Part of the support with which the U.N. and E.U. sought, against all the evidence, to encourage the transitional government must have reflected a conviction, taken as self-evident, that Somalis could not survive without a modern centralized regime. It would certainly be more convenient for international relations. In the case of E.U. and North American countries a more direct motive related to the delicate political problem of refugees that so engaged their leaders in the summer of 2002. Partly because of difficulties in absorbing Somali refugees in countries like Denmark and their impact on right-wing political parties, there was a strong desire to limit the number of Somali asylum seekers and encourage repatriation where this was feasible. For better or worse, this type of pressure partly informed international interests in promoting the formation of a government in Somalia which, it was forlornly supposed, required yet more Somali 'peace conferences'. Few of these external actors, however, appreciated the extent to which the fragile 'frontiers of the state' had been massively 'rolled back' in this powerfully decentralized and robustly individualistic culture.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 712