Kill Your Darlings Pages from my PhD dissertation
These are the most interesting pages I had to scrap from my PhD dissertation; they were written in 2021 and 2022:
- Somaliland Population Figures – how I calculate my estimate of 2 to 2.5 million total population for Somaliland
- The state in the contested borderlands between Somaliland and Puntland
- Local politics in Berbera
- Land Issues in Somaliland
- Somaliland in 2019
Safety Analysis Somalia – papers I wrote for my employer, assessing risks and opportunities for NGOs operating in Somalia, between 2015 and 2017
Example of a quarterly report (last quarter of 2017) covering political and security developments throughout the country. 29 pages.
An in-depth study of Bosaso, the port city in Puntland; made in November-December 2015. 51 pages
A mission report on a trip made by the author to Buuhoodle and Taleex in Eastern Somaliland in May 2017 (9 pages)
Information for NGOs on the town of Taleex in Sool province, Eastern Somaliland, written in June 2017 (4 pages)
Info sheet on the defecting Al Shabaab leader Mukhtar Robow, Sept 2016 (2 pages)
Access info sheet about the Afgooye Corridor, leading from Mogadishu to the Shabelle river valley, November 2017 (5 pages)
News Analysis: US friendly fire incident in Galmudug, September 2016 (3 pages)
News Analysis: consequences for Somaliland of the Somali-Oromo riots in Ethiopia, September 2017 (3 pages)
Articles/blogs published on this website:
La Reconnaissance du Somaliland par Israël: Un Cadeau Empoisonné? in The Conversation, Dec 2025
Al Shabaab Governance: Illiberal Modernization? published in the Canadian Journal of African Studies, July 2025
PhD thesis: The State in Somalia. Between Self-Governance and International Order, Oct 2022, defended at Sciences Po Paris/CERI in Jan 2023
Article about current developments in Somaliland, Oct 2020
Report on Al Shabaab governance, April-July 2019
Donor influence in Somaliland: general notes and fieldnotes from Berbera
Trip to Berbera and Sheekh, June 2019
Mes efforts pour recupérer les statues de Berbera, en français, juin 2019
Report on the Business Community of Mogadishu, March 2019
News analysis: Somaliland and Puntland sliding toward war, June 2018
Description and analysis of mysterious ancient statues in Somaliland, 2018
Reports about the Somaliland elections of 2017 – the campaign and election day
The worst road trip ever: from Hargeisa back to Addis through back roads to avoid Somali-Oromo clashes
Brief description of cultural heritage in Taleex: the fort of the ‘Mad Mullah’ and other buildings from the early 20th century, May 2017
Analysis of international interventions in Somalia from the colonial times to the War on Terror (with link to the first chapter of my PhD)
Reflections about the UN Security Council’s take on Somalia