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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:39 am
Time: 11:39 am
Results for terrorism (somalia)
1 results foundAuthor: Norris, John Title: Twenty Years of Collapse and Counting: The Cost of Failure in Somalia Summary: The disastrous famine in Somalia is the worst the world has seen in 20 years, and it again casts a harsh spotlight on the situation in that country. With millions of people now at risk of starvation, and appalling stories of human hardship dominating the evening news, the name “Somalia” once again conjures images of crisis and despair—a famished, suffering country peopled by pirates, terrorists, and warlords. Somalia is best known for the civil war and famine of the early 1990s, which killed some 250,000 people and triggered a massive, U.S.-led humanitarian intervention that culminated in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident of 1994. More recently, the rise of indigenous Islamist movements in southern Somalia has rekindled fears that the anarchic territory could—or has—become a safe haven for Al Qaeda and other transnational terrorist movements. Western and regional efforts to reduce the terror threat by establishing a central government in Somalia have failed to improve governance. A recent confidential audit of the Somali government suggests that in 2009 and 2010 some 96 percent of direct bilateral assistance to the government had simply disappeared, presumably into the pockets of corrupt officials.19 The repeated failure of international efforts to produce positive change in Somalia has generated fatigue among donors at a time when Somalia’s needs have never been greater. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is rightfully a well-worn adage. Yet in the world of foreign policy it is an exceedingly difficult credo to translate from convenient talking point into practice. As much as policy experts and others, including the U.S. secretary of defense, call for sensible investments in crisis prevention, international development, and expanded diplomatic capabilities, the default setting of the U.S. government and its partners in the international community is to scrimp on crisis prevention while pouring money into crisis response and containment. By and large, the U.S. government ends up spending far more time and money responding to crises or tinkering with tactical responses than preventing crises or nurturing effective peacebuilding efforts. This paper explores the staggeringly high cost of this approach by looking at the case of Somalia. This research tries to determine—using a variety of official and unofficial sources and some educated guesswork—a reasonable estimate of the financial cost of Somalia’s conflict since 1991. We tried to be as exhaustive as possible in determining the money spent on Somalia by the international community, regional actors, and the Somali diaspora, regardless of the specific intentions of spending and whether these expenditures were sensible and effective or not. It is our hope that the data explored in this paper can provide the foundation for a useful cost-benefit analysis of what has and has not worked in Somalia. We welcome any additional insights into our methodology and findings. Details: Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2011. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 22, 2013 at: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/09/pdf/somalia.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Somalia URL: http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/09/pdf/somalia.pdf Shelf Number: 127696 Keywords: Drug TraffickingMaritime CrimePiracy/PiratesTerrorism (Somalia) |