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| 1 |
ID:
078565
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2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Somalia's catastrophic humanitarian crisis of 2007, in which up to 300,000 Mogadishu residents were displaced in fighting pitting Ethiopian and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces against a complex insurgency of clan and Islamist opposition, was the culmination of a series of political miscalculations and misjudgements on the part of Somali and external actors since 2004. They resulted in a cascading sequence of political crises which plunged Somalia into increasingly intractable conflicts. This 'tragedy in five acts' includes the flawed creation of the TFG in late 2004, which emerged as a narrow coalition rather than a government of national unity; the failure of a promising civic movement in Mogadishu in summer of 2005 to challenge the power base of warlords and Islamists in the capital; the disastrous decision by the US government to encourage an alliance between its local counter-terrorism partners in Mogadishu, producing a war which led to the victory of the Council of Islamic Courts (CIC) in June 2006; the radicalization of the CIC over the course of 2006, which guaranteed a war with Ethiopia; and the Ethiopian offensive against the CIC in late 2006, leading to its occupation of the capital, a complex insurgency against Ethiopian forces and armed violence which produced what the UN described as a 'humanitarian catastrophe'. In virtually every instance, key actors took decisions that produced unintended outcomes which harmed rather than advanced their interests, and at a cost in human lives and destruction of property that continues to mount.
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| 2 |
ID:
086165
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The epidemic of piracy off the coast of Somalia since 2007 included the spectacular pirating in November 2008 of the Saudi supertanker Sirius Star containing a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily oil production; the ship was released on 10 January 2009 in exchange for a $3 million ransom. The epidemic has led to extensive media commentary, a flurry of UN Security Council resolutions, and deployment of an unusual combination of some of the world's most powerful navies to escort commercial ships through one of the world's busiest, and now most dangerous, shipping lanes.
Predictably, policymakers, pundits and politicians have sought to harness the piracy story to advance their own agendas. Many have seized on it to plead for a durable political solution to the 19-year crisis of state collapse in Somalia. This is a waterborne variation on the 'securitisation' of state-building, the argument that failed states pose a host of spillover dangers, including piracy, if left unresolved. Humanitarians have contrasted the robust international anti-piracy response with the tepid global mobilisation to address Somalia's horrific humanitarian crisis, in which three million Somalis are in need of emergency aid. Some apologists have cast Somali piracy in 'Robin Hood' terms, as a legitimate local response by poor coastal fishing communities against external predators engaged in illegal fishing and toxic-waste dumping in their waters. More than a few journalists have framed the Somali piracy story as another example of 'Mad Max anarchy' prevailing in the hopelessly ungovernable place called Somalia. Still others warn that it is only a matter of time before the pirates fire on a ship laden with chemicals or fuel, producing an environmental disaster on Somalia's shoreline. And counter-terrorism experts have expressed concern over a 'terrorism-piracy nexus' in which some of the tens of millions of dollars of ransom money flowing into Somalia are being garnered by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia known as al-Shabaab. What all of these perspectives share is the claim that Somali piracy is only a symptom of a much bigger political problem on land.
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| 3 |
ID:
087319
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| 4 |
ID:
076183
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| Publication |
2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Zones of state failure are assumed to be anarchic. In reality, communities facing the absence of an effective state authority forge systems of governance to provide modest levels of security and rule of law. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in Somalia, where an array of local and regional governance arrangements have emerged since the 1991 collapse of the state. The Somalia case can be used both to document the rise of governance without government in a zone of state collapse and to assess the changing interests of local actors seeking to survive and prosper in a context of state failure. The interests of key actors can and do shift over time as they accrue resources and investments; the shift "from warlord to landlord" gives some actors greater interests in governance and security, but not necessarily in state revival; risk aversion infuses decisionmaking in areas of state failure; and state-building initiatives generally fail to account for the existence of local governance arrangements. The possibilities and problems of the "mediated state model," in which weak states negotiate political access through existing local authorities, are considerable.
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| 5 |
ID:
052864
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| Publication |
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
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| Description |
92p.
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| Series |
Adelphi paper; 364
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| Standard Number |
0198516703
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Copies: C:1/I:0,R:0,Q:0
Circulation
| Accession# | Call# | Current Location | Status | Policy | Location |
| 048311 | 967.73053/MEN 048311 | Main | Withdrawn | General | |
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| 6 |
ID:
090509
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
After almost two ignominious decades as the world's foremost failed state, Somalia's prospects had seemed brighter at the start of 2009. Only a few months later, the country is once more in the grip of despair as an emboldened insurgency and feeble government together frustrate national reconciliation
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| 7 |
ID:
115619
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
While transitional politics and the war against Al Shabab are dominating headlines, . . . a combination of intense pressures is making subsistence livelihoods less and less viable and producing massive, irreversible migrations with enormous long-term implications for Somalia and Kenya.
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