Rebuilding the State from Below. Networks of NGOs in Somalia

In Anceschi, Gervasio and Teti, 2014, Informal Powers in the Greater Middle East. Hidden Geographies, Routledge, chapter 9.

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REBUILDING THE STATE FROM BELOW

NETWORKS OF NGOS AND THE POLITICS OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOMALIA.

Valeria Saggiomo

In the absence of a formal state able to oversee social policy, the organizations of civil

society in Somalia are taking steps to compensate for the lack of a proper government.

From the moment of the advent of the Islamic Courts Union in Mogadishu in 2006, the

phenomenon of religious associations made its mark in the literature and began to be

studied by numerous scholars and observers of political and social phenomena in the

Horn of Africa. In particular questions were asked about the relationship between

religious aid organizations, which we refer to as Islamic NGOs, and the Islamist

movements which in the wake of the fall of the Siad Barre regime became ever more

dominant in the country’s political panorama. To what extent were these Islamic NGOs

operating in Somalia linked to the Islamist movements that were calling the tune in

Somali political life? How did they contribute to the country’s development and the

construction of a social and political system standing as an alternative to their official

counterparts?

These are the questions which this chapter sets out to answer by examining the NGOs

linked to the Somali Islamist movement Al Islah. Somali Islamist movement Al Islah is

here seen as a religion- based social movement, with its structure and organization; we

therefore analyse the existing literature on social movements and their organizations and

describe the rise in Somalia of networks in the civil society involving NGOs connected

either directly or indirectly to the Islamist movement Al Islah. We hope to show, using

the case of Al Islah and its networks of NGOs and institutions, that there exists an

informal policy of rebuilding the State from below instituted by the organizations of civil


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society which, by joining together and forming networks, acquired the necessary

legitimacy and clout to have an impact on both official and unofficial political processes

in the country.

The politics of civil society networks is an aspect of policy-making in the country that has

been ignored in the international literature; this has tended to concentrate above all on the

clan dynamics which dominate power sharing in Somalia in the processes of peace and

mediation supported by the international community. An understanding of how the

organizations of civil society and Islamist movements practise politics in Somalia

constitutes an important analytical tool in assessing Somali politics and the process of

rebuilding the State currently in progress in the country.

The Politics of Civil Society: the social movements theory

The majority of the studies that deal with the Somali politics are grounded on a clan-

based analytical framework. In the light of the post 11 September events, this framework

had to confront itself with the religious factor as second important variable for forging

alliances, creating associations and socio-political factions. In the attempt to describe and

interpret Somali political events, most of the scholars and observers tend to opt for either

the clan or the religious analytical tool; unfortunately, the two variables are rarely

interwoven and the resulting analysis are often flattened out on rigid visions that fail to

give a comprehensive picture of the changing political situation.

By looking at NGOs and organizations of civil society to interpret the Somali politics,

this study wishes to overcome existing limits in the theoretical tools used by analysts and

to offer a different perspective where the clan and the religious factor merge and loose

rigidity. Looking at Somali socio-political dynamics in the light of the social movements’

theory will offer the opportunity to include different actors (NGOs, civil society


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organizations, Islamist movements) within a comprehensive theoretical framework and to

produce an inclusive analysis of the current Somali political history. For this reason the

Social movements theory has been chosen as theoretical framework of this study.

How are NGOs and organization of civil society conceptualized by the social movements’

theory? The social movements theory attributes great importance to the organizations that

derive from the movements. One line of enquiry analyses how the organizations were

formed in the wake of the mobilisation of resources, both human and social, involving a

gradual acquisition of the necessary social status to pursue their true aims. This type of

approach, based on the “mobilisation of resources”, regards the organizations as a natural

evolution of the social movements themselves, seen as informal, embryonic structures

which, as they acquire a precise physiognomy, give rise to the organizations. Once

formed, the organizations adopt a formal and professional profile so as to supervise

collective actions more efficiently.

However, the relationship between the social movements and the offshoot organizations

is not entirely straightforward. McAdam analysed the rise and fall of the Afro-American

protest movement in the United States by considering, among other things, the

mobilisation of the Afro-American churches, highlighting their role in extending, for

sectarian ends, the constituency of the protest movement (McAdam 1999). Pursuing this

line of enquiry, McAdam emphasized how the social movements were able to “take over”

existing organizations in order to rapidly mobilise groups of individuals; the

organizations that were in the orbit of the social movements were not necessarily

derivatives from them or affiliated to them. The movements made an instrumental use of

the associations of the civil society in pursuing a short-medium term objective of the

movement, as for example an extraordinary mobilisation of activists at a specific

historical juncture or the need for a “cover” in a politically repressive regime.


