Somalia

Writing a book about Somalia has become a cotton industry of late. Countless pundits with little or no experience of the country try to reduce its extraordinarily intricate conflict to images of destruction, decay and death. Keep reading . . . 

That is from the review of Mary Harpers' Getting Somalia Wrong: A History Of International Misreading – By Abdi Aynte.

An interesting paragraph:

Somaliland, the former British protectorate, features significantly in Harpers book. She shows how this island of calm in an ocean of chaos has managed to strike a balance between traditional leadership (Guurti) and modern state systems. “Somaliland held elections that are far better than many African countries,” she correctly observes. Harper criticises the international community for ignoring these local stability initiatives by overemphasizing the importance of that most evasive of Somali institution – ‘central government. To this end, Harper suggests some type of “federalism” for Somalia, allowing local communities to exert greater control over local governance.