Power And Violence In Somalia

Power and violence are two things that groups or people in the country like to get their hands on and have total control over it. One might ask if this could create chaos in the country and who should have the rights to them? Fortunately in most of the countries, only the "state" is allowed to these rights and privileges. What is a state? A state is an organization which holds the monopolistic rule of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory (Weber 1918). No one can contest or use these privileges unless they are allowed by the state itself (Weber 1918). A state is not something that just appears out of nowhere, it is something that needs to be formed. There are four major steps involved in forming a state. War making which …show more content…
Somalia a country which once had a government and proper control over its land and territory is now known as a failed state. It was officially no longer recognized as a state in 1995 when the international community such as the United Nations peacekeepers left the country (Maas 2001). The reason for that is people besides the government have control over the country and use force or violence to implement their rule. Basically, anyone who has a group of followers use violence to terrorize and threaten by forcing people to obey their rules and commands. An example would be of the city of Somalia known as Mogadishu. The city no longer has a government since 1991 when the president Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown and the country was in a civil war (Mass 2001). The city was now run by warlords who continue to fight others and asked businessmen like Sheikh to pay them money for their own protection against them (Mass 2001). Eventually, him and the other businessmen and entrepreneurs got fed up by their rule and decided to have their own militia (Mass 2001). They hired some people for the safe running of their telecom company and to protect other people, which eventually broke down the hold and power of these warlords in the city (Mass 2001). This is a prime example of a country which is not a state. It does not follow the steps which Tilly argues form a state. It lacks all the steps which qualify a …show more content…
Baghran which is totally under the Taliban rule where they perform as a government rather than an insurgent force (Goldstein and Shah 2015). The most important part of becoming a state is waging wars. The Taliban did this by fighting against the US government which was present at the time in Afghanistan but is no longer there. This has caused a conflict between America and the Taliban. Taliban in the past has used force to neutralize their enemies inside Baghran. The men are thrown into jails if they shave their beards and they have random turban checks if anyone has a fancy haircut underneath (Goldstein and Shah 2015). They make sure that there is no freedom or rights for the women and they are not allowed to travel or have an education (Goldstein and Shah 2015). Besides that, they wage wars into other parts of Afghanistan as well to expand their rules and have successfully managed to neutralize the Afghan government in 4 out of 400 districts (Goldstein and Shah 2015). They continue to spread throughout and people fear them. They have control over what people do in their daily lives and how much freedom they should be granted. Some people like the way how they rule because they think they are carrying out rules which support the Islamic rule. They want the mission to be carried out and the Taliban being the controllers of the