Mutallab purportedly has links to radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric known to have contacted alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hassan.

Martin Savidge hosts Christopher Boucek and Sudarsan Raghavan.

We examine the situation with al-Qaeda in Yemen and then address additional angles of the shifting circumstances.

The show analyzes the background of three different ongoing conflicts:

• al-Qaeda in Yemen (current activities, terror threat, government efforts)

• Houthi rebels in North (independence goals, Iran v. Saudi, Shia minority)

• South Yemen separatists (historical roots, central government weakness, clans)

The Yemeni capital of Sana’a. Photo: Flickr user Eesti

GUESTS:

Christopher Boucek is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on regional security challenges. He has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, and terrorism.

Sudarsan Raghavan is the Washington Post’s correspondent in Yemen. He was recently their Baghdad bureau chief and next month will become their Africa bureau chief. He has reported from more than 50 countries and nine war zones in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the former Soviet Union and Central America.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Ben Piven and Lisa Biagiotti

Al-Qaeda in Yemen. Photo: Al Jazeera

Mohammad Al-Kassim is a producer with Worldfocus.

It took an incident like the Christmas day failed bombing of the Delta/Northwest airliner to bring Yemen to the forefront of the news in the U.S.

It was Yemen where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was allegedly trained by al-Qaeda. Currently Yemen offers al-Qaeda the perfect environment to reorganize and reinvent itself, and that’s precisely why the world’s focus is now shifting to the small Arabian Peninsula nation.

It’s not news to many that Yemen has been a safe haven for al-Qaeda for many years. Yemen has a weak centralized government, tough terrain and rugged mountains — and a severely fragmented tribal population with little loyalty to the government.

Also, let’s not forget that Osama Bin Laden’s family was originally from Yemen, and the al-Qaeda mastermind still enjoys wide support there.

Last week, General David Petraeus visited the Yemeni capital of Sana’a for a meeting with President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Petraeus delivered a message of support from President Obama to the Yemeni president and told him the U.S. is pledging military aid to Yemen.

Meanwhile British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a conference on terrorism to be held in Yemen at the end of this month. Officially, the Yemeni government is a close ally of the U.S. And it’s one of the world’s poorest countries despite being a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, which is the world’s largest oil exporters and among the region’s richest.

Internally, the weak central Yemeni government has its hands full. For the last six years, the Yemeni army have been engaged in a de facto civil war in the North with a Shi’a rebel group called the Houthis. Yemen’s government accuses the group of being loyal to Iran and receiving weapons from them. Fighting has escalated since last August.

Saudi Arabia’s army was sucked into the conflict when the Saudi government accused the Houthis of crossing the border and attacking a Saudi patrol. A short war ensued between Saudi Arabia and the rebels. Some experts - including Worldfocus contributing blogger Dwight Bashir - argue that Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war with Iran in Yemen.

The government also faces a strong secessionist movement in the south over perceived northern exploitation of its resources, as I reported last fall. Another problem facing Yemen is the influx of African refugees, mainly Somalis, who cross the Gulf of Aden to escape the failed Somali state. Al-Shabaab militants from Somalia have also threatened to join with al-Qaeda in the impoverished Arabian country.

The failed Christmas day bombing brought Yemen and its myriad problems forcefully to the forefront of the world’s headlines. Unfortunately, the Western media was reacting to events rather anticipating them. Hardly any Western news outlets had a real presence there until the Christmas attack.

It’s disturbing that it took such an event to shine the spotlight on Yemen. The crucial country should have been on the radar long ago.

- Mohammad Al-Kassim

On January 4th, the Transportation Security Administration imposed tougher screening rules for passengers originating in 14 mostly Muslim nations:

View TSA Enhanced Security Screening in a larger map

Additional safety precautions following the Christmas Day incident initially included checks at flights gates, restrictions on leaving airplane seats and using electronics/blankets in the hour prior to landing.

But the new strategy is based mostly on enhanced screening techniques. It requires that passengers with suspicious behavior — as well as passengers who are traveling from or citizens of one of the 14 nations — undergo full-body and explosive-detection scanning, pat-downs, and extensive searches of carry-on baggage. Only four of the 14 countries are currently deemed state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. government: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

This citizenship-based profiling has been met with controversy. Opponents argue that it unfairly targets some passengers and violates travelers’ privacy. The ACLU disapproves of whole-body imaging technology.

Michael German, National Security Policy Counsel with the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office and a former FBI agent said:

We should be focusing on evidence-based, targeted and narrowly tailored investigations based on individualized suspicion, which would be both more consistent with our values and more effective than diverting resources to a system of mass suspicion,

Over-broad policies such as racial profiling and invasive body scanning for all travelers not only violate our rights and values, they also waste valuable resources and divert attention from real threats.

Singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced screening is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American values. Empirical studies of terrorists show there is no terrorist profile, and using a profile that doesn’t reflect this reality will only divert resources by having government agents target innocent people.

Profiling can also be counterproductive by undermining community support for government counterterrorism efforts and creating an injustice that terrorists can exploit to justify further acts of terrorism.

Many bloggers see the new efforts as superficial. Bruce Maiman writes:

How many of these procedures at the airport and on the airplane really work? They seem more like theatre designed to make you feel safer when in fact that do little to make you safer.

Tunku Varadarajan, Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and professor at NYU’s stern Business School writes about the aftermath of the failed attempt by the “jock-strap jihadist“:

The Transportation Security Administration went predictably into Pavlovian overdrive, announcing a series of new security measures that would take immediate effect. This is the other, less reassuring, side of the episodic nature of the terrorist threats against us. We seem always to react, never to anticipate—and in this form of hasty reaction, with its flavor of humiliation, and of having been outwitted by a wearer of dangerous underwear (or shoes), there lurk always the seeds of over-reaction…

The broader point is that we need, constantly, to recalibrate our bandwidth of stoicism. We are at war with al-Qaeda; that organization is doing its best to kill us. Our need is, of course, to make it as near to impossible for it to do that. But our reaction to each new threat must not be to grant al-Qaeda small, but important, victories, in the form of an imposition by the TSA of inconveniences on travelers that have not been thought through, inconveniences that are, themselves, a form of theater—the extempore theater of homeland security.

- Michael Ramirez

Radio journalist Hassan Suber was killed in the recent blast in Somalia. Photo: Shabelle

This year was the deadliest year for African journalists since 2000, according to an analysis by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The organization confirmed 12 cases of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa killed while reporting. In Somalia, nine local journalists were murdered or killed in combat situations.

Tom Rhodes is the Africa Program Coordinator at CPJ. He writes about the deteriorating situation for journalists in Somalia and explains why this figure is especially startling considering that sub-Saharan Africa has historically had one of the lowest journalist murder rates.

On the very first day of 2009, a Somali reporter from one of the leading independent stations, Radio Shabelle, was shot by a government soldier in a town outside the capital, Mogadishu.

This month, three journalists died in a suicide bomb blast set off by the notorious Al-Shabaab insurgents during a graduation ceremony held in Mogadishu.

“You never know what the day will bring in Mogadishu,” said Mustafa Haji Abdinur, editor-in-chief of Mogadishu’s Radio Simba who received CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award this year. “I basically live in my office due to the insecurity, it’s impossible for journalists to venture too far from their office –the few of us still here are basically prisoners to our work.”

Watch Martin Savidge interview Mustafa Haji Abdinur: Somali journalist on culture of violence and crippled press.

The heavy death toll in Somalia has led to an exodus of journalists, with at least a third of Somali journalists living in exile, the National Union of Somali Journalists estimates. Those that remain in the country work under extreme duress, where self-censorship is pivotal to a journalist’s survival. Al-Shabaab now control southern and central Somalia, including the airwaves. Major towns such as Baidoa and Kismayo now only broadcast Al-Shabaab radio.

But it is not only war-torn countries that have targeted African journalists.

Other journalists were murdered while investigating local corruption in Nigeria and Kenya or covering the political crisis in Madagascar. CPJ is investigating the cases of two other journalists in Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo to determine whether their deaths were related to journalism.

No perpetrator in any of the African cases has been brought to justice. Such a record sends a chilling message to local reporters: you can be killed, at any time, without repercussions.

Impunity towards the killers of journalists in Africa is unfortunately not a new phenomenon. This week also marks the anniversary of two unsolved murders of veteran journalists: the 1998 killing of Norbert Zongo from Burkina Faso and the 2004 murder of Gambian editor Deyda Hydara. Despite their popularity within their respective countries, local journalists hold little confidence in authorities to actively pursue their cases.

Africa’s high rate of killed journalists reflects a morbid trend seen across the world.

At least 68 journalists were killed for their work in 2009 — the highest yearly tally ever documented by CPJ. The nature of journalists’ deaths in Africa also reflects a global pattern: most were local reporters and most were murdered. As in past years, murder was the leading cause of work-related deaths in 2009 worldwide, representing about three quarters of the cases.

As media outlets scale back on costs and rely more and more on local reporters for their international coverage, the more we may see this trend increase. For this reason, among many others, the death of journalists in Africa and worldwide should be a matter of concern for everyone.

- Tom Rhodes

Martin Savidge continues the interview discussing how Abdinur reports in his country amid threat and intimidation. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 15 journalists have died in Somalia in connection with their work in the last two years. Many journalists have fled the country and only few report from inside Somalia. They also discuss what the extent of the international community’s involvement and the worsening security situation that is driving NGOs and aid organizations out of Somalia.

