| 2009 | | |||||||||| | | 2008 | | |||||||||||||||| | | 2006 | | |||||||||||||||| | | 2005 | | |||||||||||||||||||||||| | | 2004 | | |||||||||||||||||||||||| | | 2003 | | |||||||||||||||||||||||| | | 2002 | | |||||||||||||||| |
|
Somaliland Defends Expulsions
The move follows the killings of three foreign aid workers during the past month.
This was described by the Somaliland administration as a concerted attempt to destabilise the country.
Since the northern region of Somaliland broke away from the rest of Somalia 12 years ago, it has failed to secure international recognition, but it has developed a reputation for being relatively secure.
In contrast to the civil strife and absence of central government in the south, Somaliland has been largely peaceful and organised.
But its hopes of building on that reputation to gain international acceptance have been severely undermined by the killing of an Italian and two British aid workers in the space of a few weeks.
Plus
The response of the authorities has been to announce that all illegal immigrants - an estimated 77,000 people - should leave by early December.
Somaliland's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Edna Adan Ismail, said that far from damaging her administration's international standing, the move was likely to enhance it.
"I think our friends would appreciate that we are taking more serious action in maintaining the stability of Somaliland," she told the BBC.
"I think it's a plus for Somaliland rather than a discredit."
Most of those who face expulsion are Somalis.
Asked how Somaliland would identify who has a right to remain in the country, the president said simply that local people knew each other well, and could distinguish foreigners.
What Somaliland fears most is being dragged back into the killings and disorder of its southern neighbour.
The danger in calling for large-scale expulsions is that the breakaway republic will contribute to the strife it seeks to avoid.
Posted on Friday 31st October at 23:45:37 Drought Menaces 90,000 People in Somalia
NAIROBI: The United Nations has appealed for urgent help for more than 90,000 men, women and children whose herds of goats and camels are likely to be wiped out by a worsening drought in Somalia.
Aid workers say rains are likely to fail in the Sool Plateau region of northern Somalia, aggravating four years of drought which have already decimated livestock and plunged families into deepening debt.
"We are already facing an acute humanitarian crisis, in particular in the Sanaag and Sool regions of the Sool Plateau, due to four years of consecutive drought," said the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Maxwell Gaylard.
"With the current rains apparently failing again, we can expect that most remaining livestock will die, the local economy will collapse and this could trigger large-scale population movements to towns that would adversely affect the health and welfare of the communities, in particular children," he said in a statement issued on Friday (NZT).
The drought has pushed food and water prices higher, forcing many families to supplement their income by cutting down trees to sell as charcoal, causing widespread environmental damage.
The government of the northwestern Somali enclave of Somaliland – which covers part of the affected region – appealed on Friday (NZT) for urgent help, saying it was facing its worst drought in two decades.
Posted on Friday 31st October at 23:36:50 Somaliland's Painful Push for Recognition
AN OLD MIG fighter plane is mounted on a plinth in the centre of Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway Somaliland republic. It is a stark reminder of the civil war fought more than a decade ago in which about 50000 died.
The city itself was flattened by repeated bombing sorties by the forces of then Somali president Siad Barre.
After the war, Somalilanders decided to go it alone. They took a devastated territory and made it into a peaceful democracy in what many of them refer to as a "rough neighbourhood".
Recently, that peace has been shaken by the murder of three foreign workers in two separate incidents.
On October 5, Italian doctor Annalena Tonelli was killed outside the hospital she founded in Borama, a town on the border with Ethiopia. Last week, two British teachers working for an aid agency were killed by unidentified gunmen. A number of arrests have been made but no motive has yet been identified.
The first murder could have been dismissed as a random killing but the second, soon afterwards, suggests a pattern. There are fears it may be the work of Islamic fundamentalists or possibly a politically motivated plot to undermine Somaliland's bid for international recognition as an independent country.
The nation's peaceful record has been a crucial pillar in its tireless efforts to gain recognition. Its hard-won peace is noteworthy. The long process of demobilising armed militias and re-employing them into state security functions is a major success story.
So is the fact it has held two successful elections a record many recognised governments in Africa cannot claim. Its nationhood is a grassroots initiative kept on track by a determination to succeed.
Keeping the peace is a major part of the plan. And as a result, it has held despite the fact that the country is, by most standards, heavily armed. Almost every household has at least one weapon.
Understandably, security is an issue. Somaliland's lack of international recognition leaves it bound to Somalia, the lawless country to its south of which it is officially still a part despite Somaliland's 12 years of self-declared independence.
Somalia, now in its 14th round of peace talks, is a country without a government, which presents a major security headache for the whole region.
Somaliland, on gaining its independence from Britain in 1960, was independent for just five days before electing to merge with Somalia, formerly an Italian colony. When it broke away and declared independence in 1991, it kept the British colonial boundaries.
This fact has been an important argument in Somaliland's appeals to the African Union (AU) for recognition. The AU has stated it will not tamper with colonial boundaries. But regardless of Somaliland's protests on the border issue, the AU has ignored it in favour of recognising whatever government the failed state of Somalia comes up with.
While its legal case for recognition is persuasive, there are myriad reasons it has not happened. Among them are the fact that the international community appears to be waiting for an African nation to take the lead in officially recognising Somaliland while African nations are waiting for someone to do so first.
The situation has been complicated by regional politics involving, primarily, Ethiopia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Djibouti, which have to do with complex issues mostly relating to the balance of power in the Horn of Africa.
Somaliland has a good unofficial relationship with SA, Zimbabwe and Mozambique as well as Senegal. But so far no one has been prepared to promise more than the possibility of low-level contact at a diplomatic or trade level.
Somaliland's fate hinges largely on what resolution is found, if any, in Somalia. A legitimate government in Somalia, for Somaliland to negotiate independence with, seems to be what the international community wants.
Somalilanders are bitter about the influence events in Somalia still have over them. Said one: "Those of us who have established order and democracy in the north are being ignored while those who have created chaos and anarchy in the south are being pandered to by the international community. How does that add up?"
Meanwhile, Somaliland has been surviving on its own with no donor aid or access to international finance. There is limited aid assistance through the United Nations and foreign nongovernmental bodies, though the latest killings have shot alarm through such organisations.
Its resources are limited. Its main income is, like several other African countries, remittances and investment from the diaspora, which is estimated to be as high as $300m a year. Livestock is another, although this has been significantly reduced by Saudi Arabia's ban on livestock imports from Somaliland, officially because of Rift Valley fever but unofficially because of Middle East support for a united Somalia that includes isolating Somaliland.
There are also some oil concessions offshore, which have yet to be taken up by their signatories because of the recognition problem, and large reserves of minerals and gemstones.
Otherwise the country has to make do with its limited tax revenue, port duties and a few other income streams. It survives on a total budget of a meagre $18m, the biggest chunk of which goes towards civil service salaries, especially for the armed forces. This has held back postwar rebuilding of the country.
Although the government is firmly focused on the issue of recognition, there is acknowledgement that recognition alone will not solve all its problems overnight. There is even concern that aid and international engagement may skew its priorities, as has happened in so many African countries.
In the climate of political peace and political accommodation that have prevailed in Somaliland during the past few years, the murders this month have come as a shock.
The government's assertion that the incidents are a plot to undermine its case for recognition might be right. This is indeed a rough neighbourhood.
However, the international community should not underestimate Somaliland's determination to succeed. Across the board, people say they will fight to keep the independence they have already fought so hard for. "Recognition is more than just the political expression of the people, it is a matter of life and death," said an opposition party politician. And he is not alone in this view.
Recognition is as much a question of security as it is economic development. The longer Somaliland remains unrecognised, the greater its vulnerability.
Africa needs to find a solution to this problem that does not create more problems than it solves and it needs to do so soon.
Dianna Games: Johannesburg
Games is a director of Africa@Work, a company focusing on African issues
Posted on Friday 31st October at 23:34:42 Appeals Court Affirms Drug Conviction
BOSTON — A federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed the conviction of a Somali refugee from Portland, Maine, who was sentenced to one year of probation in the state´s first case involving the stimulant khat.
Abdigani Hussein, who has applied for U.S. citizenship and moved to the United States six years ago, was arrested in April 2002 as he picked up a FedEx package that contained khat. Hussein was cooperative and told investigators he did not know khat contained any illegal drugs.
Khat contains cathinone, which is chemically similar to amphetamines. Federal drug enforcement agencies have included cathinone on the list of controlled substances since 1993.
Hussein´s lawyers argued khat is used in Africa the way coffee is used in the United States.
Hussein now faces deportation after the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston affirmed his conviction.
The court rejected his argument that there was not sufficient evidence for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew he possessed a controlled substance and that the government had not made it sufficiently clear that possession of khat was a criminal offense.
"There is no proof that Hussein knew what cathinone was or that he was dealing with it," the appeals court wrote. "Nevertheless, the evidence suffices to show that he knew _ in a general sense _ that he was dealing with a controlled substance."
Hussein could have faced up to 20 years in prison. But under federal guidelines, his sentence fell in a range of zero to six months because of his background and lack of criminal history.
The case in U.S. District Court was the first of its kind in Maine, but one of a growing number around the country with an influx of immigrants from countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen.
Last year, 103,000 pounds of khat were intercepted at the nation´s borders by U.S. Customs officers, prosecutors sai
Posted on Thursday 30th October at 23:35:43 Djibouti's Turn-Around On Somali Peace Talks
Djibouti has rescinded its decision to pull out of the Somali Peace Talks.
Foreign Affairs Minister Kalonzo Musyoka hailed the move saying concerted efforts by all parties in the process would achieve the conference's goals.
Signalling a change of mind was Djibouti's Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Abdi Farah, who turned up for a meeting of the facilitation committee held at a Nairobi hotel.
Musyoka said a resolution at the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) summit in Kampala resolved that the facilitation committee be expanded to include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Musyoka said: "His presence lends null and void earlier statements on his country's stand." However, Farah did not respond to Musyoka's statement.
Announcing the decision to pull out of the Igad technical committee two weeks ago, the Djibouti ambassador, Mr Ismael Goulal accused Kenya and Ethiopia of high-handedness.
Member states, he said, had failed to adhere to the objectives of the peace process. He added that his country would not recognise a Somali government that would result from the talks.
Musyoka announced that the conference is faces a cash crisis.
The peace conference was operating under a deficit because pledges for funding had not been met, Musyoka said.
In Eldoret, where the conference started last year before being moved to Nairobi, the conference owed local businesses huge debts, he added.
Musyoka appealed to the international community and countries, who made pledges to honour them, saying the conference was costly.
The minister did not say how much was owed.
The meeting had been convened to review the conference's progress.
Copyright © 2003 The East African Standard
Posted on Wednesday 29th October at 17:50:21 Two Are Arrested Over Somali MP's Murder
A former MP and a businessman have been arrested over the murder of a Somali MP and two Kenyans.
The two were picked up from the city by a squad of detectives from Rift Valley and Nairobi who are investigating the murder.
They are investigating allegations that the two plotted the killing of the Somali MP, Mr Ibrahim Ali Abdulleh, over a business.
The two are alleged to have swindled Mr Abdulleh millions of shillings, purporting to sell him non-existent sugar imported from Brazil.
Mr Abdulleh is reported to have made a down payment after being shown importation documents, which later turned out to be fake.
He was killed for demanding his money back and for threatening to take the bogus sellers to court.
The Kenyans - identified as Mr Hassan Abdurahman Mohammed, a cross border businessman, and Mr Abdulleh's driver, Mr Mohammed Eley - were aware of the swindle and they were murdered to conceal evidence.
Mr Abdulleh, who was a delegate to the Somali peace talks going on at the Kenya College of Communication Technology in Mbagathi, Nairobi, was a financier of the Transitional National Government, one of the groups that have for the past one year been seeking a peaceful solution to the war in Somalia.
The three were last seen alive on October 18 and their bullet-riddled bodies were found the next day in Oloolua Forest, near Ngong.
Autopsy results showed that all three were shot in the head, just above the right ear.
A police source said detectives had been told the slain men and the suspects in custody had lunch in a hotel in Eastleigh on the day they went missing.
"Abdulleh had threatened to expose the forgery to the police and take the former MP to court. The former MP arranged for a lunch date to cool down Abdulleh and discuss how the money was to be refunded," he said.
He went on: "The former MP proposed they meet at 7pm in the city centre the same day for further talks. The three men were kidnapped when they turned out at the meeting venue."
The suspects are being held in separate police stations in the city.
Stephen Muiruri
Copyright © 2003 The Nation. All rights reserved
Posted on Wednesday 29th October at 17:47:51 Oman Cement Bags Export Order from Somalia
MUSCAT — Oman Cement Company (OCC) SAOG has bagged a major export order for supplying some 6,000 metric tonnes of cement to Somalia's Dahabshiil group. The prestigious order worth about $252,000 has been bagged by the company with assistance from the Omani Centre for Investment Promotion and Export Development (Ociped), a statement issued here said yesterday.
The Hargesia, a Somalia-based Dahabshiil Group, is considered a key player in that country with operations spreading over 33 countries. Its core areas of operations are said to be general trading, telecommunications, money transfer, foodstuff and construction.
According to the Ociped release, the Dahabshiil Group representatives had visited Oman late last month as part of a programme organised by Ociped, which plays a central role as matchmaker between producers and exporters in various markets for Omani products.
"The visit of the Dahabshiil Group is a part of our ongoing programme of inviting international buyers to Oman and organising buyer-seller meetings. Our research has underlined that East Africa is a strong potential market for Omani companies and we are pleased with the firm orders that are now being secured," Ali Al Araimi, director of export marketing facilitation at Ociped, said.
Meanwhile, another official of Ociped pointed out to Times Business that the Somali buyer had paid advance for the order. He also called on Omani exporters to look beyond the AGCC markets without any fear of market mischief such as defrauding, etc. According to him, orders like the one that OCC has obtained from Somalia, are examples that Omani exporters should try to cash in from.
"These are opportunities that Omani exporters should look at. They should remove the misconception about African market."
Amitava Saha, marketing manager of OCC, told this paper that his company had begun exporting oilwell cement to Turkmenistan. "We have sent one container load and the next one is in the process," he said. According to him, oilwell cement, a new line of product from OCC "is fetching" fairly good rate for the company.
"Our annual production capacity is 1.2 million tonnes and this year we will be crossing the 1.5 million level," he said.
Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) conforming to Omani standards, sulphate-resisting cement (SRC), blast furnace slag cement and oilwell cement Class A and Class G conforming to API specification 10A are the major products of OCC. The oilwell cement product was introduced recently and is used for cementing oil wells.
The company is currently exporting normal cement to East Coast of Africa, and Yemen and grey cement to Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea. It exports oilwell cement to Libya, Sudan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. OCC is a key player in the local market where it claims to be supplying about half of the PDO requirement for cementing oilwells. It also supplies to Halliburton, Occidental Oman and others.
Last year was a good one at Oman Cement Company (OCC) as production figures rose and growth prospects for the cement industry as a whole look positive, according to OCC. So much so that the company may, if demand holds up, increase cement manufacturing capacity in the future, says a spokesman.
OCC has been at the forefront of Oman's manufacturing industries, contributing to every facet of the Sultanate's development for more than 19 years.
The company is a winner of the prestigious His Majesty's Cup for the Best Five Factories in Oman for the tenth time. OCC was established in 1978, and has an annual turnover of RO21.6 million ($56.2 million).
Copyright ©2000 Manfn.com All Rights Reserved.
Posted on Wednesday 29th October at 17:46:41 Teachers 'Killed To Disrupt Mission'
AN AFRICAN Foreign Minister last night claimed that two British teachers had been murdered by terrorists linked to Al Qaeda to undermine a diplomatic mission that includes her trip to Wales.
Edna Adan Ismail is Foreign Minister of the Republic of Somaliland, a breakaway part of Somalia, where teachers Dick and Enid Eyeington were shot dead last week in the school where they worked.
Mrs Ismail, a former senior official of the World Health Organisation, is on an international tour trying to persuade governments to recognise Somaliland, which has a population of 3.5m, as an independent state.
It broke away from Somalia in 1991, following a long period of repressive dictatorship and a bitter civil war.
On Monday she arrived in Britain from the United States, and last night she was in Cardiff, which has one of the biggest ethnic Somali communities in Europe.
She told The Western Mail, "Somaliland is the untold miracle of Africa. Despite having more than 250,000 of our people murdered by the former regime, with schools, hospitals, bridges and other elements of our social infrastructure destroyed, and with 500,000 people forced to seek exile, in 12 years we have created a country where democracy is working.
"We have had local elections, we have held a referendum in which 97% voted for us to stay out of Somalia. Earlier this year we held a democratic presidential election and next year there will be multi-party elections.
"In contrast, Somalia has fragmented into 63 separate areas run by local warlords. It is in utter chaos, yet so far as the international community is concerned we have to seek permission from Somalia before we can expect international recognition. This is disgraceful, and flies in the face of the logic you British taught us. We are expected to divorce what amounts to a ghost."
Mrs Ismail said she had been received "as a friend" by representatives of the US and UK governments.
"Whoever heard of an African country that had no overseas debts? That is Somaliland. I am also proud to say that although 100,000 tonnes of food aid came through our port Berbera on the way to Ethiopia, not a single sack was looted. We have law, order, peace and stability."
Asked about the murders of the Eyeingtons, she said, "They were shot by cowardly terrorists as they were watching TV in the school where they had come to work.
"It is in my view no coincidence that these people were murdered as I was embarking on my diplomatic mission seeking recognition for our country. The terrorists want to destabilise our country and resent the fact that we are successfully building a democratic society."
Posted on Wednesday 29th October at 17:44:40 Somali Finds Attentive Legal Ear
Dying in a Minnesota jail or dying in Somalia.
In Keyse Jama's mind, those have been his choices as he awaits a court decision on his possible deportation to his African homeland. Jama at least has gained some relief in explaining his dilemma to a judge. His opportunity came Sunday during an unusual telephone hearing that U.S. District Judge John Tunheim conducted from home, with Jama taking part from jail and lawyers joining in from around the country.
Tunheim on Friday issued an order giving immigration authorities until Monday to release Jama, who has been in detention for 29 months. Officers of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, hastily arranged to have him flown to Somalia on Sunday, taking him to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for deportation.
Tunheim, however, placed a hold on that action after the telephone hearing to give Jama time to appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court was expected to rule soon but issued no decision Monday. Jama decided on Monday to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his challenge to the government's authority to deport him.
As he spoke to the judge from jail in Rush City, Jama broke down in tears, said one of his lawyers, Michelle Garnett McKenzie of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, as he told the judge he didn't know what to do — drop legal challenges to his deportation and stay in jail indefinitely or submit to removal to Somalia, his East African homeland where chaos has largely reigned since civil war broke out 12 years ago.
"To continue to fight but to stay in jail or to leave and then be dead: These aren't decisions that I should be making," 24-year-old Jama told the judge, according to McKenzie.
McKenzie added: "I think it was important for his own peace of mind to actually say that to the judge himself, in his own words."
The judge, for example, listened as Jama said that while he would rather stay in the United States, he would prefer to go to the Somali city of Bossaso. He fears what would happen to him if he ended up in Hargesa, the city where he was to be deported to Sunday, because of tribal differences.
"He put it exactly right," McKenzie said. "This is the dilemma so many people are faced with — to go back to a completely dangerous, uncertain situation or to sit in jail. And when you're sitting in jail, it's hard to think about that and contemplate the bigger decisions."
Jama, detained by immigration authorities since May 2001, faces a removal order because of a third-degree assault conviction stemming from a 1999 fight in Hennepin County. He has had few chances to speak about his case because much of the proceedings concerning the government's efforts to deport him have taken place on paper, in the lengthy briefs lawyers on each side have filed.
The chance to talk to Tunheim apparently helped Jama reach a key decision — giving his lawyers permission to ask the Supreme Court to review his underlying case.
Jama brought that case in June 2001, challenging the legality of the government's plan to deport him to Somalia because that country has no functioning government to consent to his return. In March, Tunheim issued an order restraining the government from removing Jama. A divided panel of the 8th Circuit, however, ruled in the government's favor in May, finding that immigration officers did have the authority to deport him to Somalia.
Only a handful of Minnesota Somalis, including Jama, face deportation because they had filed petitions challenging their deportation before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle issued a nationwide ban barring further deportations until Somalia has a government that can receive them.
BY TODD NELSON
Pioneer Press
Posted on Tuesday 28th October at 17:46:08 Djibouti Rejoins Somali Peace Effort
NAIROBI, Oct. 28 — Djibouti has rejoined a committee managing peace talks for Somalia, raising hopes of improved cooperation in the region to reunite the shattered country, Kenya's foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Djibouti withdrew from the committee it shared with Kenya and Ethiopia last month, saying more than a year of Kenyan-hosted talks had only served to stoke tensions between Somalia's rival faction leaders.
Kenya said Djibouti reversed its decision after a regional body supervising the talks, the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), agreed at a summit in Uganda last week to expand the committee to include Uganda, Eritrea and Sudan.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said the presence of Djibouti Foreign Minister Ali Abdi Farah at a meeting of IGAD foreign ministers in Nairobi on Tuesday to endorse the expansion of the committee was proof that Djibouti was back.
His very presence here renders null and void the earlier statements that Djibouti had left,'' Musyoka told reporters, speaking alongside Farah and other foreign ministers as a spokesman for their meeting.
Diplomats say that rifts between Somalia's neighbours over the talks reflect a broader competition for influence in Somalia between non-Arab Ethiopia and Arab states such as Egypt. Djibouti is a member of the Arab league.
Kalonzo said Sudan was still deliberating on whether to join the committee managing the Somalia peace talks. IGAD groups Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.
Posted on Tuesday 28th October at 17:43:44 Somaliland Tightens Security after Killings
HARGEISA, Somalia, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Officials in the breakaway enclave of Somaliland urged foreign aid workers and U.N. staff on Tuesday to advise them of their travel plans as they tighten security in the area following a spate of killings.
Four international aid workers have been murdered in Somalia over the past six weeks, three of them in Somaliland, which has enjoyed relative stability since declaring independence from the rest of the anarchic Horn of Africa country in 1991.
Somaliland officials, anxious to repair their territory's image as a safe place to work, said they had established a new security coordination office and that foreign agencies should advise them of any travel plans.
"What is important and imperative is to take the necessary precautionary measures to prevent such crimes from happening again," Ismail Aden Osman, the interior minister of the breakaway enclave, told reporters in the town of Hargeisa.
However, the security plan outlined by Osman said local police lacked "sufficient transport, trained personnel and communications equipment to provide all necessary precautions."
Somaliland, which covers northwestern Somalia and is not recognised internationally, last week ordered all foreigners without permits to leave within 45 days as part of a security crackdown after the murder of a British couple on October 20.
Police have arrested 13 people in connection with the shooting of the couple, who were teachers.
An Italian aid worker was also shot earlier this month outside a tuberculosis clinic she founded in Somaliland. A Kenyan working for a religious charity was killed in southern Somalia last month.
Posted on Tuesday 28th October at 17:41:23 Clan Clashes in Somalia Claim 27 Mogadishu, Somalia
At least 27 people were killed and 45 others wounded when fighting erupted between the militia of two clans in central Somalia, local elders contacted by field radio said on Tuesday.
The fighting, which broke out on Monday, pitted members of the Marehan clan against their Dir rivals in Herale village of Abudwaaq district, which is situated in the Galgudud region.
"Fourteen people were killed on Monday and early Tuesday, before the fighting subsided, but eight others died when the fighting resumed after midday on Tuesday," elder Ahmed Mohamed Aden said by radio.
"Five others died when their vehicle hit a landmine on Tuesday near the contested Herale village, but so far we don't know who planted the landmine," Aden added.
The clashes are said to have been triggered by animosities over the murder in April of a prominent Marehan elder by people believed to be Dir clansmen.
Several hundred people have fled Herale since the renewed fighting broke out, local elder Abdulrashid Hassan said.
The elders have failed to broker a ceasefire and both sides were said to be regrouping, elders and militia officials said.
Somalia has been without a nationally recognised government and torn apart by factional warfare since the collapse of president Mohammed Siad Barre's regime in 1991.
A reconciliation conference aimed at restoring a national administration in the Horn of Africa country has been going on in neighbouring Kenya since October last year. -- Sapa-AFP
Posted on Tuesday 28th October at 17:39:36 Somalia to Use Museveni Expertise for Peace
SOMALI leaders are excited that President Yoweri Museveni will help speed up the restoration of peace in their country, reports Henry Mukasa.
Museveni, who took over the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)chair last week, is the new facilitator of Somali peace talks.
Dr Yusuf Omar Al Azhani, a member of the leaders committee at the Nairobi peace talks, said, "He (Museveni) is experienced. He is a hero. We are going to take the process that Uganda took so that our country is re-established."
Omar, also the legal adviser to the president of Puntland state, together with Lt. Gen. Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, Mowlid Maan Mohamoud and Abdalla derow Isaq were addressing a press conference at Hotel Equitoria in Kampala on Saturday.
