To glimpse America's secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia...
Security personnel from the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland patrol the Gulf of Aden near Bosaso. "You can see why we still need America's help," says a coast-guard commander.
Somalia developmentsEthiopia withdrawing: Ethiopia announced Friday it is pulling its forces from Somalia by year's end. Ethiopia has sent thousands of troops here since early 2007, when it launched a U.S.-backed operation that drove Islamic militants from the capital Mogadishu after
six months in power.
Pirates seize tanker: Somali pirates seized control of a chemical tanker ship Friday,
the latest in a series of increasingly brazen pirate attacks off Somalia's coast, a major international shipping lane through which about 20 tankers sail daily. Friday's
was the 97th ship hijacking this year.
The Associated Press
BERBERA, Somalia — To glimpse America's secret war in Africa, you must bang with a rock on the iron gate of the prison in this remote port in northern Somalia. A sleepy guard will yank open a rusty deadbolt. Then, you ask to speak to an inmate named Mohamed Ali Isse.
Isse, 36, is a convicted murderer and jihadist. He is known among his fellow prisoners, with grudging awe, as "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg."
That "thing" is a stainless-steel surgical pin screwed into his bullet-shattered femur, courtesy, he says, of the U.S. Navy. How it got there — or more to the point, how Isse ended up in this crumbling, stonewalled hellhole at the uttermost end of the Earth — is a story that the U.S. government probably would prefer to remain untold.
That's because Isse and his fancy surgery scars offer what little tangible evidence exists of a bare-knuckled war that has been waged silently, over the past five years, with the sole aim of preventing anarchic Somalia from becoming the world's next Afghanistan.
"Your government gets away with a lot here," said the prison warden, Hassan Mohamed Ibrahim, striding about his antique facility with a pistol tucked in the back of his pants. "In Iraq, the world is watching. In Afghanistan, the world is watching. In Somalia, nobody is watching."
It is a standoff war in which the Pentagon lobs million-dollar cruise missiles into a famine-haunted African wasteland the size of Texas, hoping to kill lone terror suspects who might be dozing in candlelit huts.
It is a covert war in which the CIA has recruited gangs of unsavory warlords to hunt down and kidnap Islamic militants and — according to Isse and civil rights activists — secretly imprison them offshore, aboard U.S. warships.
Mostly, though, it is a policy time bomb that will be inherited by the incoming Obama administration: a little-known front in the global war on terrorism that the U.S. appears to be losing, if it hasn't already been lost.
"Somalia is one of the great unrecognized U.S. policy failures since 9/11," said Ken Menkhaus, a leading Somalia scholar at Davidson College in North Carolina. "By any rational metric, what we've ended up with there today is the opposite of what we wanted."
What the Bush administration wanted, when it tacitly backed Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006, was clear enough: to help a close African ally in the war on terror crush the Islamic Courts Union. The Taliban-like movement emerged from the ashes of more than 15 years of anarchy and lawlessness in Africa's most infamous failed state, Somalia.
At first, the invasion seemed an easy victory. By early 2007, the Courts had been routed, a pro-Western transitional government installed, and hundreds of Islamic militants in Somalia either captured or killed.
But over the past 18 months, Somalia's Islamists — now more radical than ever — have regrouped and roared back.
On a single day last month, they flexed their muscles by killing nearly 30 people in a spate of bloody car-bomb attacks that recalled the darkest days of Iraq. And their brutal militia, the Shabab, or "Youth," today controls much of the destitute nation, a shattered but strategic country that overlooks the vital oil-shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden.
Even worse, Shabab's fighters have moved to within miles of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, threatening to topple the weak interim government supported by the U.S. and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, in the midst of a killing drought, more than 700,000 city dwellers have been driven out of bullet-scarred Mogadishu by the recent clashes between the Islamist rebels and the interim government.
Somalia's hapless capital has long been considered the Dodge City of Africa — a seaside metropolis sundered by clan fighting ever since the nation's central government collapsed in 1991. That feral reputation was cemented in 1993, when chanting mobs dragged the bodies of U.S. Army Rangers through the streets in a disastrous U.N. peacekeeping mission chronicled in the book and movie "Black Hawk Down."
The airport — the city's frail lifeline to the world — is regularly closed by insurgent mortar attacks despite a small and jittery contingent of African Union peacekeepers.
Foreign workers who once toiled quietly for years in Somalia have been evacuated. A U.S. missile strike in May killed the Shabab commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, enraging Islamist militants who have since vowed to kidnap and kill any outsider found in the country.
Today most of Somalia is closed to the world.
It wasn't supposed to turn out this way when the U.S. provided intelligence to the invading Ethiopians two years ago.
The homegrown Islamic radicals who controlled most of central and southern Somalia in mid-2006 certainly were no angels. They shuttered Mogadishu's cinemas, demanded that Somali men grow beards and, according to the U.S. State Department, provided refuge to some 30 local and international jihadists associated with al-Qaida.
But the Islamic Courts Union's turbaned militiamen had actually defeated Somalia's hated warlords. And their enforcement of Islamic religious laws, while unpopular among many Somalis, made Mogadishu safe to walk in for the first time in a generation.
When the Islamic movement again strengthened, Isse, the terrorist jailed in Berbera, was a pharmacy owner from the isolated town of Buro in Somaliland, a parched northern enclave that declared independence from Somalia in the early 1990s. Radicalized by U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is serving a life sentence for organizing the killings of four foreign aid workers in late 2003 and early 2004. Two of his victims were elderly British teachers. Sources say Isse was snatched in 2004 by the U.S. after fleeing to the safe house of a notorious Islamist militant in Mogadishu.
The job was done by Mohamed Afrah Qanyare, a warlord in a business suit, who said four years ago his militia helped form the kernel of a CIA-created mercenary force called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in Somalia. The unit cobbled together some of the world's most violent, wily and unreliable clan militias — including gangs that had attacked U.S. forces in the early 1990s — to confront a rising tide of Islamic militancy in Somalia's anarchic capital.
Isse was wounded in the raid, according to Qanyare, now a member of Somalia's weak transitional government who divides his days between lawless Mogadishu and luxury hotels in Nairobi. Matt Bryden, one of the world's leading scholars of the Somali insurgency who has access to intelligence regarding it, confirmed the account. They say Isse was then loaded aboard a U.S. military helicopter summoned by satellite phone and was flown, bleeding, to an offshore U.S. vessel.
Navy doctors spliced a steel rod into Isse's bullet-shattered leg, according to defense lawyer Bashir Hussein Abdi. Every day for about a month afterward, Isse's court depositions assert, plainclothes U.S. agents grilled the bedridden Somali at sea about al-Qaida's presence. The CIA never has publicly acknowledged its operations in Somalia. Agency spokesman George Little declined to comment on Isse's case. In June, the British civil-rights group Reprieve contended that as many as 17 U.S. warships may have doubled as floating prisons since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Calling such claims "misleading," the Pentagon has insisted that U.S. ships have served only as transit stops for terror suspects being shuttled to permanent detention camps such as the one in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In a terse statement, Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet that patrols the Gulf of Aden, said only that the Navy was "not able to confirm dates" of Isse's imprisonment. For reasons that remain unclear, he was later flown to Camp Lemonier, a U.S. military base in the African state of Djibouti, Somali intelligence sources say, and from there to a clandestine prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Isse and his lawyer allege he was detained there for six weeks and tortured by Ethiopian military intelligence with electric shocks.
Security officials in neighboring Somaliland confirmed that they collected Isse from the Ethiopian police at a dusty border crossing in late 2004. "The Man with the American Thing in His Leg" was interrogated again. After a local trial, he was locked in the ancient Berbera prison.
The CIA's anti-terror mercenaries in Mogadishu may have kidnapped a dozen or more wanted Islamists for the Americans, intelligence experts say. But their excesses ended up swelling the ranks of their enemy, the Islamic Courts Union militias. "It was a stupid idea," said Bryden, the security analyst. "It actually strengthened the hand of the Islamists and helped trigger the crisis we're in today." Somalia's 2 million-strong diaspora is of greatest concern. Angry young men, foreign passports in hand, could be lured back to the reopened Shabab training camps, where instructors occasionally use photocopied portraits of Bush as rifle targets.
Some envision no Somalia at all.
With about $8 billion in humanitarian aid fire-hosed into the smoking ruins of Somalia since the early 1990s — the U.S. will donate roughly $200 million this year alone — a growing chorus of policymakers is advocating that the failed state be allowed to fail, to break up into autonomous zones or fiefdoms, such as Isse's home of Somaliland.
But there is another possible future for Somalia. In Bosaso, a port 300 miles east of Isse's cell, thousands of people swarm through the town's scruffy waterfront seeking passage across the Gulf of Aden to the Middle East. Dressed in rags, they sleep by the hundreds in dirt alleys and empty lots. Stranded women and girls are forced into prostitution.
"You can see why we still need America's help," said Abdinur Jama, the coast-guard commander for Puntland, the semiautonomous state encompassing Bosaso.
A military think tank at West Point studying Somalia concluded last year that, in some respects, failed states were admirable places to combat al-Qaida, because the absence of local sovereignty permitted "relatively unrestricted Western counterterrorism efforts."
By Paul Salopek
Chicago Tribune
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
30 November, 2008
JUSTICE ESSENTIAL TO BREAKING CYCLE OF CONFLICT IN DR CONGO, UN RIGHTS CHIEF SAYS
JUSTICE ESSENTIAL TO BREAKING CYCLE OF CONFLICT IN DR CONGO, UN RIGHTS CHIEF SAYS Outbreaks of bloodshed will continue to occur in the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where in the past few months escalating conflict has uprooted a quarter of a million people, unless impunity is ended for those guilty of the worst violations, the top United Nations human rights official said today in Geneva.
“The DRC runs the risk of becoming a case study in how peace processes can go awry without the will to make justice and accountability an integral part of these processes,” Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a special session on the human rights situation in the east of the vast African nation.
The DRC has been trying to consolidate stability following a brutal six-year civil war – widely considered the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II – that ended earlier this decade and cost 4 million lives in fighting and attendant hunger and disease. Serious unrest has continued sporadically in recent years, despite the official end of the war.
Fighting has stepped up in recent weeks between Government forces (FARDC) and a rebel militia known as the Congress in Defence of the People (CNDP), led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda, mainly in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda. Other armed groups, including the Mayi Mayi, have also been involved in deadly clashes, some of which have been along ethnic lines.
Ms. Pillay told the 47-member Council today that her office has documented a worsening human rights situation in North Kivu, with executions, kidnappings and looting occurring daily.
“The prevailing culture of impunity contributes to this wide range of serious human rights violations,” she said, adding that “unparalleled violence” against women continues, with rape being a particular concern.
The High Commissioner said Government forces had been involved in pillaging, rapes and killings in Goma, North Kivu’s capital. But such acts are not confined to North and South Kivu provinces, she underscored, pointing to the violations committed by other “brutal forces” in the region, including Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
“Past peace agreements have enabled well-known perpetrators of atrocities to be integrated into the army and police,” Ms. Pillay said. “This has exacerbated the current climate of impunity in the DRC, empowered human rights violators and further endangered the Congolese population.”
