Zimbabwe's MDC plan to extradite Mengistu Haile Mariam to Ethiopia

Medeshi Feb 5, 2009

Zimbabwe's MDC plan to extradite Mengistu Haile Mariam to Ethiopia

Martin Fletcher in Harare

(Mengistu Haile Mariam in a picture taken in June 1989)

For 17 years Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former Ethiopian dictator who slaughtered opponents on an industrial scale in the “Red Terror”, has lived in Zimbabwe as the honoured guest of Robert Mugabe, dividing his time between a heavily guarded villa in Harare, a farm near the capital and a retreat on glorious Lake Kariba.
Last year an Ethiopian court sentenced the “Butcher of Addis” to death after convicting him of genocide in absentia but Mr Mugabe flatly refused to extradite the man who helped to arm Zanu (PF)’s guerrillas during Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war.
Suddenly, however, the future of one of Africa’s worst tyrants looks less assured. Next week the Zimbabwe opposition Movement for Democratic Change will enter a unity government with Zanu (PF) and Nelson Chamisa, its chief spokesman, told The Times yesterday that Mengistu’s extradition to Ethiopia would be “high on the agenda” of that new administration.
“Zimbabwe should not be a safe haven or resting place for serial human rights violators like Mr Mengistu,” he said. “We can’t shelter purveyors of injustice.”
Few Zimbabweans would shed tears if Mengistu, 71, is sent home to the gallows. Mr Mugabe has spent millions of dollars providing him with a villa in a barricaded cul-de-sac in the Gun Hill suburb, with round-the-clock protection and any number of other benefits including the payment of substantial telephone bills, including one of $15,000.
In return Mengistu has advised Mr Mugabe on security issues, and was allegedly the mastermind of Operation Murambatsvina in 2006 in which security forces and Zanu (PF) thugs razed the homes of 700,000 slum-dwellers regarded as MDC supporters.
Mengistu has plenty of experience in that field. He seized power after a military coup in 1974 that ended Emperor Haile Selassie’s 44-year rule and ushered in one of the bloodiest regimes Africa has known.
In 1976 he mounted the “Red Terror” campaign against opponents of his Derg regime by standing in the centre of Addis Ababa, shouting: “Death to the counter-revolutionaries”, and smashing bottles filled with pigs’ blood to demonstrate the fate that awaited them.
Over the next few years more than half a million people were thought to have been killed in what Human Rights Watch called “one of the most systematic uses of mass murder ever witnessed in Africa”. Relatives had to pay a tax called “the wasted bullet” to retrieve the bodies of the dead. The victims included the former Emperor and numerous members of the Royal Family, and Mengistu is said to have executed some of them himself.
He turned Ethiopia into a Marxist state, backed by the Soviet Union, earning the sobriquet the “Black Stalin”. He created giant collective farms that had the same ruinous effect on agricultural production as Mr Mugabe’s land seizures in Zimbabwe, and that helped to cause terrible famine.
His Soviet-armed military sought to crush an independence war in Eritrea, and an uprising in Tigray province, but when the Soviet Union collapsed Mengistu lost his sponsors. In 1991 he fled to Zimbabwe as the Tigre People’s Liberation Front and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front surrounded Addis. Washington asked Mr Mugabe to accept him to end the bloodshed.
In 1995 Mengistu narrowly survived an assassination attempt by two Eritreans as he took an afternoon stroll with his wife near Garvin Close, his Harare home.
Otherwise he has maintained a low profile. Early on he was occasionally spotted in a shopping centre or restaurant, surrounded by guards and armed with a pistol. In 1998 he told a reporter that he was a “political refugee” who spent his time reading, writing and watching television.
In 1999, using a Zimbabwean diplomatic passport, he flew to Johannesburg for medical treatment, and gave a rare interview to a South African newspaper in which he claimed his socialist revolution had been necessary to remove Selassie’s “backward, archaic and feudalist system”, and that millions of peasants had benefited. More recently he has vanished from sight.
Mengistu’s armed guards were nowhere to be seen in Garvin Close yesterday, and The Times was able to drive right up the cul-de-sac before soldiers appeared and ordered the intruder to leave.
As Mr Mugabe’s popularity has plunged, Mengistu was rumoured to have made contingency plans to move to North Korea. Now might be the time to dust them off — if he has not done so already.
Reign of terror
— Seized power in the aftermath of the 1974 coup against Emperor Haile Selassie, who died the following year
— Replaced the ancient feudal system with totalitarian rule from 1977, marked by “Red Terror” purges in which suspected enemies were rounded up and executed
— Tens of thousands were butchered or tortured. Thousands more civilians were caught in the crossfire of war against northern rebels and 700,000 peasants were resettled forcibly
— Up to one million Ethiopians starved to death in the 1984 famine, a direct result of his Marxist policies that left the country ravaged by economic decline
— Fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, after guerrilla forces led by Meles Zenawi toppled his regime
— Found guilty in absentia of genocide by Ethiopia’s supreme court last year and sentenced to death
Source: Times archives

SOMALIA: Thousands of Somalis fleeing to Ethiopia

Medeshi

SOMALIA: Thousands of Somalis fleeing to Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, 4 February 2009

An estimated 10,000 Somalis fleeing instability in their home country have reached Dollo Ado, in the Somali Region of southern Ethiopia, and more are expected in the next few weeks, Save the Children (US) has said.

(Displaced Somalis line up for food (file photo): An estimated 10,000 Somalis fleeing instability have reached the Somali Region of southern Ethiopia)
The NGO, which has set up assistance, emergency education activities and psychosocial support for the refugees, said most of them were women and children.
"It is critical to act quickly to mitigate further suffering of the refugee children and women who have endured years of fighting and humanitarian catastrophe, and to avert undue pressure on the host country Ethiopia, which is recovering from a recent drought," said Margaret Schuler, Save the Children's country director in Ethiopia.
The refugees, it said in a 3 February statement, were fleeing instability in Somalia in the wake of the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops. Their number was expected to reach 25,000 with more arrivals in the next few weeks.
Responding to an Ethiopian government appeal for additional support for the refugees, the NGO said it would spearhead the emergency education response as well as emergency nutrition interventions.
Somali children have borne the brunt of years of conflict and violence and traditional support networks have crumbled under enormous economic and security pressures in the country.
Drought in Somali Region of Ethiopia
Yet the adjacent Somali Region of Ethiopia has 1.5 million people who also need emergency assistance this year. The region, Save the Children noted, has suffered the loss of livestock/assets and faces increased malnutrition following consecutive failures of seasonal rains.
According to the UN World Food Programme, a succession of poor or failed rains has led to the loss of so many animals in the Somali Region that families can often no longer support themselves.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has hailed the election of new Somali President Sheik Sharif Ahmed as an "encouraging development" and a "great opportunity" for the war-torn country.
Ban, who was attending the African Union heads of state summit in Addis Ababa, told reporters: "I am quite hopeful and optimistic that we are now entering a new stage with a direct intervention of the United Nations in managing peace and stability there."
Ahmed, the former chairman of the Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS), was elected president by the Somali parliament in Djibouti on 31 January. He has promised to ensure that hundreds of thousands displaced Somalis return to their homes.

