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- Author: Arrliya Sugal x
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At a recent meeting in Mogadishu, a Somali elder challenged national and
international scholars and policy-makers who were debating how best to
destroy the non-state Islamist armed group al-Shabaab, active in Somalia for
over a decade. ‘When you say, “destroy al-Shabaab,” you are speaking about
destroying us. Al-Shabaab is part of Somali society. If you destroy
al-Shabaab, you destroy us.’ The statement illustrated the role that
recognition plays in engaging with non-state armed groups and the complexity
surrounding this question.
The chapter examines how recognition in the
case of non-state armed groups goes beyond the question of legality and
legitimacy, to whether a group is recognised as part of the social fabric of
a society or external to it. Al-Shabaab has had close ties to transnational
non-state armed groups, particularly al-Qaeda, and numerous state actors
have tried to engage with it as a mere extension of al-Qaeda. The claim that
al-Shabaab is exogenous to the conflict and, indeed, to Somali society is a
specific form of mis-recognition. Al-Shabaab reacts to this by denouncing
the current government as being controlled from outside forces, too, thereby
trying to undermine its legitimacy.
The mutual allegations that either
the government or al-Shabaab are not ‘one of us’ deny the respective actor
to have a legitimate role in the conflict and its solution. Thus, the
chapter goes on to argue that the question of whether an armed non-state
group is recognised as endogenous or not has direct consequences for
conflict transformation.