Four UN human rights experts today voiced their serious concern over violations in the country’s east, calling on warring parties to respect human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as abide by ceasefire commitments and allow aid workers access to the vulnerable.
“The international community has a responsibility to protect and should provide MONUC, the peacekeeping mission of the United Nations in the DRC, with the capacity to protect civilians at risk, where and when State authorities fail to do so,” according to a statement by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Yakin Ertürk, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences; Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and Walter Kälin, the Secretary-
General’s Representative on the human rights of IDPs.
In a related development, former Nigerian president and the Secretary-General’s envoy Olusegun Obasanjo will be returning to the region today to resume diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in the DRC’s east.
It was announced today that he is slated to visit Kinshasa tomorrow and Goma on Sunday, with other regional stops planned along the way.
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today reported that it has begun the voluntary transfer of displaced Congolese from camps in Kibati, on Goma’s northern outskirts.
The agency’s vehicles will take the first group of people with special needs such as disabilities and chronic illnesses will be transported to Muganga I camp, one of four sites in the area.
This is the first of several movements which will continue through the weekend, UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told reporters in Geneva, and about 1,000 are expected to be moved to the camp by next week.
Shelter and basic services will be provided at the camp, and the new arrivals will join 25,000 other IDPs who have been sheltering there since 2006.
Ground has been broken on construction at Mugunga III, a new site proposed for voluntary relocation of the displaced who will travel from Kibati on foot.
Mr. Spindler also said that thousands of Congolese refugees have fled across the border to Uganda in the past two days to escape a new round of fighting and attacks by armed assailants in Rutshuru in North Kivu.
UNHCR staff have reported that 13,000 IDPs had entered the south-west Uganda border town of Ishasha, while 10,000 people crossed into the country today. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concern that the new arrivals may be carrying diseases, such as cholera, with them, and has been distributing clean water there.
After the latest influx, there are now 150,000 refugees in Uganda, one-third of them from the DRC, Mr. Spindler said.
For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that relief has been reaching South Lubero, nearly 200 kilometres north of Goma, but cautioned that inaccessibility in certain areas could lead to an increase in malnutrition cases.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
“The DRC runs the risk of becoming a case study in how peace processes can go awry without the will to make justice and accountability an integral part of these processes,” Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a special session on the human rights situation in the east of the vast African nation.
The DRC has been trying to consolidate stability following a brutal six-year civil war – widely considered the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II – that ended earlier this decade and cost 4 million lives in fighting and attendant hunger and disease. Serious unrest has continued sporadically in recent years, despite the official end of the war.
Fighting has stepped up in recent weeks between Government forces (FARDC) and a rebel militia known as the Congress in Defence of the People (CNDP), led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda, mainly in North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda. Other armed groups, including the Mayi Mayi, have also been involved in deadly clashes, some of which have been along ethnic lines.
Ms. Pillay told the 47-member Council today that her office has documented a worsening human rights situation in North Kivu, with executions, kidnappings and looting occurring daily.
“The prevailing culture of impunity contributes to this wide range of serious human rights violations,” she said, adding that “unparalleled violence” against women continues, with rape being a particular concern.
The High Commissioner said Government forces had been involved in pillaging, rapes and killings in Goma, North Kivu’s capital. But such acts are not confined to North and South Kivu provinces, she underscored, pointing to the violations committed by other “brutal forces” in the region, including Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
“Past peace agreements have enabled well-known perpetrators of atrocities to be integrated into the army and police,” Ms. Pillay said. “This has exacerbated the current climate of impunity in the DRC, empowered human rights violators and further endangered the Congolese population.”
Four UN human rights experts today voiced their serious concern over violations in the country’s east, calling on warring parties to respect human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as abide by ceasefire commitments and allow aid workers access to the vulnerable.
“The international community has a responsibility to protect and should provide MONUC, the peacekeeping mission of the United Nations in the DRC, with the capacity to protect civilians at risk, where and when State authorities fail to do so,” according to a statement by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Yakin Ertürk, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences; Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and Walter Kälin, the Secretary-
General’s Representative on the human rights of IDPs.
In a related development, former Nigerian president and the Secretary-General’s envoy Olusegun Obasanjo will be returning to the region today to resume diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in the DRC’s east.
It was announced today that he is slated to visit Kinshasa tomorrow and Goma on Sunday, with other regional stops planned along the way.
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today reported that it has begun the voluntary transfer of displaced Congolese from camps in Kibati, on Goma’s northern outskirts.
The agency’s vehicles will take the first group of people with special needs such as disabilities and chronic illnesses will be transported to Muganga I camp, one of four sites in the area.
This is the first of several movements which will continue through the weekend, UNHCR spokesperson William Spindler told reporters in Geneva, and about 1,000 are expected to be moved to the camp by next week.
Shelter and basic services will be provided at the camp, and the new arrivals will join 25,000 other IDPs who have been sheltering there since 2006.
Ground has been broken on construction at Mugunga III, a new site proposed for voluntary relocation of the displaced who will travel from Kibati on foot.
Mr. Spindler also said that thousands of Congolese refugees have fled across the border to Uganda in the past two days to escape a new round of fighting and attacks by armed assailants in Rutshuru in North Kivu.
UNHCR staff have reported that 13,000 IDPs had entered the south-west Uganda border town of Ishasha, while 10,000 people crossed into the country today. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concern that the new arrivals may be carrying diseases, such as cholera, with them, and has been distributing clean water there.
After the latest influx, there are now 150,000 refugees in Uganda, one-third of them from the DRC, Mr. Spindler said.
For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that relief has been reaching South Lubero, nearly 200 kilometres north of Goma, but cautioned that inaccessibility in certain areas could lead to an increase in malnutrition cases.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Just ten trained terrorists caused carnage
Mumbai's ordeal ends after three days with 200 dead – and the Indian authorities piecing together how a small unit of Islamist fanatics were able to mount such terrible attacks
By Andrew Buncombe in Mumbai and Jonathan Owen
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Officials said they believe the terrorists who carried out attacks that left almost 200 people dead, and who held off the security forces for three days, may have numbered as few as 10. Only one – apparently a Pakistani national identified as Mohammed Ajmal Qasam by a senior Indian official – was captured alive. And a report claimed that, under interrogation, he told officials that he and his colleagues wanted to carry out "India's 9/11" – a title that local television channels have already attached to this week's events. Other reports said the men were linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group that has fought Indian forces in disputed Kashmir and was blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.
Despite suggestions that one or more of the terrorists may have been British, authorities in the UK and India damped down talk of such a connection. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said that the Indian government had assured him there was no evidence that the terrorists had British origins. The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said that British authorities had "no knowledge" of any links with the massacre. In India, Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Maharashtra state chief minister, said: "There is no such authentic information. We totally deny this." David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was more circumspect. In an interview with Sky News yesterday, he said it was "too early to say" if any of the terrorists were British.
What is certain is that the series of co-ordinated incidents involved a new level of planning and training for terror attacks in South Asia. The terrorists apparently had GPS equipment, were heavily armed, well disciplined and in all likelihood had carried out a reconnaissance mission. Some may have checked into the Taj Mahal hotel several days before launching the violence on Wednesday. One of their first acts once inside the hotel was to blow up the CCTV control room.
Surviving hotel staff said the men seemed to have a practised knowledge of the hotel's less obvious internal routes. And they may also have recruited local help.
Yesterday, the Indian navy said it was investigating the possibility that a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack. The authorities suspect the Kuber had sailed from the neighboring state of Gujarat, and that the militants used a rubber dinghy found nearby to come ashore.
For the paramilitaries and commandos confronting the gunmen, it was no easy matter. An army general told reporters the terrorists were well armed and well trained, something that would explain why a relatively small number of them could hold off the security forces for so long. "At times we found them matching us in combat and movement," said one commando. "They were either army regulars or have done a long stint of commando training."
They were equipped with sophisticated weapons, mobile and satellite phones, and were "constantly in touch with a foreign country", police said.
"Whenever they were under a little bit of pressure they would hurl a grenade. They freely used grenades," said commando chief Jyoti Krishna Dutt. The gunmen were prepared for a long haul, carrying bags of almonds and dried fruit to keep their energy levels high. One man's backpack contained 400 rounds of ammunition.
The three-day siege ended around 7am yesterday, when commandos killed the last three terrorists, who were holed up in the seafront Taj Mahal hotel, near the Gateway of India monument. Since Thursday, the authorities had repeatedly said they were on the brink of "cleaning out" the hotel, but the last three fighters put up tough resistance. At least one commando was also killed in the running gun battle.
Mr Dutt told reporters crowded outside the battle-scarred building that gunmen had set parts of the hotel ablaze as they played cat and mouse with the security forces and left bodies in their wake, some with grenades stuffed into their mouths or concealed underneath them.
An American tourist, identified as Patricia, who had been trapped in her room, told a television news channel: "The blood, everywhere the blood. And when we came down to the lobby, all the hundreds and hundreds of policemen were standing there looking so fried and so sad."
Yesterday, the authorities began removing bodies and taking them to hospital mortuaries for identification. It is unclear how many bodies were removed from the hotel, but it is likely that the death toll will rise considerably. A number were being delivered to the Sir JJ Hospital in Mumbai, where tearful families came to identify the bodies of relatives.
Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, said he would act against any groups in his country shown to be responsible for the attacks. The country's ISI intelligence agency is due to dispatch a senior official to India to help in the investigation. "As President of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest of action in the light of evidence and in front of the world," he said.
Meanwhile, the leader of militant groups in Pakistani Kashmir called the slaughter of civilians in Mumbai "reprehensible" and denied that any member of his alliance was involved. Syed Salahuddin, who heads the United Jihad Council, told Reuters: "I can say with utmost certainty that none of the Kashmiri jihadi groups has any involvement with the events in Mumbai."
Additional reporting by Richard Orange in Mumbai
Mumbai terror attacks: Nightmare in the lap of luxury
Mumbai terror attacks: Nightmare in the lap of luxury
The terrorist rampage that gripped the world for three days began in silence as eight killers stepped from a boat on to a dark city beach. Now India demands to know who they were, where they came from ... and most of all, why the security forces failed to prevent them
Gethin Chamberlain in Mumbai
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 00.01 GMT
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008
Soldier prevents people from approaching the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai on November 29, 2008. Photograph: Pedro Ugarte/AFP
From the moment a small boat nudged the shore of Mumbai's Fisherman's Colony on Wednesday evening and decanted eight young men clad in orange anoraks, the plan was simple: kill and keep killing to the very last breath. The little group paused to shed their waterproof jackets, revealing jeans and T-shirts. Picking up their bulging rucksacks from the black inflatable, they turned silently and set off towards the heart of India's financial capital.
The beach was virtually empty, most of the residents of the area having retreated indoors to watch the final stages of the one-day cricket match between India and England. India won, but it was the last piece of good news the country would have until yesterday morning when Mumbai was finally freed from the grip of an audacious terrorist outrage that claimed the lives of at least 195 people.
For 62 hours, the gunmen roamed freely around some of the city's most prestigious hotels, killing at random, holding Mumbai and the wider world in horrified thrall.
