From Mogadishu to Minneapolis
The Trump administration’s crackdown on Somalis in Minnesota ignores a longer history: decades of US intervention that helped produce the violence and displacement Somalis fled.
Somalia
The rubble of empire
Built by Italian Fascists in 1928, Mogadishu Cathedral was meant to symbolize “peaceful conquest.” Today its ruins force Somalis to confront the uneasy afterlife of colonial power and religious authority.
Minnesota was promised to us
Somalis have answered Trump’s latest racist tirade not with outrage but with a tidal wave of trolling.
When Moscow looked to the horn
Half a century after the Soviets built their base on the Gulf of Aden, the same strategic coastline is once more drawing in foreign powers, old and new.
Fragile state
Without an immediate change in approach, Somalia will remain a fragmented country populated by self-serving elites seeking foreign patrons.
The Mogadishu analogy
In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.
Buying back our things
One man’s mission to reclaim Somali material culture.
Poetry, nationalism, and al-Shabaab
In Somalia, poets are considered organic public intellectuals.
Divided loyalties
Somalia’s political landscape is increasingly fragmented due to regional and clan differences. Is this the end of the centralized state and a unified, national identity?
Warsan Shire’s prayer for the unmourned
The British-Somali poet Warsan Shire’s audacious yet uneven volume of poetry captures the quiet loneliness of African immigrant lives in the West.
The skeleton in the closet
The novelist Nadifa Mohamed complicates Britain’s troubled, racist legal history through the personal tale of one otherwise insignificant person, a Somali immigrant to Cardiff in Wales.
Endless war in Somalia
Somalis have enough to worry about. The last thing they need is more war, especially one sponsored by the United States’ War on Terror.
The lives of refugees
Somali refugees in Kenya are held hostage by political disagreements between their governments. Under international law, Kenya has a duty to protect them.
Geographies of war-making in East Africa
African states are involved in the War on Terror more than we think. They're surrounded by an eco-system of the war industry.
The Pearl of the Indian Ocean
Exploring the different neighborhoods within Mogadishu raises the question: who is this city really for?
Food crimes
Why the World Food Program doesn't deserve the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
Precarious Somali boyhoods
Somali-Canadian writers lay bare the harsh realities of being Black, migrant and Muslim in multicultural and ostensibly tolerant Toronto.
Moving forward while standing still
Reflecting on the 60th anniversary of Somalia’s Independence with Fouzia Warsame, one of the country's most prominent academics.
Independence Day
The labor and political organizing of Somali immigrants in the US Midwest should inspire more Americans to join the broader movement for worker rights and racial equality.
The undeclared war in Somalia
The United States’ military operations in Somalia are not well known because they'e carried out secretly or via proxies. COVID-19 hasn't slowed them down.