They were part of the delegation that attended the ministerial council that heralded the IGAD summit. Morgan is the chairman of the leaders committee at the Somali talks in Kenya. Isaq is its speaker and Mowlid is the chairman of the Somali Africans Muki Organisation (SAMO).
The Somali peace process has completed two stages so far, the cessation of hostilities protocol signed on October 27, 2002 and the nomination of reconciliation committees mid last month.
The 820 delegates meeting in Kenya are now grappling with the most delicate stage of selection of MPs, election of the chairman of the national assembly and a president of a government of national unity.
Somalia has not had an internationally recognised government since dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
The country's interim president, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, who is recognised by IGAD and attended the summit in Kampala last week stormed out of the talks recently, protesting IGAD involvement.
But the delegates want IGAD heads of state to woo him back to the peace table.
"Somalis have suffered a lot. We are peace loving people and want to come back to the fold of IGAD as a responsible government," Omar said.
Copyright © 2003 New Vision.
Posted on Tuesday 28th October at 17:38:23 Peace Process Hits Snag As TNG Accuses
The president of the Transitional National Government (TNG), Dr Abdiqassim Salat Hassan, on Friday accused Kenya and Ethiopia of derailing the Somali peace process.
"The Transitional National Government of Somalia would like to share with your excellencies the disappointing news that the Somali reconciliation conference going on for the past one year in Kenya has totally collapsed," Abdiqassim told delegates at the 10th summit of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
He blamed the IGAD technical committee - which has been responsible for facilitating the peace talks between the warring Somali factions - for the collapse, asserting that IGAD had displayed "neglectful behaviour" in allowing Ethiopia to have too strong a hand in setting the agenda for the talks.
Having lobbied unsuccessfully for Ethiopia's exclusion from the talks, Abdiqassim said: "The rules of the conference were violated to the extent that the TNG's official delegates became a minority and were overshadowed by more than a dozen factions created and supported by Ethiopia."
He accused Kenya of failing to honour its commitment to prepare an "all-inclusive" meeting that would "bring on board those factions who chose not to attend previous talks".
He added that both Ethiopia and Kenya were trying to divide the country, "for fear that a strong, united Somalia might resurrect territorial claims against them".
At the heart of Abdiqassim's complaint is the fact that IGAD leaders honoured the requests of separatists in Somalia's northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland to exclude them from the Somali peace process.
"Contrary to the wishes of the Somali people and their political leaders, the technical committee has unilaterally decided to exclude the northern regions from the conference, something which implies that the northern regions are no longer part of Somalia," he said.
A communiqué delivered at the end of the IGAD conference by Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo called for an urgent meeting of IGAD leaders on Tuesday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to discuss ways of resuscitating the peace process. It also said the Somali reconciliation conference needed to be expanded to include the Djibouti, Eritrean, Ethiopian and Ugandan heads of state and the chairman of the African Union.
Somalia has been without a functioning government since the fall of Muhammad Siyad Barre's regime in 1991.
The TNG was supposed to be inclusive of all Somalia's various clans but is opposed by a number of warlords, some of whom are allegedly supported by Ethiopia. Somalia and Ethiopia have been involved in hostilities relating to a border dispute that has existed since 1964.
Ethiopia accuses the TNG of harbouring Islamist terrorists, such as members of Al-Ittihad al-Islami, hostile to the largely Coptic Christian country, and believed to have been responsible for a bomb attack in Addis Ababa in 1996. In turn, Somalia accuses Ethiopia of backing warlords opposed to the current Somali peace process and of offering support to separatist factions in Somaliland and Puntland which are trying to break away from Mogadishu.
Posted on Monday 27th October at 18:16:23 Judge Delays Deportation of Somali Man
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim on Sunday postponed for one day the deportation of Somali refugee Keyse Jama after a last-minute hearing in which an emotional Jama asked for an emergency stay.
The case is expected to go before the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today, said LouJean Gleason, Tunheim's scheduling clerk. Jama told court officials that if he loses his appeal, he will return, as ordered, if he is allowed to go to a Somali city of his choosing, Gleason said.
Jama's original destination, chosen by federal authorities, is a dangerous region with which he claims to be unfamiliar, she said.
Jama, 24, lost his legal residency status after pleading guilty to a 1999 assault. He has served his sentence, but he is being held in the Rush City jail as his deportation case winds through the federal court system.
Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said Jama was just moments from boarding a plane for Somalia when Tunheim called the Bloomington office of the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and held Sunday's hearing by telephone.
Last April, Tunheim ordered immigration officials not to deport Jama because of the chaos in Somalia. Since then, another federal judge in Seattle has put a hold on all Somali deportation orders pending more legal challenges.
Posted on Monday 27th October at 18:14:32 Arrests over Teacher Killings
Up to 13 people have reportedly been detained in connection with the deaths of two British teachers in the horn of Africa.
Headmaster Richard Eyeington, originally of Pelton Fell, County Durham and his wife Enid were killed last Monday by unidentified gunmen in Somalia's self-declared republic of Somaliland.
The president of the breakaway region, Dahir Riyaleh Kahin, was quoted as telling a local radio station the 13 suspects were mostly security guards at their school, Sheikh Secondary.
On Friday Mr Kahin's administration offered a $10,000 (£6,000) reward for information leading to the capture of the British couple's killers.
It also ordered foreigners without permits to leave within 45 days in a security crackdown following a series of high-profile killings.
Aid worker death
The couple were shot through the window of their apartment by unidentified gunmen in Sheikh, 140 kilometres (87 miles) northeast of Hargeisa, the region's capital.
Their deaths came after Italian aid worker Annalena Tonelli was killed on 5 October.
That attack took place in the grounds of a hospital she ran in Borama, 125 kilometres (78 miles) northwest of Hargeisa.
Mr Kahin also told Radio Hargeisa two people were being questioned about Ms Tonelli's murder, AP news agency reported.
Mr Kahin has condemned the recent killings of foreign aid workers as a planned attempt to destabilise the country.
He has appealed for international help to tackle what he described as a terrorist threat to Somaliland.
Correspondents say the region had previously developed a reputation for being relatively secure.
Final challenge
The Eyeingtons had worked in Africa for 32 years.
They joined SOS Children's Villages in June 1995, working in Swaziland, before moving to Somaliland in September 2002, where Mr Eyeington became head teacher.
Mrs Eyeington worked as a teacher at the school.
Their mission to the war-torn country was to be their last challenge before retirement.
The Foreign Office advises against all travel to southern Somalia and to the Sool and Sanaag parts of Somaliland.
Posted on Sunday 26th October at 18:10:56 Accused Al-Qaeda Money Man in Legal Limbo
MOGADISHU: The former Somali refugee had it all: a group of international companies with millions of American dollars in revenues and a handsome home on the Persian Gulf. Then the U.S. government froze his assets and accused him of being al-Qaeda's main money mover.
Two years later, Ahmed Nur Ali Jim'ale has been deported from the United Arab Emirates to Somalia, his al-Barakaat Group of Companies' US$8.5 million remains frozen and he's caught in limbo, not charged with a crime, but not cleared of funding Osama bin Laden's bombers either.
The case of Jim'ale, who claimed his innocence in an Associated Press interview - his first since his deportation last month - is an example of how the U.S. government has used powerful administrative tools since Sept. 11 to freeze more than 1,400 accounts with roughly US$136 million in assets belonging to suspected figures from al-Qaeda and other groups, U.S. officials say.
Jim'ale's business was built on transferring money around the world. He helped Somalis overseas to send money cheaply to relatives at home, doing this by combining many small remittances into bulk transfers. This saved money, but the large amounts involved - and the failure to identify individuals making the transfers - raised the suspicions of U.S. authorities.
The U.S. Treasury Department has placed Jim'ale, two of his managers and all his registered businesses on a list of people and organizations banned from making financial transactions with the United States. The department sent the list to the United Nations and now any government, corporation or individual doing business with Jim'ale faces severe sanctions or criminal charges.
Neither Jim'ale, nor any of his employees have been charged with a terror-related crime. Jim'ale and his top managers all deny they have had any dealings with terrorists, and Jim'ale insists he never met bin Laden.
"We cooperated with the FBI and Treasury, and we answered all of their questions, and they had all the data. They checked all of that," said Jim'ale, who wears a traditional Muslim cap and has streaked his beard and hair orange with henna in traditional Somali fashion. "We want to go to court; otherwise all of this needs to be lifted."
A Treasury official said the criminal investigation into al-Barakaat is continuing, but seizing the company's assets was an end in itself.
"The action to block the assets of the al-Barakaat network was a direct attempt to cut off that network and the use of that network by al-Qaeda to move funds and to raise funds," the official said in Washington.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Jim'ale had met with investigators and added that he must prove to the U.S. government - through an appeal process - that he shouldn't be on the list.
The Treasury Department alleges Jim'ale talked with, worked with and helped bin Laden. The al-Barakaat network financed al-Ittihad al-Islami, a Somali Islamic group on a list of organizations believed to have links to bin Laden, the official said. Israeli and U.S. officials suspect al-Ittihad was involved in the attack last Nov. 28 on a hotel outside Mombasa, Kenya, that killed 11 Kenyans and three Israelis.
When the U.S. government freezes assets, it doesn't have to publicly detail its evidence findings if that would compromise classified materials or intelligence sources. But such evidence often is shown to other countries to convince them to add people or groups to their own terror-financier lists.
Nearly two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush accused al-Barakaat of helping al-Qaeda transfer US$25 million using a traditional, largely unregulated Islamic money system called hawala.
At about that time, 62 people and organizations were placed on the U.S. Treasury's Terrorists Exclusion List, including 47 associated with Jim'ale's al-Barakaat Group of Companies, then the largest corporation in Somalia.
Posted on Sunday 26th October at 18:08:51 Boost for Somalia Peace Bid
Regional leaders urge the Africa Union to facilitate reconciliation
Leaders of Igad member countries have resolved to expand the Somalia Peace Process technical committee.
The committee, led by Kenya, will now include Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan.
In a joint communiqu issued at the end of the summit in Kampala, the leaders appealed to the African Union to facilitate reconciliation in Somalia.
President Mwai Kibaki, who attended the 10th Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) ordinary summit in Kampala, jetted back into the country yesterday.
His plane touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 12.45 pm and on hand to welcome him were Vice-President and minister for Home Affairs Moody Awori, ministers Raphael Tuju and John Michuki and the Chief of General Staff, Gen Joseph Kibwana.
He inspected a guard of honour mounted by a detachment of the Kenya Air Force before being entertained briefly by choirs and groups of traditional dancers.
In the communiqu , the summit noted the progress in the Sudan peace process, particularly the signing of the Machakos protocol, the memorandum of understanding on the cessation of hostilities and the agreed aspects of power and wealth sharing.
The summit endorsed the implementation plan of the Igad conference on prevention and combating of terrorism.
The communiqu , read by Uganda’s second Deputy Prime Minister, Mr James Wapakabulo, emphasised that the region was safe for tourists and investors and called for the lifting of travel advisories against member countries.
The Igad leaders committed themselves to stemming the flow of illegal weapons.
Kenya will host the next summit in October 2004.
Meanwhile, President Kibaki on Friday held talks with the Norwegian minister for International Development, Ms Hilde Frafjord Johnson, who called on him at his Hotel in Kampala.
Ms Johnson briefed the President on the steps her government was taking to normalise relations with Kenya.
Later, President Kibaki and his wife Lucy attended a state banquet hosted by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at the Nile Hotel, Kampala.
By TONY KAGO
and PPS
Posted on Sunday 26th October at 18:06:20 East African Leaders Give New Impetus to Somalia Peace Process
KAMPALA (AFP) - East African heads of state from the seven-member Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) announced plans to kick-start stalled reconciliation talks for Somalia.
The measures were unveiled at the end of a one-day IGAD summit in Kampala, where Somalia's barely recognised interim president, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, reiterated his rejection of the Nairobi-based talks with their current format and venue.
"The summit has decided to expand the technical committee now renamed the facilitation committee on the Somali Peace Process to include (all member states of IGAD)," said a communique read out by Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo.
IGAD comprises the governments of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Somalia, which has no universally recognised government, is nominally also a member state.
Until now, the technical committee mediating the Somali talks only included so-called frontline states: Kenya, Ethiopia and, until it walked out of the talks this month, Djibouti.
The new, more inclusive technical committee is scheduled to meet at ministerial level in Nairobi on October 28.
The summit asked the African Union (AU) to assist IGAD in the Somali reconciliation process.
It also called on AU Chairman Joachim Chissano, the president of Mozambique, to help in an increasingly tense impasse in the peace process betweeen Ethiopia and Eritrea.
At the end of two years of devastating war, the neighbouring Horn of Africa states agreed in a peace accord signed in December 2000 to give a neutral commission responsibility for deciding the precise path of their common frontier and to respect this commission's ruling as final and binding.
But Ethiopia has rejected the commission's decision and as a result the crucual process of physically marking out the border has been repeatedly delayed amid increasingly terse pronouncements from Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Also discussed by the IGAD summiteers -- presidents Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, Omar al-Beshir of Sudan, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi -- were issues related to terrorism and the flow into the region of illicit arms.
Djibouti and Eritrea were represented by their foreign ministers.
Posted on Saturday 25th October at 18:10:23 Somaliland Killings 'Terror Acts'
The recent killings of three Europeans in the self-declared republic of Somaliland have been blamed by the president on global terror networks.
President Dahir Riyale Kahin asked for help from the international community, which does not recognise Somaliland's independence from Somalia.
He was speaking to the BBC Somali service following Thursday's decision to expel all illegal imigrants.
Two British teachers and an Italian nun have been killed this month.
In 1991, the former British protectorate of Somaliland declared unilateral independence from Somalia, which is deeply divided by clan fighting.
Somaliland had been more peaceful than the rest of Somalia.
Passport problems
Interior Minister Ishmail Aden Osman blamed the killings on "other Somalis".
"They are destablising our security and the peace that the country has," he told the the BBC Focus on Africa programme.
These "other Somalis" will be expelled, along with Ethiopians and Kenyans, he said.
Ten people have now been arrested in connection with Monday's shooting of British teachers Richard and Enid Eyeington.
Two more have been arrested over the killing of renowned Italian aid worker Annalena Tonelli earlier this month.
Because Somaliland is not recognised internationally, most Somalilanders travel on Somali passports, says Abdisalam Mohamed, from the BBC Somali service.
But President Riyale said this would not be a problem.
"In Somaliland, we know each other, we know who is a Somalilander," he said.
The BBC reporter says this means anyone who is not one of the clans originally from Somaliland is likely to be expelled.
Posted on Saturday 25th October at 18:07:45 UN Brings Group of Somalis Home From Ethiopian Camp
The United Nations refugee agency said today it had returned a group of Somalis to their homeland from a camp in Ethiopia as part of a voluntary repatriation programme.
A spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva said the convoy of 205 Somalis had arrived back in Somaliland after a five-hour journey.
The group may be the last to leave the refugee camp of Hartisheik in eastern Ethiopia before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins this weekend. Another 1,700 refugees are expected to return to Somaliland, in Somalia's northwest, by December.
Their departure means the Hartisheik camp, once the world's biggest, is near closure - 15 years after it was set up for refugees fleeing Somaliland's war of secession with the rest of Somalia.
In the early 1990s, more than 600,000 refugees were estimated to be living in the camp, which lies in harsh, semi-desert territory near the border between Ethiopia and Somalia.
This week's returning refugees were given a repatriation grant of 320 birr ($40) and food supplies to help with their return to Burao and Berbera, which are just outside the Somaliland regional capital of Hargeisa. The UNHCR's spokesperson said refugees have been returning to Somaliland since the late 1990s, when the situation there improved.
Once the 1,700 others return to Somaliland, a group of 600 remaining refugees in Hartisheik will be transferred to other sites in Ethiopia. They are believed to be mainly from southern Somalia, which remains unsafe, according to the UNHCR. Hartisheik will then be closed.
Posted on Saturday 25th October at 18:02:11 UN Will Team With Regional Group on Peacemaking in Somalia
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today offered the world body's collaboration with East Africa's Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), meeting to focus on its quest for peace in Somalia and the Sudan, and said the Security Council would investigate violations of the arms embargo against Sudan.
In a message read by one of his special advisers, Mohamed Sahnoun, to the meeting in Kampala, Uganda, Mr. Annan said the progress in peace building in Sudan "paves the way for a successful completion of talks on many other matters, including power- and wealth-sharing."
"With the adoption on 10 October of a presidential statement by the Security Council, the United Nations now has the mandate and responsibility to start preparatory work in search of a peace agreement," he said. The UN would also do its utmost to gather maximum international support for the implementation of a future peace accord, he added.
By contrast, since the signing of Somalia's Eldoret Declaration, saying opposing parties would stop fighting, "serious hostilities have hindered the delivery of essential humanitarian and development assistance," Mr. Annan said.
"I urge Somali leaders to honour their commitment to ensuring the delivery of such assistance, as well as the safety of international and national aid workers."
IGAD's members are Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, and Sudan. They were meeting today and tomorrow in Kampala, Uganda.
"The (UN) Security Council is deeply concerned about the (Sudan's) persistent cycle of violence and the continued flow of weapons and ammunition supplies and has called on all States and other actors to comply scrupulously with the arms embargo. It has also decided to re-establish the Panel of Experts to further investigate violations of the arms embargo," Mr. Annan said.
Posted on Friday 24th October at 21:03:54 Rome Honours 13 Somali Immigrants Who Died at Sea
ROME, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The coffins of 13 Somali immigrants who died at sea in a desperate attempt to reach Europe's shores were laid out in front of Rome's city hall for hundreds of mourners to pay their last respects on Friday.
The men and women, whose names are not known, died of cold and hunger as their boat drifted on the Mediterranean. Survivors of the nightmarish 16-day voyage, rescued last Sunday by Italian coastguards, said about 50 more corpses had been dumped at sea.
The tragedy has traumatised many Italians and Rome responded with a formal ceremony to honour the dead in Piazza del Campidoglio, a vast square that was once the heart of the Roman empire and later re-designed by Michelangelo.
"I am crying for my brothers," said one Somali mourner, who did not wish to be named.
About 150 Somali immigrants and several hundred other mourners stood in sombre silence as 13 hearses arrived one by one and city officials placed the coffins on a raised platform.
A Muslim prayer was played on loudspeakers as the Somali flag, a white star on a light blue background, was laid on each of the coffins. Then mourners stepped forward to lay flowers.
"I came to express compassion with these people who fled their homeland in search of a better life only to find suffering and death," said Antonia Forenza, an elderly Roman woman, crying and making the sign of the cross.
Many Somali women covered their faces in their headscarves, while others held high their national flag.
The mayor of Rome, the interior minister and religious leaders including the head of Rome's Muslim community and the city's chief rabbi were among those attending the ceremony.
"We feel as though these Somali men and women who died on a floating wreck were our fellow citizens," Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni said in a speech.
At least 12 other African immigrants have died in two other shipwrecks off Italy this past week, prompting an outpouring of emotion and an appeal for Europe to give immigrants a dignified welcome from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
His government has enacted tough legislation to crack down on both illegal immigrants and on the people-traffickers, who charge hundreds or thousands of euros to deliver them to Italy's porous shoreline.
In the first six months of the year the number of illegal immigrants landing in Italy fell to 8,881, some 40 percent fewer than in the same period last year.
Posted on Friday 24th October at 21:02:38 East Africa Summit Aims to Revitalize Somali Peace
KAMPALA (Reuters) - African leaders trying to rescue faltering Somalia peace talks pledged Friday to speed up efforts to end a host of conflicts in northeast Africa.
Seven states from northeast and east Africa ended a regional summit in Uganda focused on the Somali peace talks and growing tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
"In the next year I need to concentrate on...(having) to complete and consolidate the peace process in Sudan, Somalia, northern Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea," said Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the new chairman of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) which groups Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The meeting welcomed the progress at Sudanese peace talks, visited this week by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and urged the government and rebels to conclude a peace deal by the end of this year.
The leaders said they had resolved that IGAD would take a leading role in tackling a renewed border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The two countries fought a 1998-2000 war over their frontier that sharpened tensions in the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia has objected to a new border drawn up by an independent commission set up under their 2000 Algiers peace deal, drawing criticism from Eritrea.
"The summit...decided that the IGAD Chairman and the African Union Chairman be engaged in the implementation of the Algiers agreement," a statement read at the end of the meeting said.
The leaders said they would seek to revive faltering Somali peace talks and rescue the country from 12 years of anarchy.
Somali peace talks held under the auspices of IGAD in Kenya have suffered setbacks with the withdrawal of key faction leaders in recent weeks and Djibouti's decision to quit a committee steering the talks which included Kenya and Ethiopia.
IGAD agreed to expand the steering committee to include Eritrea, Uganda and Sudan and directed the members to meet at ministerial level next Tuesday to remove obstacles in the talks.
Museveni urged Somalia's leaders to look to the future of the impoverished country of seven million, which has defied numerous reconciliation initiatives.
"The actors are wearing outdated glasses and are unable to see the opportunities of markets and industrialization around them," Museveni told the assembled heads of state.
"The leaders of the Somali factions need to do away with the outdated glasses and see the opportunities around them."
The presidents of Eritrea and Djibouti were absent from the summit, which ended a day ahead of schedule.
DIFFICULTIES
Somalia collapsed into chaos after the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. The year-long IGAD talks in Kenya represent the 14th attempt in a decade to restore peace.
Ugandan officials said IGAD heads of state were also expected to discuss efforts to combat militants in the region but there was no mention of it in the final communique.
Washington views the region as a potential haven for al Qaeda agents, blamed for 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in November last year.
But the last IGAD summit in Khartoum in January last year failed to agree specific measures to combat militants.
Posted on Friday 24th October at 21:01:15 Foreigners without Permits to Leave Within 45 Days
The President of Somaliland, self-proclaimed independent northern region of Somalia, ordered all foreigners without regular permits to leave the country within 45 days.
Somaliland officials said the measure was prompted following the murder of four international aid workers in Somalia during the past six weeks, including the Italian Annalena Tonelli who was killed last 5 October and an elderly British couple gunned down last Monday.
They were beastly acts aimed at weakening our security, peace and stability, which are our greatest assets,'' said Dahir Rayale Kahin, the leader of Somaliland, a northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in 1991. Last Tuesday, Kahin blamed the murders on a ‘conspiracy by outsiders’ to discredit his republic, which is yet to be recognised by the international community.
Insurgents from neighbouring countries are pouring into our towns and cities,'' he told a news conference in the territory's main town of Hargeisa, adding that foreign nationals without valid permits had to leave within 45 days.
Somaliland will not be a haven for criminals and to avert this, we should be ready to fight them,'' Kahin added. Meanwhile, police sources said they arrested six suspects in connection with last Monday’s killings of Richard Eyeington, 62, who was headmaster at the Sheikh Secondary School, and his wife Enid, 61. Both worked for the Austria-based non-governmental organisation
‘SOS Kinderdorf International’ (the umbrella organisation for SOS Children’s Villages) in the town of Sheikh (about 50km south of Berbera).
An award-winning Italian aid worker, Annalena Tonelli, 60, was murdered in Borama earlier this month, shattering Somaliland's hard-won reputation as a haven for peace in the Horn of Africa country. Oyaw Abdiwahid, a Kenyan working for a religious charity, was also murdered while travelling to a project site in the Gedo region of Somalia on September 15.
Copyright © MISNA
Posted on Thursday 23rd October at 20:47:12 Justice for Somalilanders Too
Last week, I wrote about the death of Dr Annalena Tonelli in Borama, whose murder shook and galvanised the government into a commitment that her assassin would be given a speedy and exemplary punishment. Senior officials who attended her memorial service in Hargeisa included the Vice-President, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Interior.
Away from the spotlight, the family of Mubarak Abdi Ali, an 18-year old stabbed to death by a fellow student, Jibril Mohamoud Mohamed, on 19 March in the town of Sheikh, are mourning his death and battling for justice. They are angry and distressed that Jibril was freed at the behest of an influential lobby led by the Vice-President himself, Ahmed Yusuf Yassin, supported by the Attorney-General, Hussein Abdi Qaalib, the very people whose job it is to uphold law and order. It is little wonder that the government's promise to render justice in the Tonelli case is regarded with cynicism in Somaliland, as intended largely to pacify the international community. In a written statement sent to the newspaper, Jamhuuriya, Jibril's family wrote: "Neither the government nor justice is on our side. We are therefore asking the public of Somaliland to assist us and thereby promote justice and champion the law." It is a simple plea from the heart. But more than that, it is a powerful reminder of what can happen to all of us when we allow justice to become politicised and when we lose sight of our core values as a society. This is a complex case, but it illuminates some of the weakest aspects of the criminal justice system, including its vulnerability to political pressures. It highlights the menace to peace and stability when we short-circuit Islamic law and community justice.
I met Mubarak's mother and brother in a settlement on the outskirts of Hargeisa known as Kilinka Shanaad. His mother, Shoon Mirre Magan, spoke tearfully of her son's death and what she described as a conspiracy of injustice against her family. Alerted to the murder, she found Mubarak's corpse in a police vehicle outside the local station. She refused to bury him until his killer, Jibril, was also executed, a custom that has been followed in Somaliland since time immemorial.
