Two weeks go by, and at least one new maritime agreement on the Somali peninsula has reared its head, with another retaliatory pact to potentially soon follow. The first was between Taiwan and Somaliland, following Hargeisa's Foreign Minister Abdirahman Dahir Osman's visit to Taipei in late July, during which he secured a cooperation agreement between the coastguards of Taiwan and Somaliland. And the inevitable Beijing-Mogadishu response has now arrived, with the Chinese Embassy in Somalia announcing that it has discussed enhancing "cooperation" with the federal government's Coast Guard. As ever, the officials reaffirmed their commitment to "safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity of China and Somalia."
On 28 May, Kenyan author and academic titan Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o passed away in the United States at the age of 87. A fierce critic of colonialism and post-independence authoritarianism, Ngũgĩ redefined the role of literature in the fight for liberation and the broader intellectual struggle for decolonisation. Regarded as one of the greats of 20th-century African literature, his death has been mourned widely and comes at a moment when the topics he grappled with, including police brutality, corruption and state overreach, are prominent in the public eye once again.
Somalia's latest plunging crisis has divided not only the usual domestic political actors but the 'international community' as well - if such a thing even exists anymore. Though nominally on the same page in regard to fighting Al-Shabaab, foreign perspectives on the diagnosis of Somalia's ills – and the appropriate remedies -- have proven radically different. And since Al-Shabaab's dramatic territorial advances beginning late February, many of the international responses to the country's escalating political and security emergencies have been working at cross purposes with one another. Meanwhile, Villa Somalia's interactions with foreign partners have continued to vacillate between blatant rent-seeking and hypernationalism.