Agenda for peace or budget for war?: Evaluating the economic impact of international intervention in Somalia.

Ahmad, Aisha

The article considers the economic effects of the United Nations (UN) humanitarian intervention in Somalia from 1991-1995. The impact on Somalia's economy of the expansion of the intervention from its original goal of providing emergency food relief to a peacebuilding effort to create political stability there is examined. Interviews with businesspersons from Mogadishu, Somalia and leaders of various militia groups there are conducted to illustrate an unintended consequence of the intervention in which the billions of dollars spent by the UN, the U.S. and international agencies altered the country's informal economy so as to leave Somalia dependent on economic assistance and allowing insurgents and warlords to perpetuate its status as a failed state.

SOMALIA; HUMANITARIAN intervention; PEACEBUILDING; CONFLICT management; PEACEKEEPING forces; SOMALIAN history, 1991-; SOMALIAN politics & government, 1991-; ECONOMICS; ECONOMIC conditions in Africa, 1960-; ECONOMIC history

International Journal, 2012, Vol 67, Issue 2, p313

0020-7020

Academic Journal

10.1177/002070201206700203