Bush Doctrine's Defeat in Somalia

Medeshi Dec 9 , 2008

Bush Doctrine's Defeat in Somalia
A disastrous war in Somalia draws to a close. It killed thousands, displaced over 700,000 from Mogadishu alone, and created a pitiful humanitarian crisis. It is one more nail in the coffin of the Bush Doctrine, notes Patrick Seale.
The announcement from Addis Ababa that Ethiopian troops are withdrawing from Somalia by the end of this month means that the U.S. has suffered a defeat in the Horn of Africa -- to add to the long list of U.S. foreign policy failures in the Arab and Muslim world.
With American backing, small numbers of Ethiopian troops entered Somalia two and half years ago in July 2006, growing into a force of some 30,000 men over the following moths. Their aim was to drive from power the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) -- a coalition of Islamist insurgents -- which had taken control of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the previous month.
The Islamists had managed to put to flight corrupt and extortionate warlords and, after years of anarchy in Somalia, had set about restoring some form of law and order.
But for President George W Bush, Islamic rule in Somalia could not be allowed to stand. However beneficial it might be for the local population, it did not square with Bush’s ‘Global War on Terror’, launched after 9/11. The CIA then sought to overthrow the Islamists by means of Ethiopian forces, and of Abdullahi Yusuf’s ‘Transitional Government of Somalia’ (TGS), a pro-Western and pro-Ethiopian phantom administration, based in Baidao.
Fierce fighting between Ethiopian troops and the Union of Islamic Courts escalated throughout December 2006, causing some 4,000 dead and wounded. By the end of the month, Ethiopian troops, backed by U.S. airstrikes, captured Mogadishu, hours after Islamist fighters fled the city. By 1 January 2007, the southern port of Kismayo -- the last UIC stronghold -- fell to the Ethiopians, while the U.S. Navy patrolled the Somali coastline to prevent Islamists escaping by sea.
The Islamists were routed, but they were not beaten. Almost at once, they started guerrilla operations against Ethiopian troops, trapping them in ambushes and inflicting casualties on them by means of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the lethal weapon which the United States had come to dread in Iraq.
As was predictable, the conflict attracted to Somalia a motley group of Islamist fighters from the Muslim world, intent on waging jihad against Ethiopia’s occupying army and its American backers.
To the alarm of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, his country’s intervention in Somalia also served to breathe fresh life into two insurgent groups in Ethiopia itself -- namely the Oromo Liberation Front, which has been fighting for autonomy in southern Ethiopia, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front, largely made up of ethnic Somalis, which demands self-determination in eastern Ethiopia.
American help for Ethiopian forces -- in the form of training, weapons supply, clandestine missions, air strikes, and the capture and interrogation of ‘terrorist’ suspects – seems to have been of little avail. On the contrary, it has united rival Somali groups against their common enemies -- Ethiopia and the United States.
After gaining ground in recent months, the Islamist insurgents now control much of the south of Somalia -- including the ports of Kismayo, Merka and Brava. Casting a noose around Mogadishu itself, they are evidently preparing for a final push, once the Ethiopians go home.
As the tide of war turned against him, the Ethiopian leader Meles Zinawi clearly had enough. On 28 November, he sent a message to the United Nations and to the African Union to say that Ethiopian troops would leave Somalia before the end of the year.
This brings to a close a disastrous war that has ravaged the country, killed thousands, displaced over 700,000 from Mogadishu alone, and created a pitiful humanitarian crisis. It is one more nail in the coffin of the Bush Doctrine.
What next? A ‘moderate’ Islamist leader, Shaikh Sharif Ahmed, who broke away from the Union of Islamic Courts, has announced that he would welcome an international force to replace the Ethiopians. His appeal looks like an attempt to promote his own prospects. As he already has some support in Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen, an international force, he no doubt believes, could put him in power.
But Shaikh Ahmed faces stiff competition from another Islamist leader, Shaikh Dahir Aweys, and indeed from the Shebab, a still more militant Islamist group. The war caused splits within the Islamic movement, which seem likely to result in a new struggle for power.
Preoccupied by the rise of maritime piracy off the Somali coast, Western states are putting together a naval force to combat the pirates. But, after the Ethiopian experience, no country seems prepared to send ground troops into the Somali snake pit.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Ethiopia Rejects Rights Report on Somalia as 'Politically-Motivated'

Medeshi Dec 9, 2008

Ethiopia Rejects Rights Report on Somalia as 'Politically-Motivated'

By Peter HeinleinVOAAddis Ababa08 December 2008

Heinlein report - Listen (MP3) audio clip
A just-released Human Rights Watch report accuses all parties to the conflict in Somalia of regularly committing war crimes that contribute to the Horn of Africa nation's humanitarian catastrophe. But Ethiopia is taking strong exception to charges made against Ethiopian troops, and questioning the methods used in compiling the report.
The report, issued Monday, charges Somalia's transitional government, the Ethiopian forces supporting it, and the country's various insurgent forces of widespread violations of the laws of war.
A summary posted on the internet quotes the group's Africa director Georgette Gagnon as saying, 'the combatants in Somalia have inflicted more harm on civilians than on each other'.
Ethiopia reacted immediately and strongly, calling the report 'deeply flawed'. In a phone interview, spokesman Wahde Belay charged Human Rights Watch's reliance on hearsay and second-hand evidence had led them to accuse Ethiopian forces of crimes committed by other groups.
"Almost all crimes in this report are committed by al-Shabab. I can talk with pride that our military is one of the most disciplined in the continent. Saying this, if there are credible allegations about any abuses by our forces in Somalia, we are ready to look into the details. But this report by Human Rights Watch is a politically-motivated one," he said.
The report's chief author, researcher Chris Albin-Lackey defended his conclusions. In a phone interview from Nairobi, Lackey said Ethiopian officials appear to be confused about how the rights group gets its information, and said some abuses attributed to Ethiopian troops appear to have been a matter of policy.
"I don't think it's possible to have an army so well-trained that it will not commit serious abuses if the soldiers on the ground are allowed to do so with complete impunity. And that's what happened with regard to Ethiopian troops in Somalia. And the systemic indiscriminate bombardment of whole neighborhoods of Mogadishu by Ethiopian military forces is organized. It appears to be a military policy," said Albin-Lackey.
Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, and a United Nations peacekeeping mission withdrew in failure in 1995. Ethiopian troops intervened in December, 2006 to drive out Islamist forces that had taken control of Mogadishu, and installed a U.N. backed government.
But the two-year Ethiopian military presence, along with an African Union peacekeeping force, has witnessed a dramatic increase in violence. Foreign ministry spokesman Wahde Monday reiterated that Ethiopia's decision to withdraw its remaining 2,000 soldiers from Somalia by the first week in January is irrevocable.
The African Union is hastily trying to bolster its 3,400-strong peacekeeping force to fill the security vacuum left by the Ethiopian withdrawal. But AU officials acknowledge it may be necessary to pull the peacekeepers out, too unless they can be reinforced to withstand an expected push by the Islamist extremists to reimpose their rule when the Ethiopians leave.