CHINA: U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged cooperation between the two countries on a range of issues including the climate change and nuclear safety in the Korean peninsula and in Iran. However, both leaders have not refrained from pointing out remaining differences between the two nations.

SOUTH KOREA: South Korea has promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below expected levels in 2020. The announcement is expected to put pressure on other developed nations to fight global warming more aggressively.

GUINEA: Recruits for Guinea’s military junta are being trained by South African and Israeli military officials according to the news agency AFP. Witnesses claim to have seen the training exercises in a town south of the capital Conkary.

Man using a vuvuzela at a soccer game

SOMALIA: Somalia is once again the world’s most corrupt country. In Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index which measures perceived levels of public sector corruption, Somalia took the lowest spot with a score of 1.1 out of 10.

SOUTH AFRICA: The noisy South African vuvuzela trumpet is under attack again, this time by Japan. The Japanese Football Association President has requested the trumpet be banned from next years World Cup saying its loud noise limits communication with players, coaches, broadcasters, etc. The vuvuzela is a common instrument used by South African soccer fans.

GERMANY: A 90-year-old former Nazi SS member was charged Tuesday with 58 counts of murder in the deaths of forced Jewish laborers in Austria.

SPAIN: Pirates have released a Spanish vessel with 36 crew members which they had held for 6 weeks, according to Spain’s prime minister.

FRANCE: A Frenchwoman who was kept in Iranian prison after allegedly “provoking rioters” during Iran’s post-election protests appeared in Iranian court on Tuesday, and then returned to the French Embassy, where she has been permitted to remain since August.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Czechs mark the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution today, which lend to the end of Communist rule in the former Czechoskovakia. Thousands of people in the capital Prague are celebrating with with reenactment of a student protest.

RUSSIA AND CIS:

A British security software firm says Russian criminals are making millions off the H1N1 flu epidemic by selling fake flu drugs over the Internet. The firm, Sophos, intercepted web sites and hundreds of millions of fake pharmaceutical span adverts, many of which are based in Russia.

A Russian human rights campaigner has been killed with a bullet shot to his head, as he entered his apartment building. The 26-year-old, Ivan Khutorsky, reportedly campaigned actively against neo-Nazi groups.

Vladimir Nabokov’s last unfinished novel “The Original of Laura” goes on sale today in London and New York. Nabokov had made his wife promise to burn the manuscript after his death, but she refrained from doing so, leaving it to their son Dmitri to decide its fate.

The Russian Orthodox Church is considering severing ties with the Evangelic Church in Germany, after the latter elected its first female leader last month. The Orthodox Archbishop reportedly said the church could not maintain a dialogue with a church headed by a woman.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the death in a Russian prison of a lawyer for the investment fund Hermitage Capital. The lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was jailed a year ago on tax evasion charges. At a court hearing this past September, he complained of inhumane conditions at the prison and of being denied medical treatment.

EL SALVADOR: The Yaqui indigenous group in Mexico has finally won the battle to get back the remains of some of their lost heroes, held in the storage of New York’s American Museum of Natural History for more than a century.

ARGENTINA: Argentina has granted its first marriage license to a gay couple, both men HIV positive.

GUATEMALA: Forty percent of Guatemala’s elderly are living in a state of poverty.

PALESTINE: The European Union said that it is “premature” for the Palestinians to try to have the UN recognize an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza.

ISRAEL/SYRIA: French president Nicolas Sarkozy says his country is ready to mediate between Syria and Israel and warns that extremists could benefit from a continued deadlock in the Mideast peace process.

SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Arabia’s government has said that all military activities have ceased on its southern borders with Yemen.

EGYPT: Amnesty International warned in a report out today that Egypt must take immediate steps to ensure there is no repeat of a 2008 rockslide that killed more than 100 residents of a Cairo shantytown.

IRAN: Iran’s nuclear envoy denied that the IAEA tour of its recently revealed uranium enrichment site has turned up any evidence that the Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

ISRAEL: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned today that Iran’s nuclear program posed a threat not just to Israel, but to the entire world.

Map of Ogaden, Ethiopia courtesy of Wiki user Lencer.

The violent, separatist conflict in southeastern Ethiopia known as the Somali region or Ogaden has been referred by some as the next Darfur. The conflict has claimed thousands of lives over the last 15 years.

Ethiopia sealed off the region to media so there is little accurate information about the conflict, including claims of human rights abuses.

The region is rich in natural gas and is home to about 5 million predominantly Muslim people, mainly ethnic Somali nomadic tribes. The U.S. has said little about the conflict, as Ethiopia is its main regional ally in the increasingly unstable Horn of Africa region.

Worldfocus interviewed David H. Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Amb. Shinn is currently an adjunct professor of international affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. His research interests include China-Africa relations, East Africa and the Horn, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, conflict situations, U.S. policy in Africa and the African brain drain.

