Containing al-Shabab

It's ten years since I covered my first Somali peace deal story. It was on a scorching hilltop in Djibouti and everyone was talking hopefully about how this, the 13th peace process I think, would finally end the anarchy and violence. It didn't and nor did the many deals that followed.
Somalia breeds pessimism more assiduously than any other country I've covered as a journalist. It is very tempting to conclude that this week's bombings in Uganda mark the beginning of a new, regionalised and increasingly dangerous stage in the conflict.
"The kaleidoscope has been shaken," was how one western diplomatic source put it to me.
A bomb attack somewhere beyond Somalia's borders was almost inevitable. If an international naval taskforce patrolling the coast couldn't stop Somalia's pirates, then a dangerously under-resourced peacekeeping force in Mogadishu protecting an embattled and feuding transitional government was hardly going to contain al-Shabab. The organization had made its intentions clear beforehand Read More