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This chapter critically investigates discourses of modernization amid experiences of chronic spirit possession, mental illness, and healing practices in Burao, Somaliland, Northwestern Somalia. The research was based on ethnographic fieldwork between January 2013 and March 2020, conducted with the local help of the University of Burao. Data were collected through participant observation in the general society and of religious healers as well as two rounds of semi-structured interviews in 2014–15 and 2018, respectively, involving a total of 26 participants and 42 interviews. Other relevant materials, such as a book manuscript by a local healer, a locally made movie, and several YouTube videos, were also analyzed. This chapter argues that chronic possession experiences and healing practices are conceptualized as part of the modernization process in Somaliland society. In contrast to other research into spirit possession, the Somali experiences suggest that possession does not need to be designated as a traditional phenomenon but is often considered modern. The author outlines how Somali Islamic practice, as part of Somali culture, may be part of a larger modernization vision of the global Islamic movement. The chapter also proposes that embracing possession as a modern phenomenon offers new ways of treating underlying suffering, as the causes of suffering are externalized and personified.

The objective of the chapter is to explore how sources of revenue sustain the insecurity in Mogadishu, prolong the armed conflict and profit certain power holders. The article contributes to the scholarship exploring politics, conflict and security of developing countries in the context of the political economy. It also adds new perspectives to the wider debates and discussions on the extent to which war economies in securitization frameworks for war-torn societies and conflict-ridden states reproduce and maintain insecurity. The first section of the article presents the theoretical discussion and conceptual framework. The second section evaluates the origins of the Somali economy in the Cold War and outlines the effects of the state collapse on the emerging informal urban economy. The third section conceptualizes the recent reconstruction activities of Mogadishu and distinguishes state development from society-driven development. The fourth section identifies strategies of the participants and features for maintaining insecurity in Mogadishu through the continuation of the armed conflict. In evaluating the architecture of insecurity and the destabilizing effects of the war economy, this section explores the profits of the war economy which, when correlated with the political conflict, reveals a close connection between insecurity and business profits.

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of radicalisation towards violent extremism and the efforts at de-radicalisation in Africa. It provides the conceptual framework of analysis. The chapter discusses the factors contributing to radicalisation in the continent. It describes the diverse methods violent extremist groups have adopted in radicalising sympathisers and recruits. The concept of radicalisation has gained significant currency among government officials, media practitioners, scholars, and security officials in discourses on terrorism and violent extremism, especially since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The usage of the term “violent extremism” in academic and policy circles has increasingly gained traction in recent times. In East Africa, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda have been severely hit by terrorism, mostly executed by Somali-based Al-Shabaab and its local affiliates. The growing audacity of the Boko Haram area is one of the many developments that have made West-Central Africa a region of growing terror concern.

The Horn of Africa’s arduous environment and distinctive culture have long challenged scholars, geopolitical diplomats, and the Somali people who make a living in the deserts of the Ethiopian Ogaden, the Somali coastal cities, and on the trade routes of the region. Going well beyond the received academic theories that elevated clanship to explain everything in pastoral life, Saȉd Samatar’s deep experience in his community led him to see the importance of poetry, diplomacy, and Islamic jurisprudence in Somali affairs. The fates of fortune that brought Samatar to Rutgers University and prominence as an Africanist historian are almost stranger than fiction. This chapter details both the romance of English teacher Lydia with camel herder Saȉd, their marriage, and their respective careers. The backdrop to this remarkable story were the Mennonite programs in education, development, and health care in newly independent Somalia’s cities of Mogadishu, Chismaio, and Jamama that brought the two together.

This chapter discusses the few remarks on the event and performance of female infibulation in the Somali context. In order to better understand what follows, it will be useful to describe some of the general features of Somali culture and social structure. As a person's bones are inherited in the male line through the father, a 'physical' relationship between agnates is demonstrated. One explanation given by male informants for this increase in marriages between closely bom agnates is that it ensures a better treatment of daughters and sisters in married life. Infibulation, also called Pharaonic circumcision, is a form of genital mutilation where the clitoris, the labia minora and inner parts of the labia majora are wholly, or partly, excised; thereupon the sides of the vulva are stitched together. Gender is a metaphoric vehicle in the Somali culture; it provides telling images of how to think about and value other relations and distinctions.

