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Foreign Affairs committee Getting better and getting worse in Somalia varies by location and sector. When we talk about—
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee You're pressing an academic to give a blanket statement. We qualify everything, but—
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee I will try to answer your question as directly as I can. The overall trend is that there are some pockets of good things happening, but the broad national trend is either stagnant or worrisome. We could be looking at a situation that could get actively worse in the next few yea
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee I think we need to continue to engage, because if we were to see Somalia backslide into a real crisis, the spillover to the region would be enormous and the humanitarian impact would be unthinkable.
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee Do you want me to go first, Jay?
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee That's a great question, and a really challenging question. Somali political culture is fascinating in that you can simultaneously have a really enduring, extreme level of parochialism around clan; a very powerful undercurrent of Somali nationalism, despite everything that has h
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee Top-down approaches in Somalia have not succeeded. There's no question. That's where the vast majority of external support has gone and that's where the vast majority of foreign aid dollars have been lost. The federal government has a number of built-in problems. One is that it'
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee The question of federalism in other countries and what Somalis can learn from that has been around since the late 1990s. There was a publication called “A Menu of Options”, which was produced by the European community, I think. It looked at countries like Switzerland and elsewher
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee All right. This is going to be a speculative answer. I wish we had better data. We do have some public opinion polls of youth, which give us some clues to this question, but I don't have a definitive answer. I think the first thing to point out is that 75% of the Somali populati
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee There is a huge danger in calling out aid agencies and their projects and saying, “Look how well they're doing”, because that immediately elicits counter-responses: “Oh, no; they messed up here and here and here.” I'm a little reluctant to give a shout-out to specific aid agencie
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee Puntland is not a secessionist state. It is formally part of the federal government of Somalia, unlike Somaliland, which has declared secession since 1991. The challenge with Puntland is that it has the ability to exercise veto power over developments it doesn't like by threate
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee Lots of donors work with whatever authorities they find most reliable. There's no question that there are pockets of competence within the federal government; they work with them. There are areas of competence, even excellence, at the local and substate level, where we have seen
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee Jay, do you want to take that?
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee As you've rightly put it, there's been a vacuum on the political side in U.S. policy toward Somalia. The result has been to substitute military strategy for political strategy. The good news is that this is changing. The U.S. has confirmed and sent out a new ambassador, Ambassa
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus
Foreign Affairs committee You're pointing at a fundamental problem in Somalia, which is that there are a lot of constituencies in Somalia that are benefiting from perpetuating the status quo. This is not an ideal situation for anyone, but it's a condition within which some very powerful elements in Somali
December 10th, 2018Committee meeting
Dr. Ken Menkhaus