November 19, 2004

The fighting between Puntland and Somaliland gunmen has revived, leaving at least two people dead. However, it's possible that the current violence is simply a tribal dispute over grazing and water access. Somaliland, with a population of about four million, was a colony of Britain for about a century. In the early 1960s, it became independent, and soon united with Italian Somaliland to form Somalia. But in the last two decades, the Somaliland people have become disgusted with the chaos in the south and reestablished the old British colony as an independent country.