The Attempt to Whitewash Crime Against Humanity in Ogadenia

Medeshi Dec 9, 2008

Ethiopia - Human Rights Watch Vs Meles Zenawi’s Government:

The Attempt to Whitewash Crime Against HumanityInside the Ogaden Region of Ethiopia

Fekade Shewakena
A recent propaganda piece by the Ethiopian authorities masquerading as a government investigative report issued to whitewash the crimes in Ethiopia's Ogaden Region would have been laughed all the way to the waste basket had the issue in question not been the tragedy and suffering of a mass of human beings. The 47 page propaganda piece entitled, “Flawed Methodology, Unsubstantiated Allegations: The Results of an Investigation by the Government of Ethiopia into allegations by Human Rights Watch on human rights in the Somali Regional State”1 is full of manufactured outrage and meant to counter the meticulously researched findings and charges by Human Rights Watch (HRW), including crimes against humanity, the use of rape and starvation as weapons of war and the burning of villages and dislocation of people, compiled in a 138 page document.2
But if you carefully examine the so called investigation report by Mr. Zenawi’s government, it gives you a window to see the amount of crime and, in fact, speaks to the opposite of its intended use, in effect corroborating HRW’s charges. It actually reminded me of the story of the proverbial goat in Ethiopia that stole and ate the wheat reserved for ecclesiastical service at the church and was in the end driven to becoming laud more talkative to the level of almost telling that she was the thief. “Megeberia Yebelach fiyel Yaslefelifatal”, so goes the saying.
Apparently, some clever Woyane thought that it is smarter to set out by questioning the methodology of HRW rather than attacking its credibility directly. Or they must have been mindful of the fact that the credibility thing with regard to investigating itself is not the best suit of Meles Zenawi’s government. Many Ethiopians including the international community has not forgotten the fait of the investigation of the post election massacres in Addis Ababa where the investigators had to flee the country with the video and written transcript of the results of their investigation to tell the truth to the rest of the world. The whitewash of the genocide against the Agnuak ethnic group in Gambella is still fresh. They seem to understand that accusing an organization of stellar global respect as HRW for credibility would not fly. The less intelligent, shoot-from-the-hip TPLF puppies at Aigaforum (the people who wrote editorials recommending death penalty on members of the opposition for testifying at the US congress) did that crazy job already by throwing the kitchen sink at HRW moments after the report was published.
The Ethiopian authorities who wrote this so called investigation report, however, do not tell us how their methodology contrasts with that of HRW or how the witness interview method, one of multiple methods used by HRW researchers, yields less valid results than the interview method extensively and almost exclusively used by Meles Zenawi’s agents on a captive population in the Ogaden, a good number of whom are prisoners accused of being members of the ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Movement). Some of the witnesses, we are told in the report, are former ONLF fighters living in the area. And Meles Zenawi and his cronies want people with heads on their shoulders, to believe the pile of crap they compiled by interviewing them.
As an Ethiopian who prides himself of the decency and goodness of the Ethiopian people, I want many of these damning reports by human rights groups and journalists including this by HRW about gruesome war crimes, collective punishment and the use of rape and starvation as a weapon of war by Meles Zenawi’s government to be false. I have two important reasons to want HRW’s report to be false.
First, I believe these kinds of extreme and gruesome crimes reported by human rights groups do not only tarnish the image of only the government or its leaders for which I care less, but unfortunately also speak badly of all of us as a people and distort the image of the country and the people we love. Disgraceful and shameful things that happen in a country, whoever the perpetrator and at whatever scale, often become broad paintbrushes that discolor the good and the bad together and create a bad single whole image of an entire country and people. Look how a handful of extremists in the Islamic world have tarnished the good religion of Islam. The crimes of the Nazi’s still shame many good Germans who were not even born at the time. Some years ago, I was chatting with a European friend when she asked me how I managed to survive and escape the famines in Ethiopia. She couldn’t believe me when I told her that there were millions of us, more than three fourths of the population at the time, who had enough food to eat. She couldn’t let go the image she formed of Ethiopia and kept on arguing with me until she got onto my nerves. But then again I myself also almost did the same thing to a Rwandan I met recently.
Even inside our long years of civil wars in the past, these kinds of systematic collective punishments of entire people and the use of rape as a weapon, as repeatedly reported by human rights groups and journalists as under Meles Zenawi in the Ogaden and earlier in Gambella, have never been heard of. Even Mengistu’s government, whose brutality is among the worst in our history, was transporting teff and other food items with cargo planes from central Ethiopia to Eritrea at the height of the civil war in the 1980s. This stands in huge contrast to Meles Zenawi’s blocking of relief organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders from operating in the Ogaden and the closure of access roads to transport food to the area at a time when the region was in the middle of a grueling famine. At one time some of these humanitarian organizations were begging Zenawi’s government to let them save lives. This, in my vew, can happen only in a country that is capable of producing human beasts. I don’t want to believe this took place in Ethiopia.
Second, I find it hard to accept that some among our good, wonderful and decent people turned soldiers, are capable of doing what human rights groups and journalists tell us they do. Having been to literally every part of Ethiopia and knowing most ethnic groups, I find it hard to believe that there could be beasts among those wonderful people who are capable of raping elderly women the age of their mothers, strangle and burry human beings alive, and burn the villages of poor people. Most of you may remember the days in June 1991 when Mengistu’s government collapsed and nearly half a million soldiers and armed militia were dispersed around the country without any command and control. I have seen them with my own eyes when they beg for food with automatic machineguns hung on their shoulders and round after round of ammunition all over them. Nothing but only that heritage of common decency was between them and the rest of us to stop them from crossing the line. I remember it with pride. That was an “only in Ethiopia” moment. I don’t want to believe that these values and that longstanding fabric of our society and culture have changed in a decade and half. I don’t want to believe that the poison of hate Meles Zenawi sprays in Ethiopia has succeeded to such an extent. So, I only wish the HRW report or the scathing annual reports of the US State Department on Human Rights or the gruesome stories written about the Ogaden on the New York Times are wrong.
The Sadism, the lie and the pile of crap in the report:
Reading this so-called investigation report of the Ethiopian authorities is a torture on two levels. First, a good part of the English is so difficult to understand. Sometimes you need to translate it into Amharic to understand it. The authorities who wrote, read, approved and issued this report seem to have shed any grain of sense of embarassment and shame. For heaven’s sakes, this is a government document that, for whatever it is worth, is expected to be read widely. How difficult is it for a government that hires lobbyists in the US with millions of dollars to hire an editor to at least check basic grammar and spelling? Consider the following I randomly picked as example:
“Its [HRW’s] inclusion of irrelevant and inappropriate satellite imagery seems to have been included to add drama to its media communications”. (Page 5) And this, “HRW, however, merely chose to use the burning of Lasoole as another unjustified accusation against her ENDF”. (Page 24) Or this,“As far as I know there is nobody has been killed in our village” (Page 34)
I could have gone on and on had this been my main concern here. It is pathetic.The second level of torture when reading this report is the sadism it is replete with. The government data was obtained almost exclusively through interviewing the local people who are traumatized by the savage war. A large number of these interviewees are prisoners. Many are women. Still many, we are told on the report, are former ONLF fighters. You can sense the terror they go through as they were trying to avoid the answers their questioners don’t want to hear. The video version of the report being spread by government media is particularly hard to watch. It is a mass manufacturing of lie. If you believe the results of this so-called investigation to be true, you should as well believe me when if tell you pigs can fly.Here are some interesting highlights. You may remember the 23 year old Mohammed Abdi Wayd who HRW reported was strangled and killed by member of the Ethiopian Defense Forces for being one of many community members who refused to obey a deadline to vacate a village as ordered by the army. The person the government interviewers summoned to testify on this dead kid, we are told, is his next of kin. Read the following and see the sadism for yourselves. How many Ethiopians under normal circumstances do you think would say the death of their young relative is a punishment from God?
He is a close relative of mine. He died in the fighting between government forces and ONLF. This is the truth. He was a trouble-maker. He was a bandit. Upon Alah’s orders, he met his death fighting the Defence Forces. I didn’t record the exact date when he died. One day there was fighting between ONLF and the Defence Forces in the Wafdug area. In the Yuub area too. He died in that period. He robbed people of their belongings. He picked up a quarrel and attacked people. His death is a punishment fro (sic) all his wrongs.” (Page 32)
Does anybody in his right mind believe that in a traditional society where kinship means a lot more than blood relation, and of all places in the Ogaden, would say of this about his dead relative unless at a gun point? Obviously, the person must be trying his best to fend off any possible suspicion of supporting the ONLF like his dead kin. Anybody who has done research in rural Ethiopia using questionnaires knows that telling what the government wants to hear is one of many sophisticated survival mechanisms peasants and pastoralists have developed to fight the tyranny of their governments over the years. And Meles Zenawi and his cronies want us to believe the crap they collected through this bogus method and question the validity of HRW’s conclusions refined over long years of recording Human rights abuse around the world.
In its attempt to clean itself of HRWs charges of rape and sexual abuses the government report, believe it or not, says this,
“It [the investigation team] interviewed people from various sectors of society and a number of women prisoners from several different prisons. All completely rejected HRW’s allegations”. (Page 37).
Now listen to what female prisoner Asmal Isal Abdi tells the investigating team:
“I am in prison here for the crime I committed. I have never encountered any problem. In prison, I am receiving proper treatment.” (Page 37)
And hear from another female prisoner Ram Ali Huyida who is reported to even have gone further in speaking for all women prisoners:“There is nothing like this that happened to me or to the other prisoners in this prison.” (Page 37)
Another female prisoner, Amina Usman, in the town of Jijiga has a more targeted “testimony” to which the interviewers seem to have direct her – to exonerate the soldier rapists cited in the HRW report:
“No prisoner, including myself, has suffered any ill treatment from Government soldiers.” (Page 38)
It is not even clear from the report as to why another female prisoner, Faduma Abdu Haj, had to testify saying that there were no women who were burnt alive when she was not even asked. Listen to her:
“I have never seen or heard any information regarding the raping of any woman byEthiopian soldiers. There is no woman who was raped or burnt alive.” (Page 38)
The report also has a cascade of responses from interviewees who say that no village has been burnt by the ENDF. All of them said that any village burnt was burnt by ONLF solders who were dressed in Ethiopian army uniforms and speaking the Amharic language to make it look the Ethiopian army did it. It gets more interesting, doesn’t it? The people are so in love with the Ethiopian army that the ONLF has to do this to have them hated, and by speaking the Amhaic language without a Somali accent? Huh!On the other hand the “investigators” tell us that they have done all their interview and research in the Ogaden. Why the investigators thought it is important to interview people to testify as to whether villages were burnt or not if they themselves see the villages intact is a mystery. HRW has given the geographic coordinates for the satellite imageries of the villages in question by providing the latitudes and longitudes of each site. Why is it difficult to present another aerial photo or a photograph taken from a higher ground and debunk it if it is a lie? Interestingly, the team has provided us with horizontally taken ground photographs that cannot by any measure show the condition of a larger settlement. Some of the photographs show two or three houses from one side surrounded by scrubland. More importantly, unless you hire a “tenquay” there is no way to attest that the picture shows the real village in question. They give you no coordinates.
The goons who prepared Zenawi’s report also want us to believe that girl HRW reported was brutally killed by the Ethiopian forces was alive by showing us a photograph of a girl who they say has the same name. They have been parading her on their TV and other media as if it is an airtight evidence to show the real girl is not dead, as if you can’t find hundreds of Faduma Hassans in the Ogaden or as if you cannot name the picture of any girl Faduma Hassan.
The investigators, in their wisdom thought that they should throw us some bones to be believable and help them sell us their pile of crap. They say they have found one case of torture among female prisoners by an army Major named Kiros. (Don’t forget most women who testified are already reported to have said that no torture of woman has ever taken place). Read her testimony paying special attention to her last sentence:
“I was arrested for being ONLF member. During the time I was in prison, I was tortured by Major Kiros, Intelligence Officer of the Fik zone 7th Regiment. This was around September 2007. During the interrogation, he strangled my neck with cloth, forced me to take off my clothes and flogged my back and feet. He tortured me by saying, out with the truth. Of course, I was ONLF member. Apart from this I do not know any other problem. I have not suffered from any wrongdoing in this prison. I confirm this.” (Page 40) emphasis added
Why was the lady that went through so much torture forced to say she “has not suffered any wrong doing in this prison”? After having gone through that humanly unbearable torture how did she manage to say that? Or shall we say the Investigator Team added it to make it look like what she went though was a prank between friends. How sadistic is that? By the way, where is Major Kiros the torturer? Why is his last name withheld? Why wasn’t this criminal interviewed like the rest of the prisoners? What was the punishment he received? The investigators are mum on these. We know why. I suspect Major Kiros is walking the streets of Addis Ababa or Mekele or managing some property of EFFORT somewhere or on scholarship in the Netherlands. After all, the Agazi soldier who killed Wro Etesnesh in front of her children for asking to spare her husband lives in freedom with no questions asked. There is a lot of repugnant and sadistic material to go over in this whitewash. You can read it holding your nose, as I did.
Challenge:
Either out of ethnic identification or innocence or misinformation or any other reason, I believe there are many Ethiopians who want to give Meles Zenawi’s report the benefit of the doubt, as there are many who actively promote this lie. I challenge all of them and the blind supporters of the TPLF/EPRDF, including my good friend Ato Haimanot Lakew from Boston who made me laugh by referring to the crap as a “carefully researched and written report” 3 and some Molla Mitiku who tried to shamelessly fake an outrage and called the governments investigators “independent investigating team” 4, to ask the Ethiopian authorities to allow independent investigators including the UN and reexamine the case. Why fear if you are outraged that HRW manufactured its report? To ask anything less is to collaborate with the cover up of crime and injustice. Don’t forget that we will all have to answer for this crime on judgment day. I don’t think this day is too far.

