Medeshi Feb 18, 2009
Immigration Service does not want to reconsider deportation of Somali
Helsingin Sanomat
Authenticity of message sent to lawyer questioned
The Finnish Immigration Service does not want to take the Somali man who was deported to Somaliland back into Finland, even if Somaliland were to expel him from its territory.
Jorma Vuorio, director-general of the service, says that it is very unlikely that Somaliland would expel him.
The man, who had been convicted of a number of crimes in Finland, was sent to Hargesia, the capital of Somaliland, just over a week ago.
The deportee says that officials in Somaliland, a relatively peaceful political entity which has been set up in the north of Somalia, will not allow him to stay in the area, because he was born in Mogadishu, in Central Somalia.
Somaliland considers itself an independent state, separate from the rest of Somalia. No country has recognised its independence, however.
Jorma Vuorio does not believe the man’s claim that he would be in danger of being deported again. “There are tens of thousands of Somali internal refugees in Somaliland. Besides, he was let into the country at the airport”, Vuorio explains.
The deportation of the man was decided by the Immigration Service, and his appeals were rejected by both the Helsinki Administrative Court and the Supreme Administrative Court.
Vuorio also says that the Immigration Service would not take the deportee back to Finland even if Somaliland really were to expel him.
“The man is banned from entering the Schengen zone, and Finland is not obligated to take him back. Ethiopia is the closest country, where there are many Somalis. He could well go there. However, I don’t believe that Somaliland will expel him”, Vuorio says.
Vuorio is also sceptical about the authenticity of the letter received by the man's legal counsel in Finland claiming to be from the Somaliland administration, and saying that he cannot remain in the area.
"It is possible to get just about any forged document you care to name in Somaliland. Anyone can get hold of anything from there, even a passport if required", said Vuorio.
Previously in HS International Edition:
Somali deportee says Somaliland refuses to let him stay (17.2.2009)
International Organization for Migration denies having taken stand on deportation of Somalis (28.1.2009)
Remorseful Somali man awaiting deportation fears return to former home country (9.1.2009)
Somali deportee says Somaliland refuses to let him stay
Medeshi Feb 17, 2009
Somali deportee says Somaliland refuses to let him stay
Finland sends Somali citizen to home country for first time in years
A Somali citizen who was deported by Finnish officials to Somaliland in the north of the country, says that officials there are not allowing him to remain. Finnish police were not able to confirm or deny the claim on Monday.
The man, about 25 years of age, had been convicted of a number of crimes, and was sent to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, a week ago on Monday. The expulsion was kept out of the media.
The deportation was the first from Finland to Somalia since November 2004.
Police escorted the man from Finland to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from where he was flown to Hargeisa without a police escort.
Since then, the deportee has made several calls to his Finnish lawyer Pekka Kivi, and said that officials there will not let him stay. Helsingin Sanomat was also able to contact the deportee.
“I am not welcome here. I will be arrested if I stay in Hargeisa. I am outside the city waiting for official papers to indicate that I am not allowed to stay here”, he told Helsingin Sanomat on Monday.
“I have built a shelter for myself out of trees and leaves. I only drink water and I try to find food”, he said, describing his conditions.
There appeared to be some confirmation of the situation on Monday afternoon, when the deportee’s lawyer got an e-mail sent in the name of the Somaliland administration.
The e-mail pointed out that the deportee cannot stay in Somaliland, because he was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Somaliland does not consider itself part of the same state as the rest of Somalia.
Kivi considers the e-mail to be a genuine letter of the ministry. He passed it on to Finnish police and the Supreme Administrative Court, which confirmed the call for deportation before Christmas.
The deportee was advised by his lawyer to go to a Finnish diplomatic mission. The closest one is in the Ethiopian capital Addis Abeba.
Juha Holopainen of the foreigners’ unit of the Helsinki Police heard about the claims on Monday.
“We have not heard any information that there would have been problems in entering the country. I consider it unlikely.”
“He was allowed on board the plane as normal, and we have not heard that he would have been turned away from Hargeisa.”
Holopainen notes that it is difficult to confirm the matter, because Finland does not have a diplomatic mission in Somalia.
Previously in HS International Edition:
International Organization for Migration denies having taken stand on deportation of Somalis (28.1.2009) Remorseful Somali man awaiting deportation fears return to former home country (9.1.2009) -->
Somali deportee says Somaliland refuses to let him stay
Finland sends Somali citizen to home country for first time in years
A Somali citizen who was deported by Finnish officials to Somaliland in the north of the country, says that officials there are not allowing him to remain. Finnish police were not able to confirm or deny the claim on Monday.
The man, about 25 years of age, had been convicted of a number of crimes, and was sent to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, a week ago on Monday. The expulsion was kept out of the media.
The deportation was the first from Finland to Somalia since November 2004.
Police escorted the man from Finland to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from where he was flown to Hargeisa without a police escort.
Since then, the deportee has made several calls to his Finnish lawyer Pekka Kivi, and said that officials there will not let him stay. Helsingin Sanomat was also able to contact the deportee.
“I am not welcome here. I will be arrested if I stay in Hargeisa. I am outside the city waiting for official papers to indicate that I am not allowed to stay here”, he told Helsingin Sanomat on Monday.
“I have built a shelter for myself out of trees and leaves. I only drink water and I try to find food”, he said, describing his conditions.
There appeared to be some confirmation of the situation on Monday afternoon, when the deportee’s lawyer got an e-mail sent in the name of the Somaliland administration.
The e-mail pointed out that the deportee cannot stay in Somaliland, because he was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Somaliland does not consider itself part of the same state as the rest of Somalia.
Kivi considers the e-mail to be a genuine letter of the ministry. He passed it on to Finnish police and the Supreme Administrative Court, which confirmed the call for deportation before Christmas.
The deportee was advised by his lawyer to go to a Finnish diplomatic mission. The closest one is in the Ethiopian capital Addis Abeba.
Juha Holopainen of the foreigners’ unit of the Helsinki Police heard about the claims on Monday.
“We have not heard any information that there would have been problems in entering the country. I consider it unlikely.”
“He was allowed on board the plane as normal, and we have not heard that he would have been turned away from Hargeisa.”
Holopainen notes that it is difficult to confirm the matter, because Finland does not have a diplomatic mission in Somalia.
Previously in HS International Edition:
International Organization for Migration denies having taken stand on deportation of Somalis (28.1.2009) Remorseful Somali man awaiting deportation fears return to former home country (9.1.2009) -->
Somalia, a graveyard of American foreign-policy blunders
Medeshi Feb 17, 2009
Somalia, a graveyard of American foreign-policy blunders
The Most Dangerous Place in the World
By Jeffrey Gettleman
When you land at Mogadishu’s international airport, the first form you fill out asks for name, address, and caliber of weapon. Believe it or not, this disaster of a city, the capital of Somalia, still gets a few commercial flights. Some haven’t fared so well. The wreckage of a Russian cargo plane shot down in 2007 still lies crumpled at the end of the runway.
Beyond the airport is one of the world’s most stunning monuments to conflict: block after block, mile after mile, of scorched, gutted-out buildings. Mogadishu’s Italianate architecture, once a gem along the Indian Ocean, has been reduced to a pile of machine-gun-chewed bricks. Somalia has been ripped apart by violence since the central government imploded in 1991. Eighteen years and 14 failed attempts at a government later, the killing goes on and on and on—suicide bombs, white phosphorus bombs, beheadings, medieval-style stonings, teenage troops high on the local drug called khat blasting away at each other and anything in between. Even U.S. cruise missiles occasionally slam down from the sky. It’s the same violent free-for-all on the seas. Somalia’s pirates are threatening to choke off one of the most strategic waterways in the world, the Gulf of Aden, which 20,000 ships pass through every year. These heavily armed buccaneers hijacked more than 40 vessels in 2008, netting as much as $100 million in ransom. It’s the greatest piracy epidemic of modern times.
In more than a dozen trips to Somalia over the past two and a half years, I’ve come to rewrite my own definition of chaos. I’ve felt the incandescent fury of the Iraqi insurgency raging in Fallujah. I’ve spent freezing-cold, eerily quiet nights in an Afghan cave. But nowhere was I more afraid than in today’s Somalia, where you can get kidnapped or shot in the head faster than you can wipe the sweat off your brow. From the thick, ambush-perfect swamps around Kismayo in the south to the lethal labyrinth of Mogadishu to the pirate den of Boosaaso on the Gulf of Aden, Somalia is quite simply the most dangerous place in the world.
The whole country has become a breeding ground for warlords, pirates, kidnappers, bomb makers, fanatical Islamist insurgents, freelance gunmen, and idle, angry youth with no education and way too many bullets. There is no Green Zone here, by the way—no fortified place of last resort to run to if, God forbid, you get hurt or in trouble. In Somalia, you’re on your own. The local hospitals barely have enough gauze to treat all the wounds.
The mayhem is now spilling across Somalia’s borders, stirring up tensions and violence in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, not to mention Somalia’s pirate-infested seas. The export of trouble may just be beginning. Islamist insurgents with al Qaeda connections are sweeping across the country, turning Somalia into an Afghanistan-like magnet for militant Islam and drawing in hard-core fighters from around the world. These men will eventually go home (if they survive) and spread the killer ethos. Somalia’s transitional government, a U.N.-santioned creation that was deathly ill from the moment it was born four years ago, is about to flatline, perhaps spawning yet another doomed international rescue mission. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the old war horse of a president backed by the United States, finally resigned in December after a long, bitter dispute with the prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. Ostensibly, their conflict was about a peace deal with the Islamists and a few cabinet posts. In truth, it may be purely academic. By early this year, the government’s zone of control was down to a couple of city blocks. The country is nearly as big as Texas.
Just when things seem as though they can’t get any worse in Somalia, they do. Beyond the political crisis, all the elements for a full-blown famine—war, displacement, drought, skyrocketing food prices, and an exodus of aid workers—are lining up again, just as they did in the early 1990s when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death. Last May, I stood in the doorway of a hut in the bone-dry central part of the country watching a sick little boy curl up next to his dying mother. Her clothes were damp. Her breaths were shallow. She hadn’t eaten for days. “She will most likely die,’’ an elder told me and walked away.
It’s crunch time for Somalia, but the world is like me, standing in the doorway, looking in at two decades of unbridled anarchy, unsure what to do. Past interventions have been so cursed that no one wants to get burned again. The United States has been among the worst of the meddlers: U.S. forces fought predacious warlords at the wrong time, backed some of the same predacious warlords at the wrong time, and consistently failed to appreciate the twin pulls of clan and religion. As a result, Somalia has become a graveyard of foreign-policy blunders that have radicalized the population, deepened insecurity, and pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
Somalia is a political paradox—unified on the surface, poisonously divided beneath. It is one of the world’s most homogeneous nation-states, with nearly all of its estimated 9 to 10 million people sharing the same language (Somali), the same religion (Sunni Islam), the same culture, and the same ethnicity. But in Somalia, it’s all about clan. Somalis divide themselves into a dizzying number of clans, subclans, sub-subclans, and so on, with shifting allegiances and knotty backstories that have bedeviled outsiders for years.
At the end of the 19th century, the Italians and the British divvied up most of Somalia, but their efforts to impose Western laws never really worked. Disputes tended to be resolved by clan elders. Deterrence was key: “Kill me and you will suffer the wrath of my entire clan.” The places where the local ways were disturbed the least, such as British-ruled Somaliland, seem to have done better in the long run than those where the Italian colonial administration supplanted the role of clan elders, as in Mogadishu.
Somalia won independence in 1960, but it quickly became a Cold War pawn, prized for its strategic location in the Horn of Africa, where Africa and Asia nearly touch. First it was the Soviets who pumped in weapons, then the United States. A poor, mostly illiterate, mainly nomadic country became a towering ammunition dump primed to explode. The central government was hardly able to hold the place together. Even in the 1980s, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre, the capricious dictator who ruled from 1969 to 1991, was derisively referred to as “the mayor of Mogadishu” because so much of the country had already spun out of his control.
When clan warlords finally ousted him in 1991, it wasn’t much of a surprise what happened next. The warlords unleashed all that military-grade weaponry on each other, and every port, airstrip, fishing pier, telephone pole—anything that could turn a profit—was fought over. People were killed for a few pennies. Women were raped with impunity. The chaos gave rise to a new class of parasitic war profiteers—gunrunners, drug smugglers, importers of expired (and often sickening) baby formula—people with a vested interest in the chaos continuing. Somalia became the modern world’s closest approximation of Hobbes’s state of nature, where life was indeed nasty, brutish, and short. To call it even a failed state was generous. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a failed state. So is Zimbabwe. But those places at least have national armies and national bureaucracies, however corrupt. Since 1991, Somalia has not been a state so much as a lawless, ungoverned space on the map between its neighbors and the sea.Click Here!
In 1992, U.S. President George H.W. Bush tried to help, sending in thousands of Marines to protect shipments of food. It was the beginning of the post-Cold War “new world order,” when many believed that the United States, without a rival superpower, could steer world events in a new and morally righteous way. Somalia proved to be a very bad start. President Bush and his advisors misread the clan landscape and didn’t understand how fiercely loyal Somalis could be to their clan leaders. Somali society often divides and subdivides when faced with internal disputes, but it quickly bands together when confronted by an external enemy. The United States learned this the hard way when its forces tried to apprehend the warlord of the day, Mohammed Farah Aidid. The result was the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in October 1993. Thousands of Somali militiamen poured into the streets, carrying rocket-propelled grenades and wearing flip-flops. They shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters, killing 18 U.S. soldiers and dragging the corpses triumphantly through the streets. This would be Strike One for the United States in Somalia.
Humiliated, the Americans pulled out and Somalia was left to its own dystopian devices. For the next decade, the Western world mostly stayed away. But Arab organizations, many from Saudi Arabia and followers of the strict Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, quietly stepped in. They built mosques, Koranic schools, and social service organizations, encouraging an Islamic revival. By the early 2000s, Mogadishu’s clan elders set up a loose network of neighborhood-based courts to deliver a modicum of order in a city desperate for it. They rounded up thieves and killers, put them in iron cages, and held trials. Islamic law, or sharia, was the one set of principles that different clans could agree on; the Somali elders called their network the Islamic Courts Union.