Iran has launched its first domestically built satellite

Medeshi Feb 3, 2009
Iran has launched its first domestically built satellite.
The spacecraft, named Omid (Hope) - the first in a series that Iran plans to put into space by the end of next year - was lifted into orbit on a rocket on Tuesday.
"With this launch, the Islamic Republic of Iran has officially achieved a presence in space," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said in broadcast remarks.
Omid will stay aloft for up to three months as part of a programme Iranian officials say is aimed at improving telecommunications and monitoring natural disasters.
Ahmadinejad has made scientific development, which often puts the country at odds with the West, a central theme of his presidency.
Nuclear fears
The satellite's launch demonstrates the development of technologies that many countries fear could one day be used to launch nuclear weapons. Iran insists it has no plans to do so.
The Iranian Fars state news agency said the satellite "has been designed for gathering information and for testing equipment ... [that] is going to help Iranian experts send an operational satellite into space".
It said the launch was "another achievement for Iranian scientists under sanctions".
Iran is under two rounds of UN sanctions due to its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, which the US and other Western nations fear could lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
A satellite was put into orbit by Iran in 2005, but was carried by a Russian rocket.
Source: Al Jazeera, Agencies

Wall Street, Somalia, and Jack Sparrow

Medeshi Feb 3, 2009
Wall Street, Somalia, and Jack Sparrow
John Feffer
Here's the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean 4. The film opens with Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow dropping anchor in New York harbor. He descends on Wall Street with his mates and, after a quick costume change at Brooks Brothers, storms the boardrooms of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and other major firms. They don't need sabers to rake in the haul. Jack's a clever pirate. He takes advantage of the tools at hand. (Photo: Pirates New Focus Of US Seamen Training )Applying mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations, Jack seizes billions of dollars in booty. He distributes huge bonuses to his crew for a job well done. And just before the government steps in to clean up the mess, the pirates scramble back to their ship and set sail.
Quick question: why are more than a dozen of the world's navies converging on Somalia to battle pirates there instead of sailing into New York to capture the Wall Street pirates? Surely the global economy would be made more secure by forcing former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, who doled out $4 billion in executive bonuses even as his company was collapsing, to walk the gangplank than by cracking down on the bands of privateers in the Horn of Africa.
"Pirate," like "terrorist," has always been a slippery term to define. Just as the British considered George Washington a terrorist rather than a freedom fighter, they portrayed John Paul Jones as a pirate rather than a naval hero. After the Revolutionary War, the shoe was on the other foot when the United States fought several pitched battles with the "Barbary pirates." These fearsome vessels, however, were not really pirate ships. Rather, they worked on behalf of several Barbary states that were part of the Ottoman empire. As Frank Lambert writes in The Barbary Wars, Algeria, Tripoli, and Morocco preferred traditional commerce and resorted to piracy largely because European powers refused to open their markets. If terrorism is the weapon of those on the political margins, piracy is the weapon of those on the economic margins.
Fast forward to the latest piracy news. The newspapers have been full of stories about gangs preying on vessels passing through the Suez Canal and near the Somali coast. They seized dozens of ships last year -- including a Saudi tanker with $100 million worth of crude oil that yielded a $3 million ransom -- with the help of fast boats, GPS, and submachine guns. The pirates are currently negotiating for a comparable ransom before releasing a Ukrainian vessel that has 33 Russian tanks, heavy artillery, and grenade launchers.
As Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Rubrick Biegon points out, the Somali pirates did not start out as Jack Sparrows. "Piracy in Somalia began because traditional coastal fishing became difficult after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks," he writes in Somalia Piracy and the International Response. "Desperate fishermen started attacking trawlers until the trawler crews fought back with heavy weapons, leading the local fishermen to turn to other types of commercial vessels. The pirates prefer to call themselves the Somali 'coast guard,' noting that, prior to the recent spate of hijackings, they organized themselves to defend their communities from overfishing and, according to several accounts, to protect Somalia's coastline from toxic dumping by foreign vessels."
Piracy blossomed in Somalia after Ethiopia invaded in 2006 with U.S. support and deposed the Islamic Courts Union. "Under the Courts, there was literally no piracy," observes one maritime security expert. "While many Somalis disapproved of some of the more fundamentalist ways of the original courts, most felt that they were well organized, disciplined, and effective civil administrators who had certainly provided Somalia with its first semblance of order and leadership since 1991," write FPIF contributors Gerald LeMelle and Michael Stulman in Africa Policy Outlook 2009.
The anti-piracy campaign, argues FPIF contributor Francis Njubi Nesbitt, is a giant red herring. "Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in December 2006, backed by the United States, sparked an Islamist resistance that led to thousands of civilian deaths, displaced over a million people, and depopulated the capital, Mogadishu," he writes in Somalia: Waiting for Obama. "But instead of focusing on the aftermath of this crisis and helping foster a peace process, the United States, European Union, and other international actors are engaged in the more dramatic and media-friendly anti-piracy campaign."
Hussein Yusuf disagrees. "Somalia poses a grave danger to the United States and the Horn of Africa today," the FPIF contributor writes in What's Next for Somalia. "Despite the U.S. 'Global War on Terror,' piracy in the Gulf of Aden threatens the supply of oil and commercial trade to the West. Islamic extremists threaten the stability of this region more than ever." Yusuf and Nesbitt offer contrasting interpretations in their strategic dialogue on this topic.
Everyone agrees, however, that the pirates of the Somali coast have raked in quite a lot of money, somewhere around $30 million in 2008. That's more than a few pearls and pieces of eight. But compare that to the bonuses that Wall Street employees took home last year: $18.4 billion.
At least the Somali pirates were good at their jobs.

African Union summit opens in Ethiopia

Medeshi Feb 2, 2009
African Union summit opens in Ethiopia
The African Union's 12th summit opened Sunday in Ethiopia with an agenda officially focused on infrastructure development but overshadowed by conflict and hunger on the continent.
The 53-nation body's summit of heads of state and government got under way in the Ethiopian capital behind closed doors and without any formal opening ceremony, an AFP correspondent reported.
The official agenda focused on infrastructure and development, while recent coups in west Africa and conflicts around the region also demanded leaders' attention.
But their first day of talks Sunday centres on the eventual creation of a "United States of Africa".
As the continent continues to struggle from economic underachievement and a seemingly never-ending cycle of political strife, plans of integration have long garnered verbal support but have always failed to materialise.
This year, analysts expect no exception.
"The union government is an issue which is deadlocked at the moment," said Delphine Lecoutre, a researcher specializing on the continental bloc.
"There is a clear lack of will on the part of many member states, they are really frightened by the possibility of being under a union government. They would want to safeguard their sovereignty by all means," she says.

