The discourse of Somalia in academic literature portends that it has been conflict-ridden for a generation (forty years). This notion applies specifically to South-Central Somalia where an average of 5,000 conflict-related deaths were recorded between 2021 and 2022 (Acled, 2023). The northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland that were once ravaged by the same conflict have developed indigenous modes of conflict resolution and governance that have been effective since the 1990s and achieved some degree of stability and security. Unfortunately, the South-Central region has been unable to replicate this success story and this book examines the reasons for this. The forces behind South Somalia's current crisis are mainly external actors consisting of its neighbours Ethiopia, the African Union (AU) and the major powers of the west that set the parameters for global norms (Kyriakiakidis, 2012). These norms are hoisted on other regions of the world irrespective of historical experience, culture and social dynamics. Organisations involved in conflict management, the AU inclusive, keep with these rules. With the dependence of the AU on its western benefactors, it is difficult for the AU to carry out its task of providing security without first protecting and promoting these western interests. The intervention in Somalia that escalated and prolonged the crisis in the south-central region was borne out of this relationship between the AU and its benefactors. Sadly, the western narrative on the necessity of AU intervention in Somalia has dominated conflict literature, while that of the effective alternative approaches embodied in the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) remained unpopular. Unfortunately too, the writings of the greater number of African scholars pander to this dominant narrative.

Contrary to the dominant narrative peddled by the global media, this book adopts a Pan-African problem-solving approach, hinged on the ‘problems of a single story’ thesis, and questions the rationale behind the AU's peace enforcement in Somalia? What justification for intervention can be given in view of the fact that a viable political alternative espoused in the ICU, existed at the time? What are the prospects for the future of (South-Central) Somalia? How can the AU and its partners retrace their steps or foster peace in Somalia?

Introduction

The project of post-colonial thought and theory in Indian academia (through the Global scene) emerged as a critique and extension of left-wing thought, mainly through subaltern studies2 and its offshoots in the discipline of Historiography (and also in English language and literature studies), in the early 1980s (Roy Chowdhury, 2016). Indian version of post-colonial theory is aligned with the ideas of the new European left mainly Gramsci (and his Southern question) and blends it with poststructuralist ideas and notions of the power of Michel Foucault, and applies it to study history from below (Dhanagare 1988). Though largely emerging from new left consciousness, within the Indian cultural context it inhabits a nuanced ‘political’ position between liberals, the left, and the religious right, and it is deeply critical of Hindutva and that agenda (Chatterjee 1992; 2019).

Subaltern studies, a heterodoxy of the new left, primarily emerged from international experience of the imperialist aggression and orthodoxy of the international left, mainly the former Soviet Union that disenchanted many communist party members in India, who eventually left the party line.

In the Indian context, it criticises the left-wing orthodoxies of neglecting culture, tribes, caste, religiosity, gender and ecology thus bringing in a ‘cultural turn’ (Roy Chowdhury 2014).

However, in the last two decades and recently, post-colonial thought has been accused of making possible a right-wing argument and imagination about neo-traditionalist cultural revival in India mainly led by Hindu right-wing party such as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by creating a discursive space and clearing the political field by making revisionist history possible by closing the gap between positivist/empirical history and interpretive/mythical history by questioning the archival documents and power invested in it through a post-structuralist reading of history ‘against the grain’ (Sarkar 2000).

Certainly, that is an anachronistic argument, as right-wing Hindu political discourses emerged much earlier during British rule in religious reform and anticolonial movements (Pennington 2001). So the right-wing cultural arguments have longer lineages than the new left ideas, obviously.

The subaltern creativity that directs border thinking may be said to begin “from a point of breakage”—a point from which, unrectified potentials, and the symbols of the unconscious, can assert themselves over or against unifying ideologies, “fictive ethnicities,” or arbitrary, standardized expectations (Keating 2012: 11; Merçon 2014). In the freedom space created by the breakage, border artists often surprisingly access dimensions of the “whole self” that are suppressed or simply lost and unknown in more mainstream cultural contexts. Although artists’ border thinking may begin from a place of difference and distinction, their creative work often awakens a mediating intelligence that can potentially support more differentiated integrations as it challenges false universals.

In his opening essay in this volume, Ananta Kumar Giri helpfully distinguishes Mrinal Miri's approach to the subject of margins (2003) from that of Noel Parker (2009). The contrast between the two perspectives, and their possible complementarity, is useful for framing my arguments regarding the nature of subaltern creativity and the artist's border-crossing intelligence. As Giri explains, Miri views “the limits of discourse of margins” as a product of mainstream discourse and thus something that leaves the individual and society subject to a “point of breakage” because they are positioned “in the context of a pervasive and hierarchical dualism between margins and mainstreams.” Parker's work, however, which is based in part upon Deleuzian philosophy, affirms the liminal nature of marginality as “integral to any condition of life,” noting that the is-and-is not, in-between position can be particularly helpful in negotiating identities and differences.

