* Creating regional co-operation, stability, security and peace in the Horn of Africa involves re-appropriating and re-defining the state, civil society and market nexus of the region in order to create enduring institutional arrangements capable of self-correction, learning, self-reliance and innovation, argues this paper, presented at a conference entitled 'Horn of Africa: Cooperation instead of Wars and Destruction', held in Lund, Sweden between May 11-12 2002 and organised by the Somalia International Rehabilitation Centre. *

Civil society is neither good and peaceful nor violent and bad. It is neither all democratic nor all despotic. The concept is a generic term for containing and including every variety of association: grassroots organisations, civility expressing organisations, independent organisations, associational organisations, private organisations, private voluntary organisations, community based organisations and non-governmental and quasi- non governmental organisations. All those associations that are neither wholly market guided nor all state guided fall in the civil society sphere. Civil society is an old idea made newer by so- called third wave democratisation and the contemporary realities of a post cold war world. Its revival owes to the emergence of a globalising agenda driven largely by donor finance that dominates the world's intellectual, political and moral space and vision.

Civil society became popular after globalisation had fully discredited the planning state (e.g. former Soviet Union states) and the interventionist state (e.g. the Keynesian welfare state in the western states) in favour of a minimalist role of the state in the economy (the liberal state). It appears that globalisation and democratisation have changed world politics and economics in favour of the rich, markets, corporations, private finance or speculative capital, and against the poor, the state, trade unions and even non-financial capital. If state action cannot deliver better possibilities, it is said civil society, and non-profit making voluntary sectors, and community based organisations and other social networks and NGOs may step in. The role of NGOs is also related to helping reduce the most unacceptable side of the mainly economic driven globalising logic. It is this international context of globalisation that explains the emergence of the current interest and development on civil society. There is thus much value in identifying the ideological contamination of this concept from the current go-go globalisation and the rhetoric of democratisation in order to distil and rescue the role of civil society in development, peace- making, and in fostering security and long-term co-operation.

There are some important indicators that are necessary but not sufficient to measure the contribution of civil society in fostering co-operation, stability, security and peace building in the Horn of Africa area:

- Spreading a culture of civility as a counter weight to war and violence;
- Institutionalising a culture of service by community based self-organisations to counter rampant poverty and inequalities;
- Spreading ethics and moral sense as a civic culture and virtue in order to overcome prevailing social interchanges marred by violence, deception, force and blackmail;
- Creating a new standard for cultivating self-aware citizens at all levels to foster long-term co-operation, security, stability and peace in the region.

The question is whether the current array or constellation of civil society associations, communities and organisations as they are evolving and persisting to exist in the region contribute to civility and civilisation or war, poverty and discord. There is an assumption that creating and spreading these associational forms will strengthen civility, co-operation and peace. There is an equal assumption that market and state failures make the latter the least attractive candidates as agencies for civilised co-operation and peace. This benign approach to civil society and uncharitable approach to markets and the state should not be taken at face value. For example, in Somalia with the disintegration of the state, civil society has become the source for the perpetuation of unending horizontal violence. Armed civilians in the context of conflict can be as lethal as militaries. The civil action that is violent should not be criminalized if the objective is to end all violence and transform chaos and incoherence with social transformation underpinned by notions of justice and equity.

Thus taken by themselves, none of the institutional actors representing markets, civil society and the state are, a priori, innocent or guilty. The context of their existence and persistence matters in identifying the social content of their occurrences in time and space co-ordinates. They are all complex organisms. They all have their own specific functions and problems. They can do different things differently. As a heterogeneous and complex sphere, civil society too can be a factor of discord and violence. There is in fact military civil society operating as a transitional network at present that has alarmed the hyper power of our time to declare the world disposition of political forces into those with the hyper power or the rest. Civil society has to be scrutinized and re-conceptualised first before we admit that it can be a factor for peace and co-operation in the region.