Friday, October 04, 2013

Reversing Somalia into a failed state - once again

It is well known how the US threw Somalia back into anarchy in 2009 with its support for the Ethiopian invasion against the Islamic Courts Union government. This was actually a quite moderate government but in Washington the name "Islamic" was enough to believe it to be Islamists.

Now we see a similar development with the closure of the Hawala system of money transfer. Several banks have already closed their support for the system and now Barclays is about to follow. The excuse is that some of the money may land with the al-Shabab guerrilla movement in the South of the country. However, for a country that is very dependent on remittances from emigrants, this could be devastating. After Barclays there will be some banks left but very probably they will soon come under similar pressure from America's (anti-)terrorists.

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