Somalia

Somali faction leaders have been meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week to try to salvage the agreement reached in Cairo on 22 December. Signatories to the Egyptian- sponsored...

On the face of it, the plan for 25 Somali factions to meet in the north-eastern port of Bossasso in November sounds like a step forward for the peace process. In practice, many Som...

Ethiopia has won another round in its war against Islamists. Somalia's main Islamist movement, Al Itahad al Islami, lost its last major bases to an Ethiopian assault on 11 June. It...

Somalia's banknotes are falling apart but attempts to replace them are causing new problems. Ali Mahdi, self-proclaimed President in North Mogadishu, tried to bring in new notes fi...

Two competing peace processes are under way in Somalia, each linked to a neighbouring state. Supporters of January's agreement at Sodere, Ethiopia, are trying to create a political...

Italian shuttle diplomacy across the 'Green Line' dividing Mogadishu has persuaded Hussein Mohamed Farah 'Aydeed' and Ali Mahdi Mohamed to resurrect the October 1996 peace deal, br...

A new year, a new faction agreement. On 3 January, after six weeks of pool-side discussions at the Ethiopian hot-spring resort of Sodere (AC Vol 37 No 25), leaders of 26 Somali fac...

Al Itahad al Islami, Somalia's main Islamist organisation, says that it intends to become a political party, to the unease of the National Executive Council. NEC members have said ...

Hopes of a reconciliation conference have risen with faction leaders' 8 December announcement that they will set up a 'national coordinating council' as the first stage of a transi...

Things had to change with the death of General Mohamed Farah Hassan 'Aydeed' on 1 August. The three main faction leaders – all Hawiye – may have begun to realise that n...