The Kenya tricky governance challenge in Kismayu. Kenya and Ethiopia Challenging In Jubba Regions.

Somali army chief press conference in port kismayu

 

“He who controls Kismayu controls southern Somalia”, so goes a political maxim popular with the Somali clans in the Jubba Valley.

Objectively understood, the saying simply encapsulates a truism — the huge economic and political significance attached to the southern Somali port town.

Subjectively, it betrays the zero-sum game mindset that has disfigured politics in Somalia and is a key driver of the conflict. And it is this problematic issue which the allied forces and their policy makers need to address.

Since 1991, the idea of Kismayu as a space for contest, extraction and exclusion — or to use a Kenyanism, for one clan or group of clans to “eat” — has been the geostrategic calculus that has animated the bitter struggle over its control.

It is also the primary trigger of the numerous inter-factional and clan wars that have claimed tens of thousands of lives.

No other Somali city has been as contested and haggled over as Kismayu. And it is perhaps not too difficult to see why this tiny seaport, inhabited by some 200,000 people, is so intensely coveted.

The city has the busiest and most lucrative port in south-central Somalia — a veritable goldmine for any faction that controls it. It is estimated that the port — even when functioning at current capacity — can generate over $100 million dollars a year in revenue.

As the chief town of the fertile Jubba Valley — Somalia’s agricultural heartland — Kismayu port has historically been the most accessible and cheapest gateway for exporting agricultural produce such as bananas and tomatoes, besides livestock exports (to the gulf).

Of course, there is no meaningful agriculture to speak of in the Jubba Valley today and under Al-Shabaab, the port has morphed into a notorious hub of the “grey economy” — a major conduit for the export and import of illicit goods and commodities, principally charcoal and sugar.

But no one can discount the enormous potential of Kismayu in helping revive Somalia’s modest agricultural economy. However, the town’s economic importance as well as its heterogeneous and complex clan demographics has made it a notoriously difficult place to govern.

None of the bewildering array of factions – starting with the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) to the Jubba Valley Alliance (JVA) — managed to govern the city for any appreciable length of time.

It was only Al-Shabaab that did manage to break the “governance jinx” and achieve regime longevity, maintaining uninterrupted functional control of city since late 2006.

And there are several reasons Al-Shabaab succeeded where others failed. First, it was the best armed, relatively less fractious and organised of all armed formations in 2006. The power to out-coerce the rest allowed it to stamp its authority and achieve dominance.

Second, and as odd as it may sound, it demonstrated it was a better steward of the port than previous groups — quickly establishing a workable and broadly acceptable formula to distribute the port revenues to the clans.

Its functionaries were less corrupt. This allowed it to establish some form of credibility and legitimacy and allowed it to buy consent. This historical context is important in better analysing the events of Yesterday and the implications of Kismayu’s fall.

And a number of issues flow from such an understanding:

• the inhabitants of the city have been made by circumstances to be cautious pragmatists, distrustful of political factions, but not always hostile. They are tough political customers and are bound to care more about those that deliver the goods;
• a mechanism to equitably share power and key resources, such as the port, is the key to preventing a governance crisis.

 

Many people believe that the challenges in the Jubba regions is among the local clans, but its quite different; Kenya and Ethiopia are challenging each other on the issue of Kismayo or rather Jubba regions. The most important thing is that Ethiopia wants to use the seaport of Kismayo, and it fears Kenyan-backed Azania administration which is rumored to have close ties with Ethiopian opposition front, ONLF..

KDF and Kenyan govt is the only in the African countries who support a clan militia onlf, and create vendetta between Marehan & Ogaden clans.  least 11 dead in Kismayo clashes … Reflects historical, ongoing tensions between Ogaden and Marehan in port city

Rahm Warsame.  Follow me on Twitter  @terrorfreesomal