مؤتمر لندن حول الصومال.. توقعات وتخوفات

The London Conference on Somalia: Expectations and Fears

This analytical paper was first published on the website of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies (Al Jazeera Net) on 16 February 2012. Link to the original text

After twenty years in which Britain showed no serious interest in Somalia, ever since the collapse of its central government in 1991, the government of the British prime minister¹ announced its intention to hold a conference on Somalia in London on 23 February 2012. It mobilised all its diplomatic resources, internationally and regionally, to persuade the countries of the world with an interest in Somalia to take an active part in the conference. The conference, the government said, was intended to unite efforts against the danger that the Somali question, with its security and political repercussions, poses to the Horn of Africa, to the world, and to Britain in particular.

Observers and those who follow Somali affairs are asking what lies behind this sudden interest in a forgotten cause, one that had never left the drawers of neglect, attended to only by monitoring from afar and timid relief aid channelled through international organisations, even though Britain itself is home to the largest Somali community in Europe.

Explanations vary, each from its own standpoint, and the positions of the Somali, international and regional parties towards the conference differ too: some support it, some fear it, and some keep a diplomatic caution towards it. Many observers are certain that something lies hidden behind the hill², and that the conference is being held not for the sake of the Somalis' blue eyes³ but for other purposes that have nothing to do with Somalia and the Somalis, if they are not actually against their national goals.

Britain and Somalia: Historical Background

Historically, Britain colonised the northern part of Somalia, which was known as “British Somaliland”. This part gained its independence on 26 June 1960 and, together with the southern part, which gained its independence on 1 July of the same year, formed what was called the Somali Republic.

The colonial legacy left behind by British and Italian colonialism together is regarded as one of the roots of the present Somali crisis. Italy helped Ethiopia invade and seize the Islamic Emirate of Harar⁴ on 26 January 1887. Britain gave the Ogaden region to Ethiopia in 1889, after Ethiopia had joined in crushing the Mahdist revolt in Sudan⁵. Ethiopia also annexed the Reserved Areas and the Harar region, and Britain confirmed its consent to this in the treaty of 1897, under which the border between British Somaliland and Ethiopia was drawn⁶. In the 1960s Britain also annexed to Kenya the “NFD”, the Northern Frontier District, which makes up roughly half the area of present-day Kenya⁷.

The crisis that Somalia has been going through from independence to this moment is, in part, an extension of the border conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia, and between Somalia and Kenya. Somalis regard both countries as occupiers of Somali land, and both have sought, ever since the Somali state collapsed in 1991, to undermine any solution that would bring it back into existence.

Britain and Italy, moreover, are among the European countries that know the hidden workings of Somali affairs. Both have studied Somali society in depth, and their research centres have published a great many studies and books on Somalia in all its phases, from the days of the first colonial pioneers down to the present moment, in which neither country has stopped following and closely studying everything that happens in Somalia, even while turning away politically from any serious effort to resolve its crisis.

The Conference's Aims: Declared and Undeclared

Many observers are asking about the timing of the conference. Why has it come after twenty-one years of deliberate political neglect, in which the whole question was left to the neighbouring countries? And why now, of all times?

The Declared Aims of the Conference

The British government says that, after the failure of all the efforts made by international and regional organisations and by members of the international community, the situation in Somalia is still deteriorating. The situation therefore requires an international effort to bring about change, on the part of both the international community and from Somali political leaders and the heads of the federal and autonomous administrations.

For this reason it has called a conference on 23 February 2012, to be attended by high-level representatives of more than forty governments and multilateral organisations, partners with a fundamental interest in Somalia. The aim is to offer a new international approach to Somalia and to discuss how the international community can pursue its efforts to address the root causes of the Somali crisis and its regional and international consequences.

It has set out seven areas, in the hope that the international community will agree on a series of practical measures for each. They are:

Security: finding sustainable funding for the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and supporting the security and justice sectors in Somalia.

The political process: agreeing on what will succeed the transitional institutions in Mogadishu⁸ in August 2012, and setting up a joint financial management board.

Local stability: setting up a coordinated international group to support Somalia and the Somali administrative regions.

Counter-terrorism: a renewed commitment to confront collectively the terrorist threat coming from Somalia.