Mogadishu’s business community spotted an opportunity. In Mogadishu, there are warlords and moneylords. While the warlords were ripping the country apart, the moneylords, Somalia’s big-business owners, were holding the place together, delivering many of the same services—for a tidy profit, of course—that a government usually provides, such as healthcare, schools, power plants, and even privatized mail. The moneylords went as far as helping to regulate Somalia’s monetary policy, and the Somali shilling was more stable in the 1990s—without a functioning central bank—than in the 1980s when there was a government. But with their profits came very high risks, such as chronic insecurity and extortion. The Islamists were a solution. They provided security without taxes, administration without a government. The moneylords began buying them guns.
By 2005, the CIA saw what was happening, and again misread the cues. This ended up being Strike Two.
In a post-September 11 world, Somalia had become a major terrorism worry. The fear was that Somalia could blossom into a jihad factory like Afghanistan, where al Qaeda in the 1990s plotted its global war on the West. It didn’t seem to matter that at this point there was scant evidence to justify this fear. Some Western military analysts told policymakers that Somalia was too chaotic for even al Qaeda, because it was impossible for anyone—including terrorists—to know whom to trust. Nonetheless, the administration of George W. Bush devised a strategy to stamp out the Islamists on the cheap. CIA agents deputized the warlords, the same thugs who had been preying upon Somalia’s population for years, to fight the Islamists. According to one Somali warlord I spoke with in March 2008, an American agent named James and another one named David showed up in Mogadishu with briefcases stuffed with cash. Use this to buy guns, the agents said. Drop us an e-mail if you have any questions. The warlord showed me the address: no_email_today@yahoo.com.
The plan backfired. Somalis like to talk; the country, ironically, has some of the best and cheapest cellular phone service in Africa. Word quickly spread that the same warlords no one liked anymore were now doing the Americans’ bidding, which just made the Islamists even more popular. By June 2006, the Islamists had run the last warlords out of Mogadishu. Then something unbelievable happened: The Islamists seemed to tame the place.
I saw it with my own eyes. I flew into Mogadishu in September 2006 and saw work crews picking up trash and kids swimming at the beach. For the first time in years, no gunshots rang out at night. Under the banner of Islam, the Islamists had united rival clans and disarmed much of the populace, with clan support of course. They even cracked down on piracy by using their clan connections to dissuade coastal towns from supporting the pirates. When that didn’t work, the Islamists stormed hijacked ships. According to the International Maritime Bureau in London, there were 10 pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast in 2006, which is tied for the lowest number of attacks this decade.
The Islamists’ brief reign of peace was to be the only six months of calm Somalia has tasted since 1991. But it was one thing to rally together to overthrow the warlords and another to decide what to do next. A rift quickly opened between the moderate Islamists and the extremists, who were bent on waging jihad. One of the most radical factions has been the Shabab, a multiclan military wing with a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. The Shabab drove around Mogadishu in big, black pickup trucks and beat women whose ankles were showing. Even the other Islamist gunmen were scared of them. By December 2006, some of the population began to chafe against the Shabab for taking away their beloved khat, the mildly stimulating leaf that Somalis chew like bubble gum. Shabab leaders were widely rumored to be working with foreign jihadists, including wanted al Qaeda terrorists, and the U.S. State Department later designated the Shabab a terrorist organization. American officials have said that the Shabab are sheltering men who masterminded the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Somalia may indeed have sheltered a few unsavory characters, but the country was far from the terrorist hotbed many worry it has now become. In 2006, there was a narrow window of opportunity to peel off the moderate Islamists from the likes of the Shabab, and some U.S. officials, such as Democratic Rep. Donald M. Payne, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, were trying to do exactly that. Payne and others met with the moderate Islamists and encouraged them to negotiate a power-sharing deal with the transitional government.
But the Bush administration again reached for the gunpowder. The United States would not do much of the fighting itself, since sending large numbers of ground troops into Somalia with Iraq and Afghanistan raging would have been deemed insane. Instead, the United States anointed a proxy: the Ethiopian Army. This move would be Strike Three.
***
Ethiopia is one of the United States’ best friends in Africa, its government having carefully cultivated an image as a Christian bulwark in a region seething with Islamist extremism. The Ethiopian leadership savvily told the Bush administration what it wanted to hear: The Islamists were terrorists and, unchecked, they would threaten the entire region and maybe even attack American safari-goers in Kenya next door.
Of course, the Ethiopians had their own agenda. Ethiopia is a country with a mostly Christian leadership but a population that is nearly half Muslim. It seems only a matter of time before there is an Islamic awakening in Ethiopia. On top of that, the Ethiopian government is fighting several rebel groups, including a powerful one that is ethnically Somali. The government feared that an Islamist Somalia could become a rebel beachhead next door. The Ethiopians were also scared that Somalia’s Islamists would team up with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s archenemy, which is exactly what ended up happening.
Not everyone in Washington swallowed the Ethiopian line. The country has a horrendous human rights record, and the Ethiopian military (which receives aid for human rights training from the United States) is widely accused of brutalizing its own people. But in December 2006, the Bush administration shared prized intelligence with the Ethiopians and gave them the green light to invade Somalia. Thousands of Ethiopian troops rolled across the border (many had secretly been in the country for months), and they routed the Islamist troops within a week. There were even some U.S. Special Forces with the Ethiopian units. The United States also launched several airstrikes in an attempt to take out Islamist leaders, and it continued with intermittent cruise missiles targeting suspected terrorists. Most have failed, killing civilians and adding to the boiling anti-American sentiment.
***
The Islamists went underground, and the transitional government arrived in Mogadishu. There was some cheering, a lot of jeering, and the insurgency revved up within days. The transitional government was widely reviled as a coterie of ex-warlords, which it mostly was. It was the 14th attempt since 1991 to stand up a central government. None of the previous attempts had worked. True, some detractors have simply been war profiteers hell-bent on derailing any government. But a lot of blame falls on what this transitional government has done—or not done. From the start, leaders seemed much more interested in who got what post than living up to the corresponding job descriptions. The government quickly lost the support of key clans in Mogadishu by its harsh (and unsuccessful) tactics in trying to wipe out the insurgents, and by its reliance on Ethiopian troops. Ethiopia and Somalia have fought several wars against each other over the contested Ogaden region that Ethiopia now claims. That region is mostly ethnically Somali, so teaming up with Ethiopia was seen as tantamount to treason.
The Islamists tapped into this sentiment, positioning themselves as the true Somali nationalists, and gaining widespread support again. The results were intense street battles between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops in which thousands of civilians have been killed. Ethiopian forces have indiscriminately shelled entire neighborhoods (which precipitated a European Union investigation into war crimes), and have even used white phosphorous bombs that literally melt people, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands of people have emptied out of Mogadishu and settled in camps that have become breeding grounds for disease and resentment. Death comes more frequently and randomly than ever before. I met one man in Mogadishu who was chatting with his wife on her cellphone when she was cut in half by a stray mortar shell. Another man I spoke to went out for a walk, got shot in the leg during a crossfire, and had to spend seven days eating grass before the fighting ended and he could crawl away.Click Here!
It’s incredibly dangerous for us journalists, too. Few foreign journalists travel to Somalia anymore. Kidnapping is the threat du jour. Friends of mine who work for the United Nations in Kenya told me I had about a 100 percent chance of being stuffed into the back of a Toyota or shot (or both) if I didn’t hire a private militia. Nowadays, as soon as I land, I take 10 gunmen under my employ.
By late January, the only territory the transitional government controlled was a shrinking federal enclave in Mogadishu guarded by a small contingent of African Union peacekeepers. As soon as the Ethiopians pulled out of the capital, vicious fighting broke out between the various Islamist factions scrambling to fill the power gap. It took only days for the Islamists to recapture the third-largest town, Baidoa, from the government and install sharia law. The Shabab are not wildly popular, but they are formidable; for the time being they have a motivated, disciplined militia with hundreds of hard-core fighters and probably thousands of gunmen allied with them. The violence has shown no signs of halting, even with the election of a new, moderate Islamist president—one who had, ironically, been a leader of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006.
If the Shabab do seize control of the country, they might not stop there. They could send their battle-hardened fighters in battered four-wheel-drive pickup trucks into Ethiopia, Kenya, and maybe even Djibouti to try to snatch back the Somali-speaking parts of those countries. This scenario has long been part of an ethereal pan-Somali dream. Pursuit of that goal would internationalize the conflict and surely drag in neighboring countries and their allies.
The Shabab could also wage an asymmetric war, unleashing terrorists on Somalia’s secular neighbors and their secular backers—most prominently, the United States. This would upend an already combustible dynamic in the Horn of Africa, catalyzing other conflicts. For instance, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a nasty border war in the late 1990s, which killed as many as 100,000 people, and both countries are still heavily militarized along the border. If the Shabab, which boasts Eritrean support, took over Somalia, we might indeed see round two of Ethiopia versus Eritrea. The worst-case scenario could mean millions of people displaced across the entire region, crippled food production, and violence-induced breaches in the aid pipeline. In short, a famine in one of the most perennially needy parts of the world—again.
The hardest challenge of all might be simply preventing the worst-case scenario. Among the best suggestions I’ve heard is to play to Somalia’s strengths as a fluid, decentralized society with local mechanisms to resolve conflicts. The foundation of order would be clan-based governments in villages, towns, and neighborhoods. These tiny fiefdoms could stack together to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that coordinated, say, currency issues or antipiracy efforts, but did not sideline local leaders.
Western powers should do whatever they can to bring moderate Islamists into the transitional government while the transitional government still exists. Whether people like it or not, many Somalis see Islamic law as the answer. Maybe they’re not fond of the harsh form imposed by the Shabab, who have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who had been raped (an Islamic court found her guilty of adultery). Still, there is an appetite for a certain degree of Islamic governance. That desire should not be confused with support for terrorism.
A more radical idea is to have the United Nations take over the government and administer Somalia with an East Timor-style mandate. Because Somalia has already been an independent country, this option might be too much for Somalis to stomach. To make it work, the United Nations would need to delegate authority to clan leaders who have measurable clout on the ground. Either way, the diplomats should be working with the moneylords more and the warlords less.
But the problem with Somalia is that after 18 years of chaos, with so many people killed, with so many gun-toting men rising up and then getting cut down, it is exceedingly difficult to identify who the country’s real leaders are, if they exist at all. It’s not just Mogadishu’s wasteland of blown-up buildings that must be reconstructed; it’s the entire national psyche. The whole country is suffering from an acute case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Somalis will have to move beyond the narrow interests of clans, where they have withdrawn for protection, and embrace the idea of a Somali nation.
If that happens, the work will just be beginning. Nearly an entire generation of Somalis has absolutely no idea what a government is or how it functions. I’ve seen this glassy-eyed generation all across the country, lounging on bullet-pocked street corners and spaced out in the back of pickup trucks, Kalashnikovs in their hands and nowhere to go. To them, law and order are thoroughly abstract concepts. To them, the only law in the land is the business end of a machine gun.
(Jeffrey Gettleman is East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times)
Somalia, a graveyard of American foreign-policy blunders
The Most Dangerous Place in the World
By Jeffrey Gettleman
When you land at Mogadishu’s international airport, the first form you fill out asks for name, address, and caliber of weapon. Believe it or not, this disaster of a city, the capital of Somalia, still gets a few commercial flights. Some haven’t fared so well. The wreckage of a Russian cargo plane shot down in 2007 still lies crumpled at the end of the runway.
Beyond the airport is one of the world’s most stunning monuments to conflict: block after block, mile after mile, of scorched, gutted-out buildings. Mogadishu’s Italianate architecture, once a gem along the Indian Ocean, has been reduced to a pile of machine-gun-chewed bricks. Somalia has been ripped apart by violence since the central government imploded in 1991. Eighteen years and 14 failed attempts at a government later, the killing goes on and on and on—suicide bombs, white phosphorus bombs, beheadings, medieval-style stonings, teenage troops high on the local drug called khat blasting away at each other and anything in between. Even U.S. cruise missiles occasionally slam down from the sky. It’s the same violent free-for-all on the seas. Somalia’s pirates are threatening to choke off one of the most strategic waterways in the world, the Gulf of Aden, which 20,000 ships pass through every year. These heavily armed buccaneers hijacked more than 40 vessels in 2008, netting as much as $100 million in ransom. It’s the greatest piracy epidemic of modern times.
In more than a dozen trips to Somalia over the past two and a half years, I’ve come to rewrite my own definition of chaos. I’ve felt the incandescent fury of the Iraqi insurgency raging in Fallujah. I’ve spent freezing-cold, eerily quiet nights in an Afghan cave. But nowhere was I more afraid than in today’s Somalia, where you can get kidnapped or shot in the head faster than you can wipe the sweat off your brow. From the thick, ambush-perfect swamps around Kismayo in the south to the lethal labyrinth of Mogadishu to the pirate den of Boosaaso on the Gulf of Aden, Somalia is quite simply the most dangerous place in the world.
The whole country has become a breeding ground for warlords, pirates, kidnappers, bomb makers, fanatical Islamist insurgents, freelance gunmen, and idle, angry youth with no education and way too many bullets. There is no Green Zone here, by the way—no fortified place of last resort to run to if, God forbid, you get hurt or in trouble. In Somalia, you’re on your own. The local hospitals barely have enough gauze to treat all the wounds.
The mayhem is now spilling across Somalia’s borders, stirring up tensions and violence in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, not to mention Somalia’s pirate-infested seas. The export of trouble may just be beginning. Islamist insurgents with al Qaeda connections are sweeping across the country, turning Somalia into an Afghanistan-like magnet for militant Islam and drawing in hard-core fighters from around the world. These men will eventually go home (if they survive) and spread the killer ethos. Somalia’s transitional government, a U.N.-santioned creation that was deathly ill from the moment it was born four years ago, is about to flatline, perhaps spawning yet another doomed international rescue mission. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the old war horse of a president backed by the United States, finally resigned in December after a long, bitter dispute with the prime minister, Nur Hassan Hussein. Ostensibly, their conflict was about a peace deal with the Islamists and a few cabinet posts. In truth, it may be purely academic. By early this year, the government’s zone of control was down to a couple of city blocks. The country is nearly as big as Texas.