The theory of limited statehood has yet to be applied to the Somali maritime domain. Within the maritime space, governance has been patchy and transitory. Under such conditions, two questions arise. Firstly, can Somalia’s territorial waters be considered an area of limited statehood? And, secondly, who can provide security governance under such conditions? This chapter examines these two questions and plots the emergence of phases of governance in response to the different threats and actors present in these waters. The chapter indicates that the trajectory of security governance has been deeply fragmented, from state-led governance under the late Barre regime to the subsequent collapse of the state and the fragmentation of security governance with the rise of new power sources and more recent signs of a trend towards a mediated but consolidated statehood. The result renders Somalia’s maritime domain akin to a “commons” under conditions of limited statehood. This finding links the broader works by Ostrom and other scholars of the commons in a new interpretation.

This chapter examines the historical roots of the elements that together lead to war in the Horn of Africa, focusing mainly on Ethiopia. War has long been ubiquitous in the Horn, owing largely to conflict over resources. Historically, conflict has been endemic among and within states and near-states in the Horn, and war has been a customary way of regulating intra- and intersocietal relations. War has been continuous in the Horn since 1800, and although not the only present conflagration in the Horn, the Eritrean war has been the longest and most intense in modern African history. The native pastoral Somali of the Horn and the alien Turks did not establish permanent presence in the Ethiopian highlands. However, the Oromo expansion from the south in the sixteenth century made use of their age-graded organization in establishing strong military formations and order in combat. The ease of the British conquest emboldened the Egyptians.

This chapter focuses on the development and implementation of a community-based initiative that highlights voices of African mothers fighting for solutions to improve the lives of their families and communities. Alarming rates of primarily male youth violence among Somali Canadians have exacerbated community trauma and fragmentation. As racist policies and procedures remain entrenched in Canadian institutions, distressing physical and mental health trends are rising and impacting wider segments of the African Canadian populace. African Canadian leaders representing various sectors were brought together to develop a “Black Health Network” with the requisite resources and strategies to improve the health outcomes of African Canadian communities in Ontario. Representing 12% of the student body, 48% of all expulsions in the Toronto student population involve African Canadian students. The undermining settlement barriers and racism Somali Canadians experience have less to do with their individual characteristics or their embodiment of a national “Somali” consciousness.

Media reports of anarchy and massive death rates in Mogadishu attracted considerable political attention in the United States in December 1991 and early in the new year. During most of 1991, Somalia's plight went mainly unnoticed beyond its borders in the absence of foreign embassies, UN agencies, and the international press. Somalia was one of the first crises confronting the newly elected UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who took office on January 1, 1992. The UN secretary-general made a periodic report to the Security Council on August 24, 1992. The Security Council was seized with the Somali question in January 1992 because the heavy fighting in Mogadishu had interrupted food distribution, putting several hundred thousand people at risk of starvation. Finally, policy analysts question whether Somalia is a precedent for future interventions in other situations of catastrophic civil conflict or is a problem that will remain sui generis.

This chapter addresses the problem of subsistence change from nomadic pastoralism to sedentary agriculture as a consequence of drought and its subsequent effects on the social, economic, and political structures of Somali populations living in northeastern Kenya. The severe drought affecting the Sahelian region of Africa during the past decade has revealed the vulnerability of pastoralists to extreme ecological pressure and has made evident the lack of scientific understanding of human adaptation to marginal environments. The drought occurring in northern Kenya is an eastern extension of the phenomenon experienced by several million Sahelians in the early 1970s. The severe drought and accompanying loss of livestock were particularly onerous owing to the scarcity of economic alternatives that could absorb famine refugees. In reviewing Somali settlement in Kenya one must note that, although the new settlers were refugees from famine, they were not geographically displaced.