This chapter considers the possibility of negotiating between these two positions: it applies an oscillating approach that engages both the limits and the possibilities of margins and their discourses. I develop the oscillating strategy by exploring culture itself as a holistic reality, and by distinguishing margin-mainstream dualisms from the inner conflicts and hierarchies that beset in-group members within a given marginalized group. While conceptualizing culture as the totality of all things may enrich our appreciation of Parker's view, the complex tension existing between margin and mainstream dualisms and in-group conflicts generates what Theophus Smith calls a “double-sidedness” that brings to the fore Miri's point regarding the limits of discourse of margins.

‘High Tech for the External Border’ is based on a radio documentary by Ralf Homann and our collaborative art-based research project The Better Think Tank Project – BTTP. The radio documentary ‘High Tech for the External Border’ was aired by German Radio ARD in a podcast for deep investigative approaches. The global border security market is prospering, and BTTP is always at the pulse of time! High Tech for the External Border deals with the externalization and outsourcing of border control from national governments to private firms. The absurdity of this concept is emphasized by using voices and quotes from the key actors. These actors are profiting from migration control and technologized borders but only as long as this form of officially unauthorized migration will continue as a threat to national security. In this respect, we can pose the question: does the European border regime conform more to the economic demands of a border security industry than a border police requirement or a humanitarian request?

Introduction

In our everyday lives, especially for adults, there is the need to be up to date with news in our communities, the larger society and the world. Beyond the need to know, there is the awareness that events that occur near or far away could have profound effects on our lives. This makes dependence on information outlets and the information media indispensable in our lives as we believe that what we hear is true and plan accordingly. There is the belief all over the world that what is conveyed into living rooms over tv and radio sets is true, and these fashion opinions, views, beliefs and convictions. This happens all over the world which implies that the power of the global media is massive as it shapes minds and convictions. When this force serves the parochial interests of states, rather than the facts as they really are, what happens? Do the news corporations ever think of the public trust vested in them, and the need to live up to that trust and present the facts as they are? If they did, would there ever be the issue of the ‘fake news’ phenomenon? How much damage does this do? Does the end justify the subversion of facts? Do citizens query the content of what they hear (or are tired of querying)?

Molina et al. (2021) acknowledge that information distortion, which has been popularly termed fake news, has become a scourge that has plagued the information environment. They identify misreporting, commentary and persuasive information among the distortion of information. Zheng and Almeida (2021) contend that it consists of plain deception and political rumour peddling. However, information distortion is conceived and employed as a political, conflict or security strategy, they have far-reaching and sometimes dire implications.

In Somalia, this strategy was adopted to pave the way for the usurpation of the authority of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU; Hull & Svensson, 2008; Cocodia, 2021). The usurpation drew its momentum from the stigmatisation of Islam (Islamophobia) and its link to terrorism and securitisation as conceived in the west (Kaya, 2011; Smith, 2016; Solomon & Cocodia, 2021; Mokoena, 2022).

Introduction

Borders are a part of the destiny of the Khaleej, (or the gulf ) the typology of which is infected by the notions of bordering, as the Persian Gulf was the norm as Persia was a dominant regional player competing for influence along with the Ottoman Empire and the British Raj. The Sheikhdoms of the Gulf from Kuwait City to Muscat to Jeddah, were British-aligned in the imperial chess game. The port town of Muscat had its twin town in Mandvi as per historian Chaya Goswami. The Gulf has the imagination of a desert frozen in time, yet this oriental framing does injustice to the Gulf which has been trading as a part of the Indian Ocean world for centuries. Manama to Muscat were important trading ports for pearling to slavery. Jeddah was known as the ‘Queen of the Red Sea’ being the eclectic Ottoman port which was the hub of the Muslim Pilgrimage to the twin holy cities of Makkah and Medina (Freitag, 2020).

The pandemic and the years of stagnant oil prices have had a defining role on the migrant lives as many businesses had to reduce as the main employer in the region, the oil sector was contributing to reducing revenues and thus had a cascading impact on the shifting priorities. The region is quickly adapting to a new demographic normal, where millions of migrants who have built the region since oil was struck are being offered hard choices as incomes fall. The realities are reflected in the recalibration of borders externally, and internally as would be fleshed out in the subsequent sections.

