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A Green Zone for Somalia?

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A Green Zone for Somalia?

Posted by Maggie Fick on January 9, 2009

A Green Zone for Somalia?

Earlier this week, an African Union peacekeeper was killed when an AU convoy hit a roadside bomb near Mogadishu and a UN aid worker was killed by masked gunmen in the Gedo region west of the capital. The Islamist militia known as the shabaab is most likely behind these attacks. Following these incidents—emblematic of Somalia’s general state of anarchy—UN envoy to Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah urged the UN to create a “Baghdad-style Green Zone” in Somalia so that his international staff could actually be based in the country. That’s right: the U.N.’s international staff working on Somalia are based in Kenya. Somalia remains the world’s most dangerous place to be an aid worker. The UN has very legitimate security concerns; just imagine what life must be like for average Somalis. While the Bush administration has done its part to, as my Enough colleagues put it, “exacerbate the already catastrophic situation in Somalia,” it is clear that the Obama administration will need to take an entirely new approach to supporting the international effort to stabilize Somalia.