To many outside Somaliland, and to many of us here, the death of another young man would not be regarded as justice, although it is in line with existing legislation. It matters nonetheless that the case be handled in accordance with the law and that the family concerned be treated with due respect and sympathy. While no one disputes that Jibril was responsible for the murder of Mubarak, his family connections have allowed him special treatment.
Jibril's father, Mohamoud Mohamed Handule, is the head of the clan, Deerayahan, to which the victim's family also belongs. He is known as chief aaqil, a position of responsibility that has complicated the case. His first response was to send his son away. A few hours after the murder, he had his son transferred to Berbera and put his house in Sheikh under guard. Mubarak's family followed Jibril to Berbera, taking the body of their son with them, to make it clear that the burial would not take place until his murderer shared his fate. They agreed to the burial in Berbera the next day after they had been assured that custom would be followed and Jibril indeed would be put to death. He was imprisoned and Mubarak's family returned to Sheikh where they were struck by a second tragedy when their 25-year old son, who had previously been in good health, fell sick and died on 27 April. They blame the shock of Mubarak's sudden and brutal death.
They received a further shock when they found out, by chance, that Jibril had been released from prison. They were even more bewildered when they were told that he had been liberated on the orders of the Vice-President and the Attorney-General. They travelled to Hargeisa to discover why. Each court, institution and individual they visited and questioned shifted the blame elsewhere, allowing the family to accumulate a stack of documentary evidence that lays bare this sorry tale. Aware that they had been betrayed by their own clan leaders, by the courts and by the government, they went to the newspapers in a last ditch effort.
The story begins with a letter written on 1 April by Jibril's father, Mohamoud Mohamed Handuleh, and signed before a public notary, in which he agrees that his son should be put to death, "in accordance with the law, and to satisfy the family in mourning." On 25 August, however, 50 men who described themselves as " the elders, the educated, the religious leaders and the youth of the Deerayahan clan" signed a letter addressed to the President, the Vice-President, the Minister of the Interior, the Attorney-General and other officials, saying that the clan had agreed that the young man should not be killed, and had decided to settle the matter through the payment of compensation, one of the three options-the others being death and forgiveness-provided by Islamic law. They argued that 18 other murder cases within the clan had been resolved similarly, and that the imposition of the death penalty in the case of this youth would only harden attitudes and revive claims demanding the death penalty in these past cases. Therefore, they said, given their age and the fact that it was not a premeditated murder, but rather an accident, and "in order to keep the peace within the clan", they were asking for "the agreement" to be implemented.
The problem is there had been no such "agreement", contrary to Islamic law, traditional justice and common sense. But the men were not deterred; instead, they launched a campaign to win over the government, the judiciary and influential figures. There was a flurry of letters, each one referring to the other, citing Islamic jurisprudence and Somali custom and reinforcing the same erroneous message, namely that the two families had reconciled and had opted for settlement. On 23 August, the chairman of the Sheikh local council, Hassan Ali Mohamed, and his 12 colleagues, said they took heed of the appeals from the clan leaders "in order to preserve the peace within the clan itself." On 28 August, three Ministers-Idris Ibrahim Abdi, the Minister of Livestock, Hassan Haji Mohamoud, the Minister of Education and Mohamoud Haji Warsame, the deputy Minister of Agriculture- signed a joint letter. The next day, the President's legal advisor, Mohamed Haji Saeed Abdi, intervened. The Vice President himself weighed in on 6 September, underlining in his letter the importance of respecting the wishes in the different appeals, "to safeguard peace." And on 7 September, the Attorney-General, saying that he was fulfilling the Vice-President's instructions, ordered the courts to facilitate the "agreement", in practical terms to release the prisoner and nullify any pending legal procedures.
The widespread concern to spare the life of a young man of 18 should be taken seriously. Jibril's death would not bring Mubarak back to life, and would plunge his family into grief. The responsibility of Jibril's father, as his father and as chief aaqil, was to persuade the victim's family by way of consultation and gain their confidence and consent. Instead, he side-lined and cornered them; he denied them a voice and deprived them of their dignity, turning them into enemies. He has forfeited their trust, and very likely that of many other people in his clan and beyond. If, because of his personal involvement in the case, he found it impossible to carry out his duties appropriately, it ought to have been possible for other elders in the clan to act as intermediaries. Customary justice, in Somali society and elsewhere, has been seen as capable of satisfying demands for justice and encouraging reconciliation because of its legitimacy and sense of fair play, both of which are compromised when the victims' voices and wishes are ignored.
The Attorney-General, in particular, has played a dubious role. It is not his task to please the Vice-President, but rather to ensure that the laws of the land are respected, by the powerful, as well as the less fortunate. It is also astonishing to note that Jibril was freed by the Court of Appeal, when he had never been tried by a lower court. If indeed the Attorney-General opposes the death penalty in the interests of human rights and justice, he should back amendments to legislation; the selective pardoning of individuals is no substitute.
As for the argument, used by all involved, that setting Jibril free will enhance peace, peace is not borne from injustice. The history of Somaliland itself bears witness to this self-evident truth. And certainly the victim's family is not convinced. In a letter written on 10 September, Mubarak's uncle, Mohamoud Ali Bulaale, had this to say:
We want to tell all the respected people who wrote various letters that you have committed a grave error against peace, generally and with regard to the specific locale, when the accused was released in a casual manner from Berbera prison, since we had not reached an agreement with his family, and in the absence of a trial in which he was declared innocent of the charges, a trial which should have been held. His release has caused us great anguish. This is the way we see it. There is a plan to cause more trouble, even greater than the disturbance provoked by the previous murder, which will, as a result, jeopardise peace. The people behind this intended to turn us against each other, at the very time when there were talks between us and the elders of the family of the accused. We are therefore requesting that urgent action be taken about this matter.
He concluded by saying that Jibril should be returned to prison and await trial. "Otherwise, we will interpret the response of those who favour another course of action as destructive and they alone will be responsible for the consequences." Mubarak's mother was more blunt. "When our own relatives have turned their backs on us, and when the two families live a stone's throw from each other, the only option was a vicious cycle of knifing each other. We left Sheikh to avoid that and to seek justice. If something is not done, no-one should blame us when we take matters into our own hands."
By:Rakiya A. Omaar
Copyright © 2003 African Rights.
Posted on Thursday 23rd October at 20:40:31 Dilka Dadka Ajaanibka ah
6-dii Bishan aynu ku jirno ee Oktoobar ayuun bay ahayd markii magaalada Boorame toogasho lagu dilay
gabadh Talyaani oo 63 jir ahayd, ahaydna hawl wadeen samofal ka waday Somaliland horseedna ka ahayd
Mashruuca Cudurka Qaaxada ee Boorama, mashruuca Indhaha ee Dhakhaatiirta Kukuyo indhaha ugu qalayeen muddo laba sannadood ah lixdii bilood mar loogu qalayay dad tiradoodu ku dhawdahay 3000 qof, dadkaasi oo qaarkood muddo indho la’aayeen, balse markii qalliinka loo sameeyay indhaha ku kala qaaday Buurta Saw oo dhinaca Koonfureed kaga beegan Cisbitaalka Boorama, waxa kale oo ay haweenaydaasi bud dhig u ahayd aasaaska dugsiga Dhagoolayaasha Boorama, waxaana ay ahayd Annalina shakhsi qaali ah oo u go’day hawlaha Aadminimo.
Haddaba, iyada oo laba toddobaad oo qudhi ka soo wareegtay dilka Annalena ayaa dugsiga Sare ee Sheekh oo ay maamusho hay’ad Caalami ah oo la yidhaahdo “SOS” toogasho lagu dilay maamulihii dugsiga Mr. Eyeing Rechard iyo haweenaydii uu qabay oo u kala dhashay dalalka Boqortooyada Ingiriiska iyo Swaziland, iyaga oo ku jira qolkii ay degganaayeen oo ku yaala xayndaabka dugsiga sare ee Sheekh Abaaro 8:30 cawaysnimo oo ku beegan wakhtigii Ms. Annalena lagu toogtay Barxadda Cisbitaalka Boorama.
Dugsigaas Sare ee Sheekh oo ay haatan ku jiraan boqol arday oo ah ardaydii ugu saraysay Imtixaankii dugsiyda dhexe ee Somaliland, iyada oo waxbarashadooda, Cuntadooda iyo Hoygoodaba ay xil qaaday hay’adda Samofalka ee SOS, sannad walbana loogu tallo galay inay ku xeroodaan Ardayda ugu saraysa Imtixaanaadka dugsiyada dhexe.
Waxa isaguna uu dilkiisu bilo ka horeeyay Mr. Martin Jutzi oo u dhashay dalka Swizerland, ninkaas oo isna goor fiid ah toogasho lagu dilay Hoteelka Star ee magaalada Hargeysa hortiisa, ninkaas oo Somaliand u yimid inuu ka hirgeliyo mashruuc ganacsi oo dhinaca Diggaaga ah, isaga oo wakhtiga la dilay daadihinayay laba Carruur ah oo uu dhalay.
Waxa kale oo iyana magaalada Hargeysa goor duhur ah meel waxyar u jirtay Madaxtooyada toogasho lagu dilay nin Wasiir ku xigeenka waxbarashada hore u ahaan jiray, iyada oo ay baxsadeen dablaydii falka gaysatay.
Haddaba falalkan Axmaqnimo ee isdaba jooga ah oo lagu abaaray hawl wadeenadii ugu muhiimsanaa ee waday adeegyada guud ee Bulshada Somaliland, waxay u muuqdaan falal cadaw oo qorshaysan, iyada oo laga faa’iidaysanayo dabacsanaanta nabadgelyada, isla markaana aan dhirbaaxooyin kulul loo gaysan dadkii falalkan gaystay si ay kuwa dambe ugu cibro qaataan, isla markaana aan xukuumadda Somaliland tabaabushe buuran u gelin sidii loo sugi lahaa ammaanka Hawlwadeenada Ajanebiga.
Xilligan falalka Isdaba jooga ahi dhacayaan oo ku beegan wakhti quus caalamku ka taaganyahay shirarka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaalida, lana garawsaday maamulka iyo nabad gelyada ka jirta Somaliland ee ka tisqaaday keligeedna ay qabsatay in lagu taageero, waxaynu odhan karnaa falalkan xidhiidhsan oo looga jeedo in lagu wiiqo magaca iyo Sumcadda Somaliland. Waxaana loo baahanyahay dawlad iyo shiciba in laga hortago falalkan waxshinimada ah, baadhitaan qaran oo ballaadhanna lagu sameeyo dilalkan, si loo helo dadka falalkan daaha dabadiisa ka hagaya, isla markaa Ciidamada Ammaanka lagu xoojiyo xafiisyada iyo goobaha ay deggan yihiin hawlwadeenada Ajanebiga ahi.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Thursday 23rd October at 16:28:04 UN Restricts Staff Movement in Somaliland after Britons Killed
The United Nations yesterday restricted its staff working in the breakaway republic of Somaliland to the capital city two days after unidentified gunmen killed two British teachers working at a secondary school in the region in north-western Somalia.
"The UN has requested all staff in Somaliland to concentrate in Hargeisa and observe a 6pm curfew and has made the same recommendation to the staff of non-governmental organisations," Wendy Carson of the Somalia Aid Coordination Body said. About 50 staff are affected by the restriction.
But Carson said there had been "no talk of suspension of activities".
The bodies of Richard Eyeington, the headmaster of Sheikh Secondary School and his wife, Enid, a teacher at the school, arrived in Nairobi by plane from Hargeisa. Both worked for the Austrian charity, SOS Children's Villages.
They were shot on Monday night through the window of their apartment in Sheikh, 87 miles north-east of Hargeisa.
On October 5, Italian aid worker Annalena Tonelli was shot and killed in Borama, 78 miles north-west of Hargeisa. Oyaw Abdiwahid Ukash, a third international aid worker, was killed in the Gedo region of Somalia on September 14.
In a statement, the SACB, which coordinates activities of donors, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations working in Somalia, said the latest deaths indicate "a serious deterioration in security focused on international aid workers".
Posted on Thursday 23rd October at 16:25:33 Security Fears Rise in Somalia After Teachers Killed
NAIROBI, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Aid workers condemned the killing of a British couple working as teachers in Somalia on Wednesday and warned that a string of murders of foreign workers could engander relief work in the impoverished country.
Richard Eyeington, 62, the headmaster of the Sheikh Secondary School, and his wife Enid, 61, a teacher at the school in the town of Sheikh, were shot dead as they watched television at home in the northwestern enclave of Somaliland on Monday.
The shootings followed the separate killings of an Italian and a Kenyan, bringing the total number of murders of foreign relief workers in Somalia to four in less than six weeks.
"I am deeply shocked by their killing," the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Maxwell Gaylard, said in a statement in Nairobi.
"The deliberate targeting of aid workers threatens the lives not only of those who are trying to help the Somali people, but the Somalis themselves whose access to aid may be jeopardised if we can't do our work safely," he said.
The Somalia Aid Coordination Body, (SACB) comprised of donors, U.N. agencies and non-governmental organisations, said the deaths showed security was worsening in Somalia, which collapsed into anarchy 12 years ago.
"The SACB sees this most recent tragedy as a serious deterioration in security focused on international aid workers," the organisation said in a statement.
NO PULL-OUT
The bodies of the two British teachers were flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Wednesday as officials made arrangements to take them back to Britain.
Aid workers are particularly concerned by threats to their personnel in Somaliland, which declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 and had been regarded as relatively safe in comparison to lawless swathes of the rest of the country.
Somaliland leader Dahir Rayale Kahin said on Tuesday that the latest murders were part of a conspiracy to undermine his republic, which is not recognised internationally.
Award-winning Italian aid worker Annalena Tonelli, 60, was shot dead while visiting a hospital in Somaliland on October 5.
Children's charity SOS Kinderdorf, which employed the murdered Britons, said it was not planning to pull out.
"We are going to have to review our security procedure, of course, but we have a commitment to the people of Somalia and Somaliland, and we want to maintain that commitment," said Andrew Moir, regional management advisor of SOS Kinderdorf.
An attempted attack on the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium agency on Tuesday in Dhoble town, southern Somalia, underscored the risks to aid workers.
Abdi Hassan, the chief security officer of the agency, said three gunmen entered the compound of MSF-Belgium planning to "kill or kidnap" expatriate workers but were repulsed by the agency's security team. The gunmen were detained.
Oyaw Abdiwahid, a Kenyan working for a religious charity, was murdered in the Gedo region of Somalia on September 15. ((Writing by David Mageria, editing by Ralph Boulton; email: nairobi.newsroom@reuters.com, +254 20 330 265))
By Arnold Temple: Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited.
Posted on Wednesday 22nd October at 16:13:03 UN Envoy Condemns Aid Workers' Murder in Somalia
NAIROBI, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The U.N. official in charge of security for Somalia on Wednesday condemned the killing of two British teachers in the breakaway republic of Somaliland, the second murder of foreign aid workers in the area this month.
Richard Eyeington, 62, the headmaster of the Sheikh Secondary School, and his wife Enid, 61, a teacher at the school in the town of Sheikh, were murdered by gunmen as they watched television at home on Monday. Both worked for children's charity SOS.
Police said they had arrested six suspects, including the watchmen guarding their residence at the school.
"I am deeply shocked by their killing," United Nations official Maxwell Gaylard said in a statement in Nairobi.
"The deliberate targeting of aid workers threatens the lives not only of those who are trying to help the Somali people, but the Somalis themselves whose access to aid may be jeopardised if we can't do our work safely," he said.
Four international aid workers have been killed in Somalia over the past five weeks, three of them in Somaliland, which has enjoyed relative stability compared to the rest of the anarchic country since it declared independence in 1991.
Somaliland leader Dahir Rayale Kahin said the latest murders -- which followed the shooting of an Italian aid worker on October 5 -- were part of a conspiracy to undermine his republic, which is not recognised internationally.
Italian aid worker Annalena Tonelli, 60, was shot dead while visiting patients in the Borama General Hospital, where she had founded a tuberculosis treatment centre.
Oyaw Abdiwahid, a Kenyan working for a religious charity, was murdered while travelling to a project site in the Gedo region of Somalia on September 15.
Posted on Wednesday 22nd October at 16:11:51 Trio Were Killed With Same Firearm
A Somali MP and two other people killed on Sunday were executed by the same gun, a post-mortem has shown.
Police yesterday extracted bullet heads from the bodies of the MP, a Nairobi businessman and their driver after the post-mortems were conducted by the Chief Government Pathologist and witnessed by their relatives and friends.
It is expected that the bullet heads will be sent for ballistic tests to verify what kind of calibration they are and from what make of gun they were fired.
Detectives led by a senior Rift Valley Criminal Investigations Department officer, and the Officer Commanding Kajiado Police Division (OCPD) John Omiya are questioning relatives and friends about the businessman's movements.
Omiya said no arrests have been made and that investigations into the high-profile killing whose motive has not been established were going on.
The murder is suspected to be political because the two were close confidants of the Somali Transitional National Government (TNG) president.
The bodies of Mr Ibrahim Ali Abdulleh, businessman Hassan Abdulrahman Mohammed together with their driver were found in Ngong's Oloolua forest.
Investigations also established the duo were scheduled to meet at an unknown place on the fateful day.
According to those close to Mohammed who was a close ally of the president of the Somali, the businessman was scheduled to travel to Busia.
However, he left his Luthuli Avenue shop at about midday saying the Somali legislator had requested that they meet.
He was then seen at the Jamia Mosque where he prayed at about 4.20 pm.
No one seems to know where he went or what happened after that until their bodies were discovered the next day.
The trader's car which is believed to have been driven off by the killers has not yet been recovered.
Meanwhile, Mohammed and his driver were buried yesterday afternoon at the Kariokor Muslim cemetery amid tight security after police conducted a post mortem and extracted the bullets heads lodged in their heads.
Abdulleh's body is expected to be airlifted back to Somali today for burial. The trio's bodies were found by villagers on Sunday morning dumped by the roadside within Oloolua Forest near the Institute of Primate Research.
Copyright © 2003 The East African Standard.
Posted on Wednesday 22nd October at 16:09:33 Somali Talks Delegates Slam Djibouti's Withdrawal
NAIROBI, Oct. 21 — Leaders representing various factions at a Somali peace conference in Kenya on Tuesday condemned a decision by Djibouti to pull out of a regional mediation team for the talks.
They said the withdrawal could complicate Somali politics further, lead to more action by warlords and fresh violence.
Djibouti confirmed on Sunday it had withdrawn from a mediation committee with Somalia's other neighbours, Ethiopia and Kenya, saying it believed the talks were promoting tension in Somalia.
The sole expected outcome of this decision, after having wrecked the conference, could only be the rise of fresh complications of the political spectrum in Somalia and emergence of regional states and new warlordism which will lead to new confrontation,'' said a statement read by the committee secretary Mowlud Mahamud.
Djibouti criticised regional mediation efforts in a move diplomats said was linked to a deepening rift between non-Arab Ethiopia and Arab states like Egypt and Djibouti that are wary of Ethiopian influence in Somalia. Djibouti is a member of the Arab league.
Somalia's transitional government was formed in Djibouti in 2000, but its three-year mandate expired in August.
The leader of the defunct government, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, walked out of the conference in September with certain key warlords.
The year-long talks have yielded an agreement between some of Somalia's warring parties on a new transitional constitution, but the withdrawal of key faction leaders has dampened hopes they will form a broad-based government for Somalia, which collapsed into anarchy 12 years ago.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.
Posted on Tuesday 21st October at 17:49:01 Four Arrested Over Killing of Two Britons in Somalia
At least four people have been arrested in Somalia today in connection with the murder of two British teachers, local police officers said.
The police declined to elaborate, although other sources said that as many as 12 people had been arrested near the scene of the murder and in other locations.
The two British teachers had earlier been named as Dick and Enid Eyeington, who were teachers working for SOS Kinderdorf, the the Austrian children's organisation.
They were shot as they watched television at their home last night in Sheikh, Somaliland.
A spokesman for SOS Kinderdorf said that Mr Eyeington had worked in Swaziland for 32 years before moving to Somaliland in September 2002 to become headmaster of a local boarding school. His wife also worked as a teacher in the school.
Although the motive for the attack was not known, aid workers in the country said there had been a backlash against Western nationals in the Muslim country in the aftermath of the Iraq War.
Stephen Collens, Africa regional manager for Health Unlimited, the London-based aid group, said there had been an escalation in attacks on foreign workers in Somalia in recent months.
"Something is up. We're not sure what the heck it is, but it's very worrying," he said.
The couple worked at the Sheikh Secondary School, 550 miles north of Mogadishu, which was established during British colonial rule and was mostly destroyed in fighting launched by Mohammed Siad Barre, the former dictator, in 1989.
SOS Kinderdorf International, also known as SOS Children's Villages, had worked to rebuild the school.
Dr Hussein Bulhan, executive director of the Academy for Peace and Development, said: "Everybody here is dumbfounded and outraged. These were people dedicated to Somaliland and to rebuilding the education system."
The murders have caused a "shockwave" in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, he said. "We are not going to rest until these two killings have been explained."
The deaths come just weeks after an award-winning Italian aid worker was killed in Borama, Somaliland.
Annalena Tonelli, 60, was shot and killed by a lone gunman on October 5 outside the hospital she founded to treat tuberculosis patients in Borama, a town 580 miles north-west of Mogadishu. The police later detained four suspects in connection with the killing.
Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the East African country following the ousting of long-time dictator Mohammed Siad Barre.
Somalia has not had an effective central government for over a decade, and Somalis rely on charities and aid groups for health care and education.
The Foreign Office had issued an advisory there was a "high general threat" of terrorism toward Western, including British, targets in Somalia.
Posted on Tuesday 21st October at 17:43:59 Two British Teachers Shot Dead in Somaliland
NAIROBI, 21 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Two British nationals working for an NGO in the self-declared republic of Somaliland were shot dead on Monday night by unidentified gunmen.
The two bodies were found in their home on Tuesday morning, said Evelyn Winkler, project coordinator with SOS Kinderdorf International, which employed them. The house was located in the same compound as the Sheikh secondary school where they were working, in a town of the same name about 70 km from the port of Berbera.
An investigation into the shootings had started on Tuesday, said Winkler, which was being supported by the president of Somaliland, Dahir Riale Kahin. The house had been sealed and the school, which opened in January 2003, was closed.
Whether the couple was targeted, and what the motive was remained unclear, she said. "We cannot think of a motive right now. They were very well integrated into the community." She said she was unaware of any threats made to the couple or any antagonistic behaviour towards them from the local community.
The secondary school where the couple worked as a school principal and a teacher also housed about 100 pupils.
Just two weeks ago, a veteran aid worker in Somalia, Dr Annalena Tonelli, was also shot dead in Somaliland by unknown attackers. In June, Dr Tonelli won the UN refugee agency's highest honour, the Nansen Refugee Award, for her 33 years of work with Somalis. She started working with Somali refugees in Kenya and moved to Somalia in 1986.
Posted on Tuesday 21st October at 17:42:07 Death Toll Climbs To 13 in Italy Immigrant Tragedy
PALERMO, Sicily, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The bodies of 13 African immigrants were discovered aboard a boat off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa and dozens more corpses might have thrown overboard, officials said on Monday.
A spokesman for the Italian coastguards said 15 illegal immigrants, all believed to come from Somalia, survived the nightmarish odyssey in the Mediterranean sea, but one of the survivors, a woman, was in a serious condition.
"Cold and hunger was the reason for the deaths, according to the survivors," said the spokesman, speaking from operational headquarters on the island of Sicily.
Survivors told the rescuers that their boat had left Libya 20 days ago with around 100 immigrants aboard. They said most of their number had died during the trip and many of the bodies had been thrown overboard.
The immigrants' boat was discovered on Sunday evening and after initial checks, coastguards said there were 11 bodies on board. But when the boat was towed into Lampedusa in the early hours of Monday rescuers found a further two corpses.
A famished woman was also found alive among the dead and rushed to hospital.
It was the second tragedy involving illegal immigrants off Lampedusa in the last three days. On Friday, seven Africans, including three children, died before their boat could reach the tiny, Mediterranean island. A further 25 people survived.
Illegal immigration to Italy has risen sharply in recent months, with most of the migrants coming from impoverished north and central African countries.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government has enacted tough legislation to crack down on both illegal immigrants and on the people-traders who charge hundreds of euros (dollars) to deliver them to Italy's porous shoreline.
Police said at the weekend that they had arrested the man who was believed to have piloted Friday's boat and charged him with manslaughter and aiding illegal immigration.
Survivors told coastguard officials the bodies of three babies who had died during the voyage were flung overboard.
Some of the survivors said they paid 1,200 euros a head for safe passage to Italy. Coastguard officials say rickety, old boats packed with immigrants tend to head straight for Lampedusa because it is closer to north Africa than either Sicily or mainland Italy.