Worldfocus: Ethiopia has labeled the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) as a terrorist organization. Is this an accurate description?

Amb. Shinn: While the ONLF has on occasion used tactics that qualify as terrorist — for example the kidnapping and/or killing of civilian Ethiopian government officials — it does not have any links of which I am aware with international terrorist organizations.

It receives external support from the government of Eritrea, which opposes the government of Ethiopia. It also receives financial assistance from Ogadenis in the Somali Diaspora. In 2007, 74 persons, including nine Chinese oil field personnel, were killed during an ONLF attack on a Chinese oil exploration work site in the Ogaden protected by Ethiopian troops.

The Chinese may have died in a crossfire between Ethiopian and ONLF forces. In the view of the U.S. government, ONLF activity so far does not meet the test of a terrorist organization. Should the ONLF escalate its tactics, however, this could change.

Worldfocus: The U.S. denied Ethiopia’s request to label the ONLF an international terrorist organization but also remained silent on claims that the Ogaden region is potentially the next Darfur. Ethiopia has shut down media access to the region, so accusations of human rights abuses are unconfirmed. Should the U.S. and other Western countries be speaking out?

Amb. Shinn: On those occasions when there are carefully documented human rights violations by the government of Ethiopia, the ONLF or any other organization, the U.S. and the rest of the world should speak out.

Virtually all of the information coming out of the Ogaden comes from either the Ethiopian government or the ONLF. Much of the information from both sides is unreliable. The problem, therefore, is making certain that accurate information exists before speaking out publicly. A good start would be a willingness by the Ethiopian government to allow independent, third party observers into the Ogaden to provide information about events there.

Worldfocus: Do the 4.5 million ethnic Somalis living in the region mostly support the ONLF? Do the majority of Ogadenis want to secede from Ethiopia?

Men chewing khat in Jigjiga, the capital of Ogaden. Photo: Flickr user CharlesFred

Amb. Shinn: It is impossible to know with any certainty what Somalis in southeastern Ethiopia really want. Because of the difficult security situation, there are no public opinion polls in the area. I think it is reasonable to conclude that the vast majority of Somalis feel marginalized in their own country and that most of them have legitimate grievances against government policies. But do most of them support the ONLF? There is no conclusive evidence.

Not all of the Somalis living in Ethiopia’s Region Five or Somali Region are ethnic Ogaden Somalis. There are significant numbers of non-Ogaden Darod, Isaaq and Dir. Ogadeni from the Darod clan constitute the most numerous group of Somalis and occupy the largest geographical part of the region.

While there may be widespread support for the ONLF by the majority Ogadeni, many Somalis from other clans are concerned about Ogadeni domination. It is even less clear whether the Ogadeni who support the ONLF agree on a political outcome for the region.

Worldfocus: Do Ogadenis have irredentist tendencies, and what is their relationship with Somalia?

Amb. Shinn: In March 2009, there was a leadership split in the organization. The leader of the main faction of the ONLF, Mohamed Omar Osman, is on the record as saying that he wants to hold a referendum so that the Somalis in the region can determine if they wish to remain part of Ethiopia, become an independent country or join with Somalia. It is my understanding that the leadership of both factions of the ONLF prefers an independent Ogaden.

Worldfocus: With national elections slotted for next May, what is at stake for the ONLF and their representation or lack thereof in the Ethiopian government?

Amb. Shinn: Ethiopian national elections in May 2010 will probably change nothing in the Ogaden. Because of the difficult security situation, it is doubtful that elections can even take place in much of Somali Region.

The ONLF, although it participated in the government as a political organization from 1991 to 1994, has shown no interest in rejoining the political process. Even if it believed that the Ethiopian government would allow it to compete freely and fairly as a political party, which it does not believe to be the case, it does not appear that the ONLF is prepared to lay down its arms.

The head of the original ONLF faction, Mohamed Omar Osman, did state in October 2009 that he is prepared to engage in negotiations with the Ethiopian government, but only in the presence of a neutral third party and in a neutral location.

- Lisa Biagiotti

For more Worldfocus coverage of Ethiopia, visit our extended coverage page: Ethiopia Past and Present.

Somali Pirates

Connie Kargbo is an associate producer at Worldfocus and a native of Sierra Leone. She writes here of the story behind Somali piracy.

There is news today that Somali pirates have hijacked a Chinese fishing vessel in the waters off the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean — a move that seems to be expanding their reach to the east.

Last week, Somali pirates who had hijacked a Spanish fishing vessel with 36 crew members on board in early October demanded a ransom of $4 million in exchange for the release of the hostages.

The ransom demand is average — pirates these days usually request between $2 and $6 million for the release of ships and hostages. The difference is that the pirates are calling the $4 million a payment for illegally fishing off the coast of Somalia.  It may come as a surprise to some but this little-known dispute about Somalia’s fishing industry is at the root of the ongoing pirate situation today.

