How can you make 1000 cops disappear just like that? It’s not easy. It’s pretty simple though.

All you have to do is be the German government and spend $1 million on a UN program to train Somalian police in Ethiopia, then give them uniforms and weapons and send them back home to help keep the peace for their government (or what would like to be one) at which point they promptly desert and join opposition Islamist militia groups instead.

Currently, the transitional Somali government is struggling to suppress the militia, including Al-Qaeda sympathisers Al-Shabaab, who control as much as two-thirds of the country.