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War and Peace in the Independence Discourse

This chapter spotlights the powerful discourse about independence that re/produced shared meanings about each of these elements, demonstrating their contingent nature. It argues that the maintenance of peace is less a function of institutional strength than of a discourse that structures the conditions of possibility such that political violence seems illogical or dangerous. The discourse articulates engrained popular ideas about the proximity—and dangerous unpredictability—of violence. The visible consequences of failing to negotiate a peace settlement in Somalia undoubtedly reinforced Somalilanders’ motivations to succeed in doing so. For Somalilanders, the war in and around Mogadishu provided a tangible worst-case scenario that graphically illustrated the potential for violence to spiral out of control in structural circumstances that closely resembled Somaliland’s. It suggests that the maintenance of peace rests, to a significant degree, on the reproduction of a belief that violence is undesirable, rather than the enforcement capacity of the institutions that articulate that belief.