As it is right now, I do think it is time to bid the United Nations farewell. As many a scholar, politician and pundit will say, the UN is indeed a very idealistic organization that has done much for the world we live in. …

Right now, the Somaliland government is conducting what it considers deportations from its territories of people it considers to be foreigners. Yet many others are considering this to be forced displacement of citizens, a move illegal under international law. Both are true assertions, depending on the position you take on what a country is. So, what is a country? The answer to this question may seem obvious but it really is not quite so simple as it appears. You may be surprised to learn that there are no laws which legally define what a country is. Some say “a country refers to a territory with its own borders and…

Once again, Somalia finds itself facing an electoral crisis. After months of rather pointless negotiations, President Farmajo decided he’d had enough and just decided to extend his own stay in office. This is a short essay examining this decision and its consequences. A little background first. The country’s elected institutions…

As has been the norm in Europe and especially France in the last decade, there is another round of tensions between some European states and their Muslim subjects. The trials of the accomplices of the Charlie Hebdo attackers in 2015 started in September 2020 in Paris. To demonstrate its defiance…

I really wanted the United States to elect Donald J. Trump as its 45th President. I really did. That desire became even stronger once he made his statements about Mexicans, Muslims, and the Chinese. The reasoning in my head was that Americans were having such a smooth ride destroying the…

As has been happening on occasion in this century, there is another round of tension between European society and its Muslim component, centred as usual around caricatures published in magazines on the continent. While Muslims around the world condemned these cartoons, the matter was escalated by some radicals who took…

During colonial times, from mid-19th century to 1960, the territories inhabited by the Somalis were split into five to be shared among four colonial powers: The United Kingdom (received two territories), France, Italy, and Abyssinia, formalized in the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. The colonial partners first administered the areas…

The current global pandemic has made some things clear about the whole world: we are a collection of armchair warriors, who, armed with Wikipedia and the Internet, think we know everything. Everyone in 2020 is an epidemiologist and/or a statistician. The speed with which most countries adapted radical (and at…

I think at this point most people know that Sweden chose a different path in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. At first, there was widespread condemnation and ridicule, especially in the Twittersphere but also in the general international media. How could a supposedly knowledge-driven country choose to go against…