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Also the literature that to date has applied the social movements theory to the Islamist

movements and affiliated organizations has identified a more complex relationship

between the organizations, including the Islamic NGOs, and Islamist movements. In 1994

Kurzman questioned whether one could really speak of a direct derivation of the NGOs

from the social movements, as maintained in the classic theory of the organization of

social movements. Kurzman pointed out that the Islamist movements did not always

choose to create Islamic NGOs as a vehicle for activism, frequently preferring to coopt

existing associations through a strategy of ideological contamination designed to extend

their ability to penetrate the civil society according to the movement’s strategic

necessities (Kurzman 1996).

Wiktorowicz maintains that Islamic NGOs fulfil a role of bridge between civil society

and political establishment thanks to their participation in the Islamist movements, on one

hand, and their pursuit of political power on the other. Moreover, the Islamic NGOs offer

their services to the civil society for setting up links with the poor, in order to recruit

adepts and expand. In some cases, instead of forming NGOs and associations, the

Islamist movements organize themselves into political parties with the aim of achieving

the power to govern through a series of alliances, at times even with radical movements1.

These studies help to give an analytical perspective to the classic theoretical approach of

the mobilisation of resources which views the organizations of social movements as

“vehicles of the movement’s objectives”. Within this framework, the identification of a

link uniting Islamist organizations and movements in either a formal or informal manner

has been the focus of a recent line of enquiry which considers networks rather than

individual entities.

The networks serve as resources for building the movement, even though they are covert

and difficult to pinpoint; above all they prove fundamental for the recruitment and


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mobilisation of new activists, as has been revealed in recent studies on the radicalization

of the Islamist movements2. The studies of Janine Clark, Benjamin Smith and Jillian

Schwedler, published in 2004 represent the networks not only as an efficient tool for

expanding the participation of individuals in the social movements and finding new

supporters and activists but as authentic resources used in achieving the movements’

objectives.

The networks thus come to be viewed no longer simply as a sort of “umbilical cord”

which nurtures the movement but as a two-way instrument available to the single

organizations that make up the network. These organizations, as Benjamin Smith points

out, do not necessarily share the same motivations or the principles underlying the

movement’s political activism but can find an advantage in adhering to the network and

manipulating its identity. Even the individuals belonging to a Network do not necessarily

share the same ideology or the same modality for achieving their objectives (Smith 2004;

Schwedler 2004). Instead, the relations and networks can be justified by common

objectives or coalitions against a common enemy and thus be merely temporary (Smith

2004). The politics of coalitions and alliances between Islamist movements, political

parties and Islamic NGOs can be more opportunist than ideological and, precisely

because they are transient and have no solid ideological grounding, these alliances can

easily disintegrate, and remain viable only for as long as the partners stand to gain from

them.

Endorsing the approach of Smith and Schwedler, Janine Clark remarks that, as well as

not necessarily sharing the same ideology, the Islamic organizations which make up the

networks do not necessarily share the same objectives (Clark 2004). In fact, if the

institutional objective of an Islamic NGO is that of providing services for the needy in a

certain society, the objective of the social movement that lies behind it is to expand the


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base of its associates among the middle classes, attracting professionals to the movement,

raising their awareness and gradually turning them into activists so as to build up social

capital3.

The Islamist movements are thus presented as political actors who can acquire, borrow

and make use of a component of the network at a certain political juncture to achieve an

objective, ready to distance themselves from it if the circumstances so require. The

networks appear as flexible relational structures, constituted by mechanisms of

opportunistic and transient alliances, necessary in a certain context and historical

moment.

In Islamic Activism Wicktorowicz describes how the Islamic NGOs increasingly took on

the character of networks of politicized individuals; networks of relationships which

belong to the individual sphere are then extended to the collective public sphere through

the activism of individuals. Wiktorowicz describes networks as a sort of chain which, link

after link, gradually makes up the movement. This becomes a structure within which the

activism of individuals takes on a collective significance. The recent studies that have

applied the social movements theory to Islamist movements have no hesitation in

identifying the role of the informal networks of individuals and organizations in the

strategies of the acquisition of political power by the Islamist movements. In the case that

we are going to present in this work, the networks of the Islamist movement Al Islah in

Somalia is made up by formal NGOs and groups that, in the absence of a State repression,

formally group up to acquire solidity and critical mass. The Islamic NGOs are a vital link

between the beneficiaries of the interventions of development and social advancement,

the Islamist movements, and the international community that finances the non-

governmental principals in situations of emergency and poverty (Singerman 2004).


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In the case of NGOs networks expand horizontally thanks to the beneficiaries of the

NGO’s aid actions, their extended families, those who work in the NGO and those who

support its initiatives, and ensure the survival and spread of the Islamist movement even

in a hostile political climate4.

This is precisely what happened in Somalia to the Islamist movement Al Islah and its

networks of Islamic NGOs, as the following case study will demonstrate.

