Paper short abstract:

Beneath Somaliland's centralised formal politics is an informal horizontal, multi-clan compact which ensures national peace. This essay traces this centralising/multipolar dynamic by way of Borama, a secondary city, whose fight for equality vis-à-vis the centre embodies the politics of the compact.

Paper long abstract:

Borama, a secondary city in terms of population and official status, lays claim to a special significance in Somaliland’s state-building story as a result of its primary role in founding the country’s peace. As a city predominately populated by one of the country’s largest minority clans, Borama in 1993 played host to the defining conference in Somaliland’s lengthy, bottom-up inter-clan reconciliation process, through channelling forgiveness and a pluralist ethos into horizontal, multi-clan compact for peaceful coexistence. Over time, and into the present, this founding compact has become overshadowed by the consolidation of a formal, centralised State, emanating from the national capital of Hargeisa, with the accompanying rise of a national elite, oligopolistic economy and majoritarian electoral supremacy (with the numerically largest clan dominating formal offices and sources of economic rent). Within this new political climate, the people of Borama have found themselves increasingly marginalised. However, in this paper, I seek to trace the ways in which communities in Borama have sought to counteract this formally peripheral status through instrumentalising their role in holding Somaliland’s peace and plurality together, resurrecting their long history as mediator and legitimiser of collective coexistence to extract concessions from the centre. Through documenting specific episodes where this dynamic played out, this essay hopes to touch upon deeper lessons regarding the ways in which alternative centres of power, and alternative (i.e., non-hegemonic) identities, do not merely challenge or resist domination, but promote pluralism and inter-group equality through decentring sites of authority and agency.