From the CIAO Atlas Map of Africa 

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An Indigenous Perspective on the New World Order: The Rule of Law and Somalia

Pietro Toggia and Pat Lauderdale 1

International Studies Association.

March 1998

Introduction

In the "New World Order", Somalia is characterized as a deviant society, especially by Western countries. This characterization is amplified by a focus upon armed conflicts among different groups in Somalia and is marked by a neglect of global forces and history, including indigenous perspectives. The benchmark for judging the nature and scale of the crisis in Somalia is the condition of statelessness, which is measured by the absence of a central political authority and the modern claim to an ostensible universal rule of law. The effective operation of a central state is considered a universal measuring scale for stability, a yardstick employed by the New World Order (cf. Gills and Rocamora, 1992; Hollinger, 1994).

While the New World Order can be traced to the breakup of the bipolar configuration of power some twenty years ago, the Gulf War was touted as the implementation of that Order. The early 1990s often are viewed as the watershed for the emergence of the New World Order, especially the rhetoric of the "Gulf War." The Order is characterized by global hegemony, the increasing role of the United Nations in advancing foreign policy, military interventions under the guise of peacekeeping, and the acceleration of a market economy ostensibly directed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The global hegemony touts Western values and typically suggests that the world today is faced with a choice between homogenous globalization (vulgarized as McWorld) and secessionist self-determination (vulgarized as Jihad), despite the enormous complexity belying this false dichotomy (Lauderdale, 1997).

Since its independence in 1960, Somalia has been identified as a deviant society, even by countries throughout Africa. This negative dismissal, in part, stems from its defiance of the OAU charter that sanctifies the existing borders of African countries. Somalia's nation state, however, has made territorial claims over all the neighboring territories inhabited by the Somali people, notably, against Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

Ethiopian scholars such as Wolde-Mariam (1977) portray Somalia as deviant even in their book titles, e.g., Somalia: A Problem Child of Africa (following the war with Ethiopia in the Ogaden region). Somalia is not only defined as deviant but also its people are depicted as incapable of solving their own problems. The people are identified with the "old" world --- the world of tribalism and clans, disorder and continual conflict --- rather than the new world --- the world of radical and atomistic individualism, and the modern state, ordered through the rule of law and conflict resolution (cf. Lauderdale and Cruit, 1993).

Such discourse lends to the legitimacy of external intervention, for example, by the United States officially sanctioned by the United Nations. While this intervention has enabled relief food for the hungry to be delivered in the short run, it also has expanded the pervasive image of Somalia as a barbarian nation and led to long term problems that have exacerbated human survival, freedom, and self-determination. As Abdi Samatar notes:

The logic of the traditionalist discourse leads to the conclusion that the trouble with Somalia is the nature of its culture, grounded in the clan system, with cruel individuals, proving divisive for projects of modern nation-building. However, this approach offers no answer to the following question: Since the lineage system has been part of Somali social organisation for centuries, why has this society not engaged in nihilistic fratricide before? Surely, there must have been power- seeking individuals in the past ? (Samatar, 1992: 629)

In essence, as the New World Order puts Somalia on trial, along with Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Haiti among others, and becomes enmeshed in their crises, historical and world system factors largely have been ignored. At least, the New World Order and its reliance on one version of the Enlightenment Project, which focuses upon the dogmas rather than the ethos of the Project, must assume a major degree of responsibility for the characterization of Somalia as demonic and its clan leaders as devils. 2 The Order ignores, for example, the Enlightenment's search for honesty, probity, criticism, and analysis as it homogeneously imposes its control through facades of democracy, and often by economic blackmail or military force (von Werlhof, 1991; Hollinger, 1994). While postmodern and poststructural analyses have been useful in explicating both the advantages and disadvantages of enlightenment doctrine (Hollinger, 1994), they suffer from two distinct problems. First, the analyses have focused upon symbolic considerations often to the exclusion of political economic factors. Second, discourse analyses typically are scathingly critical of elites and/or exclusion by elites, yet the analytical language employed has become for the most part itself exceedingly elite and exclusive.

In the following discussion, we examine the dominant view of the Somali people and the sources of the problem in Somalia. We attempt to clarify and extend previous critiques of the dominant perspective, and suggest an alternative view that implies a different response to such a crisis. We suggest that comments and calls for action on crises such as the one focused upon by the New World Order in Somalia need to be considered in light of similar attempts to "normalize or develop" other indigenous peoples, e.g., the experiences of and reactions to some North American Indians and their impact on dominant world view and policy (Nagel, 1997). In general, the crises experienced by indigenous peoples reveal one of the most obvious contradictions of The New World Order: an ostensible commitment to formal and abstract equality and another to substantive identities such as national ones in the name of which forms of exclusion and inequality are licensed (Maxted and Zegeye, 1997).