Racial ‘Kafala’ Capitalism as (B)ordering

Slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia under pressure from the American administration in 1962 and in the rest of the Gulf in that decade, as the region decolonised (Wald, 2019). The Gulf is a tribal society with many actors aligned in a hierarchy, with power stemming from proximity to the power structure which is the ruling family. Slavery from East Africa to the Gulf was a prominent feature of the Indian Ocean trade till the British outlawed slavery in the 1830s however the trade continued under the mast of the dhow, and enforcement was inadequate.

Eric Voegelin in his monumental work Order and History has shown how man is a creature who stands in tension with what transcends him and his felicity or flourishing and redemption lies in keeping this quest alive. Transcendence is understood here as what transcends the familiar notion of man as an individual ego who resists or negotiates non-self/Other, as what summons the self to an ethical and supra-individual spiritual end is a sort of transgression of ego boundaries. The modern project of maintaining or securing the life of man as an ego against all kinds of forces or prerogatives to find self by losing it in the service of others as Gandhi would put it given “I” is a lie as Simone Weil put it has been an evasion of this transcendence.

Introduction

In November 2023, I concluded the manuscript of this book, which I started in early 2022. At the time of beginning the project, the region of northern Somalia was peaceful and served as a perfect example for my argument. On submitting my finished draft to the publishers, one of several book reviewers drew my attention to the crisis that had embroiled Somaliland and Puntland. The conflict was tearing the region apart as deaths and the number of internally displaced persons swelled. The reviewer noted that it would give this book greater relevance to capture these recent events. This review comment prompted this section. However, the essence of the previous chapters and the argument made therein were to show the folly of the AU, its lack of belief in its own dictum, and how its dependence on external actors has kept it hind-sighted in its handling of conflict on the continent. The conflict in Somalia was perfect in telling explaining this. The stability in Somaliland was used to show what African States can achieve on their own, and in which case, some support from a focussed and truly Pan-African AU would help such indigenous causes. As far as this argument goes, it was a job done with the preceding chapters of this book. The recent conflict in Somalia's northern region falls outside the original scope of this book, but in order to bring this book up to date, this section has been added to briefly discuss this conflict and what it means for the recommendations already made.

Bad Policies and Political Hind-sightedness: The Conf lict of the Northern Regions

Somaliland, in seceding from Somalia, laid claim to the area of British Somaliland in the north before its merger with Italian Somaliland in the south in 1960 into what today is Somalia. Unfortunately, the Dhulbahante who are a subgroup of the Darod clan in Puntland, and who inhabit the border areas of Sool and Sanaag claimed by Somaliland do not share the secession objective of the Isaaq clan who are the dominant group in Somaliland. This became the cause of friction that blew into full-scale conflict.

Introduction

The AU has systematically drawn down its forces in Somalia, which is an indication they cannot be there forever. The increasing number of conservative right-wing leaders in the west and schisms such as Brexit does not bode well for the AU's long-term presence in Somalia. So what has to be done for long-term stability in Somalia should be done now. There is a lot to learn from the country's autonomous northern regions considering that Somalis are one people, with one language, one dominant religion (Sunni Islam) and shared cultural experience. It is logical therefore to argue that what works for the regions of the north will work for the regions of the south. The stability achieved during the short-lived ingenious administration of the ICU strongly supports this view. All that was needed was to make this indigenous approach more enduring through international support. Systems of government are more effective when they evolve from the experience of the people they are meant to serve.

While southern and central Somalia still remain conflict-ridden, the northern part of the country devoid of AU occupation has long since experienced some semblance of stability. The autonomous regions of the north devolved a system of governance unique to their experience and being spared external interference, these regions have been fairly stable. This decent example shows the workability of indigenous governance in Africa and an independent AU should have invested its resources into encouraging such indigenous political models all over Somalia rather than disrupt them at the insistence of its benefactors.

In the northwest and northeast of Somalia, the collapse of the central government did not precipitate the kind of warfare and plunder that initially devastated the south. For a variety of reasons, such as greater political cohesion among clans, local ownership, more support from businessmen to support the peace, effective political leadership and innovation rooted in tradition, these areas spared themselves intense violence. The self-declared state of Somaliland gradually began to build modes of capacity to govern, and a national assembly of traditional clan elders helped to manage the peace and keep young gunmen under control. In Puntland in the north-east, chronic inter-clan tensions were contained by traditional elders as well.