Despite the lure of the cricket, one man had ventured out onto the beach on Wednesday evening. Bharat Tamore, an assistant supervisor at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, was gazing out to sea when he spotted the dinghy drifting noiselessly towards the beach.
It was 9.15pm and by the light of the moon Tahore watched the men jump off. They were young, no more than 25, thin and good-looking, 'like Bollywood stars,' he recalled later, although their faces wore a grim, determined look. On their backs were blue rucksacks, and in their hands red carry-bags heavy enough to cause one of the smaller men to stumble. They were students, they said, when he asked what they were doing: 'They told me that they were tense and that they didn't need any more tension.'
The young men slipped away into the night in the direction of the Taj Mahal Palace and the ornate splendour of the Gateway of India. But they were not the only ones on the move. Across the southern tip of the city, others were also collecting weapons and heading out to get the carnage under way. How many there were, no one seems quite sure: as many as 40, some sources suggested. The key questions are what they intended to achieve in their murderous rampage, their identities, and who sent them to Mumbai. Answers are likely to come in the first instance from one of those who clambered out of the inflatable on Wednesday night - 21-year-old Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab - the only terrorist known to have been captured alive by Indian security forces. As details of his interrogation were disclosed yesterday in the Indian media, the first proper understanding of what happened in three days of bloodshed began to emerge out of the contradictory details - building a case that pointed ever more strongly towards Pakistan.
It is not just the Indian media who are saying out loud what many suspected, but also state officials. What they had only hinted at in the beginning - with Kasab's interrogation - was yesterday stated more boldly. '[The] investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack,' said Sri Prakash Jaiswal, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs. As Kasab left the docks, it was in the company of a man the police say has been identified as Ismail Khan, the terrorists splitting into pairs of small kill teams.
The journey that followed across Mumbai - described in the Indian press - took the two men first by taxi to the CST railway station, where Kasab was chillingly photographed as he paused, amid the gunfire and grenades that killed as many as 50 people, in grey combat trousers, a dark blue T-shirt and wearing a rucksack with spare ammunition on one shoulder.
From the railway station Khan and Kasab moved on to the Cama and GT hospitals, firing as they went. According to the same sources, it was during their progress through Mumbai that the pair shot dead the Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare and another senior officer. Their killing spree was only halted when Khan was shot down in the Girgaum Chowpatty locality of south Mumbai, and when Kasab surrendered.
Now Kasab is talking, and what he has to say is likely to define the future relations of two nuclear-armed rivals - India and Pakistan. Yesterday a Pakistani official said it would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier, if tensions erupt in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai. That the tensions will increase in the coming days seems likely.
Already, if the accounts of his questioning are to be believed, Kasab has revealed that, like him, most of his fellow attackers hailed from Pakistan - although that has yet to be confirmed. He revealed that the group had been planning the attack for months. Some are thought to have taken jobs in the targeted hotels, others had checked in as guests a few days earlier, using their rooms to stockpile weapons. Kasab - from Faridkot in Pakistan - and eight others had visited Mumbai a few months earlier, posing as students and taking a room in the Colaba market area, which they used as a safe-house to store the supplies they would need for the attacks. According to police, Kasab told them that the main planner arrived in Mumbai a month ago to film potential targets to help train the gunmen. Once he was satisfied that they were ready, the boat team members were each issued with an AK-47 rifle, a pistol, 350 bullets and eight hand-grenades.
A recovered GPS device suggested they set out from the Pakistani port of Karachi in a larger boat - though such is the friction between the two countries that such reports have to be treated with caution - before overpowering the crew of another vessel and sailing to within four nautical miles of Mumbai. There, they transferred to speedboats and made for the shore. So began a night of terror.
Even as Kasab and Khan were attacking the CST station, another pair of gunmen hit the the Leopold Café, a popular haunt for backpackers. Witnesses described how the gunmen took weapons out of backpacks and hurled grenades, killing at least one person. More gunmen moved through the area in a hijacked police vehicle, firing indiscriminately.
At Nariman House, the attackers went for a Jewish centre run by Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife Rivka. The couple's son Moshe, two, was rescued by his nanny. They were the only survivors.
But the images of horror that will forever be associated with one of India's darkest days were reserved for elsewhere - the imposing Oberoi and Taj Mahal Palace hotels, frequented by Western business travellers and well-heeled Indians. Here it was the restaurants that took the brunt of the initial assault, but the terrorists quickly fanned out to round up more hostages. At the Taj, the first shots were fired near the swimming pool before the gunmen swarmed into the hotel.
It was in the Taj that a sinister new element to the attack emerged. Survivors said the gunmen were particularly interested in British and American guests, singling them out as targets and ignoring other nationalities. Guests scattered in panic as the carnage continued. 'There were people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom,' said 28-year-old Australian former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell.
Bharat Tamore had reached the hotel only a few minutes earlier. Changing into his uniform ready for the night shift, he heard gunshots coming from the fashionable Shamiana restaurant above. 'I stepped out and saw staff and guests running. It was then I remembered those eight boys,' he said.
Paralysed by fear, he crouched with staff in the kitchen, listening to the crump of explosions and crackle of machine-gun fire until 4am, when they made a dash for freedom.
At the Oberoi, Madhu Kumar, 58, had sat down to a meal with her husband Ashok, 65, and two friends. Panic spread through the room as a gunman burst in, herding them up the stairs. 'He had a scarf like a bandana and a scarf on his mouth and he was carrying a machine gun,' she said. 'There was a stampede. We had heard a commotion and a lot of loud firing. Everybody got panicky. I saw a girl with a bleeding arm. She had been shot.'
She noticed that the gunman was quite fair-skinned and spoke in English - he was a Kashmiri, perhaps, she said. As they moved up the stairs, she heard a gunshot behind her. 'This man was shot by a terrorist behind us. The terrorist said "wait", and I heard the shot and he fell. They were just shooting people at random.'
Caught on the hop and hopelessly outgunned, police struggled to cope. The first team to respond consisted of just eight members of the Mumbai force, each armed with a revolver. It took until 2am for the first military personnel to arrive, a group of 40 Marine commandos summoned from their beds to go to the Taj. Even then, no one was able to give them any information about the layout of the hotel. They did not know the strength of their opponents or what weapons they possessed. Entering the hotel, they found about 15 bodies, but before they could do anything else the terrorists opened fire and hurled grenades. By the time the firing stopped, the gunmen had slipped away into the maze of corridors and passageways in the old building.
Now in the aftermath that has left almost 200 dead - perhaps more in the final counting - it is not simply the question of who sent Kasab and his fellow gunmen to Mumbai that is exercising a shocked India. After three days of combat in which a handful of highly trained and motivated gunmen held off against massively superior Indian forces before being at last overwhelmed, what India wants to know is how its security forces could have been caught so flat-footed yet again, when they should have been at the highest state of vigilance after a series of murderous attacks around the country this year. How, too, some asked, had they failed so dramatically to bring the situation under control during the best part of three days?
Sitting in a side street listening to the sound of loud blasts and gunfire emanating from Nariman House, Rakash Bhaud, the local leader of the far-right Hindu party Shiv Sena, blamed the central government for the failures that, he said, had left them at the mercy of Pakistan-backed terrorists.
'There is a deep anger here against the government for not providing security for the common people,' he said. 'The extremists have taken advantage of this. We don't have the security to fight against this.' If the attackers' intention was to stir up tensions between India and Pakistan - and by extension, Hindu and Muslim - they most certainly succeeded. Anti-Pakistan slogans were being chanted freely by the crowds who gathered to watch the storming of Nariman House.
As the firing died away yesterday morning, the work of getting the city back on its feet began. In the restaurant at the Oberoi hotel, staff were starting to sweep the broken glass away from the tables on which meals abandoned by the fleeing guests still lay. But it may take a lot longer to sweep away the memories of the events of last week and the old enmities it has stirred up.
For now, however, it is a moment for India to come to terms with what has happened. 'I had arranged to meet a friend in the Oberoi Trident lobby on Wednesday night,' said Malani Agarwal, 31, a radio presenter on Mumbai Radio. 'He said he was coming late, so I went upstairs to a lounge bar called the Dragon Fly which is a few doors away. Then we saw a lot of "fireworks" in the lobby. Ten minutes later we felt a tremor. That was the first grenade, then another one.
People started getting texts about a gang war at Leopold's Café and then the Oberoi. The Dragon Café has bulletproof glass and you could see bullets lodged in the windows. That was really scary. We put the television onto the news and saw the Taj burning. The army coming. We all just felt numb. Too scared to move really. It was the worst night of my life. This will be a wake-up call.'
• Additional reporting: Randeep Ramesh
source: The Observer
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
The terrorist rampage that gripped the world for three days began in silence as eight killers stepped from a boat on to a dark city beach. Now India demands to know who they were, where they came from ... and most of all, why the security forces failed to prevent them
Gethin Chamberlain in Mumbai
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 30 2008 00.01 GMT
The Observer, Sunday November 30 2008
Soldier prevents people from approaching the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai on November 29, 2008. Photograph: Pedro Ugarte/AFP
From the moment a small boat nudged the shore of Mumbai's Fisherman's Colony on Wednesday evening and decanted eight young men clad in orange anoraks, the plan was simple: kill and keep killing to the very last breath. The little group paused to shed their waterproof jackets, revealing jeans and T-shirts. Picking up their bulging rucksacks from the black inflatable, they turned silently and set off towards the heart of India's financial capital.
The beach was virtually empty, most of the residents of the area having retreated indoors to watch the final stages of the one-day cricket match between India and England. India won, but it was the last piece of good news the country would have until yesterday morning when Mumbai was finally freed from the grip of an audacious terrorist outrage that claimed the lives of at least 195 people.
For 62 hours, the gunmen roamed freely around some of the city's most prestigious hotels, killing at random, holding Mumbai and the wider world in horrified thrall.
Despite the lure of the cricket, one man had ventured out onto the beach on Wednesday evening. Bharat Tamore, an assistant supervisor at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, was gazing out to sea when he spotted the dinghy drifting noiselessly towards the beach.
It was 9.15pm and by the light of the moon Tahore watched the men jump off. They were young, no more than 25, thin and good-looking, 'like Bollywood stars,' he recalled later, although their faces wore a grim, determined look. On their backs were blue rucksacks, and in their hands red carry-bags heavy enough to cause one of the smaller men to stumble. They were students, they said, when he asked what they were doing: 'They told me that they were tense and that they didn't need any more tension.'
The young men slipped away into the night in the direction of the Taj Mahal Palace and the ornate splendour of the Gateway of India. But they were not the only ones on the move. Across the southern tip of the city, others were also collecting weapons and heading out to get the carnage under way. How many there were, no one seems quite sure: as many as 40, some sources suggested. The key questions are what they intended to achieve in their murderous rampage, their identities, and who sent them to Mumbai. Answers are likely to come in the first instance from one of those who clambered out of the inflatable on Wednesday night - 21-year-old Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab - the only terrorist known to have been captured alive by Indian security forces. As details of his interrogation were disclosed yesterday in the Indian media, the first proper understanding of what happened in three days of bloodshed began to emerge out of the contradictory details - building a case that pointed ever more strongly towards Pakistan.
