Somalia
Jamhuuriyadda Soomaaliya
The Wild West in East Africa -
What do a handful of South African mercenaries do for an encore in Somalia, once all the pirates are gone?...
Can Obama Make the Legal Case for the War on Terror? -
Normally, law professors thrive on confusion: We foment it in the classroom whenever possible. But while confusion is good for the law student soul, it's not so good for the execut...
U.S. Congress Should Clarify Authorization for War -
The Obama administration's political and legal authority to wage war against al-Qaeda has steadily eroded. Both liberal and conservative members of Congress have challenged the adm...
To Stabilize Mali, Look to Somalia's Lessons -
The United Nations Security Council has made a wise decision to create an ambitious African stabilization mission for Mali. To succeed, however, this mission will need to draw less...
Giving Guns to Somalia Is a Good Idea -
There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have...
Targeted Killing Comes to Define War on Terror -
Despite Mr. Brennan’s protestations, an overwhelming reliance on killing terrorism suspects, which began in the administration of George W. Bush, has defined the Obama years....
Related Videos
Most Recent Articles
The U.S. Did Police World Before 9/11 - Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
The indefatigable Bill Kristol has written an article in The Weekly Standard that every American ought to read. There is no more clarifying example of how skewed the neoconservati...
It's Still a Bad Idea to Sell Arms to Somalia - Armin Rosen, The Atlantic
A recent UN resolution assumes that the country has made serious progress. Here's why it may be wrong....
Rand Paul a Distraction from the Real Drones Debate - Washington Post
The fact that his paranoid fantasies gained some traction is testimony to the administration’s real failures in managing its counterterrorism campaigns. Mr. Obama has chosen to c...
Obama and the American Drone Awakening - Michael Hastings, BuzzFeed
A strange thing happened in America this week: The country started to show signs of outrage over the Obama administration's targeted killing program....
Turning Syria into Somalia - Hassan Mneimneh, German Marshall Fund
Bashar al-Assad has lost all hope of victory against an uprising that has metastasized - through the atrocities committed by his regime - into a corrosive civil war. By his own ...
Mali & the Lessons of Western Intervention - Glenn Greenwald, Guardian
The west African nation becomes the eighth country in the last four years alone where Muslims are killed by the west....
Somali Pirate Retires from Hijacking - Spencer Ackerman, Danger Room
Have we reached — and passed — Peak Pirate? The dread Somali pirate Mohamed Abdi Hassan — also known as “Afweyne,” or “Big Mouth” — ...
Africa's Triangle of Threat - Abukar Arman, The Commentator
Just as the temperature of ‘security threat’ slowly declines in Somalia, it rises in other parts of East Africa....
Invade Mali? Consider Somalia - Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Globe and Mail
Before invading Mali, look at successes in Somalia first....
Is Syria the Next Somalia? - Tony Karon, Time
At least 60,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war since March 2011, U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay reported Wednesday. Despite that death toll, which Pillay des...
The Last Stand of Somalia's Jihad - James Verini, Foreign Policy
Can Kenya's invasion of Kismayo put an end to al-Shabab for good?...
America's Out-of-Control Drone War - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
What is worse? Locking somebody up for years, without trial, while you try to find proof he is a terrorist? Or killing somebody whose name you don’t even know because his pattern...
Somalia's Tentative Recovery - Irfan Husain, Dawn
The return of a tenuous stability augurs well for this east African state. If it can build democratic institutions, it might well emerge from decades of violence and abject poverty...
Turkey Finds Its Way into Africa - Julia Harte, World Policy Journal
ISTANBUL—Late one August night in 2011, Rifat Sarıcaoglu, the head of Turkey’s association of private universities, received a call from the office of the prime minister. Sar...
Remote U.S. Base at Core of Secret Operations - Craig Whitlock, WaPo
Camp Lemonnier, a sun-baked Third World outpost established by the French Foreign Legion, began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region ...
America at War Without a Leader - Michael Gerson, Washington Post
The unavoidable disorders of the Arab Spring and the power vacuums of Africa have created an atmosphere hospitable to terrorist threats. But the administration finds this narrative...
Only Stability Will Keep al-Qaeda Out - Abdel Bari Atwan, The Guardian
The evictions of Somalia's al-Shabaab from its stronghold in Kismayo, and of Ansar al-Sharia from Benghazi in Libya are the latest successes in a concerted, US-driven effort to er...
Barack Obama: Missing in Africa - Todd Moss, Foreign Affairs
Most of Obama’s high-profile efforts have been washouts. Launched in 2009, the Global Health Initiative was supposed to broaden U.S. health investments beyond single diseases to ...
The War That Nobody Wants - Walter Russell Mead, American Interest
We are killing people in acts of war across Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa and expect to kill quite a few more. We are fighting a battle first to contain and then to defe...
Why al-Shabab Is Losing in Somalia - Combating Terrorism Center
Somalia’s (AMISOM) forces have pushed the group out of Mogadishu as well as other territory throughout southern Somalia. Its last significant stronghold is in Kismayo, a stra...
