Newswise — Davidson College Professor of Political Science Ken Menkhaus was hoping to use his sabbatical year to expand his research on African politics into new parts of the continent. But major developments in Somalia, his principal country of expertise, have forced him back to that troubled land.
Outbreak of a major war in Mogadishu, a sudden victory by an ascendant Islamist movement with possible links to al Qaeda, and allegations of deep U.S. counter-terrorism involvement have combined to thrust Somalia back onto the front page in recent weeks. As one of only a handful of political analysts with extensive experience in Somalia, Menkhaus has had to field a barrage of requests for information and analysis from media, think tanks, governments, and the United Nations.
"For scholars, it occasionally happens that our very focused areas of expertise suddenly become a front burner policy item," he noted. "When your specialty is on the radar screen of governments and the media, you're asked for explanations. The challenge is to provide assessments of very complex crises in a clear, succinct, and policy-friendly manner -- striking that fine balance between too much detail and oversimplification."
Menkhaus began studying and visiting Somalia as a doctoral student in 1987. On two other occasions -- the December 1992 decision by the U.S. to embark on a massive humanitarian intervention to stop a war and famine there, and in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- Somalia briefly leaped from obscurity to the front pages, prompting urgent calls to Menkhaus from organizations with a stake or interest in the situation.
Somalia's current crisis has been anything but simple to explain, involving layers of competing interests between rival clans, ideologies, factions, and business groups. In late May, Menkhaus made a short trip into Somalia and Kenya to interview members of Somalia's new transitional government, international diplomats, aid workers, and others to gain a clearer understanding of the dramatic developments in the country. He caught a United Nations flight from Kenya to Baidoa, Somalia, the country's provisional capital and seat of the struggling Transitional Federal Government (TFG). He spent 48 hours there, conducting interviews and briefly observing a session of the 275-member parliament meeting in a hastily converted World Food Programme warehouse.
His primary mission in Baidoa and Nairobi was to assess the conflict dynamics in Mogadishu, and conduct an inventory of specific steps the TFG is taking toward establishing a functional central government in a country which has been without one for fifteen years. Menkhaus reviewed essential legislation, critical bottlenecks in revising the government, and specific donor programs that support the TFG. "I'm trying to create a precise portrait of the TFG -- where it stands and what it needs," he said.
His reports on Somalia are commissioned by a wide range of entities, including the United Nations, policy think-tanks, the U.S. and other governments, and non-profit groups engaged in relief and development efforts in the country. Menkhaus values the role of practitioner-academic. "Periodically stepping in and out of the policy world has been a great learning experience," he observed. "I know it has made me a more precise and careful writer and analyst, and I hope it has enriched my teaching of politics."
Menkhaus said the fact that Somalia's TFG has begun meeting again after a year of inactivity provides a glimmer of hope for the country. However, he conceded that few analysts are optimistic that the TFG will succeed in the face of its enormous hurdles. One of the first crises facing the TFG is insecurity. Menkhaus observed, "There's no law and order even in Baidoa, the temporary capital. The town was swarming with militias and battlewagons when I was there. One freelance militia set up a roadblock outside of parliament to extort money from parliamentarians trying to get to work, and no one could do anything about it."
The session that Menkhaus attended was mostly devoted to animated discussion of the growing fighting in Mogadishu, which this week resulted in Islamists gaining control of the city from various U.S.-backed militia leaders calling themselves a counter-terrorism alliance. The Parliament successfully pressured the Prime Minister to sack four of the members of the alliance who had positions in the cabinet.
"The victory of the Islamists was very unexpected and is a seismic shift in Somali affairs," Menkhaus said. "No one foresaw that they would be able to take over all of Mogadishu."
However, the group has been operating in the city for some time. In fact its Sharia court system has been the city's only source of law and order, and its schools and hospitals have been valued by citizens as the city's only social services.
The problem, said Menkhaus, is a hard line faction within the Islamists who have a political agenda that may include cooperation with international terrorists. "One of the things we'll be watching closely is the power struggle between Islamist moderates and hard liners," he said. "The moderates have been approachable and open to collaboration."
The U.S. Government has a particular bone to pick with the Islamists. The U.S. believes that three non-Somalis involved in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 are being provided safe haven by the Islamists in Mogadishu. That concern, said Menkhaus, led the U.S. to forge partnerships with a number of Somali leaders and groups in hopes of capturing the suspects, including the eight militia leaders who announced the formation of the counter-terrorism alliance in February. That move precipitated the war with the Union of Islamic Courts.
Menkhaus said Somalia currently is at a critical juncture. Depending on key decisions made in days and weeks to come by the Islamists, the TFG, the U.S. government, and neighboring Ethiopia, Somalia will be pushed into one of several very different scenarios. If the Islamists produce a regional administration with moderate leadership, there is a chance for dialogue with the TFG. If hard liners emerge as the top leaders, renewed war is a real possibility.
Outside of his immediate engagement in Somalia matters, Menkhaus has focused his sabbatical on research about protracted conflicts and informal systems of governance in the Horn of Africa, completing research he began several years ago with support from a U.S. Institute of Peace grant. During the past year, while serving as a visiting scholar at Uppsala University's Department of Peace and Conflict Studies in Sweden, he has conducted fieldwork in Kenya, Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and plans to travel to south Sudan later this summer.
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its founding by Presbyterians in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently recognized as one of the leading liberal arts colleges in the nation.
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