When Somalia’s central government was overthrown in 1991 the country quickly deteriorated into what many are now calling a failed state.  With the lack of central leadership and ongoing clan warfare, law enforcement took a backseat to the violence.

This lawlessness spread to the coast of Somalia with the arrival of  illegal foreign fishing vessels.  Many of these vessels did not have the proper rights to fish in these waters, but the lack of regulation made it easy for them to fish to their hearts content. Some of these ships were owned by countries now patrolling the coast of Somalia, the country’s police chief said Wednesday.

This illegal industry in turn began to hurt local Somali fishermen who were dependent on the fish they caught. Competition from foreign fishermen depleted fish resources and also brought toxic waste to Somali waters.

Fearing for their livelihoods, local fisherman began patrolling off the coast of Somalia and fining ships that were found to be illegally fishing in the area. Just as some illegal foreign fishing vessels found an untapped and lucrative zone to make money, in time the Somalis who patrolled the coast exploited their newly found money-making opportunity.

What began as a way for Somalis to protect their livelihood eventually became the livelihood.  Reprimands and small fines for ships found illegally fishing became hijackings and million dollar ransoms on any ship that was caught, regardless of whether or not the ships actions were illegal.  And so pirates were born off the coast of Somalia.

Nowadays most Somali pirates are not former fisherman but stealth businessmen looking to make a buck. And while illegal fishing vessels have largely been replaced by foreign navies patrolling the coast on the lookout for pirates, within Somalia the problems of rampant violence and insecurity still persist.  Until there is an overhaul of the country’s fundamental problems, crime along the coast of Somalia will largely be a reflection of the country’s internal conflict.

- Connie Kargbo

As the goals and the strategy are debated in coming weeks, the chairman of the joint chiefs — the top U.S. officer — told Congress on Tuesday that more U.S. forces in Afghanistan are probably required.

But Afghanistan is not the only battleground in the U.S. fight against extremists and terrorism. There have also been developments in Pakistan and Somalia.

Is the United States being aggressive enough — or too aggressive — in its efforts to combat international terrorism?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Juan Carlos Zarate, a senior advisor on terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins Daljit Dhaliwal to discuss strategies in the fight against terrorism. He says that in some cases, the Obama administration has actually been more aggressive than the Bush administration in fighting the so-called war on terror.

In recent days it has launched another deadly attack in the capital, Mogadishu, killing people as they were fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, thousands of displaced people continue to stream across the border into a large refugee camp in northern Kenya. The Dadaab refugee complex, with almost 300,000 people, is the largest refugee camp in the world and grows by about 8,000 Somalis a month.

Spencer Platt, a photographer for Getty Images, recently returned from a visit to the refugee camps in Kenya and shares his impressions of the camps.

Find more information at the Doctors Without Borders Web site.

Clinton pledged to expand America’s support for Somalia’s weak interim government as it struggles against Islamic extremists. As she makes her way through Africa, economic development and human rights are also expected to be high on the agenda.

Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Clinton’s agenda in Africa and U.S. goals in Somalia.

Below, view an interactive map exploring Hillary Clinton’s tour of Africa. Click on a country to view her plans.

In Somalia, pirates have released a German container ship and its crew. The ship was captured 400 miles off the coast of Somalia and the crew was held for ransom. On Monday, the owners of the ship paid the pirates almost $3 million.

Sarjoh Bah, a senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, joins Martin Savidge to discuss the chaos in Somalia, Somali militants abroad and Hillary Clinton’s expected visit with the president of Somalia.

For more, read our Q&A: Somalia’s state of emergency and listen to our online radio show on lawlessness in Somalia.

Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sudan topped the list of failed states this year — rankings based on human rights, governance, economic activity and other indicators.

Also among the top 10 are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Poverty is endemic in many failed or failing states; in others, the government has lost legitimacy and control. As economic pressures increase with the global financial crisis, and environmental pressures contribute to water and food shortages, even more countries are at risk of failure.

But these dire conditions have implications far beyond individual borders, as failed states — with their high rates of poverty and violence — may serve as breeding grounds for terrorists with global ambitions.

Displaced persons in Yemen, which may be on the verge of becoming a failed state. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores what it means for a state to fail, from the impact on daily life to widespread geopolitical ripple effects.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosts a panel of guests:

Pauline Baker is the president of The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause conflict. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Christopher Boucek is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on regional security challenges. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and lecturer in Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School. Boucek has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, and terrorism.

Georgette Gagnon is the director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and led a research mission to Darfur in 2004. She previously investigated human rights violations in Rwanda and directed the Human Rights Department at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Ben Piven

Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sudan topped the list of failed states this year — rankings based on human rights, governance, economic activity and other indicators.

