经济学人下载:索马里之子-来自非洲的声音

In “Crossbones” the Union of Islamic Courts has vanquished the “CIA-funded” warlords. But when Ethiopia, with the help of American drones, invades Somalia to prop up the embattled federal government, the Courts’ al-Qaeda-affiliated military wing, Shabaab, regroups for insurgency. Jeebleh is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a New York journalist. Their story alternates with that of Malik’s brother, Ahl, who is searching in the autonomous coastal region of Puntland for his runaway stepson, Taxliil. The teenager is thought to have left Minnesota with other Somali-American youths, heading for Shabaab’s jihadist boot camps.

在《死亡髅骷》一书中，伊斯兰法院联盟战胜了“美国中央情报局资助的”军队将领。但是，在美国无人驾驶飞机的帮助下，埃塞俄比亚入侵了索马里，支持准备战斗的联邦政府，伊斯兰法院联盟隶属基地组织的军事派别沙巴布为了进行叛乱重组编制。吉伯莱由女婿纽约记者马利克陪同返国。他们的故事交杂着马利克的哥哥阿里的故事，阿里正在沿海的邦特兰自治区寻找他离家出走的继子塔克斯里伊尔。这位十几岁的少年被认为和其它索马里籍的美国青年一起离开了明尼苏达，前往沙巴布的伊斯兰圣战士新兵训练营。

The brothers uncover links between Shabaab and Somali piracy by talking to would-be suicide bombers, pirate financiers and a “deviously handsome” middleman between the hostage-takers and the shipowners. Their findings support the view that pirates began as a community “coastguard” after illegal foreign fishing boats had exploited Somalia’s collapse to plunder its sea resources. As one source says, “We have nothing to eat, no fish to fish.” Sharks up the food chain take their cut, leaving local pirates to pilfer crews’ watches and mobiles.

兄弟俩通过跟准自杀式炸弹、海盗的财政专家、以及劫持人质者和船主之间一个“迂回大方”的中间人的交谈，揭开了沙巴布和索马里海盗之间的联系。他们的发现支持了这样一种观点，即在非法外国渔船利用索马里的瓦解掠夺其海洋资源后，海盗由社区的“海岸警卫队”演化而来。正如一位消息人士称，“我们没有东西可吃，没有鱼可捕。”他们敲诈食物链获取保护费，这让当地海盗偷窃船员的手表和手机。

Mr Farah reveals the minutiae of survival in a failed modern African state that is awash with SIM cards and AK-47s, where television-repair men are spies, reporters are targeted with roadside bombs and petty disputes turn lethal “in less time than it takes to stub out a cigarette”. His interest is in the moral ambiguity of surviving in such conditions and the compromised choices it forces upon people. Cambara’s cunning misdirections to a young insurgent result not only in his death but in that of an innocent old man. “When the country in which they live changes”, people change unrecognisably, a reformed militiaman explains. It is to the novelist’s credit that he preserves a degree of sympathy for those whom poverty pushes towards piracy, as well as for the teenagers who are brainwashed into jihadism and whose fate, should they refuse to take orders, may entail shackling and torture.

法拉揭示了在一个失败的现代非洲国家生存的细枝末节。在这个国家，SIM卡和AK – 47自动步枪泛滥成灾，电视维修工是间谍，记者是路边炸弹的标靶，小小的纠纷在“不到掐灭一根香烟的时间内”就变成致命的了。他的兴趣是在这种条件下生存道德的界线已经模糊，以及这种道德界线的模糊迫使人们做出的妥协的选择。卡姆芭拉的狡猾误导了一个年轻的暴徒，结果不仅导致了暴徒的死亡，也导致了一个无辜老人的死亡。一个编制重组过的民兵解释说，“当他们生活的国家发生改变时”，人们变得难以辨认了。值得称赞的是小说作者对贫困促使他们成为海盗的人保留了一定程度的同情，对被洗脑成为伊斯兰圣战士的青少年和他们的命运也保留了一定程度的同情，假使他们拒绝接受命令，可能会承受镣铐和酷刑。