The focus in the article is on the beginning and expansion of the Somali war between 1988 and 1992. Three patterns and dynamics of mass-mobilisation are comparatively examined: the relatively sudden transformation of the northern guerrilla struggle in a civil war 1988, the expansion of the war to the southern region after 1989 and the mass-upheaval in Mogadishu 1990/91. Although clan-affiliation became a prominent tool to mobilising violence and to framing friends and foes throughout Somalia, the patterns of organising clan-relations within the insurgent movements and between the movements and the non-armed population differed and laid the basis for the different trajectories of violence in the Somali regions.
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