Also among the top 10 are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Poverty is endemic in many failed or failing states; in others, the government has lost legitimacy and control. As economic pressures increase with the global financial crisis, and environmental pressures contribute to water and food shortages, even more countries are at risk of failure.

But these dire conditions have implications far beyond individual borders, as failed states — with their high rates of poverty and violence — may serve as breeding grounds for terrorists with global ambitions.

Displaced persons in Yemen, which may be on the verge of becoming a failed state. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores what it means for a state to fail, from the impact on daily life to widespread geopolitical ripple effects.

Thank you for your questions. Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosts a panel of guests:

Pauline Baker is the president of The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing war and alleviating the conditions that cause conflict. She has also served as an adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Christopher Boucek is a research associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on regional security challenges. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and lecturer in Politics at the Woodrow Wilson School. Boucek has written widely on the Middle East, Central Asia, and terrorism.

Georgette Gagnon is the director of the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and led a research mission to Darfur in 2004. She previously investigated human rights violations in Rwanda and directed the Human Rights Department at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

David Sanger of the New York Times, the author of the book “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” joins Martin Savide to discuss why al-Qaeda members are fleeing and how they might be caught.

For more on al-Qaeda’s role in Somalia, read our Q&A: Somalia’s state of emergency.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has blamed al-Shabaab, a radical Islamist group with ties to al-Qaeda, for the surge in violence. Control over the failed state is split between many groups.

The nation has had no effective government since 1991, and one third of the population requires food aid.

Read more background on Somalia’s conflict in our Q&A: Answers to lawlessness in Somalia.

David Shinn, a former ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, and Lynn Fredriksson, a researcher on the Horn of Africa for Amnesty International, join Worldfocus to discuss the spiraling crisis in Somalia.

Al-Shabaab militiamen in Somalia. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus: What are the two sides embroiled in the current fighting, and how much of Somalia is currently controlled by either side?

Ambassador David Shinn: There may actually be more than two sides in this struggle. There is the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) led by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, which is the government recognized by the United Nations, African Union and the international community. A moderate Muslim group known as Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is allied with the TFG.

The primary group opposing the TFG is the extremist al-Shabaab organization, which has links with al-Qaeda and now has the support of several hundred foreign jihadis. A Somali organization known as Hizbul Islam, led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is aligned with al-Shabaab. President Ahmed and Sheikh Aweys were partners in 2007, when they controlled much of Somalia under the Union of Islamic Courts.

The TFG controls a small part of the capital of Mogadishu and some of the area along the Ethiopian border. Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam control most of Mogadishu and much of southern and central Somalia. Other jurisdictions such as the Puntland administration control the rest of the country.

Worldfocus: President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed came to power in January, and he has since instituted Sharia law. Why hasn’t this appeased Islamic groups?

David Shinn: Strictly speaking, President Ahmed has not been able to implement his version of Sharia because he controls so little of the country. More importantly, this is a power struggle among different Islamic groups. Virtually all Somalis are Muslims. Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam insist on a stricter version of Sharia similar to the one advocated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. President Ahmed wants a more moderate version of Sharia — but this struggle is more about political power than it is about Sharia.

Displaced Somalis near the Kenyan border. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus: The Somali government is pleading for foreign military assistance. How would the Somali public feel about outside help, given past tension over the Ethiopian troop presence in the country (and current reports that Ethiopian troops have returned)?

David Shinn: This poses a huge dilemma for the TFG. The vast majority of Somalis do not want foreign troops of any kind in the country. This includes Ethiopians, African Union forces, United Nations forces and foreign jihadis fighting for al-Shabaab. My own view is that foreign troops can not prop up the TFG. What is required is urgent international training and equipping of Somali security forces who support the goals of the TFG. Ultimately, only Somalis are going to resolve this situation. Because of their training and experience, foreign jihadis provide al-Shabaab with a short-term advantage. It might even be enough to give them a temporary victory. But eventually Somalis are going to turn against any foreign presence and any philosophy that does not fit Somali tradition.

Ethiopian forces do periodically cross their lengthy border with Somalia and may have ventured a little deeper into Somalia in recent days. I doubt, however, that Ethiopia will commit forces deep inside Somalia.

Worldfocus: Is it in the interest of other countries in the region to intervene in Somalia?

David Shinn: In my view, it is not in their interest except for hot pursuit across the border. They should protect their sovereignty at the border and do what they can to support Somalis loyal to the TFG to regain the initiative in the country. I think the engagement of foreign troops inside Somalia will only alienate more Somalis. At the same time, the international community should take all feasible steps to prevent foreign jihadis from entering Somalia.

A young man injured in the fighting in Mogadishu. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus: How do you see this ending? Will the TFG retain power?