Piracy: breaking the business model of piracy.

Humanitarian: a renewed commitment to address the humanitarian situation.

International coordination: agreement on how the international community deals with Somali issues.

The British government recognises that these complex issues cannot be solved overnight. It will therefore need to build on and support the work of the United Nations, the African Union and non-governmental organisations, and the vital role of civil society in Somalia.

Among those invited to the conference are the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the League of Arab States, together with representatives of the Somali transitional institutions and the presidents of the Republic of Somaliland, Puntland and Galmudug, and of Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a⁹.

Beyond the Declared Aims

The British government has become convinced that Somalia poses a threat to security, not only Britain's but the international community's, as the growth of extremism and piracy in Somalia makes clear. London sees al-Shabaab¹⁰, a group on the list of terrorist organisations, as a growing security concern because of the large Somali community in England. Other countries share this concern, such as Canada and the United States, and others in Europe and Africa. Likewise, the growing threat of Somali piracy affects many countries around the world.

Furthermore, the recurrent famines and other humanitarian needs in Somalia present challenges that are no less important. Adding to the complexity of all this are Somalia's weak institutions and its tangled political environment.

All this is understandable. But this declared aim, the sense of the security threat that Somalia poses to Britain and the international community, has been accompanied by other matters that must not be overlooked. One of them is a struggle over the oil wealth that has come to light in Somalia, for the sake of which several countries have signed agreements with regional administrations in Somalia to explore for oil, and have actually begun to do so. The officially announced oil revenues for the Puntland region alone, where an Australian company is exploring for petroleum, are estimated at 1.9 trillion US dollars, and oil and uranium have been confirmed in many other areas of Somalia as well.

Oil exploration in Somalia goes back to the 1980s, when the government of Siad Barre signed contracts with American companies, among them Conoco, Chevron, Amoco and Phillips, before Phillips merged with Conoco in 2002. When the civil war broke out, however, the outlets of many of the oil-rich wells that had been discovered were sealed, many others were camouflaged, and detailed maps of them were kept against the day of a return under a friendly regime, as one well-informed source puts it. Somalia is now the object of a scramble by rising powers such as Turkey, India, China and South Africa.

French companies have also concluded agreements with Kenya to explore for oil inside Somalia's maritime borders, and this is the reason behind Kenya's attempt to seize the Juba region, which it entered in October 2011 on the pretext of fighting terrorism in Somalia¹¹. A number of Somalis also believe that Turkey's sudden interest in Somalia has strategic motives behind it, and oil is not absent from them. All of this has set the British government's mouth watering: it wants its share of this treasure now, and it wants to be the one holding the strings.

The second reason to which Britain's sudden interest in the Somali question is attributed is that Turkey has entered the field with all its weight, through the gateway of relief and humanitarian aid. It is leading a development effort of a unique kind that has won the trust of Somali society, and it seeks political influence through an approach never seen before, which has alarmed many of the neighbouring countries and the major powers.

Thirdly, the call for this conference has coincided with shifts on the Somali scene, some of them seen as positive and others as negative, portending grave consequences.

The Turkish Player and Its Forceful Entry

Last year Somalia suffered the worst famine in sixty years. Islamic countries and organisations rushed to its aid and played a prominent part in confronting it; without them the catastrophe would have been far greater than it was. The Turkish government, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, took the lion's share in this. Erdoğan did not content himself with providing relief aid; he led an international and Islamic campaign to save Somalia. He also opened the season of high-level visits to Somalia. No sooner had he announced his intention to visit than the President of Djibouti, Ismail Omar Guelleh, got there ahead of him on 17 August 2011, in a visit that drew little attention and that, he said, was intended to draw the world's eyes to the famine in Somalia. Two days later, on 19 August 2011, Erdoğan, accompanied by his wife and children, took the risk of visiting the capital, the scene of constant fighting between al-Shabaab and the African Union forces backing the weak government troops. He also brought with him a large delegation of ministers, members of parliament and senior figures of the Turkish state, to draw the world's attention to the scale of the disaster and to show solidarity and sympathy with the Somali people. It was the first high-level delegation of its kind, and he was the first prime minister to visit Somalia in twenty years.

