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Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding
Somalia has been devastated by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion and years of civil war, and it has long been without a central government. Against this background of violence, Somali academic Afyare Abdi Elmi, attempts to explain the multiple dimensions of the conflict and find a peace-building consensus.
Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort.
This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.
Somalia is a failed state and a Muslim state. This combination means the West assumes that it will become a breeding ground for extremism. The country regularly hits the headlines as a piracy hotspot. This combination of internal division and outside interference makes for an intensely hostile landscape. Elmi shows that only by addressing the problem of the statelessness in the country can the long process of peace begin. He highlights clan identities, Islam and other countries in the region as the key elements in any peace-building effort.
This unique account from an author who truly understands Somalia should be required reading for students and academics of international relations and peace / conflict studies.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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March 10, 2022
This is a clear book that explains the complexities of Somalia. The 8 chapters include an introduction, the causes of the conflict, clans, Islam, the US, Ethiopia and Kenya, education, and the peacebuilding process, with a final chapter with recommended steps. The author addresses many of the sociocultural issues as well as geopolitical issues that affect Somalia's (failed) peacebuilding process. For instance - the reality that the Islamic groups are the most "stable" political force even while they are the most unappealing to both the West and to Somalia's own neighbors. Or that one issue with clans is that because they are infinitely nesting and dividing, there is no way to either partition or power share.
I walk a way a bit less optimistic than the author. I am a little surprised that the economic base almost never comes up in the book - that Somalia's overwhelming pastoral nomadism is the base that generates the superstructure of clans, endemic violence, foreign interference, and Islamism (compare this to Afghanistan). However, I still learned a lot about the situation in Somalia and I think this is a fine book.
I walk a way a bit less optimistic than the author. I am a little surprised that the economic base almost never comes up in the book - that Somalia's overwhelming pastoral nomadism is the base that generates the superstructure of clans, endemic violence, foreign interference, and Islamism (compare this to Afghanistan). However, I still learned a lot about the situation in Somalia and I think this is a fine book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review