The New World Order through the Enlightenment

The New World Order employing only part of Enlightenment discourse continues stressing sameness and similarity across the human condition rather than diversity. Under the rubric of rationality there is the claim that the Order will pull in those who have traditionally been excluded, leading to an eventual melting pot where identity maintenance is minimal, since identity transformation is archaic or unrecognized. "Emancipation," and "rational social order" are central and interrelated concepts of the project with an undefined or varying concept of democracy touted as central. Democracy for the Order typically is a rhetorical device for maintaining or gaining power, and often the reality is "elite democracy" as local elites compete with one another for power while attempting to service local capital and the requirements of international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Or, it is the imposition of external control without local participation. Democracy was ignored by the Order for "economic and strategic self-interest" in Iraq and Kuwait (Gills and Rocamora, 1992: 523).

There also have been overtures to the strength of "difference" from organizations presented as universal such as the United Nations. However, the original meaning of diversity contained and practiced within indigenous cultures of the world, for example, usually has been damned to the specter of deviance often shaded with demonic labels such as "savage" or "tribal." This domination of diversity can not be ignored by introducing dialectical nuances into the scheme or being "for" or "against" The New World Order or the Enlightenment (Foucault, 1984: 43).

Domination of nature, and derivatively domination of humans and their behavior, was not the end objective of the Enlightenment. Rather, a means for "human emancipation" from scarcity and the eradication of the supposed "arbitrariness" of nature were central goals. An unintended consequence of the Enlightenment's "emancipation" scheme, however, was that it opened the possibility of the self-alienation of humans from nature, from their own labor and from other human beings, the oppression and exploitation of human by human, and the destruction of what is now called the natural environment. Despite these severe setbacks under modernity, progress was proclaimed through the sleight of hand of powerful new technologies that purport to free up more time for humans. Yet, many cultures with the most "leisure" time have had the lowest levels of technology. Similarly, the claim that human conflict was being resolved appears to be conflict management or denial (cf. Gurr, 1994, especially pages 365-367). In such presumption of progress, no one seems to be certain (including Enlightenment optimists) whether humans are encapsulating themselves in light or darkness. Blind faith in the dogmas of enlightenment, rather than a focus upon its ethos, is taken as an antidote to darkness and uncertain apocalypse.

The implementation of homogenous agendas of social and policy sciences and a hegemonic emergence of law are seen as instrumental to the creation of "rational order" in society. The myth of law, in Gramscian terms a "civil religion" under Enlightenment, is substituted for religious myths. We now find atheists practicing the religious rituals of science as they simultaneously attempt to kill any and all god(s) or substitute the rational order of egoism and its sacred ceremonies for those religious ones they view as profane. The creation of "rational order" entails the construction of homogeneous nation-states, national identities, centralized bureaucracies, unified legal systems with a set of formal laws, and the institutionalization of market capitalism as "the" rational economic system (Thomas et al., 1987). Under The Order's criteria these indices are considered to measure the stability and orderliness of a society. They are contrived to represent "civilized society". The existence of a state, which centrally enforces all these features under a "rule of law" is considered an active agent of The Order, and "in modernity, social and political stability is viewed as a result of 'law and order'"(Lauderdale, 1994:4). Therefore, one of the primary functions of the state is to maintain this political stability and enforce "law and order".

The New World Order operates to enforce an idealized conception of law and order over all of the states within the political economy of the world system. Even in legal discourse which acknowledges the politics of law and trials, the "rule of law" is presented as if it is value-free, neutral, and transcending institutionalized power relationships (Christenson, 1992). The "rule of law" is elevated tacitly as a universal benchmark to identify and classify deviance and trials in all societies, regardless of specific traditional polities. Balibar, albeit in a social class tone rather than mode of production analysis, notes that: the law is a system of rules, i.e., of material constraints, to which individuals are subjected. Legal ideology interprets and legitimizes this constraint, presenting it as a natural necessity inscribed in human nature and in the needs of society in general. The legal ideology proves that the social order is not based on the existence of classes but precisely on that of individuals to which the law addresses itself. Its highest point in the legal representation is the state." (1987:739-740; cf. Thompson, 1987:64-67).

One of the central problems with the concept of the rule of law is that it does not explain change in law or the differential application of law. The relationship between changes in modes of production and legal rules remains obfuscated by simply invoking the sacredness of the rule of law. The rule of law does not explain how concepts of legal equality have changed, e.g., legal status based on gender, ethnicity, race, age, or how exogenous factors will change it (Inverarity et al, 1983). Also, it does not inform us regarding, for example, such issues as discretion in enforcement or punishment, rather than to tell us about the form of the legal framework. The rule of law which requires that law simply be applied prospectively conflicts with natural law which "requires moral responsibility which cannot be excused through compliance with immoral positive law" (Adams, 1993: 312).

