Somalia

Next August, Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government is due to wind up, to be replaced by a new government under a new constitution. Last July, the TFG received a...

Saracen International, a Ugandan-based private security firm, is the latest armed party to intervene in Somalia’s civil war. Speculation abounds about its true role. Just as intriguing are its covert financiers,...

The African Union has made a bold attempt to yoke the issue of Somali piracy to the Shabaab problem in the hope of getting United Nations Security Council...

Nobody knows what to do about Somalia. In Madrid in September, the International Crisis Group held the latest of a series of international meetings that included the United...

Behind the general condemnation of the 11 July bombings in Kampala, for which Harakat al Shabaab al Mujahideen (Mujahideen Youth Movement) claimed responsibility, Western governments are wary of...

Somalia's new Information Minister, Abdirahman Omar Osman, wants African Union troops to defend more aggressively the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its 'moderate' Islamist vision. The AU should...

President Yoweri Museveni welcomes African Union leaders to Kampala on 25 July playing a role he has made his own: military leader and regional policeman. Ugandan opposition politicians...

Al Shabaab’s political tactics and internal dynamics are deliberately, systematically opaque, on the classic Islamist model. It is both nationalist and avowedly part of the global jihad. Shabaab’s...

The Transitional Federal Government has a new component. On 15 March in Addis Ababa, the TFG signed an agreement with Ahlu Sunna wal Jama’a, the council (and militia)...

No one was left in any doubt about the purpose of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s four-day trip to Britain last week. He wanted, he told a 9 March...