The Psychopolitics of Violence: Warlordism, Clan Mobilization, and the Making of the Somali Civil War

Abstract

The Somali civil war precipitated one of the most brutal and protracted episodes of
inter-warlord violence and power contestation on the African continent during the early
1990s. In the wake of the Somali state’s collapse, political authority fragmented, giving
rise to a violent patchwork of clan-based militias led by warlords - figures who, as Max
Weber classically theorized, derive legitimacy from charismatic authority and emerge in
contexts where formal state institutions have either weakened or disintegrated altogether.
The downfall of the military regime of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 marked a turning
point, unleashing a wave of clan-based vendetta, mass killings, and violence that rapidly
escalated into a systematized and internecine communal conflict. What initially began
as a rebellion against an authoritarian military regime in the late 1970s evolved into
a devastating cycle of clan vengeance, mass killings, and large-scale displacement of
Somalis. This study interrogates the politics of warlordism in Somalia by examining how
warlords mobilized kinship networks and clan solidarities in the vacuum of state authority.
Drawing on both psychoanalytic theory and ethnographic fieldwork, the research seeks
to uncover the emotional and symbolic dimensions of violence, authority, and belonging that animated this dark chapter in Somali history. Importantly, this study foregrounds the
voices and memories of those who lived through the war - former fighters, civilians, and
survivors - granting them epistemic agency to narrate their experiences under warlord
rule. In doing so, it contributes to a deeper understanding of how power, identity, and
violence coalesced in the making of Somalia’s warlord era and offers critical insights into
the psychosocial legacies of civil war.