Deegaan Politics and War in Somalia 335There are no overriding policies for land and natural resource management
owing to the break-up of the formal Somalia state. Instead, the three different
regional governments in Somalia control and manage land and natural
resources differently. Throughout Somalia, land and natural resources are not
managed according to a legal or policy precedent. Strategies are highly specific
to local social, political and ecological contexts. Different clans and groups
formulate and enforce their own, informal policies for managing natural
resources. In places where there is some level of authority, a combination of
xeer, Islamic Sharia law and the pre-1991 penal code are used to decide con-
trol over and specific uses of land and natural resources. In addition, there is
an absence of an enabling policy environment and supportive infrastructure to
promote production and to add wealth to natural resources. The absence of a
policy framework to promote fair distribution and effective use of land and nat-
ural resources is manifest in a number of environmental problems.LandIn the past, there were bundles of tenure rights to different land and
resources for different individuals and groups. For example, rangelands were
communally owned but individuals and families owned livestock. In pre-
colonial times, traditional claims and inter-clan bargaining were used to
establish land rights. A small market for land, especially in the area of plan-
tation agriculture in southern Somalia, developed during the colonial period
and into the first decade of Somalia's independence. Land was owned by
individual families and inherited from one generation to the next.
Barre's government sought to block land sales and tried to let all private-
ly owned land as concessions to powerful clan leaders and overseas
investors, but in vain. The national land registration procedure was cumber-
some, required a great deal of time and money for small farmers, was cen-
tralised in Mogadishu, and was easily abused and manipulated by well-con-
nected officials and their proxies in the capital.36 Land rights then and now
remain a critical issue for minority groups. The Italians alienated large tracts
of riverine farmland from peasant farmers to establish foreign-owned banana
plantations. After independence, a new class of Somali entrepreneurs began
acquiring land for irrigation, using their government connections and, if nec-
essary, force, to claim land. Thousands of civil servants, politicians, mer-
chants and army officers alienated large tracts of riverine land in the 1980s.
They used provisions in the ostensibly progressive 1975 Land Reform Act to
register land titles in their own names, while local smallholders were unable
to navigate the complex bureaucracy or pay the bribes necessary to protect
customary rights to land they inhabited and farmed."'
Following the fall of Barre's government, the civil war escalated competi-
tion to control land. Militia fighters and their kinsmen claimed farm lands. In