Abdi Ismail Samatar is professor of geography at the University of Minnesota and a fellow at the University of Pretoria.
Will the London conference change Somalia's future?
Continue reading his excellent article here: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 70145.htmlMinneapolis, MN - The upcoming London Conference on Somalia is, potentially, a promising occasion to finally put the country on the road to peace, stability and democracy. Whether this opportunity is realised will be largely contingent upon the willingness and ability of the participants to chart a new course that takes full stock of the genuine and long term needs of the Somali people. Only through a just course and able order can terrorism and piracy in Somalia be defeated, and regional security restored.
Thus, so far, more than a dozen conferences on Somalia have produced unsustainable, incompetent and costly transitional dispensations that had ill-served the Somali people or those members of the international community in solidarity with it. The key political strategy of the past 20 years has been anchored on this flawed assumption: the cause of the Somali political disaster has been due to the neglect of clan identity in political affairs of the country.
Consequently, it has been argued that political injustices of the past can only be remedied by formally deploying political tribalism as the sole paradigm and means of structuring political representation in government and the distribution of public service posts. This approach was formalised in the 2000 Arta Conference and has marked all subsequent political developments in Somalia.
