Washington is reviewing its policy on Somalia at a time when the country is approaching elections amid deep political divisions.
Ambassador Idd Bedel Mohamed argues that the moment calls for a decisive change. For decades, he writes, Western policy toward Somalia has rested on containment, first shaped by Cold War thinking and later reframed around counterterrorism, producing a pattern of one step forward and two steps back.
He calls for policy that moves from containment to capability: empowering Somalia to overcome its challenges rather than only limiting the threats that come from them.