[The following OPINION piece in the NYT was written by Pete Buttgeig and Nat Meyers. Nat Meyers is an old Harvard college friend of Pete and works for USAID et al. His job was to influence/alter governments.]
Tourists in Somaliland
July 31, 2008
(Excerpt) Last week we went to Somalia as American tourists. We stayed only a night, but that was plenty of time to wander unescorted through the local market, explore town in a battered Toyota station wagon, and even head out into the desert to admire some ancient cave paintings.
It might seem an odd choice of vacation spot, given that Somalia, so long synonymous with "failed state," appears to be growing ever more dangerous. The insurgency against the American-backed Ethiopian occupation persists, and just last week it was reported that a particularly radical group has launched a campaign to murder relief workers, who are there trying desperately to avert an oncoming famine.
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Peter Buttigieg is a management consultant in Chicago and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Nathaniel Myers is a political analyst in Ethiopia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/opinion/31iht-edmyers.1.14914273.html
Quick thoughts on Mayor Pete’s 2008 Somaliland vacation and related op-ed
Dec 7, 2019
In July 2008, Buttigieg and Nathaniel Myers, identified as a “political analyst” in Ethiopia, had published in the New York Times an op-ed under the understated headline “Tourists in Somaliland“. I have no clear idea why. The substance of the article is not about tourism but rather the argument that the United States was failing to adequately support Somaliland and should initiate formal recognition, but with very little real detail or heft. Myers was working as a World Bank consultant in Ethiopia at the time according to his bio online at the Carnegie Endowment where he worked until recently (update: Myers was a friend of Buttigieg’s from Harvard). Myers also published two op-ed pieces in 2010 in Foreign Policy on the authoritarianism of Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia and analogizing Eritrea as “Africa’s North Korea”. My involvement in East Africa has been as a democracy advocate so I agree with the sentiments of Myers’s writings, even if I don’t think the “Tourists” piece with Buttigieg was really on point.
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As late at least as mid-2008, US Government civilians and direct contractors were not allowed to travel to Somaliland, which is perhaps one of the reasons USAID was keen for us at IRI to ramp up and open an office. Later Buttigieg did work visits to Iraq and Afghanistan under contract to an unidentified US department. As an employee of McKinsey as a US Government contractor Buttigieg would not have been able to go to Somaliland on business under ordinary circumstances to the best of my understanding. As employees of a Government-funded NGO working under a “Cooperative Agreement” with USAID rather than a “Contract” we at IRI were not subject to that restriction.
https://africommons.com/2019/12/quick-thoughts-on-mayor-petes-2008-somaliland-vacation-and-related-op-ed/