Global Partners 2003
East Africa Travel Grant Report

Kenneth Menkhaus, Davidson College

Fax number: 1-704-894-2005

I departed for Nairobi Kenya on June 16, and spent a week conducting interviews there with Somalis and international figures who work in and on Somalia. I was then supposed to travel to Mogadishu Somalia to conduct interviews there with members of Islamic charities, including and especially officials of Mogadishu University, which has been constructed mainly with funds from Islamic donors and which is linked to the Islamic outreach group known as al-Islah. Unfortunately, three days before I was scheduled to travel to Mogadishu, the US government issued a security alert of an immanent terrorist attack, closing its embassy in Nairobi. The Kenyan government suspended all flights to and from Somalia, a flight ban which is only being lifted tomorrow (July 8). That effectively blocked me from traveling to Mogadishu. Instead, I continued to seek interviews in Nairobi, both on the issue of Islamic charities in Somalia and on the ongoing Somali peace talks now being held in Nairobi Kenya. Fortunately, mainly top Somali political and social figures were in Nairobi for the peace talks, allowing me to interview figures such as Puntland President Abdullahi Yusuf and the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Mogadishu University. Though the travel ban to Somali was a disappointment, the trip overall was a success, as I was able to establish new relations with a number of key figures in the al-Islah movement.

In my application to the GLCA, I noted that there was the possibility of additional funding from the European Commission to support a second phase of this research. That project, submitted by the French research institutes IFRA (based in Nairobi) and CFEE (based in Addis Ababa) has not yet been secured, and I am not in a position at this time to know if that funding will be awarded or not. If it is, I will follow-up this research with another field visit in December and January.

The results of this research will be presented in a paper for the 2004 International Studies Association Conference in Montreal Canada. I will be sure to forward a copy of that paper to you when it is completed. The research trip also enabled me to present a briefing on the situation in Somalia to the Department of State on July 10.

For additional information, please contact Matt Horstman at horstman@glca.org or 1-734-761-4833.