Who wants Somalia?!

By Meshary Alruwaih,
      April 16 2009

During modern times, when one talks of piracy, we automatically allude to a scene from a movie that has usual accessories of a black flag with a skull and two bones, a wooden leg and an eye-patch. We always thought that we were born and raised within the confines of a well-established international system and complex networks of regimes that incorporate codified and institutionalized regimes of international shipping, through an international law and international organizations like the International Marit
ime Organization, and a super power who is ready to punish those who do not respect the rules of the system. In short, we take the neatness of movement of goods and people through the units of the system for granted.

After more than 350 years of the Peace of Westphalia, speaking of the world as an international system divided between sovereign states becomes second nature. We seem to forget that this image of unit-based system is actually a vast territory where each group or collection of people are endowed with a social project to institutionalize their relationship and build a functioning society that can first serve themselves and enable them to conduct their foreign relations coherently with others.

But it seems that not every collection of people can manage these rather challenging responsibility, especially in this region where colonization has intervened in the process of creating and sustaining intimacy between a group and its space -- a process that is a basic requirement for the creation of national identity and national institutions.

Conventional wisdom directs us to think beyond the security situation off the coasts of Somalia, and look at the political, economic, and social problems of that troubled place. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing like Somalia, what is Somalia? What is the identity of Somalia? Where are the roots of building Somalian institutions and Somalian state? Somalia is simply a crack in the system. This is the reality of Somalia, but this realistic view it brings with it certain normative bias to legitimize fo
reign intervention and nation-buildings operations that will inevitably require foreign troops...But again foreign to what?

Where should those 'foreigners' come from? the hegemony? Well any involvement by the US or western powers will be categorized as another round of domination in an Islamic land. Africans have tried and failed. Clearly, China is interested but they will never go as far as committing to a truly exhausting nation-building operation.

Russia is corrupt itself and cannot be trusted with such operations that necessarily involve ethical dimension. Muslims? Since this mess is in their backyard, actually in their own home, but there is no Muslim nation-state, organization, or actor of any sort that is capable or willing to take such commitment which requires confidence and standing on global stage. Believe it or not, when we talk about 'Islamic actors' Al-Qaeda might be the most talented one on world stage, one that is so skilled at filling
cracks and holes of the international system, but Al-Qaeda is a force of destruction not construction!

Email: meshary@kuwaittimes.net