It is not just the Indian media who are saying out loud what many suspected, but also state officials. What they had only hinted at in the beginning - with Kasab's interrogation - was yesterday stated more boldly. '[The] investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack,' said Sri Prakash Jaiswal, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs. As Kasab left the docks, it was in the company of a man the police say has been identified as Ismail Khan, the terrorists splitting into pairs of small kill teams.
The journey that followed across Mumbai - described in the Indian press - took the two men first by taxi to the CST railway station, where Kasab was chillingly photographed as he paused, amid the gunfire and grenades that killed as many as 50 people, in grey combat trousers, a dark blue T-shirt and wearing a rucksack with spare ammunition on one shoulder.
From the railway station Khan and Kasab moved on to the Cama and GT hospitals, firing as they went. According to the same sources, it was during their progress through Mumbai that the pair shot dead the Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare and another senior officer. Their killing spree was only halted when Khan was shot down in the Girgaum Chowpatty locality of south Mumbai, and when Kasab surrendered.
Now Kasab is talking, and what he has to say is likely to define the future relations of two nuclear-armed rivals - India and Pakistan. Yesterday a Pakistani official said it would divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier, if tensions erupt in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai. That the tensions will increase in the coming days seems likely.
Already, if the accounts of his questioning are to be believed, Kasab has revealed that, like him, most of his fellow attackers hailed from Pakistan - although that has yet to be confirmed. He revealed that the group had been planning the attack for months. Some are thought to have taken jobs in the targeted hotels, others had checked in as guests a few days earlier, using their rooms to stockpile weapons. Kasab - from Faridkot in Pakistan - and eight others had visited Mumbai a few months earlier, posing as students and taking a room in the Colaba market area, which they used as a safe-house to store the supplies they would need for the attacks. According to police, Kasab told them that the main planner arrived in Mumbai a month ago to film potential targets to help train the gunmen. Once he was satisfied that they were ready, the boat team members were each issued with an AK-47 rifle, a pistol, 350 bullets and eight hand-grenades.
A recovered GPS device suggested they set out from the Pakistani port of Karachi in a larger boat - though such is the friction between the two countries that such reports have to be treated with caution - before overpowering the crew of another vessel and sailing to within four nautical miles of Mumbai. There, they transferred to speedboats and made for the shore. So began a night of terror.
Even as Kasab and Khan were attacking the CST station, another pair of gunmen hit the the Leopold Café, a popular haunt for backpackers. Witnesses described how the gunmen took weapons out of backpacks and hurled grenades, killing at least one person. More gunmen moved through the area in a hijacked police vehicle, firing indiscriminately.
At Nariman House, the attackers went for a Jewish centre run by Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife Rivka. The couple's son Moshe, two, was rescued by his nanny. They were the only survivors.
But the images of horror that will forever be associated with one of India's darkest days were reserved for elsewhere - the imposing Oberoi and Taj Mahal Palace hotels, frequented by Western business travellers and well-heeled Indians. Here it was the restaurants that took the brunt of the initial assault, but the terrorists quickly fanned out to round up more hostages. At the Taj, the first shots were fired near the swimming pool before the gunmen swarmed into the hotel.
It was in the Taj that a sinister new element to the attack emerged. Survivors said the gunmen were particularly interested in British and American guests, singling them out as targets and ignoring other nationalities. Guests scattered in panic as the carnage continued. 'There were people getting shot in the corridor. There was someone dead outside the bathroom,' said 28-year-old Australian former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell.
Bharat Tamore had reached the hotel only a few minutes earlier. Changing into his uniform ready for the night shift, he heard gunshots coming from the fashionable Shamiana restaurant above. 'I stepped out and saw staff and guests running. It was then I remembered those eight boys,' he said.
Paralysed by fear, he crouched with staff in the kitchen, listening to the crump of explosions and crackle of machine-gun fire until 4am, when they made a dash for freedom.
At the Oberoi, Madhu Kumar, 58, had sat down to a meal with her husband Ashok, 65, and two friends. Panic spread through the room as a gunman burst in, herding them up the stairs. 'He had a scarf like a bandana and a scarf on his mouth and he was carrying a machine gun,' she said. 'There was a stampede. We had heard a commotion and a lot of loud firing. Everybody got panicky. I saw a girl with a bleeding arm. She had been shot.'
She noticed that the gunman was quite fair-skinned and spoke in English - he was a Kashmiri, perhaps, she said. As they moved up the stairs, she heard a gunshot behind her. 'This man was shot by a terrorist behind us. The terrorist said "wait", and I heard the shot and he fell. They were just shooting people at random.'
Caught on the hop and hopelessly outgunned, police struggled to cope. The first team to respond consisted of just eight members of the Mumbai force, each armed with a revolver. It took until 2am for the first military personnel to arrive, a group of 40 Marine commandos summoned from their beds to go to the Taj. Even then, no one was able to give them any information about the layout of the hotel. They did not know the strength of their opponents or what weapons they possessed. Entering the hotel, they found about 15 bodies, but before they could do anything else the terrorists opened fire and hurled grenades. By the time the firing stopped, the gunmen had slipped away into the maze of corridors and passageways in the old building.
Now in the aftermath that has left almost 200 dead - perhaps more in the final counting - it is not simply the question of who sent Kasab and his fellow gunmen to Mumbai that is exercising a shocked India. After three days of combat in which a handful of highly trained and motivated gunmen held off against massively superior Indian forces before being at last overwhelmed, what India wants to know is how its security forces could have been caught so flat-footed yet again, when they should have been at the highest state of vigilance after a series of murderous attacks around the country this year. How, too, some asked, had they failed so dramatically to bring the situation under control during the best part of three days?
Sitting in a side street listening to the sound of loud blasts and gunfire emanating from Nariman House, Rakash Bhaud, the local leader of the far-right Hindu party Shiv Sena, blamed the central government for the failures that, he said, had left them at the mercy of Pakistan-backed terrorists.
'There is a deep anger here against the government for not providing security for the common people,' he said. 'The extremists have taken advantage of this. We don't have the security to fight against this.' If the attackers' intention was to stir up tensions between India and Pakistan - and by extension, Hindu and Muslim - they most certainly succeeded. Anti-Pakistan slogans were being chanted freely by the crowds who gathered to watch the storming of Nariman House.
As the firing died away yesterday morning, the work of getting the city back on its feet began. In the restaurant at the Oberoi hotel, staff were starting to sweep the broken glass away from the tables on which meals abandoned by the fleeing guests still lay. But it may take a lot longer to sweep away the memories of the events of last week and the old enmities it has stirred up.
For now, however, it is a moment for India to come to terms with what has happened. 'I had arranged to meet a friend in the Oberoi Trident lobby on Wednesday night,' said Malani Agarwal, 31, a radio presenter on Mumbai Radio. 'He said he was coming late, so I went upstairs to a lounge bar called the Dragon Fly which is a few doors away. Then we saw a lot of "fireworks" in the lobby. Ten minutes later we felt a tremor. That was the first grenade, then another one.
People started getting texts about a gang war at Leopold's Café and then the Oberoi. The Dragon Café has bulletproof glass and you could see bullets lodged in the windows. That was really scary. We put the television onto the news and saw the Taj burning. The army coming. We all just felt numb. Too scared to move really. It was the worst night of my life. This will be a wake-up call.'
• Additional reporting: Randeep Ramesh
source: The Observer
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Holding Gaza hostage
Gaza's humanitarian crisis escalates as the world watches in silence. Dina Ezzat reports from Cairo, Saleh Al-Naami from Gaza
 Click to view caption |
| HOPE UNDER SIEGE: A Palestinian child flashes the victory sign during a demonstration calling on Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing |
As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press Wednesday Arab foreign ministers were convening for an extraordinary meeting against the backdrop of an explosive humanitarian crisis in Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians are suffering the effects of Israel's 22-day long blockade.
Gaza's population has been systematically deprived of electricity, medicine, medical supplies, fuel and food. Over the past week Arab TV news channels have been transmitting live footage of the human tragedy, including scenes of critically ill Palestinians awaiting treatment in Gaza's hospitals pleading with the Arabs, and not Israel, for "mercy". One elderly woman suffering from heart disease and diabetes asked Al-Jazeera on Monday: "We are Muslims, why are the Arabs leaving us to die? Why isn't Egypt opening the [Rafah] borders?"
But in Cairo Arab foreign ministers are unlikely to offer anything of substance to the Palestinians. Diplomats who spoke to the Weekly on condition of anonymity say there are three reasons why the Cairo meeting will end with little meaningful help being offered to Gaza. First is the reluctance of the Palestinian Authority to solicit Arab support. "The issue has become strictly Fatah versus Hamas," commented one Cairo- based Arab diplomat.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, will interpret Arab support for Gaza as indirect support for Hamas.
In the words of another Arab diplomatic source: "Abbas does not want Arabs to even talk to Hamas. He was furious when [Arab League Secretary-General Amr] Moussa met with [Hamas leader Khaled] Meshaal in Damascus on the fringe of Arab League meetings."
Abbas, the source suggested, complained to Cairo and Amman that Moussa was lending credence to Hamas at a time when Hamas should be forced to submit to Fatah.
Abbas has reportedly demanded that the PA, and not the Hamas government in Gaza, be credited for any assistance advanced to Palestinians living in the Strip. Otherwise, he argues, Hamas will emerge the victor.
The second problem is Egypt's reluctance to unilaterally open the Rafah Crossing, the only link Gaza has with the outside world that is not under Israeli control, for humanitarian assistance. The Rafah Crossing, says Cairo, is designed for the passage of individuals not commodities and it can only be operated after the PA, which left Gaza under Hamas control in the summer of 2007, returns to the Strip. This, Egypt argues, could have been achieved through the national reconciliation it was trying to mediate earlier this month but which Hamas abandoned after complaining Abbas was harassing its members in the West Bank and that the mediation process was biased towards Fatah.
Egyptian officials now say it is up to Hamas to end Gaza's misery, first by suspending Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli targets and denying the Israeli government any pretext to impose a blockade and then by pursuing national reconciliation that will allow for the Palestinian Authority to return to Gaza and the Rafah Crossing to be reopened.
The third reason the Arab foreign ministers meeting yesterday at the Cairo-based headquarters of the Arab League will fail to reach any agreement on a rescue package is that even those Arab countries sympathetic to Hamas and supportive of a more inclusive approach to Palestinian decision-making, remain unwilling to confront Cairo over the need to open Rafah.
"It is a matter of Egyptian sovereignty and there is not much we can do," said one Syrian diplomatic source.
The most that can be expected from the meeting is a resolution blaming Israel for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip but containing no retaliatory measures against Tel Aviv should it continue with the siege. As one senior Hamas source said, "when the Palestinian Authority is encouraging the siege and coordinating with Israel it is hard to expect other Arab countries to worry much about the Palestinians".
The Wednesday meeting is certain to call for continued reconciliation efforts and demand that the incoming US administration prioritise a final peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the lives of thousands of Palestinians are threatened. Palestinian Health Minister Bassem Naim told the Weekly that recurrent power cuts have paralysed health services and death "on a large scale" is expected. Central oxygen supply stations catering to the needs of patients with respiratory problems are barely operational. Sterilisation equipment for surgeries no longer functions and pasteurisation machines for milk are no longer operational. The entire system of intensive care in Palestinian hospitals is on the verge of collapse.
