Somalia in the Age of the War on Terror: An Analysis of Violent Events and International Intervention between 2007 and 2017

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the geographic location and frequency distribution of three event types – namely violent events, nonviolent events, and events characterized by riots and protests – and the distribution of political and military events and death rates by region. We provided an assessment of various international interventions in Somalia between 2007 and 2017. Our results showed that violent events (N = 17,539, 86.9%) were by far the most common event type, followed by nonviolent events (N = 1,372, 6.8%), with riots and protests accounting for just N = 1,278 or 6.3% of total events. We found that almost one half (48.7%) of the events involved political or ethnic militias, and over 42.95% of events involved rebel forces, with slightly less than this accounted for by the government (40.2% of events) and 29.4% of the events involved civilians. The northern and central regions of Somalia registered the lowest number of events and fatalities, with most violent events and fatalities occurring in the southern regions. There was a burst of fatalities in 2010, and a steady increase in death rate from 2011 until 2017. This violence has not been halted by external intervention, which has led to internal division in Somalia by subverting power dynamics, encouraging political polarization and radicalizing the insurgency and distribution of power, while lacking the resources and political will to sustain the preferred winning faction.

Keywords: Terrorism, Horn of Africa, Somalia, U.S. Covert Operations, Military Intervention, War on Terror, Terrorism, armed resistance, counterinsurgency, African Union, Somalia, peacekeeping, state-building, violent events, civil war, conflict data.