Articles
‘Off the Charts’: 133k Somalia Famine Child Deaths
(NAIROBI, Kenya) — A ban on food aid decision by extremist Islamic militants and a "normalization of crisis" that numbed international donors to unfolding...
Why Charcoal May Endanger Somalia’s Best Hope for Peace
On a Monday afternoon in October in a warehouse in the southern Somali port of Kismayo I attended a meeting on the future of Somalia On one side 20 Somali...
Dispatch from Somalia: War, But a Glimmer of Hope
We drive west out of Mogadishu in a convoy of three African Union armored personnel carriers, mounted with three heavy machine guns. No building seems untouched...
How America Settles Down Somalia (And, By Extension the Piracy Problem)
Nice Washington Post story about how the U.S. is training Ugandan soldiers (along with some from Burundi, Sierra Leone and Djibouti) in Uganda on how to do...
17,731
The total number of troops that will be deployed to Somalia after the U.N. Security Council voted to increase an African Union peacekeeping force by nearly half...
Rescue in Somalia: SEALs Strike Again
Even as President Obama publicly praised the Navy’s SEALs Tuesday night for killing Osama bin Laden, a team of the elite war-fighters was wrapping up the daring...
Somalia: A Navy Without Boats
We’ve reported frequently on the Somali piracy infesting the Indian Ocean. The good news is that the Somali navy wants to do something about it. The bad news,...
Bombardment of Somali Refugee Camp: Tragedy Symbolic of Kenya's Doomed Invasion
Kenya's hasty invasion of its northern neighbor Somalia took a tragic turn late Sunday when , according to witnesses on the ground, the Kenyan air force bombed a...
A Novel Response to the World's Worst Famine: War.
In September, Somalis kidnappers kill a British tourist and his wife; later they kidnap a disabled French tourist, who subsequently dies; then in October they...
Kenya Invades Somalia. Does It Get Any Dumber?
If the history of war teaches us anything, it's that invading a foreign country is dicey. Storming across too many borders was the undoing of many of the world's...
Collateral Crisis in Somalia: How the War on Terrorism Caused a Famine
By late June and early July, when their goats were all gone and the last of their cows had sunk to their knees and died, the men told their families it was time...
From Vietnam to Somalia: Two Books Worth Reading
Short version:I spent the dog days the earthquake and hurricane days of August reading What It Is Like To Go to War, by Karl Marlantes, and Submergence, by J.M...
Needless Disease and Death in Somalia
As I've written before, the devastating famine in Somalia—which has killed tens of thousands in the Horn of Africa—may have been triggered by the worst drought...
Somalia: A Very Man-Made Disaster
The difference between a drought and a famine is down to man. Texas is in the middle of its worst drought on record right now but cowboys aren't starving -...
Somalia's Former Prime Minister Settles Back Into His Desk Job in Buffalo, N.Y.
Mohamed A. Mohamed once again holds down his comfortable desk job at the New York State Department of Transportation in Buffalo. He's glad to have a semblance of...
El Nino, La Nina, Climate Change and the Horrific Drought in Somalia
As I write this, Somalia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years. The lack of rain—combined with civil unrest and political interference from the al-Qaeda...
Somalia: When Free Means Perfect Anarchy
All war is chaos, but after 20 years of fighting Mogadishu resembles perfect anarchy. The streets are surfaced with decades of compacted garbage and to drive...
Is the CIA Helping Run a Secret Prison in Somalia?
An interesting exposé in The Nation, the left-of-center U.S. newsweekly, explores how the CIA has participated in the running of secret detention and...
Escaping from Somalia's Famine into a Perilous Refuge
We have been driving around the world's largest refugee complex, late for an appointment with an NGO, as we are lost amid seemingly endless rows of ramshackle...
Famine in Somalia: When Does the World Decide to Use the ‘F' Word?
The word ‘famine' may be a familiar one, but it is not thrown around lightly by the people who decide when there is one. The fact that most of us today probably...