From NGOs to networks in Somalia

The Somali Islamist movement Al Islah was founded in Saudi Arabia in 1978 by some

Somali religious leaders driven into exile by the political persecution of Siad Barre5. At

that time, the secular national policy of scientific socialism was inimical to the reformist

Islam that had found its way into Somalia from Egypt and the neighbouring Arab

countries and which was spreading rapidly, above all in the urban areas of the country,

among people in commerce and the nascent middle class. Thus the movement, inspired

by and directly affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, was formed abroad and

imported into the country by activists in the 1990s, taking advantage of the void left by

the fall of the government and its institutions. In that period Al Islah laid the foundations

for a strategy of radical expansion and permeation of the Somali society, modifying its

structure according to the promotion of the Islamic NGOs undertaken in the previous

years (Saggiomo 2011b). In fact on one hand the development of the Islamic NGOs

reflected the need of the Somali population, including the members of Al Islah, to import

aid, organize this on the territory and begin to rebuild the fundamental social services

(Saggiomo forthcoming); and on the other it was of use to the Islamist movement in

extending its constituency and acquiring legitimacy within the Somali society.


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Throughout the first half of the 1990s Islamic NGOs were set up in Somalia on the

initiative of the members of Al Islah, who were invited to contribute to Al Igatha wa

Taclim, the movement’s humanitarian aid scheme. From the middle of the decade

onwards, and as a result of an important change adopted by the Islamist movement in

pursuing its objectives represented by the Dealing with Reality Policy, a process of

alliances and networking among the various associations affiliated either indirectly or

directly to Al Islah and other political and religious movements got under way. Dealing

with Reality Policy, adopted to maximise Al Islah’s ability to achieve its objectives,

allowed for greater scope in the strategic alliances the movement could forge and also for

the members themselves to join, participate in and infiltrate political and humanitarian

organizations, importing the strategic vision and objectives of Al Islah itself. Up until

1995, prior to the decision to enact the Dealing with Reality Policy, such a possibility had

been precluded for various reasons, above all the desire to safeguard the principles of the

movement, which in Somalia had chosen to distance itself from the clan-based politics

and from using violence to further its cause, the prerogative of the Islamist movement Al

Ittihad (Abdullahi 2010).

However, as a result of severing all ties with clan-based organizations and with the

religious organizations preaching different methodologies of activism, Al Islah found

itself isolated in the Somali political panorama and denied access to political life.

Moreover, for Al Islah as for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, participation in political

life is a duty, reflecting the conviction that Islam is both religion and State and its practice

must inevitably thus include political activism.

In 1994 the movement evaluated three possible options: first the possibility of forming an

alliance with a political party that was already active; secondly, that Al Islah should itself

become a political party; and thirdly, allowing the members of Al Islah to join existing


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organizations and parties, whether they were founded on clan, religious or whatever

premises. The first two hypotheses were discarded because the political panorama at that

time was excessively chaotic. In fact, as Abdurahman M. Abdullahi has described, the

representatives of Al Islah who had been formed in the school of the Muslim Brotherhood

possessed the theoretical tools to gradually transform a secular state like Egypt into an

Islamic state, but did not have the means to orient themselves in a situation where the

State and its institutions had collapsed and society was “at war with itself” (Abdullahi

2010: 270). Overt participation in politic life in such a context was not a viable solution.

Thus it was decided to adopt the third hypothesis, setting up an intricate network of

relations which would connect Al Islah, through its exponents, with a vast range of

political, humanitarian, development and economic-commercial organizations. In the

wake of Dealing with Reality Policy, Al Islah developed ramifications in practically all

sectors of Somali society, and extended its influence to the political processes supported

by the international community which have been enacted in the country from 2000 to the

present, particularly the Arta peace conference in 2000.

Al Islah’s adoption of a strategy of permeation of society and politics based on a network

structure marked the beginning of a comparable tendency to associate and join together in

the sector of Islamic NGOs, as Abdurahman Moallin Abdullahi has shown6.

Contrary to Wiktorowicz’s claim that the networks of the Islamist movements owe their

existence to the result of individual relationships, the network that Al Islah set up between

1994 and 2010 in Somalia is represented by formally constituted organizations and not

only by interpersonal relationships that are covert and difficult to pinpoint, as tends to

happen in countries in which the government represses the emergence of potentially

subversive movements. Instead, the Al Islah networks in Somalia comprise organizations

that have a largely official constitution and are openly visible on the territory, and this is


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surely due to a large extent to the fact that the country has no government able to impose

limits on the development of the Islamist movements. The construction of networks by Al

Islah thus serves to bring Islam into the heart not only of politics and the institutions but

also of that sense of collective identity which has been shattered in Somalia by the clan-

based factor.

