Media Diaspora And The Somali Conflict

This book illustrates how diasporic media can re-create conflict by transporting conflict dynamics and manifesting them back in to diaspora communities. Media, Diaspora and Conflict demonstrates a previously overlooked complexity in diasporic media by using the Somali conflict as a case study to indicate how the media explores conflict in respective homelands, in addition to revealing its participatory role in transnationalising conflicts. By illustrating the familiar narratives associated with diasporic media and utilising a combination of Somali websites and television, focus groups with diaspora community members and interviews with journalists and producers, the potentials and restrictions of diasporic media and how it relates to homelands in conflict are explored.

This edited collection argues that the connective and orientation roles ascribed to diasporic media overlook the wider roles they perform in reporting intractable conflicts in the Homeland. Considering the impacts of conflict on migration in the past decades, it is important to understand the capacity of diasporic media to escalate or deescalate conflicts and to serve as a source of information for their audiences in a competitive and fragmented media landscape. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapters examine how the diasporic media projects the constructive and destructive outcomes of conflicts to their particularistic audiences within the global public sphere. The result is a volume that makes an important contribution to scholarship by offering critical engagements and analyzing how the diasporic media communicates information and facilitates dialogue between conflicting parties, while adding to new avenues of empirical case studies and theory development in comprehending the media coverage of conflict.

Explores the experiences of women in Somalia and how they have survived the trauma of war.

This book is about Somali mothers and daughters who came to Britain in the 1990s to escape civil war. Many had never left Somalia before, followed nomadic traditions, did not speak English, were bereaved and were suffering from PTSD. Their stories begin with war and genocide in the north, followed by harrowing journeys via refugee camps, then their arrival and survival in London. Joanna Lewis exposes how they rapidly recovered, mobilising their networks, social capital and professional skills. Crucial to the recovery of the now breakaway state of (former British) Somaliland, these women bore a huge burden, but inspired the next generation, with many today caught between London and a humanitarian impulse to return home. Lewis reveals three histories. Firstly, the women’s personal history, helping us to understand resilience as an individual, lived historical process that is both positive and negative, and both inter- and intra-generational. Secondly, a collective history of refugees as rebuilders, offering insight into the dynamism of the Somali diaspora. Finally, the forgotten history and hidden legacies of Britain’s colonial past, which have played a key role in shaping this dramatic, sometimes upsetting, but always inspiring story: the power of women to heal the scars of war.

This book is about Somali mothers and daughters who came to Britain in the 1990s to escape civil war. Many had never left Somalia before, followed nomadic traditions, did not speak English, were bereaved and were suffering from PTSD. Their stories begin with war and genocide in the north, followed by harrowing journeys via refugee camps, then their arrival and survival in London. Joanna Lewis exposes how they rapidly recovered, mobilising their networks, social capital and professional skills. Crucial to the recovery of the now breakaway state of (former British) Somaliland, these women bore a huge burden, but inspired the next generation, with many today caught between London and a humanitarian impulse to return home. Lewis reveals three histories. Firstly, the women's personal history, helping us to understand resilience as an individual, lived historical process that is both positive and negative, and both inter- and intra-generational. Secondly, a collective history of refugees as rebuilders, offering insight into the dynamism of the Somali diaspora. Finally, the forgotten history and hidden legacies of Britain's colonial past, which have played a key role in shaping this dramatic, sometimes upsetting, but always inspiring story: the power of women to heal the scars of war.

For migrant communities residing outside of their home countries, various transnational media have played a key role in maintaining, reviving and transforming ethnic and religious identities. A vital element is how media outlets report and represent ethno-national conflict in the home country. Janroj Yilmaz Keles here examines how this plays out among Kurdish and Turkish communities in Europe. He offers an analysis of how Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Europe react to the myriad mediated narratives. A vital element is how media outlets report and represent the ethno-national conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish PKK.Janroj Yilmaz Keles here offers an examination of how Turkish and Kurdish migrants in Europe react to the myriad narratives that arise. Taking as his starting point an analysis of the nature of nationalisms in the modern age, Keles shows how language is often a central element in the struggle for hegemony within a state. The media has become a site for the clash of representations in both Turkish and Kurdish languages, especially for those based in the diaspora in Europe. These 'virtual communities', connected by television and the internet, in turn influence and are influenced by the way the conflict between the Turkish state and subaltern Kurds is played out, both in the media and on the ground.By looking at first, second and third generations of Turkish and Kurdish populations in Europe, Keles highlights the dynamics of migration, settlement and integration that often depend on the policies of each settlement country. Since these settlement states often see the proliferation of such media as an impediment to integration, Media, Diaspora and Conflict offers timely analysis concerning the nature of diasporas and the construction of identity.