From Mogadishu, Erdoğan delivered a historic speech that Somalis will never forget. He declared his love for them and denounced Western civilisation, saying that Somalia's tragedy was a real test of the values it sings about. Addressing the Western countries, he said: “This is your chance to prove that your civilisation is not just empty words.”

Erdoğan announced the reopening of the Turkish embassy in Mogadishu and a permanent presence of Turkish aid agencies in Somalia to deliver Turkish aid to those hit by drought and famine, and he pledged to build a number of roads in the capital, Mogadishu.

Erdoğan went on to pursue the Somali question at the United Nations, until he stood at its rostrum on 22 September 2011 to present Somalia's case, saying: “The people of Somalia are now walking towards death before the eyes of an international community that watches Somalia as if it were watching a film, without reacting. We must deal with this picture, which is a test of humanity.” And he insisted: “I say it frankly: no one can speak of peace, justice and civilisation in the world unless they hear the voice of Somalia. Words cannot describe the pain in Somalia.”

Then came, one after another, the giant projects led by the battalion Erdoğan had left behind in Somalia: building schools and digging wells, building six major hospitals with fifteen hundred beds between them and six medium-sized hospitals, and further cash aid whose details were not announced. It was also decided to pave the road between the airport and central Mogadishu, and to provide refuse lorries to clean the city and an incinerator to dispose of the waste. Moreover, the Turkish people, in a spirit of solidarity with the Somali people, generously collected donations amounting to 280 million dollars to support the relief effort in Somalia and enable the country to overcome this disaster.

The Turkish leader's visit opened the door to others, as eminent world figures and international officials visited Somalia one after another. Among them were the humanitarian visit of Dr Sultan bin Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, adviser to the President of the United Arab Emirates, on 19 August 2011; the visit of the Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal with a delegation of Saudi businessmen on 27 August 2011; the unprecedented visit of the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and his delegation on 9 December 2011; and, most recently, the surprise visit of the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on 2 February 2012. All these successive visits, especially that of the UN Secretary-General, who called for the offices of international organisations to be moved to the capital, Mogadishu, carried within them a message: that security in the Somali capital had improved and that every country could open its embassy there.

The Retreat of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen

On another front, the hard-line movement opposed to the Somali government has seen its military victories recede. After painful blows from African Union and government forces, it withdrew from the capital, and even from its traditional areas of influence. This is what made these visits possible, and it also brought the whole capital under the control of the Somali government.

It has been noted that the United States wishes to focus on Somalia in its fight against terrorism now that its withdrawal from Iraq is complete, as the US Secretary of Defense announced from the largest American base in the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti¹².

Kenya and Ethiopia: The Double Military Intervention

The double military intervention took the form of two neighbouring countries, Kenya and Ethiopia, sending troops into the Somali areas bordering them in the centre and south of the country, to confront what they called the terrorist group, al-Shabaab, which they saw as an imminent danger to their security and which controls more than two-thirds of southern and central Somalia.

Kenyan forces overran coastal towns and villages near the border between the two countries, and Kenyan warplanes bombed other villages and towns in the Somali interior. Most of the victims were Somali civilians, amid statements from international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International calling on the Kenyan government to stop its violations of the rights of Somali civilians.

Units of the Ethiopian army, accompanied by forces of the transitional government, also took the town of Beledweyne in the centre of the country, which had been under the rule of Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen. Many Somali patriots, who carry a legacy of historical sensitivity towards these two African states, see them as carrying out an agenda of their own and simply using al-Shabaab as “Juha's nail”¹³ to achieve their aims.

Changes on the Political Scene

On the Somali political scene, the map of tussles between the political factions within the transitional government, and of plots to bring rivals to heel, has looked fierce ever since the agreement reached in Kampala in the middle of last year, 2011, to extend the transitional government's institutions by one year, to August 2012¹⁴.

In mid-December 2011, members of the transitional parliament announced the dismissal of the Speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden¹⁵, while he was out of the country. On his return he refused to comply, describing the move as illegal and contrary to the constitution and the rules of parliament. Many considered it the work of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who wanted to dislodge his rival from his power base.

In September 2011 the United Nations held a consultative conference in Garowe, capital of the Puntland region, to which the Speaker was not invited but in which Sheikh Sharif and his prime minister took part. Its purpose was to draw up a roadmap for meeting the deadline the transitional institutions will face in August 2012, when their constitutional term ends, and to set out broad lines, agreed by the participating parties, on what will succeed this government.

