I do tend to drone on about Somalia a lot, pardon the pun, and here’s evidence, by semi popular demand: this is a letter to the Private Eye where I point out that corrupt warlords didn’t create the disintegration in Somalia, rather they are the products of it.

(it’s unfair on the guy who wrote the original piece obviously because I don’t include his article which wasn’t all bad)

I know you are supposed to be a retired colonel before you start writing to esteemed organs in order to correct them, but in this case I thought it worth pointing out; if someone said, for example, Britain invaded Poland to start world war two it might be seen as somewhat misleading.

Whilst the world is becoming increasingly peaceful, there’s still a lot of conflict to keep up with and it’s hard to remember who started what when. Who are the bad guys? And it does seem logical that warlords would have started the war. With a name like that. If they had, the solution would be easy. Get rid of the warlords, innit.

The only problem is that warlords didn’t start the war, they inherited it: or at least the conditions in which it was possible. They came into existence in the power vacuum created by the absence of an evil dictator. Someone who the international community knew was bad, but propped up for years, to whom it supplied tons and tons of weaponry along the way, much of which was used against said dictators’ own people, creating decades of mess in the fall out. Does this in any way sound familiar?

The wider problem for people who aren’t slightly obsessed with Somalia is that we are used to getting news about the world in incremental updates even if we don’t understand the main story – a bit like getting software updates for software you don’t own. I didn’t learn about Somalia at school, did you? So why would you know this stuff? How could you possibly know that the conditions for the situation in Somalia, and by extension Kenya, preceded the rise of al Shabab?

It’s complicated of course; there are many reasons why things went wrong in Somalia, including its colonial past – which takes in Italian, British and Omani rulers – as well as a clan-based societal structure that doesn’t mix well with modern military hardware, and many more. Needless to say the average Somali is a victim in the piece, which makes it all the more frustrating when *some people* more or less assume that if you are Somali you are either a warlord, terrorist or pirate rather than someone whose country has been messed up by these factors.

It’s pretty important stuff – particularly if you are British. Britain is in the top few arms exporters in the world – exact figures are murky because so many weapons are given away in dodgy deals.

Britain has spent decades supplying weapons to countries with dodgy leaders which then get used. They also get used in the terrible, chaotic aftermath of those dodgy leaders and it’s my opinion that the only way that we can prevent future, similar situations is by unilaterally reducing arms exports.

PS The thing you can do about it is support the campaign against the arms trade: http://www.caat.org.uk
Or if you disagree, you can always plump for a career in the defence industry, where ‘a change in market conditions is presenting new opportunities,’ apparently:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/skills-and-careers/in-depth/engineering-job-opportunities-in-the-defence-sector/1015722.article