The Rumi Forum presented "Doing Less Could Help More in Somalia" with Bronwyn Bruton.

The world awaits news of an expected major government offensive in Somalia against a radical Islamist movement known as the Shabaab. But despite the combined efforts of the international community to strengthen and defend the country's notional Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the offensive is unlikely to bear fruit. The odds of the TFG emerging as an effective body are extremely poor. In fact, international support of the weak TFG has perversely only served to isolate the government, and to propel cooperation among previously fractured and quarrelsome extremist groups. The United States urgently needs to consider other policy options with the expectation that the TFG’s leadership will fail or continue to be marginalized to the point of powerlessness.

Bronwyn Bruton, author of the Council on Foreign Relations Report, Somalia: A New Approach, will offer an analysis of U.S. interests in Somalia, including piracy, humanitarian issues, and counterterrorism concerns, and will suggest that the U.S. should adopt a radically different strategy for combating the threat of terrorism in Somalia.

Bronwyn Bruton, a democracy and governance specialist with extensive experience in Africa, was a 2008-2009 international affairs fellow in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She was born in Swaziland and spent most of her childhood in Botswana. Prior to her fellowship appointment, Bronwyn spent three years at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she managed a $7-million portfolio of grants to local and international nongovernmental organizations in east and southern Africa (priority countries included Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Sudan). Ms. Bruton has also served as a program manager on the Africa team of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Transition Initiatives, as a policy analyst on the international affairs and trade team of the Government Accountability Office, and as a program officer at the Center for International Private Enterprise.

Ms. Bruton holds an MPP, with honors, from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Richard Downie is a fellow with the CSIS Africa program. He joined CSIS following a decade-long career in journalism. He was a reporter for several newspapers in the United Kingdom before joining the BBC, where he worked as a senior broadcast journalist covering the leading international stories of the day for radio. Since then, he has conducted research and completed writing projects on Africa for the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is a contributor to the Africa section of Freedom House’s annual report, Freedom In the World. Downie holds a master’s degree in international public policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in modern history from Oxford University