Editorial Board
Help Somalia’s New President: Cut Off Aid
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A surprise candidate, Sheikh Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud, has won Somalia’s first freely contested presidential election. The bigger surprise will be if his government proves any less corrupt or incompetent than the one it is replacing.
Somalia is the world’s premier basket case, with a stranglehold atop Foreign Policy magazine’s annual Failed States Index. It’s home base for the pirates of the Indian Ocean, an intermittent haven and recruiting ground for al-Qaeda, and the cradle of al-Shabaab, a jihadist sect that kills aid workers, conscripts children and until recently controlled the capital, Mogadishu, and most of the south of the country.