Ironically, the supposed new discovery of things and historical meanings by The Order is usually only "rediscovery" (Lauderdale, 1994). Indigenous people long ago implemented "civil law", "principles of confederation" and practiced civilization long before the late "discovery" of them by modernity (1994:10-11). Moreover, brazenly propagated is "the discovery" of indigenous people, whose existence and civilization long predated modernity, as "history." Their ancient civilization and history also were viewed either as "primitive" or "prehistory". Most importantly, it must be noted that despite being enmeshed in "endless internal ruptures and fragmentations", the New World Order endeavors to establish "universal order," a presumed "order" which itself inherently lacks. The catastrophic conflicts among the various alternative systems (Democracy, Fascism, Socialism) attest to these "ruptures and fragmentations", as was tragically manifested in the two world wars, social and national revolutions, and state repressions against dissidents. The tragic consequences of these handful of events are unprecedented in the history of the whole world. The two world wars, which claimed some 57 million lives, were basically European wars that were universalized throughout the globe. At the world level, the rule of law is suspended in debates over just versus unjust wars, and at the nation-state level the rule of law becomes a chimera as it variously labels dissidents as terrorists and bans the label of state terrorism, except of course, for use by effete intellectual snobs (Oliverio, 1998). Such actions raise serious questions about the ability of the New World Order to satisfy its commitments. Ironically, the agents of the New World Order view non-European traditional societies not only as "barbarian and primitive," but also living in perpetual chaos and disorder.

Vine Deloria observes that "in the [ostensibly] appalling indices of social disorder of the tribal peoples Westerners see only continued disruption and, being unaccustomed to viewing life as a totality, cannot understand the persistence of the tribal peoples in preserving their communities, lands and religions" (1973:300). This indigenous view includes not simply tolerance, but respect for diversity (which often is redefined as disorder). The indices, based upon Western ethnocentric construction of the concepts of disorder rather than diversity, now are being employed by the New World Order as justifications for extermination under the facade of progress. Similarly, Walter Rodney argues in his analysis of how Europe underdeveloped Africa that:

tribalism is understood by Europeans to mean that each tribe still retains a fundamental hostility towards its neighboring tribes... their accounts suggest that Europeans tried to make a nation out of the tribes, but they failed, because the various tribes had their age-long hatreds; and, as soon as the colonial power went, the nations returned to killing each other. To this phenomenon, Europeans often attach the word 'atavism', to carry the notion that Africans were returning to this primitive savagery. Even a cursory survey of the African past shows that such assertions are the exact opposite of the truth (1982:227).

Somalia: A Nation Conceived for Crisis

The Somalis are indigenous people in the Horn of Africa (East Africa) who have inhabited that part of the region since 500 B.C.; their name is derived from "Samaale," who was the legendary founder of the major pastoral clan families. Their population is estimated around 6 million, currently residing in Somalia "proper," Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti.

Two-thirds of Somalis are pastoralists, who herd camels, goats, cattle, and sheep to support their lives. Their pastoral occupation seems to be determined by the dry land, hot climate, and scarcity of water in the region. Except along the banks of the two main rivers (Juba and Shebelle), the soil is not suitable for agriculture and therefore hardly cultivable. The Somali pastoralists follow their annual migratory cycles, they remain with their herds in the pasture of the hinterland during the rainy season (October - November) and spend the remaining months in the proximity of the Red Sea shores, where water holes are located. Said Samatar and David Leitin note that: in this land of hardy vegetation, steaming sand dunes, and sun-baked coastal plains, the Somalis have evolved during the centuries a way of life peculiarly suited to their demanding environment: on the one hand, a trans-human pastoralism designed to maximize the meager resources of water wells and pasturelands for the pastoralists and their herds and, on the other, a social organization that encourages collective action and mutual aid (Samatar and Leitin, 1987:22).

Somali's pastoral life is symbolized by the camel; the camel holds a central place not only in the economic sphere but in the cultural expressions of the Somalis. Somalis use the camel as a term of reference in their poetry, songs, and political vocabularies. Moreover, camels are used as a medium of exchange, including as a form of payment for "blood money." Somalis call the camel the "mother of man." Two milch-camels support a family of ten with their nutritious milk. The "place" of the camel is understandable in the diversity of other cultures. For many North American Indians the buffalo was central to their symbolic and ceremonial life often having a place in creation traditions (Thornton, 1987). Josephy (1984: 89) notes that, for example, in 1978, various Plains tribal members still needed buffalo meat for specific religious feasts: "Some ceremonies require the presence of a live buffalo among the participants." 3