On somaliland recognition

Medeshi Feb2, 2009

Does Somaliland exist?
As it turns out, not a single nation in the world has recognized Somaliland, despite the fact that they have been a coherent, peaceful and remarkably democratic country for 12 years now. That didn’t quite explain it for me, and so I went digging. I found lots of good reasons to recognize Somaliland, but very few reasons not to. Here’s an article outlining the situation. Somaliland is democratic, peaceful and abides by the rule of law. An article written nearly a year and a half ago for the Somaliland Forum outlines the reasons the US should recognize Somaliland:
1- From all indications, terrorism in Somalia is linked with al-Ittihad al-Islami an organization that is dedicated to fighting Ethiopia among other things. However, the idea of Somalis fighting Ethiopia predates the appearance of al-Ittihad al-Islami, and is an integral part of Somali political nationalism. By declaring their independence from Somalia, the people of Somaliland have confirmed their rejection of extremist Somali political nationalism, which is based on irredentism against neighboring countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya. Without Somaliland, it will be next to impossible for any Somali government to wage war against Ethiopia. Thus by recognizing Somaliland, the United States and the international community will help bury this aggressive Somali nationalism which led to two wars with Ethiopia (1964, 1977-8), and take care of one of the sources of conflict in the region, namely, Ethiopia’s security needs.
2- By recognizing and assisting Somaliland, the United States and its coalition partners will also show skeptical Somalis and Muslims that the war against terrorism is not a war against Somalis or Muslims, and that the United States will help those who are willing to help themselves.
3- Somaliland offers a promising model for Somalis. By recognizing Somaliland, the United States will be encouraging Somalis to follow Somaliland’s example of democracy, the rule of law, and peaceful co-existence.
4- Recognition of Somaliland will most likely be opposed by the Arta Faction (a.k.a the Somali Transitional Government) citing Somali territorial integrity, but those objections are groundless since the Somaliland Republic (or what was known as the British Protectorate of Somaliland) was a recognized state before it merged with Somalia and is only restoring its independence after a failed and catastrophic union. Somaliland meets international criteria for recognition such as a permanent population and internationally recognized boundaries. The U.S has also recently identified the Somali Transitional Government as being linked to terrorists, which should make the objections of that so-called Somali Transitional Government irrelevant to the campaign against terrorism and the future of Somaliland.
The US has not done this, however. In fact, while during the discussion for a bill passed in 1999 to give aid to Somaliland, the bill’s sponsors were very clear that they would not recognize Somaliland as an independent nation, and were committed to a “unified” Somalia. No other nations have recognized Somaliland either, for similar reasons. But why? Take these remarks made just under a month ago by the former US Ambassador to Ethiopia:
Somaliland sees Ethiopia as an ally in its quest for support and recognition. Although Ethiopia understands that a stable, peaceful and independent Somaliland is in its interest, it is unwilling to be the first to recognize the government in Hargeisa. Somalia would immediately attribute nefarious motives to Ethiopian recognition of Somaliland, arguing that it wishes to balkanize Somalia and weaken Somali unity.
There are important clan ties between Somalilanders and the some 60 percent of the Djiboutian population that is Somali. Relations between Somaliland and Djibouti are correct and improving.
Saudi Arabia poses a major dilemma for Somaliland. A significant financial backer of the TNG and supporter of it within the Arab League, Saudi Arabia was traditionally the major importer of Somaliland livestock. For the better part of the last five years, Saudi Arabia has banned livestock from Somaliland on the grounds that it might be infected with Rift Valley Fever. Somaliland denies the charges, and there does not appear to be any current scientific evidence to support the claim.
In the meantime, the Saudi ban is doing grievous damage to the Somaliland economy. The ban has harmed nearly every kind of employment in the country?oralists, truck drivers, livestock traders, animal health staff, brokers, port employees and private business people.
In more recent years, Egypt has been a supporter of Somali unity and a strong Somali state that can serve as a counterweight to Ethiopia. Eighty-six percent of the water reaching the Aswan Dam in Egypt emanates from Ethiopia. The Nile River is, of course, Egypt’s lifeline, and the leadership in Cairo wants to maintain maximum leverage over Ethiopia. A unified Somalia that might one day reassert its claims to Somali-inhabited areas of Ethiopia and has close links to Egypt would add to this leverage. As a result, Egypt is one of five countries that has recognized the TNG and opposes an independent Somaliland.
Eritrea, which received de facto independence from Ethiopia in 1991 and de jure independence in 1993, seemingly is a country that would be sympathetic to Somaliland’s independence. On the contrary, it supports the unity of Somalia and is one of five nations to recognize the TNG in Mogadishu. Like Egypt, Eritrea also sees a strong and unified Somalia as a counterweight to Ethiopia.
Sudan’s policy on Somaliland is especially intriguing. Sudan has traditionally supported Somali unity and is one of the five countries that recognized the TNG in Mogadishu. Sudan has been dealing with its own civil war since 1983 and does not wish to take any step that would provide additional justification for an independent southern Sudan. Acceptance of an independent Somaliland might weaken its own case for Sudanese unity.
Like Ethiopia, Kenya is primarily interested in a peaceful and friendly neighbor that does not export refugees and is in complete control of its borders. Kenya is also concerned that terrorist acts in Nairobi and Mombasa may have had some support from elements in Somalia. At the same time, Kenya does not want a strong neighbor that one day revives the Greater Somalia concept. For this reason, it is probably quietly sympathetic with an independent Somaliland. But as long as it is trying to solve the larger issue of peace in Somalia, it must remain completely neutral.

Speak your heart

Malta: Sending them back to Somalia is like sending them a death sentence

Medeshi Feb 2 , 2009

Somalia and Immigration
After watching Aljazeera, My father remarked ‘they have money to buy guns, but not food’.
He was referring to Somalia.
Most of the immigrants who arrive in Malta are from that region. On March 24 of 1994, Ilaria Alpi, a journalist for TG3, together with her cameraman, Milan Hrovatin, was killed in Mogadishu. (Photo: Maltese immigration officer and north African migrants)
On the scene of the crime, there were two other journalists present, from the ABC and the RTSI. They would be found dead some time after.
According to some reports, Ilaria was investigating an illicit international traffic of toxic and radioactive waste that industrial countries were sending to the poor countries of Africa, in exchange of money and weapons. Possible, the weapons came from Rome, Brescia and Turin.
It is not that far-fetched to assume that the Mafia and influential political figures were involved.
Italy is after all a country, which after the fall of Facism gave rise to the P2, a Masonic lodge (which provided Silvio Berlusconi with a launching pad), and the Christian Democratic party, which relationship with the Mafia have become quite infamously known.
Giancarlo Marocchino, a 50 something Italian exile in Somalia for tax evasion, was suspected by the U.S. intelligence to have got rich by trafficking weapons.
It is believed that the ‘weapons confiscated by the Italian military were sold to Giancarlo who then reconditioned them and sold them back on the streets.’
Apart from this, during the 1980s Giancarlo was one of the main beneficiaries from a scam organized by the Italian government of Benito Craxi. And seriously, why would a westerner choose Somalia as his home? Love?
He is married to a Somali woman and lives in the Northern part of Mogadishu.
This post is not intended to be on Ilaria, but rather on the darker side of Immigration.
It is evident that the problem of immigration that we have is related to the crisis that exists in the region. Repatriation happens and it happens fast when there is no problem with the country of origin. This should be clear even to the stupid far-right person (or new-right whatever).
Also, Malta has the DAR programme, a voluntary repatriation scheme. In the past 15 months it has repatriated 70 immigrants. Going through Tonio Borg press releases is like a diabetic being forced to eat sugar. It kills you. Nonetheless, putting aside the corny self-glorified wording of Borg, we understood that Malta works differently from other countries when it comes to repatriation.
Instead of providing the countries of origin with aid; Malta gives money to the migrant with the idea to set his/her own business at home. From what we understood, those who ‘kept in contact’ with Malta did manage to start out something – salon, taxi company, selling mobiles … One way of seeing it is of ‘buying out their repatriation’. The government sees it as a way to improve the entrepreneurial community; as far as I can tell, if this manages to improve the African continent then all well and do.
However, Borg fails to tell us whether repatriation of Somali ever happened. I doubt it though. Sending them back to Somalia (and Eriteria) is like sending them a death sentence. And even so, is it wise to give Somali man money, when there is no structure in place to start out nothing, let alone a business?
The only thing that can actually start out is more illegal operation.
I doubt that this government is so dumb to do so.
It is evident that the problem of Somalia is its current situation. With no central government; where are the funds suppose to?
Thus, it is not even a question of sending money. Even so, it is no secret that African governments have in the past used these funds for their own greedy interests rather to improve the situation of their people. Needless to say, that monitoring and transparency should be a must.
Smugglers, shrewd businessmen and warlords see the current civil war as big business opportunity. Thus, I hardly see an end to it. It is in their interest to perpetuate poverty so as to have an access to an endless supply of militia. No one fights with his belly full.
It is also obvious that the status quo in Somalia is supported by even darker forces which operate from Europe and in the Middle-East; all of whom are ready to sacrifice humanity on the altar of capital.
The first solution is to cut the lines of smuggling. Easier said than done and from the few sources that I brought together, it seems that it is tough. However, Watergate and Tangentopoli are examples of how great powers came to their knees with well placed intelligence.
Otherwise, I can’t see how, the immigration problem can be solved without looking at it in a holistic manner and take action accordingly. I think that since most parties have grown out from its ideologies skins (without actually compromising their own values) and moved towards a more pragmatic centre, this should provide continuation for in tackling the problem of immigration