Ref documents:

http://www.mfa.gov.et/Press_Section/Flawed_Methodology_Unsubstantiated_Allegations

http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0608_1.pdf

http://aigaforum.com/articles/Does_the_Huma_Rights_Watch_Report.htm

http://aigaforum.com/articles/Does_the_Huma_Rights_Watch_Report.htm

Eid Mybarek

Eid Mubarek

Ciid Wanaagsan

Happy Eid

Hajj Diary: A hard day's work

Medeshi Dec 7 , 2008
Hajj Diary: A hard day's work
By Jamal Elshayyal in Mina

Day three, and its probably been the most difficult so far.
We are up at dawn again - leaving Mecca for the plains of Mina. Here we camp for three days, going to Arafat and coming back in the middle.
Aside from the spiritual high felt by the team, we're also pretty happy with our first day of live coverage.
But the strain of travelling, working and Hajj itself is beginning to take its toll on us. If we're not filming, we're worshiping and if we're not worshiping we're on the road.
As we approach our base in Mina, we drive by hundreds of thousands of white tents. The sheer quantity of things here, be it people, coaches or tents, and the way in which they appear in unison still amazes me.
No rest
In depth

Map - Tracking Hajj

Day 1: Arriving in Mecca
Day 2: Secure supplication
Day 3: A hard day's work

Videos
'From Hollywood to Hajj'
Gazans denied pilgrimage
American's journey of faithWe have a live news segment as soon as we arrive so there's no time to rest, and to add to the stress, the guest we hoped to have on the show doesn't make it.
But our skin is saved when we meet an African-American couple who agree to fill in.
It transpires that they are also friends of someone we had been chasing with no success for three days: a convert who Al Jazeera has been following on his journey to Mecca from Washington.
Coincidence? Or a blessing in disguise? Either way we were grateful.
Although the pilgrims' tents at Mina are split into regions, depending on which country they started their journey, it is here that people mostly interact with their brothers and sisters in faith from across the world.
The camera man and I couldn't help but find the irony when noticing those from Pakistan and India were side by side.
Perhaps the most interesting person I have met so far has been another African-American named Omar Reagan.
Self-reflection
Omar is a Hollywood actor, who acted as a double for Chris Tucker in the blockbuster movie Rush Hour Two. Speaking to us he explained what Hajj meant to him.
As an actor he said, you are taught to put on a front, to not be yourself. But here on Hajj, you strip yourself of anything worldly or materialistic - even your cloths.
It is here that you realise that in the end, you will face your Lord for who you are on the inside, and not how you appear on the outside.
It got me thinking: If society's scales of success and classing systems were replaced with a society where we all wore the same cloths, ate the same food and slept in the same circumstances, what and how would one person be differentiated from another? And how and who would you aspire to be like? The Quran teaches Muslims that the most pious and sincere amongst humanity is the closest to God.
I guess when all you're wearing is two white pieces of cloth and you're sleeping on the ground along with three million other people, only God will be able to differentiate between you and the person you're sharing your food with.

