ANALYSIS: WHY STATES FAIL AND HOW STATES RECOVER – ANALYSIS

 Somalia and its twin Somaliland are prototypes of states that fail and states that recover. The difference between Somalia and Somaliland is the difference between a peace owned and a rent-seeking peace. Local ownership is but one aspect of the conditions for state recovery.

By Greg Mills

Somalia and Somaliland  on the Horn of Africa are prototypes of states that failed and states that recovered. Somaliland declared independence from Somalia on 18 May 1991 after a six-week Grand Conference of the Northern Peoples in Burao. The conferences in Burao and later, Bomora were managed and financed by locals, bringing their own food and shelter over many weeks, sometimes months.

These events were “bottom-up, not top-down”, emphasised Mohamed Omar, the minister of commerce, “unlike Somalia’s, which has been top-down, driven by donors through leadership and taking place outside the country”. Somalilanders concentrated on achieving peace, not on acquiring financial rents for delegates from the process, a feature which has continually by contrast blighted Somalia’s attempts to the south, where conflict entrepreneurs have fed off both the fighting and the talking.

State failure; state recovery

While the absence of international recognition might impede the consolidation of its development, Somaliland’s home-built steadiness so far exemplifies the limits of external intervention in stabilising countries and the necessity of local ownership. The irony does not end there. The route to reclaiming Somaliland’s independence lies through Mogadishu, in getting its southern neighbour to agree to a divorce; but the Mogadishu government is barely functional, little more than a Western-supported and African-military controlled client state.

The difference between Somaliland and Somalia is the difference between a peace owned and a rent-seeking peace. A lack of aid has meant that Somalilanders have had to find their own way, and the lack of external involvement has left local structures in place. It is a prototype for making peace elsewhere, the lesson for outsiders being: Less is often more. Foreigners cannot after all want peace more than the locals.

This is a first of several lessons in understanding why states recover and the role of outsiders in this process. State failure, of course, is not just about Somali-style collapse. The strains of fragility – of governance, economics, politics and society – intersect and play out differently in different circumstances. While many states are fragile, there is a group at one extreme that threatens to explode or implode, and is as a result prioritised by external actors.

At the other extreme, there are authoritarian democrats; states that might work for now, but whose lack of democratic governance threatens to undermine both their standards of governance and prospects of long-term growth.

Getting it right

There is no single reason or a tipping point at which a state becomes officially ‘failed’, an imaginary dividing line between success or normality and failure. This explains the difficulty in defining such states, and especially in categorising them. Hence terminology including failed, fragile, weak, collapsed, vulnerable, moribund, straggling, struggling, crisis, quasi-failed, ‘non-state’, broken, invisible, insufficient, stillborn, phantom, or even ‘Potemkin’ states. But these situations should be viewed on a spectrum or continuum rather than a balance sheet of failure.

Countries that work for some, at least for the relatively well-heeled visitor, can work against the locals. There are those that significantly and continuously under-perform, lurching from crisis to crisis, a roller coaster of political and economic collapse, but do not explode into violence and become the focus of international aid groups, one external metric of failure.

Getting it right depends on answering why the international community so often gets it wrong in managing transitions, from war to peace, and from poverty to prosperity. Even so, the difference between state recovery and failure involves more than the efficacy of external actors, no matter the attempts to plan and resource a coherent strategy, to achieve better coordination, staffing, commu¬nication, and to establish clear pillars, goals, objectives, systems of accountability, and clear priorities.

The drivers of state success include legitimacy, not just stability; soft systemic not just hard physical infrastructure; and the emergence of issue- rather than identity-led political and economic choices, where narrow self-interest is subsumed by national concerns. Transforming states is about the politics, and the political economy, and living with local solutions, however messy they appear.

Security is imperative: indeed, it is the door through which much else follows, including better governance and development. You can’t fix instability without fixing, first, security. To do that effective armed forces are required, including the police.

Thinking things through to the finish, by locals and outsiders, is also imperative.

Cost of failure

Countries are quick to respond to emergency situations, or to engage militarily, driven often by their own domestic political considerations. But few have the staying power, as is evidenced by Iraq, whatever the strategic folly in getting involved in the first instance.

