International efforts have tightened the noose on Somalia’s infamous pirates, but the scourge is alive in West Africa and …
Mogadishu
After Botched U.S. Raid, Somalis Fear Looming War With Al-Shabab
On Oct. 5, the same day the U.S. whisked leading al-Qaeda operative, Anas al-Liby, from his home in the Libyan capital to a suspected holding cell aboard a ship in the Mediterranean, it tried a similarly audacious operation in …
Dispatch from Somalia: War, but a Glimmer of Hope
TIME’s Africa correspondent writes from the front lines in war-ravaged Somalia, where an African Union offensive against al-Shabab is offering a tenuous glimpse of progress
Must-Reads from Around the World: April 6, 2012
Warring Words – Der Spiegel reports on the raging controversy surrounding German Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s new poem, which is sharply critical of Israel. The poet has taken to the airwaves to defend himself, while Israeli …
A Novel Response to the World’s Worst Famine: War.
In September, Somalis kidnappers kill a British tourist and his wife; later they kidnap a disabled French tourist, who subsequently dies; then in October they abduct two Spanish aid workers. In reply Kenya, whose economy depends heavily on tourism, sends hundreds of troops into southern Somalia in pursuit of an al-Qaeda affiliate, …
Mogadishu Bombing Delivers a Slap to Turkey
The truck bomb attack that killed more than 100 people in Mogadishu on Tuesday was a not entirely unfamiliar horror for the residents of a city locked in a permanent state of fratricidal warfare for two decades, but it highlighted the scale of a foreign policy challenge recently accepted by the government of Turkey.
Prime Minister …
Will We Really Let 750,000 People Starve to Death?
Are we really about to let three-quarters of a million people starve to death? The U.N. thinks we might. Figures describing the famine in Somalia from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) paint a consistent, horrifying picture. As of late September, hunger is besieging 12.4 million East Africans, with …
Dispatch from Mogadishu: Looking for Militants in Somalia’s War-Torn Capital
All war is chaos, but after 20 years of fighting Mogadishu resembles perfect anarchy. The streets are surfaced with decades of compacted garbage and to drive them is to be tossed about like a small boat on a rough sea. The buildings still standing are pock-marked with hundreds — generally thousands — of holes from bullets, …
Somalia: Deadly, Even For al Qaeda
The reported death of the mastermind of the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Nigeria Tanzania finally brings to a close the opening chapter of what went on to become the war on terror. Photographs and DNA analysis on the bodies of two men shot and killed at a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) roadblock in Mogadishu overnight on …