The Shape of Al Shabaab’s Post-Kismayo Attacks
In late September, African Union (AU) forces surrounded the port city of Kismayo on Somalia’s southern coast. The AU troops stood on the threshold of capturing the city from the al Qaeda-af...
Transitional Federal Government of Somalia
Shabaab’s Godane Releases Eid Message
Shabaab leader Ahmad Abdi Godane (a.k.a. Mokhtar Abu Zubayr) released an audio statement on Saturday commemorating Eid al-Adha that was posted on the pro-Shabaab Calamada website. Here I excerpt...
Op-eds
Reports of Al Qaeda’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Al Qaeda is returning to the shadows. The experiment by al-Shabab, al Qaeda's Somali affiliate, of attempting to govern a broad area in Somalia's south officially came to a close...
Op-eds
7 Shabaab Leaders Added to Rewards for Justice Most Wanted List
The US State department has added seven senior leaders of Shabaab, al Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia, to the...
Op-eds
Shabaab Abandons Western City as Ethiopian Troops Advance
As Ethiopian forces continue to press their offensive in Somalia, Shabaab forces have relinquished control of a key southern city that has been under the terror group's control for three yea...
Op-eds
Shabaab Formally Joins al Qaeda
Shabaab and al Qaeda have announced their formal merger, according to a video disseminated online today and translated by the SITE Intelligence group. In the video, Mukhtar Abu al Zubayr (a.k.a....
Op-eds
Suicide Bomber Kills 15 Somalis in Mogadishu
A Shabaab suicide bomber killed 15 Somalis in an attack in Mogadishu today as Kenyan forces advance against the terror group in the south. The suicide attack occurred near the old foreig...
Op-eds
Around the Troubled Horn
Even by the much-reduced expectations of the subregion, the news emanating from the geopolitically-sensitive, but ever-volatile Horn of Africa has not been at all good these last few weeks....
Op-eds
Eritrea: The Horn of Africa’s Rogue Regime
Last week, exasperated with Eritrea's continued violations of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and its increasing harassment of representatives at the American Embassy in Asmara...
Op-eds
The War on Terrorism in Africa: Assessment and Prospects
The end of one year and the beginning of another is a good time both to take stock of where we have been and to look ahead at the paths we are likely to take and the battles which we will have to...
Op-eds
Somalia Still Sinking as Eritrea Entertains Enemies
September has not been a good month in the sometime Somali capital of Mogadishu, even by the relative standards of a failed state that has not had an effective central government in the sixteen y...
Op-eds
UN-Real Assembly
As the contributors to The National Interest symposium in the current issue note, there is an emergent consensus among foreign policy analysts of all political persuasions that “going...
Op-eds
Securing Africa
On February 6, 2007, President George W. Bush launched a major evolution in American military posture when he formally announced that he had directed the Pentagon to establish a new unified...
Op-eds
Somali Piracy Hits America: Some Questions in Need of Answers
The murder earlier this week by their captors of four United States citizens aboard the SV Quest, a yacht hijacked last Friday off the coast of Oman, brought home to America the increasing toll o...
Op-eds
Somalia in Need of New Approach Two Decades after State Collapse
Last week marked the twentieth anniversary of the night when Mohamed Siyad Barre, president of the last entity that could plausibly be described as the government of Somalia, fled Mogadishu in hi...
Op-eds
Review: Somalia, the New Barbary? Piracy and Islam in the Horn of Africa
Since the tattered remnants of what was the country's last central government fled the capital aboard a column of their last functioning tanks in January 1991, Somalia has been such a striki...
Op-eds
Somalia’s New Prime Minister: Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered
Just when it seems things can get no worse for Somalia's dubiously legitimate, utterly ineffective, and wholly self-serving "Transitional Federal Government" (TFG), the embattled clique pull...
Op-eds
A Subtle, But Significant, Shift in U.S. Somali Policy Opens the Door to Realism
Last Friday, speaking in New York to reporters one day after attending a major meeting on Somalia chaired by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the margins of the 65th session the Un...
Op-eds
Is ‘Constructive Disengagement’ the Solution in Somalia?
On Thursday, Joshua Foust published an article at PBS's Need to Know that, though avoiding the term "constructive disengagement," mirrors the arguments advanced by Bronwyn Bruton's repo...
Op-eds
Hizbul Islam faction in southern Somalia defects to Shabaab
An important Hizbul Islam faction in southern Somalia has broken away from t...