Somalis Reach Peace Deal After Dozen Years of Fighting
By MARC LACEY
AIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 29 — An array of Somali warlords and clan leaders struck a deal here on Thursday that could lay the groundwork for the country's first national government since 1991.
Previous peace deals — there have been more than a dozen rounds of talks since 1991 — have quickly collapsed, and Western diplomats cautioned that continued clan violence could doom this accord as well.
But the current pact, signed by leaders of all the major warring parties, is widely regarded as more credible than earlier efforts.
The agreement calls for a 275-member parliament, based in Mogadishu. That body will select an interim Somali president who, in turn, will appoint a prime minister who will put together a coalition government.
Each of Somalia's four major clans will select 61 members of the parliament, while a coalition of smaller clans will fill the other 31 slots. But the selection process is expected to be very divisive, as each of Somalia's clans is divided into subclans that are eager for their own political voice.
The negotiations that led to the new agreement have stretched on since November 2002 and have been marked by fistfights, shouting matches and, until now, few achievements. There were varying opinions on Thursday on whether the deal would hold together, ultimately uniting a country that has spent more than a decade as a collection of warring fiefs.
Posted by P6 at January 30, 2004 08:28 AM
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Comments
It was an experiment in anarchy, not libertarianism. Libertarianism is dependant on a small government providing for the protection of rights and enforcement of contracts.
Posted by Phelps at January 30, 2004 06:44 PMAnarchism would seem to be libertarianism taken to its natural extreme. No government, just the market. What is your basis for determining when a government is needed? It can probably be reinterpreted by other people to argue for much more government. Anarcho-capitalists would seem to be more logically consistent.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 2, 2004 04:38 PMAnarchism is indeed the extreme beyond libertarianism on the opposite end of the scale from authoritarianism. Anarchy is the ideal, but the world doesn't conform to ideals. In both systems (and the world in general) might makes right. Libertarianism consolidates the (lawful) use of force into government.
The limit to government is that concept. Since government derives its power to use force from you (the People) then the government should not be allowed to exercise that force in a manner that you would not allow your neighbors to do. If someone breaks a deal with you, you should be able to get your neighbors together to make the other person live up to his end of the deal (enforcing contracts.) On the other hand, you probably wouldn't want your neighbors deciding that you have too much stuff and that they should be able to take some of your stuff at gunpoint and give it to other people (wealth redistribution.)
Posted by Phelps at February 2, 2004 06:00 PMSorry, Mr. Phelps, it's not that I don't think the scope of government should be limited; I just don't believe there's a plain continuum. For example, it's pretty obvious that a citizen of French enjoys more types of liberty, greater scope of personal action, and greater opportunity to act without fear, than does a citizen of Congo-Kinshasa. Yet government by any measure is costlier--e.g., as a share of income--in France. And get this--France is not a socialist economy; with the exception of a few strategic industries, the means of production is privately owned. Congo-Kinshasa under Kabila had socialist pretensions.
Liberty and limited government requires optimization. It's not like a knob that can be twisted arbitrarily. The whole idea of a continuum is silly anyway. I've tried to make this point in the past: we have the simple example of Hoover and FDR's response to the Depression. Hoover's reaction was, if we feed people to stop them from starving TO DEATH (as over a 1000 Americans did), that's socialism; but controlling wages and prices was okay. FDR left the market system intact, but redressed the macroeconomic problems that were stifling demand.
Whose the socialist? "Both," you say? Then you must concede that Somalia was a libertarian society, if your definition excludes any consideration of problems people expect their nations to redress.
Posted by James R MacLean at February 2, 2004 06:32 PMWhat is the result of the experiment? 5 years ago
or so I remember seeing some reports that
the Somalian economy was thriving (by the standards
of Africa at least-- growing rapidly from a very
poor base)and people were relatively well off.
Did that continue? Are there any recent and reliable
reports?