1. Raphael Njoku, The History of Somalia (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2013), 1.
2. Mary Harper, Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State (London: Zed Books, 2012), 46-50.
3. Njoku, 30-35. Somalia has been historically associated with the land of Punt, a trading partner of ancient Egypt, though some scholars have contested this.
4. I.M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Oxford: James Currey, 2002), 2; I.M. Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History, Society. Revised ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 3.
5. Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst (New York: Penguin Press, 2017),
283.
6. I.M. Lewis, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland, 1-3; "What Religions are Practiced in Somalia?" World Atlas, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-major-religions-practised-in-somalia.html. Accessed November 11, 2019.
7. Njoku, 18-19.
8. Harper, 11, 36.
9. Harper, 36.
10. See Lewis's treatment of the subject in A Modern History of the Somali for one clan-centric take on the war.
11. Harper, 15-16; Njoku, The History of Somalia, 12, 18. Some of these commonalities are shared by the minorities as well, who also largely practice Islam, and many of whom speak Somali.; I.M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 63.
12. Lee Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600-1900 (Philadelphia:University of Pittsburg Press, 1982), 4.
13. Harper, 46-47.
14. See Chapter Nine, “Local History and Regional Resistance: The Somali Response to Colonial Occupation in the Benaadir Region.” In Cassanelli, The Shaping of Somali Society.
15. Cassanelli, 75, 249.
16. Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 75.
17. Njoku, 99.
18. Njoku, 90.
19. Lewis, Understanding Somalia, 4-5; Njoku, 99-101.
20. Njoku, 100.
21. Njoku, 110-111, 114.
22. Njoku, 117-118.
23. Harper, 54.
24. Njoku, 119-124. Barre made the Latin script the official script for the Somali language. In five years, literacy in the country jumped from extremely low to 70%, thanks to both Barre’s emphasis on urban education and his sending students to live with nomadic Somalis to teach them to read. This was considered a secular victory over religious tradition, as Arabic was the competing script for the Somali language. See Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 216-217; Njoku, The History of Somalia, 122-123.
25. Kapteijns, 79; Njoku, 124-125. It is important to note that Barre’s cronyism was not fully clan based, as has been argued. Members of various clans thrived under Barre’s client system. The key ingredient was personal loyalty to Barre.
26. Kapteijns, 84, 88.
27. Kapteijns, 89-90.
28. Kapteijns, 85, 88-89.
29. Kapteijns, 154.
30. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali, 263-265.
31. Scott Peterson, Me Against my Brother: At War in Somalia, Sudan, and Rwanda (New York: Routledge, 2001), 44, 49.
32. Njoku, 142-143.
33. Njoku, 144-155.
34. Cindy Horst, Transnational Nomads: How Somalis Cope with Refugee Life in the Dadaab Camps of Kenya (New York: Berghan Books, 2006), 19-21.
35. “Managing Environmental Stress in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp,” https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/managing-environmental-stress-kenyas-kakuma-refugee-camp, accessed December 3, 2019.
36. Aukot, “It is Better to be a Refugee than a Turkana,” refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 21, no. 3, (2003): 74. Accessed November 7, 2019. https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/23482.
37. Aukot, 75.
38. Bram J. Jansen, Kakuma Refugee Camp (London, UK: Zed Books, 2018), 71, 101.
39. Horst, 80.
40. Grayson, Children of the Camp: The Lives of Somali Youth Raised in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya
(New York, Berghan, 2017), 62; Horst, 84-85; Jansen, 111.
41. Jansen, 110-11.
42. This was the average resettlement time from the sample in Tamar Mott, African Refugee Resettlement in the United States (El Paso: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2009), accessed January 7, 2020, Proquest Ebook Central.141.
43. Jansen, 145-148.
44. Mott, 211-212.
45. Ihotu Ali, “Staying Off the Bottom of the Melting Pot,” Bildhaan 9 (2009): 88-89. Accessed November 7, 2019, https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/bildhaan/vol9/iss1/.
46. Mott, 132-133.
47. Calfano, Brian R. and Nazita Lajevardi. Understanding Muslim political life in America: contested citizenship in the twenty-first century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. 7, 87. Accessed January 7, 2020. Proquest Ebook Central; Ali, Ihotu. “Staying off the Bottom of the Melting Pot: Somali Refugees Respond to a Changing U.S. Immigration Climate.” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 9 (2009): 95. Accessed November 7, 2019. https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/bildhaan/vol9/iss1/.
48. Pew poll, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/, accessed November 6, 2019.
49. For an example of just one of many such organizations, see https://www.welcomingamerica.org/about/who-we-are. There are many such groups, as well as welcoming individuals, around the country.
50. Abdi Kusow and Stephanie Bjork, From Mogadishu to Dixon (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 2007), 279-280.
