Somalia Was Not Just a Collapse It Was Reorganized Around Failure        

I grew up hearing that Somalia had failed. That the state collapsed, society followed, and chaos became permanent. Over time, I began to question that story. Not because Somalia recovered, but because failure itself seemed too orderly, too stable, to be accidental.

After the civil war, clan-based governance was reintroduced as a temporary solution to prevent renewed violence. I was told, as many were, that this was the only realistic option. What is rarely acknowledged is that clan polarization was one of the forces that drove the war in the first place. Rebuilding the state on those same structures did not heal divisions. It made them structural. What was meant to be transitional quietly became permanent.

As a political scientist and as a member of the Somali diaspora, I have learned to read Somalia’s crisis differently. The problem is not the absence of institutions, elections, or formal rules. It is the presence of a political order designed to diffuse responsibility and protect power from accountability. Authority is fragmented by design, making failure consequence-free.

For ordinary people, this system produces insecurity and uncertainty. For political elites, it offers predictability. Informality is not a flaw. It is how the system functions. Power flows through clans, intermediaries, and opaque agreements that ensure no one governs fully and no one can be held responsible.

This logic has reshaped both religious and traditional authority. Religious actors have entered politics through alliances with clan-based power structures rather than democratic legitimacy. Traditional leaders, once positioned outside the state, now act as political gatekeepers. Elders often determine parliamentary representation through closed processes where loyalty and financial incentives matter more than public accountability. Representation moves upward through power brokers, not outward toward citizens.

International actors have adapted to this arrangement and continue to sustain it. Stability is prioritized over transformation, procedure over substance. Elections are organized, agreements are signed, and institutions are funded, while the underlying structure of power remains unchanged. Aid, salary support, and budget financing keep the system running without demanding accountability. Governance becomes performance, while justice, trust, and long-term development are postponed.

Somalia is not trapped because change is impossible. It is trapped because the current system works for those who benefit from it. Transformation will not come from new faces within the same structure or from recycled promises. It requires abandoning the belief that Somalia can be governed through the arrangements that once destroyed it.

This is not pessimism. It is realism. Naming this reality is not an act of disloyalty. It is an act of responsibility. Somalia’s future will not be shaped by the number of institutions it creates, but by whether it is willing to replace a political order built on fragmentation with one grounded in accountability, dignity, and public service.