Al jazeera

Ethiopia stalls on Somalia pullout

Medeshi Dec 7, 2008

Ethiopia stalls on Somalia pullout
Ethiopia has announced a possible delay of "a few days" in its plans to pull its troops out of Somalia by the end of the year and hand over security duties to the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as Amisom.
The country's foreign ministry made the announcement on Saturday, a day after Somali witnesses said Ethiopian troops killed at least 16 people in the Somali capital.
Ethiopian forces said they were targeting armed men in a stronghold of opposition fighters, but witnesses said that artillery shells were fired into a crowd at a market in Mogadishu.
Ethiopia sent its troops to Somalia in 2006 to oust the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had taken control of most of the country and was imposing a strict form of Sharia law.
Ethiopian troops, estimated at about 3,000, were meant to prop up Somalia's transitional federal government, but the internationally backed authorities never succeeded in asserting their power on the country.
Ethiopian withdrawal
Last month Addis Ababa announced it would pull its troops out by the end of the year, causing concern among Amisom and the UN, which urged immediate talks aimed at convinving Ethiopia to keep its forces in Somalia a little longer.
"Ethiopia accepted it had a moral obligation to Amisom and it would do whatever necessary to see that its withdrawal did not harm Amisom," the Ethiopian foreign ministry statement said on Saturday.
"This did not imply any delay in withdrawal but might allow for some flexibility in terms of a few days, if necessary, but this would be for Amisom to assess."
Following the removal of the Islamic courts, al-Shebab, the group's former youth and military wing, has waged an armed campaign against Somali government troops and Ethiopian forces.
Some Islamic Courts' Union factions have signed a peace pact with the Somali government, brokered in Djibouti, but no deadline has been set for the deal and anti-government groups inside Somalia have rejected the pact.
Further fighting
Ethiopia has also cast some doubt on the possible agreement, with the foreign ministry statement saying that the Djibouti process "looks unlikely to make a breakthrough".
Since Ethiopia said it was pulling out of Somalia, al-Shebab has closed in around Mogadishu after taking most the country, leaving government and AU troops to control only a handful of locations.
On Saturday, al-Shabab was reported to have taken control of the town of Gurael, 370km north of the capital Mogadishu, after fighting that killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, residents said.
Locals said the group took the town after three days of fighting with a government-allied Sunni group in the area.
The battle began after al-Shabab fighters arrested a local Quran teacher of that group, they said.

Al Jazeera

Senator Coleman is concerned about the situation facing Somalis in Saudi Arabia.

Medeshi

Friday, December 05, 2008
Original Docoment

His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud
c/o Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037

Your Excellency,

As the Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Central Asian Affairs, I wish to extend my greeting and good wishes during Islam’s four sacred months.

Today, I write to draw your attention to the situation facing many Somalis currently in Saudi Arabia. These immigrants fled a country where there is no functioning government, where violence rages and humanitarian needs are great.

Specifically, I am concerned about both the humanitarian conditions facing Somalis currently in Saudi Arabia, as well as their fate if forcibly returned to Somali during these difficult times. Through my contacts with the Somali community in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali immigrants in the U.S., I have been made aware that a plane of Somali deportees recently landed at the Mogadishu airport. Further, I have been informed that many more Somalis are currently being detained in various jails in Saudi Arabia while en route to Somalia, including a number of mothers with children. I am concerned about reports of poor conditions in these facilities.

As you know, protecting the refugees and safeguarding their needs is aligned with international law. Respectfully, I ask you to consider halting deportations to Somalia so long as the country remains dangerous and unstable. I also request that you look into improvements to the detention facilities where these individuals are being held.

Your Excellency, I deeply appreciate the steps that your government has taken to support the reconciliation of the Somali people. I urge you to continue your support for peace in Somalia and an alleviation of the humanitarian crisis there.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration of these concerns .

Sincerely

Norman Coleman

Ethiopia and Somalia: A promised withdrawal

A promised withdrawal
Dec 4th 2008 NAIROBI
From The Economist print edition
Ethiopia says its troops will be out of Somalia soon. Will they? And then?
IT TOOK Ethiopia two weeks in December 2006 and January 2007 to invade Somalia and crush fighters loyal to the Somali Islamic Courts Union. By contrast, it has taken two years for it to decide to withdraw, leaving the nastiest of the same Islamists in control of much of the country. Officially, Ethiopia is making good on a promise to quit, signed at peace talks in Djibouti last month between Somalia’s impotent transitional government and moderate Islamists. It has been reducing its presence for some time. Its intelligence network will remain on the ground, though some of its agents may well be killed by the ascendant jihadists. Several thousand of its troops will be stationed on Ethiopia’s side of the border, a day’s drive from Mogadishu, Somalia’s battered capital.
The Djibouti agreement is supposed to swell Somalia’s parliament with moderate Islamists, promising the country the first broadly-based government it has known since the collapse of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991, the last time Somalia had anything approaching a government that controlled the whole country. In truth, the Ethiopians are leaving because they are fed up—with the vanity of Somalia’s president, Yusuf Abdullahi, and his constant bickering with his prime minister, Nur Hussein; fed up, too, with the listlessness of the African Union (AU) and the UN. Both have failed Somalia almost as entirely as its own leaders.
The AU promised 8,000 troops to control Mogadishu but only 3,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers pitched up, and then only to protect a few key installations, while other parts of Mogadishu became ever more anarchic. The capital may now be in its worst shape ever. Several hundred thousand of its hungry people are in dangerous, squalid camps outside the city. The UN has tried to deliver aid, but its budget is far too small and the country is far too dangerous for aid workers, many of whom have been kidnapped and killed.
Among Ethiopian officials and soldiers, a sense of quiet relief prevails; it could have been worse. Perhaps 800 Ethiopian soldiers have been killed. No one knows the cost of the operation or how much of it may have been borne by the United States, which egged on Ethiopia to invade. But the Ethiopians’ original aims, to shore up Meles Zenawi, their ruthless prime minister, and rout Ethiopia’s ethnic-Somali separatists in the country’s restive Ogaden region in the east, have largely been realised.
Ethiopia, in any case, reckons that the jihadist fighters’ influence in Somalia is weaker than many observers think. It says the reason young men flock to the Shabab (Youth), the former armed wing of the Islamic Courts, wrap their faces in black scarves and kill in the name of Allah, has less to do with al-Qaeda’s virulent internet rhetoric than with the $100 monthly salary the Shabab pays. Somalia’s government forces have not been paid for months.
Some Ethiopian officials may hope to be begged to stay on with all their costs paid for, but they know that is as unlikely as the UN sending a robust force of peacekeepers. So far, President-elect Obama’s team of foreign-policy advisers has given no hint that it will drastically change American policy in the Horn of Africa. Until someone has the courage and the equipment to intervene decisively on a large scale, Somalia will remain the world’s murkiest failed state, with ordinary Somalis trapped in their misery.

