Somali Pirates vow to fight US Navy

[agzg]

Originally Posted by Kevin

Western colonization may be an indirect cause, but for the most part, as in many failed African states' cases, their problems are by and large self imposed. They had a working government for about a decade before they got caught up in some war over land with Ethiopia (note: never ever go to war with Ethiopia, those folks have a long, long history of dealing out ass kickings to major powers). After that, the government pretty much collapsed and never picked up steam again.

If I could name one issue which has been a major cause of failure (directly) in African states, I would have to say that tribalism is probably it and that colonialism makes a nice scapegoat, but c'mon... that was a long, long time ago. It's time for some of these countries to look within for their problems rather than to Western meddling in the early 20th century.

I think it's a case of the two together. Now, this is on the general level, not specific to Somalia since I don't really have serious expertise in Somali politics beyond what anyone else would have. Since many African countries have similar borders to what was created through colonization, there has not been much done by way of allowing "national" groups to have their own territory, when you keep in mind that colonial powers didn't give a rat's what tribes were thrown in together or whether or not tribes were split up. You add that together with land grabs and dominant tribes ruling over smaller tribes now, and you get the mess that they're in.

Many failed states have had a hard time forging a national identity because the tribes are so diverse, and that's really had an effect on whether or not the state remains. If there's no national identity, it's hard to keep people from overthrowing the government when all tribes aren't happy (and it's very rare for all tribes to be happy).

I really only have a basis in former French colonies, however, since that was my area of interest. It doesn't make a huge difference who the colonial power was, but there are some differences which do play in to the stability of regions.