Al Islah networks

According to the Vice President of Al Islah, Abdurahman M. Abdullahi (Abdullahi 2008:

23), starting in the mid 1990s exponents of Al Islah and the Islamic NGOs connected to

the movement have set up three networks of NGOs: Peace and Human Rights Network

(PHRN), constituted in 1997, for Islamic NGOs which work above all for the promotion

of peace and human rights; Coalition for Grassroots Women Organization (COGWO),

constituted in 1995, for Islamic NGOs which promote the role of women in Somali

society; and Formal Private Education Network (FPENS), constituted in 1998, for Islamic

NGOs which work in the education sector.

Taken together, these networks form a constellation of some 130 NGOs7 in the orbit of

the Islamist movement Al Islah. They are a tangible sign of the link that exists between

this movement and the development of Somali social life in general and the phenomenon

of the Islamic NGOs in the country in particular.

These networks, even though they were stimulated by Al Islah, are not exclusive, in the

sense that they are not made up of Islamic NGOs that are necessarily permeated by

members of the movement or who adhere to its strategies. The only important parameter

for Al Islah is that the NGOs which participate in its networks do not violate Islamic law


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as it is interpreted by the movement. Thus these are networks of NGOs varying in nature,

origin and composition, within which there are numerous Islamic NGOs promoted by

exponents of Al Islah.

Furthermore it should be said that not all the NGOs which form part of the networks

generated by Al Islah have the same characteristics. Some of them choose not to reveal a

strictly “Islamic” identity, even though they are predominantly and directly linked to the

Islamist movement, as in the case of Mercy-USA; others do not hide their Islamic identity

but have no direct links to Al Islah, like the numerous Islamic NGOs to have their

headquarters in Arab countries; others again do not show an Islamic identity and are

linked to the movement, if at all, only indirectly through their participation in a network,

as in the case of IIDA, a NGO of Somali women of the diaspora which is active in

promoting the role of women in Somali society and is part of the Peace and Human

Rights Network.

Peace and Human Rights Network (PHRN-INXA)

The Peace and Human Rights Network8 was created in 1997 by a group of 29

organizations including various local NGOs such as IIDA, Hirda, SADO and Horn Relief;

some of these NGOs do not necessarily include the religious aspect among their

motivations and objectives. Among the latter we can mention IIDA, a women’s

organization founded in May 1991 in Mogadishu by Halima Abdi Arush to promote the

defence of women and the return of peace to Somalia; today IIDA is an organization

acting at the transnational level and is part of numerous other networks for the promotion

of the role of women in Africa. It has four headquarters in Somalia, one in Kenya in


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Nairobi and one in Italy, in Turin, which oversees contacts with local authorities in Italy,

the central government and with its partners. While IIDA was founded in Somalia and

extended to Europe following the migration of the Arush/Yassin family, HIRDA9 had a

contrary development. Set up in Holland by women of the Somali diaspora, HIRDA

subsequently moved to Somalia to administer development projects financed through the

support network the organization has managed to establish, generating some 200,000 euro

per year in Europe and the United States (Mohamoud 2003).

SADO is a local NGO which receives strong support from the diaspora. Its President is

Aden Hassan Barre, who also sits on the board of directors of the National Civic Forum, a

platform bringing together organizations of civil society supported by the international

community10. SADO was founded in 1994 as a non-profit humanitarian organization

based in Bardera, in the region of Gedo, and since 2006 it has extended its activity to the

Bay region. Its major intervention sectors are humanitarian aid, water, health, health

education aimed at AIDS, human rights, peace building and since mid-2007 also

education, supporting a limited number of schools11.

The aim of PHRN is to contribute to building a lasting peace in the country through the

respect for human rights. It does this by encouraging civil society to participate in

campaigns of information and promotion of peace, debates and conferences about

reconciliation, coordinating the circulation of calls for peace and supporting the rights of

women, children and minorities (PHRN 2007b). The network relies on a General

Assembly which sets out its mission and objectives and gives approval to specific

initiatives; an Executive Committee responsible for implementing the initiatives approved

by the General Assembly; a Board of Auditors which supervises expenditure and reports

to the General Assembly; and a series of Task Forces charged with drawing up projects

and seeing them through. Initially there were six Task Forces, but following a review of


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the network’s efficiency carried out by Novib12 there are now three, responsible for

information campaigns, reconciliation and human rights. PHRN gets substantial backing

from international donors including the European Commission, Care and USAID as well

as Novib, from which it receives virtually all its funding. In 1998 Novib supported PHRN

with a little over 30,000 euro per year; this figure stood at 340,000 euro in the years 2003-

2005 and 360,000 euro for the subsequent two-year period (PHRN 2007b).

In pursuing its mission PHRN interacts on three levels: locally, mobilising the population

to take part in the public demonstrations organized by the network including peace

marches, processions etc., and raising awareness of the relevant issues; at the intermediate

level aimed at setting up partnerships with other organizations in civil society and

furthering networks by means of meetings and conferences; and finally at the top level, as

an interlocutor of national and international governmental institutions. In fact the network

interacts with such national institutions as the Federal Transition Government and, from

2006, with the Islamic Courts Union, pursuing intense diplomatic activity to obtain

recognition and permission to operate in Somalia(PHRN 2007a).