The costs of failure and the potential rewards of recovery are enormous. Today the bulk of the world’s poor – totalling 1.1 billion of the planet’s seven billion people – live in failed or failing states. Not only is their lack of development and progress a missed opportunity for all, but their problems are unlikely to remain at home in a world increasingly connected by the flows of people, capital, goods, technology, information and news.

History teaches however that the period of recovery for states from failure is at least as long as the period of decline. The term ‘buy and hold’ is synonymous with taking a long-term view; not aiming to enter low and sell high, but rather to build a business over generations.

This approach discourages speculative investment and promotes the practice of holding onto shares for years in the belief that the stock is undervalued, and that sound management and patience will not only add value for the investor, but create wealth and jobs in the process.

Buy and hold is also the strategy necessary to fix states. Local leaders need to adopt this approach, investing in the future of their countries, and not simply using their power to extract personal wealth.

Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation and is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. His latest book – ‘Why States Recover’ (Picador/Hurst) – based on his assignments in three dozen case-studies across the world, is being launched at RSIS this month.

Israel's Kill List Inside the Mossad's campaign to off its most dangerous foes, one by one.

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YOAV LEMMER/AFP/Getty Images

BY RONEN BERGMAN

There'll be a summit conference in the sky," smiled an Israeli intelligence official Wednesday morning when he learned of the assassination of Hassan Lakkis, the Hezbollah commander in charge of weapons development and advanced technological warfare, in a Beirut suburb around midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 3. The killing of Lakkis is yet another in the latest in a long series of assassinations of leading figures in what Israeli intelligence calls the "Radical Front," which comprises two countries -- Syria and Iran -- and three organizations: Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.

"We're talking about a number of organizations and people involved in nuclear and terrorist activity. [They] do it not only for their countries in various missions, but have created an international network -- the most dangerous and most efficient that I have met," the official added. The coalition's goals: "the construction of a nuclear bomb and of various missilery capabilities -- from very short to very long ranges -- and the implementation of suicide terror at the highest level." The Israeli goals: take these men out, one by one.

This isn't the first time Israel has faced very powerful enemies, of course. But Israeli intelligence officials think this may be the most diverse, most intricately woven set of foes the country has encountered. These foes range from those at the leadership level down to field operatives, according to Mossad and Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) high-ranking officials. And it all involves deep, intimate cooperation that even spans the religious rifts between Sunnis and Shiites, driven by a single motive force: hostility toward the state of Israel.

Back in 2004, the Mossad began identifying various key figures within this Radical Front -- those with advanced operational, organizational, and technological capabilities. While other, better-known personalities in these extremist groups and their state backers dealt with strategy, these were the people who handled the details and the translation of strategy into actual practice.

The Israeli intelligence source, who dealt with the Radical Front, likens the anti-Israel coalition to SPECTRE, the fictional enemies of James Bond. With one difference: "SPECTRE usually did it for money." Israeli intelligence drew up a list of these men, each one the possessor of highly lethal skills that could be threatening to Israel, even if there had not been a coordinated network embracing of all of them. The list was headed by two men: Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's supreme military commander, and Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's head of secret special projects, including the building of a nuclear reactor, and the person in charge of Syria's ties with Iran and Hezbollah. As Meir Dagan, the former Mossad chief, told me: "Gen. Muhammad Suleiman was in charge of Assad's shady businesses, including the connection with Hezbollah and Iran and all sensitive projects. He was a figure Assad was leaning upon. And these days, he misses him."

After them came Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, head of missile development for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the export of missiles to Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad; Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official in charge of tactical ties with Iran; and Hassan Lakkis (also spelled in FBI documents as Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis), who was identified by Aman in the early 1990s as Hezbollah's weapons development expert. In an article about Lakkis's death, Lebanon's Daily Star called him a "key figure in Hezbollah['s] drone program." The Israeli intelligence source continued the analogy with the Bond movies and called him "Hezbollah's Q."

According to his Aman file, Lakkis was active in the radical Shiite movement since age 19, enlisting shortly after it was established. He had a certain amount of technical education at a Lebanese university, but most of his skills were acquired from his experience in developing and manufacturing weaponry. Almost from the outset he was the top procurement officer and coordinator with Iran on these matters. Thanks to his efforts, Hezbollah became the most powerful terrorist organization ever -- even more powerful than al Qaeda in many ways -- with "firepower that 90 percent of the countries in the world do not have," according to Dagan.