This chapter argues that the transfer of southern land resources from local clans to other, favored ones was on the agenda of Somalia's national leaders at least from the early 1970s. But that this agenda was obscured for outsiders by international preoccupation with a succession of other, more visible conflicts: the Ogaden War in 1977-1978, the Barre government's efforts to quell opposition movements in the Northeast and North in the 1980s and, after Barre's ouster in 1991, the Hawiye factional struggle for control of the capital city of Mogadishu. The interest of Somalia's new political elites in appropriating rural assets for their own use had precedents in the 1950s and 1960s, but national competition for the resources of the southern riverine areas began in earnest in the early 1970s. Land and water rights, always objects of contestation at the local level, now became embedded in state policies and programs.

This chapter focuses on the consequences of the UN's response to events in Mogadishu in late 1991, which led the UN ten months later to invoke the enforcement provision of the UN Charter. It begins with the interactions between Aideed and Mahdi after Siad Barre's overthrow and up to the time of the UN response to the crisis in Mogadishu. This relationship had not been monitored by the UN secretariat and therefore was not included in its assessment and plan of action. The secretary-general's urgent request for a higher level of UN military intervention, which inevitably weakened Sahnoun's negotiating position with Aideed, followed reports of a serious famine in the interriverine agricultural areas. Aideed argued that a Somali police force equivalent to the size of a security personnel force in Mogadishu and eventually in Kismayu would be a rational replacement for foreign troops on their departure.

This chapter begins with the motivations for intervention. These were, of course, officially proclaimed to be an independent concern for the well-being of the Somali civilian population, decimated by combat and even more by famine, after three years of steadily escalating civil war. At first, the French General Staff had thought about an intervention into Somaliland, where French troops would have been by themselves and closer to the Djibouti zone of French influence. The French arrived in Hoddur on December 25 and quickly set up the own disarmament and weapons-control policy without bothering too much to check it with the UN. Dealing with the political situation in Somalia was everybody's weakest point, especially the UN's. The European presence in Operation Restore Hope was a rather mixed bag. It was motivated by a variety of different domestic political considerations and remained dominated by them throughout.

This chapter examines the role of the US Congress during the Somali crisis and reviews the legislative process during that period. The dominant Africa issue in the latter part of the second session of the 102nd Congress was the anarchy and famine that developed in Somalia, a nation of about 6.5 million people. By the end of the second session (December 1992), a total of seven hearings had been held on Somalia—two in the Select Committee on Hunger, three in the House Subcommittee on Africa, and two in the Senate Subcommittee on Africa. With the new policy from the White House, the debate in Congress shifted from congressional authorization to how soon American troops should withdraw from Somalia. The withdrawal of US troops marked the beginning of a shift toward isolationism in the US Congress that was demonstrated by greater wariness over subsequent deployments to Haiti and Rwanda.

The African continent has (re)gained agency in international relations. This is mainly due to the African Union (AU), which, after a political and institutional transition from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in the years 1999–2002, is increasingly representing African interests in the emerging post-Cold War multipolar world order. The Peace and Security Council met for the first time on March 16, 2004, and has held almost six hundred meetings since, usually at the level of Permanent Representatives. The Panel of the Wise is meant to support the PSC's efforts and those of the AUC chairperson, particularly in the area of conflict prevention. The Committee of Intelligence and Security Services (CISSA), based in Addis Ababa, also provides additional early warning information for the AUC chairperson and the PSC. Despite the fact that piracy off the Somali coast has declined in intensity since 2012, maritime security is another APSA-related policy field.

In the 1990s, the issues of “race” and “ethnicity” have emerged as new concepts among young people in Finland. During this period, the racialisation of youth gangs has taken place, either through the staking out of the claims by native youths such as skinheads to keep away from “niggers” and “black heads”, or through ethnic gangs distancing themselves from native youth. This chapter considers the issue of racist violence with respect to violent brawls between skinheads and Somali youngsters, and actions taken by the police to alleviate the situation. Racist violence may take many forms and consist of attacks on property as well as on people on account of perceived factors such as colour, race, nationality and ethnic or national origins. Moreover, the training of police officers should provide new opportunities for developing more professional policing and more creative strategies for responding to racist violence.