The transitional government, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a and the administration of Puntland State took part in the conference. In the first round the participants agreed in principle on achieving security and stability, promoting national reconciliation, drafting the constitution and practising good governance. They then met in a second round on 22–24 December 2011 and agreed on what were called the “Garowe Principles”¹⁶: that the term of the present transitional government should end on schedule, that the present parliament should be dissolved, and that a new parliament should be formed on a clan basis, which would form a new transitional government whose term would end in 2016.

Many observers believe that this conference was a response to the wishes of the international donors, who carry out their agendas through the United Nations and the forces that currently hold power in the transitional government, Puntland and Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a, and that these agendas merely reproduce themselves and do not solve the Somali crisis.

The other development, and a very important one, is the outbreak of fierce fighting inside the so-called Republic of Somaliland, which had for a time enjoyed stability. It pits the Somaliland government against three regions that have declared their wish to return to the motherland, the Somali Republic, and proclaimed the state, or government, of “Khatumo”¹⁷. The fighting between them is still going on, in an attempt to make these regions retreat from a step that would endanger the entity of Somaliland. That entity rests on the legitimacy of the colonial borders of British Somaliland, and it has been unable to absorb the clans that do not belong to the Isaaq clan into the state system. This shows that the clan problem exists everywhere in Somalia, and that no region can be exempted from this disease.

Progress on the Development Scene

Since the Turkish giant entered Somalia, the country has recently seen the launch of major projects, some already completed and others under way and moving apace. Among them, for example, is the completion of the “Qatar” village for displaced people in the capital, Mogadishu, built by Qatar Charity. It can house a thousand Somali families and includes places of worship and education, a clinic to treat the village's sick and dispense medicines, and a sports ground.

At the end of November 2011 a high-level delegation of the Turkish government, headed by the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, Bekir Bozdağ, visited Mogadishu for the second time, to announce the start or completion of development projects in the country.

These projects include the educational scholarships that Turkey has generously provided in various fields, especially the sciences, to dozens of young Somalis, who left Somalia on Turkish Airlines for Turkey and enrolled in its universities. They also include the model Turkish school opened in Mogadishu; the project, now under way, to expand and equip Mogadishu's airport; the building of specialist hospitals for children and women; the highway project linking the airport to the presidential palace; the Istanbul Municipality project to solve the capital's refuse problem; and the project to supply the capital, Mogadishu, with clean water.

The London Conference: Acceptance and Rejection

Most of the Somali parties invited to the London conference declared their readiness to take part. The only one that hesitated was the “Republic of Somaliland”, which unilaterally declared its secession from Somalia, since its agreement required lifting the legal ban on its taking part in international conferences held on Somalia. On 5 February 2012, at a joint session of both houses of parliament in Hargeisa, 101 members approved this change, while three voted against it. Its foreign minister, Mohamed Abdullahi Omar, then announced that his government would take part in the conference, describing it as an opportunity for the “Republic of Somaliland” to explain its point of view and its cause to the international community. He pointed out that the opposition parties and civil society leaders had agreed to take part in the conference after consultations with him, and that it represented an opportunity not to be missed.

Somaliland's announcement that it would take part in the conference, and its lifting of the ban, are attributed to the fact that the country calling the conference is its strategic ally, which supports it politically in its project of secession from Somalia and is also one of its largest economic backers: Britain allocates 40 per cent of its aid to Somalia to “Somaliland”. Had it refused to take part after being invited, it would have lost that ally, perhaps for ever. It therefore preferred to take part and to present its cause to the participants at a conference hosted and convened by a country that knows its cause better than any other.

Somalis who oppose the secession of the north fear that Britain will use the conference's back rooms to market Somaliland's right to secede on the strength of the relative stability, development and democracy it has achieved.

As for the transitional government, it announced that it would take part in the conference after the historic visit of the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, at the head of a high-level British delegation. He brought with him the first British ambassador to Somalia since the collapse of the country's central government twenty years ago, who presented his credentials as ambassador to the Somali president.

Later, the Somali prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gaas, expressed the hope that the London conference on his country would yield a “Marshall Plan” to end two decades of chaos.