Israel opened border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Monday, allowing in limited amounts of food and fuel for the second time in three weeks after the United Nations warned of a looming humanitarian crisis. Aid groups say the one-day shipment will have minimal impact because border crossings have been closed for so long, depleting reserves of everything from flour to animal feed.
"It is just not enough," says Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Gunness reports that UNRWA cannot function normally without a steady stream of supplies, not only food but books for schoolchildren, also blocked by Israel for weeks.
Israel first imposed its siege on Gaza after the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah resulted in Hamas's takeover over of the Strip in June 2007. The aim of the siege is ostensibly to weaken Hamas and remove it from power yet it is Gaza residents who daily pay the price of an increasingly deadly political equation.Al-Ahram Weekly
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
29 November, 2008
King Kong Oo Boqornimo Loo Caleemo Saaray.
Warbixinta Caleemo Saarka - Soo rogo (MP3) Warbixinta Caleemo Saarka - Dhegayso (MP3)
Boqor King-KongBoqor Cabdullahi Boqor Muuse oo loo yaqaan King-Kong, ayaa loo caleemo saaray maanta inuu noqdo Boqorka Beelaha Daarood.
Munaasabada caleemasaarkaasi oo ka dhacday Magaalada Qardo ayaa waxaa ka soo qeybgalay Mas’uuliyiin uu ka mid yahay Madaxweyanah Dowlada FKMG Cabdillahi Yusuf Axmed, Mas’uuliyiinta maamul goboleedka Puntland, Salaadiin, Odoyaal iyo dadweyne aad u fara badan.
Qaar ka tirsan Mas’uuliyiintii iyo Salaadiintii ka qeybgashay Caleemasaarka Boqor King-Kong ayaa halkaasi ka soo jeediyey qudbado hambalyo iyo guubaabo ah oo ay u jeediyeen Boqorka cusub.
Warbixinta Caleemasaarkaasi halkan ka dhagayso.
By Abdulqadir Nuunow Boossaso 27-November-2008
Boqor King-KongBoqor Cabdullahi Boqor Muuse oo loo yaqaan King-Kong, ayaa loo caleemo saaray maanta inuu noqdo Boqorka Beelaha Daarood.
Munaasabada caleemasaarkaasi oo ka dhacday Magaalada Qardo ayaa waxaa ka soo qeybgalay Mas’uuliyiin uu ka mid yahay Madaxweyanah Dowlada FKMG Cabdillahi Yusuf Axmed, Mas’uuliyiinta maamul goboleedka Puntland, Salaadiin, Odoyaal iyo dadweyne aad u fara badan.
Qaar ka tirsan Mas’uuliyiintii iyo Salaadiintii ka qeybgashay Caleemasaarka Boqor King-Kong ayaa halkaasi ka soo jeediyey qudbado hambalyo iyo guubaabo ah oo ay u jeediyeen Boqorka cusub.
Warbixinta Caleemasaarkaasi halkan ka dhagayso.
By Abdulqadir Nuunow Boossaso 27-November-2008
The Democratic Republic of Congo has announced its refusal to see Indian troops reinforce the peace mission
The Democratic Republic of Congo has announced its refusal to see Indian troops reinforce the peace mission of the United Nations in that country. The country accused India of having committed "abuses." A letter addressed to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "We reject Indian troops."
A journalist held in Somaliland freed after two weeks
A journalist held in Somaliland freed after two weeks
MONTREAL, Nov. 28 /CNW Telbec/ - Reporters Without Borders today notes
the release, on 18 November 2008, of freelance journalist Hadis Mohammed
Hadis, after being held for two weeks at the Criminal Investigation Department
in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway region of Somaliland in northern
Somalia.
Hadis Mohammed Hadis has already been arrested on several occasions over
the last two years. He told Reporters Without Borders that he was "worried"
and concerned about how he will be able to do his job in the future. He
however stressed that he had been "well-treated" by police while in custody.
He was arrested on 3 November while filming the arrival at Hargeisa
airport of Suleiman Mohamed Adam, chairman of the House of Wise men, one of
the two legislative chambers. The journalist said he thought his arrest could
be linked to his coverage of a bombing in Hargeisa in October. The authorities
have not provided any explanation for his detention.
For further information: Katherine Borlongan, Executive Director,
Reporters Without Borders Canada, (514) 521-4111, rsfcanada@rsf.org
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
MONTREAL, Nov. 28 /CNW Telbec/ - Reporters Without Borders today notes
the release, on 18 November 2008, of freelance journalist Hadis Mohammed
Hadis, after being held for two weeks at the Criminal Investigation Department
in Hargeisa, capital of the breakaway region of Somaliland in northern
Somalia.
Hadis Mohammed Hadis has already been arrested on several occasions over
the last two years. He told Reporters Without Borders that he was "worried"
and concerned about how he will be able to do his job in the future. He
however stressed that he had been "well-treated" by police while in custody.
He was arrested on 3 November while filming the arrival at Hargeisa
airport of Suleiman Mohamed Adam, chairman of the House of Wise men, one of
the two legislative chambers. The journalist said he thought his arrest could
be linked to his coverage of a bombing in Hargeisa in October. The authorities
have not provided any explanation for his detention.
For further information: Katherine Borlongan, Executive Director,
Reporters Without Borders Canada, (514) 521-4111, rsfcanada@rsf.org
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Muslims urged to settle disputes, forge unity
Muslims urged to settle disputes, forge unity
MADINAH: The imam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, called on the Muslims yesterday to settle their disputes and forge unity.
Delivering his Friday sermon to a gathering of more than one and a half million pilgrims at the Grand Mosque, Al-Sudais said, “This is the sacred place and time to settle disputes that have caused the Ummah untold miseries. We should not disunite. One of our major problems is the issue of Palestine. Our Palestinian brothers are suffering due to injustice and Israeli siege and also because of infighting and division among themselves.”
The imam welcomed the Haj pilgrims to Makkah and called their pilgrimage a journey of repentance and piety. He urged them to keep away from sinful deeds. “The safety and security of the pilgrims is in the hands of Almighty Allah.
The sanctity and inviolability of the Two Holy Mosques cannot be marred by crises or extremist activities,” he said.
The khatib at the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, Sheikh Salah Al-Budair, in his Friday sermon said that Allah forgives all sins of pilgrims who repent genuinely because they come from far off places with the sole aim of winning the mercy of the Almighty. “They are cleaned of all past sins,” he added. “The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: ‘A virtuous Haj pilgrim has no reward but Paradise,’” Al-Budair added. He also urged the pilgrims to behave kindly, help and cooperate during the pilgrimage. He asked them not to push or jostle at crowded places and not to quarrel with anyone.
According to the Saudi Press Agency, more than 500,000 worshippers attended Friday prayers at the Prophet’s Mosque.
“After visiting and praying at the Holy Mosque in Madinah, thousands of pilgrims who came mostly from Arab and Muslim countries, returned to Makkah yesterday,” said Hamid Al-Bakri, director general at the Haj Ministry’s branch in Madinah.
Al-Bakri added that the ministry’s branch had taken all possible steps to make their journey comfortable and safe.
“Our teams made 2,154 inspection tours to various field offices serving the pilgrims. The teams of the emergency and operation center made 2,000 rounds and inspected all the facilities for the pilgrims including the arrangements at the departure points,” Al-Bakri said.
Arab News
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
MADINAH: The imam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, called on the Muslims yesterday to settle their disputes and forge unity.
Delivering his Friday sermon to a gathering of more than one and a half million pilgrims at the Grand Mosque, Al-Sudais said, “This is the sacred place and time to settle disputes that have caused the Ummah untold miseries. We should not disunite. One of our major problems is the issue of Palestine. Our Palestinian brothers are suffering due to injustice and Israeli siege and also because of infighting and division among themselves.”
The imam welcomed the Haj pilgrims to Makkah and called their pilgrimage a journey of repentance and piety. He urged them to keep away from sinful deeds. “The safety and security of the pilgrims is in the hands of Almighty Allah.
The sanctity and inviolability of the Two Holy Mosques cannot be marred by crises or extremist activities,” he said.
The khatib at the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, Sheikh Salah Al-Budair, in his Friday sermon said that Allah forgives all sins of pilgrims who repent genuinely because they come from far off places with the sole aim of winning the mercy of the Almighty. “They are cleaned of all past sins,” he added. “The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: ‘A virtuous Haj pilgrim has no reward but Paradise,’” Al-Budair added. He also urged the pilgrims to behave kindly, help and cooperate during the pilgrimage. He asked them not to push or jostle at crowded places and not to quarrel with anyone.
According to the Saudi Press Agency, more than 500,000 worshippers attended Friday prayers at the Prophet’s Mosque.
“After visiting and praying at the Holy Mosque in Madinah, thousands of pilgrims who came mostly from Arab and Muslim countries, returned to Makkah yesterday,” said Hamid Al-Bakri, director general at the Haj Ministry’s branch in Madinah.
Al-Bakri added that the ministry’s branch had taken all possible steps to make their journey comfortable and safe.
“Our teams made 2,154 inspection tours to various field offices serving the pilgrims. The teams of the emergency and operation center made 2,000 rounds and inspected all the facilities for the pilgrims including the arrangements at the departure points,” Al-Bakri said.
Arab News
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
For Somalis, going home has its risks
Many would like to return to their homeland someday. Some even do. But if they go, they say it's only to gain fresh perspective -- not to fight.