Ilaria Alpi

From the Second City, An Extended First Family

Medeshi

From the Second City, An Extended First Family

Obama's Mother-in-Law, Other Chicagoans Bring Home to White House
By Eli SaslowWashington Post Staff Writer

(Photo: Marian Robinson joined the first couple to watch coverage of the election victory, and as the first mother-in-law and the first daughters' grandma she has moved from her Chicago walk-up to an upstairs bedroom in the White House)

Sunday, February 1, 2009
A bus filled with about 50 of President Obama's friends and in-laws arrived at the White House just after midnight, as Inauguration Day came to a close, for what they called a "housewarming party." The group had celebrated more than a dozen moves together over the years, usually with casual dinners in bungalows on the South Side of Chicago. This time, they wore rented tuxedos and gowns as a small army of presidential staffers ushered them past Secret Service agents and into the East Room.
Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother and the family matriarch, came downstairs from her new bedroom, and the family reunited on an oak parquet floor underneath crystal chandeliers. Celebrities and political power brokers greeted them. Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis played trumpet while caterers handed out hors d'oeuvres and flutes of champagne.
About an hour into the reception, Obama returned from his whirlwind tour of 10 inaugural balls. His wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, went to bed, exhausted. But the new president called over a photographer and explained that he wanted one final memento from the historic day. He gathered his in-laws -- teachers, secretaries and retirees from a self-described middle-class black family in Chicago -- and posed with them beneath a 1797 portrait of George Washington in his velvet suit.
"I was just trying to soak it all in, and then this realization hit me," said Steve Shields, 57, Michelle Obama's uncle. "It was like, 'Okay. This is different. All of the sudden, we are the family that's, like, at the center of the universe.' "
To help him adjust to Washington, President Obama has lifted an entire network of unassuming friends and in-laws from the South Side into the capital's stratosphere. None of them has been more suddenly transported than Robinson, 71, who has moved from the walk-up home where she spent 40 years to the historic mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She has a room on the third floor, one level up from the Obamas, with a four-poster bed, a walk-in closet, a television set and a small sitting area for guests. She can walk down the hall to visit Malia and Sasha in their playroom, where the girls will spend as much time with their Nintendo Wii as Grandma allows. Or she can step over to the solarium to read on a plush couch or gaze out the bay windows, with their sweeping views of the Washington Monument and the city beyond.
Robinson sometimes yearns for her anonymous life in Chicago, but she is committed to making the president and first lady feel at home. And she is hardly alone in that commitment. Kaye Wilson, godmother to both Obama daughters, will visit about once a month to cook family favorites and twist Malia's hair. More than a dozen other friends and relatives -- some of whom have never so much as visited Washington -- are scheduling spring sleepovers in the White House.
How well the group handles its rise to extended first family could foretell the president's happiness in his new job. Obama generally shied away from new friendships during his political ascendancy, preferring the company of the people who had babysat his daughters and thrown his birthday parties -- people who would retell familiar jokes. As the state senator became a U.S. senator and waged a successful campaign for the presidency, the extended network provided a cocoon of normalcy. Now, as extended first family, the friends and in-laws wonder: Can normalcy ever be re-created?
"The way [the Obamas] got this far was with support from all of these people in Chicago," said Wilson, the godmother, who works as an artist and consultant in Olympia Fields, Ill. "They always had people to depend on, friends who watched the girls and took care of things so some part of their life could stay the same. That group has to stick together. We have to find a way to make their lives comfortable in Washington."
Until last week, the family nexus had remained 700 miles to the west, at a two-story house on Euclid Street in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. Robinson and her husband, Fraser, rented a small apartment on the house's second floor from an aunt, who lived downstairs. As toddlers, their children, Michelle and Craig, shared a large bedroom. It was a tidy home in a predominantly black, working-class neighborhood -- safe and affordable -- and Marian Robinson loved it. She sent Michelle and Craig to the elementary school down the block and took them to South Shore Methodist Church across the street.
In that house, she raised two future Ivy League students, cared for her dying aunt and sick husband, and lived alone as a widow for almost two decades. She parked on the street and shoveled snow off her sidewalk. In the winter, she played the piano or watched home improvement shows on an aging television surrounded by pictures of four generations of her family. On summer days, she read the entire newspaper and then worked crosswords and other puzzles on her brick sun porch.
It was home, and she never planned to leave.
Few in the Robinson family have ever left Chicago. Marian grew up the daughter of a painter and a stay-at-home mother in a small house with seven siblings on the South Side, and all five of her surviving brothers and sisters still live within 15 miles. They gather every few months for holidays and impromptu dinners. When Michelle married Barack Obama, who had no family nearby, the Robinsons adopted him as one of their own and threw his birthday parties.
Marian built a life entrenched in routine, and almost all of her activities revolved around family. Until she retired last year, she carpooled to her job as an assistant in the trust department of a downtown bank with her sister Grace Hale, who lives in a duplex around the corner. On Thursdays, Marian took a yoga class taught by her brother Steve Shields. She visited a downtown hair salon on Saturday mornings and then went to River Oaks Mall with Hale, who doesn't drive. Afterward, the two women treated themselves to lunch, usually at Red Lobster or Bennigan's, before stopping to do their weekly grocery shopping on the way home.
"We are longtime doers of everything," said Hale, 68, who works at a medical company. "We like things simple. We've never needed too much. All of us have our lives here, and we have them set the way we like."
After Obama announced plans to run for president in February 2007, the extended family worked to adapt. Marian, who had never before wanted to retire, quit her job so she could watch over Malia and Sasha and sometimes spent the night at their home in Hyde Park while the Obamas campaigned. She listened to the girls' morning piano practice and then ferried them to school, tennis, gymnastics, dance and drama -- a modern parenting schedule that sometimes made Marian yearn for actual retirement, she joked.
Still, she loved being around her grandchildren, and she insisted on watching them rather than hiring a babysitter. In the Robinson family, nobody relied too heavily on babysitters. With dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins nearby, Marian thought, why would you?
"I've heard Barack and Michelle say that their greatest comfort was having Marian watching the girls and a whole other rotation of us waiting and ready to back her up," said Wilson, the godmother. "Her being with those girls kept their lives normal."
Normal -- it was the goal they strived for, and a target that became increasingly elusive. Marian took a trip to a fundraiser at Oprah Winfrey's mansion and marveled at closets that looked bigger than her house. Hale accepted well wishes from strangers who rode with her on the No. 14 public bus that she takes each morning to work. At the Democratic National Convention, Wilson was crying alone in the Obama family box during Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech, grateful for anonymity, when she received a text message from her daughter: "Mom, they keep showing you on TV and you're wiping your nose with a paper bag. Get a tissue."
"It was like our private space was slowly disappearing," Wilson said.
The extended family continued to throw the usual parties -- a bash at Wilson's suburban home on Mother's Day, a get-together with about 60 people for Obama's birthday in August -- but now Secret Service agents secured the perimeter and gratefully accepted leftovers. The Obama daughters continued to visit the same friends for play dates, but now they rode in dark Chevy Suburbans driven by agents who had memorized the girls' favorite Jonas Brothers songs.
Marian adapted to one change at a time, steadfastly refusing to look ahead. While other family members predicted an Obama victory, Marian remained skeptical until election night. She hesitated to move into the White House -- it would be like living in a museum, she once said -- until she visited in November and saw her room. Even when she finally decided to leave Chicago, Marian told friends the move might only be temporary. She would stay in Washington as long as the family needed her, she said, and probably no longer.
"She's 71 years old, you know, and I wouldn't say she's set in her ways, but she certainly was comfortable in them," said Craig Robinson, Marian's son. "Moving, even if she had to move just downtown from where we lived in Chicago, it would have been a little bit of a daunting task to get her arms around. I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school when I say that she had to think hard about going to the White House. She knew it was going to be a serious change."
The White House isn't a bad place to stay, Marian has told friends, but it still lacks the comforts of home. She went for a walk downtown every day while staying at Blair House, but leaving the White House grounds requires security coordination and planning. Staff members have offered to help her find a yoga class, but she joked that she would rather take her brother's class in Chicago via webcam. Every Saturday, Marian calls her sister Grace Hale to make sure she found her own way to the grocery store.
Marian confessed to friends in Chicago that she is worried about boredom, and they suggested she volunteer for a few hours each day for a government agency, possibly doing accounting. Marian agreed to look into it; she has always been good with numbers.
Her primary daily task is to shepherd her grandchildren to and from school, and even that has stretched her comfort zone. For years, Marian drove 40 minutes to work near the Chicago Loop through hellacious weather and traffic, chauffeuring Hale to her job en route. Now, Marian sits in the back with the Obama daughters, who have been required to ride with the Secret Service since August, friends said.
"I think the hardest thing in her situation is that making new friends is almost impossible," said Wilson, the godmother. "I don't know how anybody makes friends from inside the White House. And when you get to our age, making friends anywhere is hard."
So the only option -- for Marian, for the Obamas -- is to bring their old friends to Washington. As Michelle said goodbye to the Chicago entourage at the end of the inauguration weekend, she encouraged a handful of friends and in-laws to immediately buy plane tickets for return trips to Washington. Wilson is back in town this weekend. Michelle's brother, Craig, a college basketball coach at Oregon State, will travel across the country with his family of four as much as possible. Friend Yvonne Davila will visit from Chicago with her two young daughters. A revolving door of aunts, uncles and cousins will provide a constant rotation of familiar faces.
"They've made it abundantly clear that we're welcome," said Yvonne Shields, a former in-law and one of Marian's closest friends.
The Robinsons used to vacation in White Cloud, Mich., where they shared rustic cabins in the woods, so transitioning to sleepovers at the White House has required some fine-tuning. A few hours after Obama took the oath of office, he asked Wilson if she and her husband were going to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.
"Oh, no, I can't do that," Wilson said. "I'd be the one who broke the glass and spilled my coffee on the Gettysburg Address."
Wilson stayed in Room 303 instead -- a suite with its own bathroom -- and Craig Robinson and his wife slept in the Lincoln Bedroom. Craig, who had never even toured the White House before, retired to a rosewood bed from the 1860s. He woke up and walked on the Truman Balcony, where 11 presidents have entertained the world elite.
"We're a pretty down-to-earth family from the South Side of Chicago, so nobody can get their arms around this whole thing," Craig said. "When all of our family was in there, it almost felt like: 'Wait. Are we at somebody's kitchen table? Because this can't actually be the White House.' The kids were off playing, and some of us adults sat back and just said: 'Can you believe this? Are you kidding?' "

