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29/01/2015

Somalia: X-ray of a fragile state. From colonization to Islam (I) (DIEEEA05-2015)

Somalia is one of the weakest links in the arc of crisis that stretches from Nouakchott to Mogadishu; a country wherein more than twenty years of civil war, together with the absence of state structures have mutated this ancient Italian colony in what is now called a fragile state, setting up an almost endemic situation that fosters the spreading of international terrorism. To understand how Somalia has become such a fragile state, it is necessary to analyze the evolution of the country through the period of the Italian and British colonization, to follow with the decolonization process somewhat atypical, the long dictatorship of Siad Barre during the War cold, whose fall after a disastrous conflict with Ethiopia led to the emergence of Islamist militias, the consequent intervention of foreign powers and, finally, the appearance in the last decade, of a threatening jihadist network whose most important expression is the group Al-Shabab.

Author: Ignacio Fuente Cobo


 

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