The latest dispatches from Mogadishu read like a despatches from the heart of darkness, a haunting echo of Conrad’s Congo. Young boys, some no older than twelve, are being torn from their families and thrust into the maw of warlord militias. They are given Kalashnikovs heavier than their bones and told to kill or be killed.
This is not a scene from a dystopian novel. This is Somalia today. And it is a moral stain on the conscience of the West, not least on the United Kingdom, which once proudly bore the white man’s burden and now shirks its duty as a responsible global power.
The argument that stabilising failed states is not our affair is the same short-sightedness that allowed the collapse of Yugoslavia, the rise of ISIS, and the chaos in Libya. We cannot pretend that these horrors unfold in a vacuum. The rot in Mogadishu, the child soldiers of Kismayo, the pirates of Puntland – these are the symptoms of a global system that has abandoned its duty of care.
And the UK, with its seat on the Security Council, its history of empire, and its self-image as a force for good, has a particular responsibility. We cannot lecture other nations on human rights while standing idly by as children are turned into murderers. To do so is not just hypocrisy.
It is a betrayal of our own values. The Victorians understood that with great power came great responsibility. We have forgotten the lesson.
It is time to remember it.
