Over the course of the past decade, Somaliland’s fortunes have drastically and irrevocably changed, raising hopes that engagement with foreign powers will translate into formal recognition. Unfortunately, recent violence between security forces and a local clan in the southeast show that things are never so straightforward.
This month marks 12 years since Syria’s civil war began. The past year has been marked by a string of political wins for the Syrian regime but has brought greater misery for Syrians. Despite the regime’s triumphant rhetoric, Syrian society is overwhelmingly focused on survival alone, with no hope for economic recovery or reconstruction.
According to some pundits, class identity in the United States matters only insofar as it is a proxy for anti-immigrant attitudes and resentment toward racial minorities. But we shouldn’t be so quick to accept the idea that class identification is unimportant to Americans and therefore politically irrelevant.
Increasingly, diasporas are powerful constituencies in their countries of origin. Despite their physical distance, they influence homeland politics and can also be instrumental in shaping relations between their countries of origin and residence. Yet, home and host government attitudes toward diasporas are decidedly mixed.