Ilyas Maye, 24, is one of the young Minneapolis Somali men who has returned to his homeland. He went back last year, for three months. "I went outside to see what the world had to offer me," said Maye, who owns a clothing store on Lake Street in Minneapolis. "And I would go back again." He did not, he insisted, go to fight. He went for a new perspective on his life in America. And others are doing the same thing, Maye and several other local Somali men said Wednesday. Many have found only disappointment here -- lost jobs, trouble with the law, poor prospects. So, he said, they go back to Somalia for a fresh start or to reconnect with their culture. Or, he said, "to do something good." But federal officials continue to investigate whether some young Somali men are returning to their homeland with more dangerous intentions, a source familiar with the case said, adding that several have left the Twin Cities in recent months. What authorities are trying to determine is whether they are participating in terrorist activities. The source has confirmed that one of the men who returned to Somalia at the beginning of this year blew himself up in a terrorist-led operation there. In a community of tens of thousands of people, the reasons for the reported disappearance of up to 20 young men has prompted many rumors. But what people believe tends to reflect how close they are to one of the missing men. E.K. Wilson, a spokesman for the Minneapolis FBI office, confirmed Wednesday that investigators continue to meet with members of the Somali community to discuss the disappearances. "Our activities are still evolving daily," Wilson said. "We know that some Somalis have traveled from the United States to fight. I would say that some have traveled from Minneapolis potentially to fight, because we just don't know yet." While it's unclear what cause the men might have returned to fight for, Somalia has been caught up in civil war for more than a decade, and U.S. intelligence officials are concerned that Al-Qaida may have used the chaos to gain a presence in the country. Osman Ahmed, board chairman of the Riverside Plaza Tenants' Association, said his 17-year-old nephew disappeared Nov. 4. The nephew called his mother a few days later and said only that he was OK and in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and would call back later. He never did. The family didn't want the nephew's name used out of fear for his safety. Ahmed said the nephew was a Minneapolis high school student who spent his time at school, at home, or at a local mosque. "He was very nice," Ahmed said. "He was very connected to the mosque." He said the boy's mother first went to authorities, then noticed his passport was missing. He said the family suspects the boy was being told what to say when he called home. Afraid to go to authorities Ahmed said he has since spoken to others in the community and believes that young men have been recruited to fight in Somalia during the past year or two, but that their parents were afraid to go to the authorities for fear they would somehow be blamed or that their children would be in trouble if they returned. Ahmed encouraged other parents to step forward, though, saying that authorities will catch those responsible and parents "have a right to speak and tell that they are missing a child." Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said he's spoken to several parents of missing children and said others should feel assured that there's nothing to be afraid of if they speak out. Concern is growing among those who have seen their sons disappear without even a goodbye note, said Saheed Fahia, executive director of Confederation of the Somali Community in Minnesota. It is being discussed in community meetings and in meetings with the FBI, he said. "It seems that they are going back to fight," Fahia said of a handful of missing sons. "And parents ... think there are people here who are recruiting their sons because the young people just left without telling anybody." Many people, however, are cautioning people to ask questions before they assume that men are missing. Ahmed Abdullahi, 24, said he heard rumors that his brother, 23-year-old Abdul Abdullahi, was named as one of the missing men who may have gone to Somalia to fight. "When they said one of the people was my brother, I couldn't stop laughing," Abdullahi said. "They said he was one of the people who was sent, which is a lie." What those spreading the rumors didn't know, he said, was that his brother was spending three months in Somalia with his extended family because he suffers from depression during the winter months. His family has been in touch with his brother and is not concerned that he is involved in any fighting. "Those who are saying my brother went there, I wish they would have come to me or my mother or his physician and talk to us," said Abdullahi, adding that he also made a trip to Somalia in 2006 for similar reasons. Imam Hassan Mohamud, of the Islamic Da'wah Center in St. Paul, said he is reminding members of the Somali community that passing along rumors is against Islam. He said that the Qur'an states, "If you heard any news don't react; make sure that the news is genuine and true." Some in the community have a hard time believing anyone would return to fight. "I've never seen any family of mine, or any person, go back," said Muhamed Muhamed, 22, whose family came to the United States in 1995. "I won't believe it until I actually see it happen." Abdulkadir Said, 47, said he didn't believe the rumors when he first heard them a couple of weeks ago. Going to fight with terrorists in Somalia is "totally unacceptable" in the local Somali community, he said. Mahad Isse, 28, said that fighting convinced his family to flee Somalia. Why would others now want to seek out such dangers? "I consider myself a survivor. We had a civil war, people were killed," Isse said. "I heard, a long time ago, that it was time to set the gun down, pick up the pen and educate yourself. And I believe it." Maye said he believes more young Somalis should return -- if only to gain a clearer perspective about how much better life is here. But even he admits he wouldn't return soon. "They shoot educated people," he said. Lora Pabst contributed to this report. James Walsh • 612-673-7428 Pam Louwagie • 612-673-7102 |
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Somaliland Blames Recent Suicide Attacks on Al-Shabab
Somaliland Blames Recent Suicide Attacks on Al-Shabab
By VOA News 27 November 2008
Officials in the breakaway region of Somaliland are blaming the Islamist militant group al-Shabab for last month's suicide bombings in the regional capital Hargeisa.Addressing reporters Thursday, Somaliland's interior minister, Abdullahi Ismail Ali, said an investigation found that two al-Shabab leaders masterminded the attacks. He identified them as Ahmed Abdi Godane and Mukhtar Roobow Abu-Mansuur.
The minister said other militants led by a man called Abdulfatah Abdullahi Guutaale carried out the bombings.The bombers attacked a United Nations office, an Ethiopian consulate, and the presidential palace in Hargeisa October 29. At least 24 people were killed.Somaliland, located in northern Somalia, has mostly been spared the violence that has wracked southern Somalia as insurgent groups like al-Shabab battle the Somali transitional government.The U.S. government considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization. The group is believed to have links to al-Qaida.Somaliland declared itself separate from the rest of Somalia in 1991 and runs its own affairs, though it is not recognized internationally.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
By VOA News 27 November 2008
Officials in the breakaway region of Somaliland are blaming the Islamist militant group al-Shabab for last month's suicide bombings in the regional capital Hargeisa.Addressing reporters Thursday, Somaliland's interior minister, Abdullahi Ismail Ali, said an investigation found that two al-Shabab leaders masterminded the attacks. He identified them as Ahmed Abdi Godane and Mukhtar Roobow Abu-Mansuur.
The minister said other militants led by a man called Abdulfatah Abdullahi Guutaale carried out the bombings.The bombers attacked a United Nations office, an Ethiopian consulate, and the presidential palace in Hargeisa October 29. At least 24 people were killed.Somaliland, located in northern Somalia, has mostly been spared the violence that has wracked southern Somalia as insurgent groups like al-Shabab battle the Somali transitional government.The U.S. government considers al-Shabab a terrorist organization. The group is believed to have links to al-Qaida.Somaliland declared itself separate from the rest of Somalia in 1991 and runs its own affairs, though it is not recognized internationally.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Islamic Courts in Somalia: We are not Courting Saudi Arabia
Islamic Courts in Somalia: We are not Courting Saudi Arabia Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat- Sheikh Abdul Raheem Isa Ado, the spokesman for the Islamic Courts’ forces in Somalia has stated that the Courts have issued warnings to the pirates responsible for the hijacking of the Saudi Sirius Star oil tanker on November 17 at the port city of Haradheere, Puntland. The Courts demanded that the pirates end the operation, release the oil tanker and ensure that the crew is returned to safety.
In this exclusive interview, Abdul Raheem spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat by phone from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The interview proceeded as follows:
Q: Do you have any new information about the hijacked oil tanker?
A: No, I do not have any information.
Q: Are there any plans for military intervention to secure the release of the tanker?
A: There are ongoing attempts; we have already warned them [the hijackers]. After that, we will cut off supplies that reach them from the mainland and we will do everything in our capacity to have the boat released.
Q: Are your forces in the city [of Haradheere]?
A: Yes, the city is in under our control, we’re there and our forces are there. Moreover, its surrounding villages are under the control of the [Islamic] Courts.
Q: So could you confirm that there will be military intervention taken against the pirates?
A: There have been attempts; firstly, we have issued warnings to them to release their hostages without any conditions. Secondly, we are stopping their supplies on land and after that we will spare no effort and do everything in our capacity [to ensure the tanker’s release] but I cannot say that intervention will take place at a certain time or on a specific day. However, we will try our best, God willing, to set the boat free because it belongs to an Arab and Islamic country. It is not enough to sit by and watch and not to intervene.
Q: But pirates have hijacked Egyptian and Yemeni ships before, why didn’t you intervene then?
A: We have always been thinking about putting an end to piracy against ships belonging to non-Muslims. We are against piracy and the horrific acts that pirates carry out but this ship [the Sirius Star] was close to the city that we are in; this is the first reason. We do not approve of piracy against Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Our forces are present in the city [of Haradheere] and there is security, as well as the [Islamic] Courts and that is why we announced our position before.
Q: Some consider your statement as a way of courting Saudi Arabia. What is your response to this?
A: No, Saudi Arabia is our sister, there is no courting. Egypt, Yemen and all Arab and Islamic countries are our sisters and it is the same for the rest of world. We do not condone the hijacking of ships and we have always thought about how we can try to intervene in cases of piracy but from now on we will intervene. Let me tell you that there are ships that enter Somali seas illegally and there are ships that come in and dump waste and there are pirates who are not Somalis.
Q: What is the number of your forces in the city?
A: I cannot state the size of our forces to the media but there are enough for us to work and intervene, but this will take place at the right time and place and this will be decisive.
Q: The Shabaab movement denied that it is going to confront pirates; are the disputes between you?
A: The movement is our sister and there are no problems between us.
Q: Has there been any personal communication between yourselves and the pirates?
A: Yes, our brothers in Haradheere have spoken to them and warned them and there is an office that contacts them.
Q: Thank you, is there anything you would like to add?
A: We are fighting our Ethiopian enemy that occupies our land and we say to all Arab and Islamic countries and their nations that they should know that we are defending our land, our religion and our nation and they must help our afflicted people.
Asharq Al-Awsat 28/11/2008
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
In this exclusive interview, Abdul Raheem spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat by phone from the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The interview proceeded as follows:
Q: Do you have any new information about the hijacked oil tanker?
A: No, I do not have any information.
Q: Are there any plans for military intervention to secure the release of the tanker?
A: There are ongoing attempts; we have already warned them [the hijackers]. After that, we will cut off supplies that reach them from the mainland and we will do everything in our capacity to have the boat released.
Q: Are your forces in the city [of Haradheere]?
A: Yes, the city is in under our control, we’re there and our forces are there. Moreover, its surrounding villages are under the control of the [Islamic] Courts.
Q: So could you confirm that there will be military intervention taken against the pirates?
A: There have been attempts; firstly, we have issued warnings to them to release their hostages without any conditions. Secondly, we are stopping their supplies on land and after that we will spare no effort and do everything in our capacity [to ensure the tanker’s release] but I cannot say that intervention will take place at a certain time or on a specific day. However, we will try our best, God willing, to set the boat free because it belongs to an Arab and Islamic country. It is not enough to sit by and watch and not to intervene.
Q: But pirates have hijacked Egyptian and Yemeni ships before, why didn’t you intervene then?
A: We have always been thinking about putting an end to piracy against ships belonging to non-Muslims. We are against piracy and the horrific acts that pirates carry out but this ship [the Sirius Star] was close to the city that we are in; this is the first reason. We do not approve of piracy against Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Our forces are present in the city [of Haradheere] and there is security, as well as the [Islamic] Courts and that is why we announced our position before.
Q: Some consider your statement as a way of courting Saudi Arabia. What is your response to this?
A: No, Saudi Arabia is our sister, there is no courting. Egypt, Yemen and all Arab and Islamic countries are our sisters and it is the same for the rest of world. We do not condone the hijacking of ships and we have always thought about how we can try to intervene in cases of piracy but from now on we will intervene. Let me tell you that there are ships that enter Somali seas illegally and there are ships that come in and dump waste and there are pirates who are not Somalis.
Q: What is the number of your forces in the city?
A: I cannot state the size of our forces to the media but there are enough for us to work and intervene, but this will take place at the right time and place and this will be decisive.
Q: The Shabaab movement denied that it is going to confront pirates; are the disputes between you?
A: The movement is our sister and there are no problems between us.
Q: Has there been any personal communication between yourselves and the pirates?
A: Yes, our brothers in Haradheere have spoken to them and warned them and there is an office that contacts them.
Q: Thank you, is there anything you would like to add?
A: We are fighting our Ethiopian enemy that occupies our land and we say to all Arab and Islamic countries and their nations that they should know that we are defending our land, our religion and our nation and they must help our afflicted people.
