Make Somalia more stable, habitable to stem terror threat

Writing over two millennia ago, the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle explained that “nature abhors a vacuum.” The rationale behind his argument – ostensibly referring to physics but with much wider relevance – was that there can be no vacuum in nature, as the surrounding material would immediately fill any void. This theory is evident and applicable in reference to terror groups. For just as a vacuum in the natural world is immediately filled by surrounding material, history shows that a vacuum in the human world is filled by terror groups.

Take for example the case of Al Qaeda. Formed in the late 1980s by Islamist fighters who had just finished fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda’s central hub has frequently re-located to wherever central authority was weakest. In Afghanistan, the complete absence of a functioning state allowed Osama Bin Laden the freedom to plan the September 11th attacks. In the intervening years, the group operated freely from the equally lawless North-West region of Pakistan, while ISIS – itself an offshoot of Al Qaida – has similarly operated from Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, all countries in which the central state has ceased to function, creating a vacuum to be filled.