Regenerative Farming as Somali Security Policy
Caroline Ognibene, Research Fellow, Resource, Environment & Energy Policy Lab
cognibene@africacfsp.org
The extremist organization al-Shabaab capitalizes on food insecurity and internal displacement to recruit and coerce new members. Environmental damage to crops, upon which many Somalis rely for subsistence and livelihood, severely exacerbates these risk factors. To lessen the pervasive influence of al-Shabaab, and to increase overall stability, Somali farmers should adopt regenerative farming techniques, which decrease environmental vulnerability.
Overlapping Insecurities
As of October 2020, 2.1 million Somalis face acute food insecurity, and 2.6 million are internally displaced. Amongst this instability’s many causal factors are environmental impacts, including drought, locust swarms, and extreme soil degradation. Forced displacement due to economic or food insecurity is a problem not only in and of itself, but also as a driving factor of increased participation in al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliated extremist organization. To quote Somalia’s former top environmental official, Bur’i Hamza, “The fact that many of our youth have lost jobs because of desertification, deforestation […] is one of the major causes of radicalization because of the linkages between violence and environmental degradation.” Hamza was killed in the al-Shabaab attack of June 25, 2016. Soil degradation and desertification displace those who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and lead to food insecurity, which in turn increases involvement with and dependency on al-Shabaab for land and resources.
Impacts on Somali Women
Unfortunately, the option of joining al-Shabaab poses some potential benefits to Somali women. Currently, federal Somalia law drastically limits marital autonomy for women; imposes sexually discriminatory laws such as treating sexual violence as an offense against sexual honor, rather than a criminal act; exposes women to sexual violence from government soldiers and civilians; and, despite mandated representational quotas, largely excludes women from the electoral process. Consequently, some women choose to join al-Shabaab to gain relatively higher of access to the public sphere and marital autonomy under Sharia law – and, of course, some women join out of belief in al-Shabaab’s mission. Nonetheless, the presence of al-Shabaab, and its attempts to dominate the region, pose a number of harms to women in particular. Many women are forced, coerced, or lured into joining, and many are brutally forced into sexual slavery. Because women are disproportionately affected by drought and famine, they are more likely to face the extreme insecurity that can lead to joining al-Shabaab. Whether they are involved directly or indirectly, women “bear the brunt of violent extremism” as victims of trauma, fear, violence, stigma, and familial disintegration.
Most counterterror policies are not specific to the women’s health issue, and existing recommendations to counter al-Shabaab’s influence on women at the local level only target the surface issue. The International Crisis Group suggests a policy of hiring more female security personnel at government-run checkpoints, as women have successfully transported explosives for al-Shabaab due to traditionally being seen as unthreatening. This policy aims to reduce the incentive for al-Shabaab to recruit or abduct women by making women less militarily valuable. This recommendation is valuable in comparison to destabilizing foreign interference, such as U.S. airstrikes, but it does not address the causal factors behind women joining the group voluntarily, nor does it aid those in pursuit of food security. As the impact of al-Shabaab is exacerbated by poverty and displacement, local measures should target underlying causal factors.
Regenerative Agriculture
The climate crisis changes water cycles, directly impacting agricultural practices in Eastern Africa. Additional causes of land degradation include mismanagement of soil, overgrazing, and lack of water conservation. Regenerative agriculture is a farming system of conservation tillage, crop rotation, and rich diversity of planting. This system prioritizes the long-term health of soil and the atmosphere while increasing biodiverse nutrients and decreasing carbon emissions. Initial implementation of regenerative planning requires no technology. These techniques include no-till agriculture, where soil is not plowed; rotating crops with livestock grazing; and planting cover crops, all of which are low-to-no-cost methods of increasing soil fertility and enrichment. No-till soil management directly reduces soil erosion, which is caused in part by overworked and over-dry topsoil. Infrastructure for implementation is already in place; groups such as the Somali Agriculture Technical Group already offer agricultural management education and support, and could easily encourage transitions towards regenerative planting.
While the reasons that people join al-Shabaab, and the consequent effects on the broad category of Somali women, are enormously complex and diverse, introducing systems of regenerative agriculture could decrease dependency on the group for land, food, and economic security, particularly as the climate crisis worsens. Regenerative techniques would have the long-term effect of increasing women’s autonomy by mitigating the factors that force internal displacement and food insecurity.
Source List
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‘Aziza Mohamed.’ “My Al-Shabaab horror story, how women are lured into terror group traps.” Interview by Dennis Okari. NTV Kenya. June 1, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HdEymurwno
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https://issafrica.org/iss-today/nine-years-in-an-al-shabaab-camp-one-womans-story
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Janet Ranganathan, Richard Waite, Tim Searchinger, Jessica Zionts. “Regenerative Agriculture: Good for Soil Management, but Limited Potential to Mitigate Climate Change.” World Resources Institute. May 12, 2020.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/05/regenerative-agriculture-climate-change
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http://www.faoswalim.org/land/land-degradation
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https://thegroundtruthproject.org/somalia-conflict-climate-change/
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https://theintercept.com/2020/04/22/coronavirus-somalia-airstrikes/
Samuel Lovett, “Almost five million people at risk of hunger and famine as swarms of locusts ravage East Africa.” Independent. June 4, 2020.
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https://unsom.unmissions.org/security-council-press-statement-al-shabaab-attack-mogadishu
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https://minorityrights.org/country/somalia/
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https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/what-regenerative-agriculture
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https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/somalia/b145-women-and-al-shabaabs-insurgency
