Thursday, July 3, 2014

Alternatives for Conflict Transformation in Somalia

The Life and Peace Institute (LPI) in Uppsala, Sweden, recently published a study titled "Alternatives for Conflict Transformation in Somalia: A Snapshot and Analysis of Key Political Actors' Views and Strategies."  LPI is an international center that supports non-violent approaches to conflict transformation.

The study concludes that dividing Somali political actors into two categories, extremists and moderates, has produced a distorted understanding of the conflict and undermined the political and military effort to resolve it and rebuild the Somali state.  The study was conceived to address the distorting effect of the counterterrorism discourse.  A key finding is that Somalia, particularly south-central Somalia, is more diverse politically than the binary terrorism-counterterrorism discussion suggests.  The conflict is also more multi-layered and multidimensional than the picture painted by the counterterrorism narrative.