Somali Pirates Thrive After U.S. Helped Oust Their Islamic Foes

Somali Pirates Thrive After U.S. Helped Oust Their Islamic Foes
By Gregory Viscusi

Medeshi Dec 6, 2008

International patrols at sea have done little to stop pirates from menacing ships off the coast of Somalia. Even less is being done to thwart them on land -- and for that the brigands may want to thank an unintended consequence of the U.S.’s war on terror.
In 2006, militant supporters of the Islamic Courts Union, an alliance of Sharia tribunals, won control of Somalia and imposed religious law.
“Under the Courts, there was literally no piracy,” says Hans Tino Hansen, chief executive of Risk Intelligence, a maritime security consultant in Denmark.
Then the U.S. helped drive out the Muslim rulers to prevent the East African country from becoming a terrorist haven, leaving behind a lawless chaos in which piracy has flourished.
“It’s a bad mistake to look at Somali events through the prism of international politics,” says Richard Cornwell, an Institute for Security Studies researcher in Pretoria. “The U.S. turned an internal Somali conflict into part of the global war on terror.”
Now, Cornwell says, the West is making the same mistake with piracy by focusing more on battling it at sea than on pushing feuding Somali factions toward a settlement. And with Islamist militiamen again poised to seize the capital, Mogadishu, there’s little chance they will be able to control the outlaws this time.
$100 Million Extorted
“They are no longer some ragged bunch of pirates,” says Cornwell. “They are increasingly well armed and organized.” The pirates also are flush with cash, having extorted an estimated $100 million since the 1990s, according to Will Geddes, managing director of ICP Group, a London security company.
Moreover, today’s Islamists are unlikely to deliver a government capable of eradicating piracy because they are more divided than in 2006, says Rashid Abdi, an International Crisis Group analyst in Nairobi. Some may even form alliances with the pirates in the self-governing breakaway northern region of Puntland, the base for many brigands, he says.
Somalia hasn’t had a central government since the 1991 fall of the Siad Barre regime, which led to an earlier ill-fated U.S. intervention, recounted in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”
The Islamic Courts Union took control of Somalia in June 2006 by defeating its ruling alliance of warlords. The new rulers raided pirate dens on land and sea, effectively shutting them down, Hansen said.
Restraint Urged
The Islamist takeover alarmed neighboring Ethiopia, a U.S. ally. Initially, U.S. officials urged Ethiopia to show restraint and tried to cajole the Islamists into a power-sharing deal with other Somalis, says Ken Menkhaus, a former adviser to the United Nations in Somalia.
After those efforts failed, Ethiopia invaded in December 2006 and went on to rout the Islamists. The U.S. asserted in mid-December that the Islamists were linked to al-Qaeda, the group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. And once the invasion was under way, the Americans helped the Ethiopians “with advisers and intelligence,” as well as “aerial attacks,” Menkhaus says.
In January 2007, a U.S. gunship attacked Islamists in the south after the Ethiopians forced them out of Mogadishu, the Americans said at the time. The U.S. military also has confirmed launching missiles against Islamic leaders in Somalia on Jan. 8, March 3 and May 1.
“The U.S. denies it publicly, but it’s a commonly held view that the American government provided tacit if not overt support to the Ethiopians,” says Roger Middleton, an Africa researcher at Chatham House, a London consultant.
‘Common Vision’
“The Americans and the Ethiopians have different agendas in Somalia,” Middleton adds, but “it was clear from the U.S. missile strikes” that the two countries “shared a common vision that an Islamic movement was not what they wanted to govern Somalia.”
Before being shut down, the pirates demanded tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for each boat they seized, mostly preying on ships plying trade routes along Somalia’s east coast.
Now they use more powerful boats and also strike ships in the Gulf of Aden on their way to the Suez Canal, usually demanding between $500,000 and $2 million per ship, according to a report by Chatham House. Pirates holding an oil-filled Saudi tanker want $25 million.
The tanker is one of 120 attacked so far this year off Somalia’s east coast and in the Gulf of Aden on the way to Egypt’s Suez Canal, a route used by 20,000 ships a year carrying a tenth of the world’s trade.
Seized Ships
That’s up from 37 attacks for all of 2007, the French government says. About 40 vessels have been successfully seized this year. They include a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks that will soon be released for an undisclosed ransom, the Associated Press reported Dec. 2, citing a pirate spokesman.
Russell Brooks, a U.S. State Department spokesman, rejects the idea that American actions might be to blame for increased piracy, noting that the U.S. had urged the Ethiopians not to go into Somalia.
Moreover, the “epicenter of the piracy problem” is Puntland, which the Islamists never controlled, he says. “So to suggest that the Islamic Courts were able to control the piracy problem is a misreading of the situation.”
The Chatham House’s Middleton says the Islamists had their own coast guard, raided ports in Puntland and controlled Hobyo, Harardheere and other central Somalia port towns where most pirates were then based, before the brigands moved north.
Edge of Mogadishu
This year, an Islamic militia known as Al-Shabab, or “the Youth,” began moving against the warlords and now controls much of the center and south of the country and is on the edge of Mogadishu.
“We strongly oppose piracy,” said Sheikh Abdi Rihin Isse Adow, a militia spokesman, by telephone from a location he declined to disclose. He didn’t specify what action would be taken to stop them.
Somalia’s internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government, which controls just a few Mogadishu neighborhoods, has approved foreign action against the pirates.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, Malaysia, India, and Russia have sent ships to patrol waters off Somalia. A United Nations Security Council resolution passed in June and renewed Dec. 2 gives navies the right to pursue pirates into Somali waters.
Patrol Ships
The pirates operate across 2 million square kilometers (772,200 square miles) of sea, more than three times the size of France. In all, about 15 ships patrol the area, says Christophe Prazuck, a French military spokesman. It would take 300 warships to control every ship movement there, he adds.
The Western powers say they don’t have the right to operate at will on land or to blockade Somalia. “Blocking ports is not contemplated,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s Secretary General, in Brussels Nov. 24.
“A naval force can keep piracy levels down, but it can’t solve the problem,” says Risk Intelligence’s Hansen. “A permanent solution can only come from land.”

Mismanagement of Somaliland port hinders development

Medeshi Dec 6, 2008
Mismanagement of Somaliland port hinders development
Great opportunities were opened to the famed deepwater port of Berbera in non-recognised Somaliland as Ethiopia needed a new outlet in the 1990s. Somaliland's revenues and geopolitical importance were to increase. Mismanagement and alleged corruption however is leading to declining government revenues as shipping companies avoid Berbera in favour of ports in Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan.