Unlike many African indigenous peoples, whose differences and conflicts stem from ethnic segmentation and the struggle for power, the Somalis are people of the same ethnicity. They speak the same Somali language and preponderantly have followed Islam as a religious faith since the twelfth century. However, the Somalis are segmented among lineages, which is an organizing principle of clan life. There are six major clans (Dir, Hawiye, Isaaq, Darood, Digil, and Rahanwayan) and approximately 56 sub-clans. Samatar and Leitin observe that "genealogy constitutes the heart of the Somali social system and is the basis of the Somali collective predilection to internal fissions and internecine sectionary conflicts as well as of the unity of thought and action among Somalis - a unity that borders on xenophobia" (1987:29). The Somalis' primary allegiance is to their respective clans and sub-clans; and their identities are also derived from such clan affiliation. An individual is identified as a Somali only after becoming a member of a certain clan. The clan system has its own defense mechanisms based on clan solidarity or clannish exclusivity from outside threats or penetration (cf. Samatar and Leitin, 1987:31). In contrast, using the concept of kinship rather than simply clan, Abdi Samatar states that:

The significance of the household economy in pre-colonial Somali social life rested, at least to a great extent, on the fact that very few were not engaged in productive activity, and they certainly did not dominate the affairs of the community. In fact, those who were not productive, and consequently unable to care for their households, had no standing in the community, let alone the ability to command any authority. In other words, being a competent pastoral manager or good peasant was a necessary prerequisite for any leadership position (1992: 639).

The "Old" New World Order was introduced directly to Somalia via European colonialism in 1889. The introduction included forceful occupation of the region and subjugation of the people by armed force. First the Italians (in 1889), and subsequently the British (1899) and the French (1900) carved the region into four pieces and began their colonization, a process which was euphemistically termed as "the civilizing mission" of the "primitive natives". That decade was a period when the colonizing project by European powers continued under the rubric of "the Scramble for Africa" following their conference in Berlin in 1884.

Sir Henry Maine in his study of the development of law discusses how Roman law in its concept of 'occupatio' developed into a law to justify and preserve the acquisition of private property, such as land. According to this legal principle, every thing must have an owner; if anything does not, it may be claimed by the first occupant (Maine, 1909). However, when it came to "acquiring" (colonizing) colonies, the colonizers needed an expediting fiction, or a "legal fiction", which manifested itself in the contrived hierarchization of "civilized citizens" and "primitive natives" (Lauderdale, 1994:15). The mythology of modern law was reinforced by portraying "the primitive, to take a figure of the other, [as] uncontrolled, fickle, irresponsible, of nature...The European is disciplined, constant, self-responsible, of culture, and so on" (Fitzpatrick, 1992: 30). Variation in positive or stigmatizing identity was also contingent upon numerous forms of economic organization, labor control, and symbolic concern. Consider the instance of primitive accumulation of indigenous food:

The British did not own the means of propagating such crops. This technicality did not deter them. They simply refused to recognize any proprietary rights of the people or even of the rulers of these peripheral lands. The plant explorers were charged with obtaining the plants by any means possible... (Perelman, 1983: 17). And, grazing land which was communally owned by indigenous people was considered devoid of legal titles and the indigenous people left without any entitlement to ownership. Moreover, under such classification, the dispossession of territories from the indigenous people was justified as liberating the land for productive use, which otherwise was perceived as lying fallow and being valueless under the hands of "lethargic primitives". Thus, colonial acquisition and capitalist privatization of land and other natural resource were "legally" sanctified while forcefully instituted to be commodified as any other product, mediated only through the fetishism of money.

Land and its sacred identity of place was negated by the colonists with propriety of ownership and production becoming the central concept. On the contrary, indigenous people, as Vine Deloria notes, have "spiritual unity" with the land they inhabit and honor its sacredness (1973:295). Interestingly, in this century we find liberation theologians primarily in Central America calling for land to revert to those people who work it, rather than simply own it, and subsequently we find peasants and indigenous people suggesting that their work "with" the land is sacred (Lauderdale, 1994; 1997). Yet, there as in Haiti where Aristide spoke of a similar theology of liberation in the early 1990s, the theology typically was rationalized away by the New World Order by reducing it to a communist identity despite the obvious conundrum of the spirit of communism. Aristide's religious work often was identified as undemocractic, rather than communitarian or spiritual. As the Order tried to impose its dogma and "develop" the North American Indians and the Central American Indians and peasants, it now returns to other places such as Haiti with hopes of transforming the identity of Aristide and the Haitians. Yet, land, especially the relationship of its meaning to social identity in places such as Haiti and Somalia, remains unresolved.

The control of the definition of land also is central to other concepts such as discovery or development. For example, Benjamin Franklin, who often is resurrected as a paragon of the Enlightenment vision, "rationalized" colonization by asserting that colonialists who acquire land, even by forcefully removing "the natives" if necessary, "may be properly called the fathers of the nation" (Hunt,1987:47). This so-called development process is one way the legendary European "founding fathers" were concocted, who otherwise, in the eyes of the indigenous people, were often exploiters or demolishers of traditional societies. And, the British colonial powers projected onto their "civilizing mission" an ironic feature when they proclaimed that their colonial presence in Somalia induced an industrial revolution. What otherwise sounds as an immaculate implanting of an "industrial revolution" there was nothing but the production of candles, matches, bottle corks, wine, and rum (British Military Administration, 1944: 62).