David Shinn: The international community would not support a Somali regime run by al-Shabaab and its al-Qaeda patrons. In this sense, the TFG will retain power somewhere in Somalia. More than 4,000 African Union troops remain in Mogadishu. One of their tasks is to protect the TFG, although the force does not have a mandate to go after al-Shabaab. It is possible that al-Shabaab could seize power in Mogadishu and then claim to represent Somalia. I don’t believe many Somalis would willingly support an al-Shabaab government. Eventually an al-Shabaab government would take actions contrary to the views of the vast majority of Somalis and then fall. In the meantime, it could do a lot of damage.

Worldfocus: What has been happening on the ground in Somalia over the last month as fighting has worsened? Does Amnesty International have a presence in Somalia?

Lynn Fredriksson: Amnesty International not currently have access to Somalia due to security concerns. However, we have recently conducted research with Somali refugees in Nairobi and Dadaab camps in Kenya, and in the Ali Addeh camp and the city of Djibouti. We have also conducted interviews in Hargeisa, Somaliland and will continue to pursue access to Somalia or the region in order to continue this research.

Fighting between al-Shabaab and other insurgent forces against the TFG over the past several weeks has resulted in the displacement and re-displacement of more than 100,000 Somali civilians, and it has left many dead and hundreds wounded. Amnesty International continues to call on all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and refrain from all indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, including in civilian populated areas.

Worldfocus: How has the violence curtailed humanitarian operations?

Lynn Fredriksson: Humanitarian assistance is always affected by heavy fighting and these past few weeks have allowed no exception. The population of Somalia is heavily dependent on food and other emergency assistance. More than 3 million Somalis have become aid dependent. Donor governments, United Nations agencies and the African Union must take effective action to ensure unhindered access for the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable in Somalia, including newly and repeatedly internally displaced persons.

A family flees Mogadishu. Photo: IRIN

Worldfocus: What should be done to address the humanitarian concerns in Somalia?

Lynn Fredriksson: The International Contact Group, donor governments, the United Nations Security Council, the African Union and other concerned parties must send strong and consistent messages that ongoing human rights abuses by all parties against civilians will not be tolerated. They should work to strengthen the current U.N. arms embargo on Somalia, and ensure vetting, transparency and oversight of any security sector assistance provided to the government of Somalia. They should support concrete steps toward the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry or related mechanism to investigate recent and ongoing human rights abuses in Somalia. And they should provide immediate support to human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian aid workers who continue to place their lives on the line to report and alleviate the dire conditions under which Somali citizens continue to suffer human rights abuses every day throughout much of southern and central Somalia.

Worldfocus: Do you think the spiraling crisis will improve or worsen?

Lynn Fredriksson: There is no way to predict this, but one can hope that recent political changes — along with strong and consistent international actions in support of civilian protection and human rights — will create the space necessary for the Somali people, together, to bring about the peace, stability, justice and development they have been waiting for.

Fighting in Somalia is prompting large numbers of civilians to flee into Kenya. Photo: IRIN

Somalia’s president has declared a state of emergency following weeks of intense fighting between Islamic militants and pro-government forces. Over the weekend, the government requested foreign troops from neighboring countries to help stabilize the troubled nation.

Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has blamed al-Shabab, a radical Islamist group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, for the surge in violence. Control over the failed state is split between many groups.

The nation has had no effective government since 1991, and one third of the population requires food aid. Read more: Q&A: Answers to lawlessness in Somalia.

Michael Keating is the senior fellow and associate director at the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He writes at Worldfocus contributor World Politics Review about Kenya’s response to the Somali government’s request for intervention.

As the world was riveted to the events in Iran last week, the beleaguered government of Somalia put out an S.O.S. for international military support in its deteriorating fight against al Shabab guerrillas and other radical opposition forces. Thus far, only Kenyan government officials have publicly responded with threats of military intervention.

But there remains the possibility that troops from Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Sudan and Uganda might be deployed in a combined warmaking/peacekeeping operation under the banner of the African Union and other international and regional organizations. More than 5,000 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are currently deployed to protect government operations in and around Mogadishu, but in recent days they have been targeted by anti-government militants who refuse to recognize their neutral status.

The response from Kenya seems to suggest that the profile of the intervention would shift from peacekeeping to combat operations against al Shabab. In response, a spokesman for al Shabab said that any foreign troops “would be sent home in coffins.”

Kenya has many reasons to try to deal with the chaos on its border. The primary one is al Shabab’s close ties with al-Qaida, which put Kenya in the crosshairs of international jihadists. Both the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998 as well as the subsequent Paradise Hotel bombing in Kikambala were coordinated by al-Qaida-backed operatives coming across Kenya’s long and virtually unpoliced border with Somalia. Kenya also has problems with its own homegrown militants, many of whom train and get both financing and weapons from Somali brethren.