Asharq Al-Awsat 28/11/2008
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
SOMALIS: Children from minority communities miss out on school
HARGEISA, 28 November 2008 (IRIN) - Children in parts of Somalia's self-declared republic of Somaliland have never gone to school because their communities prefer they remain at home and learn petty trades, a local NGO said. The communities include the Gaboye, Midgan, Tumal and Yibro - most of whom lead reclusive lives and do not interact or inter-marry with other communities. They are mostly cobblers, blacksmiths and barbers. Abdillahi Hassan Digale, chairman of the Ubah Social Welfare Organization (USWO), said the NGO had interviewed 31 families, with 118 children aged seven to 14, and only five were in school.
"The main obstacles against children going to school are the economic status and social exclusion of these minority groups," Digale said. However, various initiatives are being undertaken to uplift the communities' status. "In collaboration with UNICEF [the UN Children's Fund] and the University of Hargeisa, we have built one education centre for minority children in Daami and enrolled almost 300 pupils," Abdillahi said. "The university has also started a programme that gives higher education scholarships to five minority children every year."
During a study in August, USWO found eight families in Koosaar camp for internally displaced persons, where only two children were enrolled in school, in Burao, the second-largest city in Somaliland. "I have three children who can go to school but they don't because we like our children to study the skills of their parents such as shoe-making and running barber shops," Bedra Ibrahim Dalbac, a resident of Burao, told IRIN. Moreover, he said, discrimination by other communities made it hard for them to send their children to school.
"Also, our income is not enough to provide for the schooling, so we just think about taking care of them and forget about schooling," he added. Another parent, Bedel Biihi Mohamud, said he had enrolled three of his five children in school. "Five of my children reached school-going age but only three attend school, while the other two work with me in shoe-making because we don't have enough money to send all of them to school," he said. However, according to USWO, lack of education opportunities for minorities is the main reason for the communities' failure to send their children to school.
"In addition, most parents are hesitant to send children to public schools due to discrimination," he added. "Somaliland authorities say schools are open for minority children but they don't have a policy that specifically targets them." Minority groups had a representative in the lower house of Somaliland's parliament, but he lost the seat in the last election.
Two officials from minority communities - the deputy minister of health and labour, Mahdi Osman Buri, and Jirde Sa'id Mohamoud, a member of the standing committee of the Upper House of Parliament - remain in government.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
"The main obstacles against children going to school are the economic status and social exclusion of these minority groups," Digale said. However, various initiatives are being undertaken to uplift the communities' status. "In collaboration with UNICEF [the UN Children's Fund] and the University of Hargeisa, we have built one education centre for minority children in Daami and enrolled almost 300 pupils," Abdillahi said. "The university has also started a programme that gives higher education scholarships to five minority children every year."
During a study in August, USWO found eight families in Koosaar camp for internally displaced persons, where only two children were enrolled in school, in Burao, the second-largest city in Somaliland. "I have three children who can go to school but they don't because we like our children to study the skills of their parents such as shoe-making and running barber shops," Bedra Ibrahim Dalbac, a resident of Burao, told IRIN. Moreover, he said, discrimination by other communities made it hard for them to send their children to school.
"Also, our income is not enough to provide for the schooling, so we just think about taking care of them and forget about schooling," he added. Another parent, Bedel Biihi Mohamud, said he had enrolled three of his five children in school. "Five of my children reached school-going age but only three attend school, while the other two work with me in shoe-making because we don't have enough money to send all of them to school," he said. However, according to USWO, lack of education opportunities for minorities is the main reason for the communities' failure to send their children to school.
"In addition, most parents are hesitant to send children to public schools due to discrimination," he added. "Somaliland authorities say schools are open for minority children but they don't have a policy that specifically targets them." Minority groups had a representative in the lower house of Somaliland's parliament, but he lost the seat in the last election.
Two officials from minority communities - the deputy minister of health and labour, Mahdi Osman Buri, and Jirde Sa'id Mohamoud, a member of the standing committee of the Upper House of Parliament - remain in government.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
UNAIDS Urges More Transparency on HIV Reporting
UNAIDS Urges More Transparency on HIV Reporting
Bryant report - Download (MP3) Bryant report - Listen (MP3)
A new report by UNAIDS urges countries to adopt flexible policies that reflect how and why the latest HIV infections are transmitted. The report coincides with the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. For VOA, Lisa Bryant has more from Paris.
An AIDS patient at a hospital in Dakar, Senegal (Nov 2007)The overall story of HIV/AIDS is not as bleak as its numbers suggest. While an estimated 33 million people worldwide live with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, the numbers of new infections have been declining since 2001 and more HIV-infected people are getting treatment and living longer.But a study published Friday by UNAIDS suggests countries have much more to do to fight the epidemic - in large part by adopting combined and flexible HIV/AIDS-prevention policies - particularly since the pattern of the epidemic may change over time. Some countries are also not targeting the most vulnerable populations in fighting the virus - such as intravenous drug users and men having sex with men.
"The message is that countries need to tailor their prevention programs to the epidemics in their own specific countries," said Karen Stanecki, a senior advisor for UNAIDS in Geneva. "And they need to know where the new infections are occurring in order to do that. And we recommend a combination-prevention process of doing this where one prevention program isn't going to do it all." Stanecki says that message has registered in some countries. Namibia is a case in point. "They have put various strategies into place and they are now seeing reductions in new infections among young people," she said. "Young people are delaying sexual activity .
They're reducing the numbers of multiple partners and we've seen increase use in condoms."The global financial crisis may pose a new threat for cash-strapped countries. But experts warn that cutting corners when it comes to fighting HIV/AIDS will leave the world in worse shape in a few years time than it is now.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Bryant report - Download (MP3) Bryant report - Listen (MP3)
A new report by UNAIDS urges countries to adopt flexible policies that reflect how and why the latest HIV infections are transmitted. The report coincides with the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. For VOA, Lisa Bryant has more from Paris.
An AIDS patient at a hospital in Dakar, Senegal (Nov 2007)The overall story of HIV/AIDS is not as bleak as its numbers suggest. While an estimated 33 million people worldwide live with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, the numbers of new infections have been declining since 2001 and more HIV-infected people are getting treatment and living longer.But a study published Friday by UNAIDS suggests countries have much more to do to fight the epidemic - in large part by adopting combined and flexible HIV/AIDS-prevention policies - particularly since the pattern of the epidemic may change over time. Some countries are also not targeting the most vulnerable populations in fighting the virus - such as intravenous drug users and men having sex with men.
"The message is that countries need to tailor their prevention programs to the epidemics in their own specific countries," said Karen Stanecki, a senior advisor for UNAIDS in Geneva. "And they need to know where the new infections are occurring in order to do that. And we recommend a combination-prevention process of doing this where one prevention program isn't going to do it all." Stanecki says that message has registered in some countries. Namibia is a case in point. "They have put various strategies into place and they are now seeing reductions in new infections among young people," she said. "Young people are delaying sexual activity .
They're reducing the numbers of multiple partners and we've seen increase use in condoms."The global financial crisis may pose a new threat for cash-strapped countries. But experts warn that cutting corners when it comes to fighting HIV/AIDS will leave the world in worse shape in a few years time than it is now.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
UPSURGE OF FIGHTING IN SOMALIA AMONG HEAVIEST IN RECENT MONTHS, UN REPORTS
The past week has seen some of the heaviest fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in recent months, with at least 55 civilians estimated to have been killed and more than 80 others wounded, according to local hospital records cited by United Nations humanitarian officials.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (<"http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/news">UNHCR) estimates that more than 100,000 additional people have been forced to flee Mogadishu since 1 September in upsurge of fighting in a country that has been riven by factional conflicts and has not had a functioning central government since 1991.
Some 45,000 of those recently displaced moved to relatively safer areas in Mogadishu itself, while others sought safety along the Afgooye corridor, adding to a population of more than 360,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in appalling conditions there, UNHCR said. An estimated 250,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu this year alone.
During the past week, NATO and Dutch naval frigates successfully escorted three vessels through pirate-infested waters with 18,730 metric tons of UN World Food Programme (<"WFP'>http://www.wfp.org/english/?n=31">WFP) shipments to Mogadishu and the coastal town of Marka. WFP distributed food to nearly 360,000 people in various parts of the Horn of Africa country.
The agency has found that large areas of cultivated farms in the Lower and Middle Juba regions have been flooded and crops damaged. Food reserves stored in underground pits were also destroyed.
But the outlook for the ongoing short rainy season (September-December) is promising and expected to be normal throughout Somalia, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization (<"http://www.fao.org/">FAO) analysis. Grazing and water availability has improved countrywide and the cereal crop harvest is expected to be good in the main producing areas of the south.
Depending on the outcome of the cereal harvest and prices in areas of good crop production, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance could decline over the coming six months.
On the political front, UN officials have welcomed the signing of a power-sharing decision in neighbouring Djibouti between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and one of its Islamist opponents, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), to set up an inclusive and enlarged government and Unity Government.
“We are pleased to be supporting this initiative,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said. The UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) is facilitating a three-day workshop in Djibouti ending today to flesh out the decision.
“This is the first of many dialogues on a long journey gathering various stakeholders in the complex process of bringing peace and stability to Somalia, UN Development Programme (<"http://www.undp.org/">UNDP) country director Bruno Lenmarquis said.
The Independent Expert on human rights in Somalia Shamsul Bari also welcomed the power-sharing decision as well as one on the establishment of a commission of inquiry and an international court to address gross human rights and international humanitarian law violations.
http://www.un.org/news
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (<"http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/news">UNHCR) estimates that more than 100,000 additional people have been forced to flee Mogadishu since 1 September in upsurge of fighting in a country that has been riven by factional conflicts and has not had a functioning central government since 1991.
Some 45,000 of those recently displaced moved to relatively safer areas in Mogadishu itself, while others sought safety along the Afgooye corridor, adding to a population of more than 360,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in appalling conditions there, UNHCR said. An estimated 250,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu this year alone.
During the past week, NATO and Dutch naval frigates successfully escorted three vessels through pirate-infested waters with 18,730 metric tons of UN World Food Programme (<"WFP'>http://www.wfp.org/english/?n=31">WFP) shipments to Mogadishu and the coastal town of Marka. WFP distributed food to nearly 360,000 people in various parts of the Horn of Africa country.
The agency has found that large areas of cultivated farms in the Lower and Middle Juba regions have been flooded and crops damaged. Food reserves stored in underground pits were also destroyed.
But the outlook for the ongoing short rainy season (September-December) is promising and expected to be normal throughout Somalia, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization (<"http://www.fao.org/">FAO) analysis. Grazing and water availability has improved countrywide and the cereal crop harvest is expected to be good in the main producing areas of the south.
Depending on the outcome of the cereal harvest and prices in areas of good crop production, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance could decline over the coming six months.
On the political front, UN officials have welcomed the signing of a power-sharing decision in neighbouring Djibouti between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and one of its Islamist opponents, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS), to set up an inclusive and enlarged government and Unity Government.
“We are pleased to be supporting this initiative,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Representative for Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said. The UN Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS) is facilitating a three-day workshop in Djibouti ending today to flesh out the decision.
