Since its inception, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia (and Eritrea) has been rolling over controversies, mainly in its reporting, sourcing, and unsubstantiated claims. I just got through reading its latest report made of truths, half-truths, and a whole lot of innuendoes that implicate at least four present/past officials and presidential candidates with certain […]
Housing nearly half a million people, the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya been a growing haven for those fleeing drought, famine and chaos in neighboring Somalia, albeit one with problems of its own. This past week, aid agencies reported that funds needed to keep servicing the camp are falling short by nearly $25 million. “The […]
Internally—where it matters the most—the overall status of a government is judged by how the average citizen perceives it. From that perspective, and due to a number of factors, in Somalia not much has changed in the past three decades since the military government went astray. Still, the average Somali sees his/her government as the […]
Like in wars between states and other organized groups, civil wars and other protracted domestic conflicts are seldom caused by a single factor. Over time, even those that prove to be the exception to the rule eventually evolve into a much more complex conflict- hence the entity known as Somaliland. A Brief History Only […]
Two decades have passed since the collapse of the Somali state. Twenty one years to be exact. According to Lee Cassanelli, Professor of African history at the University of Pennsylvania, this exact number matters in Somali politics – perhaps in a subconscious way. In August 2007, during one of his presentations at the Somali Studies […]
For more than two decades, Somalia’s sovereignty has been in limbo- or in an utterly defunct status. Though there are many causes, a particular one stands out exponentially: volatile security. For no nation can claim, or (like in Somalia’s case) reclaim its sovereignty while dependent on another country, coalition, or a peace-building force for security. […]
Andrew J. Shapiro, the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, has been making the rounds lately, speaking on the subject of pirates (not the intellectual-property kind, the old-fashioned kind). Addressing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce one week and the Center for American Progress the next, he adjusts his emphasis just a tad (a […]
For a number of years, Nairobi (Kenya) has been the de facto capital of Somalia after the State has disintegrated into anarchy. It has been where Somalis sought refuge, re-started their lives, and networked with the rest of the world. By the same token, it has been where almost all of the eighteen or so […]
If there is any consensus on the nature and the outcome of the London Conference on Somalia – that brought together representatives of over 50 nations that included a number of Muslim nations – it must be the fact that it was a puzzling event that raised much speculation. Now that the fanfare has ended, […]
And you thought your biggest social media worry was being defriended. Last week, the New York Times published an interesting piece on the use of social media by terrorist groups. They focused on a recent Twitter battle instigated by the Somalia-based, loosely al-Qaeda linked, al-Shabab. Their target…African Union peacekeeping forces and the Kenyan army. The […]
As the civil war in Libya dominates news headlines this week, the State Department reminds us that U.S. efforts to fight famine in the Horn of Africa continue even as the media focus has shifted away. How is the U.S. responding to the famine crisis? Secretary Clinton explained the U.S. response in remarks to the […]
There are so many events competing for our attention right now, there’s the debt crisis, the Norway attacks and a foiled attack here at home, it’s easy to get distracted. There’s another event unfolding in Africa, a humanitarian tragedy brought on by the perfect storm of drought and civil war. Even amid all the other […]
Last week the UN declared a famine in two regions of Southern Somalia and warned that it could spread to other parts of the Horn of Africa. That is a big deal. As Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch pointed out, a famine is a technical finding based or mortality, malnutrition and water consumption; they […]
Many are familiar with the origin of Somalia’s protracted conflict in the fall of Said Barre’s regime in 1991 and the resulting competition for political control among warring clans. Yet the conditions of warfare in Somalia have evolved dramatically since that time as the impact of the conflict upon the local geography, the role of […]
Yesterday I went to CSIS downtown to hear Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson talk about the Administration’s “Dual-Track” approach to Somalia. The speech was good, but I didn’t hear anything that sounded particulary new when it came to foreign policy. The introduction was along the lines of, “no one has an […]