By KEVIN J. KELLEY (email the author) Sunday, March 14, 2010 Some Somalia experts in the United States are urging the Obama administration to negotiate with Islamist insurgents instead of facilitating a looming military offensive by the country’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
One of the analysts, Bronwyn Bruton, calls for a new US policy of “constructive disengagement” from the TFG.
In a report for the non-governmental Council on Foreign Relations, she warns that negligible political support for the TFG inside Somalia indicates that a major counter-insurgency operation “is not the answer for the United States.”
Somali Man Pleads Guilty in 2009 Hijacking of Ship
A Somali man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that he hijacked an American-flagged cargo ship and kidnapped its captain, in what the authorities called the first piracy prosecution in the United States in decades