Somali president faces tough task

Medeshi

Feb 1 ,2009

Somali president faces tough task
By Roger Middleton
The election of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as president of Somalia marks a dramatic return for the former head of the Union of Islamic Courts administration.
Winning over the roughly 500 members of Somalia's newly expanded parliament is likely to be the easiest part of his presidency, however.
Somalia faces a daunting set of challenges: famine, poverty, chronic insecurity and lawlessness, meddlesome neighbours, and the enduring memory of numerous failed peace processes.
Sheikh Sharif defeated at least 14 other candidates including current Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, commonly known as Nur Adde, who has been the driving force behind bringing the Transitional Federal Government and Mr Sharif's Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) together.
Mr Hussein was probably the favoured candidate of the West, but Sheikh Sharif commands considerable respect among many in Mogadishu and southern Somalia.
The most pressing problem for the new president is how to deal with the radical Islamist group al-Shabab.
So far they have shown no willingness to join the grand coalition between Sheikh Sharif's ARS and the remains of the transitional government under Mr Hussein.
They have spent the last two years building their military and financial strength and will be hard to dislodge by force.
Sharia law
Since the Ethiopian intervention at the end of 2006 al-Shabab has grown in size, ambition, organisation, and seems increasingly radical.
Their leaders have benefited from the bitter feelings generated by the Ethiopian intervention and are now probably the best organised force in Southern Somalia.
They have expanded their control over southern Somalia since taking control of the strategic port of Kismaayo late last year.
Baidoa, the town that until recently hosted the Transitional Federal Parliament, is for now also under their control.
Reports indicate that they are established in Mogadishu and threatening to capture the city.
The ARS and the transitional government have been negotiating in Djibouti but it is al-Shabab who have been making headlines.
In Shabab-controlled Kismayo a young girl accused of adultery was stoned to death - in fact she had been raped.
Al-Shabab have said they will also impose their version of sharia law in Baidoa and the other areas they control.
They have been destroying shrines of traditional saints across southern Somalia.
Most Somalis insist that al-Shabab does not represent traditional interpretations of Islam.
Clan divisions
It seems highly unlikely that the international community or Somalia's neighbours would be keen to support the new president if he engages in negotiations with a group listed as a terrorist organisation by the US State Department.
His best bet may be to hope that militiamen fighting for al-Shabab can be convinced to change sides and support his government.
President Sharif cannot even count on unified support from the newly enlarged parliament.
The clearest division is between the original MPs who served under President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and the new ARS MPs.
Even within these two groups there is hardly consensus, and it is likely that the new president will receive little help from politicians who in the past have only really swung into action when new prime ministers or presidents needed to be appointed.
MPs have been selected on the basis of a formula designed to ensure even representation across Somalia's different clans.
It is up to each clan to decide how to negotiate divisions within them along sub-clan lines.
Humanitarian crisis
Some analysts argue this system means MPs who come from the more stable north of the country will be involved in trying to solve the problems of the south.
They complain that the formula, by treating the problem as an all-Somalia one, ignores the reality - that the war is in the south and only southerners will be able to end the fighting.
As Mr Hussein and Sheik Sharif are both from the Hawiye clan, if one is president the other cannot be prime minister.
So the two men with the best chance of resolving the problems of the south cannot together hold the two most important offices of state.
More than three million people are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, millions were displaced from Mogadishu, and Somalia has been described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Somalis rely on massive shipments of food aid to stay alive.
If the president wants to build popular legitimacy then he will need to address these problems.
However, providing food and medical supplies will be very difficult until some form of security is established, and without a government that can ensure the most basic services young men have little incentive not to take the $15-a-day pay cheque from the warring factions.
Finally, President Sharif should not expect to be left alone to resolve his country's crises.
The outside world has a history of interfering in Somalia's affairs.
Among a long list of interventions, the two-year Ethiopian mission and US missile strikes against terrorist targets may have been motivated by legitimate security fears, but they have almost never improved the security or humanitarian situation inside Somalia.
The new president will need to navigate a bickering parliament, a hungry population and meddling world - and face down a massive military threat from al-Shabab.
He will need a lot of luck if this is not to be just the most recent failed peace process in Somalia.
Roger Middleton works for the Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based foreign-policy think tank