Al Islah found difficulty in its relations with the Islamic Courts Union, which regarded

the movement as a potential political opponent13. In fact Al Islah had to officially distance

itself from the Union when some of its members, lured by the idea of being able to

participate in an Islamist government for the first time in the country’s history, revealed

their willingness to join forces with the Courts despite the presence of extremist elements.

Faced with this unwelcome process of adhesion of exponents of the movement to the

Islamic Courts Union, Al Islah was obliged to react by carrying out expulsions and taking

a more rigid stance in its dealings with the Islamic Courts Union. Among the members to

be expelled there was Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, who had served as President of Al Islah

from 1990 to 199914.


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This distancing on the part of Al Islah explains why, although the Union contained a

moderate wing potentially open to dialogue, and despite the fact that both organizations

are Islamist, Al Islah was not accepted by the Union, which began by prohibiting the

celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the organization’s foundation and went on to

persecute its members and institutions (Abdullahi 2010). The persecution and the

impossibility for its own organizations to operate in the south of the country, ruled by the

Islamic Courts Union, gave rise to numerous diplomatic attempts on the part of the

movement to modify its status of persona non grata.

Among the diplomatic activities Al Islah set in motion to regain the possibility of

operating, with all its structures and organizations, in Somalia, it published an official

communiqué on the site of the Muslim Brotherhood on 27 July 2006 officially

condemning the entry of Ethiopian troops into Somalia in opposition to the Union, even

though the military intervention was part of a strategy of international support for the

Transition Government15. In the month after this communiqué the Islamic Courts Union

received the representatives of the organizations of the civil society in Mogadishu to

sanction a general collaboration16. During the meeting, attended by representatives of

PHRN and COGWO on one hand and Sheikh Sharif and Sheikh Nur Barud Gurhan17 on

the other, representing respectively the executive of the Islamic Courts Union and the

Shura, the Union allowed the organizations of the civil society to operate on the

territory18. A few months later, following the capitulation of the Courts to the Ethiopian

army at the end of December 2006, Al Islah issued another communiqué which, contrary

to what had been declared six months earlier, set out a position closer to the Transition

Government19.

At the international level PHRN has established itself as a network which represents the

Somali civil society for peace, taking part in important international events concerning


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national policy and its progress towards peace. Among these we can certainly enumerate

the Peace Conferences held in Arta in 2000 and in Mbagathi in 2004 and the meeting of

the Contact Group20 in January 2007. On this occasion the network, in the person of its

President, presented to Jendayi Frazer, assistant to the American Secretary of State for

African Affairs, an appeal for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia and the

constitution of a peacekeeping force of the African Union which would exclude troops

from neighbouring countries (PHRN 2007a). The appeal, which was accepted and taken

into consideration by the Contact Group, actually contained the position of Al Islah

concerning the despatch of a peacekeeping force of the African Union, as the movement

publicly acknowledged the following month using the site of the Muslim Brotherhood21.

The Coalition for Grassroots Women Organization

The Coalition for Grassroots Women Organization (COGWO) brings together 30 local

NGOs under one umbrella organization intent on providing support for Somali women in

the socio-economic and political spheres. COGWO sets out to lay the foundations for a

genuine women’s rights movement as both a local and international interlocutor and to

promote the cause of women’s rights in the country. The idea was hatched in January

1995 in Nairobi, in the run-up to the 4th United Nations World Conference on Women in

Beijing, when a group of Somali women decided to pool the efforts of a number of

associations to create a single more powerful organization to make their voices heard in

Somalia and the world at large22. The group was consolidated in Beijing and, on its return

to Mogadishu in January 1996, the COGWO network became a reality. The participating

NGOs are all local bodies, some with offices in Nairobi and the countries of the diaspora


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where they receive the most support, as in the case of SAACID which has a headquarters

in Australia and another in the United States23. Since forming a network, many of the

small local NGOs have had access to funding from important international donors,

including Novib, Oxfam, and United Nations agencies such as UNIFEM, specifically for

gender issues, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNDP, and in addition Mercy-USA and the

European Commission bureau for emergencies ECHO. COGWO, like PHRN, participates

in various transnational networks including Africa Women Development and

Communication Network (FEMNET), East Africa Sub-regional Support Initiative

(EASSI) and Strategic Initiative for Horn of Africa (SIHA). In order to optimise its

international relations COGWO has opened headquarters in Dubai and Nairobi, as well as

its main one in Mogadishu. At the national level COGWO collaborates closely with

PHRN and FPENS in the network of Al Islah as well as with other local NGOs24.