Regional partitioning by European colonialism and the implantation of a colonial state engendered the perpetual disruption of the normal economic cycle and social life of the Somali pastoralists. During colonial rule the Somalis were considered colonial subjects, and were racially segregated. The majority of Somalis, not having contact with the colonial administration, became increasingly alienated. Only an elite portion had access to modern formal education and administrative positions. Elite implementation of the institutionalization of private property directly negated their traditional communal land ownership system. Under the traditional "economy" of the Somalis, the "household was a basic unit of cattle ownership; whereas the grazing lands and water resources were collectively utilized by the members of the clan" (A. Samatar, 1989: 16). Much of the fertile agricultural land and the grazing land with the water holes fell under the control of the colonial administration or was designated as enticement for European colonial settlers. Similarly, once the livestock export began to generate revenue for the colony, this commodification process pulled the self-sufficient pastoralists into a dependent relationship with the domestic and international market (cf. von Werlhof, 1991). Dependency was compounded by the demarcation and enforcement of international borders, which inhibited the free movement of the pastoral people and so disrupted their occupation. Wallerstein cogently remarks that: the political boundaries were drawn primarily to include as much territory as could be conquered or negotiated diplomatically. Since the lines were established by each European power essentially out of fear of a claim of sovereignty by another European power, they were frequently arbitrary in terms of the previous lines drawn by the African states now enclosed or divided." (1986:16).

There was not only conquest (called 'pacification'), but there was also the deliberate disruption of existing social organizations similar to the disruption and conquest of American indigenous people by European colonialists. Hunt observes that "white Americans had not inherited the fabled empty continent, rather by their presence and policies, they had emptied it" (1987:53).

Justification for colonialism was claimed by identifying the Somalis as people with "inherent lawlessness," and with a benign racist label, in strikingly similar fashion to the characterization of North American Indians by Europeans as "noble savages." The characterization of a "handsome, unreliable race" was imputed to the Somalis (British Military Administration, 1944: 49-50). The colonial period in Somalia was marked by the resistance of the indigenous people. Somalis notably struggled under the leadership of a religious leader and a famous poet, Hassan Abdille, from around 1900 until 1920. Abdille strongly resisted the British and the Italian colonialists through armed struggle. The British referred to him as the "mad mullah". The label seemed to originate in view of how "primitive" indigenous people could resist a "benevolent civilizing mission" unless they are totally psychotic, much as the European labeling of indigenous North Americans as "savages" stemmed from indigenous resistance (Nagel, 1997). Part of the resistance was directed at the manner in which Europeans identified what type of order was the defining criteria of civilization. 4 A central component of the new order is the separation of humanity from nature with the human identity constructed as capable of order and nature as naturally disordered. Vine Deloria observes that Europeans could not understand the persistence of the indigenous people and their insistence on the preservation of land and a traditional way of life (1973). Nontheless, Despite numerous attempts of holocaust proportion to destroy these indigenous people, they have persisted. Their social organization and cultural values based on thousands of years of learning the lessons of nature and are central to this persistence. These lessons were ignored and suffocated by colonizers who prefer to be called modern people (Lauderdale, 1994:15).

Somalis also incessantly resisted the political, economic, and cultural domination of Europeans and their claims to homogenous order (see, Samatar and Leitin, 1987:42). The Somalis opposed, for example, all forms of Italian and British rule, including colonial legal systems that held individuals as culpable and defined political resistance as a crime. Under indigenous law, individuals were not culpable for their offenses, rather the "dia-paying" group was collectively accountable, and political resistance was a civil matter to be mediated by elderly councils. When Somalia finally achieved its independence as a nation in 1960, there were only a few Somalis who were able to work successfully in the centralized bureaucratic administration, inherited from colonialism. The construction of a unified Somali nation, organized under a central state, and its continuation in the post-colonial era was the work of colonial powers. The colonial powers, however, did not differentiate between the commitment to formal and abstract equality, and the one to homogenous substantive identities such as national citizenship that resulted in the licensing of exclusion with varying degrees of stigma. Family loyalty, for example, was redefined negatively as non-rational attachment to kin-ship and then amplified by proclaiming that kinship, often defined as clan, worked against national interests. Somali nationalism seemed more a product of the Enlightenment's dogmas than the concern of Somali aspiration. After an experience of two elections and a parliamentary state of eight years, Somalia fell under General Siad Barre's military dictatorship in 1969. Siad Barre ruled Somalia with an iron-fist through his ruling party, the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, for the ensuing 22 years until he was overthrown in January 1991.

