somaliland
Inside Somaliland’s Pirate Rehab
If you've ever wondered what happened to all those pirates who were terrorizing boats—including Tom Hanks'—off the coast of Somalia a while back, many of them got scooped up and sent to a prison in Somaliland with a focus on rehabilitation.
Midgaans and Ethiopians Are Fighting for Last Place in Somaliland
The truly troubling thing about the Midgaan-Ethiopian competition for “unclean” jobs is that, if these minority groups joined forces, they’d constitute a fair power block of well over 100,000 people in a nation of just 3.5 million. But the groups can’t...
My Time with One of Somaliland’s Khat Kingpins
Khat is a longstanding part of Somali culture, and people familiar with the plant in Yemen and Ethiopia jump to defend it as a recreational social lubricant. But it’s not so benign in Somaliland anymore. Ethiopian growers flood the market, realizing...
Al Qaeda's Somalia Cell Is Fractured and Dangerous
Al-Shabaab is the terrorist group that’s been periodically ravaging and ruling parts of Somalia for the past six years and, in 2012, officially became a subsidiary of al Qaeda. I had a sit-down with one of its alleged former soldiers.
Somaliland Is a Real Country, According to Somaliland
At the back corner of the top floor of a little office building in London’s East End, around the corner from the Tesco down Mile End Road from the Whitechapel subway stop, sits the one-room Somaliland Mission in the UK. Yes, Somaliland, not Somalia.
Crossing Pirate Alley on a Yemeni Cookie Boat
After a week of lingering around in Aden, I secured a spot on a ship bound for Somaliland, transporting a quarter-million pounds of cookies.