A few years ago, the port of Berbera contributed with an estimated 60 percent to Somaliland's GDP and government revenues. According to non-confirmed figures, revenues from the non-recognised country's main port however have dropped by around 30 percent during the last two or three years. Berbera Port is definitively losing out in the regional competition over the lucrative foreign trade of Ethiopia.
According to several sources, the main reason for the decline of the Berbera Port has been years of mismanagement and a culture of corruption and extortion. Due to ineffective standards, unloading at Berber Port takes two to three times longer than in the competing ports of Bossaso (in Somalia's Puntland region), Djibouti and Port Sudan.
While time spent at Berbera Port is growing longer each time, the unwanted stay also gets expensive. Somaliland authorities in 2002 increased tariffs and taxes for vessels unloading and uploading in Berbera. At the same time, the modernised port of Djibouti lowered taxes and the Bossaso port tariff was almost dropped altogether. Berbera became reputed as a milking cow for the Somaliland government.
Even more annoying for shipping companies are however the non-legal payments demanded during the stay in Berbera. According to 'Somaliland Times', visiting vessels are forced to pay daily fees to port authorities for services not requested, including garbage collection and cleaning. Fees for jobs as unloading, tallying, piloting and anchorage are further collected double, by port authorities and by "a bogus firm," the newspaper found.
Also the World Bank in a recently published study found practices at Berbera Port to be little competitive. "The Berbera Port Authority collects import-export duties, board dues and other charges, and has a monopoly on loading / unloading services. However, the port continues to lack vital cargo handling equipment and storage facilities, and its loading time and cost compare unfavourably with those of privately managed ports," the Bank concluded.
For Ethiopian importers and exporters, the hassle does not stop in the port. According to the World Bank, municipal governments collect inappropriate tolls on the Berbera-Hargeisa road, which is the first passage towards Ethiopia. Compared with the somewhat longer distance between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, the Berbera - Addis Ababa road is in a poor state and has less capacity.
Consequently, Ethiopian businessmen and foreign shipping companies choose alternative routes. The Berbera Port is not gaining from the fact that Somaliland has the friendliest terms with Ethiopia compared with all other neighbours. Despite the unstable relations between Ethiopia and Djibouti, effectively and competitive prices at Djibouti Port have directed more and more regional trade to this facility, making it a regional hub.
The restructuring of Djibouti's port in fact has become a model investment. During the last five years, the port has been privatised and has attracted large investments to make it more effective and modern. Corruption has targetly been rooted out. The only factors hindering an even greater traffic to Djibouti Port is the transport bottleneck to Addis Ababa and the lack of political will in Ethiopia to get more dependent on trade through Djibouti.
A growing number of Somalilanders now urge the government of President Dahir Riyale Kahin to take equal steps to revitalise Berbera Port. Analyst Guled Ismail this week in an article in 'Awdal News' that the answer to the current crisis "is to privatise the port with a controlling majority shares left in the hands of Somalilander businessmen." A privatisation would also bring capital for investment and upgrading, Mr Guled holds.
A possible privatisation of the run-down port has in fact been discussed for years in the Somaliland press. The World Bank and the UN's development agency UNDP have several times recommended such a solution to increase efficiency in Berbera.
Observers however hold that such a solution is very difficult given the power balance in Somaliland. "Despite the highly touted democracy and rule of law in Somaliland, the reality is that the country is still governed on clan-basis and Berbera port is not an exception," a Somalilander journalist today told afrol News.
- The top management of the port comes from the natives of Berbera and the government has little say in the management of the port's revenue and how it is operated, he added. Attempts to privatise the port could provoke tensions between the traditional and economic elite in Berbera on one side and the central government on the other.
After all, the Director of the Port Authority is said to be one of Somaliland's richest and most powerful men, despite his modest salary, several sources hold. He also is said to have the backing of the local business community and clan leaders.
Meanwhile, Somaliland sees its regional importance diminishing from year to year, also making the government's efforts for international recognition of the breakaway republic more difficult. Somaliland lost a great opportunity to become a regional trading hub as Ethiopians were looking for new port facilities in the late 1990s, government critics hold.

This article was originally published in Afro news in June 08

Somaliland offers ports for anti-pirate operations

Medeshi Dec 6, 2008

Somaliland offers ports for anti-pirate operations
By Andrew Cawthorne and David Clarke
NAIROBI (Reuters) - The breakaway enclave of Somaliland offered on Thursday the use of ports along its long coastline for foreign naval patrols against Somali pirates.
The Somali sea-gangs have attacked dozens of ships in the Gulf of Aden this year, but generally prefer to strike in waters near Yemen instead of going close to Somaliland's shore.
"Our coast is extremely long but we have kept our waters free of pirates. We have not had one single incident," said Abdillahi Duale, foreign minister for Somaliland which broke away from Somalia to declare itself an independent republic in 1991.
"We will support the fight against pirates any way we can. Our ports are open for the coalition and all those who are fighting piracy to use as they wish," he told Reuters.
The European Union is to begin an air and naval operation off Somalia next week, while a Danish-led multilateral task force has eight ships, and the NATO alliance has a further four patrolling the waters off Somalia.
Duale said the coastguard of Somaliland -- a semi-desert terrain that is home to 3.5 million people and neighbours Djibouti and Ethiopia in the north-west of Somalia -- was doing a good job keeping pirates at bay.
He declined to say how many boats Somaliland had.
Neighbouring Puntland, which also runs its affairs relatively autonomously but has not sought independence from Somalia, is by contrast a major base for pirates.
Seventeen years of civil conflict in southern and central Somalia has fuelled piracy, which has spilled into Indian Ocean waters as well as the Gulf of Aden, shaking global shipping.
U.N. SECURITY ALERT
Since early 2007, Islamist insurgents have been fighting the Mogadishu-based government of Somalia and its Ethiopian military backers. The insurgents are within a few miles of the capital.
Duale said the militant Islamist group al Shabaab was behind an October 29 wave of suicide blasts in Somaliland's capital Hargeisa that killed at least 25 people at a U.N. building, the Ethiopian embassy and a local government building.
"They want to cripple Somaliland's democratisation process," the minister said during a visit to Kenya.
The ex-British protectorate, roughly the size of England and Wales, has won plaudits for multi-party polls and institutions. No country, however, has recognised its independence.
Duale, and other ministers on a Somaliland delegation in Nairobi, said the United Nations' decision to put the region on a Phase Four alert after the bombs -- meaning all non-essential staff are evacuated -- was "outrageous" and unfair.
"That is just what the terrorists want," Duale said
Planning Minister Ali Ibrahim said Somaliland should be supported, rather than abandoned, in its fight against militants, which included foiling numerous bomb plots.
"It is very paradoxical. We all talk about the fight against terror, but when terror hits a poor country like Somaliland, everyone pulls back and retreats in the name of protecting their nationals," he said. "They are giving up to terrorists."
The U.N. security decision would hinder much-needed development projects in Somaliland, deter foreign aid groups and investors, and may even undermine a local presidential election set for March 2009, the ministers said.
"Voter registration is in full swing. If this Phase Four continues, we might have problems, for example in getting in all the foreign observers who were expected," Ibrahim said.
Somalianders abroad remain undeterred, however, the ministers said, still pouring money into construction of homes, hotels and factories.
"We are a de facto state," Foreign Minister Duale said. "We will stay the course. We know that one brave country will ... recognise our independence. History will put the Somaliland state where it belongs."