The characterization of "Third World" states as the vehicle of nationhood by O'Donnel (1987) also applies to Somalia's state under General Siad Barre. "The state in the 'Third World' is a profoundly unrepresentative entity (to its colonial origins) whose historical mission is to be the agent that produces a synthesis of what is a heterogeneous civil society. It has meant a creation of a nationhood" (1987:213). In short, the central state in Somalia with its homogenizing mission through crushing people into the "national" mold is incompatible with the freedom- loving and heterogeneously kin-based Somalis. Inversely, what had been witnessed in post-independence Somalia was the utilization of the state as a center vying for power and resources among the different clan leaders. The extension of the traditional rivalry among the different clans within the centralized state creates conflict over the allocation of political power and the use of national resources (Doornbus, 1993).

General Barre's rule in the 1970s and 1980s usually was characterized as stable from the perspective of the Western core countries. This view emanated from the middle of the cold war period with considerable military assistance from the former U.S.S.R. and the U. S. and was based upon Barre's shift of alliances between the two military super-powers. The Soviet Union, for example, was a strong ally and major supplier of arms to General Barre until 1977. Between 1967 and 1976 Somalia imported $181 million worth of arms from the U.S.S.R. (Lefebvre, 1991: 44). However, when the U.S.S.R. shifted its alliance to Ethiopia, Somalia turned to the U. S. and found an ally whose preoccupation was to check the influence of the U.S.S.R. in the Persian Gulf region. In 1980, the U.S. signed an agreement with the same dictator, General Barre, an accord based on access- arms exchange. Over the next seven years Somalia purchased $500 million worth of arms from the U. S. (Lefebvre, 1991: 241).

Domestically, Barre maintained his power by brutally silencing his opponents and relying on his Darod clan, and its Marehan sub-clan. In 1988 10,000 people were killed and 110,000 fled to Ethiopia as the conflict escalated between Barre's regime and the opposing clans. In the late 1980s, however, his military disintegrated into different clan militias, the civil service was in disarray, and his cabinet vied for fragmented power and depleted resources. Despite promises for constitutional review, elections, and legalization of parties between 1989 and 1990, General Barre was overthrown in January 1991. Subsequently, a civil war intensified among the different clan-based political factions. During this civil war, from May 1988 to December 1989, according to Africa Watch, between 50,000 and 60,000 civilians died (Makinda, 1992).

Political parties in Somalia are based on new clan allegiances. The conflict among the different political parties is the reflection of tension among the different clans and novel economic interests and political views engendered by the New World Order. There is infighting within the same clans among the fragmented army units and their respective political parties. For instance, the Hawiye clan-based United Somali Congress party took power in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in the wake of General Barre's flight. The Hawiye clan has six sub-clans in central Somalia, two of which (Abgal and Habr Gedir) are bitter enemies. General Aideed leads the Habr Gedir sub-clan and Mohammed "Bod" the Abgal one. The Northern part of Somalia under the Isaaq clan-based Somali National Movement formed its own separate state in May 1991. The large scale conflict in 1991 was an eruption of the hidden and gradual crisis emerging from the inception of the unified and repressive nation state.

The crisis in Somalia was conceived within the formation of the centralized nation-state under which all the different clans were forcefully enclosed. The gradual build-up of the crisis was not detected by the chevaliers of The Order (including the foreign policy makers of the U. S. and the former U.S.S.R.) due to their overriding concern for world hegemony and geopolitical domination. It is ironic that the ostensibly united Somalia of 1960 under one central state was deserted by all foreign powers when it exploded in the crisis of 1991. Initially, the United Nations and the U.S. minimized their public involvement in Somalia and the U.S. did not fully enter the conflict until December of 1992 when it announced that U.S. troops would arrive to protect food convoys sent to the starving nation. The U.S. approach to resolve the conflict had been within the New World Order, a scheme re-constructed by the Reagan and Bush administrations. The re-packaged New World Order, designed under such thin veils as "the rule of law," "peace," "stability," "world democracy," and "equal sovereignty rights", is "a crusading movement" to promote world hegemony (cf. Augelli and Murphy, 1988). This new form of (post Cold War) global expansion intends to recreate the world after the images of the New Order's system of governance and open market economy. International institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF are part of the global hegemony working as instruments of rationalization to realize these two basic interests (see, Lefebvre 1991: 275 on international financial institutions, bi-lateral development assistance, and the policing role of the U.N.). More generally, core countries that strive for world hegemony will continue to attempt to use the U.N. as the peace keeper. Under such a New World Order the notion of "equal sovereignty rights" of states is designed at least to console Third World countries, or at most is simply a hegemonic facade, to help veil domination (Krasner,1985:62).