Somaliland has shared traditional institutions of governance that are not only the prime force in conflict resolution and societal stability, but also in regulating access to resources, such as land, water, and pastures. Somali pastoralist communities cross into other clan territories in search of pasture and water and Xeer is a vital institution for governing intra-clan relations and maintaining peace among such groups. The leadership of elders (odayo) is the second key institution of governance. A titled elder is a delegate and representative of his clan and is selected according to certain procedures and criteria, as is attested in poems and proverbs. Under colonial rule the aqils, unlike the traditional elders, were answerable to the colonial state. Despite the identified changes, traditional institutions remain the cornerstone of peace-making, especially when the government has limited influence. In terms of resources, land and water are the most important assets in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities.

This chapter examines how the Somali-Egyptian political partnership ultimately failed to subsume the pan-Somali project into the pan-Arabic association. While the Somali-Ethiopian political partnership definitively failed during the 1960s, it was the Somali connection with Nasser's Egypt that constituted one of the main premises for the increasing association of Somali affairs with Middle Eastern politics over the following decades and up to the present. It is certain that prior to independence, the two Somali leaderships in southern and northern Somalia, respectively the Somali Youth League (SYL) and the Somali National League (SNL), were seriously committed to planning the union of the two Somalias and to achieve what they believed to be a first step towards total Somali unity. Having failed to master the mainstream of Somali nationalism in former Italian Somalia, Nasser rethought his strategy in order to face SYL predominance at the regional level.

Since 1960, the Horn of Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation shaped by internal dynamics and external intervention. Somalia has been embroiled in a bitter civil war since 1991. There is a constant threat of escalation of local conflicts and border skirmishes that could spill over and further destabilize the sub-region. This chapter focuses on the existing intraand inter-state instability in the Somali inhabited region in these sub-regional dynamics in the Horn of Africa. While in most countries in the Horn of Africa multi-party democracy's failures were tied to fragmentation and weak opposition party structures, especially when undermined by the ruling party, this is not the case of Somaliland. No pattern of fragmentation or erosion of sovereignty can be established for the whole sub-region and the cases of South Sudan, Somaliland, and Puntland represent three different outcomes: independence, de facto statehood without recognition, and federal integration respectively.

Contents: Foreword: Africa and China in a 'post-American' world Preface The Yellow mana (TM)s burden: race and revolution in Sino-African relations, Ali A. Mazrui Trends in Sino-Zambian relations, Godfrey Hampwaye and Peter Kragelund Chinaa (TM)s Somali piracy deployment: strategic context and implications, J. Peter Pham Merchandise trading between Kenya and China: implications for the East African Community (EAC), Joseph Onjala Perspectives on Sino-Tanzanian relations, Nga (TM)wanza Kamata Sino-Ugandan relations: themes and issues, Edward Kannyo A new all-weather friend? Chinaa (TM)s evolving relations with South Sudan, Daniel Large The logic of Chinaa (TM)s diplomacy in Ethiopia, Seifudein Adem Impact of the growing Chinese foreign trade on the economy of Madagascar, Olivier Ramiandrisoa, Jean Razafindravonona and Aina Rafalimanana China-Zambia relations, Edgar Bwalya Chinaa (TM)s foreign policy toward Africa from the Bandung Conference to the 21st century (1955-2011), Darryl C. Thomas Conceptualizing China-Africa relations: a conclusion, Seifudein Adem Index.

This chapter deals with a number of overlapping, supplementary and conflicting formal and informal, local, international norms that inform the transfer of money from immigrants to family, local communities or local businesses in the south. It focuses on how, in the aftermath of September 11, the broadening and elusive notion of security in international and national laws and policies impacted on Somali remittance companies and Somali diaspora communities trying to fulfill their financial and family obligations. The chapter discusses the regulatory process of hawala-based remittance transfers that was initiated after September 11 and the experiences of the Somali hawala companies in the formalizing process. Hawala is indigenous and has been practised by Somali pastoral nomads for centuries, previously known as an abbaan. Abbaan is a security arrangement that guarantees the protected route of goods carried by camel convoys within and between the different clans and their territories, regardless of whether those respective clans are hostile to and among each other.

