APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 7 Integrating Principles and Practices in Somaliland 7 During the first twelve years of its self-declared independence from the rest of Somalia, Somaliland did not have political parties, but instead relied on traditional forms of social and political organization embedded in western-style institutions of governance. In 1997 Somaliland had adopted a draft interim constitution based on a power-sharing process called the Beel system, which blended the principles and practices of clan elders with western democratic processes and structures of governance. The Beel system consisted of an executive (Golaha Xukuumadda) comprised of a president, vice president, and council of ministers, a legislature—composed of the Upper House of Elders (Golaha Guurtida) and House of Representatives (Golaha Wakiillada)—and an independent judiciary for administering civil law.24 The authority held by the elders of the Upper House, or Guurti, included responsibility for selecting a president, ensuring state security by managing internal conflicts, and acting as a check on the executive as well as the House of Representatives.25 This role for elders in government has a long history. Guurti governance of Somaliland ‘goes back [to] when we settled in this part of the world[;] when foreigners came . . . as colonizers, the guurti governing bodies reached agreements with them. [This was done] with the Turkish, the kadives of Egypt and the British’.26 The Beel system should not be described as a democracy; it neither established political leadership or the right to legislate or recruit judges, policemen, or soldiers, or others, to carry out the law. Rather, it allowed for decisions to be made based on consensus, where policy would be formulated through well-argued discussions that satisfied the needs of the elders and clans.27 This system of government eventually evolved to include political parties and election of the president and members of the lower house. A present danger is that government has become a power-sharing coalition of Somaliland’s main clans, weakening the Beel system and thereby impeding effective government.28 The challenge for Somaliland is to develop a government that is fair and satisfies traditional clan-based rules and regulations while at the same time addressing the global influences and pressures related to governance and secular legal structures. CUSTOMARY LAW The Somaliland constitution outlines three separate, but not mutually exclusive, legal systems: sharia law (based on Islamic traditions and interpretations of the Quran), civil law (based on officially binding punishments and agreements), and customary law (consisting of rules used by councils of elders to regulate life and resolve conflicts at the clan and sub-clan levels).29 Although all laws need to be consistent with sharia and its codes of conduct, customary law (xeer) determines daily life and is used to address the majority of conflicts in Somaliland, including murder. Somali folk wisdom 24. Hersi, ‘Research guide to the Somaliland legal system’, 2.1.3 Customary Law. 25. M. Bradbury, A. Y. Abokor, and H. A. Yusuf, ‘Somaliland: Choosing politics over violence’, Review of African Political Economy, 30:97 (2003), 455–78. 26. Upper House of Elders report, 28 March 2007. 27. Notten and MacCallum, Law of the Somalis. 28. Bradbury and the Catholic Institute for International Relations, Becoming Somaliland. 29. Interview, Mohamaud Hussen Farah, 30 March 2008.