Somalia

IntelBrief: The Eastleigh Crackdown & the Troubled Kenya-Somalia Relationship

By Joshua Meservey

Bottom Line Up Front The Somali and Kenyan governments are at war with the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabab, but disagreements over the Kenyan Defense Forces’ actions in Somalia’s Kismayo region have strained the bilateral relationship. In April, Kenya launched a nation-wide security crackdown that targeted its domestic Somali population. Some four thousand were detained, including […]

Pham on Islamism in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Morocco

By J. Peter Pham

Atlantic Council Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham is the author of the reports on Islamism in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Morocco in the American Foreign Policy Council’s World Almanac of Islamism 2014, just published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Somaliland Democratization Strategy

Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and the International Republican Institute (IRI) hosted the Washington launch today of the new Somaliland International Democratization Strategy commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. Prepared by IRI after extensive consultation and field research, the detailed strategy document will help the international donor community coordinate and plan future democracy-support […]

Let’s Give Somalia’s Government the Non-Recognition It Deserves

By J. Peter Pham

One year ago the Obama administration broke with the Somalia policy of its three predecessors by according diplomatic recognition to the government of the Federal Republic of Somalia. Last month, in his annual Worldwide Threat Assessment report to Congress, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper bemoaned that the Somali regime’s “persistent political infighting, weak leadership […]

EU Defense Ministers Support the Way Forward for CSDP and EU Operations

By European Union

The informal meeting of EU Defence Ministers took place on 20 and 21 February in Athens, chaired by Greek Minister of National Defence Dimitris Avramopoulos on behalf of EU High Representative Catherine Ashton.

J. Peter Pham Discusses “Lessons from the Former Somalia” at US Army War College

By J. Peter Pham

J. Peter Pham, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, spoke today on “Lessons from the Former Somalia” at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In his invited lecture to students in the College’s Department of National Security and Strategy, Pham discussed the role that state collapse, extremism, insurgency, piracy, famine, foreign intervention, […]

IntelBrief: Somali Piracy Neutralized: West Africa Is Next

By J. Peter Pham

Bottom Line Up Front • The International Maritime Bureau reports that incidents of maritime piracy hit a six-year low in 2013, mainly because of a precipitous drop in attacks off the coast of Somalia• But piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is rapidly replacing the Somali threat. West African piracy accounted for 19 percent of worlwide attacks […]