I am featured extensively in Joe DeCapua's story "Analyst says US Showing Greater Support for Somalia" for Voice of America.
Here's the beginning:
Secretary of State Clinton met Thursday with Somali President Sharif Sheik Ahmed, expressing support for his embattled Transitional Federal Government, the TFG.
The TFG is fighting Islamist militias, who control more of the country than the government does. The ongoing conflict has created one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters with hundreds of thousands of people displaced and millions in need of food aid and other assistance.
David Shinn, adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and a former ambassador to Ethiopia, considers the meeting significant.
"It's the highest level meeting that any American official has ever given to President Ahmed. So that's important. It clearly underscores the interest that the United States has in reaching some sort of satisfactory resolution to the conflict in Somalia," he says.
He says the amount of US moral and material support for the TFG "is greater than on any previous occasion in recent years."
You can read the story and listen to the audio
through this link.
