Somalia

‘Top-down’ leadership conferences, such as Sodere and Cairo last year (AC Vol 39 No 8) are now out and seem to be being replaced, as many have long hoped, by a ‘bottom-up’ approach...

The leaders of Mogadishu's three main factions are still trying to avoid a real peace settlement. Nearly three months after the Cairo agreement that was meant to bring peace, Ali M...

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin chose an odd day to condemn outside interference in Somalia: 18 March, the day Ethiopian troops again crossed into Somalia's Gedo Region to...

Somali faction leaders have been meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week to try to salvage the agreement reached in Cairo on 22 December. Signatories to the Egyptian- sponsored...

On the face of it, the plan for 25 Somali factions to meet in the north-eastern port of Bossasso in November sounds like a step forward for the peace process. In practice, many Som...

Ethiopia has won another round in its war against Islamists. Somalia's main Islamist movement, Al Itahad al Islami, lost its last major bases to an Ethiopian assault on 11 June. It...

Somalia's banknotes are falling apart but attempts to replace them are causing new problems. Ali Mahdi, self-proclaimed President in North Mogadishu, tried to bring in new notes fi...

Two competing peace processes are under way in Somalia, each linked to a neighbouring state. Supporters of January's agreement at Sodere, Ethiopia, are trying to create a political...

Italian shuttle diplomacy across the 'Green Line' dividing Mogadishu has persuaded Hussein Mohamed Farah 'Aydeed' and Ali Mahdi Mohamed to resurrect the October 1996 peace deal, br...

A new year, a new faction agreement. On 3 January, after six weeks of pool-side discussions at the Ethiopian hot-spring resort of Sodere (AC Vol 37 No 25), leaders of 26 Somali fac...