Puntland State, Galmudug and Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama'a also announced their agreement to take part in the conference with high-level delegations of their leaders.

So none of the parties in Somalia invited to the conference has announced a refusal to take part. On the contrary, some of the self-declared states that were not invited are clamouring to get in, sending letters in protest at being ignored!

As for Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, it was not invited to the conference and announced in advance its rejection of whatever the conference might produce. It pre-empted the conference by announcing that it had formally joined al-Qaeda, whose ideology it had already held and to which it had already been loyal.

As for the countries other than Somalia, their participation in the conference has been confirmed, and some of the Arab Gulf states are said to be funding it.

The Participants' Fears, Foreign and Somali

Although most of those invited have declared their readiness to take part, every party is wary of the conference's undeclared agenda, each according to its own interests, from the Somali parties to the major powers.

The Somali transitional government, and the presidency in particular, fears that it will not manage to come back to power through the back door, as it has planned, and to keep for itself the coming four-year term approved at the Garowe conference. The Republic of Somaliland fears that its taking part, placed on an equal footing with the other states and regions inside Somalia and not treated as a state by its chief patron at the conference, may herald the end of that patronage and drag it into the intractable problems of southern Somalia.

At the level of states, Somali websites and newspapers have reported that Italy, which considers itself more entitled to hold the Somali file in Europe, being the country that colonised Somalia and that the Somalis chose for the trusteeship period¹⁸, is working with Egypt to make the conference fail, even though both will attend it.

France, too, fears losing what it has gained through its military support for the Kenyan forces in southern Somalia: driving out al-Shabaab and setting up a semi-independent entity under Kenyan protection in the Azania region¹⁹. France intends this entity to secure for it the special agreements that the French company Total has concluded with Kenya to explore for oil on the continental shelf belonging to Somalia. Kenya, for its part, hopes to annex the area.

As for the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation²⁰, currently led by Turkey, it is pre-empting the conference by holding a joint meeting in London on 20 February 2012, with the participation of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Humanitarian Forum. The meeting will bring together up to ninety leading humanitarian organisations from more than twenty Muslim donor countries, the Western countries, the multilateral system and Somalia.

The meeting carries the slogan “Humanity before Politics”, which springs, according to the organisers, from the belief that the voice of those in need has not yet been heard, and that meeting humanitarian and development needs in Somalia must be at the top of any agenda for change.

As for the Arab League, it spoke for the first time on 9 February 2012, saying that it would hold a special meeting on Somalia and on the London conference, which it described as important and influential.

A statement issued from the League's headquarters in Cairo said that the League would hold an extraordinary meeting on Somali issues, especially on the conference that Britain had called for the Somalis.

It said that the Arab meeting, to be held on 19 February 2012, four days before the date announced for the conference, would discuss in depth the current situation in Somalia and the Somali conference to be held in Britain, and that the League would adopt a unified position on it.

Nothing is officially known about the direction the League's meeting will take, or about its influence on the agendas of the London conference on Somalia. But it is unlikely to come out in opposition, since the Arab states invited to the conference announced their participation without waiting for what the League would announce.

Most Somalis fear that the conference will entrench the new European colonial mentality of the twenty-first century, since Somalis were never consulted on the nature, scope or intentions of the conference.

They ask: “How can Britain organise a conference of solidarity with the Somali people, who long to have their political, social and economic problems addressed, while at the same time continuing to support the war crimes committed continually by Ethiopia, and by Kenya, which has recently joined in the practice of military intervention in Somalia?”

Below is the interpretation one Somali writer has given of the areas announced for the conference:

Security: this means no responsible, professional national security forces answerable solely to a legitimate national government, and instead the imposition of yet more foreign troops brought into Somalia, with the Somali government their captive.

The political process: this means the continuation of the transitional government's methods and making them the model for institutions of government; regional administrations or governments built on clannism, corruption and Ethiopian intervention in Somalia; a deceptive roadmap.

Local stability: this means expanding the dual-track policy²¹, which hastens the fragmentation of Somalia and the conflict that comes from competing for resources and power.

