Civil-Military Coordination in Peacebuilding: The Obstacle in Somalia

The complex nature of peacebuilding as an instrument of conflict resolution has increasingly collided the military and the civilian actors to share the same field of operation, thereby undermining the independence, impartiality and neutrality of either the military or the civilian actors. Despite the fact the military has often accentuated the need for “correspondence†, the civilian actors have conveyed concern regarding the effect of civil-military coordination on the capacity to remain independent, neutral and impartial in undertaking their main functions. This paper examines the cultural, organizational, operational and normative factors that condition the approaches of the civilian actors such as nongovernmental organizations and the military actors toward the civil-military coordination. This paper also discusses the obstacles to the (CIMIC) and offers more effective recommendations for enhancing the civil-military coordination (CIMIC) in order to achieve the economic, political and security order sought in the Somalia peacebuilding process.