Somalia progress and new government

I've been looking into somalia for the last 30 minutes, and I feel incredible anger towards the rest of the world.

The country has been improving quite drastically in many areas since the fall of the central government. I don't know how much you guys know, but I don't want to go to much into it. It's a long list of things. The only things that have measurably declined are literacy and a vague indication that roads aren't doing to well (even though the amount of schools has doubled,their attendance is rising an costs are falling, and universities have quadrupled. The roads aren't doing well because militias and the TFC government armed by other countries are tolling on them without maintaining them).

The reason I was pissed is because the country is doing considerably better and only increasing, it's even outperforming its neighbours in many ways, but the new government seems like it is finally forcing its way into power with the help of the U.S. and various European and african nations. It doesn't own the country yet, but it has already declared Shari'a law as the judicial basis of law. It doesn't have public support because the citizens don't want a new government, so it has used militancy to agressively shove its way into legitimacy.

Honestly I don't know what this topic is about, I was just pissed to hear that. I wanted to see somalia experience real anarchy (since it is only under a vague anarchy) for 20 more years and see how it went. Instead we get 15 years of improvement and the international community pushing hard for another tyrannical government that is going to kill people for being raped.

As a political paradigm, anarchy can only ever be a modifier, not a state.  For it to be a semi-functional existence, any force strong enough to maintain the existence of the anarchy would instantly negate the purity of the anarchy.

>>2

In what way? How do you define anarchy? I'd define it as the lack of a monopoly on force. That might not be a textbook definition, but I think it's the most reasonable. There will definatly be agents of force. Even in Somalia the various militias are the ones that keep the peace.

I thought it interesting how that works though. I mean basically what I want to see is a Somalia without a centralized government for a long span of time. There are interesting turns of events in how somalia is organized, but it would only get more interesting as time goes on. At the moment its little un-intententional experiment is still extremely young, unproductive and un-industrialized so any results are all tentative. They can only be compared to its previous state of corrupt central planning, which obviously almost anything is better. Its neighbours aren't the most prosperous benchmarks for competition, though if it surpassed Ethiopia in productivity and progress that would be impressive.

Theres just interesting things I'd like to see play out. The militias take payment in order to protect and the businesses and locales have been supporting a private court system that, from what I've read, has responded quickly and efficiently. Would it eventually become a tyranny of the wealthy business people? Would the citizens themselves be the major customers of the militia defense and the private courts, so that the courts and militias would act fairly?

If it lasted like this for a long time and a militia tried to take over, would the public be armed and would the militia be met with such resistance that it would basically go out of business, or would it succeed in creating a new central government? It's just a damn shame the world has to jump in on it and fund/arm new regimes. They're not going to do anything but harm the people and muddle the results of their new decentralized society.

You have got to give the plucky Somalians credit for resisting the U.S. military and then winning that resistance movement.  Of course the U.S. had only expressed interest in the Somalian situation since unlike Ethiopia (in the same straits for starvation), Somalia has deposits of uranium.

U.S. "humanitarian" efforts throughout the world have only revolved around nations harboring resources that the U.S. wanted.  They had nothing to do with humanitarian missions.  That was just propaganda to get U.S. citizens to tolerate and accept such resource seizures.

@OP:

Although I haven't looked very much into it, I suspect that 'anarchy' in Somalia did not come into place because the people were ready for a more free form of government. And I feel that for any anarchy to work, people need to consciously be ready for it.

It is just the Jews trying to control every-fucking-thing.

>>5

I totally agree, it is a necessity for any anarchy that it is purposeful and ideologically consistent with the people. The anarchy was an accident, it was a product of their civil war in 1992 which resulted in the collapse of the govt and no new one. They've been in relative anarchy for about 15 years or so.

Thats the reason why I imagine if no one interfered that eventually they probably would make a govt. I'd prefer if they didn't, but I can just see them doing it since I'm sure they still think a govt is an asset as long as it's a "good" govt.

Isn't Belgium in a similar situation for quite a while now? It seems that once the society is on a certain track, government is not really necessary. After all their job is to make laws. Once there is another mechanism to create laws or laws pre-exist the fall of government, then, well, they won't be missed very much.

I don't see what Somalia has to do with anarchism, half the country is controlled by regional governments which don't differ much from the average African government I believe. In the rest of the country a civil war is being waged between Islamists and the internationally recognized government which depends almost entirely on the Ethiopians, leading to a situation similar to Afghanistan during their civil war.

And in Belgium the previous federal government is basically still in power, just with limited powers, and the 4-5 regional governments still function as usual.

>>9

From what I've read the differences would be that there is no taxation, and in order to supplement most of the regional militias just charge tolls to use the roads (which definatly sucks). The court system is private and the militias mostly just offer defense as well as punishment for breaking the laws. Theres also no regulatory structures.

The differences between it and anarchism are equally large though. For one the people don't believe in anarchism specifically, so anarchism is pretty much impossible in a society that is just "anarchist" by chance. From an anarchist point of view they still believe in central authority.

The other difference is the whole outside interests thing, which can kind of be amounted to that they don't believe in anarchism. The islamists assuredly get their weapons and resources from other islamist militants who are probably funded by corrupt governments. The TFC itself is funded by outside powers and granted legitimacy by outside powers.

So all of the special interests involved and the lack of an independent ideology mean it will surely turn into a government eventually, but for the time being it is extremely decentralized and the markets are free so it would be an interesting experiment in free market anarchism.

>>10

Just to add, the laws are basically just what everyone agrees on. I don't personally know how they work or where they were agreed upon. I know that somalian business people who have been interviewed on the subject just say there is an agreed upon structure of laws that people abide by. It's probably not free there in the sense that I'm sure some of these laws are arbitrary and victimless crimes (Though I'd like to know what they are and how often they are enforced), but theres definatly a general freedom of press and arms and stuff like that because theres no-one to deny it.

Governments like governments, because they believe everyone should be under some kind of authority. So of course there will be a new government pushed on Somalia, whether they like it or not.
Check out "The Eye of the Heron". It really explains this principle well. Power people are not cool with you doing whatever you want "over there", because they believe everyone and everything MUST be controlled in some way.
Big reason why weed and prostitution are illegal. And homosexuality, in some places.

Why do people think Somalia has no state? They have no bureaucratic government as we have come to understand it but a state is a monopoly over force and I'm pretty sure the various gunmen and warlords have a monopoly over force in their area, that's pretty much all they do.

:)

>>14
What do you have to say for yourself?

>>15
not much

I only care about political issues if theres a good song about it>