Just when things seem as though they can’t get any worse in Somalia, they do. Beyond the political crisis, all the elements for a full-blown famine—war, displacement, drought, skyrocketing food prices, and an exodus of aid workers—are lining up again, just as they did in the early 1990s when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death. Last May, I stood in the doorway of a hut in the bone-dry central part of the country watching a sick little boy curl up next to his dying mother. Her clothes were damp. Her breaths were shallow. She hadn’t eaten for days. “She will most likely die,’’ an elder told me and walked away.
It’s crunch time for Somalia, but the world is like me, standing in the doorway, looking in at two decades of unbridled anarchy, unsure what to do. Past interventions have been so cursed that no one wants to get burned again. The United States has been among the worst of the meddlers: U.S. forces fought predacious warlords at the wrong time, backed some of the same predacious warlords at the wrong time, and consistently failed to appreciate the twin pulls of clan and religion. As a result, Somalia has become a graveyard of foreign-policy blunders that have radicalized the population, deepened insecurity, and pushed millions to the brink of starvation.
Somalia is a political paradox—unified on the surface, poisonously divided beneath. It is one of the world’s most homogeneous nation-states, with nearly all of its estimated 9 to 10 million people sharing the same language (Somali), the same religion (Sunni Islam), the same culture, and the same ethnicity. But in Somalia, it’s all about clan. Somalis divide themselves into a dizzying number of clans, subclans, sub-subclans, and so on, with shifting allegiances and knotty backstories that have bedeviled outsiders for years.
At the end of the 19th century, the Italians and the British divvied up most of Somalia, but their efforts to impose Western laws never really worked. Disputes tended to be resolved by clan elders. Deterrence was key: “Kill me and you will suffer the wrath of my entire clan.” The places where the local ways were disturbed the least, such as British-ruled Somaliland, seem to have done better in the long run than those where the Italian colonial administration supplanted the role of clan elders, as in Mogadishu.
Somalia won independence in 1960, but it quickly became a Cold War pawn, prized for its strategic location in the Horn of Africa, where Africa and Asia nearly touch. First it was the Soviets who pumped in weapons, then the United States. A poor, mostly illiterate, mainly nomadic country became a towering ammunition dump primed to explode. The central government was hardly able to hold the place together. Even in the 1980s, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre, the capricious dictator who ruled from 1969 to 1991, was derisively referred to as “the mayor of Mogadishu” because so much of the country had already spun out of his control.
When clan warlords finally ousted him in 1991, it wasn’t much of a surprise what happened next. The warlords unleashed all that military-grade weaponry on each other, and every port, airstrip, fishing pier, telephone pole—anything that could turn a profit—was fought over. People were killed for a few pennies. Women were raped with impunity. The chaos gave rise to a new class of parasitic war profiteers—gunrunners, drug smugglers, importers of expired (and often sickening) baby formula—people with a vested interest in the chaos continuing. Somalia became the modern world’s closest approximation of Hobbes’s state of nature, where life was indeed nasty, brutish, and short. To call it even a failed state was generous. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a failed state. So is Zimbabwe. But those places at least have national armies and national bureaucracies, however corrupt. Since 1991, Somalia has not been a state so much as a lawless, ungoverned space on the map between its neighbors and the sea.Click Here!
In 1992, U.S. President George H.W. Bush tried to help, sending in thousands of Marines to protect shipments of food. It was the beginning of the post-Cold War “new world order,” when many believed that the United States, without a rival superpower, could steer world events in a new and morally righteous way. Somalia proved to be a very bad start. President Bush and his advisors misread the clan landscape and didn’t understand how fiercely loyal Somalis could be to their clan leaders. Somali society often divides and subdivides when faced with internal disputes, but it quickly bands together when confronted by an external enemy. The United States learned this the hard way when its forces tried to apprehend the warlord of the day, Mohammed Farah Aidid. The result was the infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode in October 1993. Thousands of Somali militiamen poured into the streets, carrying rocket-propelled grenades and wearing flip-flops. They shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters, killing 18 U.S. soldiers and dragging the corpses triumphantly through the streets. This would be Strike One for the United States in Somalia.
Humiliated, the Americans pulled out and Somalia was left to its own dystopian devices. For the next decade, the Western world mostly stayed away. But Arab organizations, many from Saudi Arabia and followers of the strict Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, quietly stepped in. They built mosques, Koranic schools, and social service organizations, encouraging an Islamic revival. By the early 2000s, Mogadishu’s clan elders set up a loose network of neighborhood-based courts to deliver a modicum of order in a city desperate for it. They rounded up thieves and killers, put them in iron cages, and held trials. Islamic law, or sharia, was the one set of principles that different clans could agree on; the Somali elders called their network the Islamic Courts Union.
Mogadishu’s business community spotted an opportunity. In Mogadishu, there are warlords and moneylords. While the warlords were ripping the country apart, the moneylords, Somalia’s big-business owners, were holding the place together, delivering many of the same services—for a tidy profit, of course—that a government usually provides, such as healthcare, schools, power plants, and even privatized mail. The moneylords went as far as helping to regulate Somalia’s monetary policy, and the Somali shilling was more stable in the 1990s—without a functioning central bank—than in the 1980s when there was a government. But with their profits came very high risks, such as chronic insecurity and extortion. The Islamists were a solution. They provided security without taxes, administration without a government. The moneylords began buying them guns.
By 2005, the CIA saw what was happening, and again misread the cues. This ended up being Strike Two.
In a post-September 11 world, Somalia had become a major terrorism worry. The fear was that Somalia could blossom into a jihad factory like Afghanistan, where al Qaeda in the 1990s plotted its global war on the West. It didn’t seem to matter that at this point there was scant evidence to justify this fear. Some Western military analysts told policymakers that Somalia was too chaotic for even al Qaeda, because it was impossible for anyone—including terrorists—to know whom to trust. Nonetheless, the administration of George W. Bush devised a strategy to stamp out the Islamists on the cheap. CIA agents deputized the warlords, the same thugs who had been preying upon Somalia’s population for years, to fight the Islamists. According to one Somali warlord I spoke with in March 2008, an American agent named James and another one named David showed up in Mogadishu with briefcases stuffed with cash. Use this to buy guns, the agents said. Drop us an e-mail if you have any questions. The warlord showed me the address: no_email_today@yahoo.com.
The plan backfired. Somalis like to talk; the country, ironically, has some of the best and cheapest cellular phone service in Africa. Word quickly spread that the same warlords no one liked anymore were now doing the Americans’ bidding, which just made the Islamists even more popular. By June 2006, the Islamists had run the last warlords out of Mogadishu. Then something unbelievable happened: The Islamists seemed to tame the place.
I saw it with my own eyes. I flew into Mogadishu in September 2006 and saw work crews picking up trash and kids swimming at the beach. For the first time in years, no gunshots rang out at night. Under the banner of Islam, the Islamists had united rival clans and disarmed much of the populace, with clan support of course. They even cracked down on piracy by using their clan connections to dissuade coastal towns from supporting the pirates. When that didn’t work, the Islamists stormed hijacked ships. According to the International Maritime Bureau in London, there were 10 pirate attacks off Somalia’s coast in 2006, which is tied for the lowest number of attacks this decade.
The Islamists’ brief reign of peace was to be the only six months of calm Somalia has tasted since 1991. But it was one thing to rally together to overthrow the warlords and another to decide what to do next. A rift quickly opened between the moderate Islamists and the extremists, who were bent on waging jihad. One of the most radical factions has been the Shabab, a multiclan military wing with a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. The Shabab drove around Mogadishu in big, black pickup trucks and beat women whose ankles were showing. Even the other Islamist gunmen were scared of them. By December 2006, some of the population began to chafe against the Shabab for taking away their beloved khat, the mildly stimulating leaf that Somalis chew like bubble gum. Shabab leaders were widely rumored to be working with foreign jihadists, including wanted al Qaeda terrorists, and the U.S. State Department later designated the Shabab a terrorist organization. American officials have said that the Shabab are sheltering men who masterminded the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Somalia may indeed have sheltered a few unsavory characters, but the country was far from the terrorist hotbed many worry it has now become. In 2006, there was a narrow window of opportunity to peel off the moderate Islamists from the likes of the Shabab, and some U.S. officials, such as Democratic Rep. Donald M. Payne, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, were trying to do exactly that. Payne and others met with the moderate Islamists and encouraged them to negotiate a power-sharing deal with the transitional government.
But the Bush administration again reached for the gunpowder. The United States would not do much of the fighting itself, since sending large numbers of ground troops into Somalia with Iraq and Afghanistan raging would have been deemed insane. Instead, the United States anointed a proxy: the Ethiopian Army. This move would be Strike Three.
***
Ethiopia is one of the United States’ best friends in Africa, its government having carefully cultivated an image as a Christian bulwark in a region seething with Islamist extremism. The Ethiopian leadership savvily told the Bush administration what it wanted to hear: The Islamists were terrorists and, unchecked, they would threaten the entire region and maybe even attack American safari-goers in Kenya next door.
Of course, the Ethiopians had their own agenda. Ethiopia is a country with a mostly Christian leadership but a population that is nearly half Muslim. It seems only a matter of time before there is an Islamic awakening in Ethiopia. On top of that, the Ethiopian government is fighting several rebel groups, including a powerful one that is ethnically Somali. The government feared that an Islamist Somalia could become a rebel beachhead next door. The Ethiopians were also scared that Somalia’s Islamists would team up with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s archenemy, which is exactly what ended up happening.
Not everyone in Washington swallowed the Ethiopian line. The country has a horrendous human rights record, and the Ethiopian military (which receives aid for human rights training from the United States) is widely accused of brutalizing its own people. But in December 2006, the Bush administration shared prized intelligence with the Ethiopians and gave them the green light to invade Somalia. Thousands of Ethiopian troops rolled across the border (many had secretly been in the country for months), and they routed the Islamist troops within a week. There were even some U.S. Special Forces with the Ethiopian units. The United States also launched several airstrikes in an attempt to take out Islamist leaders, and it continued with intermittent cruise missiles targeting suspected terrorists. Most have failed, killing civilians and adding to the boiling anti-American sentiment.
***
The Islamists went underground, and the transitional government arrived in Mogadishu. There was some cheering, a lot of jeering, and the insurgency revved up within days. The transitional government was widely reviled as a coterie of ex-warlords, which it mostly was. It was the 14th attempt since 1991 to stand up a central government. None of the previous attempts had worked. True, some detractors have simply been war profiteers hell-bent on derailing any government. But a lot of blame falls on what this transitional government has done—or not done. From the start, leaders seemed much more interested in who got what post than living up to the corresponding job descriptions. The government quickly lost the support of key clans in Mogadishu by its harsh (and unsuccessful) tactics in trying to wipe out the insurgents, and by its reliance on Ethiopian troops. Ethiopia and Somalia have fought several wars against each other over the contested Ogaden region that Ethiopia now claims. That region is mostly ethnically Somali, so teaming up with Ethiopia was seen as tantamount to treason.
The Islamists tapped into this sentiment, positioning themselves as the true Somali nationalists, and gaining widespread support again. The results were intense street battles between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops in which thousands of civilians have been killed. Ethiopian forces have indiscriminately shelled entire neighborhoods (which precipitated a European Union investigation into war crimes), and have even used white phosphorous bombs that literally melt people, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands of people have emptied out of Mogadishu and settled in camps that have become breeding grounds for disease and resentment. Death comes more frequently and randomly than ever before. I met one man in Mogadishu who was chatting with his wife on her cellphone when she was cut in half by a stray mortar shell. Another man I spoke to went out for a walk, got shot in the leg during a crossfire, and had to spend seven days eating grass before the fighting ended and he could crawl away.Click Here!
It’s incredibly dangerous for us journalists, too. Few foreign journalists travel to Somalia anymore. Kidnapping is the threat du jour. Friends of mine who work for the United Nations in Kenya told me I had about a 100 percent chance of being stuffed into the back of a Toyota or shot (or both) if I didn’t hire a private militia. Nowadays, as soon as I land, I take 10 gunmen under my employ.
By late January, the only territory the transitional government controlled was a shrinking federal enclave in Mogadishu guarded by a small contingent of African Union peacekeepers. As soon as the Ethiopians pulled out of the capital, vicious fighting broke out between the various Islamist factions scrambling to fill the power gap. It took only days for the Islamists to recapture the third-largest town, Baidoa, from the government and install sharia law. The Shabab are not wildly popular, but they are formidable; for the time being they have a motivated, disciplined militia with hundreds of hard-core fighters and probably thousands of gunmen allied with them. The violence has shown no signs of halting, even with the election of a new, moderate Islamist president—one who had, ironically, been a leader of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006.
If the Shabab do seize control of the country, they might not stop there. They could send their battle-hardened fighters in battered four-wheel-drive pickup trucks into Ethiopia, Kenya, and maybe even Djibouti to try to snatch back the Somali-speaking parts of those countries. This scenario has long been part of an ethereal pan-Somali dream. Pursuit of that goal would internationalize the conflict and surely drag in neighboring countries and their allies.
The Shabab could also wage an asymmetric war, unleashing terrorists on Somalia’s secular neighbors and their secular backers—most prominently, the United States. This would upend an already combustible dynamic in the Horn of Africa, catalyzing other conflicts. For instance, Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a nasty border war in the late 1990s, which killed as many as 100,000 people, and both countries are still heavily militarized along the border. If the Shabab, which boasts Eritrean support, took over Somalia, we might indeed see round two of Ethiopia versus Eritrea. The worst-case scenario could mean millions of people displaced across the entire region, crippled food production, and violence-induced breaches in the aid pipeline. In short, a famine in one of the most perennially needy parts of the world—again.
The hardest challenge of all might be simply preventing the worst-case scenario. Among the best suggestions I’ve heard is to play to Somalia’s strengths as a fluid, decentralized society with local mechanisms to resolve conflicts. The foundation of order would be clan-based governments in villages, towns, and neighborhoods. These tiny fiefdoms could stack together to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that coordinated, say, currency issues or antipiracy efforts, but did not sideline local leaders.
Western powers should do whatever they can to bring moderate Islamists into the transitional government while the transitional government still exists. Whether people like it or not, many Somalis see Islamic law as the answer. Maybe they’re not fond of the harsh form imposed by the Shabab, who have, on at least one occasion, stoned to death a teenage girl who had been raped (an Islamic court found her guilty of adultery). Still, there is an appetite for a certain degree of Islamic governance. That desire should not be confused with support for terrorism.
