This month, the RESOLVE Network team’s “What We’re Reading” post features research addressing concepts related to governance, ideas, individuals, and violence in the country of Somalia. The publications listed below illuminate the complexity of the Somali landscape in their individual analyses of Somali clan dynamics and violence; government weaknesses and state failures; the evolution and appeal of the violent extremist group, al-Shabaab; and various military counterterrorism operations undertaken by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), among others. Click the links below to view the documents.

Governance

Carlson, Khristopher. “Measuring Illicit Arms Flows: Somalia.” October 2016. Small Arms Survey. http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-61.pdf 

Loubser, Helge-Mari, and Hussein Solomon. “Responding to State Failure in Somalia.” Africa Review 6, no. 1 (2014): 1-17. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09744053.2014.883753 

Jones, Seth, Andrew Liepman, and Nathan Chandler. “Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency in Somalia: Assessing the Campaign against Al Shabaab.” 2016. RAND. http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1539.html 

Williams, Paul D. “Stabilising Somalia: The African Union Mission and the Next Stage in the War against Al-Shabaab.” RUSI Journal 159, no. 2 (2014). https://rusi.org/publication/rusi-journal/stabilising-somalia-african-union-mission-and-next-stage-war-against-al 

Ideas

Doboš, Bohumil. “Shapeshifter of Somalia: Evolution of the Political Territoriality of Al-Shabaab.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 27 (2015): 937-957.http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592318.2016.1208282?journalCode=fswi20     

Mair, David. “#Westgate: A Case Study: How al-Shabaab used Twitter during an Ongoing Attack.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40, no. 1 (2017). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1157404?journalCode=uter20 

Menkhaus, Ken. “Political Islam in Somalia.” Middle East Policy 9, no. 1 (2002): 109-123. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-4967.00045/abstract 

Individuals

Botha, Anneli and Mahdi Abdile. “Radicalisation and al-Shabaab Recruitment in Somalia.” September 2014. Institute for Security Studies.https://www.issafrica.org/research/papers/radicalisation-and-al-shabaab-recruitment-in-somalia 

Kfir, Issac. “Al-Shabaab, Social Identity Group, Human (In)Security, and Counterterrorism.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2016). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1236569?journalCode=uter20 

Drumtra, Jeffery. “Internal Displacement in Somalia.” January 2015. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/research/internal-displacement-in-somalia/ 

Violence

Ahmad, Aisha. “The Security Bazaar: Business Interests and Islamist Power in Civil War Somalia.” International Security 39, no. 3 (2014/15): 89-117. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gove.12071/abstract 

Bakonyi, Jutta. “Ideoscapes in the World Society: Framing Violence in Somalia.” Civil Wars 17, no. 2 (2015): 242-265. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13698249.2015.1070456 

Mueller, Jason. “The Evolution of Political Violence: The Case of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab” Terrorism and Political Violence (2016): 1-26. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2016.1165213?journalCode=ftpv20