The government has no authority and exists only in embassies and summit rooms out of the country

AU Soldier protecting presidential palace. TFG exists only with foreign support and control only small area of Mogadishu

Whatever its failings the transitional government in Mogadishu has to be preferable to an absolute takeover of Somalia by the radical Islamists of al-Shabaab. This has been the red line that cannot be crossed in international thinking about the devastated Horn of Africa nation.

It was reflected in the decision this week by African Union (AU) leaders to bolster the peacekeeping force in response to bombings by al-Shabaab in Uganda.

The AU, whose Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers are all that prevents al-Shabaab from defeating the government, could not back down in the face of Islamic terrorism and withdraw its troops.

Instead the strategy is to increase the AU peacekeeping force to more than 10,000 and push back against al-Shabaab to create space for the government to govern.

The July 11 bombings in Uganda carried out by the al Qaeda-linked group al Shabaab exposed the global terror threat emerging in the Horn of Africa – a region also plagued by destitution and authoritarian rule.  This week, however, about 3.5 million people in the region will celebrate a remarkable victory for democracy.  The government of a Muslim population just north of the territory controlled by al Shabaab will experience a peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties one month after a free and fair presidential election.  The government conducted the multi-party election by its own initiative and with limited external assistance or pressure.  The feat, which has so far received little attention in the West, reaffirms the idea that democracy can take root in cultures of any religious and socio-economic background, and it occurs at a time when U.S. foreign policy has shied away from promoting democratic allies in strategic parts of the world.

This democratic success story takes place in Somaliland, which borders a country to the south that is overwhelmingly controlled by terrorists (Somalia), sits 150 miles across the Gulf of Aden from one of al Qaeda’s stronger safe-havens (Yemen), is roughly 70 miles south of one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror (Eritrea), and is separated by only one country from the site of a recent genocide (Sudan).

Somaliland’s nascent democracy features a bicameral parliament and an independent executive branch, as stipulated by a constitution that its people approved through a national referendum in May 2001.  A mere 80 votes separated the victor from the runner-up in Somaliland’s 2003 presidential election, yet the miniscule margin of victory – rare in a region where incumbents generally expect to win 99 percent of the vote (as happened in Ethiopia’s May parliamentary elections) – generated no internal violence.

After twenty years of civil war Somalia still remains stateless and unstable. However, in spite of this, the Transitional Government is printing a new currency. On 12 January 2010, a deal costing $17 million to print new currency for Somalia has been signed between the head of currency printing office of Sudan Mohammed Al-Hassan Al-Bahi, and the Transitional Government’s Finance Minister Sharif Hassan Sheikh. At least one of the media outlets has labeled it: a “stateless nation is printing a stateless currency.”

The Transitional Government’s move to print currency only adds to a story the Somali people know only too well. Throughout the civil war individuals and administrators have printed notes which had devastating impact on the cost of living and the economy. In the civil war, the motive behind printing currency has always been greed. With disregard to the country and its people, invariably, the greed behind printing false money has been to exchange it with millions of US dollars circulating in the country and deposit it in foreign banks’ accounts.

Contrary to the TG Finance Minister’s argument — printing currency for lawless Somalia will not “contribute positively” to the economy. ^[1] Somalis in Puntland know too well the devastation printed money causes to the local economy and price hikes it heaps on food and other commodities. For that reason, the last time former Puntland administrators attempted to introduce printed money to the semi-autonomous region, the elders and business community forced them to abandon the plan and the money printed in the Far East was burned.

Early this year, I wrote an article for The Bi-College News about how Somalia had disappeared from the news since the summer’s string of piracy attacks. The media largely continues to downplay the situation in Somalia. Rather than indicating public indifference, this lack of media coverage may point to the deeper historical significance: Western states are largely responsible for the collapse of Somalia.

BBC’s "Timeline of Somalia" summarizes the events surrounding the formation of the Somali state: “1960 - British and Italian parts of Somalia become independent, merge and form the United Republic of Somalia; Aden Abdullah Osman Daar elected president." Within one year, colonies of two separate colonial powers gained independence and unified.

The colonization of Africa had divided land and drawn borders where none had previously existed. Tribal allegiances gave way to allegiances with colonial powers. In the case of Somalia, however, these boundaries were drawn twice, once during colonization by the British and the Italians and again during the simultaneous independence and unification of British and Italian Somaliland. While I have no qualms with decolonization, I wonder who saw the blueprints for this political plan and thought that this was the best way forward for Somalia. For me, it comes as no surprise that the Somali state collapsed; it seemed doomed to do so from the start of its independence.

Amid rumors that the otherwise moribund "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG) of Somalia might just bestir itself enough to attempt to break out of the tiny enclave in Mogadishu which Islamists insurgents have kept it and its supporters from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) boxed, there is reason to be concerned that in this geopolitically critical corner of the world the United States and other governments have substituted wishful thinking for realistic assessment and muddled platitudes for policy objectives, thereby magnifying the potential damage when, as I warned earlier this year, this improvised approach falls apart.

Four points to consider:

First, the virtual entirety of the international community's Somali strategy—if the hodgepodge of policies can even be dignified with that name—has been predicated on an assumption about Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's accession to the TFG presidency last year that has now been exposed as a false premise. As Bronwyn Bruton succinctly summarized in her recent Council on Foreign Relations Special Report Somalia: A New Approach (for which I had the privilege of being a member of the advisory committee):