In structural terms the network has created a series of departments: elaboration of

programmes, administration and finance, information, development of potential, and

peace. In the structure of COGWO there is also a centre of documentation and human

rights, all under the guidance of an Executive Director, Zahra Mohamed, and a President,

Ms Sharifa Adow Olow.

COGWO has proved very skilful in mobilising the Somali diaspora. In 2007 contributions

from the diaspora in Britain, Canada, South Africa, Uganda and the United States totalled

nearly 190,000 dollars, which was distributed to support 23 women who were victims of

rape and illness, some of whom were taken to Minnesota for specialized medical

assistance (Sheikh and Healy 2009). Thanks to the role that Al Islah played during the

Arta conference in 2000, three women from COGWO were appointed to positions in

Parliament and the Government. However, this success was not repeated in 2004 at


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Mbagathi, where the participation of women in general was reduced and where the

participation of Al Isah itself was limited with respect to the Arta conference.

The Formal Private Education Network in Somalia

The Formal Private Education Network in Somalia (FPENS) groups organizations which

offer formal, private education accessible only on payment of fees by students’ families.

From 1992 some local and international Islamic NGOs began to work in the education

sector in the centre-south of the country, supporting a small number of schools. The war

and the dissolution of the state institutions responsible for education meant there was no

longer a mechanism for the recognition of school qualifications, an official calendar for

the school year or a standard curriculum. Thus in 1998 the group of Islamic NGOs

decided to join forces, and FPENS was set up in 1999. Initially it covered 14

organizations working in the education sector, including Imam Shafi, ZAMZAM

foundation, United Arab Emirates, Red Crescent, Africa Muslim Agency, joined later by

WAMY and other NGOs. In the year of its foundation it concentrated on the certification

of school qualifications. This required a unified exam system and the formation of a

commission to supervise the award of diplomas. The presence of the Transitional

National Government in 2000 and the Transitional Federal Government in 2005 made it

possible to obtain the recognition of FPENS diplomas by the relative education

ministries. Then in 2000 attention turned to establishing a unified curriculum by

integrating curricula from Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt. A standard

curriculum was agreed on for primary schools using Arabic as the language of instruction

for humanistic subjects and English for scientific subjects. Between 2003 and 2006 work

proceeded on revising and upgrading the text books. In 2005 they were translated into


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Arabic by the Islamic NGO WAMY and printed and distributed in 2006 in the schools of

the FPENS, thanks to funding from the Islamic Development Bank and with the approval

of the then Ministry of Education25. In 2006 FPENS transferred to a central headquarters

in Mogadishu which houses the organization’s organs, the teacher training centre, a

resource centre for the civil society supported by UNDP and a library.

The schools supported by the NGOs of FPENS are appreciated locally for the high quality

of teaching and the possibility of completing education up to university level thanks to

scholarships funded by some Arab countries. According to a study carried out jointly in

2004 by the Islamic NGO WAMY-Somalia and the Dutch NGO Novib, between 1999

and 2002 a total of 261 Somali students from schools associated with FPENS obtained

scholarships to attend university, above all in Egypt and Sudan, countries that since 2004

have had consulates in Somalia.

Originally made up of 14 Islamic NGOs, now FPENS can claim the participation of some

80 NGOs, whose schools benefit from its services as if they were guidelines provided by

the Ministry of Education. The network manages in part to make up for the shortcomings

due to the absence of a proper Ministry of Education and extends its scope of action

beyond the confines of the country, thanks to the network of relations and influence

which Al Islah maintains with some Arab countries with a Muslim majority such as Egypt

and Sudan. Thanks to these ties, students at secondary school which are part of the

network manage to obtain scholarships funded by the governments of donor countries

enabling them to attend foreign universities26.

Conclusions


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The case of the NGOs and networks activated by Al Islah in Somalia shows that the

Islamic NGOs are not, as Mohamed Ayoob observed (Ayoob 2007), merely centres of

direct interaction between beneficiaries and the Islamist organizations, or points of

distribution for aid, food and primary necessities but, joined up in networks, become an

agent for social change, promoting models of development and management for social

services in Somalia.

In the absence of an effective government, the networks operate with the objective of

creating a genuine system of informal government, as is shown by the experience of

FPENS. The changes that the Islamic NGOs manage to bring about in Somali society are

due to the network approach adopted by the NGOs themselves, for if they remained

isolated from one another, they would not be able to go beyond mere humanitarian

assistance. Thus the network function is seen to be fundamental in achieving a qualitative

leap in terms of the impact of the NGOs’ action on society, as can be seen by the

coexistence of two different scholastic curricula in the country, one Arab-speaking

promoted by FPENS and the other endorsed by the United Nations. The legitimacy of this

education policy by Somali intellectuals, who got together and agreed on an orientation,

put forward under the aegis of the Network of local and international Islamic NGOs,

FPENS, is due to the network.

