Somalia is, on paper, a sovereign state. But for the past two decades, beset by endless civil strife, secessionism, and regionalism, it has been anything but. The international community has acted as a de-facto caretaker of Somali affairs in the absence of a credible central government, with troops from African states continuing to provide security assistance. But this has begun to change.
Fauzia Haji Adan was sworn in on Monday November 19, 2012, as the Somali Federal Republic’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, making history as Somalia’s first woman to hold those posts. Another Somali woman, Maryan Qassim, was also sworn in as the minister for social services. But only a policy of sustained affirmative action can address ingrained structural imbalances against Somali women; one or two cabinet appointments won’t cut it.
As the classic modern-day failed state, Somalia seems to be finally sailing out of the rough seas of ongoing conflicts and endless political instability on which it has been floating for so long. The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia, which was temporarily set up eight years ago to transition the country into permanent statehood, came to an end earlier this month.
A few insurance companies manage to make covering piracy profitable.
The report shows that over the period 2000-2011, the first Somali Transitional National Government and the subsequent Transitional Federal Governments received bilateral aid totalling $308 million that was given mainly by Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (This figure does not include funds that came through the Arab League. It also does not cover multilateral assistance to Somalia, which is managed entirely by the United Nations Development Programme.) Only $53 million was raised domestically during this period, mainly through the Mogadishu port and airport. However, successive governments have only been able to account for $124 million – or one-third – of the total bilateral and domestic funds they received.
Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief. The last two presidents may not have been emperors or kings, but they — and the vast national-security structure that continues to be built-up and institutionalized around the presidential self — are certainly one of the nightmares the founding fathers of this country warned us against. They are one of the reasons those founders put significant war powers in the hands of Congress, which they knew would be a slow, recalcitrant, deliberative body.
Thanks to fuzzy accounting, civilians killed in drone strikes are liable to be categorized as militants posthumously.
A growing reliance on airstrikes reduces chances of a peaceful solution to the Somali piracy issue.
Since the fall of the unitary state in 1991 and the subsequent two decades of lawlessness, local Somali communities have been gradually drifting away from one another into more exclusive clans protected by regional authorities. With the absence of a functioning national government to restore public confidence and provide basic governmental services, most Somalis below the age of 30 today generally identify with regional and clan-based entities that are antithetical to the existence of a central government.
The much-ballyhooed conference on Somalia hosted by UK Prime Minister David Cameron on February 23 was long on grandstanding but short on new substance. The meeting was clearly more about crowning a new leader (Britain) and celebrating the limited military successes against Islamist militants than about building a foundation for peace.