The Most Dangerous Place in the World

Somalia is a state governed only by anarchy. A graveyard of foreign-policy failures, it has known just six months of peace in the past two decades. Now, as the country’s endless chaos threatens to engulf an entire region, the world again simply watches it burn.

Beyond the airport is one of the world’s most stunning monuments to conflict: block after block, mile after mile, of scorched, gutted-out buildings. Mogadishu’s Italianate architecture, once a gem along the Indian Ocean, has been reduced to a pile of machine-gun-chewed bricks. Somalia has been ripped apart by violence since the central government imploded in 1991. Eighteen years and 14 failed attempts at a government later, the killing goes on and on ... Full Story »

Posted by Kaizar Campwala

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Review

Derek Hawkins
4.4
by Derek Hawkins - Feb. 24, 2009

This comes with one of my highest ratings. Foreign Policy paints a dark, lucid picture of the anarchy that has racked Somalia in the past two decades and convincingly shows why the international community has failed to pull it out. The author, who has deep knowledge of the subject, maintains a critical tone without sacrificing fairness. Excellent story.

It’s crunch time for Somalia, but the world is like me, standing in the doorway, looking in at two decades of unbridled anarchy, unsure what to do. Past interventions have been so cursed that no one wants to get burned again. The United States has been among the worst of the meddlers: U.S. forces fought predacious warlords at the wrong time, backed some of the same predacious warlords at the wrong time, and consistently failed to appreciate the twin pulls of clan and religion. As a result, Somalia has become a graveyard of foreign-policy blunders that have radicalized the population, deepened insecurity, and pushed millions to the brink of starvation.

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Derek's Rating

Overall
4.4

Good
from 12 answers
Quality
4.5
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4.0
Fairness
4.0
Information
5.0
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4.0
Style
5.0
Context
5.0
Depth
4.0
Enterprise
4.0
Popularity
4.0
Recommendation
5.0
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3.0
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