ON SOMALIA: Ambassador Johnnie Carson. PHOTO BY STEPHEN WANDERA
Top US diplomat for Africa, Ambassador Johnnie Carson, at a press conference in Kampala on Tuesday, outlined Washington’s key involvement and strategies in Africa. Daily Monitor’s Senior Reporter Tabu Butagira attended the briefing, and below, brings an abridged version starting with what Ambassador Cason said African Heads of State agreed on Somalia during a closed-door session on Monday.
We did hold a very lengthy meeting to talk about Somalia; to express our growing concern about the situation in that country. Somalia is a problem on three dimensions and levels: A domestic problem of an imploded state with a very weak central government with lack of capacity to deliver services and a large number of internally displaced persons.
It’s also an enormous regional challenge because of the large number of its refugees in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Tanzania, causing enormous social burdens and the collapse of the Somali state has resulted in high levels of smuggling of major contrabands and movement of weapons across borders.
Somalia is also a problem due to the emergence of piracy that affects commerce over the Red Sea. We note with great concern that Somalia has become host to a number of violent extremists and we have seen that extremism play itself out in the July 11 bomb attacks in Kampala. Read More
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