As early as the mid-1990s, there were Aman officers who marked Lakkis as a potential target, believing that he should be eliminated. But Hezbollah was not a preferred target at the time and was considered more of a nuisance than a strategic threat. By the time that this changed in the 2000s, he was already taking extreme precautions to protect himself.

As I detail in my book, The Secret War With Iran, Lakkis was also wanted in Canada and the United States for running Hezbollah cells in those countries in the early 1990s. He had dispatched "elements with criminal tendencies there, and they were therefore happy to send them to North America so that they would not carry on such activities close to the organizations members" in Lebanon, according to a classified Aman paper. These Lebanese criminals settled in Vancouver, North Carolina, and Michigan, where they worked in the wholesale counterfeiting of visas, driver's licenses, and credit cards, raking in huge profits. Lakkis permitted them to skim off a fat commission, as long as most of the cash was used for the procurement of sophisticated equipment that Hezbollah was finding it difficult to acquire elsewhere, such as GPS and night-vision equipment and various kinds of flak jackets.

In the wake of information conveyed by Israeli intelligence, the FBI and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service mounted a number of operations against these cells, and their members either fled or were arrested and sentenced to long jail terms for offenses including illicit acquisition of weapons and conspiring to attack Jewish targets. Lakkis himself learned about the raids in time and canceled a planned visit to the United States. In the last telephone calls recorded by the FBI before the crackdown, Lakkis was heard rebuking the cell members for not doing enough for Hezbollah and enjoying the good life in America while the organization's members in Lebanon were being hammered by Israel.

With Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah's military buildup and preparations for a general campaign against Israel became central in the organization's doctrine. Lakkis functioned in tandem with and under the command of Hezbollah's military commander, Mughniyeh. The two were aware of Israel's sensitivity to casualties in its military and of the lack of preparedness on the Israeli home front for sustained bombardment.

They built a complex array of fortifications in south Lebanon with a double goal: surviving for as long as possible under attack from Israeli land forces, which they were sure would happen sooner or later, and preservation of their own ability to fire as many missiles as possible at Israeli communities.

The formula was a success. In the summer of 2006, Israel lost its war with Hezbollah, thanks, in part, to fortifications equipped with advanced gear like communications, command-and-control systems, and night-vision optics -- all of which Lakkis played an important role in acquiring. In effect, it was Israel, the strongest military force in the Middle East, that was badly defeated, failing to achieve any of the goals it had set itself.

On July 20, 2006, the Israelis tried to take Lakkis out with a rocket fired from an F-16 fighter at his apartment in Beirut, but he wasn't home and his son was killed.

The 2006 war (known as the "Second Lebanon War" in Israel, to distinguish it from the war Israel waged against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982) was the high point of the Radical Front and the coordination between the coalition's top members. Since then, the wheel has turned a full cycle. Mughniyeh was killed by a bomb in his car in Damascus in February 2008; Suleiman was shot dead by a sniper on a beach in Syria in August of the same year; Mabhouh was strangled and poisoned in a Dubai hotel room in January 2010; Moghaddam was blown sky high along with 16 of his personnel in an explosion at a missile depot near Tehran on Nov. 12, 2011. And on Tuesday night, two unidentified masked men cut Lakkis down in the parking garage of his apartment building in a suburb of Beirut.

Hezbollah was quick to point the finger at Israel; Israel was quick to deny the attack. If indeed the assassins belong to some elite intelligence organization, by now they are most likely to be out of Lebanon, away from Hezbollah's grasp. But this tactical success -- if you can call it that -- is not necessarily a strategic one in the Middle Eastern political arena. 

To play assassin is to challenge history outright. Some hit jobs proved effective in changing reality, but not all changed it in the manner the perpetrators had hoped for. Take the 1992 assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi. Retaliation attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets after his death cost dozens of lives, and the more radical and more effective Hassan Nasrallah took over as the organization's leader. 

For these reasons, assassinations should be considered a last resort. The Radical Front is undergoing changes. Iran had to come to a difficult compromise with the West after many years of sanctions brought its economy to its knees. Hezbollah has taken both tactical and political blows since it openly sided with Assad in the Syrian civil war and sent its troops to fight alongside his.

