Somalia: State Collapse and the Threat of Terrorism

by Ken Menkhaus

Overview

This work explores Somalia's state collapse and the security threats posed by Somalia's prolonged crisis. Communities are reduced to lawlessness, and the interests of commercial elites have shifted towards rule of law, but not a revived central state. Terrorists have found Somalia inhospitable, using it mainly for short-term transshipment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198516705
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/08/2005
Series:	Adelphi series , #364
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ken Menkhaus is Professor of Political Science at Davidson College, North Carolina. He has served as Senior Technical Advisor to the United Nations Development Office for Somalia, Nairobi and Kenya and was Special Political Advisor to the Policy Planning Group of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) from 1993 to 1994.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter 1 Reassessing Protracted State Collapse in Somalia; Chapter 2 Interests and Risk in a Collapsed State; Chapter 3 Somalia, Global Security and the War on Terrorism;

Editorial Reviews

Since September 11, failed states such as Afghanistan have been viewed as significant security threats. Menkhaus' probing analysis of Somali dynamics in the last decade suggests this is only partially true. Key Somali elites, with few incentives to revive a central government, benefit from the current state of collapse, and such collapse need not be associated with lawlessness or economic stagnation. Indeed, commercial elites have successfully reined in the worst warlord excesses to promote highly profitable pockets of stability, and Somalia has proven to be inhospitable terrain for foreign terrorist groups, who need some kind of complicit central authority for their own security. Perhaps this argument will convince Western decision-makers to once again consign Somalia to the benign neglect it knew before September 11. Rather than try to rebuild a central state in Somalia, a goal he views as too ambitious for the time being, Menkhaus recommends strengthening the groups that are promoting lawfulness and a modicum of prosperity even absent a central government.

Foreign Affairs