British Somalis play politics from afar

Medeshi Dec 6 , 2008

British Somalis play politics from afar
By Samanthi Dissanayake

BBC News
The university of Burao in the breakaway territory of Somaliland began life on the streets of Whitechapel, east London.
"It is a diaspora building. We set up committees in every country to fund-raise. We had to do something to help our people."
Dr Saad Ali Shire knows that he is a lucky man. He sensed the danger and fled Somalia shortly before 40 people, including a friend, were massacred on a Mogadishu beach during an insurgency in 1989.
In the years that followed, conflict laid waste to his hometown of Burao in the north. Building a university for Burao was his idea.
Since Somaliland declared independence in 1991 it has enjoyed relative stability. Its independence is not recognised by the international community but it has a parliament and a police force, and money from the diaspora funds universities, hospitals, schools - the fabric of civil society.
Even though the rest of Somalia has been in turmoil since 1991 and Islamist insurgents are capturing more territory, remittances from the diaspora keep Somali society functioning.
"There are few sources of income but what comes from the diaspora," says Dr Ali Shire, who also runs Dahabshiil, the UK's biggest Somali money transfer company.
Reliable figures are very difficult to come by but some estimate that remittances come to about $1bn (£650m) each year.
Whenever north London housewife Isha can get small jobs she sends money back, even if it is as little as £20. Her brother was murdered in front of her and the money sent to her nephew sustains his business and many families.
"Every day people are dying. It is hard to say no," she says.
Dr Anna Lindley of the Refugees Studies Centre at the University of Oxford explains how even such small remittances to relatives can invigorate the economy.
Exporting chaos
"People receive money and then recirculate it. They spend it and that creates demand for different types of goods and services. It energises the whole economy," she says.
But the chaos and competing factions that have characterised Somalia's recent history of civil strife can also be found in the UK.
Somali community workers often lament how fragmented Somali society is here. It is an extremely complex community with different clans and different social backgrounds, including a high number of educated professionals, politicians and activists. There is no one overarching organisation for Somalis - hundreds flourish throughout the UK.
"People came here because of tribal war. That enmity still exists and it hurts everyone," said one community worker who wished to remain anonymous.
It is reported that al-Shabab, a group of Islamist insurgents, which the US believes is linked to al-Qaeda, does have collection agents operating in the UK. People do contribute money - although some might not know exactly where it is going beyond the cause of getting Ethiopian troops out of Somalia.
Mohammed Abdullahi of the UK Somali Community Initiative says: "We know it is going on in the Somali community." But he stresses the importance of the community uniting.
Warlords 'go freely'
Experts say that clan divisions can be overplayed. But whatever divisions do exist, there is palpable resentment towards those who exploit them. People do not shy from blaming Western governments for their attitude.
"Warlords come and go freely. Nobody disturbs them because they were part of the Western support for the transitional government [currently in power in Somalia]. They find sanctuary here," says Somali journalist Abdulkadir Gutaale.
Many people expressed support for the brief period in 2006 when the Islamist group the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) controlled Mogadishu and defeated the warlords. It represented a force which transcended clan divisions, many argue.
"They did something the international community could not do for the last 16 years. Mogadishu became peaceful," says Mohamud Nur, head of community group the Somali Speakers' Association.
Mr Nur says that when the UIC took control, many Somalis streamed back to Mogadishu to congratulate them. He was among their number and he is now a representative for the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia, the organisation opposing Somalia's transitional government, which includes elements of the UIC.
He is part of a Somali political class in the UK that makes it their business to get involved in the deals and coalitions about Somalia's political future.
In a refugee centre in Birmingham, there is talk of yet another coalition of UK-based power-brokers to tackle Somalia's problems.
"We can make a better government if we go back," says Mohamed Aden, who believes the diaspora is critical to Somalia's future political stability.
Growing discontent
But unemployment, poverty and difficulties with integration are all serious problems facing Somalis in Britain, regardless of clan or class. A number of London's teenage knife crime victims come from Somali backgrounds and Somali gangs have been the subject of intense media and police scrutiny.
At a gathering of young Somalis in east London's Oxford House in October, there were complaints about being criminalised, the humiliation of being stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act, being questioned by police up to six times a day.
In Birmingham, which has a growing Somali community, a report from the Human City Institute last year highlighted the appalling conditions many Somali families lived in. The social housing available is often unsuitable for big families, so many take poor quality private sector accommodation.
"We are all politicians. We have to unpack our bags, settle down and try to live as normal British people," says Mr Gutaale.
He argues that an emphasis on life back home - often almost an obsession - has meant that the Somali community has allowed itself to become neglected and marginalised in the UK.
"In this advanced Western country, people should be putting other factors such as education, finding work, getting life skills instead of talking about backwards things such as tribalism," he says.
The responsibility of sustaining Somalia from afar can also become a burden.
"You can't make any progress. You work hard, try to go up the ladder. Whatever you earn is sent back home. It handicaps you."
The warning is clear; an absorption in the traumas of Somalia can lead to the neglect and alienation of Somalis in Britain.
Story from BBC NEWS:

Somaliland recognition

Medeshi 6 Dec, 2008
Suggestions for America... a Foreign Policy Item: Somalia
Skipping ahead because it is timely... here is one on...NATIONAL DEFENSE AND FOREIGN POLICY Try a fresh approach in the Horn of Africa... and (carefully) assert power for good.
by David Brin
A recent surge of high-profile piracy has drawn attention to the Gulf of Aden - one of the world’s most important seaways - now under siege and frequent assault by brazen pirates, based in Somalia.
That lawless land has been a calamity in many other ways, for example by offering a haven for terrorist organizations to train and operate. Unpoliced Somali territorial waters have become a handy dumping ground for unscrupulous companies to dump toxic waste. Criminal gangs launder cash and stolen goods. Meanwhile, millions of innocents suffer under horrific warlords, in a land where schools, hospitals and basic services have almost vanished from memory.
The world community has tried a variety of timid “solutions” that range from increasing naval patrols to encouraging an incursion by neighboring Ethiopia -- all to no avail. The entire region, from the Kenyan border, past the national capital, Mogadishu, all the way to the Horn of Africa, remains a hellish maelstrom of fanatics, marauders and tribal vendettas. Sure, we got our fingers burned in the early 1990s, trying to bring order to Somalia with peacekeeping troops. So? Must we therefore stand aside, wringing our hands while an important region festers in catastrophic lawlessness?
One potential alternative has been avoided, till now, for reasons never made publicly clear. Go online and look up Somaliland, as opposed to Somalia. It turns out that this northern third of the country -- the portion formerly colonized by Britain -- is already at peace and relatively well-ordered.
It also sits directly adjacent to the Gulf of Aden. And yet, this region has striven to be a solution, not a part of the problem. “Our coast is extremely long, but we have kept our waters free of pirates,” said Abdillahi Duale, foreign minister of Somaliland, in a statement last week, offering the use of his territory’s ports for foreign naval patrols. This overture, like many others, appears likely to be ignored. Why?
Ever since attempting to declare its independence in 1991, Somaliland has failed to gain recognition from a single nation, because of an archaic diplomatic consensus that original national boundaries should be held sacrosanct -- an axion that has had hellish effects in Africa and that was shrugged aside, in places as wide-ranging as Tibet, Bangladesh, Kashmir, East Timor, Kosovo and Georgia. Still, because of this standing principle, for almost two decades, four million people in northern Somalia have been told that they could not legally detach themselves from the madness in the south.
But all right. If that’s the iron rule of diplomacy, then why not turn the matter around? Here’s an alternative idea.
Recognize Somaliland as the one calm region of Somalia. Establish and upgrade western consulates in its capital, Hargeisa. Assist improvements in democracy and human rights. Beef up aid to this promising zone and make clear to southern factions which way the wind is blowing. Reward any tribes who choose to turn away from madness and join a growing confederation that already has a record of providing at least basic law and safety, under a purely Somalian umbrella.
Moreover, with modest international aid, a Somalian constabulary based right there at the Gulf of Aden might carry out far more effective efforts against piracy - both at sea and on land, taking the fight to the pirate enclaves. (This, historically, was always the best solution to piracy.)
One Somali territory that immediately borders Somaliland, Puntland, is a major pirate haven. It ought to be possible to sway Puntland, with a combination of carrots and sticks, to join in confederation with Somaliland, or else face quarantine, while watching Somaliland grow overwhelmingly strong, next door. In any event, the cost of such an experiment would be low, and no western or foreign troops need put a foot on the ground.
Sure, it’s no panacea. But why not offer this purely Somali option -- to join a growing portion of the nation that is sane, moderate and increasingly democratic -- to any Somalian who wants to live like a civilized person?
Or, at least, could we finally hear an explanation why not?

December 5, 2008
Why does Somaliland deserve U.S. recognition?