A more radical idea is to have the United Nations take over the government and administer Somalia with an East Timor-style mandate. Because Somalia has already been an independent country, this option might be too much for Somalis to stomach. To make it work, the United Nations would need to delegate authority to clan leaders who have measurable clout on the ground. Either way, the diplomats should be working with the moneylords more and the warlords less.
But the problem with Somalia is that after 18 years of chaos, with so many people killed, with so many gun-toting men rising up and then getting cut down, it is exceedingly difficult to identify who the country’s real leaders are, if they exist at all. It’s not just Mogadishu’s wasteland of blown-up buildings that must be reconstructed; it’s the entire national psyche. The whole country is suffering from an acute case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Somalis will have to move beyond the narrow interests of clans, where they have withdrawn for protection, and embrace the idea of a Somali nation.
If that happens, the work will just be beginning. Nearly an entire generation of Somalis has absolutely no idea what a government is or how it functions. I’ve seen this glassy-eyed generation all across the country, lounging on bullet-pocked street corners and spaced out in the back of pickup trucks, Kalashnikovs in their hands and nowhere to go. To them, law and order are thoroughly abstract concepts. To them, the only law in the land is the business end of a machine gun.
(Jeffrey Gettleman is East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times)
Somaliland Vice-President Speech on Somali Unity: Misinterpreted One
Medeshi
Somaliland Vice-President Speech on Somali Unity: Misinterpreted One
Abdulazez Al-Motairi
February 16, 2009
The people of the Republic of Somaliland reasserted their independence at a Grand Conference of the Somaliland Communities on 16th May 1991. For the people of Somaliland, this marked the end of the union of the State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland Protectorate), which became an independent state on 26 June 1960, and Somalia (the former Italian colony and trusteeship territory), which became independent on 1 July 1960.
The Conference, besides endorsing the declaration of independence, resolved that an interim government headed by a President and led by the Somali National Movement (SNM), should be built and should hold office for a period of two years. Then Chairman of the SNM, Mr. Abdirahman Ahmed Ali (Tuur) was endorsed as President and Mr. Hassan Essa Jama as Vice-President by both the SNM Central Committee and the Conference. Putting behind them the long period of dictatorship and near-genocidal war of the 1980s, the Somaliland people than started concentrating on their efforts of building peace through grassroots initiatives which started even before the May 1991 Grand Conference, and then moved on to rebuilding state institutions.
Borama Conference on 1993 was finally settled and constitution was agreed by all Somaliland communities from Sool to Awdal regions. This conference established political consensus and power-sharing arrangements that provided the foundations for new state structures. There was also a strong desire, as later expressed strongly in the preamble to the new Somaliland Constitution, to break away from the past injustices and tyranny.
Somaliland independence is public decision and neither Vice President nor President or any other political party can hijack the public into another dark unity with Italian Somalia. On 18th May 1991, the people of Somaliland primarily decided to recreate the lost nation of Republic of Somaliland and during 2001 Referendum; they reassured to the world that Somaliland independence is public but not political.
The recent speech of Somaliland Vice President Ahmed Yasin was misread by the opposition parties in Somaliland for political gains, the Vice President meant that Somaliland government will not impose restrictions on business, trade and immigration between Somaliland and Somalia. But there is no way, that Yasin can consider uniting the failed Somalia again.
The recent statement of Somaliland Vice President Ahmed Yasin, say "Somali speaking people need each other" was misinterpreted by media and politicians, to achieve political gains in this hot political season where the presidential election is in less than two months – 29th March 2009.
Somalia websites circulated the speech along with Somaliland opposition parties, for political again in the upcoming elections against the ruling party UDUB. This is signs of healthy democracy, where free competition is the backbone of all time. UCID and Kulmiye opposition parties, criticized the statement and demanded the resignation of the Vice President Ahmed Yasin, and asked the President of Somaliland Dahir Riyale to disown the statement of his deputy.
Somaliland had history of stamping out politicians who call for unity with Italian Somalia. In 1993, former President of Somaliland and Former Chairman of Somali National Movement (SNM) Abdurrahman Ahmed Ali joined federal Somalia government led by General Mohamed Farah Aideed, and later he was deported from Somaliland. Former Ministers of Somaliland like Ismail Buubaa and Jamac Yare have no access to Somaliland cities. Every person who wants to join these illegitimate leaders in Mogadishu should pack up his belongings before the decision, else will rest in Prison like Tuur.
The current stability, economic development and excellent education system in the country is result of public demands, who worked hard with the government to achieve what Somaliland is today. Every tribe laid down their weapons for the sake of creating stable and strong Somaliland, and supported late former president Mohamed I. Egal. The Vice President Yasin corrected his statement, and accused the media for misinterpreting him.
By Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi
Somaliland Vice-President Speech on Somali Unity: Misinterpreted One
Abdulazez Al-Motairi
February 16, 2009
The people of the Republic of Somaliland reasserted their independence at a Grand Conference of the Somaliland Communities on 16th May 1991. For the people of Somaliland, this marked the end of the union of the State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland Protectorate), which became an independent state on 26 June 1960, and Somalia (the former Italian colony and trusteeship territory), which became independent on 1 July 1960.
The Conference, besides endorsing the declaration of independence, resolved that an interim government headed by a President and led by the Somali National Movement (SNM), should be built and should hold office for a period of two years. Then Chairman of the SNM, Mr. Abdirahman Ahmed Ali (Tuur) was endorsed as President and Mr. Hassan Essa Jama as Vice-President by both the SNM Central Committee and the Conference. Putting behind them the long period of dictatorship and near-genocidal war of the 1980s, the Somaliland people than started concentrating on their efforts of building peace through grassroots initiatives which started even before the May 1991 Grand Conference, and then moved on to rebuilding state institutions.
Borama Conference on 1993 was finally settled and constitution was agreed by all Somaliland communities from Sool to Awdal regions. This conference established political consensus and power-sharing arrangements that provided the foundations for new state structures. There was also a strong desire, as later expressed strongly in the preamble to the new Somaliland Constitution, to break away from the past injustices and tyranny.
Somaliland independence is public decision and neither Vice President nor President or any other political party can hijack the public into another dark unity with Italian Somalia. On 18th May 1991, the people of Somaliland primarily decided to recreate the lost nation of Republic of Somaliland and during 2001 Referendum; they reassured to the world that Somaliland independence is public but not political.
The recent speech of Somaliland Vice President Ahmed Yasin was misread by the opposition parties in Somaliland for political gains, the Vice President meant that Somaliland government will not impose restrictions on business, trade and immigration between Somaliland and Somalia. But there is no way, that Yasin can consider uniting the failed Somalia again.
The recent statement of Somaliland Vice President Ahmed Yasin, say "Somali speaking people need each other" was misinterpreted by media and politicians, to achieve political gains in this hot political season where the presidential election is in less than two months – 29th March 2009.
Somalia websites circulated the speech along with Somaliland opposition parties, for political again in the upcoming elections against the ruling party UDUB. This is signs of healthy democracy, where free competition is the backbone of all time. UCID and Kulmiye opposition parties, criticized the statement and demanded the resignation of the Vice President Ahmed Yasin, and asked the President of Somaliland Dahir Riyale to disown the statement of his deputy.
Somaliland had history of stamping out politicians who call for unity with Italian Somalia. In 1993, former President of Somaliland and Former Chairman of Somali National Movement (SNM) Abdurrahman Ahmed Ali joined federal Somalia government led by General Mohamed Farah Aideed, and later he was deported from Somaliland. Former Ministers of Somaliland like Ismail Buubaa and Jamac Yare have no access to Somaliland cities. Every person who wants to join these illegitimate leaders in Mogadishu should pack up his belongings before the decision, else will rest in Prison like Tuur.
The current stability, economic development and excellent education system in the country is result of public demands, who worked hard with the government to achieve what Somaliland is today. Every tribe laid down their weapons for the sake of creating stable and strong Somaliland, and supported late former president Mohamed I. Egal. The Vice President Yasin corrected his statement, and accused the media for misinterpreting him.
By Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi
US To Help Put Pirates On Trial
Medeshi Feb 16, 2009
Kenya Agrees to Hold Trials for Pirate Suspects
By SARAH CHILDRESS
ABOARD THE USS VELLA GULF -- More than a dozen suspected pirates captured in the Gulf of Aden this past week will become part of a test case in a new legal arrangement between the U.S. and Kenya that officials hope will result in trials, jail time and, eventually, fewer pirates.
Naval officials have long said they can't stop piracy with ships alone, and maritime lawyers have said jurisdiction issues make bringing pirates to justice difficult. But now, the U.S. and Britain have signed legal agreements with Kenya -- essentially extradition treaties for the high seas -- in which Kenya has agreed to try suspected pirates.
ABOARD THE USS VELLA GULF -- More than a dozen suspected pirates captured in the Gulf of Aden this past week will become part of a test case in a new legal arrangement between the U.S. and Kenya that officials hope will result in trials, jail time and, eventually, fewer pirates.
Naval officials have long said they can't stop piracy with ships alone, and maritime lawyers have said jurisdiction issues make bringing pirates to justice difficult. But now, the U.S. and Britain have signed legal agreements with Kenya -- essentially extradition treaties for the high seas -- in which Kenya has agreed to try suspected pirates.
The 16 men apprehended by U.S. ships will be the first case under the agreement signed Jan. 16.
Since the start of 2008, governments world-wide have deployed forces to counter a surging number of attacks in one of the world's most important sea lanes. Ransoms were paid this year for the release of two vessels: a Ukraine-owned cargo ship seized in September loaded with tanks and weapons bound for Sudan, and a Saudi Arabian oil tanker taken in November.
Just last month, Washington created a task force dedicated to fighting pirates. Britain, Denmark, Turkey and Singapore have since joined in, U.S. officials said. Meanwhile, Chinese and Russian navies have been providing escorts for their national shipping interests in the region. The European Union has its own naval task force.
All of this firepower has resulted in several thwarted attacks. On Wednesday, this U.S. guided-missile cruiser apprehended seven suspected hijackers who had slapped a ladder to a merchant ship. The next morning, an American destroyer rescued an Indian-flagged merchant ship and grabbed nine more suspected hijackers.
Catching these pirates is just half the battle. International law makes piracy a crime, but nations have struggled to figure out where to send suspects and how to gather evidence for cases that occurred in international waters. In September, a Danish ship captured 10 alleged pirates, but ended up landing them back onshore in Somalia.
"The big holdup was finding someone who would prosecute international piracy," said Coast Guard Lt. Greg Ponzi, an officer on the task force who usually pursues drug runners in U.S. waters.
Bogeta Ongeri, the spokesman for the Kenyan Ministry of State for Defense, said Kenya is eager to cooperate with other nations to combat piracy. But his country is wary of having its courts overwhelmed. "We have taken the lead, but that doesn't mean all pirates will be tried in the Kenyan courts," he said.
Kenya has agreed to take only a limited number of cases. Mr. Ongeri said he couldn't comment on the recent arrests, but that the government would decide which cases to try in part based on where the alleged crimes took place. Kenya has provided the Navy with a checklist of evidence required to prosecute, U.S. officials said.
Still, Kenya enjoys a good relationship with the U.S. and the U.K., and has a strong court system.
Initially, U.S. Navy officials were reluctant to enter the fray. Without fundamental improvements in largely ungoverned Somalia, pirate havens are likely to flourish, they said. Officers said the size of the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters make it impossible to respond to every attack.
Now, flush with some success, commanders seem optimistic. "The task force won't be the final answer but it's one of the key things," said Rear Adm. Terrence McKnight, the U.S. task force commander. "I think we've made significant headway."
Since the start of 2008, governments world-wide have deployed forces to counter a surging number of attacks in one of the world's most important sea lanes. Ransoms were paid this year for the release of two vessels: a Ukraine-owned cargo ship seized in September loaded with tanks and weapons bound for Sudan, and a Saudi Arabian oil tanker taken in November.
Just last month, Washington created a task force dedicated to fighting pirates. Britain, Denmark, Turkey and Singapore have since joined in, U.S. officials said. Meanwhile, Chinese and Russian navies have been providing escorts for their national shipping interests in the region. The European Union has its own naval task force.
All of this firepower has resulted in several thwarted attacks. On Wednesday, this U.S. guided-missile cruiser apprehended seven suspected hijackers who had slapped a ladder to a merchant ship. The next morning, an American destroyer rescued an Indian-flagged merchant ship and grabbed nine more suspected hijackers.
Catching these pirates is just half the battle. International law makes piracy a crime, but nations have struggled to figure out where to send suspects and how to gather evidence for cases that occurred in international waters. In September, a Danish ship captured 10 alleged pirates, but ended up landing them back onshore in Somalia.
"The big holdup was finding someone who would prosecute international piracy," said Coast Guard Lt. Greg Ponzi, an officer on the task force who usually pursues drug runners in U.S. waters.
Bogeta Ongeri, the spokesman for the Kenyan Ministry of State for Defense, said Kenya is eager to cooperate with other nations to combat piracy. But his country is wary of having its courts overwhelmed. "We have taken the lead, but that doesn't mean all pirates will be tried in the Kenyan courts," he said.
Kenya has agreed to take only a limited number of cases. Mr. Ongeri said he couldn't comment on the recent arrests, but that the government would decide which cases to try in part based on where the alleged crimes took place. Kenya has provided the Navy with a checklist of evidence required to prosecute, U.S. officials said.
Still, Kenya enjoys a good relationship with the U.S. and the U.K., and has a strong court system.
Initially, U.S. Navy officials were reluctant to enter the fray. Without fundamental improvements in largely ungoverned Somalia, pirate havens are likely to flourish, they said. Officers said the size of the Gulf of Aden and surrounding waters make it impossible to respond to every attack.
Now, flush with some success, commanders seem optimistic. "The task force won't be the final answer but it's one of the key things," said Rear Adm. Terrence McKnight, the U.S. task force commander. "I think we've made significant headway."
Ongoing Islamic Conference Discusses Future of Somalia
Medeshi
Ongoing Islamic Conference Discusses Future of Somalia
By Peter Clottey Washington, D.C
16 February 2009
Somalis living in the capital, Mogadishu are expressing optimism that ongoing talks among different Islamic groups in the country about the future of the country would yield positive results. The conference, which was instigated by new President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and is being attended by both moderate and hardliner Islamic groups operating in the country ends Monday. Discussions are largely focused, among other topics, on the new government and the implementation of Sharia law. The conference also condemned ongoing insurgent attacks on ordinary Somalis by Islamic hardliner al-Shabaab. But al-Shabaab, which has been excluded from the ongoing talks, denounced the meeting and promised more attacks. Described by Washington as a terrorist organization, al-Shabaab has vowed never to recognize the new Somali president and his chosen prime minister.