BBC

Kenya oil blaze 'leaves 100 dead'

Medeshi

Feb 1 ,2009

Kenya oil blaze 'leaves 100 dead'
More than 100 people have been killed in central Kenya after an oil spill from a crashed lorry caught fire as locals rushed to scoop it up, police have said.
The lorry crashed near the town of Molo, spilling oil that later burst into flames as hundreds of locals were crowded around trying to help themselves to the fuel.
"We counted 91 bodies at the site and there were 20 others that had been taken to the local mortuary," police provincial spokesman Hassan Noor Hassan told the Reuters news agency.
Another 82 people were critically injured, a local Red Cross official said.
"The people went to scoop up the oil, then something lit the fire, maybe someone dropped a cigarette," Titus Mung'ou, a Kenya Red Cross spokesman, said on Saturday.
Local residents said there was also a suspicion someone angered at being blocked from the spill by police may have started the fire on purpose.
Children missing
Hundreds of people were still milling around the site after the blaze.
A woman said she was searching for her two missing children.
She said: "My two sons ran home, picked some jerry cans and ran to get some petrol.
"I tried to stop them but they did not listen, they told me everyone is going there for the free fuel."
The disaster follows the deaths of at least 25 people in Nairobi when a supermarket caught fire earlier this week.
Local newspapers have criticised the government for poor safety regulation.After the supermarket blaze, the Daily Nation said Nairobi's three million inhabitants are served by just one fire station situated close to a traffic-choked business district.

Al Jazeera

Crisis-hit Africa holds summit

Medeshi Feb 1, 2009
Crisis-hit Africa holds summit
ADDIS ABABA
The African Union's 12th summit opened Sunday in Ethiopia with an agenda officially focused on infrastructure development but overshadowed by conflict and hunger on the continent.
The 53-nation body began meeting in the Ethiopian capital behind closed doors and without any formal opening ceremony.
The leaders are officially focused on developing Africa's infrastructure and were to discuss transport, energy and investment issues against the background of a global economic slump.
AU Commission chief Jean Ping bemoaned the current global economic downturn which he said will adversely affect African countries that deserve no blame for the crisis.
"African economies and African people will suffer the full wrath of the crisis for which they are not responsible," Ping told a preparatory meeting of foreign ministers on Friday.
Ping argued that the financial crisis "would divert the international community's attention from funding development to rescuing banking and financial institutions."
But he also noted that conflicts have deepened Africa's vulnerability to the economic slump.
"The continent's vulnerability is always worsened by potential and open conflicts," Ping said.
Among the most noted leaders present at the AU's headquarters in Addis Ababa for the summit was Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who was elected the new president of Somalia on Saturday.
In his inauguration speech in Djibouti, Sheikh Sharif vowed to build an inclusive government, extend a hand to hardline armed groups still opposed to peace talks and bring Somalia back into the regional fold.
The African Union, which has around 3,500 peacekeepers in Somalia, has been pleading with member states and the international community for the support needed to expand the mission to its planned size of 8,000 men.
The summit was preceded by a high-level meeting on the crisis in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting has displaced tens of thousands over the past five months.
Adding to its woeful list of long-running conflicts, a military coup in Mauritania in August 2008, another one in Guinea four months later, as well as a thwarted attempt in Guinea Bissau further hindered the continent's political growth.
Both Mauritania and Guinea were suspended from the bloc last year.
However, Ping remarked that progress had been made in restoring stability in Burundi, the Comoros, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic, among other trouble spots.
He also lauded the "well conducted elections in Guinea Bissau, Zambia and Ghana."
On development, Ping said several infrastructure projects in the continent are to be resumed such as the construction of the Cairo-to-Cape of Good Hope and Dakar-to-Djibouti highways, a regional reference university and electricity networks.
Also high on the agenda of the first day's talks was the ever-recurring isse of unifying the continent under a joint government.
While some leaders have favoured a maximilist option for a "United States of Africa
AFP