Counter-terrorism: this means the absence of security, the loss of dignity and freedom, and death for the innocent in the hunt for terrorists; depriving Somalis of income from remittances from abroad and of humanitarian aid; and, in addition, imposing a harsh embargo on al-Shabaab, on account of which banks are pressed to halt money transfers to Somalia in the name of fighting terrorism.

Piracy: this means restricting the use of Somali territorial waters and marine resources, imposing an exclusive economic zone, and the continuation of illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste.

Humanitarian: this means intensifying the exodus of the population of present-day Somalia by increasing the numbers of refugees, displaced and destitute people through large-scale military interventions and measures in Somalia.

International coordination: this means more support for polarisation, dismemberment and division in Somalia, instead of more support for Somalia and for pushing it towards peace, reconciliation and nation-building.

Somalis also fear that the aim of this conference is to restore trusteeship over Somalia in a twenty-first-century fashion rather than in the fashion of the last century, with Somalia ruled by international organisations. This is what the Italian government openly called for ahead of the conference, in a proposal published during the Somali prime minister's visit that calls for international trusteeship to be imposed on Somalia, along the lines of what the United Nations did in Iraq. Whether Italy meant by this to embarrass the conference or to test the waters is not known, but it angered most of the Somali elite and the Somali people alike.

Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) held a consultative meeting on 8 February 2012 with a select group of Somali experts and activists in Britain. It ran in two sessions. The morning session was closed, held in a small room with a handful of experts under what is known as the “Chatham House Rule”, which allows the information to be used but not attributed to the speaker, so that people can talk freely without feeling they will be held to account for what they say. The afternoon session was held with a larger number in a large hall. (The writer of these lines took part in both the morning and the afternoon sessions.) The British government said it wanted to consult Somalis living in Britain on the areas it had set for the conference, and ministers and government officials took part and listened to the Somalis. Some of them openly voiced their fears, and the British officials listened to them, but it is not certain that their views will be taken into account.

What Can Be Expected of This Conference?

The announcement of this conference has created great momentum for Somali affairs at every level, and this momentum will continue beyond the conference. But expectations are not high. Many fear it will become one more addition to the many conferences held on Somalia, more numerous than the years of the crisis itself, which proved useless and only complicated the question further.

This will be all the more certain if the mechanism for dealing with the Somali question is not changed, and if it builds on the earlier formulas, which relied on clan quotas, federalism and semi-autonomous regional administrations based on clannism. These carry the seeds of their own collapse within them; indeed, they are remedies that have already proved their failure and cannot produce a different result this time.

Many of those who took part in the Chatham House consultations became convinced that Britain is seeking not so much to change the approach as to take control of the question, and that it is more interested in solving what concerns it, the danger posed to it by what it calls terrorism and piracy, than in offering a new solution to the problem.

Those pessimistic about the conference insist that it will further divide Somalia, because it will rely on clan quotas for political posts, the formula that has proved its failure ever since it was adopted at the Arta conference in Djibouti in 2000²².

It will also adopt the “dual track”. On one track, this means supporting the regional administrations based on clannism independently of the Somali government, and concluding international agreements and deals with them without reference to the government, which makes it easy for the major powers to practise plunder by legal means. On the other track, it means supporting the transitional government in security, political and economic matters through international organisations, which makes the government less accountable to its people than bound to follow what these organisations dictate to it.

This in turn will lead to the fragmentation of Somalia into small entities, independent of one another in all but name and not governed by the central government, which is what Ethiopia, Kenya and most Western countries, Britain among them, have been seeking.

It has become almost certain that the most the conference will produce is an announcement that the transitional period is over and a call to form a unified government based on clan and sub-clan representation; the creation of an international body to oversee the process of political transition in Somalia after August 2012; and a call for more support for the African Union forces and for more foreign troops to be deployed in southern and central Somalia, to be completed by the creation of a fund to support Somalia under a single international management of the donor countries. All this will ultimately lead to the imposition of indirect trusteeship over Somalia, which those states could use to block the ambitions of other states to take part in rebuilding Somalia.

In the light of the above, little is to be hoped for from the conference. Even if it changes some of the equations on the ground, it will not solve Somalia's problem so much as give it another face under which to go on. ___________________________ Mohamed al-Amin Mohamed al-Hadi, Director of the Al-Shahid Centre for Research and Media Studies, London

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.