Borders and border crossings are perennial challenges for self, society, and the world. Situated in a world where questions of citizenship and cosmopolitanism loom large, border crossers critically interrogate who is a citizen and who belongs to a larger planetary history. Many of the chapters that follow touch on these questions. Two of the first forms of border crossing, religion, and commerce, dominate much of the history of humanity into the twenty-first century. Globalization is not new, as William H. McNeill and others have pointed out, and the anticipations of the crossings of trade, conquest, conversion, and colonialism have meant that borders have always had a provocative position in human history.

But something unique is now happening and needs to be reported. The speed with which border crossing is taking place today would simply be unimaginable to humans of earlier eras, not least the electronic border crossing taking place every day for most of the world's population. This book is an attempt to cover at least some of this territory. We begin this dialogue on the new art of border crossing by noting the myriad forms of border crossings and their intersections with questions of mobility, refugees, persecution, and identity politics. Violence and state and substate conflict, especially in Ukraine, Palestine, and the Congo, have deeply problematized the questions of borders and control. These topics on a planetary scale require our attention, and at least some of them show up in the chapters that follow, our effort at a transdisciplinary collection of essays from around the globe. Chapter 1 of the book by Ananta Kumar Giri presents these challenges and Chapter 2 by David Blake Willis provides the latest theoretical discourses concerning border crossing and border crossers.

Subaltern: A Site of Border Invasion

In line with the Post-Marxian tradition, in a revolutionary approach to the same at the hands of Antonio Gramsci has a theme of a possible border crossing. The Subaltern, a social class is seen as a locus of border invasion in this section of the chapter. The invasion here is in a psychological sense where the mental makeup of the members is tried to be influenced through their own ‘objects of interest’. I shall return to these means or objects, later in the chapter. The notion of the subaltern was first used by the Italian political activist, Antonio Gramsci in his article ‘Notes on Italian History’ which appeared posthumously in his most widely known book, Prison Notebooks written between 1929 and 1935. Gramsci's standpoint is that the section of society who are termed as oppressed are not actually are given the right to determine their own history or even to participate in legislations of what is to determine their future. The understanding of the origin of the notion of the subaltern is not also theoretical rather needs some experiential wisdom from having lived in the midst of such groups. They tend to detach themselves from the mechanistic and economistic aspects of societal life as psychologically there is a large amount of discrimination that they have been subjected to.

The term ‘subaltern class’ is used to refer to any low-rank person or group of people in a particular society who are under the control or direction of another dominant group.They are suffering under the hegemonic domination of a ruling elite class that denies them the basic right to participate in the making of local history and culture. They in actuality are active individuals of the same nation. Gramsci's intentions when he first used the concept of the subaltern are clear enough to be given any other far-fetched interpretations. The only groups Gramsci had in mind at that time were the workers and peasants who were oppressed and discriminated against by the leader of the National Fascist Party of Benito Mussolini. Gramsci took an interest in the study of the consciousness of the subaltern class as one possible way to make their voice heard instead of relying on the historical narrative of the state.

My first encounter with Somalis was in the early 1990s. What struck me was their hospitality, they were quick to smile and to lend a helping hand should one need it. Somali warmth was indeed legendary. Despite being a stranger in the midst, I was invited as an honoured wedding guest and shared meals with families I was just introduced to. I was appalled, then, when the country descended into a bloody civil war. For the past forty years, South-Central Somalia has been engulfed in violence between clans, an Islamist insurrection in the form of Al-Shabaab and the Machiavellian antics of political elites in Mogadishu whose sole purpose was to ensure that they were as closely positioned to the feeding trough of a failed state.

This spiral to hell and mayhem continued apace whilst the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) kept having its mandate extended. This raises the important question as to why Somalia's northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland have remained relatively unscathed by the violence. It is here where Jude Cocodia in the book goes against the grain of mainstream scholarship on Somalia. Courageously and innovatively, he has provided an alternative explanation to the Somali imbroglio. Erudite and fearlessly, Cocodia notes how both Puntland and Somaliland have made use of indigenous modes of conflict resolution and governance. As these were not deemed alien to their peoples’ values, they resonated with them and allowed them to create relatively stable polities. In the process, both Puntland and Somaliland have challenged the Eurocentric underpinnings of state formation contained in the Westphalian order.

State formation in southern Somalia, sadly did not go this route. Indeed, following the ouster of the dictatorship of Siad Barre, there emerged the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). As practically all Somalis are Muslim, the ICU was formed to prevent inter and intra-clan conflict through Islamic principles. However, Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union, did not want this to occur. Addis Ababa, already occupied a large portion of Somalia, the Ogaden and a united Somalia may well press claims for the return of Ogaden. So, Ethiopia had a vested interest in not seeing a stable and strong Somalia.