Africa Is Up For Sale, The Middle East is Buying

Medeshi Feb 1, 2009

Africa Is Up For Sale, The Middle East is Buying

As African nations sell and lease its land, and birthright, to the world’s super-powers, and arguably “dangerous” countries like Saudi Arabia who support Islamic fundamentalism, we are seeing a brand new kind of neo-colonial land-grab, and it scares me.
I’d reported on Galten’s Jatropha seeds for biofuel here, and also on the Israeli conglomerate Ormat, Evogene and Leviev in Namibia planting castor seeds for biofuel, and came out thinking, naively perhaps, that land development for biofuels in Africa was a beautiful thing: Israel doesn’t have much arable land, and the projects create jobs for Africans as well.
Israel is not the only Western country buying into Africa:
Britain’s Sun Biofuels plans to grow about 5,500 hectares of jatropha in Tanzania. The company also grows jatropha in Ethiopia and has similar projects in Mozambique.
Sweden’s Sekab Group, one of Europe’s leading ethanol producers, plans to produce 100 million litres of ethanol a year in Tanzania by 2012 at a cost of $200 - $300 million.
British-based energy firm CAMS Group said in September it planned to produce 240 million litres of ethanol a year from sweet sorghum in Tanzania at a cost of up to $600 million.
British biofuel company, D1-BP Fuel Crops is also actively planting Jatropha in Swaziland and Zambia, and also has plantings in Madagascar.
In November 2008, South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics secured a 99-year lease on 1.3m hectares of land, an area roughly half the size of Belgium, from the government of Madagascar. (This equals about half of Madagascar’s arable land!)
Flora EcoPower of Germany, through a local subsidiary, of 8,000 hectares in Oromia province in Ethiopia for the cultivation of castor seeds.
Now I am not a huge follower of crazy conspiracy theories, but something has me a little paranoid about new and aggressive land buying and leasing in Africa, especially when I hear countries like Saudi Arabia (15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis), are buying up land in Sudan for agricultural development. Gulf nations are cash-heavy, but water-poor and are looking to secure food and fuel resources on Africa’s land for the coming decades.
It’s Like The Gold Rush
New patterns of land use in Africa, and what’s being called an aggressive “land-grab” according to AfricaAsia.com, opens up some serious questions for environmentalists and policy makers to think about. I’m not mongering doom and gloom: the results could be good too: It’s possible that agricultural development for food and biofuels in countries like Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia could create more political stability and wealth for its indigenous people.
But I hazard to guess that sharing the profits equally with the Africans isn’t really on the landlords’ minds.
I fear, the only ones who’ll be reaping the big rewards, like coffee and diamond exporters mainly do, will be the big companies doing the colonizing. It is also likely, inevitable, and quite scary that some of these massive players will take their political points of view and baggage with them too.
Consider some of the Middle East players:
In August 2008, Al-Qudra Holdings of Abu Dhabi said that it was looking to acquire 400,000 hectares of land in Asia and Africa, with Sudan a likely candidate, for the cultivation of corn, rice and cattle. The company already farms 1,500 hectares in Morocco and Algeria.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have already acquired substantial holdings in Sudan.
The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development alone is set to cultivate some 30,000 hectares of land in the north of Sudan.
Hadco, of Saudi Arabia, is investing more than $96m in Sudan to lease 10,000 hectares on the banks of the Nile, near Khartoum, to produce wheat, vegetables and fodder.
According to AfricaAsia.comthere have been similar investments in Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe. And Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, has been actively soliciting Middle East investment countries, describing himself as “very eager” to attract further land deals.
Here at Green Prophet, I work to give fair “green” value and criticism to all countries in the Middle East; the fact that countries like Saudi Arabia who support the Taliban and al Qaeda, are also buying land in Africa for agricultural development, deeply worries me.
InformationClearinghouse.net (in general highly critical of Israel, the US and the West) comments:”Backed by their governments and bankrolled with huge trade and investment profits and budget surpluses, the newly emerging neo-colonial economic powers (ENEP) are seizing control of vast tracts of fertile lands from poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through the intermediation of local corrupt, free-market regimes.
“Millions of acres of land have been granted – in most cases free of charge – to the ENEP who, at most, promise to invest millions in infrastructure to facilitate the transfer of their plundered agricultural products to their own home markets and to pay the ongoing wage of less than $1 dollar a day to the destitute local peasants.
“Projects and agreements between the ENEP and pliant neo-colonial regimes are in the works to expand imperial land takeovers to cover additional tens of millions of hectares of farmland in the very near future. The great land sell-off/transfer takes place at a time and in places where landless peasants are growing in number, small farmers are being forcibly displaced by the neo-colonial state and bankrupted through debt and lack of affordable credit. Millions of organized landless peasants and rural workers struggling for cultivatable land are criminalized, repressed, assassinated or jailed and their families are driven into disease-ridden urban slums. The historic context, economic actors and methods of agro-business empire-building bears similarities and differences with the old-style empire building of the past centuries.”
The above point-of-view may be a bit extreme (and the site insanely anti-Israel), but what I would like the commentary above and this post to do in general, is to encourage more people, reporters and environment bloggers to look with a critical eye at what’s happening in Africa with regards to foreign land leases, investments and development. It’s worrisome to think that without any controls, the massively rich nations will be getting richer and stronger, while the Africans and the weaker ones . . . you know already how this story ends.

Mideast Youth

Somalia: US, Ethiopia praise former Somali foe, now leader

Medeshi Jan 31, 2009

Whatever happened to ‘radical, extremist, Islamist, etc.’? !!!!!!!
US, Ethiopia praise former Somali foe, now leader
After two years since Ethiopia-US alliance to oust Somali ‘Islamists’, today both Washington & Addis Ababa welcome return of ICU leader as president.
ADDIS ABABA - The election of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed as the new president of war-ravaged Somalia could be a step towards peace and benefit the whole region, Ethiopia's prime minister said Saturday.
The young cleric, who ran as the head of the Islamic-dominated opposition movement Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, took the oath on the Koran Friday during a ceremony in Djibouti.
"It's the decision of the Somalis. If they are happy with their own elections, everybody else should be happy," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on the sidelines of talks here ahead of the annual African Union summit.
"We are very happy with the fact that Sheikh Sharif has been elected. Following the path that he has been taking for the past six, nine months that will be very helpful for Somalia and the region as a whole," he added.
The Ethiopian leader said that Sheikh Sharif's election would help peace efforts in the country, saying: "It could be one step forward."
Sheikh Sharif is expected to travel to Addis to represent his country at the AU summit, which starts on Sunday.
Addis Ababa only completed its withdrawal from Somalia a few days ago.
US welcomes Somalia's new president
The United States welcomed cleric Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's election as Somali president Saturday and vowed to support his efforts to restore stability in the Horn of Africa nation.
In a statement issued by its embassy in Nairobi, the US government congratulated the former opposition leader on his victory.
"President Sharif has been a strong proponent of the Djibouti process and has worked diligently on reconciliation efforts in Somalia," it said referring to UN-sponsored peace talks in Djibouti, where Saturday's vote was held.
"We urge President Sharif to reach out to the broad spectrum of Somalis who reject violence and extremism in forming a new government," the statement said.
Outgoing prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein, long a darling of the international community, pulled out of the race after the first round.
"The United States looks forward to cooperating with President Sharif and his broad-based government on these efforts to establish democracy and achieve peace in Somalia," the US statement added.
The Ethiopian army – with US blessing and support - invaded Somalia in late 2006 to rescue Somalia's embattled transitional government and oust the ICU, which controlled of much of the country's central and southern regions.
The ICU had ruled much of Somalia with relative peace and prosperity until the Ethiopian involvement.
But Ethiopian troops have caused many casualties among Somali civilians.
Since the Ethiopian invasion, about one million Somalis have fled their homes. An estimated 6,500 civilians have been killed.
Aid workers estimate 2.6 million Somalis need assistance.
In May 2008, Amnesty International accused the Ethiopian troops in Somalia of increasingly resorting to throat-slitting executions, highlighting an "increasing incidence" of gruesome methods by Ethiopian forces that include rape and torture.
Since the ousting of the ICU, Somalia had plunged into unprecedented chaos, where warlords and pirates have returned to the scene.
Sheikh Sharif, the head of the ICU, was sent into exile with the ICU's leadership.
Sheikh Sharif then formed an Islamic-dominated opposition umbrella group and last year led its moderate wing into peace talks with the transitional government, then headed by Hussein.

SOMALIA: Counting the Cost After Ethiopia Withdraws

Medeshi

SOMALIA: Counting the Cost After Ethiopia Withdraws

Analysis by Abdurrahman Warsameh

MOGADISHU, Jan 31 (IPS) - The suicide car bomb that struck Mogadishu Jan. 24, killing at least twenty people and injuring nearly fifty others is an explosive comment on the failure of the Ethiopian military deployment to Somalia two years ago to oust Islamist forces it believed represented "a clear and present danger" to Ethiopia.

