Stabilization Programme in Somalia: More Harm than Good?

In this Dhambal, our political analysts and sectoral experts concluded that:

• the FGS made good progress with regard to the biometric registration, but that the security sector in general is suffering from symbolic and premature victory celebrations that are frequently caused by political expediency and followed by controversies, thus risking the hard-won gains to unravel;
• solely focusing on one single aspect of stabilization (‘territorial fight’) is a gargantuan design fallacy;
• the liberated districts were either retaken or cordoned by Al-Shabaab;
• the stabilization efforts in Somalia, may causing more harm than good;

Our experts also assessed that the level of fragmentation among the IC security partners and the fragmentation among the FGS and FMS actors, contributes to the stagnation experienced. And that there is a correlation between the two. Another major factor is the compartmentalization syndrome, the lack of high level and compulsory coordination mechanism that have subsequently resulted in the current myopic view on the complex and intertwined set of challenges Somalia is facing. This in return resulted in the lack of a holistic approach that does justice to the complexity of stabilization work in Somalia.