By Michael A. Weinstein
What does 2011 hold in store for Somalia’s politics?
That is the question that I will address here within the context provided by Somali intellectuals who witness their country's fragmentation and, like some, have compared Somalia to the English nursery‐rhyme character Humpty‐Dumpty...... Is Somalia salvageable? they ask.
Somalia does not exist presently as a political subject, a political actor in the world that pursues interests by deploying power, has an organization that creates an internal order and is a player at the international table. Post‐independence Somalia was a political subject; it lost that status in 1991, after the fall of Siad Barre’s dictatorship, when its factions were unable to agree on a power‐sharing formula that would keep them within a unit, when Humpty‐Dumpty took the plunge. Since then political Somalia has become an imaginary, an idea of reclaiming what once was and rectifying the mistakes that destroyed it.
Is Somalia salvageable? An analyst cannot even begin to answer that question. “Ifs” are all that an analyst can offer. If one actor becomes sufficiently coherent and powerful to impose itself on the others, then Somalia might become a political subject again. Alternatively, if enough factions reconciled with one another, Somalia might be salvaged. If external actors/powers/players let Somalia coalesce either by force or consensus, Somalia might exist in the perceptual political word. What an analyst can attempt to do is to assess what analyst‐theorist Ahmed Egal calls the fundamental and basic dynamics of “fission” and “fusion” in politics – are factions/units tending to divide or unite? Are their interests convergent or divergent? What is the balance of power among the actors? Solidarity and division; strength and weakness.
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