End of December 2022, a young politician was assassinated in Lasanod. This was the most recent targeted killing in a long series of similar attacks, which had not been prevented or at least followed up and solved by the Somaliland authorities in town. In reaction, Lasanod residents started protesting against the prevailing insecurity in town. This escalated into .....
The election of a new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud in Somalia, coupled with a recent statement from one of the Harakat Al-Shabaab’s leaders, Mahad Warsame Qalley Karate have again put negotiations with Al-Shabaab on the agenda. The war against Al-Shabaab has developed into a ‘forever war’, where the biggest losers are Somali’s civilian population. Negotiating is .....
The Somali electoral process is nearing its end. The process has been plagued by postponements and totalitarian tendencies and is not the ‘one person one vote’ process that many hoped for. It has been determined by a combination of clan factors and financial resources, but also real political agendas, abilities to build alliances, and political images. It is not a pure clan-based process, nor is it a process determined by money alone—it is not ‘all about the money’. What we see is rather a hybrid system where many factors interact. The hybrid system has, for all its faults, in the past ensured that opposition can- candidates have had a chance to win elections in Somalia, which stands in contrast to many of its neighboring countries. In order for this to continue to function in the long run, continued checks and balances, including in the federal system, are needed, and the quality of processes becomes more important than artificial benchmarks.
The Biden Administration recently released three important strategies: the Strategy
toward sub-Saharan Africa (STSA), the National Security Strategy (NSS), and the
National Defense Strategy (NDS).This policy brief explores these strategies, what
they mean, and their potential impact in the Horn of Africa. We argue that these
strategy papers aside from the STSA, both the NSS and NDS largely ignore Africa.
The shift in focus of these new US strategies is rather dramatic, and it is away
from Africa, the US-Africa summit notwithstanding. Yet they indicate that we
should expect the United States to engage more in mitigating climate change in
the Horn of Africa, and that its strategies are to a certain degree aligned with
Kenyan foreign policy goals in the region. Further.....Comming soon
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