This chapter examines the United States' policy toward Somalia, with particular emphasis on United States policy after September 11 2001. The United States policy goals specifically relating to Somalia include removing the terrorist threat extant in Somalia and ensuring against Somalia's use as a terrorist base preventing developments in Somalia from threatening regional peace and stability. When Mogadishu fell to the United Somali Congress, the Somali conflict quickly turned into a clan civil war. However, many Somalis disagree with Washington and consider the group as an idealist Somali Islamist movement with objectives similar to those of other Islamist groups. This group of warlords told the media that about 70 international terrorists were hiding in Mogadishu and that Somalia's Islamic Courts were protecting them. Finally, most Somali Islamists, intellectuals, and business groups author interviewed think that the United States is punishing the Somali people for the 1993 events when Aideed's supporters killed 18 American Rangers.

As highlighted by Bradley and Longman in Chapter 2, there is very little literature that explores how circumcised or (and in contradiction to the previous author) as I would rather call it mutilated women, are treated in diaspora communities. Additionally, this chapter also builds on my previous work in Bradley (2011) in which I offer some life histories of cut women from within my own Somalian community. One of those stories was in fact my own and in this chapter I offer a continuation of my experiences of living with FGM. The motivation for taking this approach is to ensure that my voice and those of other women in my community are heard and responded to. As highlighted in Chapter 2, the eradicate FGM movement in the UK has become highly politicised, not least because of the amount of money being ploughed into it. The voices of women at the grass roots are marginal to a more public and global campaign. Building on the arguments made by Bradley and Longman in this volume I argue here that more attention needs to be focused on how women experience and view FGM. Women from within so-called cutting communities do not speak with one voice and that is clear both from the work presented in other chapters of this volume and also in the case studies I present below. This chapter also explores the impact or not that migration has on how practices are observed. In doing so it attempts to respond to the gap in research highlighted in chapter two looking at how HCPs may change as people move from one country to another. I have therefore chosen to concentrate on four specific case studies, of African immigrants to the UK, with the first case study from North America. The chapter then begins with a review of literature that explores the impact of migration on the ethnic-cultural identities of migrants and considers what factors if any trigger changes in mind-set. The chapter then moves into presenting four case studies, the first is reproduced from a personal published testimony of an African American woman who opted to undergo FGM in her home country of Sierra Leone. The next two case studies I recorded and came out of discussions I had with Somali women living in London. The last case study represents my own reflections of living with FGM as a mother. In the conclusion I try and offer some hope that the practice is gradually being phased out although the path of change is slow and fraught.

Introduction 1. Families, Governments, Schools, Alternative Spaces and the Making of European Muslims Mark Sedgwick Part 1: Islamic Religious Socialization 2. Islam in the Family: The Religious Socialization of Children in a Danish Provincial Town Marianne Holm Pedersen 3. "Freedom has Destroyed the Somali Family:" Somali Parents' Experiences of Epistemic Injustice and its Influence on their Raising of Swedish Muslims Rannveig Haga 4. Dilemmas of Educating Muslim Children in the Dutch Migration Context Trees Pels Part 2: Government Policies 5. Religion and Citizenship in France and Germany: Models of Integration and the Presence of Islam in Public Schools Margrete Sovik 6. Negotiating Identity, Difference and Citizenship in Finnish Islamic Education: Building a Foundation for the Emergence of "Finnish Islam?" Inkeri Rissanen 7. Religious Diversity and Muslim Claims-making: Conflicts over the Danish Folkeskole Lene Kuhle 8. Islam in Christianity: Religious Education in the Danish Folkeskole Mark Sedgwick Part 3: Public Schools 9. Being a Good, Relaxed or Exaggerated Muslim: Religiosity and Masculinity in the Social Worlds of Danish Schools Laura Gilliam 10. Muslimness and Prayer: The Performance of Religiosity in Everyday Life in and Outside School in Denmark Iram Khawaja 11. Likable Children, Uneasy Children: Growing up Muslim in Small-town Danish Schools Sally Anderson Part 4: Alternative Spaces 12. Islamic Private Schooling in Austria: a Case-Study of Parents' Expectations Elif Medeni and Barbara Breen-Wenninger 13. Brainwashed at School? Deprogramming the Secular Among Young Neo-orthodox Muslims in Denmark Christian Suhr