, or Xeer. His point is to explain how this customary law arose and evolved in the absence of legislatures—in the absence of a government entirely—and, more importantly, how it served to promote order, protect property, and punish criminals in a state of nominal anarchy.

I wonder what the Statist counterargument to van Notten’s and MacCallum’s claims of government-caused chaos and civil war is. I find their case quite convincing and quite supportive of the idea that the State only divides and embitters, only sets up factions against one another who fight to control the monopoly on legal force, when they weren’t fighting beforehand. If you accuse us libertarians of being biased and misconstruing everything we read as supportive of libertarianism, then what facts are we missing, omitting, or misconstruing? Certainly Somalia was no Utopia in 1995, but it is difficult to argue the military interventions have made (or will make) it better off. Would non-libertarians say that if the Somalis had eventually formed their own democratic government internally, with no external intervention, that they’d be straightened up and flying right today? Is the problem, in your mind, that the interventions were military and not diplomatic? You’d be hard-pressed to name very many countries (governments) that weren’t founded by military conquest or rebellion in some fashion or another. According to MacCallum, the U.N. has tried numerous peace-keeping meetings, all of which failed.

Would some Statists say that while anarchy is better for these primitive, clan-dominated societies, democracy actually worked out better for other societies, such as European ones? Do they argue that anarchy is fine for a while in small, primitive communities, but if you want to progress towards material wealth, robust infrastructures, and widespread harmony, you must establish monopolistic states? After all, the democratic and monarchic societies of Europe were the ones that had progressed materially and economically much farther than the African colonies they conquered. Obviously I would say that warfare and conquest are hallmarks of devolution, not progress, but the fact remains that these colonial powers had a higher quality of life and financial power, such that they could build ships, guns, and airplanes and fund these murderous expeditions.

But it was short-lived. And I contend that it hurt those European powers more than it helped them in the long run, just as America’s imperial colonialism has hurt it badly in the long run. And even though the colonial powers had the money, technology, manpower, and firepower to subdue African nations, they planted the seeds of tyranny and genocide that ravage nearly the entire continent today; that is a black mark against them, not a glorification of their cultural advancement or material wealth. And, lastly, I wholeheartedly assert that if the European (and American) powers had been governed by natural law and not democratic or monarchic fiat, and had not had the income-theft or bloodthirstiness that comes along with Statism, they wouldn’t have wasted untold quantities of money, resources, and lives on imperial conquest and would have advanced humanity’s material and cultural well-being far beyond what it is today.

Somalia had such promise to be a shining example of the progress and harmony that occur in the absence of State coercion. Instead, Western governments have turned it into a militant hellhole of death and despair. If I were a Statist, I would at least admit that in this case, anarchy was better than monopolistic government. And more government isn’t going to fix it. At the very least, I would admit this.

Contrary to the conclusion of the author of the article “A familiar tragedy,” who thinks,

International humanitarian organizations can try to help those who suffer from the combined effect of violence and drought…but this will merely treat the symptoms of the crisis whereas ultimately the solution must be political. …

On Somalia there seems to be full agreement among all sides [at the U.N.]: the meeting where the continuation of the AU peacekeeping mission was decided lasted just five minutes….

The stakes for the United States are understandably higher in Iraq and Afghanistan, where American troops are on the ground, than in the Horn of Africa [but, I think the author is saying, the United States must continue its military "peacekeeping" intervention]. …

The quagmire in Somalia is neither easy nor new, but this should not stop the politicians trying to find a solution. Everything and anything must be done, lest another few years in Mogadishu look like the past few years in Baghdad.

it is painfully clear that too much has been done already. The politicians were and remain a large part of the problem, and more government or different government or better government seems unlikely to do the job, to me. I predict that Mogadishu will look worse and worse until foreign military forces pull out. Sadly, neither Baghdad nor Mogadishu are going to look better any time soon.

As I said above, despite the initial progress Somalis were allowed to make without a central government for several years, and even if it had continued prospering under anarchy up until now with no military intervention, I probably wouldn’t want to live there. I like my home and its culture and material comforts. Socialist and increasingly fascist though it is, I’d much rather live in the United States or western Europe than in Somalia. And Somalis would probably rather live in their country and be left alone by militant, “democratic” powers. They would be better off if they had been, either from the very beginning or since 1991. A commitment to military-backed democratic government—Statism—has hurt millions of Somalis and not helped anyone but politicians and jihadists. A commitment to freedom, local customary law, and the lack of legalized/systematized coercion—anarchism—could have done much better.