By Peter J. Schraeder
The United States government should officially recognize the independence of Somaliland, a moderate Muslim democracy in the Horn of Africa. Such an argument may seem counterintuitive at a time when tensions are rising in the region. But I submit that it is precisely because of those rising tensions that it is time for the Bush administration to act, especially if it is truly serious about democracy promotion, counter-terrorism, and curtailing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.
First and foremost, it is important to recollect that, after achieving independence from British colonial rule on June 26, 1960, Somaliland was duly recognized as a sovereign entity by the United Nations and thirty-five countries, including the United States. Several days later, on July 1, the independent country of Somaliland voluntarily joined with its newly independent southern counterpart (the former UN Trust Territory of Somalia that was a former Italian colony) to create the present-day Republic of Somalia. Somalilanders rightfully note that they voluntarily joined a union after independence, and that, under international law, they should (and do) have the right to abrogate that union, as they did in 1991.
Examples abound in the second half of the twentieth century of international recognition of countries that have emerged from failed federations or failed states, including East Timor, Eritrea, Gambia, and the successor states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The same legal principle should be applied to Somaliland.
The political basis for Somaliland’s claim is that the voluntary union of 1960 was derailed in 1969 by a military coup d’etat in Mogadishu that ushered in more than two decades of brutal military rule under the dictatorship of General Mohamed Siyaad Barre. Himself a southerner, Barre destroyed the foundations of the north-south democratic compact, most notably by unleashing a murderous campaign (bordering on genocide) against northern civilians that resulted in more than 50,000 deaths and created over 500,000 refugees as part of a widening civil war during the 1980s.
Even after Barre was overthrown in 1991 by a coalition of guerrilla armies, including the northern-based Somali National Movement (SNM), northern expectations of a government of national unity were dashed when southern guerrilla movements reneged on an earlier agreement and unilaterally named a southerner president, which in turn was followed by the intensification of inter and intra-clan conflict in the south. Nearly thirty years of unfulfilled promises and brutal policies ripped the fabric of the already fragile north-south political compact.
A "point of no return" had been reached for Somalilanders intent on reasserting their country’s independence. In May 2001, a popular mandate was given to dissolving the union, when a resounding number of ballots cast (97 percent) in a national Somaliland referendum favored the adoption of a new constitution that explicitly underscored Somaliland’s independence.
Somaliland deserves recognition if the Bush administration is truly sincere about promoting democracy in the wider Middle East. In sharp contrast to southern Somalia where instability and crisis have reigned and in fact intensified in the last fifteen years, Somaliland has established a democratic polity that, if recognized, would make it the envy of democracy activists in the Muslim world.
The essence of Somaliland’s successful democratization was captured by U.S.-based International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy in convening a September 2006 panel discussion on Somaliland. They wrote that "Somaliland’s embrace of democracy, its persistence in holding round after round of elections, both winners and losers abiding by the rules, the involvement of the grassroots, the positive role of traditional authorities, the culture of negotiation and conflict resolution, the temperance of ethnicity or clan affiliation and its deployment for constructive purposes, the adaptation of modern technology, the conservative use of limited resources, and the support of the diaspora and the professional and intellectual classes are some of the more outstanding features of Somaliland’s political culture that are often sorely lacking elsewhere."
Somaliland also deserves recognition from a purely U.S.-centric national security perspective. The Somaliland government and population embody a moderate voice in the Muslim world that rejects radical interpretations of Islam, including that espoused by various portions of the Council of Somali Islamic Courts (CSIC) currently in control of Mogadishu and its environs. It would serve as a bulwark against the further expansion of radical ideologies in the Horn of Africa by offering a shining example (along with Mali and Senegal and other predominantly Muslim Sub-Saharan African democracies) of how Islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually reinforcing. Somaliland leaders are also eager to cooperate with the Bush administration in a variety of counter-terrorism measures, including working with the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) based in Djibouti.

Somalia's al-Shabaab seize central town

Somalia's al-Shabaab seize central town
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA Dec 06 2008
The hard-line Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab has taken control of a central Somali trading town after fighting that killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, residents said on Saturday.
(Photo: Hardline islamist women shwing off machine gun)
The capture of Gurael, 370km north of the capital, Mogadishu, adds to the growing hold al-Shabaab has gained across south and central Somalia in a two-year insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian military allies.
Locals said al-Shabaab, which means youth in Arabic, took Gurael after three days of fighting with a government-allied moderate Sunni Islamist group in the area.
The battle began after al-Shabaab fighters arrested a local teacher of that group, they said.
"I have counted 10 dead men myself," one local resident, Ali Aden, told Reuters by telephone from the area. "Six died yesterday [Friday] and four were lying in the paths of the deserted town this morning. It is now under control of al-Shabaab."
Witnesses spoke of chaos in the area, with bullets being fired on vehicles full of fleeing residents. Three women were killed in one lorry, they said.
More than 5 000 Gurael residents had fled to the protection of nearby woods, a local human rights group said.
Medical staff were overwhelmed.
"We received 15 injured people including civilians and fighters. And we hear many families fled with injuries to other towns," said Ismail Ali, a nurse at Gurael hospital.
Al-Shabaab leaders could not be reached for comment.
Since the start of 2007, al-Shabaab and other Islamist rebels have waged an Iraq-style insurgency of mortar attacks, roadside bombings and assassinations in Mogadishu, and been gradually taking towns across south-central Somalia. -- Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online

The As Salaam, with 11,000 tons of humanitarian aid from the United Nations arrives at Berbera, Somalia.

Medeshi

U.N. Extends License to Fight Piracy Using 'All Necessary Means'
Tuesday , December 02, 2008
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council has extended for another year its authorization for countries to enter Somalia's territorial waters, with advance notice, and use "all necessary means" to stop acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.

(Photo: Nov. 30: The As Salaam, with 11,000 tons of humanitarian aid from the United Nations and escorted by the Italian Navy arrives at Berbera, Somaliland.)
Virtually all the world's nations have powers under the 15-nation council's unanimous resolution Tuesday to repress the increasingly brazen pirates off Somalia. Before acting, however, nations must first have the approval of Somalia's weak U.N.-backed government, which also must give advance notice to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Diplomats said such sweeping authorizations are needed to stop the piracy off Somalia that threatens humanitarian efforts and regional security, and seems to be growing ever more audacious and technologically sophisticated each week.
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The resolution extends until one year from now a measure first approved in June that granted authorization to foreign ships to enter Somali waters when fighting piracy and armed robbery along the country's 1,880-mile coastline, the continent's longest.
A maritime official said Tuesday that pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise ship with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships.
The London-based International Maritime Bureau, which fights maritime crime, could not say how many cruise liners use the waters. International warships patrol the area and have created a security corridor in the region under a U.S.-led initiative, but attacks on shipping have not abated.
With the deteriorating situation in Somalia — both on land and at sea — threatening some of the world's most important shipping routes, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin called the pirates' goals "ever-expanding."
In September, pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter loaded with 33 battle tanks and on Nov. 15 they seized a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil.
About 100 attacks on ships have been reported off the Somali coast this year and 40 vessels hijacked, with 14 still remaining in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members, according to maritime officials.
The latest council resolution, which had been pushed by France and the United States, was in part a response to requests for help from both the Somali government and the U.N. chief.
Somalia's transitional president Abdullahi Yusuf told council members in Djibouti earlier this year that "the issue of piracy is beyond our present means and capabilities."
Somalia, a nation of about 8 million people, lacks a navy. It has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other. The current government, formed in 2004 with the help of the U.N. and backed by Ethiopia, has failed to protect citizens while it battles a growing Islamist insurgency.
Last month, the council voted to impose sanctions on pirates, arms smugglers, and perpetrators of instability in Somalia in a fresh attempt to help end the years of lawlessness in the Horn of Africa nation.
A council panel was authorized to recommend people and entities whose financial assets would be frozen and who would face a travel ban. It also reaffirms an arms embargo.
Somali pirates preying on international shipping are also damaging their homeland's battered economy, worsening the instability that opened the door to piracy and inroads by Islamic extremists, according to the U.N., which also reports that inflation is "unbridled," especially in south-central Somalia where fuel costs and food prices are soaring.
Since January, the number of Somalis in need of humanitarian aid has increased from 1.8 million to more than 3 million.