"Now they're all together," said the Israeli intelligence official. Then he recited words from the Jewish religious blessing that's meand to be said on hearing that someone has died: "Blessed be the Judge of the Truth."

But sometimes it's better to let the Judge -- and History -- take its own course.

Oil discoveries at the Kenya-Somalia offshore border may increase inter-state armed conflict between the two countries

 

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By Eng. Mahmud Hassan,

East Africa’s coast extends from Somalia in the north, through Kenya and Tanzania, all the way to Mozambique in the south. There are also several islands in between such as Madagascar, Seychelles and Comoros. The recent oil and gas discoveries in East Africa (EA) particularly in Mozambique and Tanzania attracted increasing attention from many international oil and gas companies who desire to get a portion of EA’s offshore resources in order to boost their profits.

As this can influence border disputes however, it can also replicate similar issues where many EA countries have disputes on inland borders and border Lakes such as Lake Albert, Lake Victoria, and Lake Malawi after resources were discovered. Similarly, following the rumours of the existence of natural resources (Oil and gas) in trans-boundary areas between Somalia and Kenya may increase inter-state and armed conflict.

This article reflects what is currently taking place across the Somalia-Kenya offshore border where Kenya recently awarded six oil and gas blocks to the international oil companies (IOC), within Somali offshore territory approximately 120,000 km². As shown in figure1; IOCs from Italy, Norway, USA and France are tended to be exploiting the trans-boundary area.

It was apparent that those greedy alliances’ aim is to plunder Somalia’s offshore hydrocarbon resources and this has become more obvious since Kenya started invading southern Somalia in October 2011 while its allies such as France, Italy and Norway kept quiet about the invasion.

However, after Somalia parliament and Somalia people rejected both governments’ endeavour to reach a deal, some companies such as Anadarko and Statoil have abandoned their transgression wishes.

In addition, Kenya’s supporting the creation of self-autonomous regions across the border called Jubba-land seems to have failed due to the consciousness showed by the Somali government and its’ people. This administration’s denial of Kenya invaded Somalia water reinforced the suspicion that Kenya would like to keep Somalia unstable, preferring a weak Somali government and smaller puppet states within Somalia which would conveniently wanted to allow Kenya to exploit the trans-boundary resources in Somalia’s territorial waters.

Below map shows position of DSDP/ drill sites. Also experts speculated the area in existence of huge amount oil and gas deposit. DSDP site 241, which is the richest drilled well so far in East Africa’s deep water, is located in the Somali basin. If Kenya gets what they want the DSDP well will be on their site while currently situated in Somalia site according to 2009 preliminary information for Somalia continental shelf(see figure2).

Moreover, three blocks awarded to Italy’s ENI are located in this area whilst another three, awarded to US, French and Norwegian IOCs straddle Somali territory (See figure 1). The question is whether ENI and its mafia bosses are looking for a new approach towards Somalia’s offshore or might this be a new form of colonialism in the 21century.

The inner map shows an old colonial map from Maritime Jurisdiction sketched in 1926; the area hatched in blue belongs to Somalia according to ex-colonial map agreed between Italy and British government.

Kenya already patrols this area strictly with its navy forces while they kept pushing its agenda through persuasion to the Somalia government demarcation to reach a deal on maritime.

After several attempts, Kenya failed to convince Somalia to reach a deal whether it is financial or technical delineation. Currently Somalia logged on Court application to the International court of

Justice (ICJ). This court will decide the demarcation line between Somalia and Kenya maritime. Unfortunately, Somalia side even didn’t mention the existence of international colonial border which Britain and Italy agreed on 1926 that should not be changed easily similarly to the inland borders between the two countries.

What Somalia Government doesn’t know is that Kenya built strong alliances including oil companies and many commonwealth countries that are helping Kenya to prepare for its maritime boundary negotiations with Somalia which they also could offer best maritime lawyers. It is all about resources that oil and gas companies should discover oil and gas in Somalia water and want to get it either use by force or other possible methods.

In 2010, according to the Commonwealth website, its secretariat’s maritime boundary specialists held a workshop for government officials to prepare the country for its maritime boundary negotiations with Somalia because “establishing clear maritime boundaries will have important implications for security, shipping, environmental protection, fishing and offshore resource exploration in the region.”

The other question is whether Somalia is going to prepare well in advance or it will be surprised by sudden loss after the final decision hearing and consequently going to war “typically Somali way”.

