To stabilise Somalia, donors and friends must calibrate their policies. Chief among them is the United States.
The US is no longer on the fence regarding Somalia. On May 5, 2015, Secretary of the State John Kerry visited Mogadishu. The Obama administration also announced that US boots were on the ground and that the president had appointed a new ambassador, Stephen Michael Schwartz, to Somalia. Moreover, Washington plans to spend more than $1.5bn over the next two years, of which nearly $800m will be spent on security.
Despite these positive developments, nothing much will change until US policy toward Somalia and the narratives that inform this policy are reassessed. Only then could progress towards peace-building, reconstitution of a functioning state, and robust bilateral relations be achieved.