Geography Archives: Somalia

Recent developments in the West African Republic of Mali are raising serious concerns about the possibility of yet another U.S. intervention.  On March 22, one month before a scheduled presidential election, a military coup toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.  Quickly taking sides, the regional 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) […]

The news of the killing of Colonel Gaddafi in the battle to take Sirte marked one more episode in this NATO war in Libya and North Africa.  The killing has all of the hallmarks of a coordinated assassination, synchronised between NATO aircraft and forces on the ground.  The reports are that Gaddafi was attacked when […]

Oct. 15 is a day of nationally coordinated antiwar actions in cities across the U.S., the 10th anniversary of the massively destructive and criminal U.S. war on Afghanistan. When the U.S. government began its attack on Afghanistan 10 years ago, President Bush called it a “war on terror.”  It was followed by 8 years of […]

  Is current U.S. foreign policy in Africa following a blueprint drawn up almost eight years ago by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative think tanks in the world?  Although it seems odd that a Democratic administration would have anything in common with the extremists at Heritage, the convergence in policy and […]

On Tuesday, June 14, the Guardian of London published “Left and Libertarian Right Cohabit in the Weird World of the Genocide Belittlers.”1  In this nearly 1,100-word commentary, the British writer George Monbiot attacked the two of us (among others) as “genocide deniers” and “revisionists” for our writings on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.  Monbiot also […]

We are witnessing an unprecedented surge in racism against Muslims in the US.  There is a real fear among US Muslims that if there’s a successful terrorist attack on Americans, particularly on US soil, we will surely face pogroms and detention centers.  The growth of the Far Right and, more specifically, the Tea Party over […]

  Just what did Barack Obama and his spinners do to the critical faculties of so many leading American progressives?  Some of my regular readers might be surprised to know that I often bring a significant measure of disinclination to my recurrent radical criticism of President Barack Obama and his “progressive” defenders.  The reluctance stems […]

Somalia in particular and the Horn of Africa in general are at such a volatile stage that any misstep — domestic or foreign — could only further exacerbate their perilous condition.  One such potential misstep is the recently proposed US foreign policy toward Somalia known as the Dual-Track approach. First, a brief background: In 2006 […]

Fahd Bahady is a Syrian cartoonist.  This cartoon was published in his blog on 2 October 2010; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.  See, also, Merle David Kellerhals, Jr., “United States to Strengthen Engagement with Puntland, Somaliland” (America.gov, 27 September 2010); Sophia Tesfamariam, “Ethiopia: It Is in the Minority Regime’s Interest to Perpetuate […]

  As’ad AbuKhalil, or Angry Arab as he is more commonly known after his blog The Angry Arab News Service, is in real life a most friendly and forthcoming man.  A Lebanese-born author of four books on the Middle East, he is professor of political science at California State University and is visiting professor at […]

War Crime Whistleblower in Obama’s Sights, War Criminals Not Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for disclosing a classified video showing American troops murdering civilians in Baghdad from an Apache Attack Helicopter in 2007.  Eleven adults were killed in the […]

If I could think of any tactfully discreet and diplomatically clear way to describe the outcome of the 15th Extraordinary Session of the IGAD Assembly of Heads of State and Government on Somalia without compromising the essence of my message, I would simply choose that approach.  Therefore, going crude is the appropriate way: As a […]

When, in an Op Ed published in the New York Times in May 2009, we first criticized President Obama’s early decision to continue covert anti-Iranian programs he inherited from George W. Bush, some expressed disbelief that Obama would undermine his own rhetoric about engaging Tehran in a climate of mutual respect by conducting a dirty […]

  I had the opportunity to sit for a conversation with the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan at the end of the 2009 meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montreal.  Ramadan is a public intellectual who has been a figure of both much praise and much condemnation, occasioned by controversial statements and positions that […]

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty […]

The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years.  It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR […]

Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island’s recent history.  It has adopted military priorities and strategies.  It has sidelined Haiti’s […]

Vali Nasr.  Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World.  New York: Free Press, 2009.  320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]

An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

It was just a matter of time before members of the collapsing left enlisted in the imperial attack on the most fundamental principles of the UN Charter, and added their voices to the growing chorus of support for Western power-projection under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).  But this […]