86.THE CORRELATION OF MISGOVERNANCE, VIOLENCE, FOREIGN INTERVENTION, POVERTY AND RADICALISATION
It is a common knowledge that misgovernance, violence, radicalization, foreign intervention, and poverty have correlation. Recent Somali history is abounding instances of the mutual relationship between these terms and their effects. The misgovernance by successive Somali governments especially during the 1979-1991 of the military authoritarian government (dictatorial repression, injustice, human rights abuses, civil war, etc.) fermented radicalization in popular attitudes which in turn led to social unrest in the end and gave rise to desperate situation of helplessness, discontent and poverty that drove the people to resort to take up arms to meet violence with counter-violence in the form of various opposition movements from the late 1970s to the late 1980s which were unfortunately essentially tribal both in form and content as they were inspired by the prevailing predominant tribal social mode and attitudes of society enlivened by the government of the time.
The official regime’s misgovernance and use of unstrained force and the popular counter-violence in the country from 1979 to 1991 caused massive destruction, massacres, poverty, and displacement in a number of central and northern regions especially in Hargeisa, Burao, Berbera cities and related districts and villages and eventually led to the disintegration of the central government in 1991. This first phase civil war and after the collapse of the central government, a second phase of all-out and prolonged civil war ensued in the south-central regions which brought about even greater bloodshed and destruction, displacement, gross human rights abuses, poverty, misery and radicalization manifesting in diverse tribal, mafia-like warlordism, criminal, and extreme forms.
Such mutual relationship between misgovernance, violence, radicalizations and poverty is also true for foreign intervention or domination. From 1992 there were a number of foreign interventions, i.e., the 1992-1995 US led UNISOM military intervention, the 2006 US backing of the Somali warlords against the Somali Islamic groups in Mogadishu, and again its backing of the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia which all applied violence on the Somali people and compelled them to resort to counter-violence which resulted not only further loss of life, destruction, displacement, more destitution and poverty and radicalizations of peoples attitudes but also stirred and ignited of hitherto hardly existing politicized religious radical sectarian movements and unprecedented level of hatred for foreign interveners especially for the Ethiopian occupiers and the US Bush Administration which backed them as well as current situation of unprecedented radicalization particularly the emergence more radical and new brand Islamic groups like al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam in Somalia.
Hence, the correlation between misgovernance, violence, forceful foreign intervention, radicalizations and poverty.
