| | The Somali crisis has drawn attention to the question: 'what went wrong?' In our view, this question should not be addressed by way of a post-mortem. Unlike those who regard the past in the case of Somalia as an aberration best forgotten, and certainly not to be re-lived, we believe that the past is always with us. No 'fresh start' can be divorced from the past. Indeed, if it is to prove a meaningful exercise, a fresh start must be linked to the past. In this sense, an understanding of what went wrong is indispensable to the search for solutions to the present predicament. While it would be too much to expect that we can provide the answer to such a complex question in this briefing, what we hope to do is to explore certain paths that have already been identified and seem promising in the quest for such an answer. |
