Somalia's Continuing Security Conundrums - ACM Interview with Professor Abdi Jama Ghedi : Africa Wide - Informed Insights

Somalia has long been burdened with the appellation of being a 'failed state'. How accurate is that description today? To understand the collapse of Somalia we have to go back into complicated and Western-defined history. The reasons why Somalia has collapsed are both internal and external. Internally, by incapable, competing groups mostly linked to external and border countries, therefore without any national vision and strategy. Also, the conflict was complicated by the lack of partiality and dishonesty of UN peacekeepers and their funders, which complicates the present African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). AMISOM was never interested in building a Somalia national army capable of facing al-Shabaab. Nor is AMISOM interested in building a secure Somalia state which can provide for the basic needs of its people; a Somalia that can secure its borders and play a better role fora democratic, progressive and developmental state. Finally, there is the challenge of the so-called Federal States, run by tribal groups who have one leg in Mogadishu and one in their fiefdoms, and who have no national vision and, like warlords, serve external and regional forces.