What emerges from the events in the period of government of the Islamic Courts Union in

2006 is that the ability of the Islamic NGOs and the networks to operate on the territory

and to act as interlocutors with the local institutions depends on the ability of the

movement with which they are associated to negotiate their presence and the conduct of

their activities. In the cases we have looked at, the position taken by the Islamist

movement Al Islah vis à vis the authorities wielding formal political power on the


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territory at a precise historical moment determined the access and ability to operate at the

local level of the NGOs and the networks associated with or perceived as close to the

movement, even though the single NGOs maintained their own identity and autonomy, as

in the case of the negotiation between COGWO, PHRN and the Islamic Courts Union in

Mogadishu in 2006.

If on one hand the ability to operate of the Islamic NGOs in a context of conflict like the

centre south of Somalia depends on how the movement manages to negotiate their

presence with the local authorities, on the other the Al Islah movement “uses” its own

networks to pursue its political positions in the international community and to obtain

informal contacts with interlocutors who are outside the movement, as in the case of the

message of Al Islah communicated to the Contact Group through PHRN. There is thus an

instrumental use of the networks of NGOs by the Al Islah movement in Somalia, just as

there is a clear distinction between the movement and the NGOs making up the network,

which maintain their identity and full autonomy vis à vis the Islamist movement with

which they are indirectly or directly associated.

In some cases the networks serve as a springboard for its activists who go on to positions

of power in the country’s political sphere. This makes for consolidation of alliances

between the centres of power in the country which facilitate the action of the single

networks, as in the case of the COGWO, whose ability to make an impact on national

policy and to promote its own causes depends on collaboration with the government, with

the PHRN and with the other centres of power of Al Islah.

The strategy of collaboration rather than competition between formal and informal

centres of power, meaning between the government and the networks of NGOs, whether


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Islamic or not, can in fact be clearly seen in the case of Somalia. In the centre south of the

country, where there is no authority exercising the functions of government, the FPENS

network has taken the place of the Ministry of Education in orienting and regulating the

private schools, precisely on account of a void of central power. What is striking is that

the legitimacy of the Islamic NGOs to put forward a system of education different to the

one proposed by the United Nations and the international community at large derives

from the network structure they have adopted. The network, as a social institution created

from the bottom up, becomes the expression of the will of the Somali collectivity, made

up of professional figures in the country which, although they have not been elected,

contribute to the rebuilding of the state, starting from its institutions and the social

services offered to the population.

Bibliography Abdullahi A.M. (2008) ‘The Islah Movement. Islamic moderation in war-torn Somalia’ draft paper, Mogadishu, Somalia. Abdullahi, A. M. (2010) The Islah Movement in Somalia: a Historical Evolution of the Islamic Moderation (1950-2000). Unpublished thesis, McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies Montreal. Ayoob, M. (2007) ‘Challenging Hegemony: political Islam and the north-south divide’. Internatioanl Studies Review, 9:629-43. Bayat, A. (1997) Street Politics: poor people's movements in Iran, New York: Columbia University Press. Bayat, A. (2007) Making Islam Democratic: social movements and the post-Islamist turn, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Beck, C. J. (2008) ‘The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Terrorism’ Sociology Compass, 2, 5:1565-81. Hansen S. J. and Mesoy, A. (2009) The Muslim Brotherhood in the wider Horn of Africa, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research. Kurzman, C. (1996) ‘Structural Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: the Iranian revolution of 1979’ American Sociological Review, 61,1: 153-70.


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McAdam, D. (1999) Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency , 1930-1970, 2nd edn, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mohamoud, A.A. (2003) ‘Africa Diaspora and African Development’, paper presented at the AfroNeth congress, Amsterdam, 5 December 2003. Olesen, T. (2009) Social Movement Theory and Radical Islamic Activism, Denmark: Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation (CIR) Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. PHRN (2007a) Annual Report of the Civil Society and Advocacy Development. (accessed 13 February 2012) PHRN (2007b) Organizational Profile. 30 September 2007. www.inxa.org (accessed 13 February 2012) Saggiomo V. (2011a) ‘From Charity to Governance. Islamic NGOs and education in Somalia’ Open Area Studies Journal, 4:53-61. Saggiomo, V. (2011b) ‘Soccorrere e Governare. Le ONG Islamiche e la ricostruzione dello Stato in Somalia’ unpublished thesis, Università L’Orientale di Napoli. Saggiomo, V. (forthcoming) ‘Islamic NGOs in Africa and their Notion of Development. The case of Somalia’ in Negash T., Taddia I., Pallaver K., Vezzadini E., Religion and Capitalism in Africa. Schwedler, J. (2004) ‘The Islah Party in Yemen: political opportunities and coalition building in a transitional polity’ in Q. Wiktorowicz (2004) Islamic Activism. A social movement theory approach, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sheikh H. And Healy S. (2009) Somalia’s Missing Million: The Somali Diaspora and its Role in Development. Nairobi, UNDP. Singerman, D. (2004) ‘The Networked World of Islamist Social Movements’ in in Q. Wiktorowicz (2004) Islamic Activism. A social movement theory approach, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Smith, B. (2004) ‘Collective Action with and without Islam: mobilizing the bazaar in Iran’ in Q. Wiktorowicz (2004) Islamic Activism. A social movement theory approach, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Vicky Langhor (2001) ‘Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, 4. Wiktorowicz, Q. (2004) Islamic Activism. A social movement theory approach. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Xurmo Newsletter (2006) Civil Society Forum for Somalia Meet with UIC Officials. (accessed 13 February 2012)


