Hillary Clinton is meeting with Somalia’s President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed today in order to provide at least symbolic support for that country’s seemingly hapless government and its fight against the Al-Shabaab Islamist radicals who control most of the southern part of the country, including the capital city of Mogadishu — a fight it is difficult to imagine the government ever winning. (My inclination was to put scare quotation marks around the words “President,” “country’s” and “government” given the virtually stateless chaos into which Somalia is entrenched, which is probably telling.)
(By the way, this Council on Foreign Relations interview on Clinton’s trip with Princeton Lyman, former Ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, is very much worth reading.)
