Somalia partitioned under Italy, Britain, France
In 2016, Somalia was declared the most fragile state in the world – worse off than Syria. Famine struck yet again in 2017, compounded by President Trump’s attempt to ban Somalis from entering the US. But for the first time since 1991, when Somalia collapsed along with its one-time ally, the Soviet Union, Somalia now has functioning political institutions.
Dual US-Somali citizen Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo became president in February 2017, approved by the US, refugees are returning from the US, Canada and Europe, and remittances from them buttress the economy. Just to make sure Farmajo knows who’s really in charge, Trump ordered an air strike on suspected militant bases in April 2017, near the Bab el-Mandeb strait choke point separating Yemen from Eritrea, boasting it killed 150 Shabab fighters.
The 1980s were a monstrous decade. We are still living out the disasters that the Cold War and the US war to prevent ‘the advance of socialism’, which had been on the books since the end of WWII, and was reaching its logical conclusion by then. After two world wars, everyone expected peace, and the vast majority — socialism. No such luck. Hundreds of coups in the 1950s — 60s orchestrated by the CIA kept most countries toeing the imperial line. But after Vietnam, for a few shining moments in the 1970s, there was a shift by a slightly sobered America.
The world breathed a sigh of relief. Somalia was prospering,…