ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 explores questions of political partisanship in peacemaking by looking at the UN–US peace enforcement operations in Somalia and the peacebuilding initiative in Somaliland in the 1990s. It points out that peace formation is the result of irreconcilable interests and antagonisms; it does not operate in a politics-free space: during the UN–US-led intervention, the interveners violated the foggy barrier existing between neutrality and impartiality once international forces took side in the conflict. The UN assumed a non-neutral behaviour within the conflict and dictated political distinctions between insurgents. Interposition forces became an instrument of division, as well as leverage for political and military advantage. Interveners had a political impact on the ground, as they initially subverted the internal distribution of power in favour of the weakest faction, but they lacked the commitment and material capacity of sustaining the preferred winning faction. In addition, also peacebuilding in Somaliland was not impartial, neither immune from violence, as the chapter deconstructs the imaginary of ‘the local’ as depoliticised entity by defining the socio-political stratifications of multiple actors and political agenda engaged with the peace process.