Djibril Ahmed is a political analyst. He told reporter Peter Clottey there are strong indications that Somalia might be tilting towards an Iranian-style government.
"The ongoing conference has a lot of scholars from overseas as well as scholars from this country. And they are trying to interpret the current situation we are in now, and the conference will end on Monday. As you know the new President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed appointed this group to come out and discuss the situation in the country. But we don't know if we are going to have a system like the one they have in Iran. As you know in Iran there are three powers: the government and then the Islamic powers," Ahmed noted.
He said the conference has condemned some of the activities of Islamic insurgents, including the dreaded al-Shabaab.
"This group that is meeting here denounced some of what al-Shabaab has been doing but at the same time they gave some suggestions to the government to change a lot of things like the United Nations or the African Union have to go. So, we don't know if we are going to have the same style of Iran that there would be a Council of Islamists. So that could be another power that we would have to face," he said.
Ahmed said the new president has a lot of challenges to contend with in the coming years.
"The question we are facing here is that Sheikh Sharif himself came to power with four point five (constitutional provision) but this group wants a change to the constitution. They don't believe in the constitution so the president has big, big challenges ahead of him," Ahmed pointed out.
He said the ongoing Islamic conference is proposing an imposition of the Sharia law across Somalia.
"That is the big question everybody has been asking because there seems to be too many things going on that I don't know how it is going to be possible. But this group wants the country to be ruled by the Sharia law. So that means the constitution has to go out of the window, but we are yet to know whether Somalis would accept it," he said.
Ahmed said it seems most Somalis are not against the full implementation of the Sharia law.
"Most of the Somalis or a 100 percent are Moslems and don't seem to have problems with the Sharia law. But the problem is the government itself is based on the four point five (provision in the constitution) and the constitution which brought the TFG (Transitional Federal Government). So, the question that arises here is those two would not go on the same page," Ahmed pointed out.
Ongoing Islamic Conference Discusses Future of Somalia
By Peter Clottey Washington, D.C
16 February 2009
Somalis living in the capital, Mogadishu are expressing optimism that ongoing talks among different Islamic groups in the country about the future of the country would yield positive results. The conference, which was instigated by new President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and is being attended by both moderate and hardliner Islamic groups operating in the country ends Monday. Discussions are largely focused, among other topics, on the new government and the implementation of Sharia law. The conference also condemned ongoing insurgent attacks on ordinary Somalis by Islamic hardliner al-Shabaab. But al-Shabaab, which has been excluded from the ongoing talks, denounced the meeting and promised more attacks. Described by Washington as a terrorist organization, al-Shabaab has vowed never to recognize the new Somali president and his chosen prime minister.
Djibril Ahmed is a political analyst. He told reporter Peter Clottey there are strong indications that Somalia might be tilting towards an Iranian-style government.
"The ongoing conference has a lot of scholars from overseas as well as scholars from this country. And they are trying to interpret the current situation we are in now, and the conference will end on Monday. As you know the new President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed appointed this group to come out and discuss the situation in the country. But we don't know if we are going to have a system like the one they have in Iran. As you know in Iran there are three powers: the government and then the Islamic powers," Ahmed noted.
He said the conference has condemned some of the activities of Islamic insurgents, including the dreaded al-Shabaab.
"This group that is meeting here denounced some of what al-Shabaab has been doing but at the same time they gave some suggestions to the government to change a lot of things like the United Nations or the African Union have to go. So, we don't know if we are going to have the same style of Iran that there would be a Council of Islamists. So that could be another power that we would have to face," he said.
Ahmed said the new president has a lot of challenges to contend with in the coming years.
"The question we are facing here is that Sheikh Sharif himself came to power with four point five (constitutional provision) but this group wants a change to the constitution. They don't believe in the constitution so the president has big, big challenges ahead of him," Ahmed pointed out.
He said the ongoing Islamic conference is proposing an imposition of the Sharia law across Somalia.
"That is the big question everybody has been asking because there seems to be too many things going on that I don't know how it is going to be possible. But this group wants the country to be ruled by the Sharia law. So that means the constitution has to go out of the window, but we are yet to know whether Somalis would accept it," he said.
Ahmed said it seems most Somalis are not against the full implementation of the Sharia law.
"Most of the Somalis or a 100 percent are Moslems and don't seem to have problems with the Sharia law. But the problem is the government itself is based on the four point five (provision in the constitution) and the constitution which brought the TFG (Transitional Federal Government). So, the question that arises here is those two would not go on the same page," Ahmed pointed out.
Revealed: British Muslim student killed 20 in suicide bomb attack in Somalia
Medeshi
16th February 2009
Wave of terrorism: Somali men are taught how to use assault rifles. MI5 fears dozens of extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in the war-torn country
A university student who became a suicide bomber in Somalia is believed to be the first of a new wave of British-based Islamic terrorism.
The 21-year-old reportedly blew himself up at a military checkpoint killing up to 20 soldiers in the southern Somali town of Baidoa.
Wave of terrorism: Somali men are taught how to use assault rifles. MI5 fears dozens of extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in the war-torn country
A university student who became a suicide bomber in Somalia is believed to be the first of a new wave of British-based Islamic terrorism.
The 21-year-old reportedly blew himself up at a military checkpoint killing up to 20 soldiers in the southern Somali town of Baidoa.
(Photo: Wave of terrorism: Somali men are taught how to use assault rifles. MI5 fears dozens of extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in the war-torn country)
Raised in Britain, the unnamed bomber dropped out of a business studies course at Oxford Brookes University to travel to his country of origin in October 2007.
A member of al-Shabaab, a youth militia fighting to impose Islamic Sharia law, the man, from Ealing, recorded a martyrdom video before his trip imploring fellow British Somalis to follow his example.
Raised in Britain, the unnamed bomber dropped out of a business studies course at Oxford Brookes University to travel to his country of origin in October 2007.
A member of al-Shabaab, a youth militia fighting to impose Islamic Sharia law, the man, from Ealing, recorded a martyrdom video before his trip imploring fellow British Somalis to follow his example.
In the video he says: 'Oh my people, know that I am doing this martyrdom operation for the sake of Allah.
'I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation.'
The bomber, whose family still lives in London, is the first reported case of a Somali based in Britain carrying out terrorist acts in the east African country.
However it is unclear whether British security services are aware of the case, which happened when the Somali prime minister was staying at a hotel near the checkpoint.
Jihadist websites claimed more than 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed. The same group was reported to have killed six aid workers in December.
The killings come amid warnings that dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia.
MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans has raised concerns that Somali-trained militants could be plotting to carry out attacks in Britain or attempting to attract new recruits.
Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the failed July 21 2005 London Underground bombings, came to Britain as asylum seekers.
The Somali community in Britain numbers around 250,000, the largest in Europe, with the bulk of those coming to the country as refugees within the last 20 years.
Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, said: 'The numbers I hear (going from Britain to Somalia) are 50, 60 or 70 but in reality we don't know.
'You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat.'
Ethiopian forces occupied parts of Somalia in 2007 after ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from the capital, Mogadishu.
The Ethiopians withdrew last month as part of a peace deal agreed between the government and moderate Islamists, leaving African Union peacekeepers and Somali soldiers - although many believe that they will not be able to keep advancing extremists at bay.
More than 16,000 people have been reported killed in the past two years.
'I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation.'
The bomber, whose family still lives in London, is the first reported case of a Somali based in Britain carrying out terrorist acts in the east African country.
However it is unclear whether British security services are aware of the case, which happened when the Somali prime minister was staying at a hotel near the checkpoint.
Jihadist websites claimed more than 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed. The same group was reported to have killed six aid workers in December.
The killings come amid warnings that dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia.
MI5 director-general Jonathan Evans has raised concerns that Somali-trained militants could be plotting to carry out attacks in Britain or attempting to attract new recruits.
Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed, two of the four men convicted of the failed July 21 2005 London Underground bombings, came to Britain as asylum seekers.
The Somali community in Britain numbers around 250,000, the largest in Europe, with the bulk of those coming to the country as refugees within the last 20 years.
Peter Neumann, a terrorism expert at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, said: 'The numbers I hear (going from Britain to Somalia) are 50, 60 or 70 but in reality we don't know.
'You don't need big numbers for terrorism. Somalia will never become another Pakistan, but that does not mean it is not a threat.'
Ethiopian forces occupied parts of Somalia in 2007 after ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from the capital, Mogadishu.
The Ethiopians withdrew last month as part of a peace deal agreed between the government and moderate Islamists, leaving African Union peacekeepers and Somali soldiers - although many believe that they will not be able to keep advancing extremists at bay.
More than 16,000 people have been reported killed in the past two years.
Somalia's Sharif On Stability Track
Medeshi Feb 14, 2009
Somalia's Sharif On Stability Track
CAIRO — Picking up a new prime minister and negotiating a ceasefire with rival groups, Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is on track to restore stability to the violence-wracked Horn of African state.
"This is a president who has hit the ground running," Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at International Crisis Group, told the Los Angles Times on Saturday, February 14.
Less than two weeks in office, Sheikh Sharif chose Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the son of Somalia's last democratically-elected president, as his prime minister.
"I am more optimistic about the future of Somalia than I have been in a number of years," professor David Shinn, an Africa expert at George Washington University, told Reuters.
"I think this selection increases the possibility that the Sheikh Sharif government will be able to pull Somalia out of its downward spiral and eventually even create an administration that is broadly accepted by Somalis."
The Somali parliament on Saturday endorsed Sharmarke's appointment.
"I will form a government of national unity that will give top priority to peace and security," Sharmarke told parliament after his endorsement.
"The nation and the people are waiting for us."
Somalia has been without effective government since the ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
More than 14 attempts to restore a functional government have since failed.
Optimism
Sheikh Sharif, who is the leader of the Islamic Courts Union, which ruled Somalia for six months before the 2006 Ethiopian invasion, also started negotiating a ceasefire with rival Islamic groups.
According to the Times, the Somali president is holding preliminary talks, through intermediaries, with the leader of Eritrea-based opposition, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.
He is also negotiating with Mukhtar Robow, the leader of Shebab group, a splitter of the Islamic Courts Union.
Shebab, which is designated as a terror group by Washington, has rejected Ahmed's election as Somalia's president, describing his government as an illegitimate "puppet" administration put together by foreign powers.
"(His) appointment has thrown Shabab into disarray," analyst Abdi told the Times.
"It has undercut the argument that the only way Islamists can come to power in Somalia is through military means."
Abdirahman Issa, a Mogadishu resident, is confused why armed groups are still fighting.
"They have been fighting for Islamic law, and now it will be implemented," he said.
Hopes for peace and stability are now prevailing across the Horn of African nation.
"People like him because he's not seen as a clansman, or a warlord or an extremist," said Ali Said Omar Ibrahim, head of the Center for Peace and Democracy, a conflict resolution group.
"So far there is a lot of hope and optimism toward this new government."
Somalia's Sharif On Stability Track
CAIRO — Picking up a new prime minister and negotiating a ceasefire with rival groups, Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed is on track to restore stability to the violence-wracked Horn of African state.
"This is a president who has hit the ground running," Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at International Crisis Group, told the Los Angles Times on Saturday, February 14.
Less than two weeks in office, Sheikh Sharif chose Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the son of Somalia's last democratically-elected president, as his prime minister.
"I am more optimistic about the future of Somalia than I have been in a number of years," professor David Shinn, an Africa expert at George Washington University, told Reuters.
"I think this selection increases the possibility that the Sheikh Sharif government will be able to pull Somalia out of its downward spiral and eventually even create an administration that is broadly accepted by Somalis."
The Somali parliament on Saturday endorsed Sharmarke's appointment.
"I will form a government of national unity that will give top priority to peace and security," Sharmarke told parliament after his endorsement.
"The nation and the people are waiting for us."
Somalia has been without effective government since the ouster of former president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
More than 14 attempts to restore a functional government have since failed.
Optimism
Sheikh Sharif, who is the leader of the Islamic Courts Union, which ruled Somalia for six months before the 2006 Ethiopian invasion, also started negotiating a ceasefire with rival Islamic groups.
According to the Times, the Somali president is holding preliminary talks, through intermediaries, with the leader of Eritrea-based opposition, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.
He is also negotiating with Mukhtar Robow, the leader of Shebab group, a splitter of the Islamic Courts Union.
Shebab, which is designated as a terror group by Washington, has rejected Ahmed's election as Somalia's president, describing his government as an illegitimate "puppet" administration put together by foreign powers.
"(His) appointment has thrown Shabab into disarray," analyst Abdi told the Times.
"It has undercut the argument that the only way Islamists can come to power in Somalia is through military means."
Abdirahman Issa, a Mogadishu resident, is confused why armed groups are still fighting.
"They have been fighting for Islamic law, and now it will be implemented," he said.
Hopes for peace and stability are now prevailing across the Horn of African nation.
"People like him because he's not seen as a clansman, or a warlord or an extremist," said Ali Said Omar Ibrahim, head of the Center for Peace and Democracy, a conflict resolution group.
"So far there is a lot of hope and optimism toward this new government."
Questions about evidence against suspected Somali Coast Guards
Medeshi, Feb 14, 2009Questions about evidence against suspected Somali Coast Guards
WASHINGTON: Questions emerged Friday about whether the U.S. Navy can continue to hold a group of suspected Somali Coast Guards captured on the high seas and kept for now in floating jail cells ringed with barbed wire.
At issue are nine men, probably Somalis, seized off a small skiff in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday. A Navy ship fired warnings shots and sailors boarded the skiff and arrested the men after a distress call from an Indian-flagged merchant ship.
Although defense officials would not be specific, several acknowledged that there may not be enough evidence to hold the men for trial and that some or all might be returned to Somalia.
If a case can be brought, it will be among the first under a new arrangement with Kenya to take on prosecution of suspected Somali Somali Coast Guards.
Somalia has no effective government or recognized court system, and until now foreign navies have been reluctant to detain suspects because of legal uncertainties over where they would face trial.
