Somalia y el Cuerno de África: Los grandes olvidados

Legal and Politico-Strategic Review José Manuel Castro Milla, “Somalia and the Horn of Africa: The Great Forgotten Ones”, CODESEL Bulletin (Cadre of Defense and Security Law), Vol. 2, No. 7, February 2026 This article offers a comprehensive and analytically robust examination of Somalia and the Horn of Africa as a structural nexus of humanitarian crisis, maritime insecurity, and fragile statehood. Its principal contribution lies in connecting long-term historical drivers of state collapse with contemporary security challenges, while situating European engagement within a broader framework of international responsibility, maritime governance, and regional stability. From a legal perspective, the article provides a clear and well-grounded account of Somalia’s prolonged condition of state fragility and its implications under international law. The historical reconstruction—from pre-colonial clan structures and customary law (xeer), through colonial fragmentation, post-independence institutional weakness, and eventual state collapse—serves as a necessary foundation for understanding the legal limits of sovereignty, governance, and responsibility in the Somali case. The analysis implicitly highlights how the erosion of effective governmental authority complicates the application of classical doctrines of state responsibility and territorial control. The discussion of international and regional intervention frameworks is particularly strong. The author carefully outlines the legal and political basis of African Union and United Nations involvement, notably through AMISOM and its successor ATMIS, emphasizing their Security Council mandates and the progressive transfer of security responsibilities to Somali authorities. This treatment reflects a nuanced understanding of contemporary peace support operations as hybrid instruments combining stabilization, capacity-building, and state-reconstruction functions rather than traditional peacekeeping alone. A central legal-strategic axis of the article concerns maritime security in the Gulf of Aden and the western Indian Ocean. The author convincingly explains why Somalia’s situation is of direct relevance to European security interests, noting that a substantial share of global maritime trade—and a significant portion of EU maritime supply routes—passes through this corridor. The analysis of piracy as a symptom of broader governance failure, rather than a purely criminal phenomenon, is doctrinally sound and aligns with international legal approaches that link maritime crime to land-based instability. The examination of EU Common Security and Defence Policy missions, particularly Operation Atalanta, constitutes one of the article’s most valuable contributions. The author correctly characterizes Atalanta as a landmark operation in EU maritime security, both in legal terms—through its mandate to protect shipping and combat piracy—and in strategic terms, as a platform for international cooperation and norm-based maritime order. The distinction drawn between the relative success of Atalanta and the more limited results of EUTM Somalia and EUCAP Somalia is analytically important, as it underscores the structural difficulty of translating external training and advisory missions into sustainable local security capacity. From a politico-strategic standpoint, the article effectively frames Somalia as a persistent security laboratory where terrorism, maritime crime, humanitarian emergencies, and geopolitical competition intersect. The continued threat posed by Al-Shabaab and other armed groups is rightly analysed as both a domestic and transnational challenge, with implications for counter-terrorism law, international cooperation, and regional security architectures. The author’s emphasis on conditionality and results-based engagement reflects current EU strategic thinking on external action and responsibility sharing. Overall, this contribution stands out as a balanced and well-integrated analysis that bridges international law, security studies, and political history. It avoids reductionist explanations and instead presents Somalia and the Horn of Africa as a complex system in which legal norms, institutional capacity, and strategic interests are deeply intertwined. The article is highly relevant for scholars and practitioners concerned with fragile states, maritime security, EU external action, and the governance of protracted crises.