Word: menkhaus
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...anarchic vacuum, a place that has gone 18 years without a government, which is an al-Qaeda sanctuary and destination of choice for hundreds of foreign jihadists, and where millions need food but where 40 aid workers have been killed since the start of 2008. Somali expert Ken Menkhaus, political science professor at Davidson College, calls it the "longest-running instance of complete state collapse in the post-colonial...
...stating the obvious to say the Somali crisis that involves millions of people receives almost no attention while the Somali crisis that involves millions of dollars receives unprecedented military action. (Menkhaus says the pirates raised $20-$40 million in ransoms last year. They also cost the shipping industry millions more in hiked insurance premiums.) It's also true that land intervention in Somalia would be immeasurably bloodier than the sea operations underway, and the ineffectiveness of peacekeepers in Darfur, and the DRC raises big questions over whether such operations can ever be successful. It is widely acknowledged that finding...
...Menkhaus, a professor of political science at Davidson University and one of the world's foremost experts on Somalia, told TIME that bin Laden's message would only bolster Sharif's standing in his own country. "There's nothing that plays as poorly in Somalia as foreigners trying to advance their own agenda in Somalia - telling them who they may or may not have as a leader - and al-Qaeda is falling into that category. In some ways, you could not script this any better for the new government. On paper, it all looks excellent...
...Late last year, after two years bloody occupation of Somalia, Ethiopia withdrew. Instead of creating a vacuum for the Shabaab to fill, as many feared, Menkhaus says Ethiopia's withdrawal allowed Somalis to turn their attention to their own internal enemies. "The Shabaab have been pushed back by Somali communities," he said. "Somalis do not want their version of government...
...Both Menkhaus and von Hippel caution that Somalia's new government faces the steepest of obstacles. Even without the Islamists, 18 years of war have robbed it of almost all infrastructure and anything resembling law, left millions of its people on the edge of starvation and given it a raging piracy problem along its coasts. But both warn that the world should not flood Somalia with help. Von Hippel said experience had shown that international peacekeepers or a U.N.-sponsored drive to create a central government were inappropriate to Somalia. Far more important was building up Somalia's own security...