Once they reach the barren, flat island they are transferred to Sicily. Authorities there issue them with expulsion orders, but instead of returning home, they vanish into the vast army of migrant workers across continental Europe. -- Additional reporting by Rachel Sanderson
By Wladimiro Pantaleone
Posted on Monday 20th October at 17:45:45 Member of Parliament Murdered in Nairobi
NAIROBI, 20 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - A member of the Transitional National Assembly of Somalia, was found murdered in a forest on the outskirts on Nairobi on Sunday.
The body of Shaykh Ibrahim Ali Abdulle, a prominent Mogadishu-based businessman and delegate to the peace talks in Kenya, was found - along with those of a Kenyan businessman and their driver - in the Ololua forest near Nairobi, according to the Kenyan newspaper, 'Daily Nation'.
Somali sources who saw the bodies told IRIN that "all three men were shot in the head, execution style".
"This is not a random shooting. It looks like an assassination," said one Somali source.
However, James Kiboi, a member of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) technical committee, which is steering the talks, told IRIN it was premature to reach any conclusions about the killings.
"The matter is now being investigated by the Kenyan police. Let's wait for the investigations to finish before reaching any conclusions," he said.
Muhammad Farah Anshur, interior minister of state in the Transitional National Government (TNG), said it was too early to comment on a possible motive for the killing.
"We really need to give the police time to uncover those behind this dastardly deed before we can comment," he told IRIN. He added that TNG would issue a statement after the police investigations were completed.
Shaykh Ibrahim, who was a close ally of TNG President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, was known as a very humble man "who used his money to further the peace process in the country", Mire Abdulle, a close friend of the deceased, told IRIN. "I cannot think of any reason why anyone should want to kill him."
Shaykh Ibrahim's body will be flown to Mogadishu for burial, at the request of his family, as soon as arrangements can be made, Mire added.
Posted on Monday 20th October at 17:30:56 Djibouti Wants Wider Involvement in Somalia Talks
NAIROBI, Oct. 19 — Djibouti criticised regional mediation in a year-long Somali peace talks on Sunday and called for a broader international involvement in efforts to end 12 years of anarchy in the African nation.
Djibouti's latest criticism underscored regional divisions in the Kenya talks on Somalia, held under the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regional body, undermining hopes that the discussions could produce results.
Bizarre as it may sound, during this conference there have been more divisions,'' Djibouti's ambassador to Kenya, Ismael Goulal Boudine, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital.
The Somali issue should be given to some other country, or the wider international community,'' he said.
Djibouti, a member of the Arab League, withdrew from the mediation team comprised of itself and Somalia's other neighbours -- Kenya and Ethiopia -- last month in protest at what it said was a lack of broad representation during the year-long discussions.
Diplomats said the move was linked to a deepening rift between non-Arab Ethiopia and Arab states like Egypt that are wary of Ethiopian influence in Somalia, an Arab League member.
Peace talks have yielded an agreement between some of Somalia's warring parties on a new transitional constitution on September 15 that was intended to steer the country towards stability.
But the leader of a defunct transitional government for Somalia, formed in Djibouti in 2000, along with various political groups and several key warlords have since walked out.
Some of those who quit say they are concerned about what they see as attempts by Ethiopia to mould the kind of government the talks will produce. Ethiopia, the dominant power in the Horn of Africa, denies meddling in Somali affairs.
Djibouti said on Sunday it had seen no attempt to promote a more inclusive process since its withdrawal, and singled out Kenyan mediator Bethuel Kiplagat for criticism, saying he had not consulted Djibouti on various issues during the talks.
Mr Kiplagat, virtually alone in the Technical committee, exercising an evident desire to derail the collective efforts of Somalis, IGAD, and the international community, has left the process with appalling problems and challenges,'' said a statement issued by Djibouti's foreign ministry on Sunday.
Kiplagat was not immediately available for comment.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.
Posted on Sunday 19th October at 17:32:41 Somali Peace Talks a Laughing Stock
An old woman with a Somali flag wrapped around her takes a swing at a member of parliament. Groups of men sit around playing cards or chewing narcotic khat leaves. A warlord with a shaved head, sunglasses and a foot-long grey beard tells the press peace is at hand.
It's just another day at the Somali peace talks.
One year after negotiations aimed at ending Somalia's civil war began amid great optimism, the talks have little tangible to show for the effort -- or for the price tag, estimated at more than US$2 million.
If Somalia's situation weren't so tragic, the ballooning list of delegates, disputes with hotel owners and fisticuffs that marred the early phase of the talks could have been considered comical.
But more fundamental is whether the federal system of government being cobbled together at the talks will bring peace to a country ripped to shreds by 12 years of anarchic conflict.
Twice the facilitators have announced "major breakthroughs" on an interim constitution and the composition of parliament only to be rebuffed by key faction leaders.
"This is the end of this conference," the president of the transitional government, Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, said when the facilitators announced a deal on the interim charter last month. "Whoever is behind this treachery has succeeded in scuttling the peace process. The talks have totally collapsed."
Abdiqassim has since stayed out of the talks along with several powerful faction leaders and even one of the three organizing countries, Djibouti.
The facilitators insist the conference is on track -- "alive and well" in the words of James Kiboi, liaison officer for the organizing body, the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.
Thirteen previous formal sets of negotiations since the regime of dictator Siad Barre collapsed in 1991 failed to achieve a comprehensive agreement between the country's fractious militia leaders.
The current talks were hailed as Somalia's best -- and possibly last -- chance for peace when they began on Oct. 15 last year. Key international players were all on side, including the US, the European Union, the Arab League and Somalia's neighbors. All faction leaders were invited and agreed to participate.
Within two weeks, a ceasefire deal was agreed, tinging the talks with even more optimism.
Yet the unravelling was already under way. The organizers lost control of the delegate list, as faction leaders tried to flex their muscles by having larger and larger entourages. At one point, more than 800 delegates were registered -- all eating and sleeping on the international community's tab at around US$100 a day each.
The host hotel refused to serve food one day over unpaid bills. One faction leader got into a fist-fight with a civil society delegate and some of his supporters beat up another delegate with a lead pipe.
Walkouts began in January as faction leaders called for the resignation of the mediator, Elijah Mwangale. He was replaced in February by a former Kenyan ambassador, Bethuel Kiplagat just as the conference endured a chaotic move to a run-down college campus on the edge of Nairobi as a cost-savings measure.
Kiplagat promised more transparency and his personal energy and enthusiasm gave new life to the conference. He focused discussion on how to create a federal system, devolving power to the regions -- a way of simultaneously devolving power to the clans, which hold the allegiance of most Somalis.
Next Tuesday, the clans are scheduled to begin naming people to the 351-member parliament, which in turn would select an interim president with a four-year mandate.
Some of the participants organized an event on Tuesday to mark one year since the talks began. National songs accompanied by a synthesizer and patriotic poetry over a distorted loudspeaker were the order of the day.
Outside the tent where the delegates gathered, Nur Hajji Omar, a refugee and former militia fighter shook his head.
"This is a sad day, there's nothing to celebrate," he said. "One year later, they're still killing, they're still fighting. These people should be ashamed of themselves."
Posted on Sunday 19th October at 14:58:07 Somaliland Seeks Admittance in African Union
THE Republic of Somaliland is courting Zimbabwe's support so that it can be admitted as a member of the African Union.
Somaliland's representative to sub Sahara Africa and Malaysia Mrs Jawahir Mohamed Ali Sheikhmadar was in the country recently to meet Government officials over the issue.
She had already been to Mozambique as part of her tour to seek support for admittance into the AU.
The AU does not recognise Somaliland, based on its fundamental premise of respecting colonial boundaries.
The United Nations also does not recognise the legality of the country because when it separated from Somalia in May 1991 there was no government in Somalia.
Somaliland got its independence from Britain on 26 June 1960 and five days later Somalia also became independent.
The two then merged to become one country.
Somaliland then pulled out of the union in 1991 after a devastation of the country by the Siad Barre regime.
She said standing as an independent country was not a contravention of the AU charter because the country assumed the boundaries that existed before independence in 1960.
"It is not a case of cessation by any means. It is dissolution of a union between two independent countries that consummated voluntarily.
"We simply dissolved an unhappy union," she said.
Mrs Ali Sheikhmadar said Somaliland wanted a peaceful relationship with Somalia, but not as a part of Somalia.
She invited Zimbabweans to invest in the country and said Somaliland provided vast opportunities in agriculture, tourism, the media and mining.
The country has a population of 2,3 million and is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the west and south-west, Somalia to the east and south and the Gulf of Aden in the north.
The country offers incentives such as non payment of duty on all imports that are related to one's business venture, holiday incentives and guaranteed property rights.
She said she would be opening an office in Harare soon that would be responsible for the promotion of trade between the two countries.
Copyright © 2003 The Herald. All rights reserved.
Posted on Friday 17th October at 17:48:48 Muqdisho oo Laga Furey Waxbarsho Sare
Wararka ka imaanaya Muqdisho ayaa sheegaya in markii ugu horreysay Soomaaliya tan iyo intii ay dhacday dowladdii hore ee Soomaaliyeed haatan laga furay barnaamij waxbarasho sare oo gaaraya ilaa master iyo PHD.
Xaflad amuurtaas lagu maamusayo ayaa la qabtey. Xafladdan oo lagu qabtay xarunta kulliyadda Computer Science iyo Information Technology ee Jaamacadda Muqdisho ayaa looga dhawaaqay billowga barnaamijkan waxbarashada sare ee bachelor-ka kaddib ah kaasoo gaarsiisan min diploma hal sano oo jaamacadda kaddib ah, ilaa Master iyo weliba ilaa PHD, waxaana si wadajir ah isaga kaashanaya Jaamacadda Muqdisho iyo Jaamacadda Umdurmaan Islamic University ee dalka Suudaan, waxbarashadan oo dadka Soomaaliyeed loogu bishaaraynayo in hadda la helayo iyadoo aanan loo dhoofin oo aanan dhibaato kalena loo marin.
Sida lagu sheegay war faah-faasan oo isagoo qoraal ahna dadka loo qeybiyey waxa uu barnaamijkan xoogga saarayaa horumarinta takhasusiga ah ee maaddada waxbarashada, maamulidda waxbarashada iyo sidoo kale horumarinta manaahijta, taasoo looga baxayo dhibaatadii ka taagnayd tiro yaraantii Soomaaliya ka haystay macallimiinta aqoonta sare leh, tiro yaraantii maamuleyaasha tababaran iyo weliba jiritaan la'aantii ka taagnayd manaahij mideysan.
Labadan jaamacadood ayaa haddaba waxay hawshan waxbarashada sare u qeybsadeen Jaamacadda Umdurmaan ee dalka Suudan oo hawsheedu noqonayso in ay ka masuul ahaato dhammaan arrimaha waxbarashada sida aqbalidda ardayda, in ay keento Profesoorrada casharrada bixinaya, qaadista iyo sixidda imtixaanaadka, arrimaha cilmi baarista iyo weliba in ay kormeerto thesiska isla markaana bixiso shahaadada.
Jaamacadda Muqdisho waxa ay qaabilsntahay martigelinta dhammaan barnaamijkan waxbarasho iyo maamulka goobaha waxbarashada, maamulka ardayda iyo diyaarinta maktabadda waxaanay labadan jaamacadood heshiiskan wada gaareen bishii Nofembar ee sannadkii 2001, iyadoo ilaa xilligaasna loo diyaargaroobayey sidii loo meel-marin lahaa heshiiskan.
Barnaamijka diploma-ha ee waxbarashada waxaa ka qeybgeli kara arday kasta oo haysta shahaado jaamacadeed oo la aqoonsan yahay waana hal sano, barnaamijka master-kana waxaa ka qeybgeli kara qof kasta oo haysta shahaado jaamacadeed oo la aqoonsan yahay ama diplom-ka waxbarashada, PHD-na waxaa geli kara qofkii haysta Masterka, waxaanay diiwaangelintu billaabanaysaa 25-ka bishan iyadoo socon doontaa ilaa 30-ka bisha Nofembar.
Xafladdan Khamiistii looga dhawaaqay furitaanka master-ka iyo PHD-da ee dhinaca waxbarashada oo ah markii ugu horreysay ee Soomaaliya laga helo waxaa goobjoog ka ahaa dhammaan dalladaha waxbarashada ee fadhigoodu yahay magaalada Muqdisho, Jaamacadda Muqdisho saraakiisheeda iyo saraakiil ka socotay safaaradda Suudan ee Soomaaliya oo uu ka mid ahaa wakiilka Dhariq Axmed Cabdullaahi oo ay soo wakiilatay Jaamacadda Umdurmaan.
Xasan Barise - BBCSomali.com
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:52:25 Salaad Kulankii uu la Yeeshay Hoggaamiyaha Liibiya
Xasan iyo Madaxweyne C/qaasim Salaad Xasan ayaa magaallada Tripoli ee dalka Liibiya kula kulmay hoggaamiyaha waddankaas Mucammar Al-Qadaafi, waxaana kulankaasi la iskula soo qaaday arrimaha Soomaaliya iyo qaddiyada Bariga Dhexe.
Madaxweyne Qadaafi oo halkaa ka hadlay waxa uu sheegay in dowladda Liibiya ay sii wadi doonto taageerada ay u hayso shacabka Soomaaliyeed mar kasta.
C/qaasim oo isna halkaa ka hadlay wuxuu uga mahad celiyey Dowladda Liibiya sida hagar la'aanta leh ee ay u garab taagan tahay mar kasta shacabka Soomaaliyeed, wuxuuna ugu baaqay dowladda Liibiya in ay sii wado taageerada ay siinayso shacabka Soomaaliyeed, wuxuu kaloo C/qaasim uga mahad celiyey dowrka muhiimka ah ee hoggaamiyaha Liibiya ugu jiro sidii Afrika u noqon lahayd Qaarad keligeed isku filnaansho gaarta, waxaana lagu warramay in xalay uu C/qaasim Salaad Xasan gaaray magaallada Kuala Lumpur ee dalka ee dalka Malaysia, halkaasoo maanta uu si rasmi ah uga furmayo shirka Madaxweynayaasha waddamma-da Islaamka.
Ayaamaha
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:50:51 Ciidanka Daraawiishta oo Qabsaday Bankiga Boosaaso
Jam(Boosaso)Ciidamo ka tirsan kuwa Daraawiishta ee fadhigoodu yahay tuulada Laag oo qiyaastii dhinaca Koonfureed 30 Km ka xigta magaalada Boosaaso, ayaa shalay waxay isku gadaameen xayndaabka Bangiga magaalada Boosaaso.
Lama yaqaan sababta dhalisay in ciidamadani ay ku soo duulaan Bangiga magaalda Boosaaso, hase yeeshee qaar ka tisan ciidamada ayaa waxay ka cabanayeen in muddo dhowr bilood ah aan la siin wax mushaharah.
Halkaasi wax dhibaato ahi kama dhicin, waxaana kala dareeriyey ciidamadaas Taliyaha Booliska Puntland Cabdrisaaq Maxamuud Afguduud.
Carqaladan ayaa waxay ku soo beegantay xilli lagu gudo jiro sixitaanka khilaafaadka maamulka Puntland gudihiisa ka taagan.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:46:29 Somali Peace Talks Hailed
The Somali National Reconciliation conference has despite various disagreements achieved five major goals, says Somali Factional Leaders Committee chairman, Gen Mohammed Said.
Said, popularly known as General Morgan, who addressed a news conference at the Kenya College of Communication Technology in Nairobi where the talks are being held, appealed to three major stakeholders who abandoned the sitting to return.
Morgan, who was flanked by his two deputy chairmen, Abdi Osman and Maulid Maane, said the conference had led to the endorsement of agreements by all leaders on July 15 and the signing of cessation of hostilities on October 27.
However, many of the delegates we talked to during the first anniversary of the Somali talks, said the talks are likely to take long since the factional leaders are not serious.
Rukine Osman representing civil society said there was little chance of success because of disagreements. She said there was no criteria for the selection of delegates to the conference and as a result, the figure of 300 agreed to initially had been exceeded by 61.
Sultani Mohammed Jamahris of Mogadishu said many of the delegates were not serious but "were having a nice time while the common Somali citizen suffers back at home".
Copyright © 2003 The East African Standard.
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:44:35 Meddling Mars Somalia Peace Talks
Canada must lead effort to keep Kenya and Ethiopia from dictating terms of deal
The peace conference in Kenya neither reconciles Somali factions nor does it re-establish a Somali state. Rather, it surrenders Somalia's national interests to those of its hostile neighbours.
This peace conference violates two major conflict resolution tenets: a lack of a credible and neutral third party, and the need for the conflicting parties to own the peace process.
Ethiopia and Kenya are manipulating Somalia's peace process.
They control the agenda and the forum and have given absolute power to the criminal warlords who have committed human rights atrocities against the Somali people.
They have marginalized traditional and civil society leaders. They have forced on Somalia a charter that leads the way to the permanent partition of the country.
They have also accepted delegates appointed by warlords as representatives of the Somali people. The warlords (most of them created and supported by Ethiopia) agreed to select the 351 parliamentarians and to establish an undefined and obscure form of federalism.
While Kenya hosted it, IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development), the regional organization of East African countries, sponsored the talks. However, Ethiopia, an avowed hostile neighbour, has controlled the peace process since its inception.
Because it was not happy with the outcome of a previous civil society-led Somali reconciliation meeting held in Djibouti in 2000, Ethiopia — at the 2001 IGAD conference in Khartoum — insisted it was necessary to hold another conference. The Addis Ababa regime argued that some pro-Ethiopian regional administrations and warlords had been left out.
Ethiopia has a history of meddling in the conflict. It helped Somali warlords to wage, and then perpetuate, the civil war. It has also undermined peace initiatives in 1997 and 2000.
Ethiopia prolongs Somalia's civil war in order to eliminate a traditional enemy, get access to a sea corridor and distract its people from their own internal problems.
Kenya, the country hosting the conference, is not oblivious to Ethiopia's manipulations. Since there are political, economic and military ties between Kenya and Ethiopia against Somalia, Kenyan mediator Bethuel Kiplagat has deliberately chosen to facilitate Ethiopia's insatiable demands.
Speaking at the American Defence University in Washington in September, Kenya's former president, Daniel Arap Moi, openly stated that a strong and prosperous Somalia would be a threat to its neighbours.
As a result of their neighbours' meddling at the conference, Somalis do not own the peace process in which their future is being decided.
Respected Somali figures, including former Prime Minister Abdirizak Haji Hussein, have publicly raised concerns over the way the peace process is being handled. Traditional elders and many intellectuals condemned IGAD and Ethiopia's handling of the conference.
The international community must intervene as a neutral third party if it is serious about helping to end the Somali civil war.
It must understand that Ethiopia and Kenya have strategic and economic interests in perpetuating the Somali conflict and recognize that IGAD is an incompetent organization controlled by Ethiopia.
The European Union, which paid the bills of this long reconciliation conference, must intervene before it wastes more money in the IGAD-sponsored reconciliation process.
The whole exercise is about securing the interests of Somalia's neighbours while using the international community's credibility and resources.
Perhaps the EU and the international community should support a grassroots peace initiative. That will surely be a better investment than the funding of the current reconciliation conference in Nairobi.
As Barbara F. Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego rightly pointed out, when the different groups of a civil war get the assistance of a committed and credible third party, they will sign and implement a peace accord they agree on.
Without serious mediation efforts, Somali groups cannot be expected to reconcile by themselves, especially when they are under the influence of hostile neighbours. Asking Ethiopia and Kenya to mediate Somali groups is like "putting the fox in charge of the henhouse."
Canada hosts the largest Somali immigrants in the diaspora, and it is a member of IGAD Partners' Forum. It should play a leadership role in advocating the international community to pressure Somalia's neighbours to stop meddling in the country's peace-building efforts.
Supporting the IGAD-sponsored talks in Nairobi will, unwittingly, help perpetuate the very conflict the world intends to help solve.
Afyare Abdi Elmi is a member of the Star's community editorial board.
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:43:03 Hundreds Fleeing Baidoa
NAIROBI, 16 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Hundreds of people are fleeing their homes and businesses in the southwestern town of Baidoa after heavy fighting broke out between rival factions of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) which controls the area, local sources told IRIN on Thursday.
They said the conflict, which broke out last week, is centred around the villages of Dambal near Baidoa airport, and at Dainunai on the road to Mogadishu.
According to the sources, the fighting pits forces loyal to the RRA chairman, Hasan Muhammad Nur Shatigadud, against those of his former deputies Shaykh Adan Madobe and Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade. Shatigadud and Madobe were reported to have reconciled recently, but sources on the ground said the accord had not yet taken hold.
One source said it appeared that anyone associated with Shatigadud's Harin sub-clan was being targeted. An employee of Olympic Telephone Company was shot dead in front of the company's offices, he said.
Telephone companies were threatening to shut down if "those in charge do not do something about the insecurity", he added.
He said that over the last two weeks, more than 15 people had been killed in and around Baidoa because of their clan affiliations, and the killings had become a daily occurrence.
"At this rate there won't be much business or anything else left in Baidoa, if the situation does not improve quickly and dramatically. As it is, it is almost out of control," he noted.
Attempts by IRIN to elicit comment from representatives of the Madobe/Habsade faction in Baidoa were unsuccessful.
The fighting in Baidoa is due to a split within the senior ranks of the RRA, which controls much of the Bay and Bakol regions of southwestern Somalia. The town changed hands numerous times between July and December last year.
Posted on Thursday 16th October at 17:39:55 Hoggaamiyeyaal Dadaal ugu Jira Siday Salaad u Hor Istaagi Lahaayeen
Qaar ka mid ah hoggaamiyeyaasha Soomaaliyeed ee ka qayb galaya shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed ayaa dadaal ugu jira sidii Madaxweyne C/qaasim Salaad Xasan ay uga hor istaagi lahaayeen shirka madaxda Urur Goboleedka IGAD oo 19-ka Bishan ka furmi doona caasimadda waddanka Uganda ee Kampala, waxaana lagu warramay in qaar ka mid ah hoggaamiyeyaasha ay markiiba qoraallo u gudbiyeen qaar ka mid ah waddammada IGAD oo ay ugu sheegayaan in C/qaasim loo diido ka qayb galka shirkaasi, maadaama ay Dowladdiisii ku ekayd 12-kii Bishii August.
Warar kale ayaa waxay sheegayaan in wakiilka Kenya u qaabilsan arrimaha Soomaaliya Bathuel Kiplagat iyo Safiirka Itoobiya C/casiis iyana ay dadaal ugu jiraan sidii C/qaasim looga hor istaagi lahaa ka qayb galka shir madaxeedka waddammada IGAD, iyadoo la filayo in C/qaasim uu halkaasi ka jeediyo Khudbad uu ku eedeynayo dowladda Itoobiya in ay mas'uul ka tahay fashilkii ku yimid shirkii dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed.
Shirkii ka dhacay Maputo ee dalka Mozambique C/qaasim waxa uu ka jeediyey khudbad uu ku dhaleeceynayay dowladda Itoobiya oo uu sheegay in ay mas'uul ka tahay dib u dhaca ku yimid shirkii dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed iyo natiijo la'aanta shirkaasi, waxaana warkan Magaalada Nairobi nooga soo diray weriyeheenna Asad Cabdi Axmed (Asad Yare).
Ayaamaha
Posted on Wednesday 15th October at 17:43:57 Italian Aid Worker in Somalia Mourned
NAIROBI, Kenya - Several hundred aid workers, diplomats and Kenyans gathered at a church Tuesday to remember an awarding-winning Italian aid worker killed in neighboring Somalia at the tuberculosis hospital she had founded.
With a piano and flute playing solemn music, speakers took turns telling how they had met, worked with or been helped by Annalena Tonelli.
"What I learned from Annalena was there are no religious boundaries. ... She was an icon of social workers," Fatuma Ali, principal of Nairobi Muslim Academy in the Kenyan capital, said of Tonelli, a Roman Catholic.
The 60-year-old Tonelli spent 33 years working in Somalia and Kenya. She was killed by a lone gunman Oct. 5 on the grounds of the hospital in Borama, in northwestern Somalia.
Authorities in the region, known as Somaliland, have detained four men in the killing, but none has been charged.
Somaliland set up its own administration and declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the country following the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Somalia, a Muslim nation on the Horn of Africa, has not had an effective central government since Siad Barre's ouster, and Somalis rely on charities and aid groups for health care and education.
Tonelli set up clinics in Somalia to fight tuberculosis and created awareness about the harmful effects of female circumcision and HIV/AIDS - even though discussing the deadly disease is a taboo in the country.
"Annalena had the incredible gift to see beauty inside somebody," said Joe Morrissey, who works at a school for the deaf and blind in Nairobi.
Fluent in Somali, Tonelli had lived in Borama since 1996. Earlier this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees awarded her the 2003 Nansen Refugee Award for her work.
Several previous winners of the award, including opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres and the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, sent an open letter Tuesday urging politicians, soldiers and "decision-makers" to do more to protect aid workers in the wake of Tonelli's death.
Her work was all the more remarkable because she was independent, raising her own money and running her own programs. Most aid workers in Africa represent established organizations.