"They obviously had some strong suspicions about these individuals and are right now mulling through the evidence they have to determine whether or not they can be prosecuted," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday. "If there is insufficient evidence to do so, they'll have to make another determination, and that could well be repatriating them."
Morrell said the men would not be allowed to keep weapons including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher seized from their boat.
For now the group is being held aboard the Lewis and Clark, a U.S. Navy ship equipped with bare-bones holding cells. Pentagon video footage showed thin black pallets and pillows spread on the floor and surrounded by coils of barbed wire.
The nine suspected Somali Coast Guards are the second of two groups seized by the Navy this week off the pirate-infested coast of Somalia. Those seizures were part of a high-profile international crackdown on Somali pirate bands that have grown increasingly bold and efficient in hostaging merchant ships.
Defense officials said there are not the same concerns about the strength of evidence against the first group seized by the United States. Those seven suspected Somali Coast Guards were detained Wednesday after they allegedly tried to board a merchant ship flagged in the Marshall Islands.
The Pentagon said there is no deadline by which a new U.S.-led anti-piracy consortium must decide what to do with the men, who in the meantime were being treated "humanely."
Separately, the Russian navy said Friday it detained 10 suspected Somali Coast Guards closing in on an Iranian-flagged fishing trawler. Russian military prosecutors were questioning the men, who were caught on Thursday with rifles, grenade-launchers, illegal narcotics and a large sum of money, the navy said.
Piracy off Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991, reached record levels last year. Somali Coast Guards, seeking multimillion-dollar ransoms, launched 111 attacks and seized 42 vessels last year, mostly in the Gulf of Aden, with attacks peaking between September and November.
Somali Coast Guard activities accounted for the bulk of the 49 vessels hijacked and 889 crewmembers taken hostage around the world in 2008 — the highest worldwide figures since the London-based International Maritime Bureau began keeping records in 1991.
WASHINGTON: Questions emerged Friday about whether the U.S. Navy can continue to hold a group of suspected Somali Coast Guards captured on the high seas and kept for now in floating jail cells ringed with barbed wire.
At issue are nine men, probably Somalis, seized off a small skiff in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday. A Navy ship fired warnings shots and sailors boarded the skiff and arrested the men after a distress call from an Indian-flagged merchant ship.
Although defense officials would not be specific, several acknowledged that there may not be enough evidence to hold the men for trial and that some or all might be returned to Somalia.
If a case can be brought, it will be among the first under a new arrangement with Kenya to take on prosecution of suspected Somali Somali Coast Guards.
Somalia has no effective government or recognized court system, and until now foreign navies have been reluctant to detain suspects because of legal uncertainties over where they would face trial.
"They obviously had some strong suspicions about these individuals and are right now mulling through the evidence they have to determine whether or not they can be prosecuted," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Friday. "If there is insufficient evidence to do so, they'll have to make another determination, and that could well be repatriating them."
Morrell said the men would not be allowed to keep weapons including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher seized from their boat.
For now the group is being held aboard the Lewis and Clark, a U.S. Navy ship equipped with bare-bones holding cells. Pentagon video footage showed thin black pallets and pillows spread on the floor and surrounded by coils of barbed wire.
The nine suspected Somali Coast Guards are the second of two groups seized by the Navy this week off the pirate-infested coast of Somalia. Those seizures were part of a high-profile international crackdown on Somali pirate bands that have grown increasingly bold and efficient in hostaging merchant ships.
Defense officials said there are not the same concerns about the strength of evidence against the first group seized by the United States. Those seven suspected Somali Coast Guards were detained Wednesday after they allegedly tried to board a merchant ship flagged in the Marshall Islands.
The Pentagon said there is no deadline by which a new U.S.-led anti-piracy consortium must decide what to do with the men, who in the meantime were being treated "humanely."
Separately, the Russian navy said Friday it detained 10 suspected Somali Coast Guards closing in on an Iranian-flagged fishing trawler. Russian military prosecutors were questioning the men, who were caught on Thursday with rifles, grenade-launchers, illegal narcotics and a large sum of money, the navy said.
Piracy off Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991, reached record levels last year. Somali Coast Guards, seeking multimillion-dollar ransoms, launched 111 attacks and seized 42 vessels last year, mostly in the Gulf of Aden, with attacks peaking between September and November.
Somali Coast Guard activities accounted for the bulk of the 49 vessels hijacked and 889 crewmembers taken hostage around the world in 2008 — the highest worldwide figures since the London-based International Maritime Bureau began keeping records in 1991.
Conflict resolution in Somaliland : Peace Petition
Medeshi
Conflict Resolution In Somaliland : Peace Petition
Coalition of Somaliland Crisis Group Release Petition with hundred of signatures urging to prevent any civil clash in Gabiley-Awdal area. Feb,14,2009
Petition to prevent any clash, discord or conflict in Ceelbardaale and surrounding area in Somaliland
Friday, February 14th 2009
"Every Somalilander must avoid any kind of clash in any form in Somaliland territory."
News Release
Petition to prevent any clash, discord or conflict in Ceelbardaale and surrounding area in Somaliland
Friday, February 14th 2009
"Every Somalilander must avoid any kind of clash in any form in Somaliland territory."
News Release
(Photo: Reer Guurayiyo Gabadh tima tidcaniWaa waxa dadkeena u gaar ahee la inagu garteeMaantey galadi noo toostey ee Gobonimadayada Guulow adkee : Nomadic girl infront of Somali dome and and pastoralist on the move )
For Immediate Release: Feb, 14, 2009
Contact available at saylacnews@yahoo.com
After organizing two days campaign to gather more than hundred of supporters for this petition, Coalition of Somaliland Crisis Group received this outpouring of support from Somaliland communities around the world. This respond has strengthened our resolve and validate our belief that a silent Somaliland majority that was waiting ready, and eager to speak our emerging. Today we join together and speak as one “No need any clash in any form in Somaliland Territory"
Recommendations
* taking the necessary steps to preventing all attacks, threats and violent intimidation of civilians by any party or group, including both sides;
* respecting the livelihoods and property of the individuals and communities;
* ensuring the principle of good neighborhood and decent manner and valuable cultural heritage of peace loving and solving problem through dialogue.
*Protecting the rights of rural society in the area to cultivate their fields in stable and security.
*cooperating fully with current government and coming government alike to implement a sustainable peace in the area.
*appointing an independent commission of traditional Gurti to solve this dispute land through dialogue.
* Any involvement of violation of any kind of agreement should be reported to the appropriate authorities or current government and any one who commit this violation should be accountable.
Coalition of Somaliland Crisis Group plans to continue to gather signatures on their future website which will launch shortly, so please join and be part of the Gurmad. Send your support to our media partner saylac.com at saylacnews@yahoo.com
The least you can be part of peace making effort is to forward this petition to a friend or publish in your site.
For Immediate Release: Feb, 14, 2009
Contact available at saylacnews@yahoo.com
After organizing two days campaign to gather more than hundred of supporters for this petition, Coalition of Somaliland Crisis Group received this outpouring of support from Somaliland communities around the world. This respond has strengthened our resolve and validate our belief that a silent Somaliland majority that was waiting ready, and eager to speak our emerging. Today we join together and speak as one “No need any clash in any form in Somaliland Territory"
Recommendations
* taking the necessary steps to preventing all attacks, threats and violent intimidation of civilians by any party or group, including both sides;
* respecting the livelihoods and property of the individuals and communities;
* ensuring the principle of good neighborhood and decent manner and valuable cultural heritage of peace loving and solving problem through dialogue.
*Protecting the rights of rural society in the area to cultivate their fields in stable and security.
*cooperating fully with current government and coming government alike to implement a sustainable peace in the area.
*appointing an independent commission of traditional Gurti to solve this dispute land through dialogue.
* Any involvement of violation of any kind of agreement should be reported to the appropriate authorities or current government and any one who commit this violation should be accountable.
Coalition of Somaliland Crisis Group plans to continue to gather signatures on their future website which will launch shortly, so please join and be part of the Gurmad. Send your support to our media partner saylac.com at saylacnews@yahoo.com
The least you can be part of peace making effort is to forward this petition to a friend or publish in your site.
CSCG Press OfficeWashington USA
temp' email saylacnews@yahoo.com
Omer Abdirashid is the new Somali PM
Medeshi
Omer Abdirashid is the new Somali PM
DJIBOUTI, Feb 13 Somalia's president has chosen Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the U.S.-based son of a slain former leader, to be prime minister in a unity government intended to end civil war, government sources said.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's nomination was formally announced on Friday in Djibouti, where Somali politicians are meeting, several senior government aides said.
Sharmarke, who has held various U.N. posts and was educated in the United States, is the son of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, an elected president who was assassinated in 1969 during a military coup.
He is a member of the Darod ethnic group, whereas Ahmed is Hawiye. Somalia's government is meant to share key positions among the major communities who live in Somalia but non from Somaliland which declared independence in 1991.
By choosing Sharmarke, Ahmed will hope to win support from the Somali diaspora and also bolster international support for his fledgling government, which has been set up under a U.N.-brokered peace process in Djibouti.
The major challenge for both president and prime minister will be to face the threat of armed Islamist insurgents in Somalia led by the Al Shabaab group, which is on Washington's list of terrorist organisations.
Al Shabaab says Ahmed's government is an illegitimate "puppet" administration put together by foreign powers. Although Ahmed is a moderate Islamist who used to lead a sharia courts movement in Somalia, al Shabaab denounces him as anti-Islamic.
Agencies
Omer Abdirashid is the new Somali PM
DJIBOUTI, Feb 13 Somalia's president has chosen Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the U.S.-based son of a slain former leader, to be prime minister in a unity government intended to end civil war, government sources said.
President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's nomination was formally announced on Friday in Djibouti, where Somali politicians are meeting, several senior government aides said.
Sharmarke, who has held various U.N. posts and was educated in the United States, is the son of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, an elected president who was assassinated in 1969 during a military coup.
He is a member of the Darod ethnic group, whereas Ahmed is Hawiye. Somalia's government is meant to share key positions among the major communities who live in Somalia but non from Somaliland which declared independence in 1991.
By choosing Sharmarke, Ahmed will hope to win support from the Somali diaspora and also bolster international support for his fledgling government, which has been set up under a U.N.-brokered peace process in Djibouti.
The major challenge for both president and prime minister will be to face the threat of armed Islamist insurgents in Somalia led by the Al Shabaab group, which is on Washington's list of terrorist organisations.
Al Shabaab says Ahmed's government is an illegitimate "puppet" administration put together by foreign powers. Although Ahmed is a moderate Islamist who used to lead a sharia courts movement in Somalia, al Shabaab denounces him as anti-Islamic.
Agencies
Captive Indian sailors in Somalia send SOS
Medeshi
Captive Indian sailors in Somalia send SOS
Varanasi, Feb 13 (IANS) Fourteen Indian sailors, held captive on a cargo vessel off the Somali coast for over four months, are losing hopes of freedom and have threatened to commit suicide.
“Nobody except the Indian high commissioner in Kenya is willing to help us. We now appeal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to rescue us,” Manoj Singh, a sailor from Uttar Pradesh who worked as welder-cum-cutter on the vessel, told IANS on phone Friday.
Singh, a native of Judapur village of Jaunpur district, about 200 km from here, made a distress call to select journalists in Varanasi and said they were contemplating suicide.
The sailors have been held captive on board the MV Jaipur 1, owned by Al Rashid Shipping Company of the UAE, since Oct 10, 2008 at the Mogadishu port as the firm whose consignment the vessel was carrying from Oman to Somalia has been demanding $20 million in damages, according to him.
Six sailors are from Uttar Pradesh and other from Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. There are three Pakistani sailors too among the crew.
Singh said they have run out of food and there are also facing grave threat from violence in the region.
“Since yesterday (Thursday), the situation at the Somali port has become volatile due to intermittent firing between pirates and African naval warships. As a result, All vessels except our ship have moved to safer places.
“Four rockets were fired near our ship, though none directly hit our ship, with the closest landing a short distance away. A ship from the UAE, Lady Fatima, which also has Indian sailors on board, reported a few injuries, while crew on other ships reported many injuries, following which they anchored at a safer distance,” Singh said.
“We don’t know how long we will remain alive with the battle going on between pirates and naval forces, no food or money left and many of our sailors falling ill. Neither our employers nor the Indian embassy in the UAE is helping us. Only the Indian high commissioner in Kenya has been trying to help us, but that too in vain.
“Unless the prime minister steps in and rescues us, we think it’s all over for us,” he added.
“We heard our Dubai-based employer was sending air tickets for us, but later we realised that it is not possible as apart from the cargo owner, the port authorities are also demanding a huge amount to let us out.”
Singh identified his fellow sailors from Uttar Pradesh as Hriday Narayan Pandey from Sultanpur, Aniruddh Kannaujia from Lucknow, Kailash Chand from Meerut, Kapil Kumar and Sachin from Ghaziabad.
The vessel left the Salalah port of Oman Sep 30 for Somalia with food grains and other edible items.
“On reaching Somalia the ship brushed along the coast and was slightly damaged from below. Water seeped in and damaged the consignment. The recipient businessman - whom we do not know - has held us captive with the help of his men,” Singh said.
Singh’s wife Poonam says she wrote to the president of India, the prime minister, external affairs ministry and the Uttar Pradesh chief minister earlier this month to seek help.
“But till now we have not received any response. We also met Uttar Pradesh Culture Minister Subhash Pandey and he assured help. However, nothing has happened and we are losing hope,” said Vinod Singh, Manoj Singh’s lawyer.
Captive Indian sailors in Somalia send SOS
Varanasi, Feb 13 (IANS) Fourteen Indian sailors, held captive on a cargo vessel off the Somali coast for over four months, are losing hopes of freedom and have threatened to commit suicide.
“Nobody except the Indian high commissioner in Kenya is willing to help us. We now appeal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to rescue us,” Manoj Singh, a sailor from Uttar Pradesh who worked as welder-cum-cutter on the vessel, told IANS on phone Friday.
Singh, a native of Judapur village of Jaunpur district, about 200 km from here, made a distress call to select journalists in Varanasi and said they were contemplating suicide.
The sailors have been held captive on board the MV Jaipur 1, owned by Al Rashid Shipping Company of the UAE, since Oct 10, 2008 at the Mogadishu port as the firm whose consignment the vessel was carrying from Oman to Somalia has been demanding $20 million in damages, according to him.