"The chapters are based on papers presented at the 9th Congress of the Somali Studies International Association, which was hosted by the Centre for Development and International Relations, Aalborg University, Denmark in September 2004."--P. xii.

For many scholars and politicians, Somalia is a premier example of anarchy, having been without a central government since 1991 and has been described as "a failure amongst failed states". Somalia's statelessness and the ongoing conflict has been explained as being due to Somalis' general antipathy towards authority, preference for chaos, history of clan rivalries and Somalia's Cold War alliances with the USSR and the US and by intervention from neighboring countries. While these are important puzzle pieces, they fail to explain the underlying reality in Somalia today. Much of the literature on diaspora is focused primarily on their development contributions with a few examining their conflict-perpetuating activities and even less their role in governance. This dissertation seeks to build and expand on this literature by exploring the ways that the diaspora not only engages in development, conflict and politics but also the manner by which they can take part in governance including collapsing the state as well as state-building from below. Using the Somalia case, I ask: What are the ways that the diaspora promotes development, contributes to conflict and engages in governance? How did the Somali diaspora contribute to the collapse of the Somali state? How have their activities contributed to the emergence and destruction of local institutions after the collapse of the central state in Somalia? In examining their different activities in and towards Somalia, this research finds that the diaspora were an important factor in the collapse of the Somali state through their funding of rebel groups, directing remittances away from state control and their opposition to the state. Secondly, their continuous and constant remittances have provided a lifeline for Somalis at home, the provision of basic services including security are obtained through the clan, which receives funding from the diaspora. This has strengthened clan identities, undermining national identities, which is critical for the reconstitution of the Somali state. Finally, there has been no consideration by states in how to mitigate the activities of the diaspora while promoting their positive contributions resulting in a diaspora, which has an undue influence in what happens within Somalia.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa, grade: 1,3, Helmut Schmidt University - University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (Internationale Politik), language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction Since the fall of the Barre regime in 1991, Somalia has been the most profound and outstanding example of state failure not only in Africa but the entire world. For almost 20 years Somalia has been lost in a vicious circle which the author of this paper calls “the failure system”. It is a system of mutually reinforcing factors consisting of clan violence and a corresponding history of real or imagined marginalisation, the establishment of war economics, various jihads and last but not least the interference of a multitude of external actors. The question of this bachelor thesis is: What role did external actors take in the process of state failure in Somalia? My hypothesis is, that the Somali state collapse cannot be seen as a purely internal phenomenon but rather as a layered systemic process that has been influenced by external actors on a massive scale. The main purpose of this bachelor thesis is to outline the role of external actors in the Somali state collapse. Albeit the focus of this work is clearly the external dimension of this conflict, we shall not neglect the internal actors and factions in Somalia. Especially after the Ethiopian invasion of 2006 and the begin of the international anti-pirate mission at the Horn of Africa a whole pile of scientific literature has been written on external actors and their strategic motivations in Somalia. But usually these publications only focus on the external actors and their motivations without appropriately addressing internal dynamics. In order to bridge the gap of understanding between the layers of internal and external conflict dimensions, this work tries to create a holistic and systemic big picture view of the Somali state collapse by outlining historical, sociological, internal and external factors alike. To achieve this goal, this work has been divided into three main parts. The first part will briefly describe the Somali history. I will at first outline the historic developments before 1991 to give an impression of the long-term development of the country. Subsequently the clan structure and its relevance will be addressed to answer the question why such a high internal conflict potential could arise in Somalia despite far reaching ethnic, cultural, religious and lingual homogeneity. Afterwards the historic events in the state-failure period from 1991-2009 will be described. The main sources for this