Another reason for Kenyan concern is the rapid increase in recent weeks in the number of Internally Displaced Persons arriving at border towns along the Kenya-Ethiopia border. There are already 160,000 Somali refugees in the Dadaab camps on the Kenyan side of the border, most of whom have been living there since the early 1990s.

[...]This is a developing situation that the Europeans and Americans should pay careful attention to. The recent “World War” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which troops from multiple foreign countries ran riot for several years in the name of stabilization, led to millions of civilian deaths. Somalia has far fewer riches than the Congo to plunder, but no matter what happens, civilians are likely to bear the brunt of the fighting. And any survey of Somali history suggests that nothing radicalizes the population like an invasion of foreigners.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

The Victory Monument in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital.

Somaliland, a break-away region of north-western Somalia, has gone unrecognized by the international community since it declared independence 18 years ago.

Since then, the Somaliland region has remained more peaceful and stable than the Somali Republic, which has descended once again into chaos. While the world’s eyes are fixed on Somalia, Somaliland — and its 3.5 million people — linger in the periphery.

Tristan McConnell of the Pulitzer Center laments the lack of concern for the small, unrecognized Somaliland.

It’s a disconcerting experience to report from a place that doesn’t exist. 18-years ago Somaliland broke away from Somalia, its bigger, nastier neighbor. While that benighted nation has continued its descent into chaos, death and mayhem Somaliland has kept the peace and built a likeness of democracy.

But as Somalia’s anarchy is showered with money Somaliland is diligently ignored. In April donor nations pledged another $213-million to the besieged Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, that’s roughly seven times the annual budget of Somaliland’s entire government.

The reason is that Somaliland is unrecognized. It has most of the trappings of the modern nation-state: army, government bureaucracy, parliament and (limited) multi-party political system, legal system and functioning economy.

But not a single country in the world accepts Somaliland’s existence. The question constantly asked by politicians, businessmen, civil society activists, street traders and school children alike is, “Why?”

In the mean time Somaliland struggles on, isolated from the international financial institutions that could help transform the lives of its dirt poor people.

Part of the problem is that this chunk of stultifying semi-desert squeezed between Djibouti, Ethiopia, northern Somalia and the Gulf of Aden has little to offer the world: there are lots of sheep and goats, and maybe a little oil and some minerals but nothing much else.

In the absence of valuable resources Somaliland has to fall back on moral arguments – we are good neighbors, we are a stable country in a notoriously tough region, we are trying to be a good democracy, they say.

But moral arguments don’t carry much weight in the world of global realpolitik: Somalilanders (as they call themselves) can expect to be waiting a good while longer before the world accepts that they exist.

To read more, see the original post.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user tristam sparks under a Creative Commons license.

Off the coast of Somalia.

Here’s a different take on the issue of piracy off the African coast: The people we call pirates think that they are the ones under attack?

It reminds me of the old saying: One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. In any case, no one is about to justify piracy on the high seas, but a bit of critical thinking and analyzing root causes never hurt.

The case at hand is a report in The Times of London, in which a 38-year-old man, Farah Ismail Eid, said his life was once based on running humble fishing business. Eid is now held in prison on charges of –unsuccessfully—trying to raid foreign ships.

He sets the story on its head. He told the Times:

“I believe the title of pirates should be given to those who come to our waters illegally,” he said, after shuffling into a room at the British colonial-era Mandheera prison, 40 miles south of Berbera, wearing plastic sandals, a T-shirt and a length of printed material wrapped around his skinny waist.

Eid says that life for Somali fishermen changed when foreign fishing trawlers began operating close to shore and other foreigners began dumping toxic waste close by. He’s well aware that raiding ships on the high seas and demanding ransom is wrong. But he considers it a matter of survival.

As a result, the world’s greatest navies are chasing after fast boats manned by people who feel they are justified. It doesn’t help, of course, that Somalia has been lawless for years and wracked by civil war.

Eid’s solution, also from The Times:

“The international community should come and talk to us; they should compensate us for the problems caused to our waters by illegal fishing and toxic waste,” he said. “Then, until the government is in place in Somalia, we could protect the ships as they cross our waters.”

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user guuleed under a Creative Commons license.

The battle is between government forces and an insurgency that aims to topple the government and impose a stricter form of Islamic law. For more on the conflict, listen to our online radio show on lawlessness in Somalia.

In recent weeks, there has been intense fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, with more than 100 people killed. The United Nations says 34,000 people were forced from their homes by the fighting just last week. More than a million Somalis have been displaced by the war, and fully 40 percent of the population is said to require humanitarian assistance.

Aid groups say that 5,000 Somalis make their way to Kenyan refugee camps each month, where conditions are bad enough that some consider returning to their violent homeland. Three of the camps are in the border town of Dadaab, where there are now more than a quarter million Somali refugees.

Joke van Peteghem, head of Doctors Without Borders in Kenya, describes the deplorable conditions in Kenyan refugee camps.