Coming home from Al-Shabaab: What determines whether communities forgive in Somalia

Global Voices reports on new research into what makes Somali communities willing to take back people who leave al-Shabaab, the militant group at the center of the country's long-running conflict. Researchers Blair Welsh and Prabin Khadka surveyed eight hundred eighty people across eighty-one communities in seven cities, and found seventy-six percent were willing to welcome defectors back, with sixty-eight percent saying they could forgive the time spent with the group. Counter to expectations, women and children were more likely to be accepted than adult men, as were those who had held non-fighting roles or been forcibly recruited. But the openness varied sharply by place: ninety-five percent in Jowhaar, against fifty-eight percent in Baidoa, where exposure to al-Shabaab violence has been higher, and people who lost immediate family to the group were measurably less willing. The authors argue acceptance responds to specific, fixable conditions, like vocational training and financial support, which remain unevenly available across Somalia's rehabilitation program.

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