She worked with Somalis in Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s but was deported from the East African nation after helping bury Kenyan Somalis killed by the army and police in northeastern Kenya in 1984. The slayings became known as the Wagalla massacre, but were not acknowledged by Kenyan authorities until 2000.
The government said 57 people were killed by the army and police; relatives and survivors said thousands were killed.
Tonelli was buried Saturday in Wajir, a Kenyan town largely populated by ethnic Somalis, about 300 miles northeast of Nairobi.
TOM MALITI
Associated Press
Posted on Wednesday 15th October at 17:36:39 Kahin Trip Set To Strengthen Somaliland-Djibouti Relations
NAIROBI, 15 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Relations between Djibouti and the self-declared republic of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, are set to improve following a three-day visit to Djibouti by the Somaliland president, Dahir Riyale Kahin.
Abdillahi Muhammad Duale, Somaliland's Information Minister, told IRIN on Wednesday that the "Riyale administration has been extremely busy strengthening relations with neighbouring states, and this trip is part of that".
Kahin, who is accompanied by four cabinet ministers and a number of members of parliament, is in Djibouti "at the invitation of the government", Duale added.
Meanwhile, a Djibouti official told IRIN the two sides discussed bilateral issues particularly, economic cooperation. "We discussed ways of improving trade ties and exploring areas of further cooperation," he noted.
The sides also discussed "how best to bring closer the two brotherly peoples", added the official. A more comprehensive meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday, after which a statement will be issued.
Kahin's trip to Djibouti is his second since he assumed the Somaliland presidency in May 2002 after the death of Muhammad Ibrahim Egal.
Relations between the two sides soured following Djibouti's hosting of the Somali peace talks, which led to the establishment of the Transitional National Government (TNG), and Djibouti's continued support for it.
The Somaliland administration boycotted the Arta talks, accusing Djibouti of interfering in Somalia's internal affairs.
However, a regional analyst told IRIN on Wednesday that Djibouti "will most likely continue to support the TNG and Somali unity in general, and will not compromise on this".
The people on both sides of the border were one and the same, he said, so they "had to take advantage of this kind of opportunity to eventually solve their differences and find areas of common understanding".
Posted on Wednesday 15th October at 17:35:40 Caato oo ka Qayb Galay Dib u Habayn Lagu Sameeyey Ururka USC/SNA
Cismaan Xasan Cali Caato oo ah Guddoomiyaha Ururka USC/SNA kana mid ah Guddoomiye ku xigeennada Golaha Samatabixinta Qaranka Soomaaliyeed ayaa shalay ka qayb galay xaflad ka dhacday Hotel Shamo oo dib loogu habeynayay Ururka USC/SNA1 ee uu hoggaamin jiray C/naasir Axmed Aadan Seejito.
Cismaan Xasan Cali Caato oo ka hadlay kulankaas ayaa sheegay inuu aad ugu faraxsan yahay in dib u habayn lagu sameeyo ururka USC/SNA1, iyadoo geba-gebadii xafladdaasi Guddoomiye cusub loogu doortay ururka USC/SNA1 C/llaahi Jaamac. Golaha Samatabixinta Qaranka Soomaaliyeed wuxuu horey u sheegay in Goluhu uu soo dhoweynayo cid kasta oo ka mid noqoneysa Golahaasi ee ka mid ah ururrada ka jira dalka.
Qaar ka mid ah siyaasiyiintii wax ka dhisay Golaha Samatabixinta Qaranka Soomaaliyeed ayaa ka biyo diidsan qaabka ay ururradu ugu soo biirayaan Golahaas, waxayna sheegeen in loo baahan yahay in la raaco dastuurka iyo xeerka u degsan Golaha Samatabixinta ee uu Guddoomiyaha u yahay Xaaji Muuse Suudi Yalaxow.
Ayaamaha
Posted on Tuesday 14th October at 18:01:50 Rayaale oo Maanta u Socdaalaya Jabuuti
Hargeysa (Jam)-Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Somaliland, Md. Daahir Rayaale Kaahin,oo hoggaaminaya Wefti ballaadhan oo ka kooban xukuumadda iyo Baarlamaanka Somaliland ayaa la filayaa in Maanta uu socdaal rasmi ah ku tegi doono dalka Jamhuuriyadda Jabuuti.
Ujeeddada socdaalka Madaxweyne Rayaale ugu kicitimayo Jabuuti iyo Muddada uu maqnaan doono wax war ah kama ay soo saarin Madaxtooyadu, hase yeeshee guddoomiye ku xigeenka labaad ee golaha Wakiilada Md. Cilmi Xirsi Cali, oo xubin ka ah Weftiga Madaxweynaha ku wehelin doona socdaalka uu Jabuuti ugu Ambabaxayo ayaa fadhigii Golaha ee shalay waxa uu Mudanayasha ku wargeliyay safarka weftiga uu Madaxweynuhu hoggaamin doono iyo in guddoomiye ku xigeenku ka mid yahay xubnaha Weftiga Madaxweynaha u raacaya Jabuuti.
Socdaalkan awgeed, ayaa Md. Cilmi Xirsi Cali, oo isagu shirguddoomiye ka ah kal fadhiga 21aad ee golaha Wakiilada waxa uu soo jeediyey in la hakio kalfadhiga golaha Muddada weftiga uu xubinta ka yahay safarkooda Jabuuti, oo sida uu sheegay qaadan doona dhowr maalmood .
Soo jeedintan guddoomiye ku xigeenka ee hakinta kalfadhiga golaha inta uu ka soo noqonayo socdaalka Jabuuti way ka ogolaadeen mudanayaasha Golaha Wakiiladu, maadaama uu muddadaas safarka ku maqan yahay aanay joogin xubin kale oo shir guddoonka golaha ah oo fadhiyada golaha sii guddoomiya, iyada oo guddoomiyihii iyo guddoomiye ku xigeenkii koowaad ee Golaha Wakiiladu ay labaduba socdaalo dibadda ah oo shakhsi ah ay dalka kaga maqanyihiin.
Md. Cilmi Xirsi Cali, oo Saxaafaddu wax ka weydiisay ujeeddada socdaalka Weftiga Madaxweynuhu horkacayo ee Jabuuti, waxa uu ka gaabsaday inuu wax faahfaahin ah ka bixiyo, isaga oo ku cudur daartay in aanu ka war haynin arrimaha ku waajahan ujeeddada socdaalka weftig.
“Aniga Xalay [Habeen hore] uun baa la igu wargeliyay inaan ka mid ahay weftiga Jabuuti tagaya,….markaa xog kama hayo arrimaha ku taxaluuqa safarka weftiga iyo ujeeddadiisa” ayuu yidhi Md. Cilmi Xirsi Cali, hase yeeshee warar aanu ilo kale oo Madaxtooyada ku dhaw dhaw ka helay ayaa tibaaxay socdaalkan Madaxweyne Rayaale ku tagayo Jabuuti inuu ka dhashay martiqaad rasmi ah oo uga yimid Madaxweynaha Jabuuti, Md. Ismaciil Cumar Geelle, iyada oo muddooyinkan dambe xidhiidhka labada dhinac ee Jabuuti iyo Somaliland uu ka muuqdo tallaabo isu soo dhowaansho weyn ah oo laga dareemayo isu dhoolla caddayn iyo xiisayn cusub oo laabta la isu furay.
Socdaalkan Madaxweyne Rayaale waa kii labaad ee Jabuuti uu ku tagayo intii uu noqday Madaxweynaha Somaliland, socdaalkii kan ka horeeyayna waxa uu Md. Rayaale booqday Jabuuti Bishii June ee kal hore oo ahayd wax yar uun ka dib markii uu ku fadhiistay kursiga Madaxweynaha ee qasriga Madaxtooyada.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Tuesday 14th October at 17:53:37 HIV Man Guilty Of Infecting Lovers
A man diagnosed with HIV has been found guilty of "callously" infecting two women with the virus in a landmark legal case.
The jury at Inner London Crown Court found 37-year-old Mohammed Dica guilty of two counts of "biological" grievous bodily harm on Tuesday.
Father-of-three Dica, from Mitcham, south-west London, had told police both women knew of his condition before they had sex.
But the court heard he told his first victim he had undergone a vasectomy and pursued the second victim, a mother of two, repeatedly telling her he loved her and wanted her to have his children.
The jury of six men and six women were told that both women could be dead in 10 years.
The case is believed to be the first successful prosecution in England and Wales for sexually transmitting HIV.
Prosecutor Mark Gadsden told the jury that grievous bodily harm usually described a physical attack but could include psychological harm from being stalked or getting nuisance calls.
He said: "He coldly and callously infected these two women."
Appeal likely
Judge Nicholas Philpot rejected an application for bail and a request for a psychiatric report - but said he would adjourn sentencing if further concerns were raised.
He added: "If I had to sentence him today there is no doubt he would be going to prison, and for a long time."
Dica, who may only have a few years to live, is planning an appeal against the verdict.
His second victim, known only as Deborah, sobbed as the jury returned its verdict.
She said: "He played with my life and he's destroyed it. This has been a tragic part of my life.
"Not only did I find out that I had contracted HIV but also discovered that the person who gave it to me, whom I trusted and loved, had been infected for five years and devastated my life and the life of another woman with intent.
"Sadly this is not over for me.
"My sentence has begun but I can now move on knowing that justice has been done."
Others infected
Speaking after the verdict, Metropolitan Police Detective Sergeant Jo Goodall suggested Dica may have infected others.
"This is a landmark case, being the first successful prosecution in England and Wales, for inflicting grievous bodily harm by infecting, in this case two victims, with a serious sexually transmittable disease, namely HIV, in over a century.
"I admire the courage of the two females in coming forward with this allegation.
"I hope that the outcome of this case will encourage other victims to come forward, especially since it may well be that there are other victims of this man."
Derek Bodell, National Aids Trust chief executive, said: "Today's case is a tragedy for all parties.
"Treating cases like this as a criminal offence will not prevent such incidents in the future, and on the contrary may be counterproductive.
"People with HIV should feel able to disclose their HIV status without fear of rejection or discrimination."
BBC News
Posted on Tuesday 14th October at 17:51:48 Talks in Kenya "On Course", Says Official
NAIROBI, 14 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Organisers say the Somali peace talks underway in Kenya are on course, and contrary to reports, have not stalled.
James Kiboi, a member of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) technical committee which is steering the talks, admitted that "some personalities are not at the talks", but that the proceedings were continuing.
He said the committee - which now comprises Kenya and Ethiopia - was trying to bring back those leaders who had left the talks. "We are still pursuing them and we have not given up on them, but even if they refuse to return the talks will continue," he told IRIN.
Among those absent from the talks are the president of Somalia's Transitional National Government Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, prominent Mogadishu-based faction leaders Muse Sudi Yalahow and Usman Hasan Ato, the leader of the Kismayo-based Juba Valley Alliance Col Barre Adan Hirale, and Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade of the Rahanweyn Resistance Army.
Kiboi said the talks had moved into their third and final phase, which concerned the distribution of future parliamentary seats. The various clans had been discussing "the sharing out of their allotted number of seats".
He denied suggestions that the talks had stalled, stressing that "the people who say this are people who don't know what is really going on at Mbgathi [the Nairobi venue of the talks]".
However, a diplomatic source close to the talks insisted that the talks were at an impasse and that very little was going on due to the absence of some important leaders. "The talks are at standstill, and IGAD needs to find a way to break the logjam," he told IRIN.
He added that IGAD was trying hard to persuade Abdiqassim to resume his participation. "There is hope that Abdiqassim can be prevailed upon to return," he said.
"The next two weeks will be decisive in these efforts," he noted. "IGAD has to give him [Abdiqassim] something to persuade him, not only to return but to bring most of his allies back with him."
The IGAD-sponsored talks opened in October 2002 in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret, but were moved to Nairobi in February this year. The proceedings have been dogged by wrangles over issues such as the interim charter, the number of participants and the selection of future parliamentarians.
Posted on Tuesday 14th October at 17:47:06 Morgan "Anigu Qab-qable Dagaal ma ihi."
General Maxamed Siciid Xirsi Morgan oo dhowaan loo magacaabay inuu shir guddoomiyo shir ay isugu yimaadeen hoggaamiyeyaasha siyaasadda ee ka qayb galaya shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed ayaa wax laga waydiiyey baaqashadii ay shirka ka baaqdeen diblomaasiyiinta shisheeyaha ah ee daneeya arrimaha Soomaaliya, wuxuuna General Morgan sheegay in sababaha ay u baaqdeen beesha caalamku ay tahay iyagoo ku soo aaday xilli lagu kala maqan yahay fasax, isagoo sheegay in aysan jirin sababo kale oo ay u baaqdeen diblomaasiyiintaas.
General Morgan waxa uu sheegay in uu shirku haatan marayo meel aad u wanaagsan, isagoo ugu baaqay hoggaamiye-yaasha ka maqan in ay dib ugu soo laabtaan shirkaasi.
"Walaaleheen waxaan u soo jeedinaynaa in ay shacabkooda wax la qaybsadaan" ayuu yiri General Morgan oo u warramayay Idaacadda BBC-da ayaa la waydiiyey su'aal ahayd "Sow lama dhihi karo shirka waxa fashilinaya waa hoggaamiyeyaa-shiinna?", wuxuuna yiri isagoo arrintaa ka jawaabaya: "U malayn maayo in shirka ay fashilinayaan hoggaamiyeyaasha Soomaaliyed, waayo muddo 1-sano ku dhowaad ah ayuu socdaa, waa hore ayaana shirkaasi la fashilin lahaa, laguna kala dareeri lahaa".
Waxaa kaloo la waydiiyey sababta shir guddoomiye loogu doortay, maadaama uu ka mid yahay qab-qableyaasha Soomaaliyeed, wuxuuna ku jawaabay Morgan "Anigu qab-qable dagaal ma ihi, haddii aan qab-qable dagaal ahayna shir Guddoomiye la iima magacaabeen".
Ayaamha
Posted on Monday 13th October at 17:45:08 Somali Bodyguards Arrested Over Thwarted VIP Trip
MOGADISHU, Oct. 12 — Officials of Mogadishu's Islamic courts arrested 10 bodyguards after they stopped a former Somali president they once protected from flying overseas in a row over pay, aides and city residents said on Sunday.
Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, head of a defunct Transitional National Government (TNG), had to turn back from a Mogadishu airstrip on Thursday when some of his former bodyguards prevented him from boarding a flight to Djibouti, Libya and Malaysia.
The gunmen, led by Abdiqassim's nephew, Gurey Hoorri, prevented Abdiqassim from flying out of the capital's Balidogle airstrip and demanded they be compensated for what they said was two years of unpaid or underpaid service.
But on Friday Islamic court officials detained the 10, residents and aides to Abdiqassim said. There was no immediate word on the charges to be brought against the men.
Abdiqassim flew out successfully on Sunday through Balidogle for Djibouti and would go on to make the trip he originally planned, aides said.
Abdiqassim aims to represent Somalia at a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur, even though the TNG's three-year mandate ran out in August and factions at peace talks have failed to agree a successor administration.
Somalia has been torn by war since the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Since then conflict and famine have killed hundred of thousands of people. The city's main airport has been closed since 1995.
The Arab-backed TNG, formed at a conference of elders meeting in Djibouti in 2000, has never controlled more than a handful of Mogadishu streets and patches of land in the south.
Apart from two breakaway enclaves in the north, the rest of the country is a patchwork of clan fiefdoms. But Abdiqassim says he is still Somalia's president and the TNG will continue to be the government until a successor is decided, statements treated with scepticism by many Somalis in view of the country's chaos.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Posted on Sunday 12th October at 16:24:38 UN Delays Africa Arms Visit
A United Nations Security Council visit to the Horn of Africa to investigate violations of an arms embargo on Somalia has been delayed, a UN official said.
The team had been scheduled to visit Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen, as well as Somalia itself, depending on security there, from 12-25 October.
“The trip to the Horn of Africa region over the Somalia arms embargo has been postponed,” the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP by telephone.
The official has declined to give reasons for the postponement or a date when the UN team is expected to travel to the region.
The team was also due to have examined the ability of countries bordering Somalia to enforce the weapons embargo, first agreed by the UN Security Council in 1992 after two Somali commanders, Ali Mahdi Muhammad and former General Muhammad Farah Aidid, agreed on a ceasefire in the divided Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Aidid has since perished.
Gun glut
Despite the blockade, weapons are still pouring into the ravaged nation.
Rival commanders have accused Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Djibouti, Libya and Egypt of arming rival factions, a charge that has been denied by the countries.
In April, the UN Security Council adopted a new resolution stating that Somalia constituted a threat to peace and safety in the region, and noted that the weapons embargo had been repeatedly violated.
aljazeera.net
Posted on Sunday 12th October at 16:21:31 Britain's Forgotten Minority
It is the particular speciality of BBC correspondent Rageh Omaar to report on troubled disadvantaged communities around the world.
But yesterday, just for the morning, the reporter became part of the story as he sought to highlight the deprivation and alienation endured by members of his own Somali community here in Britain.
Mr Omaar appeared at City Hall, London, for the launch of a new organisation, the Association of London Somali Organisations, and the release of a report which reveals the poverty suffered by Britain's forgotten minority.
Despite the fact that Somalis first settled in the UK more than 100 years ago, they remain clustered in neighbourhoods characterised by deprivation, unemployment and crime.
They suffer racial harassment - often in silence - remain cut off from the provision of social services and receive little help even from other minority communities.
In some areas Somalis suffer unemployment rates as high as 70% and a high incidence of mental and physical health problems. They are also branded as asylum seekers, even when they have British citizenship.
The new association, of which Mr Omaar is to be a trustee, will seek to represent communities in their relations with the government and the authorities but also to train Somalis themselves to claim their entitlements.
Mr Omaar said: "There has been a tendency for Somalia communities to stick together and live within a bunker mentality.
"My family came here in the 1970s and I grew up as a Somalian living in London. I think many of the older generation came here but they never mentally unpacked. I am from a new generation for whom this is home. I want Somalians to have a voice and to get out of the ghettoisation."
Mr Omaar said he sought to put his profile to good use.
"I am lucky because I am visible. There are a lot of young Somali kids who send me emails and say they are proud of me. I have been asked to do many things in recent years of a celebrity type and I have always been careful, but this is a no-brainer for me."
The report released yesterday, entitled Somali Housing Experiences in England, focused on communities in London, Sheffield, Liverpool and Bristol.
Its authors, Ian Cole and David Robinson, say Somalis suffer because authorities fail to recognise their needs.
"The rhetoric of cultural diversity has not yet been translated into practice, certainly for the Somali community," they say.
Eric Ollerenshaw, the leader of the Conservative group on the London assembly, said the Somalians' plight must be recognised. "The statistics in terms of deprivation are unbelievable. Government and local authorities must start treating Somalians as a distinct community with needs which have been hidden too long."
Hugh Muir
The Guardian
Posted on Saturday 11th October at 23:29:36 Medics Quit Cushy Lives to Help Mogadishu's Sick
MOGADISHU, Oct 10 (Reuters) - A doctor slices a scalpel into AbdiFatah's bleeding groin to repair a botched circumcision.
The boy screams. But the urologist's expert care puts a big smile on the face of his relieved father Mohammad Ahmad, who rushed the eight-year-old to hospital only minutes earlier.
"You did a good job," he tells the doctor, who treated his son as an emergency, and for free. "I regret having done the circumcision outside. Next time I'll come to the hospital!"
Relief of traumas big and small is a daily event at Arafat hospital in Mogadishu, a two-year-old facility which every day sees 300 new patients and 200 others returning for check ups.
But the hospital itself is anything but ordinary. It was started by Somali doctors who gave up cushy lives in the Gulf to return and build one of very few facilities providing specialist care in the capital, among the world's most violent cities.
Paediatrician Abdullahi Farah Asseyr now takes home about a quarter of the $4,000 a month he once earned tax-free in Dubai but he says it is worth it because his new job has more meaning.
Like many colleagues he did basic training at taxpayers' expense in Somalia before the civil war, going overseas to complete his medical qualifications and work. He now wants to repay his debt to a society ravaged by 12 years of bloodshed.
"I went to Arab countries, worked in nice places and lived in very good circumstances. But I feel I have a great responsibility to change my country and society," he said.
"So that is why we 'forgot' our lives and I brought my wife and children here to establish Arafat and help my people because they invested in me. I have to make a big effort."
There is no doubting the need.
Arafat specialists estimate that a good half of the city's more than one million population receives no care at all from a medical system brought to near-extinction by militia mayhem.
"Of those 50 percent who are treated, maybe 30 percent do not continue treatment because once the immediate crisis is over their families shift priorities to getting food," said Asseyr.
Adults and children missing limbs hobble down every street.
Sufferers of an array of ailments weaken and die untreated in the plastic and thatch huts of internally displaced people that seem to dot every spare patch of Mogadishu's waste ground.
Somalia has been torn by war since the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. Conflict and famine have killed hundred of thousands of people.
Most Somali doctors fled: 26 doctors and 28 nurses who stayed behind were killed in the chaos of the 1990s.
For much of that decade clinics depended on relief agencies for drugs and focused on emergencies such as bullet wounds or endemic diseases of poverty such as cholera and tuberculosis.
"WE ARE KIDNAPPED BY WARLORDS"
Arafat has returned the skills of specialised medicine to Mogadishu, treating ailments such as diabetes, renal failure and respiratory stress and has high-tech diagnostic gear to support work in gynaecology, urology, obstetrics and internal medicine.
A consultation costs between $1.30 and $1.50, but the price includes 10 days of follow up care, even if a patient comes back with another disease. Emergency cases are admitted unconditionally with payments charged, or not, on a case by case basis.
Satellite television news is beamed into a clean waiting room. Trainee nurses peer into humming diagnostic computers.
Fees pay running costs but are too meagre to fund expansion.
A constant flow of money from Somalia's large diaspora and businessman benefactors, who along with the doctors were the hospital's original investors, is required for new equipment.
Zakaria Moammed, a coach for the national soccer squad, is one of a growing army of grateful customers. His five-year-old daughter Moamina was admitted with her eyes turned up in their sockets due to dehydration from severe gastroenteritis.
"Without this hospital she would be dead," he says. "There is no government. We are kidnapped by warlords who see only their interest and not the people's interest."
Admiration for professionals like Arafat's doctors is an increasingly common sentiment in Mogadishu, where warlords are despised for doing little or nothing to help their communities.
The hospital's inauguration was part of a wider revival of professional associations working to rebuild the city, motivated by a realisation that the substantial foreign aid projects may not revive anytime soon, such is the capital's militia chaos.
Internal medicine specialist Mohamud Zahed Mohamud, 50, worked for years in Saudi Arabia before deciding to come home and more than halve his $2,700 tax-free Saudi monthly salary.
He and Asseyr argue that the success of Arafat is tangible proof that Somalis are helping each other, providing a check on the influence of militias and paving the way for what they hope will be a full-scale return of foreign relief agencies.
They want to encourage U.N. institutions to return to Mogadishu after a decade in which most projects have been at a low ebb and the world body's international staff largely absent.
"We are in need of their help," said Mohamud. "Whatever resources we have is nothing compared to what the U.N. can do. If you want to prevent communicable diseases you must have water, sanitation and electricity. Without these things we cannot cope."
Some U.S. analysts see Mogadishu's middle-aged returnee doctors and teachers as Muslim radicals seeking to turn Somalia into a strict theocracy. Shaking his head and smiling, Mohamud says he has no hang-ups about soliciting Western support.
"We feel a commitment from Arab countries and Arab civil society," he said. "We would like the same commitment from the West. After all we are human beings, and we deserve their help."
By William Maclean
Posted on Friday 10th October at 17:54:24 Thousands at Risk of Malnutrition in Sool Area
NAIROBI, 10 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Thousands of people in northern Somalia are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance due to falling incomes and rising malnutrition, a food security watchdog has warned.
According to the US government's Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS), about 11,170 pastoralist households in the Sool Plateau are at risk.
The gu (April-June) rains largely failed in the area, and while the better-off households migrated with their animals to other areas, the poor households were left behind.
"After four years of successive rain failures, poor livestock productivity and significant livestock losses, pastoralist households face fewer options for obtaining food and income," the FEWS report said.
It was estimated that over 50 percent of livestock had died over the past four years, meaning that incomes had dropped by half, as the marketability and prices of animals declined.
"Poor households increasingly resort to extreme coping mechanisms (such as culling new-born calves to save the mothers) and environmental degradation (particularly cutting trees for charcoal making), which further weakens their livelihood base," the report pointed out.
It warned that malnutrition was likely to worsen as households diverted food expenditures for increasingly expensive water.
An inter-agency assessment team is visiting the area this week.
A Somali agronomist told IRIN the problems in the Sool Plateau are complicated by the fact that the area is claimed by both the self-declared republic of Somaliland and the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland.
The region falls geographically within Somaliland, but most of the clans who live there are associated with neighbouring Puntland.