As the world turns, so has the hegemony created by world powers. Whether economic and political control at the world level has been largely in the hands of the Spanish or the English, or other countries and confederations at other times (cf. Gills and Gunder Frank, 1992), hegemony has been a central factor in obscuring social science accuracy. The claim that globalization, touted as a primary force in the new world order, is new or that it will develop the underdeveloped nations is misleading (Abu-Lughod, 1989; Woodward, 1996). The enlightenment hegemony of Europe employed by various nations has shed little light, but much friction upon Somalia and the new world disorder. This (dis)order is reflected in Gramsci's observation that the old order is dead, but the new order cannot yet be born.

Closing Argument: Why the New World Order Should be Culpable

A conceptual scheme that ignored diversity underscored the formation of a central state in Somalia. The internal conflicts among the segmented clans are now concentrated and amplified in the arena of the pervasive state, a conflict which was mainly engendered by competition over resources and power, and exacerbated by the intrusion of the homogenous demands of the New World Order. The conflict intensified in a short span of time into a larger scale, involving virtually all of the clans in Somalia. This conflict and the ensuing crisis is unprecedented in the history of the Somali people. The Order facilitated chaos in Somalia. In this respect, we clearly disagree with scholars who attribute the cause of the crisis principally to the internal clan segmentation itself. Similarly, Makinda's attribution of Barre's dictatorial rule alone as the root of the tragedy is inadequate for explaining the endemic crisis in Somalia; the argument does not explain why "there was no mechanism for resolving internal conflict" (Makinda, 1993: 12). Disregarding the destruction of kinship, ignoring or minimizing the role of the world's political economy, and under the cloak of homogeneity, diversity has been reduced to the label of "deviance."

Second, The introduction of The "Order" via large scale military technology with the attendant institutionalized violence (standing army), directly contributed to the intensification and magnification of violence as a modality of ostensible conflict resolution (Lauderdale and Cruit, 1993). It also induced the destruction of human lives and impoverishment of people.

Third, Somalis could not turn to their traditional institutions to negotiate their conflict peacefully and administer their lives self- sufficiently, since their policies were incapacitated by the domination of the central state and its bureaucracy for one hundred years. The basis of "pre-colonial social justice was the self-reliance of the household, coupled with systemic checks on those who wanted to aid the resources of others" (A. Samatar, 1992:640). Moreover, during the past hundred years, the authority of the informal social contract called "heer," which binds each member of a clan to one another and regulates relationships with other clans, increasingly has been eroded. Similarly, the all-adult assembly, called the "Shir," which is accessible to the participation of all clan members and peacefully mediates conflicts among clans, was emasculated. The traditional justice system that holds groups culpable (which rendered collective social responsibility and deterrence) was centrally challenged by the system of individual liability, thereby diminishing its significance and effectiveness (cf. Oliverio and Lauderdale, 1990).

Finally, the Somali political and military leaders increasingly are modern elites who emerged from alien political, military, and economic institutions that were transplanted by Enlightenment dogmas. As they are formally educated, trained and acculturated individuals, they are the products of Enlightenment's culture and soldiers of the New World Order. Their concern, and the modalities they employ, to identify Somali problems and the management rather than resolution of crises is within the Order's paradigm - the central state, military violence, and the market economic framework of the world system. It should be remembered that: At no time in the recent history of Somalia has nearly one-third to one-half of the population died or been in danger of perishing due to famine caused by civil war (A. Samatar, 1992: 625).

In the summer of 1993, the fifteen Somali political factions were involved in the process of negotiation in Addis Ababa, with the United States as the principal mediator. However, claims of conflict resolution began fading over the summer of 1994. The Security Council of the United Nations decided on September 30, 1994, to leave its troops in Somalia only one more month, but the U.S. refused to support the latest extension of the Order. The Security Council set a condition that unless the warring clan factions ceased their fighting, the U.N. would abandon Somalia entirely. 5 This abrupt resolution again challenged the Order of the New World, especially in the face of the seemingly continual eruption of crises throughout the world. And, to the extent that the U.N. represents the New World Order, it may be impossible to keep the Order on trial as it positions itself once again to move to other jurisdictions, or claims that no current law covers its current jurisdiction.

In December of 1997, three of the faction leaders, Ali Mahdi, Hussein Aidid, and Osman Atto signed a peace agreement in Cairo. Although over a dozen similar pacts have been created in the past, there is some hope that recent meetings in Mogadishu will implement this one. Mogadishu has closed its checkpoints. And the current meetings were governed by Egyptians who seem to have some insight into the deeper problems. Yet, sporadic fights continue among other factions and the Somaliland Republic in the North has not endorsed the peace agreement.