Other issues related to this boom in EA is that EA’s offshore industry is at a very early stage in its oil and gas development and lacks its own infrastructure, regulations and standards on HSE field such as emergency response, safety training, risk assessment and regulations.

There are many oil and gas companies which are operating in the EA offshore at the present such as Anadarko, ENI, Dominion petroleum, Soma oil, Shell, Tullow, CNOOC, Total, ExxonMobil, Petronas, Canadian Africa Oil Corporation, Norwegian Statoil, BG group and Ophir Energy, Total France and many more. In such exploration and production activities, there are accidents which are related to offshore drilling such as blowouts, fires, oil spillages and other environmental disasters. Thus oil and gas companies operating in such areas where the infrastructure and regulatory regime is undeveloped would arguably be unable to respond if a major accident strikes offshore the East African region. For instance, if major accidents similar to Piper Alpha in the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were to occur in this young, undeveloped area the damage would be beyond belief since the region is currently a new frontier and lacks infra structure and good regulatory system.

References

1. Thomson, C., 2011. Oil explorers push boundaries of political, geological risk. The financial times
2. Coffin, M. F., Lemont-Dehort , Robinowitz, P. D., 1982. A Multichannel Seismic Transect of the Somalian Continental Margin. GTC 4259
3. Wadhams, N., 2010. Is east Africa the next frontier for oil? Time, 10 March 2010
4. Beckman, J. 2011. Mozambique wells reveal major frontier gas province. Offshore magazine.
5. OILWATCH AFRICA, May 2010. Oil Production in Africa: Livelihoods and Environment at Stake: Should Oil Rather Remain in the Ground?.
6. East Africa community secretariat, 2008. Strategy for the development of regional refineries.
7. Reuters, 2012. Kenya, Somalia border row threatens oil exploration. April 20, 2012.
8. Okumo, W. 2010. Resources and border disputes in East Africa. Journal of East Africa studies (2), pp.279-297.
9. Matchette-Downes C. & Cameron N.,2005 .Now is the time for East Africa
10. Weeden, S. 2011. East Africa Boasts Newest Gas Bonanzas. E&P
11. Duey, R., 2009. Black Marlin sails to new play. Epmag

Author: Mahmud Hassan Mohammed,
MBA oil and gas management and MSc engineering
Contacts: xamuud@gmail.com

Egyptian, Sudanese officials visit site of controversial Ethiopian dam in Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia –  The Ethiopian News Agency says Egypt's irrigation minister has toured the site in western Ethiopia where the country is building a controversial dam on the Blue Nile River.

The Ethiopian agency said Monday that Hossam El-Moughazi's visit Sunday marked the first time that an Egyptian official has been able to visit the site of the $4.2 billion hydro-electric project named the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia are currently holding talks aimed at reducing tension over the dam. Ethiopian officials have previously said they have arrested Egyptian citizens who allegedly entered the country illegally and tried to reach the site of the dam.

Egypt reportedly fears that the dam will diminish its share of the Nile, which provides almost all of the desert nation's water needs.

The Demise of al-Shabaab Leader: End of the Game?

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  By Abukar Sanei-CfPAR

  The U.S. airstrike operation that was carried out on the first day of September successfully targeted Ahmed Godane, the leader of al-Shabaab in Somalia. The result of this operation has been welcomed by Somali leaders and the activists in social media as a progress that is made toward the “eradication” of Somalia’s extremist group. The news of the demise of Godane came only on Friday, September 5 when the Pentagon’s press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, confirmed the death in a brief written statement. In addition, President Barack Obama, speaking at the conclusion of a NATO summit in Newport, Wales, said the successful U.S. strike was an example of his administration’s determination to hit back at terrorists. Likewise, a press statement released by the White House stated that Godane’s removal is a major symbolic and operational loss to the largest al-Qaida affiliate in Africa and reflects years of painstaking work by our intelligence, military and law enforcement professionals. On the other hand, the Facebook Page of Villa Somalia stated that US forces conducted the airstrike with the full knowledge and agreement of the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS). This, the statement continued, is an international battle against the scourge of terrorism and the government and the people of Somalia greatly value the support of our international allies whether it is direct intervention such as on this occasion or longer term capacity building through the training and equipping our reconstituting Somali security forces.

