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Backgrounder: Somalia's High Stakes Power Struggle

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Eben Kaplan, Assistant Editor
August 7, 2006

Introduction

Though Somalia has been plagued by violence for much of the last fifteen years, fighting intensified in 2006 as militias loyal to the country’s Islamic courts began expanding their territorial control. They have forced out other militias run by the warlords who have been the primary power brokers in Somalia since the collapse of the country’s last stable government in 1991. The conflict is hardly taking place in a vacuum. Somalia’s neighbors are accused of influencing the nation’s internal violence to serve their own interests, while other countries are concerned the emergence of a dominant Islamist group could make Somalia a breeding ground for terrorism. As Robert Rotberg, director of Harvard’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution, explains, “Everyone’s meddling.”

What are the Islamic courts in Somalia?

Courts imposing sharia (traditional Islamic law) have been active in Somalia since the mid-to-late 1990s. In a nation that has been largely anarchic for the last decade and a half, these courts became increasingly popular because they demonstrated their ability to provide some semblance of order. By early 2005, eleven of these tribunals had joined the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a network aimed at expanding their influence within the country. Somali business leaders, many of whom fund their own private militias, began providing financial and military backing to the ICU in hopes that the Islamists could bring wider stability. With this support, the ICU’s area of control spread from the central region of Somalia south toward Mogadishu, the capital. On June 5, 2006, the ICU claimed control of Mogadishu from a coalition of warlords calling themselves the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). Though sporadic fighting continued for several weeks, by July 15, the ICU had secured control of the entire capital.

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Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.