Six sailors are from Uttar Pradesh and other from Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. There are three Pakistani sailors too among the crew.
Singh said they have run out of food and there are also facing grave threat from violence in the region.
“Since yesterday (Thursday), the situation at the Somali port has become volatile due to intermittent firing between pirates and African naval warships. As a result, All vessels except our ship have moved to safer places.
“Four rockets were fired near our ship, though none directly hit our ship, with the closest landing a short distance away. A ship from the UAE, Lady Fatima, which also has Indian sailors on board, reported a few injuries, while crew on other ships reported many injuries, following which they anchored at a safer distance,” Singh said.
“We don’t know how long we will remain alive with the battle going on between pirates and naval forces, no food or money left and many of our sailors falling ill. Neither our employers nor the Indian embassy in the UAE is helping us. Only the Indian high commissioner in Kenya has been trying to help us, but that too in vain.
“Unless the prime minister steps in and rescues us, we think it’s all over for us,” he added.
“We heard our Dubai-based employer was sending air tickets for us, but later we realised that it is not possible as apart from the cargo owner, the port authorities are also demanding a huge amount to let us out.”
Singh identified his fellow sailors from Uttar Pradesh as Hriday Narayan Pandey from Sultanpur, Aniruddh Kannaujia from Lucknow, Kailash Chand from Meerut, Kapil Kumar and Sachin from Ghaziabad.
The vessel left the Salalah port of Oman Sep 30 for Somalia with food grains and other edible items.
“On reaching Somalia the ship brushed along the coast and was slightly damaged from below. Water seeped in and damaged the consignment. The recipient businessman - whom we do not know - has held us captive with the help of his men,” Singh said.
Singh’s wife Poonam says she wrote to the president of India, the prime minister, external affairs ministry and the Uttar Pradesh chief minister earlier this month to seek help.
“But till now we have not received any response. We also met Uttar Pradesh Culture Minister Subhash Pandey and he assured help. However, nothing has happened and we are losing hope,” said Vinod Singh, Manoj Singh’s lawyer.
Peace in Somaliland: An Indigenous Approach to State-building documentary
MedeshiPeace in Somaliland: An Indigenous Approach to State-Building’ documentary
Somaliland Focus (UK) and DPU, UCL
‘Peace in Somaliland: An Indigenous Approach to State-
Building’ documentary, followed by a panel discussion
Tuesday 3rd March 2009, 6pm
Pearson Lecture Theatre, Pearson Building
(enter through Main Gate of UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT)
Somaliland Focus (UK) and the Development Planning Unit (DPU) of UCL invite you to a showing of the documentary ‘Peace in Somaliland: An Indigenous Approach to State-Building’, followed by a panel discussion on Tuesday 3 March 2009 at the Pearson Lecture Theatre, Gower Street, London.
The film is based on research undertaken by the Academy for Peace and development in Hargeysa, focussing on the process that followed the collapse of the Siyad Barre regime in 1991. A total of 39 peace and reconciliation conferences prepared the ground for five national and regional meetings between February 1991 and February 1997.
After the showing there will be short presentation from Michael Walls (DPU, UCL), who was part of the research team; Rashiid Sheikh Abdilahi ‘Gadhweyne’ (sociologist and expert on Somali culture) and Rhoda M Ibrahim (development worker).
The meeting will be chaired by Sally Healy OBE (Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House).
How to get to the Pearson Building
The closest mainline rail stations are Euston and Kings Cross/St Pancras - both within walking distance. Nearest tube stations are Euston Square (Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City Lines), Warren Street (Victoria and Northern Lines) and Goodge Street (Northern Line).
For further directions click here:
http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/contacts-and-location/map.jpg/image_view_fullscreen
Biographies
Rashiid Sheikh Abdilahi ‘Gadhweyne’ was brought up in a Somali nomadic family.
His primary and intermediate education was in Adadle and Burao Religious Institute. In 1963, he travelled to Egypt for secondary and higher education in Cairo. In 1970, he graduated from Cairo University specialising in sociology.
Rashiid has extensive knowledge of Somali education and culture through his work with the Department of Education where he headed the Folklore Section of the Cultural Department in 1972, as well as from 1976 to 1982, when he worked as a journalist and lecturer for the Somali National University. He also worked with the Academy of Science and Culture. In 1982, he was one of the founders of SNM (Somali National Movement) in Ethiopia which was one of the opposition organisations fighting the regime of Syad Barre. Within the SNM, he occupied the positions of Director of Radio Halgan and Secretary of Foreign Relations.
After the declaration of independence in Somaliland in 1991, he played a key role in peace-making activities as a member of Somaliland Peace Committee. Since 1998, he has been the Chair of the Somaliland Commission for Investigations of War Crimes.
Michael Walls lectures in Development Management at the Development Planning Unit of University College London (UCL) and over the past four years has undertaken research in political science with a specific focus on the emergence of a system of state in Somaliland. He chairs the Anglo-Somali Society and Somaliland Focus (UK) and is the Administrative Secretary to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Somaliland in the UK Parliament.
Rhoda M Ibrahim has been working for the past 25 years for the development, relief and rehabilitation of war-torn communities in Somaliland, Djibouti and Yemen together with United Nations and other international organisations.
Rhoda has been involved with Somaliland issues since 1990 when she came to the UK as a refugee and helped to set up and manage SOMRA to raise funds for people in refugee camps and those displaced inside the country. She was the first Somaliland development worker for ICD/CIIR, now Progressio. Rhoda established the Capacity Building programme to help emerging local organisations, assisting over 400 local NGOs and their leaders to establish umbrella organisations such as Awdal Association of Indigenous Organisations (AAIN), Nagaad, COSONGO and SAMATALIS (the first human rights group in Somaliland). Rhoda is also trained as conflict transformation and peace building advocate.
Sally Healy is an Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was formerly an East Africa specialist at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Most recently, she led a collaborative study of conflict in the Horn of Africa, the findings of which were published by Chatham House in June 2008.
When Population Growth and Resource Availability Collide
Medeshi Fe 12, 2009
When Population Growth and Resource Availability Collide
10-year Population Growth Rate by Continent, Jan. 2009
Photo by mattlemmon
As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions.
Access to land is a prime source of social tension. Expanding world population has cut the grainland per person in half, from 0.23 hectares in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2007. One tenth of a hectare is half of a building lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This ongoing shrinkage of grainland per person makes it difficult for the world’s farmers to feed the 70 million people added to world population each year. The shrinkage in cropland per person not only threatens livelihoods; in largely subsistence societies, it threatens survival itself. Tensions within communities begin to build as landholdings shrink below that needed for survival.
The Sahelian zone of Africa, with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, is an area of spreading conflict. In troubled Sudan, 2 million people have died and over 4 million have been displaced in the long-standing conflict of more than 20 years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. The more recent conflict in the Darfur region in western Sudan that began in 2003 illustrates the mounting tensions between two Muslim groups--camel herders and subsistence farmers. Government troops are backing Arab militias, who are engaging in the wholesale slaughter of black Sudanese in an effort to drive them off their land, sending them into refugee camps in neighboring Chad. At least some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict and another 250,000 have died of hunger and disease in the refugee camps.
The story of Darfur is that of the Sahel, the semiarid region of grassland and dryland farming that stretches across Africa from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east. In the northern Sahel, grassland is turning to desert, forcing herders southward into the farming areas. Declining rainfall and overgrazing are combining to destroy the grasslands.
Well before the rainfall decline the seeds for the conflict were being sown as Sudan’s population climbed from 9 million in 1950 to 39 million in 2007, more than a fourfold rise. Meanwhile, the cattle population increased from fewer than 7 million to 40 million, an increase of nearly sixfold. The number of sheep and goats together increased from fewer than 14 million to 113 million, an eightfold increase. No grasslands can survive such rapid continuous growth in livestock populations.
In Nigeria, where 148 million people are crammed into an area not much larger than Texas, overgrazing and overplowing are converting grassland and cropland into desert, putting farmers and herders in a war for survival. Unfortunately, the division between herders and farmers is also often the division between Muslims and Christians. The competition for land, amplified by religious differences and combined with a large number of frustrated young men with guns, has created a volatile and violent situation where finally, in mid-2004, the government imposed emergency rule.
Rwanda has become a classic case study in how mounting population pressure can translate into political tension, conflict, and social tragedy. James Gasana, who was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Environment in 1990–92, warned in 1990 that without “profound transformations in its agriculture, [Rwanda] will not be capable of feeding adequately its population under the present growth rate.” Although the country’s demographers projected major future gains in population, Gasana said that he did not see how Rwanda would reach 10 million inhabitants without social disorder “unless important progress in agriculture, as well as other sectors of the economy, were achieved.”
In 1950, Rwanda’s population was 2.4 million. By 1993, it had tripled to 7.5 million, making it the most densely populated country in Africa. As population grew, so did the demand for firewood. By 1991, the demand was more than double the sustainable yield of local forests. As trees disappeared, straw and other crop residues were used for cooking fuel. With less organic matter in the soil, land fertility declined.
As the health of the land deteriorated, so did that of the people dependent on it. Eventually there was simply not enough food to go around. A quiet desperation developed. Like a drought-afflicted countryside, it could be ignited with a single match. That ignition came with the crash of a plane on April 6, 1994, shot down as it approached the capital Kigali, killing President Juvenal Habyarimana. The crash unleashed an organized attack by Hutus, leading to an estimated 800,000 deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
Many other African countries, largely rural in nature, are on a demographic track similar to Rwanda’s. Tanzania’s population of 40 million in 2007 is projected to increase to 85 million by 2050. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the population is projected to triple from 63 million to 187 million.
Africa is not alone. In India, tension between Hindus and Muslims is never far below the surface. As each successive generation further subdivides already small plots, pressure on the land is intense. The pressure on water resources is even greater. With India’s population projected to grow from 1.2 billion in 2007 to 1.7 billion in 2050, a collision between rising human numbers and shrinking water supplies seems inevitable. The risk is that India could face social conflicts that would dwarf those in Rwanda. The relationship between population and natural systems is a national security issue, one that can spawn conflicts along geographic, tribal, ethnic, or religious lines.
Disagreements over the allocation of water among countries that share river systems is a common source of international political conflict, especially where populations are outgrowing the flow of the river. Nowhere is this potential conflict more stark than among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in the Nile River valley. Agriculture in Egypt, where it rarely rains, is wholly dependent on water from the Nile. Egypt now gets the lion’s share of the Nile’s water, but its population of 75 million is projected to reach 121 million by 2050, thus greatly expanding the demand for grain and water. Sudan, whose 39 million people also depend heavily on food produced with Nile water, is expected to have 73 million by 2050. And the number of Ethiopians, in the country that controls 85 percent of the river’s headwaters, is projected to expand from 83 million to 183 million.
Since there is already little water left in the Nile when it reaches the Mediterranean, if either Sudan or Ethiopia takes more water, then Egypt will get less, making it increasingly difficult to feed an additional 46 million people. Although there is an existing water rights agreement among the three countries, Ethiopia receives only a minuscule share of water. Given its aspirations for a better life, and with the Nile being one of its few natural resources, Ethiopia will undoubtedly want to take more.
In the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia, there is an uneasy arrangement among five countries over the sharing of the two rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, that drain into the sea. The demand for water in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan already exceeds the flow of the two rivers by 25 percent. Turkmenistan, which is upstream on the Amu Darya, is planning to develop another half-million hectares of irrigated agriculture. Racked by insurgencies, the region lacks the cooperation needed to manage its scarce water resources. Geographer Sarah O’Hara of the University of Nottingham who studies the region’s water problems, says, “We talk about the developing world and the developed world, but this is the deteriorating world.”
Photo by mattlemmon
As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions.
Access to land is a prime source of social tension. Expanding world population has cut the grainland per person in half, from 0.23 hectares in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2007. One tenth of a hectare is half of a building lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This ongoing shrinkage of grainland per person makes it difficult for the world’s farmers to feed the 70 million people added to world population each year. The shrinkage in cropland per person not only threatens livelihoods; in largely subsistence societies, it threatens survival itself. Tensions within communities begin to build as landholdings shrink below that needed for survival.
The Sahelian zone of Africa, with one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, is an area of spreading conflict. In troubled Sudan, 2 million people have died and over 4 million have been displaced in the long-standing conflict of more than 20 years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. The more recent conflict in the Darfur region in western Sudan that began in 2003 illustrates the mounting tensions between two Muslim groups--camel herders and subsistence farmers. Government troops are backing Arab militias, who are engaging in the wholesale slaughter of black Sudanese in an effort to drive them off their land, sending them into refugee camps in neighboring Chad. At least some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict and another 250,000 have died of hunger and disease in the refugee camps.
The story of Darfur is that of the Sahel, the semiarid region of grassland and dryland farming that stretches across Africa from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east. In the northern Sahel, grassland is turning to desert, forcing herders southward into the farming areas. Declining rainfall and overgrazing are combining to destroy the grasslands.
Well before the rainfall decline the seeds for the conflict were being sown as Sudan’s population climbed from 9 million in 1950 to 39 million in 2007, more than a fourfold rise. Meanwhile, the cattle population increased from fewer than 7 million to 40 million, an increase of nearly sixfold. The number of sheep and goats together increased from fewer than 14 million to 113 million, an eightfold increase. No grasslands can survive such rapid continuous growth in livestock populations.
In Nigeria, where 148 million people are crammed into an area not much larger than Texas, overgrazing and overplowing are converting grassland and cropland into desert, putting farmers and herders in a war for survival. Unfortunately, the division between herders and farmers is also often the division between Muslims and Christians. The competition for land, amplified by religious differences and combined with a large number of frustrated young men with guns, has created a volatile and violent situation where finally, in mid-2004, the government imposed emergency rule.
Rwanda has become a classic case study in how mounting population pressure can translate into political tension, conflict, and social tragedy. James Gasana, who was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Environment in 1990–92, warned in 1990 that without “profound transformations in its agriculture, [Rwanda] will not be capable of feeding adequately its population under the present growth rate.” Although the country’s demographers projected major future gains in population, Gasana said that he did not see how Rwanda would reach 10 million inhabitants without social disorder “unless important progress in agriculture, as well as other sectors of the economy, were achieved.”