  Moreover, the Somali government thanked the US government and individuals in the Somali security forces that helped the operation. The fact that I need to underline here is that getting rid of the most senior leader of al-Shabaab is a welcoming development for Somalia and the region as well as the international community. However, the hard question is whether the demise of Ahmed Godane is an indication of the end of the game.

  The death of Godane will not be the end of the game for al-Shabaab in Somalia. Under the leadership of Godane, though weakened, al-Shabaab had been active waging their guerrilla urban warfare for the last three years since they were “ousted” from Mogadishu. They successfully attacked Villa Somalia twice; the Parliament and the UN compound in Mogadishu in addition to other suicide bombings and planed assassinations. This has been the case and will be the case, because al-Shabaab is a group that is based on ideology, not individuals. The group will continue targeting the young Somalis who are susceptible to the calls of extremism from inside and the diaspora. Those brainwashed young Somalis will keep carrying out the activities that the group has been using to dismantle the progress made so far for state-building and governance. If Godane is gone, another successor will come and continue the work. In fact, the group selected the successor of Godane on Saturday, September 06, 2014. As reported by AP, the successor’s name is Abu Ubeid Ahmed Omar. The question would be how the successor will be different from Godane’s ruthless leadership. The only difference that might be expected to happen is how the group is willing to lay down its arms, and negotiate for political participation. I am not expecting this will be carried out by the newly selected senior leadershipof the group, but the junior level leaders can take this route. Col. Hassan Dahir Aweys, the former leader of Hizb al Islam, has defected from the group after clashes with Godane on the way the group operates. It is an open question whether Col. Aweys, who is now under the “custody” of the Somali government, totally rejects the use of violence to gain power. Moreover, Mohamed Said (Atom), who used to fight in the Galagala area in northeast Somalia, has recently surrendered himself to the Somali government.

  Alternative Actions

  There are four main alternative actions that need to take place. First, as al-Shabaab is driven by an ideology found from misinterpreted and twisted quotes of the Islamic teachings, it is the job of Somali religious scholars to prove the group wrong. The phenomenon of religious extremism and the culture of suicide are new to the Somali people. The religious scholars inside and the diaspora need to collaborate effectively to uprooting this new phenomenon, and to gain the hearts and the minds of the young Somalis who may have passion for their faith, but somehow manipulated by those with sinister agendas.

  The second alternative is to pinpoint where the financial and military support of the group come from. The financial and military support that the group receives is the only lifeline that helps them to continue their operation in Somalia and the region. The group is equipped with machine guns and ammunition, and the investigation that needs to be carried out is to clearly identify who are the suppliers. This is a mission that needs to be tackled by the Somali government, AMISOM forces and the international community. As long as the group is funded financially and supported militarily, they will continue their operation in and outside of Somalia.

  The third alternative action that needs to take place is creating opportunities for the young Somalis who are trapped by the misguided interpretation of Islam. Whether it is the piracy [though it has greatly diminished] off the coast of Somalia or the extremism, the young Somalis who engage these activities have failed to see any other alternatives for their future. For the last two decades, the young generation who was born in 1990s has only seen violence whether it is by the warlords or religious extremists. The private education systems that started after the fall of the last government in 1991, though they filled the vacuum, were only for those who could have afforded to pay the fees. As a result, many families who remained inside the country could not afford to send their children to school. Therefore, four options were left for the children of those families: one, fight for the warlords; two, join the pirates; three, be recruited by the extremists; and four, be a victim for smugglers and die in the deep ocean or survive to end up somewhere else as a refugee. In order to confront extremism, the young Somalis must be given free education and other life skills so that they can see a bright future for themselves.

  The fourth alternative action is that combating against al-Shabaab and the overall security of Somalia must be owned by Somalis. Using unmanned vehicles from time to time will not completely solve the threat of al-Shabaab to Somalia and the horn of African region. The Somali security forces must be nationalized, and equipped with necessary knowledge of security and the power machines that they need to employ for the war against al-Shabaab.

  The demise of al-Shabaab leader will greatly diminish the spirit of the group, but it doesn’t mean the ideology that thrusts the group will vanish easily. The Somali religious scholars need to double their efforts against extremism, and opportunities for education and employment must be created for the young exploited Somalis.