Description
In an era marked by the crisis of peacebuilding, Somalia stands as a quintessential case study, where the intersection of peace and war takes center stage. By exploring the growing convergence between post-9/11 counterinsurgency intervention practices and peacebuilding, focusing on the cases of Somalia and Somaliland, this paper challenges the prevailing binary perspective of war and violence as antithetical to peace. Drawing on fieldwork data and interviews, the paper traces over time how counterinsurgency logics have become integrated into international intervention modalities, in particular peacebuilding discourse. In discussing the ensuing impacts, the paper stresses the need to recognize upfront the dilemmas and trade-offs between goals of countering insurgencies and terrorism, and goals of promoting peace and accountable security for populations in conflict zones.
