Rapporten är skriven av Ken Menkhaus.

Executive summary

In Somalia, political economy drivers and socio-cultural practices combine to reinforce the role of non-state security providers in the context of a fragile state. This is an impediment to quick assertion of a state monopoly on the legitimate use of force. External efforts to strengthen the formal state security sector and weaken non-state security providers in Somalia are, in consequence, swimming against powerful currents. This paper will show that non-state security providers will remain a central feature of the Somali political landscape into the foreseeable future, and the Somali state will be forced to negotiate messy and fluid partnerships with these actors. In these negotiated partnerships, the central government has a few advantages — control of foreign aid and some customs revenue, and externally recognized juridical sovereignty, which can be parleyed into other sources of influence. But the non-state security providers enjoy greater on-the-ground power across most of the country; higher levels of local legitimacy, loyalty and support; the capacity to tax local populations in areas they claim to control; an ability to penetrate the government and exploit its resources without answering to it; and the ability to withdraw their support from the government at will. External actors will not be in a position to fundamentally alter this reality, but can and should take steps to avoid incentivizing nonstate security actors’ interests in undermining state building.