Posted on Friday 10th October at 17:48:52 Fadhiga Labada Gole Baarlamaanka Somalland Ay Yeeshan
Hargeysa(Jam)-Labada gole ee Baarlamaanka Somaliland [Guurtida iyo Wakiilada], ayaa shalay waxa uga furmay xarunta golaha Guurtida kulan wadajir ah oo ay kaga doodayaan hindisaha nabadaynta Beelaha Hawiye ee Koonfurta Soomaaliya, ee ay wadaan xubno ka mid ah Salaadiinta Somaliland iyo saamaynta uu ku yeelanayo Somalialnd iyo sida laga yeelayo.
Dooda Ajandaha kulankaasi oo socon doona muddo saddex maalmood ah, waxa furitaankii kulanka hadal ka jeediyay guddoomiyaha Golaha Guurtida Somalialnd Md. Sheekh Ibraahim Sheekh Yuusuf Sheekh Madar, kaas oo uga xog waramay Mudanayaasha labada gole khatarta iyo saamaynta Siyaasadeed ee uu ku yeelan karo Qaranimada Somaliland, dhawaaqyada ka soo yeedhaya Koonfurta dalkii la isku odhan jiray Soomaaliya, iyo hindisaha ay waddaan xubno Salaadiin Somaliland ah oo ay ku doonayaan inay ku heshiisiinayaan siyaasiyiinta Beelaha Hawiye; “Mudanayal, waxa aynu caado u lahaan jirnay inay marka ay wax yimadaan ama aynu, ka baqano in la ina simbiririxaynayo in aynu isu nimaadno oo aynu isaga nimaadno waxaasi waxa aynu wax kaga qabanayno, waana aynu ku guulaysan jirnay oo wax innaga Bariiqday maynu arag. Maanta waxa aynu isugu nimid waxa weeye guux guux ayaa jira xaggaa Koonfurta innagaga socda, ka aynu isugu nimid waa kaas” ayuu ku yidhi guddoomiyuhu hadalkiisii, waxaana uu intaas raaciyay, “ Dad waxa jira u tafa xaydan inay halkaasi maraan, Mabaadi kuma marayaan, markaa garan mayno waxa ay ku marayaan waxa weeye innagu wax aynu ka shaqaynaynaa danaha ummadda reer Somaliland. Waxa aynu ka wakiil nahay dadweynaha, tii baana Maanta socota waxa weeye Somaliland wax gil gili karaa ma jirto. 1991-kii ayaynu la soo noqonay dawladnimaddeenii aynu lixdankii tuurnay, sababta innagu keliftay waxa weeye wixii dhibaato innaga soo gaadhay”.
Ugu dambayntii Sheekh Ibraahim, waxa uu sheegay in dalka Somaliland Marayo marxalad aad u wanaagsan islamarkaana la doonayo in la badbaadiyo tacabkii loo soo galay oo la doonayo in la baabiiyo, waxa uu mudanayaasha ugu baaqay in ay ilaaliyaan danta dadka iyo dalka Somaliland”.
Kulanka shalay oo ay fadhiyeen 92 mudane, waxa fekerkooda ka dhiibtay mudanayaal badan oo isugu jira guurti iyo Wakiilo, waxaana ka muuqatay badankooda inay ka soo horjeedaan hindisaha dhexdhexaadinta iyo tegitaanka Xamar, ee Xubnaha Salaadiinta ahi ay wataan.
Md. Siciid Cilmi Rooble oo doodiisa shalay dhiibtay, waxa uu yidhi; “Arrintani muddaba dalka way ku soo jirtay, oo aad iyo aad ayaa muddadii hore hoos loogu dhigayay, xisbiyadu aad bay uga hadleen golayaasha Dawladdu gadaal bay ka hadleen, hore ugamay hadlin, waxa la leeyahay oo Idaacadda laga maqlay oo jaraa’idka lagu arkay in Salaadiinta la weheliyo oo shirguddoonka Guurtidu wax kaga jiro. Oo Madaxweynuhu wax kaga jiro, oo hadalkii Madaxweynaha ee dabacsanaa uu marag ka yahay”, waxa uu Md. Siciid, intaas raaciyay, “Waxaan soo jeedinayaa guddi baadhis ah waa in la sameeyo oo labada gole ka kooban oo soo baadha arrinkan cidda ka dambaysay iyo arrintani halka ay ka timid, xukun lama gaadhi karo ilaa la ogaado arrinkan cidda ka dambaysay”.
Cabdisalaan Maxamed Siciid, oo ka mid ah Golaha Guurtida oo shalay ka hadlay kulankii labada gole waxa hadaladiisii ka mid ahaa; “Qodobkani waa qodob aad u mihiim ah, xaaladaha socday ee Siyaasaduna runtii meel xunbay marayaan oo Qodaxyo ayay leeyihiin arrimaha innagu soo waajahan, Shirkii Nayroobi xaaladdiisu meel xun bay maraysaa oo way wiiqantahay, laakiin mid kale ayaa Xamar ka jira oo saamayn innagu yeeshay. Haddaba haddii Salaadiinta qaar leeyihiin waxa aanu tagaynaa Koonfur, waxa aanu u malaynaynaa cudurbaa ka soo jeeda halkaasi, waxaana aan leeyahay Maanta maaha maalintii Salaadiinta, mana aha maalin Koonfur loo hanqal taago, aragtida halkaa ka soo jeedaa waxa weeye cudur ayaa ka soo jeeda arrintaa waxa lagu xakamayn karaa qodobka 34aad ee Distoorka”.
Md. Maxamed Muuse Abees, oo isna ka mid ah golaha Wakiilada oo kulankaas shalay ka hadlay ayaa eed u soo jeediyay golaha Guurtida oo ku dhaliilay kulamada ay la yeesheen Xubnaha Salaadiinta ah ee doonaya inay Muqdisho tagaan.
“Anigu waxaan leeyahay, golaha Guurtida, markaad maalin walba la shiraysaan nin arrinkan wada oo aad muddo ku qaadanaysaan hadhawtana arrinku noqonayo waa lagu kala kacay. Anigu waxa aan qabaa marka hore in aad talada ballaadhsataan si dadka taageero buuxda looga helo” ayuu yidhi Md. Abees.
Ugu dambayn waxa uu sheegay in arrintan Salaadiinta lagu go’aamiyo qaraaradii aynu ka soo saarnay qaddiyadihii la midka ahaa”.
Md. Sheekh Muuse Jaamac Goodaad oo ka tirsan Guurtida oo kulankaa Fekerkiisa ka dhiibtay ayaa sheegay in tallaabo adag laga gaadho cidda ka qayb gasha shirarka ku lidka ah Qaranimada Somaliland iyo ciddii kale ee ku taageertaba. “Anigu waxa aan qabaa in goluhu xeer ka soo saaro markaa laga arrinsado waxa laga yeelayo qofka dembi Qaranka ka gala, cidda ka qayb gasha shirarka Nayroobi iyo ka Xamar ee qabanqaabadiisa la waddo ee reer noqonaya, waxa la arkayaa Wasiiro, Wakiilo, Guurti iyo Masuuliyiin Qaran oo barbar yaacaya. Markaa anigu waxaan qabaa in xeer laga soo saaro cidda taageera iyo gaadiidka qaadda cidda gasha dembiga khiyaamo Qaran.
Waxa kale oo fadhigii Wada jirka ahaa ee labada gole ka hadlay Md. Xaaji Cabdi Xuseen (Cabdi-Waraabe), oo ka mid ah odayaasha Muxtarimka ah ee Golaha Guurtida waxaanu hadalkiisii ku bilaabay, “Waxaan idiin sheegayaa in Alle wax ina yeelo mooyee, maanta rag waxyeelaya Dawladda Somaliland ma jirto, haddii uu Soomaali yahay iyo haddii uu Ajanabi yahayba, nin wax ina yeelayaa ma jiro, xagga ilaahay baynu ka dhisanahay, tallada Illaahay baa ina waafajiyay. Horta hadal nin ina yidhi waxba yaanu ina gelin Aafo, wax ina rari karaa ma jiro oo aan Rabi ahayn, dawlad dhammaystiran baynu nahay oo deggen, tan maanta labada gole isugu yimid, hadalku yaanu meel ka qabsamin ee hadal wanaagsan oo aynu hore u nidhi oo caam ah haddii ay dumar tahay iyo haddii ay rag tahay,haddii ay madax dhaqameed tahay, haddii ay Guurti tahay, haddii ay wakiil tahay iyo haddii ay xukuumadda tahayba, Somaliland nin matala oo iska dhaqaaqay oo ka horyimid ninkaasi isagaa dembiga iska leh . guud ahaan hadalkeenu ha ahaado kii hore aynu shirkii Carta aynu ka soo saarnay bayaanka, kii uun hala adkeeyo hana la fuliyo”.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Thursday 9th October at 17:39:28 Heshiis Dhaxal Gal ah oo ay Gaareen DKMG..
Waxaa shalay Hotel Shamo lagu qabtay xaflad si heer sare ah loo soo agaasimay oo ay ka soo qaybgaleen Dowladda KMG-ka Ururrada siyaasaddda gaar ahaan golihii dhawana loga dhawaaqay Degmada Balcad ee Gobolka Sh/Hexe, golahaasa oo la magac baxay Golaha Samata bixinta Qaranka Soomaaliyeed,
W axaana halkaas heshiis dhaxalgal ah ku gaaray Dowladda KMG ah iyo GSQS oo ay kala horkacayeen Madaxweynaha Dolwadda KMG-ka ah Dr. C/qaasim Salaad Xasan iyo Guddoomiyaha Golahaas Al-Xaaji Muuse Suudi Yalaxow.
Ugu horreyn waxaa halkaas gabay duco ah ka tiriyey Abwaanka Caanka ah ee lagu Magacaabo C/qaadir Xirsi Yam-Yam, kaddibna waxaa hadalkii qaatay Guddoomiyaha Golaha Samata bixinta Qaranka Al-xaaji Muuse Suudi Yalaxow oo ku dhawaaqay inay dhammaatay gabi ahaanba colaaddii dagaalladii iyo xabbadihii u dhexeeyey kooxaha siyaasadda Somalia iyo qabaa'illada Soomaaliyeed, wuxuuna sheegay inay gaareen golaha GSQS iyo Dowladda KMG-ka ah heshiis dhaxal-gal ah ayna u guntan doonaan Maanta wixii ka dambeeya sidii shir dib u heshiisiin qaran loogu qaban lahaa dalka gudhiisa "13-sano waxaan ka orodnay Nabad; waxaana u orodnay colaad iyo dagaal, balse wax waan ka keeni waynay, maantana waxaan dib ugu labanaynaa halkii aan 13-sano ka hor ka soo orodnay", wuxuu kaloo sheegay in saxaafadda Magaalada Muqdisho ay si fiican ula shaqeysay si fiicanna ugu gudbisay shacabka Soomaaliyeed xaqaa'iqa dhabta ah "Waxaan moodi jiray in saxaafadda Muqdisho ay iska hor keenayaan kooxaha siyaasadda, laakiin waxaan ogaaday inay waayeen cid ay la shaqeeyaan",
Waxa uu ku amaanay Saxaafadda doorka ay kaga jiraan wacyi gelinta Ummadda, waxa uu sidoo kale ammaan ballaaran uu u jeediyey xubbnaha Dowladda KMG-ka ah oo uu ku ammaanay sidii ay isku garab tageen golahaas, wuxuuna sheegay inuu Dowladda KMG-ka ah u aqoonsan yahay dowlad KMG ah oo ka jirta Dalka. " Wax badna baan carrabkayga ka dhowray inaan C/qaasim ugu yeero Madaxweyne, balse maanta waxaan qirayaa in C/qaasim uu yahay Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Somlia" ayuu yiri Al-xaaji Muuse suudi Yalaxow oo uu u yeeray sacab aan wali loo garaacin hoggaamiy Soomaaiyeed.
Sidoo kale, waxaa halkaasi ka hadlay Dr. C/qaasim Salaad Xasan oo sheegay in dowladda KMG-ka iyo golahaasiba ay garteen inay ka hor-tagaan wax kasta oo qalalaase lagu galinayo jiritaanka iyo Qarannimada Somalia, "Waxaan dhawaana u diri doonna Caalamka Wufuud isku dhaf ah oo ka tirsan labada dhinac kuwaasoo Beesha caalamka ka dhaadhicin doona inay Soomaaliyi danteeda garatay ayna ka maarmayso in dibadda lagu qabto shir dib u heshiisiin ah " ayuu yiri: C/qaasim Salaad Xasan.
Ayaamaha
Posted on Thursday 9th October at 17:58:56 Somali Leader Blocked At Airport
Militiamen have prevented the head of Somalia's transitional national government, Abdulkassim Salad Hassan, from embarking on a planned trip to Libya.
He and senior members of his administration were confronted by a former bodyguard as they prepared to leave from an airport 80km south-west of the capital, Mogadishu.
Some of Mr Hassan's former bodyguards reportedly demanded money before allowing him to fly.
A number of shots were fired into the air and the delegation returned to Mogadishu.
No revenue
Correspondents say the incident is a vivid reminder of the lack of authority exerted by the transitional government, whose powerbase is confined to small pockets of the country.
Somalia has been without an internationally recognised central government since the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991.
Rival warlords and clans run different parts of the country.
The BBC's Hassan Barise in Mogadishu says that the transitional government does not control any of the economic installations, such as ports and airports around the capital.
He says this has prevented Mr Hassan's administration from generating enough revenue to function normally.
Posted on Thursday 9th October at 17:49:24 Six Reportedly Killed in Fighting Near Baidoa
NAIROBI, 9 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Up to six people are said to have been killed in southwestern Somalia in fighting between rival factions of the governing Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA).
RRA chairman Hasan Muhammad Nur "Shatigadud", who leads one of the factions, said "skirmishes" broke out when his clan members came under attack from supporters of his rival Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade.
He told IRIN the fighting had taken place on Tuesday and Wednesday at Dambal near Baidoa airport and at Dainunai on the road to Mogadishu, but that it died down on Thursday.
Last month, Shatigadud reconciled with one of his rivals, deputy RRA chairman Shaykh Adan Madobe, but Habsade, the other deputy chairman, has refused to join them.
"That is why his supporters attacked us," Shatigadud said. "So our people carried out a revenge attack. Five or six people were killed."
He added that the ceasefire deal with Madobe still stands, but that a committee set up to explain the agreement to the people of the region had not yet left Nairobi for Baidoa. Shatigadud is in the Kenyan capital attending peace talks which have been underway since October 2002.
Shatigadud and his two deputies split in July 2002 as a power struggle tore apart the RRA, which controls much of the Bay and Bakol regions. Fierce fighting broke out in Baidoa and the town changed hands several times, creating a severe humanitarian crisis.
Posted on Thursday 9th October at 17:47:22 Scores Injured As Somali Clans Clash
Scores of people were yesterday injured when two Somali clans clashed at Maili Nane trading centre near Eldoret town.
The Uasin-Gishu police boss, Mr Mwangi Gichuhi, said at least four people were admitted at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in critical condition. The incident, which took place on Monday night, extended to yesterday morning.
Gichuhi said police arrested six suspects who will be arraigned in court on assault charges.
He said the clash was instigated by business rivalry between the two clans.
Unconfirmed reports had earlier indicated that two people were killed in the fight but police said they investigating the allegations.
Tension remained high at the trading centre as a contingent of armed police patrolled the area flashing out suspects in a bid to restore law and order.
"Security personnel have been deployed to ensure that those behind the clash are arrested and made to face the law," said Gichuhi.
He denied claims that he had been issued with instructions to release members of a particular clan who had been arrested for sparking the fight.
Gichuhi maintained that suspects will be arraigned in court.
Clan leaders Mohammed Hassan and Ibrahim Ali alleged that a senior provincial administrator and a legislator from North Eastern Province were fuelling the rivalry.
They challenged the police to act impartially and help restore order instead of being biased.
Copyright © 2003 The East African Standard.
Posted on Wednesday 8th October at 16:37:01 Mediators Try to Repair Troubled Somalia Talks
NAIROBI, Oct. 8 — Mediators trying to restore government to chaotic Somalia sought on Wednesday to end a boycott of peace talks by a group of faction leaders protesting against alleged interference by powerful neighbour Ethiopia.
All efforts will be deployed to persuade those leaders who are away to return to the conference,'' said a statement by the chief mediator, veteran Kenyan diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat.
Efforts are being made to bring Somalis together to resolve what differences still divide them, Winston Tubman, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for Somalia, told Reuters.
On September 30, two of Mogadishu's toughest warlords led 12 southern Somali political groups in quitting the year-long peace talks in Kenya and set up a so-called Somali Salvation National Alliance in order to organise a rival peace conference.
Some members of the group are uneasy at what they see as Ethiopian attempts to dominate the talks and any government it produces for Somalia, which has been without central authority for 12 years.
Participants include Muse Sudi Yalahow and Osman Ali Atto, two of the capital's most powerful militia leaders, and the Juba Valley Alliance group that controls the southern Kismayo port.
Somalia has been torn by war since the overthrow of military ruler Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991 and since then conflict and famine have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Ethiopia, the dominant power in the Horn of Africa and Somalia's traditional foe, denies interfering but says it has a key interest in ensuring an end to Somali militia mayhem.
Earlier in September the conference was abandoned by Abdiqassim Salad Hassan, head of a defunct interim government, and Djibouti, a key player in Somali affairs, ended its participation as one of the regional mediators.
Diplomats say both moves were linked to a deepening rift between Ethiopia and Arab states like Egypt that are wary of Ethiopian influence in a country they see as one of their own.
Abdiqassim has said he walked out because delegates and mediators decided to approve a transitional constitution without involving him and other faction leaders opposed to Ethiopia.
The charter, a 40-page document, sets a four-year term for the transitional government to shepherd the country to elections.
On Wednesday, members of the new alliance led by Muse Sudi met Abdiqassim, who has good ties to some Arab states, in a Mogadishu hotel to try to persuade him to join their group. There was no immediate word on the outcome of the talks.
Officials at the hotel meeting said without elaborating that participants also discussed how to defend themselves if attacked by the forces of those warlords still attending the talks.
Diplomats said mediators planned to visit Abdiqassim in Mogadishu to ask him to resume his place at the talks.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited.
Posted on Wednesday 8th October at 16:34:59 2 Arrested for Killing Italian Aid Worker
ROME (AP) — Two people have been arrested in Somalia in the shooting death of an Italian aid worker there, Italy's foreign minister said Wednesday.
Annalena Tonelli, 60, was shot twice in the head Sunday in the town of Borama, 580 miles northwest of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. She was killed outside the hospital she had founded there.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told parliament that Somali police have two suspects in custody.
Tonelli had worked in Somalia and neighboring Kenya for more than three decades, setting up clinics to fight tuberculosis and creating awareness about AIDS as well as about the harmful effects of female circumcision.
Somalia has been beset by chaos and violence, with no central government, since longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. Much of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed, causing Somalis to rely on aid groups and charities for health care.
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press
Posted on Wednesday 8th October at 16:32:48 Kenya Leader Seeks U.S. Help in Somalia
WASHINGTON (AP) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki asked President Bush Monday for more American help in stabilizing Somalia, an East African neighbor that terrorism experts say is a concern because of the lawlessness there.
``I emphasized that in order to maintain the democratic gains and to sustain the war against terrorism, it is essential that Somalia stabilizes,'' Kibaki said at a joint news conference with Bush. ``In this respect, it is important for the U.S. to increase its involvement in this search for peace in Somalia. It is pertinent that all parties involved in the peace process remain engaged. I requested the U.S. government to assist in this regard.''
Bush made no public commitments on expanding the American role in Somalia, where 18 U.S. soldiers died in a fierce street battle, a clash that spurred the exit of American peacekeepers during the Clinton administration.
But Bush said he hoped that ``Somalia will continue to work with Kenya to bring unity and reconciliation to a badly divided land.''
``The establishment of an effective representative government in Somalia will help stabilize the region and dispel the hopelessness that feeds terror,'' Bush said.
The two leaders faced reporters as part of a state visit by Kibaki. It was just the fourth state visit Bush has hosted since becoming president, underscoring the importance that he attaches to America's ties with Kenya.
Terrorism, and Kenya's efforts to combat it, took center stage during the visit.
Last November, a car bomb detonated in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa killed three Israeli tourists and at least 10 Kenyans. The attack has been blamed on al-Qaida. Almost simultaneously, surface-to-air missiles narrowly missed an Israeli charter jet taking off from Mombasa airport.
``In Nairobi and Mombasa and beyond, terrorists have made Kenya a battleground,'' Bush said. But, he added, ``The president affirmed the fact that the Kenyan people refuse to live in fear.'' He cited steps Kenya has taken to fight terror, including arresting suspects. ``My government will continue to give them the help they need to do so,'' Bush said.
Bush and Kibaki also discussed peace efforts in Sudan, where Kenya is trying to broker a permanent truce. Formal negotiations resume this week.
Earlier Monday, Bush praised Kenya's ``historic election'' last year as a major step toward democracy while pledging to help the African nation fight terrorism.
``There can be no compromise with this evil, and the government of Kenya is a vital ally in the ongoing war against terror,'' Bush said, standing next to Kibaki on the South Lawn of the White House.
The two leaders were also discussing Kenya's democratic breakthrough over the past year and its problems with terrorism and AIDS. It is estimated that an average of 700 Kenyans each day die of the disease.
``My government is determined to uphold democratic values, human rights, good governance and the rule of law, and to empower people,'' Kibaki said.
By GEORGE GEDDA
Associated Press Writer
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
Posted on Tuesday 7th October at 17:40:06 Somaliland Tries To Get Some Respect
DPA , HARGEISA, Monday, Oct 06, 2003,Page 16
From the air the landscape looks as though it is dotted with outsized footballs, but once on the ground it becomes clear that these are human dwellings.
They are built using a technique that has also been adopted by Western outdoor equipment manufacturers in making their igloo tents.
Flexible rods form a semi-spherical skeletal structure that is then covered with old bits of clothing, plastic sheeting and old sacks.
In Somaliland, the breakaway republic in the north of Somalia, these patchwork huts stand right next door to the concrete houses of the better off and the white-washed buildings put up by the international aid organizations.
Somaliland is poor but proud. Twelve years ago the former British colony declared itself independent from Somalia, although no one has yet recognized it as an independent country.
Undeterred by their lack of success on the international stage, the inhabitants of Somaliland hoist their own national flag, use their own registration numbers on their vehicles and print their own money.
The currency's value is so degraded that exchanging a US$10 note leaves the visitor with more cash than can comfortably fit into a normal wallet.
Money changers in the nominal capital of Hargeisa sit surrounded by knee-high piles of bank notes, which provide a handy footrest when they take their midday siesta.
"This is a peaceful and stable country. You can travel around without being stopped by armed militias," says Jesper Morch, the representative of the UN children's organization UNICEF in Somalia. He believes it is time that the international community acknowledges the political achievements of the small republic.
And the International Crisis Group, a group of independent political experts, is even more explicit in the way it sees the situation.
"International recognition would establish Somaliland as one of the few truly democratic states in the region," they say in a report.
In April Somaliland conducted a tense presidential election, in which President Dahir Rayala Kahin was confirmed in office against all expectations with a majority of just 80 votes.
Foreign Minister Edna Adan, a former midwife and the founder of a women's clinic in Hargeisa, has acquired the status of a resolute mother figure in this small country with an estimated population of some 3.5 million.
She represents Somaliland on the international stage with a mixture of charm and determination to see it granted recognition as a full member of the family of nations.
Somaliland cannot survive without international aid. Income from the trade in livestock has declined dramatically after the outbreak of disease in the national herd.
And a large part of the national income is consumed in the form of khat, a leaf imported from Kenya and Ethiopia that the residents chew. The habit, which provides the consumer with a mild high after hours of chewing, can cost up to five dollars a day.
Only 17 percent of the children of school-going age actually attend school, and more than 90 percent of the women are believed to undergo a form of circumcision in childhood that is often so radical that they suffer severe health problems in later life, especially when they give birth.
"There is simply no family planning here," says Dahir Mohammed Yusuf, the deputy director of the Edna Adan Clinic in Hargeisa.
Despite all the country's problems, however, life is better here for ordinary people than in the rest of Somalia. Somalia is rated the fifth poorest country in the world, and for the past 12 years it has had no effective central government.
During the civil war, many of the country's educated elite simply left, and in the capital Mogadishu the warring clans continue to battle for turf and abduct anyone they believe can provide ransom money.
A UN security official, returning after a two year tour of duty in Mogadishu, said recently: "In this place, all hope is in vain."
Posted on Monday 6th October at 17:43:46 Dignity Through Work
NAIROBI, 6 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - "Restoring dignity through work". This how the International Labour Organisation (ILO) describes a project underway in war-torn Somalia to give residents a feeling of worth and show that there are alternatives to the cycle of violence in which so many people become swept up.
The ILO's Promotion of Economic Recovery Project in Somalia (PERPS) began in April 2002 in Hargeysa, capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, and has since spread to areas of Puntland and the ravaged capital Mogadishu.
