Abstract This thesis is intended to explore the international relations of emerging nation-building in the Somali coast, with particular reference to the un-recognised Republic of Somaliland in the north-western Horn of Africa region. This study focuses on the international relations of Somaliland’s international quest for recognition, linked to its own culturally-rooted internal reconciliatory post-war nation-building efforts. Informed by written as well as first-hand research interviews, particular focus is placed in this study on the interplay of internal and external forces in shaping a strategy by Somaliland’s elites for acquiring international recognition and national selfdetermination. These are placed within the broader regional and international context of attempts to resuscitate the Somali state, an endeavour offering a fitting assessment of different modalities of African nation-building within the greater Somali environment. In relative analytic terms, the competitive international relations of nation-building in Somaliland and state reconstitution in southern Somalia informs the underlying hypothesis of this thesis: Somaliland’s example as a study in the efficacy of the internally-driven, culturally-rooted ‘bottom-up’ approach to post-war nation-building and regional stability, and the implications this holds for prioritising reconciliation between indigenous traditions and modernity in achieving stability in nation-building. By contrast, the internationally-backed ‘top-down’ approach to reconstituting a Mogadishu-based Somali state remains elusive. Yet, the international status quo regarding the affording of diplomatic recognition to what are normally considered secessionist ‘break-away’ regions of internationally recognised states, complicates Somaliland’s culturally rooted ‘bottom-up’ modalities. It also challenges the African Union (AU) during the ‘good governance’ era of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), a context within which Somaliland fits comfortably as a good citizen of the international community. The international relations of the Somaliland nation-building enterprise is approached from a ‘quadrilateral framework’ of interactive elements to the Somaliland experience: Reconciliation, Reconstruction, Religion and Recognition. This framework informs the four core chapters of the thesis.

The United Nations has a long history of peacekeeping missions. These have evolved over time but since the end of the Cold War there has been rapid growth in those missions where the remit placed on the peacekeepers, both military and civilian, is more complex and demanding. In trying to define these missions and their mandates a wide range of terminology has been developed in an effort to describe the exact nature of the mission. Since many of these deployments take place into theatres where there is no peace to keep, or where a fragile peace reverts to a conflict situation such tight definitions often lead to the troops involved no longer having an appropriate mandate. More recently some of these larger missions constitute in fact interventions to impose peace. Attempts to find a `peace¿ classification for such deployments often confuse the issue rather than bring clarity. In reality these missions are not peacekeeping at all. The almost forgotten doctrine, principles and practices of Counterinsurgency provide a better framework for defining these missions, the respective roles of the key players and the factors necessary to bring success.

Following state-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UK has increasingly eschewed large-scale intervention in favour of local proxy forces. Whilst this strategy might appeal to the war-weary and cash strapped interventionist, frequent use of military capacity building as a tool of foreign policy inevitably raises questions about the accountability of those local forces being trained. This thesis examines the exportation of Western concepts of civil-military relations into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces (RSLAF), carried out by the British-led International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) during intervention and post-conflict stabilisation in Sierra Leone. It argues that external interventionists can reshape local military culture, to promote both democratic civil-military norms and professional military effectiveness, but only through extensive institutional change. In Sierra Leone, IMATT attempted to change the organisational culture of the RSLAF by reforming its institutional mechanisms for socialisation, training, education and promotion. By inculcating a new normative ethos in a cohort of junior RSLAF officers, IMATT sought to promulgate cultural change throughout the military via a structured process of intra-service competition and generational replacement. This novel blend of internal and external processes of military change challenges existing scholarship on military innovation and adaptation, advancing our understanding of the relationship between military culture, military change, and external intervention. However, this process of institutional redevelopment and cultural change in the RSLAF proved to be both heavily contested and deeply political, ultimately leading to partial results. Consequently, IMATT’s experience of RSLAF reform holds important implications for the study of civil-military relations and security sector reform, and with it, the conduct of contemporary military capacity building and liberal intervention.