Somalia

Tension between Somaliland (created in 1991) and the much less firmly established Puntland (created 1998) has been running high. On 1 July, yet another state, Maakhir, was inaugura...

Despite widespread scepticism, a Somali National Reconciliation Congress is now due in Mogadishu on 16 July. It offers to reconcile the clans without which no national political re...

With Somalia looking more settled, Ethiopia has been looking towards Eritrea, which it sees as the regional spoiler. On 8 June, Addis Ababa wrote to the United Nations Security Cou...

A few weeks ago, it looked as if relative calm was returning to Mogadishu, but violence has soared again. Ethiopia says it wants its forces to leave but African Union troops are re...

Eritrea now condemns foreign involvement in Somalia. Last year, it sent large quantities of arms and fighters, and a training mission, to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), then in po...

President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed claimed last week, in Addis Ababa, that the situation in Mogadishu was improving. Very few would agree now, after heavy fighting and mass casualties...

The Ugandan troops who have arrived in Mogadishu did little to stop the shooting. There were 1,300 of them, the first contingent of the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom), a...

The two most powerful clans in southern Somalia are the Habr Gidir/Hawiye and the Darod (each with its own sub-clans). Habr Gidir elders and sheikhs led the Islamic Courts Union (I...

At the end of the AU summit in Addis Ababa on 30 January, its new Chairman, Ghana's President John Kufuor, announced that four countries had pledged troops: Uganda (1,500); Nigeria...

African Union leaders will meet in Addis Ababa on 22-24 January to discuss sending 8,000 peacekeepers to Somalia. Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said that an AU force will ...