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Answer: I’m going to take your meaning of “bad” to mean unsafe for the average person and materially impoverished. First off, I’m in Somalia right now and loving it, feel safe 95% of the time, and will in fact recommend brief visits to Mogadishu for my Somali friends and family back home in the US (where I’m from). This is largely because I blend right in. I’m tall. Rail-thin. Dark-skinned. The works. To summarize my assessment of the safety level for the average Joe, I’d say the degree of safety one has is proportional to their ability to blend into the society as it is, in other words, to not stick out and be visible to individuals who wouldn’t hesitate to harm you for your money. That said, I would not recommend visiting or staying in Somalia to anyone who lacks the ability to blend in here. It’s still too risky for that, although, depending on how narrowly you make your radius of exploration, it’s not impossible to spend a very brief time in Mogadishu as a tourist and visit some of the breathtaking sites the city has to offer. It becomes even more possible if you hire personal security guards and have local friends here who can guide you and steer you clear of the riskiest zones based on their experience. Finally, “is Somalia materially impoverished to an unacceptable degree for humanity?” Uhh yes. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or knowledge of many details of Somalia to know that people are needlessly suffering on a mass-scale here given the kinds of technologies, medicines, wealth-hoarding and innovation the rest of the world could offer, if enough ppl gave a damn. It’s too bad the people demanding libertarians and anarchists to “go live in Somalia” don’t realize that just because there admittedly hasn’t been a formalized structure of laws and a justice system in the Western conception, social order and justice have persisted in other ways, like violent small-town warlords, hard-fought peaceful regional administrations and traditional law or “Xeer” as it’s called in Somalia which uses clan structures and elders to establish law and order the way it did for centuries before Western models of government came on the scene. And, in the spirit of answering your original question, it’s true that Somalia has improved dramatically in terms of “safety” over the past decade or so, but the poverty still persists virtually untouched, coupled with growing economic inequality between Somali Diaspora (like me!) and the poor locals, and with roots far beyond what a few years of relative peace can effectively extricate. Oh, and in case this wasn’t made clear in the above, the politicians who are saying go back to Somalia are using what politicians have used for centuries: rhetoric. They don’t really know what Somalia is actually like today, and they don’t care that they’re using the word insensitively to further their aims. Thank you for asking this. Not enough people get past Black Hawk Down and Captain Phillips in their study of Somalia.

The question of “what is Somalia” can be answered in many ways, due to both the vagueness of the statement and the intrinsic complexity of defining an abstract ever-evolving entity such as a modern nation-state. You can begin to grasp the difficulty by first realizing that Somalia “is” different things to different people, depending on what vantage point you’re viewing it from, what invisible blinders you’ve put on, and most importantly where your self-interest is. For example, if you look at a map, Somalia is often shown as being a coherent whole shaped like a horn, despite persistent attempts of northern “Somaliland” residents at self-determination. To know what Somalia is I recommend you research the characteristics of its geography, politics, history, economics and culture. It may also help to settle on a definition for what constitutes the physical boundaries of a nation state, so that you can accurately examine the evolution of Somalia over time (Somalia has been colonized by 3 western countries over 2 centuries, had multiple islamic sultanates, was a federal democratic republic, had a period of “scientific-socialism” under dictator Siyaad Barre, and experienced years of fragile or non-existent central governance, etc…). If your question is “what is Somalia today” I’d say it’s in a period of fragile central governance, pretty hot most the year, extreme poverty <$1/day poverty is the norm, unemployment is rampant in a extremely young population, security is tenuous thanks largely to a terrorist insurgency Al-Shabaab, and by Max Weber’s definition of a nation-state it’s continuously varying in its physical borders over time due to shifts in who has the monopoly of legitimate use of violent force. In your study I suggest you find sources that are written by Somali authors, and be cautious of clan-based favoritism and biases.

Three reasons. (1) Like others have said, it sets a dangerous precedent for the world to recognize states that form during continued widespread political instability in a country. For obvious reasons. (2) Contrary to one assumption found in other answers, Somaliland is not unanimous in its desire to be independent, there are in fact several tribes and regions within Somaliland’s unofficial borders that consider themselves unaffiliated with the concept of a Somaliland state, even if they don’t accept a united Somalia state concept either. (3) There has been significant investment, as mentioned, in the formation of a Somali state based in Mogadishu, and through the investment process attempts are being made as we speak to ensure that various groups have their strategic interests met prior the consideration of any strategic interests Somalia has. I recommend you look up how much money in international aid has been sunk into Somalia, in the form of military aid to Amisom countries and humanitarian aid intended for Somalia or Somali refugee camps in northern Kenya. The aid stalls and is wasted (one way or other) in Nairobi Kenya, never to reach its intended recipient in desperate need. That’s a long way of saying other countries and even development agencies don’t give a crap about a stable Somalia so even if Somaliland offered great vastly beneficial opportunity, it’d be ignored because it would slow down the aid flows and military financing upon which thousands in the region and a few governments are now dependent upon for survival.

Today? No. In 20-100 years, assuming Somalia reaches a level of political stability such that it can take advantage of its abundant economic resources (natural and non-natural), and assuming strong allies and trade partners around the world outside of the EU, then I’d say it’s possible. Especially as a potentially rogue country which doesn’t pay heed to an ever-increasing outcry for a halt in CO2 emissions and non-renewable energy dependence. Somalia will just be getting its start in oil production and it’s possible that most other developed nations  have stopped production due to national and international pressure rooted in climate change.

What many people don’t realize is that Somalia is speculated to have as much as 110 billion barrels of oil in off-shore and on-shore deposits. Given that’s true, when oil production optimizes it will thrust Somalia to being one of the top 10 oil producing countries in the world, and with access to markets in Africa by land, Europe, MidEast and Asia by sea (Somalia has an approx 3000 mile coastline, longest in Africa), oil alone will transform Somalia’s economic force. Note that Somalia’s government has earned approx $0 in global trade from the following geographically endowed resources: oil, natural gas, Arable farm land – 43rd largest country Somalia’s land area is approx 3x the United Kingdom, large fisheries, uranium, copper, and other precious metals. As the world dries up their sources of non-renewable resources, prices for some of those will surely rise. Now factor in Somalia’s future modest population (30-70 million at ~5% annual growth rates and UNICEF data) relative to its size, and the amount of living space it offers for immigrants in their future overcrowded home nations, and now we have that ever-elusive source of human capital beyond Somali natives and diaspora. Moreover, do a quick Google search of Somalia, and you’ll know why Italian tourists flocked to its flawless beaches which caress the Indian Ocean. Mogadishu was once called the pearl of Africa for its natural and urban beauty. You can expect money to flow from tourism, and a lot of it. Something I learned recently, kind of tangential but related: New York’s country sized trillion-dollar GDP is partially thanks to an extremely lucrative tourism industry (“in 2012, spending is estimated to have generated $92 billion in total business sales, including indirect and induced impacts” and “sustained 714,000 jobs with income of $29 billion” – source is this page on NY.gov), so don’t underestimate the power of that industry. 3000 miles of pretty beaches and a small friendly population will bring tourists and thrill-seekers like moths to a flame.

Thus, the future economic force may very well be there, and the application of it could manifest itself in covert subversive missions, funding of radical groups within countries, squeezing economic resources by not trading in Europe, or declaring war on EU as a whole based on whatever premise Somalia wants and invading straight up, annexing all EU lands.

Finally, the real question is why would Somalia ever have the desire to “bring down” the EU? Somalis aren’t ideologically or practically anarchists, I promise. And the EU doesn’t need help with its down fall, it’s doing just fine on its own anyways.