Post-conflict statecraft, land governance and exclusion in Hargeisa, Somaliland

This paper explores urban land governance in Hargeisa as a critical site of Somaliland’s post-conflict statecraft. Two key issues make this study imperative. First, the current research on Somaliland focuses on the central authority ⁽¹⁾ with scant attention to the organization and functioning of the urban state and its effect for the urban poor, thus obscuring the importance of the conurbation as a site for statecraft. Second, Somaliland’s post-conflict statecraft is marked by inconsistencies, previously unexplored. While the creation of the subnational state is characterized as bottom-up, with its origins in community-led peacebuilding, its governance practices are characterized by exclusionary top-down procedures imported from colonial and postcolonial periods. Based on interviews with key informants, archival research and document analysis, I historicize these layers of the state-building processes. I argue that the top-down approach of post-conflict land governance, a critical site of statecraft, marginalizes the disadvantaged by creating bureaucracies that favour the affluent.