"We are getting people to help themselves and also trying to bridge the gap between relief aid and development," explains Joe Connolly, the project's chief technical adviser. "We have to change the status quo and move beyond these conflict situations."
CLEANING MOGADISHU'S STREETS
The project has been particularly successful in anarchic Mogadishu, where traditionally it has been difficult to overcome the conflicting interests of faction leaders and their militia groups.
Some 600 of the city's poorest people were hired, cutting across clan and gender lines, to remove mounds of rubbish littering Mogadishu's streets.
This community-based employment was implemented with a local partner, SAACID, and the workers were paid US $2 a day. Local disputes and problems with the militia were handled by district committees comprising a cross-section of society.
As there had been no garbage collection for 12 years, the heaps were often 10 metres high, with the constant danger of unexploded ordnance hidden under the filth.
"People are sick of war," Connolly told IRIN. "This project - employment - is not just about jobs and income. It empowers local communities and restores hope and self-dignity.
"Employment is a critical factor in any social reintegration. It can act as a neutral forum to bring people together."
Although limited in scope, Connolly hopes to build on the success of this first phase and move towards more ambitious plans aimed at repairing Mogadishu's devastated infrastructure.
"UNIQUE DATA"
Another element of the project was to collect data from the workers which, the ILO believes, "provides a unique insight into the poor of Mogadishu".
Some of the main findings indicated that nearly 39 percent of the participants were internally displaced people and 50 percent had received no education (of these, 62 percent of women said they had received no education).
Only 35 percent of women could read and write, compared to 73 percent of the men. About 30 percent of the participants indicated they had no previous job experience at all.
Other findings showed that the average number of family members was nine. Some 55 percent of participants indicated they had no understanding of HIV/AIDS, and 53 percent did not know how to protect themselves from the disease.
OVERWHELMING RESPONSE
Connolly says the response from people in Mogadishu and from other parts of Somalia has been overwhelming. Such projects, he notes, can create a "critical mass" of grass-roots support in favour of peacefully resolving conflict.
He acknowledges there are problems of sustainability and raised expectations, which is why, he stresses, it is so important to keep these projects moving along and to maintain the momentum.
The ILO emphasises that access to decent work "reorients people's minds from conflict and destructive activities to constructive thinking", but criticises many conflict prevention and post-conflict programmes for giving "inadequate attention" to this issue.
It also wants such employment projects to form a core element of future recovery activities such as Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR).
"Employment influences attitudes, hearts and minds," Connolly told IRIN. "The psychological value is enormous. Ordinary people just want peace and the means to support their families."
Posted on Monday 6th October at 17:38:27 Aid Worker Shot Dead in Borama
ANNALENA Tonelli, a prize-winning Italian humanitarian worker who spent more than three decades helping Somalis, has been shot dead in the hospital she ran in northwestern Somalia, Somali and UN officials said today.
An unidentified gunman shot the 60-year-old in the grounds of the tuberculosis hospital in Borama, 930km northwest of Mogadishu, yesterday about 8pm, said Abdulkadir Suleman Ali, a local government official in the town.
The gunman, who waited for Tonelli outside the hospital, "fired two rounds from a pistol at her forehead," Ali said, speaking by telephone from Borama.
The motive for the killing was not known and nobody had been detained in connection with the shooting, he added.
Ali said Tonelli was rushed to the general hospital in the town but died two hours later.
Tonelli, who won the 2003 Nansen Refugee Award last June in recognition of her work with Somalis, had worked in Borama since 1996.
The town is in the northwestern region of Somaliland, which has avoided much of the chaos and violence that has plagued southern Somalia for more than a decade.
Somaliland set up its own administration and declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the country following the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
The Horn of Africa nation has not had an effective central government since Siad Barre's ouster, and much of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed, causing Somalis to rely on aid groups and charities for health care.
Tonelli, who was fluent in Somali, had worked with Somalis in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya for 33 years, setting up clinics to fight tuberculosis and creating awareness about HIV/AIDS and the harmful effects of female circumcision.
A lawyer by training, Tonelli worked independently, raising $US20,000 ($29,520) a month from friends and family, which she used to run her tuberculosis hospital in Borama.
She earned diplomas in tropical medicine, community medicine, control of tuberculosis and control of leprosy to better carry out what she saw as her true calling, treating TB patients, the UN refugee agency said.
Ruud Lubbers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the UN agency was devastated by Tonelli's death.
"She dedicated her life to helping others, carrying out her noble mission in remote, difficult places little noticed by the outside world," Lubbers said. "In doing so, she touched the lives of thousands of people, demonstrating that individuals can still make a huge difference. We mourn the loss of a truly great woman."
By Osman Hassan in Mogadishu
The Associated Press
Posted on Monday 6th October at 17:35:12 Anarchy Rules Mogadishu
Mogadishu, Somalia - Ali Shera and Musa Hussein point to the wreckage of an American Black Hawk helicopter tangled in a large prickly pear cactus, the only remaining evidence of a battle on this dusty side-street a decade ago that left 18 US soldiers dead.
On October 3, 1993, Shera was a lieutenant in Mohamed Farah Aidid's militia, and Hussein was a streetfighter toting a Kalashnikov assault rifle. They said they rejoiced when they won the 19-hour battle against the world's only superpower.
"You can imagine Somalia, a small nation, we beat the most powerful country in the world," Shera, now 41, said. "For us, we were very happy we beat the Americans.'
In the years since then, though, they have come to hate the militias that still prowl Mogadishu's streets and the anarchy that prevents Somalia from rising above being the prototypical failed state. Shera and Hussein said they have seen too much death and destruction, especially in clan fighting.
We hate to carry guns
"Now we are tired, we've fought each other, and we can't defeat each other," said Hussein, 34, who along with Shera is now unemployed. "We hate to carry guns anymore.'
While most of the aluminium from the Black Hawk's wreckage - one of the two US helicopters shot down - has been cut away to make kitchen utensils, one of the jet engines remains, along with the floorboard and a steel beam from the frame - most of it concealed by the overgrown cactus.
In a way, the carving up of the Black Hawk and its cactus cage serve as an analogy for what has happened to this country in the Horn of Africa.
Before dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, he had cultivated distrust and hatred among Somalia's six major clans. Since then, continued fighting among the clans has only exacerbated the distrust. More than a dozen separate peace talks have failed to restore order and a central government.
Seven faction leaders have divided up Mogadishu, and while it is possible to pass from one neighbourhood to another, Somalis need to be careful with whom they do business or how long they stay in a neighbourhood that isn't theirs.
Darkness and fear
At night, it is easy to tell good neighbourhoods from bad. The better ones have diesel generators for electricity, and people walk the streets. But in the Medina district - controlled by warlord Muse Sude Yalahow - there is only darkness and fear of his notoriously undisciplined gunmen.
The capital's main seaport and airport remain closed, primarily because no sub-clan can claim total control of them. All foreign cargo and international travellers must pass through one of the ports controlled by a single sub-clan-based faction, which collects user fees. The same system applies to highways, where gunmen set up checkpoints.
One result - which makes terrorism experts lose sleep at night - is that anyone willing to pay the fees can enter Somalia. There is no government to issue visas or immigration officers to check passports at the country's five functioning airports or the hundreds of seaports.
While Somalis deny that any international terrorists live in Somalia - and there is no evidence of terrorist training camps or offices - at least one suspected al-Qaeda member has been snatched from the country and another reportedly has been spotted in Mogadishu.
Gunmen loyal to faction leader Muhammed Dheere captured a Yemeni named Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed in March. Authorities in neighbouring Kenya claimed credit for arranging Hemed's capture. They said he provided them with "useful information" about the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania as well as leads in the investigation into the attack last November on an Israeli tourist hotel north of the Kenyan port of Mombasa and the unsuccessful attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner.
The Kenyan minister in charge of national security, Chris Murungaru, said in a statement that Hemed was later turned over to US authorities. American officials have refused to comment on Hemed, and his current location in unknown.
Seen in Mogadishu
Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, under US indictment for the 1998 embassy bombings and a suspect in last November's attacks, has reportedly been seen in Mogadishu, but he remains at large.
Somalis are very aware of the US anti-terror campaign and know the United States is watching them. In interviews, they are quick to point out that Somalia is a small, ethnically homogenous country, making it nearly impossible for a foreigner to walk the streets without being noticed. They insist that no more than a handful of people could secretly enter the country and even then they would have to remain in hiding.
"It is possible they are here," Hussein acknowledged. "But everybody in Mogadishu knows that if you capture an Arab man and say, "I have a terrorist for the CIA in America," they will send a plane for him. But nobody knows if he was really al-Qaeda or not.'
As for Shera and Hussein, they hold no ill will toward the United States, though they say the Bush administration's anti-terror campaign too heavy-handed. They said they would like Somalia to have normal relations with America.
"After the war ended between the Somalis and the Americans, we forgot everything," Shera said. "That was 10 years ago; I hope we can solve these problems and sit down and talk together."
Posted on Saturday 4th October at 17:07:51 Terror Fall-out from US Somali Failure
Ten years ago, on 3 October 1993, Somalia hit the headlines when 18 United States soldiers died in a bungled attempt to capture a warlord in the capital, Mogadishu.
The incident was turned into the Hollywood film Black Hawk Down.
The US troops were part of the 50,000-strong United Nations Operation Restore Hope which ended in failure in 1995 when the UN withdrew.
Today Somalia still has no effective central government and it has been cited as a possible refuge for al-Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan and reports of renewed US interest.
Intelligence reports
In 1993, the country was in the grip of rival armies battling for power after the toppling of President Muhammad Siad Barre and the population was starving.
The then UN secretary general, Boutros Boutros Ghali announced Operation Restore Hope.
Dan Simpson, the US ambassador to Somalia in the mid 1980s, says that "any place where there is no government is potentially a seedbed for terrorism [and so] there is concern about Somalia."
Following the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, widely blamed on al-Qaeda, US officials began taking a more concerted look at the whole of East Africa - and in particular Somalia.
US intelligence reports said that Osama Bin Laden himself had travelled to the country several times in the 1990s and sent fighters to join in the Somali civil war.
In exchange he had apparently received permission to establish base camps and training facilities. Somalia was tipped to be the new refuge for Bin Laden after Afghanistan.
Terror attacks
But in June, 24 Pakistani UN soldiers were killed in an ambush by militia gunmen. In an increasingly hostile environment, the foreign troops found themselves unable to control the situation and casualties mounted, especially among civilians.
Conditions on the ground worsened and the Americans, who made up the bulk of the UN force, identified one particular warlord, Mohamed Farah Aideed, as the main problem.
It was his men who had murdered the Pakistani troops and he was unwilling to cede control and stop fighting.
Acting on intelligence reports that Farah Aideed would be holding a meeting at a hotel in Mogadishu, the US forces decided to strike.
The operation was a disaster: not only did they fail to capture Aideed, but the Americans lost 18 men and killed hundreds of Somalis in the fighting that followed.
Five months later, the Americans withdrew from Somalia.
Nation divided
Now, largely as a result of the civil war in the 1990s, the individual regions have fallen under the control of different tribal leaders.
And in each region, says BBC Somali service editor Yusuf Garrad Omar, there is a varying degree of law and order, and of basic services.
"Immediately after the war in Afghanistan there was substantial fear that al-Qaeda cadres and senior figures would make their way to Somalia to take refuge there," says Jason Burke, author of the book Al-Qaeda - Casting a Shadow of Terror.
But Mr Burke says that did not happen - at least as far as the US knows.
However, Washington's alarm over Somalia as a potential haven for terrorists heightened again in November 2002 when another al-Qaeda-style attack struck East Africa.
In two simultaneous attacks near Mombasa in Kenya, a surface-to-air missile narrowly missed an Israeli passenger jet, while a bomb destroyed a hotel popular with Israelis, killing 13 people.
Again, as in the case of the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings, Washington feared a Somali link.
"The Mombasa attack is still very unclear... there may have been some logistical support from radicals within Somalia but their numbers are likely to be very few and they are in no way representative of Somali people as a whole," says Mr Burke.
Different tradition
Despite Somalia remaining high on Washington's watch list, Mr Burke says there is now little firm evidence linking the country with al-Qaeda.
"There is no tradition of radical militant Islam of the sort that al-Qaeda generally goes along with.
"They are coming from a very different background and should a senior al-Qaeda operative try and hide there they are likely to be more tempted by the vast rewards for his capture than by his ideology," says Mr Burke.
The former US ambassador to Somalia, Dan Simpson says that as a potentially unstable nation with no central government Somalia should still be on Washington's radar.
But alongside the threats from other unsettled and conflict areas of the world, Somalia's importance is relatively low.
"For the Bush administration the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq are much higher priorities and I think they are also absorbing the resources that the US has to devote to that type of problem," says Mr Simpson.
"The US now has a coherent policy of trying to get the neighbours to take some responsibility for Somalia."
At present it is those neighbours in East Africa who are involved in the on-going negotiations to reach some sort of power-sharing peace treaty amongst Somalia's formerly warring factions.
But given the failure of previous attempts at Somali reconciliation, success is far from assured.
By Caspar Leighton
BBC Analysis programme
Posted on Friday 3rd October at 17:51:45 Somali War Children Explore Life without Guns
MOGADISHU, Oct 3 (Reuters) - It's an insult to ask Somali teenager Mohammed Ali whether he can use a gun.
"What are you talking about! Ask me instead how many people I have killed!" he replies.
His reaction reveals something of the enormous challenge facing teachers trying to wean Somalia's child warriors away from weapons.
Ali, 16, is enrolled in a U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) course to rehabilitate some of the many children used as killers, thieves and kidnappers by turbulent militia barons.
For children raised to think bad behaviour means refusing to kill or rape, sitting still in class is no ordinary challenge.
But six weeks into the six-month programme, teachers are noticing the kind of improvements that might be familiar to their counterparts in successful inner city schools in rich countries.
"They were awful in the first two weeks of the course," said teacher Fatuma Aden Oble.
"They would smoke in class, steal the books and pens, sometimes they would fight each other. We would threaten to expel them or withdraw their transport allowance."
Gradually, her turbulent charges settled down.
"They changed the way they dress, the hair became tidier," she said. "Now they do not feel comfortable smoking in front of me. The boys began to show an interest in practical things like electrics and mechanics. We counselled the girls on rape."
The bubbly inmates of her classroom have begun to focus on her lessons about handling conflict, one of which is: Do not react angrily in a crisis or "things will explode".
The youths and headscarf-wearing girls are among 180 children drawn mainly from militia checkpoints around southern Somalia being trained by UNICEF experts in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Merca.
Teachers recruit them from the checkpoints by using go-betweens to conduct tricky negotiations for their release with militia commanders: A typical requirement is that the child leave his gun behind at the barricade for others to use.
The children are motivated by a desire to change their lives and in some cases by incentives in the form of an allowance that covers their travel to and from the downtown school.
Some graduates from a previous course are running small businesses and the hope is that the current intake follows suit.
But there are 60,000 militiamen in Mogadishu and thousands elsewhere in the country, which has been without a government since former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.
"It's a drop in the ocean," UNICEF child protection officer Abdullahi Eyow said of the programme.
Experts say the course has importance as a demonstration to donors of what can be done by patient, expert teachers to erode the grip of militia "glamour" on young minds.
"The militia becomes like a family for the children," said Eyow. "Until you take them out of that environment they do not realise what they have done."
Many parents struggling with basic survival either tolerate or encourage their children to join militias since it is often the only way of making a living. The results are disastrous.
"These children have committed horrendous crimes. Going back to the community will be very difficult and so we have outreach workers who will help them with that," Eyow said.
Ali stood on a checkpoint for a warlord called Osman Ato, working the barrier and helping loot the corpses of passengers killed when his comrades shot at vehicles that failed to stop.
"The older boys were my heroes. They were brave. I wanted to be like them," he said. "Now I know I learned no good thing in the militia. Only stealing."
Ali, who looks more like an 11-year-old, says that in fact he only ever killed once, by mistake. It was a friend, aged 20.
"We were playing with our guns and one went off. I was shocked. I threw the gun down and ran away. But I was caught and the Islamic court jailed me for a month. I was whipped."
Nassero Abdi Jama used to cook and clean for a militia run by a warlord called Muse Sudi in another part of the city.
Now a demure 17 and planning to become a secretary, she says that at the time she saw her comrades' atrocities as normal.
"I liked them. I felt they were good and brave and ours was the best (militia) team in the country," she said. "They did not interfere with me (sexually) because I was from the same clan. But they would rape girls from other clans and I thought that was normal. I thought it was what they were supposed to do."
Abdi Jama also acted as a look-out, spying on cars travelling on the approach roads to her militia's checkpoint and informing the gunmen which ones looked worth robbing.
"I saw people dying when our checkpoint shot at their cars. I thought it was normal. I thought it was good."
By William Maclean
Posted on Friday 3rd October at 17:46:58 Government Pays Off Victim of Smear
The Canadian government has quietly paid off an Ottawa man it falsely accused of financing terrorism, arrested, and financially destroyed in the post-9/11 rush to cut off money flowing to Osama bin Laden's network.
Canadians, however, are not being told how much businessman Liban Hussein has been compensated for what one critic calls the "abuse" he suffered at the hands of the government.
Before admitting it had no grounds to do so, the government seized Mr. Hussein's assets, made it a crime for anyone to do business with him, jailed him, and moved to have him deported to the U.S. to face charges.
From early November 2001 to June 2002, Mr. Hussein was devastated emotionally, financially and socially because he ran a money-transfer business in Dorchester, Massachusetts, that U.S. officials said was linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist group.
In mid-June 2002, the Canadian Justice Department announced it was discontinuing proceedings against Mr. Hussein, a Somali-born Canadian citizen, because further investigation revealed there wasn't any evidence to suggest he had anything to with terrorism -- which was what he told officials all along.
After extradition proceedings against him were stopped, it was expected that Mr. Hussein would file a civil suit against the government for damages. He had been a successful small businessman who supported his parents and several brothers and sisters.
But the civil suit was never filed because after his lawyer contacted the Justice Department, they expressed interest in settling out of court.
A deal was recently reached, but terms of the settlement are subject to a non-disclosure clause.
Mr. Hussein's civil lawyer, Al O'Brien, says he cannot speak about the case. In the past week, Justice Department officials have not returned calls requesting information. And Mr. Hussein could not be reached for comment.
Confidentiality clauses are common in civil cases, but Randal Marlin, past-president of the Civil Liberties Association, National Capital Region chapter, says this is one case the Canadian public deserves and needs to know about.
"The public should know how much the government paid this man," he said. "In the post-Sept. 11 hysteria, the government abused this man's rights in an incalculable way. The public should know what kind of compensation he was awarded for what they put him through.
"Was it a million? Was it $50 million? I guess we'll never know."
What is known, however, is what happened to Mr. Hussein, and how a series of U.S. and Canadian government decisions conspired to deprive him of several fundamental rights.
On Nov. 7, 2001, Mr. Hussein and his Massachusetts-based money transfer company, Barakaat North America Inc., a subsidiary of al-Barakaat, headquartered in Dubai, were included on a U.S. government list of 62 people and businesses who allegedly supported terrorism.
In a speech that day, U.S. President George W. Bush said clear evidence showed that people on the list were "quartermasters of terror."
Mr. Hussein's money-transfer business was raided and shut down. His brother, Mohammed Hussein, 35, who was in Dorchester, was arrested and jailed on a charge of operating the business without a licence. Liban Hussein was charged with the same crime, but he was in Ottawa. The U.S. asked Canada to extradite him to face the charge.
On the same day Mr. Bush released the names, the UN Security Council adopted the list, as did the Canadian government, using an order-in-council with no public or parliamentary debate.
Mr. Hussein was arrested by the RCMP but, a day later, a judge released him after a bail hearing because neither government brought any evidence of terrorist links.
Still, as a penalty for being listed, Mr. Hussein's assets, including his business, were frozen, it became a crime for anyone to have financial dealings with him, and Canada announced it would try to extradite him to the U.S.
From the minute he became aware that he was accused of financing terrorism, Mr. Hussein denied it. He said he was a businessman running what is called a hawala, a money-transfer business, similar to Western Union, that helped Somalis send money to their home country, where there are no banks.
To extradite someone, the alleged crime in the U.S. must be akin to a crime in Canada. Since conducting such a business without a licence is not an offence in Canada, Justice Department lawyers decided they would argue that Mr. Hussein should be extradited because he was on the terrorism list.
Mr. Hussein's defence lawyers, Michael Edelson and David Paciacco, planned to fight the extradition by challenging the constitutionality of the list itself and how it was adopted by Canada.
Mr. Hussein lived in limbo for seven months, until mid-June 2002, when the Justice Department, after receiving the defence lawyers' written argument, abruptly announced it was halting extradition proceedings.
Justice Department chief general counsel Ivan Whitehall said he'd reviewed the material the U.S. used to place Mr. Hussein on the list and found "no evidence he was connected to any terrorist activities."
Mr. Hussein was removed from the list in Canada, and, eventually, at the UN and in the U.S. Since then, he has been trying to rebuild his shattered life in Ottawa.
Mr. Hussein was allowed to access his bank account after the extradition proceedings were stopped. But his janitorial-services franchise had been revoked, his hawala business had been shut down, and any money he had was used to repay people who had supported him during the seven months that he was under suspicion.
His brother was tried and convicted in the U.S. of running a money-transfer business without a licence and given 18 months in jail. The U.S. government never alleged any terrorist links at his trial.
Mr. Marlin says the unacceptable way in which Mr. Hussein was treated is a lesson Canadians should not soon forget.
"I hope the public now understands that the government destroyed this man's life without a single shred of evidence, that he had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism, and that his name is completely rehabilitated," he said.
"The settlement is an acknowledgement of this, but the public should know the details so we can judge for ourselves if the government has been held accountable for what it did to him."
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 17:55:24 Xukuumada Aamus Laga Yeeli Maayo ee ha is Caddee
Iyada oo dhawrkii toddobaad ee u dambeeyey la isladhexmarayey warar sheegayey in qaar ka mid ahSalaadiinta Somaliland ay doonayaan in ay tagaan Xamar, si ay u dhexdhexaadiyaan dhinacyada Beesha Hawiye ee Koonfurta Soomaaliya, ayaa markii ugu horreysay Isniintii dorraad xubno Madax-dhaqameedka Somaliland ahi waxay si rasmi ah u caddeeyeen in ay tagayaan magaalada Muqdisho.
Taasina waxay meesha kasaartay fikir dad badan qabaan oo ahaa in la hafrayoraggaas.Xubnahaas ka tirsan Salaadiinta Somaliland ee ku dhawaaqay in ay u kicitimayaan dhinaca magaalada Muqdisho, waxa markiiba si kulul cambaareeyeygo’aankooda xisbiga KULMIYE, waxaanu war-murtiyeed uusoo saaray Afhayeenka xisbiga KULMIYE, Maxamed KaahinAxmed, ku sheegay in siyaasiyan xisbiga KULMIYE si caduga soo horjeedo go’aanka qaar ka mid ah Salaadiinta Somaliland ee ku saabsan martiqaadka uga yimi Xamar.
Afhayeenku war-murtiyeedkiisa waxa kale oo uu ku caddeeyey in dib-u-heshiisiinta Beesha Hawiye iyo dhinacyada ay u dhexeyso colaada Soomaaliya ay tahayarrin ka mid ah siyaasadda arrimaha dibadda ee Somaliland, masuuliyadeedana ay leedahay xukuumaddu.Sidoo kale, Golaha Guurtida Somaliland ayaa iyagunabayaan ay soo sareen shalay waxay ay ku tilmaameen
go’aanka xubnaha ka tirsan Salaadiinta Somaliland ee sheegay in ay tegayaan Muqdisho shirqool lagu duminayo jiritaanka iyo madaxbannaanida Somaliland. Isla markaana sheegay in Somaliland kooxaha Soomaaliyadhexgalkooda iyo heshiisiintoodaba isku dayi lahayd,
marka ay beesha caalamku aqoonsato madaxbannaanidaJamhuuriyadda Somaliland, kana codsato Somalilandgudogalka arrintaas. Markaas oo ah ayey yidhaahdeen;
“Marka loo baahan karo kaalinta Guurtida iyoMadax-dhaqameedyada Somaliland.”
Hase yeeshee, dhinaca xukuumadda Madaxweyne Rayaale,ayaanu jirin ilaa xalay saacadihii dambe wax war ah oo ay ka soo saartay go’aanka xubnaha ka tirsan
Salaadiinta, iyada oo beryahan dambe la isladhexmarayey in xukuumaddu daaha dabadiisa ka
dirawalinayso Odayaasha, oo ay la mactahay.Si kastaba ha ahaatee, waxa xukuumadda looga fadhiyaalaba masalo midkood; waa ta koowaade, illeyn xalaaliftiin baa la qashaaye, in ay ummadda u caddaysomowqifkeeda siyaasadeed ee ku wajahan arrimahaSoomaaliya iyo go’aanka Odayaasha sheegay in ay Xamartegayaan, taas oo haddii ay dhacdo meesha ka saari
doonta tuhuno iyo shaki laga qabo maamulka xukuumaddaRayaale, oo dad badani u arkaan in ay gacan-saar hooseka dhexeeyo Ismaaciil Cumar Geelle, Madaxweynaha
Jamhuuriyadda Jabuuti, oo beryahanba ku hawlanaa sidiiuu taageero ugu heli lahaa kooxda Carta ee saaxiibkiiCabdiqaasim Salaad Xasan, oo u muuqda mid labadhexdood ku jira xilligan.