In 1950, Rwanda’s population was 2.4 million. By 1993, it had tripled to 7.5 million, making it the most densely populated country in Africa. As population grew, so did the demand for firewood. By 1991, the demand was more than double the sustainable yield of local forests. As trees disappeared, straw and other crop residues were used for cooking fuel. With less organic matter in the soil, land fertility declined.
As the health of the land deteriorated, so did that of the people dependent on it. Eventually there was simply not enough food to go around. A quiet desperation developed. Like a drought-afflicted countryside, it could be ignited with a single match. That ignition came with the crash of a plane on April 6, 1994, shot down as it approached the capital Kigali, killing President Juvenal Habyarimana. The crash unleashed an organized attack by Hutus, leading to an estimated 800,000 deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
Many other African countries, largely rural in nature, are on a demographic track similar to Rwanda’s. Tanzania’s population of 40 million in 2007 is projected to increase to 85 million by 2050. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the population is projected to triple from 63 million to 187 million.
Africa is not alone. In India, tension between Hindus and Muslims is never far below the surface. As each successive generation further subdivides already small plots, pressure on the land is intense. The pressure on water resources is even greater. With India’s population projected to grow from 1.2 billion in 2007 to 1.7 billion in 2050, a collision between rising human numbers and shrinking water supplies seems inevitable. The risk is that India could face social conflicts that would dwarf those in Rwanda. The relationship between population and natural systems is a national security issue, one that can spawn conflicts along geographic, tribal, ethnic, or religious lines.
Disagreements over the allocation of water among countries that share river systems is a common source of international political conflict, especially where populations are outgrowing the flow of the river. Nowhere is this potential conflict more stark than among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in the Nile River valley. Agriculture in Egypt, where it rarely rains, is wholly dependent on water from the Nile. Egypt now gets the lion’s share of the Nile’s water, but its population of 75 million is projected to reach 121 million by 2050, thus greatly expanding the demand for grain and water. Sudan, whose 39 million people also depend heavily on food produced with Nile water, is expected to have 73 million by 2050. And the number of Ethiopians, in the country that controls 85 percent of the river’s headwaters, is projected to expand from 83 million to 183 million.
Since there is already little water left in the Nile when it reaches the Mediterranean, if either Sudan or Ethiopia takes more water, then Egypt will get less, making it increasingly difficult to feed an additional 46 million people. Although there is an existing water rights agreement among the three countries, Ethiopia receives only a minuscule share of water. Given its aspirations for a better life, and with the Nile being one of its few natural resources, Ethiopia will undoubtedly want to take more.
In the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia, there is an uneasy arrangement among five countries over the sharing of the two rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, that drain into the sea. The demand for water in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan already exceeds the flow of the two rivers by 25 percent. Turkmenistan, which is upstream on the Amu Darya, is planning to develop another half-million hectares of irrigated agriculture. Racked by insurgencies, the region lacks the cooperation needed to manage its scarce water resources. Geographer Sarah O’Hara of the University of Nottingham who studies the region’s water problems, says, “We talk about the developing world and the developed world, but this is the deteriorating world.”
Somaliland: Code of conduct for the political parties voter registration process
Medeshi
REPUBLIC OF SOMALILAND
NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR THE POLITICAL PARTIES ON THE
VOTER REGISTRATION PROCESS
HARGEISA, 10.02. 2009
Ref/KDQ/XK/650/09
Preamble:
After holding a series of consultative meetings in which the results and outcomes of the Voter Registration Process were discussed and assessed,
Fully aware of the importance of the Voter Registration Process both in the democratization and electoral process,
Mindful that the success of the Voter Registration will further advance the Democratization process and the cause of Somaliland,
Having seen Law No: 37/2007: The Somaliland Voter Registration Law, in particular Article 6, Article 33, and Article 36
Having seen Amendment to Law No: 37/2007, in particular Article 3.b, and Article 11
Having engaged in serious discussions and deliberations to review and analyze the present Somaliland situation and the objectives noted gaps and achievements as reported by the national Electoral Commission.
Expressing gratitude and appreciation for the Somaliland people, the local VR teams and the international supporters as well as the media.
Have agreed to abide by the letter and the spirit of this Code of Conduct which was jointly developed by the National Electoral Commission and the three Political Parties and which was signed by representatives of the three parties and the National Electoral Commission.
Objectives
The following objectives shall be the focus of this Code of Conduct:
1. To ensure that the development of the Final Voter List is conducted in the spirit of the law and in the best interest of the country.
2. To address the possible gaps of the Voter Registration as reported by the National Electoral Commission (NEC).
3. To reach a consensus agreement on the procedures to use in concluding the Voter Registration process, culminating in the publishing of the Final Voter List.
4. To ensure consensus endorsement and acceptance of the final outcome of the Final Voter List.
5. To have the Code of Conduct, which establishes the necessary agreements to achieve the above-stated objectives, and is signed in a public ceremony by the senior representatives of the Somaliland political parties (UDUB, KULMIYE & UCID) and co-signed by NEC.
Noted Gaps in the Voter Registration Process1
The actual process of registering voters has produced a number of gaps that must be addressed in order to solidify the process and ensure the results are technically sound and that the Final Voter List warrants the confidence and support of the voting populace. Gaps in the process, witnessed throughout Somaliland, include:
1. Limited technical gaps and errors by the operators and equipment.
2. Non-fingerprinted registrants throughout Somaliland.
3. Double and multiple registrants throughout Somaliland.
4. Under-aged registrants throughout Somaliland.
Agreed Resolutions:
The following resolutions shall be applied to the process of developing the Final Voter List, the voter roster for each of the official polling stations.
1. The Technical Committee (also referred to as the Task Force), and as called for in Article 36 of the Voter Registration Law, shall oversee the development and validate the draft Voter List. All recommendations to NEC by the Technical Committee, through their oversight, must be unanimous and forwarded to NEC for consideration. NEC, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Political Parties shall ensure that their Committee members are qualified to carry out these responsibilities and per Article 36 of the Voter Registration Law, are appointed by NEC. It is the responsibility of NEC to take into consideration the recommendations of the Technical Committee before publishing the Final Voter List.
2. The Voter Registration server, which houses the registrant database and recognition software, shall have controlled and limited access. NEC shall ensure that only the following technical persons, making up the Server Team2 are present at any time in the Server Room unless unanimously agreed upon by the Technical Committee:
a. The National Register Officer (or acting3)
b. The Chairman of the Technical Committee4 (NEC Commissioner)
c. The ECIL5 technical expert
d. The Interpeace Regional Director for Eastern and Central Africa6
e. The Interpeace Voter Registration Programme Director 7
3. An Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) will be utilized to disqualify all double and multiple registrants who have been electronically fingerprinted.
4. A Facial Recognition System will be utilized to further assess for double and multiple registrants.
5. The Server Team shall run the recognition software and establish the parameters for qualifying/disqualifying registrants based on data collected from the recognition software. The Server Team will develop a draft set of these qualification parameters and submit to the Technical Committee for unanimous approval and forwarded to NEC for final authorization. These parameters must be consistent with the Voter Registration Law and its amendment.
6. The approved qualification parameters will be applied to the data of all registrants to identify all qualified and disqualified registrants. From this, the Server Team will produce the draft Final Voter List as well as an annex report identifying all disqualified registrants and the reason for their disqualification (based on the approved parameters for disqualification).
7. The Technical Committee shall unanimously approve the Final Voter List, after which the lists shall be forwarded to NEC for final authorization and publishing.
8. Under age registrants shall be discouraged through a public awareness campaign warning all under-aged registrants from voting. Disqualification of under-age voting shall not be carried out at the polling center on Election Day.
9. Given the large number of double and multiple registrants, it is imperative that NEC take the prescribed legal action against violators of Article 33: Prohibition to have more than one card. Greater awareness must also be brought forth by NEC regarding the criminality of holding more than one card.
Explanation of the issues mentioned above (Index)
1. The signature of the NEC in this code of conduct means that there are gaps and criticism towards the voter registration and that NEC is prepared to address these issues.
2. Technical expert from ECIL and the acting national registrar will be working on the Server. The other members will go there for an inspection once in a while and for support
3. The acting registrar is Tani Omer
4. The Commissioner of NEC is Ismail Muse Nur
5. ECIL company ( The Electronic Company of India Limited) is the company that produced the registration equipment and is represented by Sunil Kumar Reddy who is highly trained for the server
6. Interpeace regional Director for Eastern and Central Africa is Jerry McCann
7. Interpeace Director for registration is Ruben Zamora
Signatories:
Political Parties’ Representatives
1. Jama Yasin Farah – Secretary-General of UDUB party
2. Kayse Hassan Egeh – Secretary-General Of Kulmiye party
3. Mohamed Hassan Bashe – Secretary-General of the UCID party
NEC Representative:
1. Jama M. Omer – NEC Chairperson
REPUBLIC OF SOMALILAND
NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR THE POLITICAL PARTIES ON THE
VOTER REGISTRATION PROCESS
HARGEISA, 10.02. 2009
Ref/KDQ/XK/650/09
Preamble:
After holding a series of consultative meetings in which the results and outcomes of the Voter Registration Process were discussed and assessed,
Fully aware of the importance of the Voter Registration Process both in the democratization and electoral process,
Mindful that the success of the Voter Registration will further advance the Democratization process and the cause of Somaliland,
Having seen Law No: 37/2007: The Somaliland Voter Registration Law, in particular Article 6, Article 33, and Article 36
Having seen Amendment to Law No: 37/2007, in particular Article 3.b, and Article 11
Having engaged in serious discussions and deliberations to review and analyze the present Somaliland situation and the objectives noted gaps and achievements as reported by the national Electoral Commission.
Expressing gratitude and appreciation for the Somaliland people, the local VR teams and the international supporters as well as the media.
Have agreed to abide by the letter and the spirit of this Code of Conduct which was jointly developed by the National Electoral Commission and the three Political Parties and which was signed by representatives of the three parties and the National Electoral Commission.
Objectives
The following objectives shall be the focus of this Code of Conduct:
1. To ensure that the development of the Final Voter List is conducted in the spirit of the law and in the best interest of the country.
2. To address the possible gaps of the Voter Registration as reported by the National Electoral Commission (NEC).
3. To reach a consensus agreement on the procedures to use in concluding the Voter Registration process, culminating in the publishing of the Final Voter List.
4. To ensure consensus endorsement and acceptance of the final outcome of the Final Voter List.
5. To have the Code of Conduct, which establishes the necessary agreements to achieve the above-stated objectives, and is signed in a public ceremony by the senior representatives of the Somaliland political parties (UDUB, KULMIYE & UCID) and co-signed by NEC.
Noted Gaps in the Voter Registration Process1
The actual process of registering voters has produced a number of gaps that must be addressed in order to solidify the process and ensure the results are technically sound and that the Final Voter List warrants the confidence and support of the voting populace. Gaps in the process, witnessed throughout Somaliland, include:
1. Limited technical gaps and errors by the operators and equipment.
2. Non-fingerprinted registrants throughout Somaliland.
3. Double and multiple registrants throughout Somaliland.
4. Under-aged registrants throughout Somaliland.
Agreed Resolutions:
The following resolutions shall be applied to the process of developing the Final Voter List, the voter roster for each of the official polling stations.
1. The Technical Committee (also referred to as the Task Force), and as called for in Article 36 of the Voter Registration Law, shall oversee the development and validate the draft Voter List. All recommendations to NEC by the Technical Committee, through their oversight, must be unanimous and forwarded to NEC for consideration. NEC, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Political Parties shall ensure that their Committee members are qualified to carry out these responsibilities and per Article 36 of the Voter Registration Law, are appointed by NEC. It is the responsibility of NEC to take into consideration the recommendations of the Technical Committee before publishing the Final Voter List.
2. The Voter Registration server, which houses the registrant database and recognition software, shall have controlled and limited access. NEC shall ensure that only the following technical persons, making up the Server Team2 are present at any time in the Server Room unless unanimously agreed upon by the Technical Committee:
a. The National Register Officer (or acting3)
b. The Chairman of the Technical Committee4 (NEC Commissioner)
c. The ECIL5 technical expert
d. The Interpeace Regional Director for Eastern and Central Africa6
e. The Interpeace Voter Registration Programme Director 7
3. An Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) will be utilized to disqualify all double and multiple registrants who have been electronically fingerprinted.
4. A Facial Recognition System will be utilized to further assess for double and multiple registrants.
5. The Server Team shall run the recognition software and establish the parameters for qualifying/disqualifying registrants based on data collected from the recognition software. The Server Team will develop a draft set of these qualification parameters and submit to the Technical Committee for unanimous approval and forwarded to NEC for final authorization. These parameters must be consistent with the Voter Registration Law and its amendment.
6. The approved qualification parameters will be applied to the data of all registrants to identify all qualified and disqualified registrants. From this, the Server Team will produce the draft Final Voter List as well as an annex report identifying all disqualified registrants and the reason for their disqualification (based on the approved parameters for disqualification).
7. The Technical Committee shall unanimously approve the Final Voter List, after which the lists shall be forwarded to NEC for final authorization and publishing.
8. Under age registrants shall be discouraged through a public awareness campaign warning all under-aged registrants from voting. Disqualification of under-age voting shall not be carried out at the polling center on Election Day.
9. Given the large number of double and multiple registrants, it is imperative that NEC take the prescribed legal action against violators of Article 33: Prohibition to have more than one card. Greater awareness must also be brought forth by NEC regarding the criminality of holding more than one card.
Explanation of the issues mentioned above (Index)
1. The signature of the NEC in this code of conduct means that there are gaps and criticism towards the voter registration and that NEC is prepared to address these issues.
2. Technical expert from ECIL and the acting national registrar will be working on the Server. The other members will go there for an inspection once in a while and for support
3. The acting registrar is Tani Omer
4. The Commissioner of NEC is Ismail Muse Nur
5. ECIL company ( The Electronic Company of India Limited) is the company that produced the registration equipment and is represented by Sunil Kumar Reddy who is highly trained for the server
6. Interpeace regional Director for Eastern and Central Africa is Jerry McCann
7. Interpeace Director for registration is Ruben Zamora
Signatories:
Political Parties’ Representatives
1. Jama Yasin Farah – Secretary-General of UDUB party
2. Kayse Hassan Egeh – Secretary-General Of Kulmiye party
3. Mohamed Hassan Bashe – Secretary-General of the UCID party
NEC Representative:
1. Jama M. Omer – NEC Chairperson
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