How to undermine Al-Shabaab

Editor's note: Mohamed Ali is the founder of the Iftiin Foundation, an organization that incubates social entrepreneurs and young leaders to encourage innovation in Somalia. He is also a New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute. The views expressed are his own. As new footage emerges of gunmen chatting on cell phones and praying during …

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The New-Model Nomad

Mogadishu – One of my earliest childhood memories is of swimming in a small gully near my grandmother’s home in Yaaq Bari Wayne, a dusty collection of tin-roofed adobe buildings huddled together in the plains of southern Somalia’s Bay region. After the Gu rains, the gully became a deep triangular cleft cut into the ground, …

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Overzealous Western banks pose new threat to war-ravaged Somalia

OVERZEALOUS WESTERN BANKS THREATEN TO CHOKE OFF SOMALIA’S STRUGGLING RECOVER BY TARGETING THE HAWALA TRANSFER SYSTEM. Columbus, Ohio – Every month I visit a small grocery store in a non-descript building in Columbus, Ohio, where I live, to use a service that keeps Somalia alive: "Hawala", the traditional money transfer system used throughout the Middle-East, …

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