Iyo ta labaad, in xukuumaddu badheedhaheeda caddaysooo ay si buuxda u taageerto go’aanka xubnahaa katirsan Salaadiinta, taas oo laga yaabo in ay ku taageeraan dad badan oo hadda ka shaki qaba geeddi-socodka xukuumadda, marka ay la shir timaaddo
faa’iidada ugu jirta Somaliland dib-u-heshiisiinta kooxaha Beesha Hawiye ee Koonfurta Soomaaliya xilligan oo murug siyaasadeed oo xooggani ka dhex aloosan yahay
beelaha degga dhulkii Talyaanigu gumaysan jiray ee dalweynihii Soomaaliya la isku odhan jiray.
Guntii iyo gebagebadii, waxaan xukuumadda leeyahay wax walba aamus baan kaga jawabaayaa lagaa yeeli maayo eeis caddee, oo ummaddu waa tii ku dooratay ee la hadal oo ka qanci waxay tabanayaan.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 17:50:47 ICRC: Surgical Care Remains a Priority
Somalia is currently neither at war nor at peace. The participants in the new peace talks started up over a year ago in Kenya have not achieved their aim of drawing up a constitution so that a new government could be formed. Some of them have stayed on in Kenya to pursue the negotiations beyond the set deadline of 28 August, but others have pulled out of the talks and returned home.
A transitional government was set up in August 2000 after the 12-year conflict had claimed hundreds of thousands of victims. Through the media and accounts provided by humanitarian organizations, the whole world is now aware of the horrible suffering endured by the population.
Over the past few months, fighting between members of rival clans and communities has continued to claim its share of victims. Mines have also caused terrible loss among civilians: children who venture into the ruins or play in vacant lots are regularly wounded by these lethal devices, which are buried in the rubble or the sand.
In response to the situation, the ICRC is continuing to carry out various medical programmes for war-wounded and other patients requiring emergency operations, thus ensuring that they have access to the treatment and care they need. Mogadishu’s two referral hospitals - Medina in the south of the city (65 beds) and Keysaney in the north (90 beds) - are receiving considerable financial help from the ICRC, which is also training their staff and providing supplies. In 2002 alone, 3,500 war-wounded people were operated on there. The Somali Red Crescent Society and various community groups are in charge of the administration and technical management of the two facilities. Patients with little or no money are treated free of charge, but those who can afford to are expected to pay certain fees.
The two hospitals in Baidoa and Galkaya are also receiving medical supplies from the ICRC so that they can administer first aid and transfer the most serious cases to Mogadishu. In addition, first-aid supplies have been made available to 25 health posts situated in conflict-affected areas in the central and southern parts of the country.
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 17:47:22 World Ignores Somaliland's Campaign for Independence
HARGEYSA, Somalia -- The rusting hulls of battle tanks and personnel carriers litter a cactus patch on a hill overlooking Hargeysa, Somalia's second city. They are remnants of wars that for decades battered this stretch of arid rangeland.
Mohammed Ali Ismail doesn't even notice the tanks and equipment anymore. They almost blend with the landscape.
"A businessman from Yemen wants to buy those tanks for scrap iron," said Ismail, a former government soldier who later fought for the rebels in this part of the country.
The clans in this stretch of desert in the country's north -- a region known as Somaliland -- declared their independence from Somalia after the collapse of Siad Barre's government in 1991. They have since maintained a degree of stability that is lacking in most other parts of the country.
The Somaliland region is about the size of Tennessee and has a predominantly Muslim population of about 3.5 million people. Most of them are supported by the more than $500 million sent every year from a diaspora living in places such as Britain, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States, according to Fatima Ibrahim, a human rights specialist for the United Nations Development Program in Somalia.
But the budding Republic of Somaliland has yet to be recognized by the international community, a refusal that puts the region in a diplomatic limbo.
Seeking recognition
With presidential elections last year deemed fair by international observers, many Somalilanders are wondering what other credentials are needed for the world to recognize their nationhood.
"We've shown that we can be democratic and that we can respect human rights. We are setting an example for the rest of Africa," said Somaliland Foreign Minister Edna Adan Ismail. "Where is our peace dividend?"
The biggest hurdle in Somaliland's struggle for recognition is the African Union, a coalition of leaders from 53 member nations who generally vote in favor of protecting colonial boundaries.
"We cannot stand for dismembering one of our countries. We cannot talk about African unity and then accept Somaliland," said Desmond Orjiako, a spokesman for the African Union.
Some analysts agree that supporting Somaliland's independence from Somalia, with a total population of about 8 million, sets a bad precedent, especially on a continent where rebel forces in Ivory Coast, Sudan and Congo, formerly Zaire, have split those countries in two. In Liberia, rebel groups control a majority of the country despite a shaky cease-fire and a power-sharing agreement.
Although Somaliland gained its independence from Britain in 1960, it opted days later to join its southern neighbor Somalia, a former Italian colony. The two countries shared a vision of a Greater Somalia that included parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Partnership sours
But their partnership soured in the late 1970s when Somali forces failed to gain control of Ethiopia's Ogaden region, important grazing lands for Somaliland's goat, camel and cattle herders and a region with strong Somali clan ties.
The lasting resentment from that war ended Mogadishu's dreams of expansion, and prompted a rebel movement in Somaliland that eventually toppled Barre's dictatorial regime.
The rebellion cost Somaliland more than 50,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates. Government forces flattened the region's major cities: Berbera, Sheikh, Burao and the regional capital, Hargeysa.
A dangerous legacy endures. About 100 people are maimed every year from unexploded mortars, grenades and land mines.
The land mines are mainly American-made M14s that were used by the Somali army in its fight to keep Somaliland from seceding.
Most of the injured are children, aid workers say.
"Our union with Somalia was like a partnership that didn't work out, and when we tried to leave they held guns to our heads," said Mohamed Hashi Elmi, the commerce minister who was a founder of the region's rebel group, the Somaliland National Movement.
"No one is paying attention to the atrocities committed against us by the Somali government. They just expect us to stay with Somalia," he said.
By RAYMOND THIBODEAUX
For The Journal-Constitution
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 14:12:02 More Twists in Peace Process
NAIROBI, 2 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Members of Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) attending peace talks in Kenya have called on the conference organisers not to accept "obstruction and delaying tactics".
Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah, Speaker Abdallah Derow Isaak and other delegation members said they welcomed attempts to heal the rift in the talks by bringing back key leaders who had walked out.
But, they said, in a letter to conference chairman Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat of Kenya, if the leaders refused to return "we should not accept obstruction and delaying tactics intended to derail the conference".
The TNG is effectively split into two factions after President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan returned to Mogadishu, unhappy over the adoption of a transitional charter which will serve as a blueprint for future Somali institutions.
In August, he sacked Abshir and Derow, and said the interim government would continue until new institutions were formed through free and fair elections. The TNG's mandate was due to end that same month, in accordance with the provisions of the Arta charter which established it.
A source close to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediation team acknowledged there was some confusion over the TNG's status.
But, the source told IRIN, the TNG delegation in Nairobi had been endorsed by the Transitional National Assembly (TNA) which, he said, was the only authority mandated to change the composition of that delegation. According to him, most of the TNA members were in Kenya.
He said there was now a possibility of "slowing down the process" to try and persuade leaders who had walked out to return, and to bring Djibouti back on board. Djibouti, a member of the IGAD technical committee which is steering the talks, pulled out last week complaining of a lack of neutrality in the proceedings.
The source said the mediators were also considering reducing the number of delegates to the talks and organising a retreat for delegation leaders.
In addition to Abdiqassim, three other key faction leaders - Muse Sudi Yalahow, Osman Hassan Ali Ato and Bare Hiirale - have left the peace talks, angry over the transitional charter and what they see as attempts by Ethiopia to dominate the proceedings. Ethiopia has denied trying to interfere in the talks.
The issue was further complicated on Thursday after these three announced the formation of a rival grouping in Somalia, known as the Somali National Salvation, and said they would organise a national reconciliation conference of their own.
IGAD mediators downplayed the move. "This opposition alliance is not all-inclusive," one official told IRIN. "It is a tug of war - they are trying to persuade people who are here to go there, and we are trying to persuade them to come here. But most of the key leaders are here."
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 14:03:58 RRA Factions Reconcile, Express Support for Peace Process
NAIROBI, 2 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - There has been a realignment of positions within the Rahanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) which governs the southern Somali town of Baidoa after its chairman Hasan Muhammad Nur "Shatigadud" reconciled with one of his rivals Shaykh Adan Madobe.
"We have agreed on a ceasefire and a cessation of hostilities," Shatigadud told IRIN on Thursday. "We have also appointed a committee to implement the agreement on the ground."
Shatigadud and his two deputies - Madobe and Muhammad Ibrahim Habsade - split in July 2002 as a power struggle tore apart the RRA which controls much of the Bay and Bakol regions. Fierce fighting broke out in Baidoa and the town changed hands several times, creating a severe humanitarian crisis.
Shatigadud said he and Madobe were committed to the Somali peace conference which has been underway in Kenya since October 2002. However Habsade has left the talks, unhappy over the provisions of a transitional charter.
"Habsade was in agreement with us to make peace, but he then changed his mind," Shatigadud told IRIN. "But we will talk to him and try and persuade him to join us."
He said he had agreed to reconcile with Madobe "because nobody was gaining any advantage and we want to stop the suffering of the people".
He acknowledged there were still problems in Baidoa, but said the committee had not yet gone there to explain the reconciliation. "There are still some incidents, but after the committee arrives, we hope there will be peace," he stated.
On the peace talks, Shatigadud said that even if an agreement were reached it would not mean much on the ground unless the international community sent an intervention force to keep peace in the country.
"Nothing would change," he said, describing the current state of the talks as "shaky" due to the departure of several key leaders.
Posted on Thursday 2nd October at 14:03:10 Sendiko: Wax Dan u ah Shacabka Soomaaliyeed Laguma Hayo Shirka
Waxaa maalintii shalay ahayd Hotel Kaah ka furmay shirweyne aan caadi ahayd oo ay isugu yimaadeen qaybaha kala duwan ee Isboortiga, waxaana kulankaan shir guddoominayay Faarax Weheliye Caddow Sendiko, waxaana looga hadlayay sidii loo turxaan bixin lahaa habacsanaantii soo dhex gashay qaar ka mid ah xiriirada Soomaaliyeed, iyadoo dhawaan uu is qabqabsi ka dhjex dhacay xiriirka Soomaaliyeed ee Kubadda Cagta, mar aan Sendiko kula kulmay magaalada balcad oo uu kaga qaybgalayay shirkii lagu dhisay isbahaysiga la magacbaxay Golaha Samata bixinta Qaranka Soomaaliyeed, ayaan wax ka weydiiyey waxyaabaha ka soo bixi doona shirka Isboortiga, waxa uuna ku jawaabay Faarax Sendiko "Shirkaasi waxa maanta ayaa la soo gabagabayn doonaa iyadoo dib u habeyn lagu sameyn doono Xiriirka Soomaaliyeed ee Kubadda Cagta" isagoo intaa raaciyey "Cid si gaar ah loo xumeyn doono ma jirto, waxaan dhammaanteen diyaar u nahay inaan ka shaqeyno sidii loo hormarin lahaa Isbortiga Soomaaliyeed".
Wuxuuna shalay shirkaas hakad geliyey markii ay soo xaadiri waayeen qaar ka mid ah guddiga Fulinta ee Kubadda Cagta.
Faarax Weheliye Caddow Sendiko mar aan wax ka weydiinay shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed ee ka socda dalka Kenya, waxa uuna sheegay in shirkaas aan lagu hayn wax dan u ah Maslaxadda Shacabka Soomaaliyeed, isagoo sheegay in qaar ka mid ah dowlado shisheeye ay fara galin ku hayaan shirka iyo guud ahaan arrimaha Somalia mana uusan carrabaabin Sendiko cidda ay yihiin dowladahaasi. Waxa kale oo uu sheegay Sendiko in haddii daaca laga noqdo shirkaasi ay ka soo bixi karto dowalad Soomaaliyeed oo loo dhan yahay, waxa uuna Sendiko ka mid yahay Musharraxiinta u tartamaysa Jagada Madaxweynenimada ee Shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliyeed.
Ayaamaha
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:59:22 Golaha Degaanka Boorama oo Ansixiyey
Boorama (Jam)- Golaha Degaanka magaalada Boorama, xarunta Gobolka Awdal, ayaa shalay cod aqlabiyad ah ku ansixiyey miisaaniyaddii Dawladda Hoose ee Boorama muddadii ay xilka hayeen oo dhan siddeed bilood, taas oo hore Goluhu hore isugu khilaafay meel- marinteeda.
Miisaaniyadda oo dhammayd 1,29,303000 Slsh., ayaa waxa Golaha soo hordhigay Duqa magaalada Boorama, Cabdiraxmaan Sh. Cumar Daahir, dood- dheer oo ay ka yeesheen kadib si buuxda ayey ugu ogolaadeen cod gacan taag ah.
Ereyo kooban oo uu Maayarku halkaa ka jeediyey waxa uu ku sheegay in muddadaa ay xilka hayeen kordhiyeen dakhli dhan 216,90800 Sh. Sl. Dakhligaasina uu ka soo kala xerooday toban goob dakhli ururineed oo ay abuureen muddadii ay xilka hayeen, isla markaana talogalka miisaaniyad sannadeedkan ay kordhiyeen. Waxa uu tilmaamay in miisaaniyaddii ay kala wareegeen maamulkii hore uu ahaa 1,29,303000 Sh. Sl, ku talogalka miisaaniyadda ay kordhiyeenna dhan tahay 1,51,00,000.
“Inkasta oo uu dakhligu kordhay waxaan meesha ka maqnayn korodhka kharashka baxay, waxaanuna 20 milyan ugu deeqnay dib- u- dhiska Dugsiga Sheekh Bashiir, Burco ee la gubay, dib- u- habayn aanu ku samaynay siddeed waddo oo Bariga magaalada aanu ka bannaynay, iyo kharashka ku baxa safarada aanu tuulooyinka ku tagno,” ayuu yidhi Maayarku.
Sida uu sheegay warkan oo uu noo soo diray weriyaha Jamhuuriya ee gobolka Awdal, Cabdiraxmaan Maxamed Habane, warbixintaa kadib waxa uu Maayarku soo jeediyey sida sharcigu dhigayo ansixinta miisaaniyadda in Golaha la horkeeno, si ay u ansixiyaan. “Waxaan filayaa in Goluhu diyaar u yahay arrintan,” ayuu yidhi Duqu.
Golaha Degaanka Boorama ayaa intaa kadib gudogalay ansixinta miisaaniyadda, inkasta oo ay jireen xildhibaanno soo jeediyey in xisaabtan dhab ah laga yeesho sida uu dakhliga Dawladda Hoose u baxay, haddana is qancin iyo dood- dheer kadib Goluhu cod aqlabiyad ah ayuu ku meel- mariyey ansixinta miisaaniyadda Dawladda Hoose ee Boorama.
Kulankii toddobaad ee Golaha Degaanka Boorama ee kan ka horreeyey oo uu Golaha horyaallay mawduucan ansixinta miisaaniyadda ayaa Goluhu ku kala dareeray, kadib markii ay isku mari- waayeen doodda ansixinta miisaaniyadda, iyaga oo Xildhibaannada qaarkood soo bandhigay in Golaha la horkeeno sidii loo kharash- gareeyey dakhligii Dawladda Hoose u soo xerooday, iyada aan wax go’aan ah laga gaadhin ayaa lagu kala dareeray.
Jamhuuriya
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:53:19 Djibouti Camp Gets Aid to Fight Cholera
NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) Aid agencies rushed 28 tonnes of relief supplies to 9,000 refugees at a camp in Djibouti on Tuesday to try to stave off cholera and provide sanitation, humanitarian officials said.
The refugees converged on the inhospitable Aour Aousar camp, which has been scraped out of Djibouti's arid bush and scrub land, after the tiny Red Sea state ordered more than 100,000 illegal immigrants to leave immediately earlier this month.
The 9,000 from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Yemen, Sudan, Rwanda and Iraq have been waiting in the camp while their applications for asylum are considered. Djibouti said it ordered the departures to improve its economy and security.
The Djibouti Red Crescent Society (DRCS) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the people at the sweltering camp, which was only designed for 3,000, were desperately in need of shelter and sanitation.
"This is a country with endemic cholera, and the lack of facilities in terms of water management and waste pose an imminent danger to public health," Pascal Cuttut, head of the ICRC regional delegation, said in a statement.
"They are all at risk now and we need to stabilize the situation in the short term," he added.
The two agencies carried out their one-off aid delivery to the camp, some 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Djibouti Town on Monday and Tuesday, the statement said.
Copyright 2003 Reuters.
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:49:35 Somali Bantu Arrival Date Postponed
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Somali Bantu refugees scheduled to begin settling into Columbia Wednesday won't arrive until next year, the U.S. State Department said.
About 120 Somali Bantus are moving to Columbia as part of one of the largest U.S. resettlement efforts in recent history. They are now scheduled to arrive after Jan. 1, the State Department said.
The Rev. Richard Robinson, the local coordinator of the Bantu resettlement for Lutheran Family Services, said the State Department had not told him of the delay, but he was not surprised.
"That is something we've learned to deal with," said Robinson. Refugee resettlement delays aren't unusual, he said.
The Bantus moving to the Columbia area over a two-year period are part of a second wave of Bantu refugees being settled across the country. The first 1,200 refugees, destined for 20 cities across the U.S., have not yet arrived. Eventually, 12,000 Bantu will settle in the U.S.
School district officials were pleased with the rescheduled arrival date.
"This is certainly a more logical time break and gives us more time to prepare," said Lexington school district 2 spokeswoman Venus Holland. "It's win-win for everyone."
Associated Press
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:47:09 City Heals From Torturous Time
Almost a year has passed since an ill-advised letter from the mayor of Lewiston set passions ablaze in the city and brought an unwanted spotlight onto our community. The good and the bad were illuminated for all to see.
Mayor Larry Raymond asked leaders of the Somali community to discourage others from migrating to the city, saying the costs were too high to sustain. A terrible storm was ignited as messages of tolerance and hate collided on the evening news, broadcast to the world live from the streets of Lewiston.
Hatemongers descended on the city and were greeted by a community that refused to accept their ugliness. The Many and One Coalition countered 30 neo-Nazis protesters with a rally of 4,000 people.
It was Oct. 4, 2003, when the tensions between old-line residents and their newest neighbors boiled over. There were plenty of allegations flying around, spurred by ignorance or misinformation. The Somalis received special assistance, free cars or more General Assistance than native Mainers. Cultures ran up against the rough sides of one another.
The truth: The Somali population was growing quickly. Almost 60 were arriving every month between February 2001 and September 2002. For that year, 155 Somalis received General Assistance out of 494 total cases. Since then, the migration has slowed, and Somali residents have begun to build a stable place in the community. For 2002-03, only 83 Somalis received assistance. There are at least five Somali-owned businesses, including shops and a restaurant. A new mosque has opened. And the city and Somali leaders estimate 70 percent of the adults have found work.
What a difference a year can make. There is still tension lurking, but the glare of a disapproving country has faded and our community’s reputation has begun the long process of rehabilitation. An invasion by racist, outside agitators was turned away. And the Somalis — drawn to the area because it is a safe place to raise a family and build a good life — are making their own way.
No doubt, when Mayor Raymond wrote his misguided missive, he had no idea the firestorm it would create. But by giving voice to devilish ideas that were hiding just below the surface, he sparked a conflict that has turned into a process of healing, growth and reconciliation.
The letter and the ideas it presented were wrong. It should have never been penned, and we continue to struggle with the damage it has done. But with the passage of time, Lewiston has moved forward.
©1998-2003 Lewiston Sun Journal. All Rights Reserved.
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:44:41 Emergency Repairs Keep Hargeisa Airport Open
Emergency repairs to the landing strip will enable Hargeisa airport, an important transport link for Somaliland, the northern region of Somalia, to operate for another six months while funds for complete renovation are sought.
UNDP and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) provided US$150,000 for the work, only a fraction of the resources needed for full rehabilitation. "This is not a long-term solution," said ICAO Chief Technical Adviser Joe Brunswig. "The emergency patchwork will deal with the immediate safety concerns and avert the closure of the airport, but the landing strip needs to be completely resurfaced."
The airport is crucial to the humanitarian, developmental and commercial work in the region, and serves about 4,000 passengers a month from Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and the Middle East.
Built in 1973 for smaller aircraft than are now in service, the airport closed during the civil war in the early 1990s and reopened in 1997.
Over time, erosion and use by heavier aircraft have broken up the surface of the landing strip. The potholes and loose gravel could damage the airplanes, raising serious safety concerns.
Since the airport resumed operations in 1997, the Civil Aviation Caretaker Authority for Somalia (CACAS) and the Somaliland authorities have repaired damaged sections, but have not carried out full renovation.
"UNDP is particularly concerned about the Hargeisa airport," said El-Balla Hagona, UNDP Country Director. "This is not just about humanitarian flights: the airport is also a business stimulant. The more facilities that Somalis themselves have, the higher the chances of their own developmental initiatives bearing fruit."
CACAS, which operates from Nairobi, Kenya, is a joint initiative by UNDP and ICAO and a part of the UNDP Somalia Capacity Building for Governance Programme. It was formed in 1996 to ensure the safety of air transport operations throughout Somalia in the absence of a recognized central government.
For more information, please contact: Sandra Macharia, UNDP Somalia, or Nadine Shamounki, UNDP Communications Office.
Copyright © 2003 United Nations Development Programme.
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:38:08 Arms, Miraa Trade Keep Somalia Aflame
United Nations sanctions busters, miraa-traders, property grabbers - these are the people who fuel the Somali conflict. And they have undermined the traditional role of Somali elders as arbitrators and peace negotiators.
As Somalia becomes deeply impoverished, the Somali conflict typically centres on the control of property or income-generating infrastructure. Harbours, airports, markets, bridges, road junctions - anything that can be "taxed" usually is.
The various warlords must continuously struggle to raise sufficient money to pay their militia and obtain arms and, more importantly, ammunition.
Fighting is no longer about higher ideals, such as nation-building. It is about the advancement of personal material interests.
These are some of the conclusions of a Nairobi-based United Nations panel of experts, set up to investigate violations of the UN arms embargo imposed in 1992, following the inter-clan warfare that engulfed that country after the fall of President Siad Barre.
In a report to the Security Council, the experts say neighbouring states and other players have, with impunity, flagrantly violated the arms embargo.
The experts say Somali warlords and faction leaders are convinced their business can go on as usual. They have not seen any real enforcement of the embargo by the UN or its member states over the past 12 years.
The "dismissive attitude" to the embargo "will continue to prevail" if the international community does not show any resolve to implement the embargo or remain vigilant in investigating new violations, the experts warn in a report to the Security Council.
"Since the arms embargo has been consistently violated since its imposition, it has no normative value, and none of the Somali faction leaders or regional sponsors has been held accountable.
The experts found Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, the Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait have given arms, equipment, money or training to Somali factions - in violation of the embargo.
Kenya is not mentioned as a sanctions buster. But the experts say it contributes to the financing of the factional fighting through its miraa trade with Somalia. This trade "is a significant source of revenue for the Somali warlords".
It is estimated, for example, that miraa flights to the Daynile airfield (west of Mogadishu) alone amount to nearly $170,000 a month. This is apparently shared among the airstrip owner and other important warlords.
Miraa use increased dramatically after the outbreak of the civil war. Militia members typically chew the substance to combat fear and fatigue.
The trade is associated with a war economy. Its import and distribution is linked to airstrips and the rival militias that control them. Warlords rapidly developed interests in the trade. It helps to finance their weapons purchases and keep their troops loyal. They import between 5,000 and 7,000 tons of miraa yearly from Kenya.
The experts say that it is because of the sanctions busters that the fighting continues despite numerous peace conferences, including the 14th which opened in Eldoret and resulted in the signing of the Eldoret Declaration last year. It provided for a national government this year.
Nation TV's Farida Karoney's recent three-part series based on a visit to Somalia, which examined the prospects for peace, pinpointed the problem: Somalia is awash with arms. Armed factions and clans rule the territory. Without disarming the various militias, Karoney said, a government picked in Nairobi would find it impossible to restore law and order.
Now the UN is seeking to shore up the arms embargo and, this month, the Security Council will send a mission to the region "to demonstrate the Council's determination to give full effect to the arms embargo".
Mr Mwaura, a former Editor-in-Chief of the Nation, is Deputy Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Nairobi.
Copyright © 2003 The Nation.
Posted on Wednesday 1st October at 17:36:03 Back
to the Top |