(Photo: Somali refugees in Kenya - as many as 1 million people were displaced by fighting between Islamists and Ethiopian soldiers. )
The last Ethiopian troops have now left Mogadishu as part of an agreement between Somalia's government and one major opposition faction, the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia based in Djibouti (ARS-D) which is dominated by the Islamist movement known as the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).
The movement controlled the southern and central parts of Somalia during the latter half of 2006, where it was credited with establishing a semblance of law and order. People are today nostalgic about the "Six Months of Peace" during which violence all but ceased and life for ordinary Somalis returned to something but normal after 15 years of conflict.
Responding to pressure to follow the UIC's lead and impose Islamic law, leaders in the autonomous regions of Puntland and Somaliland announced plans to implement shari'a on the one hand, and arresting suspected Islamists on the other.
The UIC's success was in marked contrast to the difficulties encountered by the internationally-sanctioned Transitional Federal Government of Somalia. The TFG was formed in 2004 as a result of two years of peace talks held in Nairobi and sponsored by the regional body, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development.
But for the first two years of its existence - during which the TFG was constantly grappling with political infighting and persistent allegations of corruption - it was unable to impose itself on the war-torn country and was confined to the southern town of Baidoa.
The growing strength of an Islamist government was of concern to at least one of Somalia's neighbours: Ethiopia accused the Islamists of threatening its national security by collaborating with arch-regional rival, Eritrea, and Ethiopian rebel groups to destabilise it.
"We sent our troops to Somalia two years ago because there was a clear and present danger posed against Ethiopia," Wahde Belay, spokesperson for the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry in Addis Ababa, told IPS, "The Union of Islamic Courts had waged a jihad against us. That is why we decided to bang the UIC".
Ethiopian troops and tanks rolled over the border with Somalia in late December, 2006 and easily unseated the Islamists in less than two weeks. But the Ethiopian forces spent the next two years fighting a deadly Islamist-nationalist insurgency and have now withdrawn under fire from the same Islamists they came to crush.
"The fact that Ethiopian troops could easily defeat the Islamists did not guarantee lasting victory as the fighters soon regrouped and started fighting back. Now as the Ethiopians are withdrawing from Somalia, most of the south-central regions are again under the control of the Islamists," Yusuf Maalin, an independent political analyst told IPS.
Evaluating Ethiopia's presence
During the past two years, nearly 10,000 civilians have lost their lives while the U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimates more than one million people, mainly from Mogadishu, have fled their homes to escape the nearly daily violence between insurgent fighters and Ethiopian troops backing Somali government forces.
A number of local and international human rights organisations have accused the troops of committing atrocities against local civilians and of indiscriminate bombardment of built up residential areas. They have also accused the Islamist insurgents of using civilians as human shields by firing from populated areas.
Abdelfatah Shaweye, deputy major of Mogadishu, says despite criticism of Ethiopia's presence in the country, the intervention was instrumental in establishing the internationally-recognised government in the capital and most of the country in the first months after the invasion.
"No matter what the human rights groups say about the troops from the friendly country, they have helped us a lot and sacrificed to bring order to our country," Shaweye told IPS.
However Sheik Abdirahim Isse Adow, a spokesman for the armed wing of the UIC, said Ethiopia had not achieved its main aim of defeating the Islamists who he says are now "as strong as ever" and control the same territory as when the troops invaded Somalia.
"What the (Ethiopian) troops brought about is just more misery for the people of this country and more bloodshed. They failed to impose themselves on us or hold on to our country." Adow told IPS.
Ethiopia has now fully withdrawn its troops from Somalia, saying the threat posed to it by the Islamists has cleared. "If Ethiopia believes there is a clear and present danger, there is no reason why we shouldn't take an identical measure in the future," Wahde Belay said.
However Maalin said Ethiopia would have to think hard before re-entering Somalia as "the adventurism and opportunism" of the first invasion cost Ethiopia dear in terms of lives and the standing of its human right record.
"The Islamists have hurt Ethiopia more badly than they have been hurt, since as even the most casual observer can ascertain, Ethiopia is leaving the Islamists in a much stronger position than before the invasion two years ago. And what has transpired during its presence has eroded much more from Ethiopia than it gained," Maalin said.
What next?
UIC and a splinter group, the hardline faction known as al-Shabaab - listed as a terrorist organisation with links to Al-Qaida by the U.S. State Department - are again running much of the south-central Somalia while the transitional Somali government is in control of small pockets in the capital Mogadishu where nearly 3,400 African Union peacekeepers are protecting government installations including the presidential palace, airport, and seaport.
The peacekeepers are part of an 8000-strong peacekeeping force authorised by the U.N. Security Council early in 2007 to replace Ethiopian forces. But only Uganda and Burundi have sent troops as promised; other African countries which pledged to contribute forces have cited security and logistical reasons for not deploying soldiers.
Elements of the UIC signed a peace and power-sharing deal with the TFG in October 2008. Sheik Sharif Ahmed, leader of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia's Djibouti faction (ARS-D) and head of the UIC's government during 2006, was elected president of the TFG on Jan. 31. He is now more conciliatory towards Ethiopia, but faces strong opposition from rival factions of the ARS and from al-Shabaab, which continues to strongly oppose any foreign presence in Somalia.
Ethiopia has not left its "enemy" to enjoy its newly regained power in Somalia without numerous killjoys. A new and well-armed faction, Ahlu Sunnah, appeared out of nowhere to confront al-Shabaab in the days leading to the announcement by Ethiopia of its decision to pull its troops from Somalia.
Al-Shabaab claims that the new faction has been created, armed and supported Ethiopia to fight a proxy war against the Islamist forces. In a Jan. 26 press conference, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said that Ethiopia is not "disappointed" or "unhappy" that al-Shabaab is now facing armed opposition from within Somalia.
"I cannot tell you that we are unhappy that they chose to fight back. I cannot tell you that we would not be supportive of any such endeavours on their part," Zenawi told reporters.
Despite now heading an internationally-sanctioned government of Somalia, Sharif will likely find running the country much harder than
(Michael Chebud in Addis Ababa contributed to this report.) (END/2009)

Sheikh Sharif Ahmed elected president of Somalia

Medeshi
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed elected president of Somalia
1/31/2009 Saturday, moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was elected Somalia's president by the members of the Somali parliament. The legislators elected the new president through a secret ballot, under a United Nations-brokered deal to establish a unity government between the transitional government and moderate Islamists. (Photo: Somali men celebrate the election of the new president)People celebrated in the streets immediately after the announcement, with shots being fired into the air, announcing a beginning of an end to Islamist militia control. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is due to be sworn in as president later on Saturday
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed defeated Gen. Maslah Mohamed Siad Barre, the son of the former dictator, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Siad Barre, in the second round of voting. The other strong frontrunners for the presidency, Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein also withdrew from the balloting following the first round, after winning only 59 votes in the initial round. Islamist al-Shabab militia says it will not recognise the new government.
Forty-four year old Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was the leader of Somalia's ousted Islamic Courts Union which briefly controlled much of Somalia in 2006. Last year, he signed a peace agreement with the government. However, hardliners Islamists did not accept that peace deal, and insurgents continue to fight for more territory across the country. The Islamist al-Shabab militia said it will not recognize the new government.
The election followed the resignation of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed last month after four years in office. He had been widely accused by the prime minister and parliament for Somalia's deepening crisis. Somalia has been functioning without a central government since 1991, when General Siad Barre was removed from power and the army fell into the hands of clan militias, who turned on one another and left the country largely in anarchy.
The northern regions of Somaliland and Puntland have broken away to govern themselves. Most of Somalia is controlled by various Islamist militias, although some of the moderate Islamist groups support the government.
Sheik Sharif Ahmed has his task cut out as the new president with the burden of reconciling Somalia's 10 million people and to put an end to 18 years of bloodshed. Somalia's government controls only parts of the capital, Mogadishu, with the help of several thousand African Union troops.