The World's Most Dangerous Place: Inside the Outlaw State of Somalia - Hardcover

Fergusson, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306821176 ISBN 13: 9780306821172

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2013

Synopsis

Although the war in Afghanistan is now in its endgame, the West’s struggle to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda is far from over. A decade after 9/11, the war on terror has entered a new phase and, it would seem, a new territory. In early 2010, Al Qaeda operatives were reportedly “streaming” out of central Asia toward Somalia and the surrounding region.

Somalia, now home to some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, was already the world’s most failed state. Two decades of anarchy have spawned not just Islamic extremism but piracy, famine, and a seemingly endless clan-based civil war that has killed an estimated 500,000, turned millions into refugees, and caused hundreds of thousands more to flee and settle in Europe and North America.

What is now happening in Somalia directly threatens the security of the world, possibly more than any other region on earth. James Fergusson’s book is the first accessible account of how Somalia became the world’s most dangerous place and what we can—and should—do about it.

About this title

About the Author:

James Fergusson is a freelance journalist and foreign correspondent who has written for many publications, including The Times of London and The Economist. He is the author of Taliban: The Unknown Enemy and the award-winning A Million Bullets. He lives in Edinburgh.

From Booklist:

Pundits, diplomats, and geopolitical strategists often speculate that Pakistan could become a failed state. If one wishes to see what such a state might look like, read this shocking and disturbing survey of the ravaged nation of Somalia located on the strategically important Horn of Africa. Fergusson, a freelance journalist and television commentator, has seen the carnage in Afghanistan, but he found the shattering of Somali civil society to be far worse. In a functional sense, Somalia has no national government. The Somali cabinet often has to meet in neighboring Kenya. Instead, power is exercised at the local level by competing clans and subclans, who rule by force of arms and terror. Often, the law is what the particular strongman in a locality says it is. One group, the ­al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab, tried enforcing Islamic fundamentalism through brutal methods often carried out by teenage boys. The result of this chaos has been mass emigration of the most talented and productive Somalis along with near total breakdown of health-care, educational, and law-enforcement institutions. This is a sobering but necessary examination of the process of national disintegration. --Jay Freeman

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0306821176
• ISBN 13: 9780306821172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432