The Cost of Identity Construction in the Somali Society : Lessons from the Past and Future Prospects.

Abstract: Nation-states are described as failed states when they fall into internal violence,stop providing affirmative political services to their citizens, loose their legitimacyand show flawed institutions and disharmonies between communities. Nations failand recover but Somalia seems to be the only failed state in the longest period ofthirty years as of 2021, which has not so far recovered from the failure. It is, thus,important to understand why the Somali state collapsed after thirty years ofindependence and has not recovered in the succeeding thirty years. Theinternational community has been trying to support the process of reconciliation,peace-building and state building but to no avail. It is not easy to find a soundanswerer to why the state has failed while the problem can be attributed to variousissues. This thesis tries to respond to that by exploring how the ethnic and identityconstructed idea for greater Somalia in the Horn of Africa contributed to thecollapse of the state. To better analyse the problem, theoretical framework hasbeen established and a previous study on the subject has been used. The thesisconcludes that the failed experiment of the idea of uniting the Somali societyinhabiting in the Horn of Africa countries under one greater Somali state which isno longer valid has to be left behind and new ways of thinking have to bedeveloped for future prospects.