The Interplay of Interventions and Hybridisation in Puntland’s Security Sector

Hybridisation is often conceptualised as a ‘liminal’ occurrence, a ‘contact point’ or the product of an ‘interface’. This tends to invoke the very binaries that the concept seeks to overcome, because it assumes that a meeting between separate entities must occur for hybrid orders to emerge. Instead, this paper argues that processes of hybridisation and how they assemble disparate types of authority lie at the very core of how social processes evolve. The argument is substantiated empirically by exploring the internal and external dynamics that have shaped and partly fragmented the security sector of Puntland, the biggest and most stable region in Somalia (beyond Somaliliand). The analysis centres on attempts by the United Nations to support the Puntland government in reducing numbers of the region’s constitutionally recognized security forces. In this analysis, the paper shows how the Puntland government necessarily has to balance and negotiate conflicting demands of clan leaders, the global and regional security interests of individual governments, notably the United Arab Emirates and the United States, as well as continued pressure from the ‘international community’, formally represented by the UN, to act as a functioning regional centre within a federal Somalia.