Why Is U.S. Surprised by Muslim Backlash? - Seumas Milne, The Guardian
Since launching the war on terror, the US and its allies have attacked and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq; bombed Libya; killed thousands in drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Som...
Somalia's New Man - Dayo Olopade, Latitude
One of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s inaugural acts as president of Somalia was to survive an assassination attempt. After winning a decisive vote among parliamentarians last Monday, ...
Help Somalia's New President: Cut Off Aid - Bloomberg
A surprise candidate, Sheikh Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, has won Somalia’s first freely contested presidential election. The bigger surprise will be if his government proves any less...
The End of Hopelessness in Somalia? - David Blair, Telegraph Blogs
The election of a Somali president would once have passed largely unnoticed – and for good reason. After all, what could it possibly mean to become the leader of a failed state...
Mali Infected by the Somali Virus - Jan Puhl, Der Spiegel
Mali was once a model of African democracy. But ever since a military coup in March, Islamists have been on the march and have already imposed Sharia law in the country's north. Th...
A Second Somalia in Africa? - Washington Post
Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS) has proposed a military intervention in northern Mali. The United Nations — in conjunction with the African Union and the United...
U.S. Puts Money on Proxy War - Nick Turse, Le Monde Diplomatique
In the 1980s, the U.S. government began funneling aid to mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan as part of an American proxy war against the Soviet Union. It was, in the minds of America...
U.S. the Driving Force Behind Somalia Fighting - David Cloud, LA Times
Washington has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has sparked alarm as foreig...
Why Don't Obama, Romney Talk About Wars? - Doyle McManus, LA Times
With U.S. citizens engaged in seven or more conflicts around the world, don't both candidates owe us some plain talk about their plans? How many troops would they keep in Afghani...
Al-Qaeda Tightens Its Grip on Africa - Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph
Just when we think we have one network of al-Qaeda terrorists on the run, up pops another one to take its place and resume the relentless campaign of terror against the West and it...
How the War on Terror Is Being Fought in East Africa - Alex Perry, Time
For the U.S. and its allies, AMISOM represents progress in the war on terror. Rather than mass deployment of troops, the U.S. and the European Union are funding neighboring count...
The Islamist Threat in Africa - Jerusalem Post
Recent warnings in Washington about the influence and cooperation of Islamist movements in Africa should not fall on deaf ears....
In Post-Gitmo World, Prisoners Rot in Somalia - Eli Lake, Daily Beast
So now it is official: United States soldiers have been hunting down al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia. When the White House confirmed earlier this month what has long been an open se...
Brewing Backlash Against the Drone War - Alan Dowd, American Interest
For most Americans, the so-called drone war is a no-brainer: maximum lethality delivered at low economic cost, with zero risk to American personnel—all buffered by the virtual-r...
To Help Somalia, Think Locally - Abdirahman Farole, Foreign Policy
Recent headlines about al-Shabab terrorist bombings in Kenya and the disruption of Somali-originated terror plots in the Netherlands have served to reinforce the conventional view ...
Does Nation-Building Work? - John Yemma, Christian Science Monitor
The term "nation-building" smacks of colonialism. But when war has broken a country, nation-building is a moral duty -- and the best way to build is with equal parts outside and ...
Yemen Must Not Become Another Somalia - David Hearst, The Guardian
Bringing the fight to al-Qaida is one thing; having to shoulder the burden of a country in a state of collapse is quite another....
How to Save Somalia - Heritage Foundation
Famine, drought, war, piracy, international terrorism, and the absence of democratic governance: The factors behind, as well as the symptoms of, the failed Somali state are legion....
Europe to Somali Pirates: Beware - Daily Telegraph
The European Union naval attack on a Somali pirate base is a vast improvement on last year's mollycoddling....
Look at Europe Getting All Tough on Pirates - Matt Gurney, National Post
On Tuesday, joint military forces operating under the European flag launched an attack against a Somali pirate base ashore. An attack helicopter, believed to be operating off of a ...
Is al-Qaeda's Somali Branch Declining? - American Enterprise Institute
he anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death last week focused attention briefly on the continued threat posed by al Qaeda. Too much of that attention has been devoted to al Qae...
Al-Qaeda Is Nation-Building - Should We Be Worried? - Will McCants, FP
Al-Qaeda's gains warrant serious attention, but they do not represent a shift away from the group's "far enemy" strategy targeting the United States to a "near enemy" strategy targ...
Europe Prepares to Battle Pirates on Land - Thorsten Jungholt, Die Welt
There’s a lot of traffic in the Gulf of Aden. The Gulf connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. Major international sea routes run through here: every trading vessel heading...
Why Africa's Conflicts Never End - Jeffrey Gettleman, Foreign Policy
There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants...
About Somalia
- Republic of Somalia
- Population: 9,832,017 (83rd)
- Area Size: 246,201 sq mi (43rd)
- GDP: $5.524 billion (156th)
- Currency: Somali shilling (SOS)
- Official Language: Somali, Arabic
- Capital City: Mogadishu
- Largest City: Mogadishu