The attempted replacement of sacred place and kinship identity of Somalis with the identity of the New World Order that emphasizes rational (self-interested) and egoistic (self-maximizing) individuals, i.e., atomistic individualism (Goldberg, 1994: 37), has led not to a melting pot, but a boiling pot. Yet, it appears once again, that most Somalis do not identify with the concept of an atomistic individual or highly abstract general terms such as the state or national citizen. The Somalis, as with many other ethnic and indigenous groups throughout the world, do not find a meaningful sense of life by being defined as a modern individual via the the state. Sustenance, solidarity, and security, for example, are located and identified with sacred places and extended families for many diverse groups such as the Somalis. Any viable alternative to disentangling Somalia from its current and future crises would benefit from recognition and accommodation to the traditional way of life and system of governance. Otherwise, the ostensible conflict resolution will be, at best, short-term and partial and, at worst, a facade.

References

Notes:

Note 1: We would like to thank Fausto Oliverio for providing us with his oral history regarding the relationship between Italy and Somalia. We thank Randall Amster, David Goldberg, and Annamarie Oliverio for their incisive comments on a number of drafts of this work and Andre Gunder Frank for providing essential background information. We also appreciate the useful critique by Raymond Corrado who attempted to define the limits on our criticisms of the Enlightenment Project. Back.

Note 2: Any analysis of the Enlightenment runs the risk of pandering to histories of the feudal period with pictures of crude struggles over scarce resources or the prattle of histories of the period with portrayals of simple but honorable lives. We accept the varying and clearly more formidable challenges provided by texts such as A Distant Mirror and In the Absence of the Sacred in this discussion.

We suggest that Enlightenment through the New World Order has two major inherent self-negations in its conception. The first is that it has been imposing its monolithic conceptual scheme in every part of the world, on societies with radically different social systems. This imposition principally takes the use of naked force or technologically bolstered mega- power violence, including and up to committing genocide. Or, it imposes itself hegemonically through diffusion of ideas and educational training (ideological), and through indirect rule by the cooptation of indigenous "modern elites", albeit in what Goldberg (1993: 104) terms a "universal reductionist" mode. Regardless of the way it imposes itself, the dogmas of the Enlightenment Project enforced by the Order has brought agonizing oppression and chronic disruption in the traditional lives of indigenous people. Secondly, Enlightenment via the Order not only has no respect for non-European traditions, but neither for its own (Harvey, 1989:11-12). Back.

Note 3: For numerous North American Indian Nations on the Great Plains, the buffalo was the source of clothing, housing, eating utensils, sleds, parfleche as a carryall, musical instruments, cosmetics, jewelry, armor, masks, and dung for fuel (cf. Thornton, 1987). Skins sometimes were used to record the events of a person's life in pictorial form. Some oral history suggests that the animal provided everything, except water and poles for housing. The most glaring example of animal reduction---probably the one most destructive to American Indians was the near extinction of the buffalo, which culminated during the last half of the 19th century, especially to the Plains Indians (Thornton, 1987: 51-52). For some of the Nations the sacred bundle was made of buffalo skin. Buffalo Gap in the southeastern part of the Black Hills now of South Dakota is the place where the buffalo came in spring which began the ceremonial year of the Plains Indians. Buffalo Gap has been seen as the starting point of the Great Race that determined the primacy between two legged and four legged creatures at the beginning of the world. Spiritual relationships with other animals and persons were associated with physical places such as Buffalo Gap (Deloria, 1973: 273). Back.

Note 4: The use of deviant or demonic labels is a common device for marginalizing or excluding protest. Calling a leader the "Mad Mullah" in Somalia or the "Red Devil" in Indian Country, U.S.A., is but one attempt. And, the demonic label often is attached to leaders who are perceived as having spiritual characteristics. In Elkswatawa or The Prophet of the West (1836), for example, as James Strange French tries to present the last stand of the Indian in Ohio country he reveals the demonization of the "spiritual" leaders and the ascription of savage in contrast to civilized identities. The practice also applies to the pejorative identification of entire cultures. North American history is replete with examples of attempts to identify Indians as savages (cf. Pearce, 1953; Kinietz, 1965). Yet, as Dennis Banks explained in his defense following criminal charges in "The Wounded Knee Trial," he was a Lakota. Lakota means "allies," while the word "Sioux" is French meaning "cut throat" (Christenson, 1986).

The power to control identity may constrain or otherwise direct action in areas where there are a number of possible courses of identification. The fight over an accurate historical record brings a variety of perspectives into the picture, including those people who are more concerned that indigenous people do not glorify their history. Baxter (1994: 174), for example, in commenting on the Oromo and political activists states that "it would be remarkable in the circumstances if a romanticized, primordial past were not fabricated." Back.

Note 5: In 1992, United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali chastised the U.N. Security Council for devoting disproportionate levels of attention and resources to the former Yugoslavia while paying little attention to the growing crisis in Somalia. He remarked that their focus was upon the rich people's war. His comment also has led to an examination of the issue of "race" in the U.N.'s varying response to such crises. Back.