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1 This was the case of the Al Islah party in Egypt, which nonetheless encountered a firm opposition and even repression on the part of the State see Vicky Langhor (2001). Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes. International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, 4. 2 See Thomas Olesen, 2009, Social Movement Theory and Radical Islamic Activism. Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation (CIR) Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Colin J. Beck, 2008, The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Terrorism. Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, N. 5, pp. 1565-1581. 3 Janine Clark prefers to use the term Islamic Social Institution rather than Islamic NGO; to ensure a homogeneous text here, what Clark calls Islamic Social Institutions we refer to as ONGs. 4 In this sense the Islamic NGOs can be used by the pacific reformist Islamist movements but also by the more radical movements like the Hezbollah and Hamas. 5 For a good description of the rise of the Somali Islamist organization Al Islah and the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Horn of Africa see Hansen and Mesoy (2009). 6 Interview to Abdurahman M. Abdullahi, Nairobi, 21 August 2008. See also Abdullahi (2008). 7 In 2011. 8 Known in Somalia by the acronym INXA, Hay’adda Isku Xirka Nabadda iyo Xuqququl Insaanka. 9 HIRDA stands for Himilo Relief and Development Association. 10 Interview with Aden Hassan Barre, Nairobi, 18 August 2008. 11 Interview with Guhad M. Adan, young Sheikh from the Gedo region and Project Officer for the ONG SADO. Nairobi, 18 August 2008 12 Oxfam Novib is one of the 14 national affiliates of the Oxfam International Confederation. 13 One reason for the hostility of the Courts vis à vis Al Islah is undoubtedly that Al Islah was seen by the Union as being too lose to the Transition Government, which in fact contained some exponents of Al Islah in the wake of the Dealing with Reality Policy. 14 See interview with Abdurahmanb Abdullahi Baadiyow by Ikhwanweb of 14 August 2006, when the Islamic Courts were ruling, having officially come to power at the beginning of June 2006. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=3751 15 Islah Mov’t Condemns Ethiopian Military Intervention in Somalia, July 27, 2006, http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=3917. 16 Xurmo Newsletter, PHRN Publication, English Edition funded by Novib. August, 2006, Civil Society Forum for SomaliaMeet with UIC Officials. 17 Before adhering to the Islamic Courts Union Sheikh Nur Barud Gurhan was one of Al Islah’s historic leaders; an activist from 1979, in 1986 he was arrested by Siad Barre and sentenced to death for his militancy in Al Islah. The sentence was not carried out and in 1989 he was freed. By virtue of his militancy Sheikh Nur Barud Gurhan acted as intermediary between Al Islah and the Union, attempting to obtain access to and freedom of action in the south of the country for Al Islah and its networks. 18 In particular the following agreements were signed: the organizations of civil society may continue their activities in Somalia, including conferences, meetings and public debates in the cause of peace and stability; the Courts will appoint Sheikh Abdirahman Janaqow, Vice President of the executive committee, to take responsibility for relations with the organizations of civil society; any political meetings only to take place with the authorisation of the Union (Xurmo Newsletter, PHRN Publication). 19 The declaration appeared on http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=2320 26 February 2007. 20 The Contact Group, providing informal coordination and consultation and made up of the Ambassadors of the chief donor nations to Somalia, was set up in June 2006 to discuss, following the ICU’s conquest of the south of the country, interventions of pacification and reconciliation in Somalia. The participating countries were United States, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Britain, the EU Presidency and Commission, Tanzania and Somalia, with the Foreign Minister of the Transition Government, plus the African Union, IGAD, Arab League and United Nations as observers. 21See http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=2320 22 COGWO Organizational Profile, www.cogwosomali.org


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23 See www.saacid.org 24 COGWO Alliances, www.cogwosomali.org 25 The history of FPENS given here was outlined by Abdulkadir Sheikh Farah, ex President of FPENS and currently member of the board. Interview with Abdulkadir Sheikh Farah, Nairobi, 6 August 2008. 26 For further information on the FPENS network see Saggiomo (2011a).

Rebuilding the State from Below. Networks of NGOs in Somalia

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