“This is the first of many dialogues on a long journey gathering various stakeholders in the complex process of bringing peace and stability to Somalia, UN Development Programme (<"http://www.undp.org/">UNDP) country director Bruno Lenmarquis said.
The Independent Expert on human rights in Somalia Shamsul Bari also welcomed the power-sharing decision as well as one on the establishment of a commission of inquiry and an international court to address gross human rights and international humanitarian law violations.
http://www.un.org/news
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Ethiopia oo la baxaysa ciidamadeeda
Ethiopia oo la baxaysa ciidamadeeda | |||||
Dowladda Ethiopia ayaa sheegtay in dhamaan ciidamadeeda ay kala bixi doonto Somalia dhamaadka bisha soo socota, taasi oo soo gabagabeyneysa labo sano oo ay halkaasi ku sugnaayeen oo ay kula dagaalamayeen kooxaha Islaamiyiinta. Wasiirka arrimaha dibedda ee Ethiopia Seyoum Mesfin ayaa ku sheegay warqad uu u diray QM iyo Midowga Africa, in ay tahay wax aan habooneyn in ciidamada militeriga ee Ethiopia ay sii joogaan Somalia, iyagoo halkaasi u tagay buu yiri inay ka hortagaan dhibaato ka dhacda Somalia, markii kooxha Ilsaamiyiintu ay weerar ku soo qaadeen 2006 si ay u ridaan dowladda taagta daran ee Somalia. Seyoum Mesfin waxa uu sheegay in in aanu rajo wanaagsan ka lahayn fursadaha ciidamo caalami ah oo dejiya oo loo diro Somalia, iyadoo dadaalka dib u heshiisiinta kooxaha Somalia uu aad gaabis u yahay. Weriyayaasha ayaa sheegaya in Dowladda Ethiopia ay dhibaato xun kala kulan tay Somalia, dagaalka ay ku jirtana dhibaato xagga dhaqaalaha uu sii gelinayo. | |||||
Warbixinta Ethiopia28 November, 2008
Justice, Poetry and Love: Food for the Soul
by Ikram jama I have lived in Ottawa since 1992 and despite the many challenges we face as a community one thing I have always loved about being a part of the Somali community in Ottawa is their spirit of activism. We are not perfect but we are known to come together on local issues, to organize at the grassroots level and to face local problems collectively. However, many of our community meetings are about difficult and sometimes heavy issues. We often come together to find a solution for a particular challenge or to lobby for certain rights and services. While these gatherings are very useful and make me proud of the way we organize and advocate, I often secretly wished if we could come together and talk about literature, poetry, the good times in the old country and take a break from serious and difficult issues. This is not to say that we don't gather to have fun at all, people enjoy weddings, and the youth have their own ways of enjoying themselves and the elderly also get together on happy occasions. But what was missing is coming together as a community, young and old, men and women to a cultural event that is relaxing, educating and fun – I wanted similar experiences to the ones I had when I was young. I often went to the National Theatre with my elders and enjoyed a wonderful play and that is where I learned a lot about Somali literature and culture. So finally I participated in a memorable event thanks to Mohamed Ibraahim Warsame Hadraawi.
The mood around the room was relaxed, and you can see shy smiles on the faces of people of all ages when Hadraawi was talking about love. As a participant I was very happy that finally I could see a glimpse of the old days when we were joyful, when every gathering was not about struggle or political disagreements but about poetry, literature and yes love! I encourage all of us to remember that in these often difficult times of migration, settlement and integration self-care is very important and perhaps we need more nights like the one described here to just take a break from our busy, hectic and issue-filled lives and talk about Cilmi Boodhari. Thank you Hadraawi for all that you did and still do for all of us. Ikram jama ikramjama@yahoo.com
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http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Mutawef Your Guide To Hajj
Thank God the first place that enabled us to complete the second edition of the "Mutawef" program after the two-year effort.
It started before that the idea of studying the reality of Hajj and Umrah for the visitors and ended the findings and recommendations pleased thanks to God and generosity that has been adapted all went out in the form of "Mutawef" program, which is in reality several programs into one program it contains ritual legitimacy, maps, housing and extension services and governmental actors And we will show you the "Mutawef" programs to make it clear how it's valuable and important for every visitor to the holly kaaba.
We have released the First version of "Mutawef" in preceding year 9 days before Hajj and was downloaded in installed on about 500,000 mobile although it was in Arabic language only and no advertisement have been made for it, but it have bean spread in a wonderful way that proves the urgent need in market for such tool for Hajj and Umrah
About Mutawef• Handles an Urgent need of users.
• Guide for the most large and important annual event in the world.
• Addresses the place where people from all Islamic countries and the world.
• Deals with a device hold by everyone (Mobile phone) so it gives the value for every person.
• Guides the Hajj and Umrah ritual in a very simple innovative way , and give strong advices for avoiding common mistakes and the desirable prayer in every step in Hajj and Umrah and visitation.
Advantages of Mutawef
• Easy accessibility of program functions using the options lists and standard Mobile buttons.• easy to deal with maps and the possibility of movement and easily browse through the arrow buttons.
• ease of download and installation on the device.
•All screens and maps of the program can be controlled and magnified depending on the preferences if the user (Hajj)
• The program is compatible with all Java Enabled Mobiles, such as Nokia and Sony Ericson and others.
for more information visit: http://www.mutawef.com/
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
A Twin Cities pipeline to terror in Somalia?
A Twin Cities pipeline to terror in Somalia?
Federal authorities are investigating whether young Somali men who have disappeared in the Twin Cities metro area in recent months have been recruited to fight for terrorist groups in strife-torn Somalia.
A source familiar with the case confirmed Tuesday that there is a high-level investigation of whether six to seven young Somali men and teenagers left the Twin Cities and returned to their homeland to participate in terrorist activities. The source confirmed that one of the people in that group under scrutiny had returned to Somalia around the first of the year and blown himself up in a terrorist-led operation there.
Additionally, E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Minneapolis office of the FBI, would not confirm an investigation. But he acknowledged the agency's concern that young Somali men have been returning to Somalia to fight.
"We are aware of the circumstances in Somalia," Wilson said. "We are aware that a number of individuals throughout the U.S., including Minneapolis, have traveled to Somalia to fight for terrorist groups. But I cannot confirm or deny an investigation at this point."
He said he could not say whether Shirwa Ahmed, a Twin Cities man named in a KSTP TV report Tuesday, was one of them. The station said that federal authorities are investigating whether Ahmed was a terrorism recruiter in the Twin Cities who blew himself up in northern Somalia last month.
A woman who said she was Ahmed's sister said Tuesday night that her brother left the United States for Saudi Arabia "a year ago." She said she last spoke to Ahmed about a month ago, when he called her from Yemen.
The woman, who did not want to give her name, said that she has been contacted by the FBI and that officials want her to come to their office for an interview. Asked whether she is going to do that soon, she said, "I don't know."
She would not say why her brother went to Saudi Arabia or what he was doing in Yemen. And, she said, she does not know if her brother is dead or alive. Her family, including Ahmed, came to the United States in 1995, she said, adding that her brother graduated from Minneapolis Roosevelt High School in 1999.
Families 'completely shocked'
Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said several local Somali families' sons have disappeared in the past few months. Two groups of men in their 20s left Minneapolis at the beginning of August and the beginning of November, Jamal said. He estimated that 14 to 20 men are missing.
Authorities said that metro-area TV news reports saying that as many as 20 or more Somali men were being recruited for terrorist operations were inflated.
"The families are completely shocked," Jamal said. "They feel their kids have been stolen away from them."
Many of the family members of the missing men have been hesitant to talk to authorities, Jamal said. While most of the families have not heard from their sons, Jamal said, one man received a call from his nephew, who told him that he was in Somalia.
"Somebody must be financing these kids, indoctrinating them," he said. "We hope the appropriate law enforcement agency gets to the bottom of this."
Jamal described the men as mostly college-educated, "from homes with strong family values, but with a strong sense of cultural shock."
The gang culture and violence that has affected the Minneapolis Somali community left a lot of young men looking for other options in their lives, he said. He said he is concerned that someone persuaded the men to return to Somalia.
"They've been left alone, marginalized," Jamal said. "They show them alternatives."
Abdisalam Adam, director of Dar Al-Hijrah Cultural Center in Minneapolis, said there is a lot of confusion in the Somali community about why the men would have left. He questioned rumors that the men are being recruited to leave the U.S., saying he doesn't know of anyone who has been approached to go to Somalia.
"No one knows exactly who is behind this and who is convincing them to leave," he said.
The focus of the Somali community in Minneapolis should be on peace in Somalia, he said.
"That's a voice we need to get to the policymakers," Adam said. "As long as there is no peace in Somalia, it will continue to affect the lives of immigrants."
Jamal and Adam encouraged local Somalis to talk to authorities if any of their family members are missing.
"We should not hide it," Adam said. "We should be upfront, and if we find out about anyone involved we should let the authorities know about this."
Jamal said he asks the young men in Somalia to report to a U.S. consulate "We think of them as victims that have been misled," Jamal said. "I don't want them to be afraid."
Wilson added: "We are committed to working with members of the Somali-American community in Minneapolis and in other cities to stop the recruitment and radicalization of their youth. We encourage Somali-Americans to reach out to us, or to the police, with any concerns about the safety of the youth in their community."
By JAMES WALSH, LORA PABST and PAM LOUWAGIE,
Star Tribune staff writers
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Federal authorities are investigating whether young Somali men who have disappeared in the Twin Cities metro area in recent months have been recruited to fight for terrorist groups in strife-torn Somalia.
A source familiar with the case confirmed Tuesday that there is a high-level investigation of whether six to seven young Somali men and teenagers left the Twin Cities and returned to their homeland to participate in terrorist activities. The source confirmed that one of the people in that group under scrutiny had returned to Somalia around the first of the year and blown himself up in a terrorist-led operation there.
Additionally, E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Minneapolis office of the FBI, would not confirm an investigation. But he acknowledged the agency's concern that young Somali men have been returning to Somalia to fight.
"We are aware of the circumstances in Somalia," Wilson said. "We are aware that a number of individuals throughout the U.S., including Minneapolis, have traveled to Somalia to fight for terrorist groups. But I cannot confirm or deny an investigation at this point."
He said he could not say whether Shirwa Ahmed, a Twin Cities man named in a KSTP TV report Tuesday, was one of them. The station said that federal authorities are investigating whether Ahmed was a terrorism recruiter in the Twin Cities who blew himself up in northern Somalia last month.
A woman who said she was Ahmed's sister said Tuesday night that her brother left the United States for Saudi Arabia "a year ago." She said she last spoke to Ahmed about a month ago, when he called her from Yemen.
The woman, who did not want to give her name, said that she has been contacted by the FBI and that officials want her to come to their office for an interview. Asked whether she is going to do that soon, she said, "I don't know."
She would not say why her brother went to Saudi Arabia or what he was doing in Yemen. And, she said, she does not know if her brother is dead or alive. Her family, including Ahmed, came to the United States in 1995, she said, adding that her brother graduated from Minneapolis Roosevelt High School in 1999.
Families 'completely shocked'
Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said several local Somali families' sons have disappeared in the past few months. Two groups of men in their 20s left Minneapolis at the beginning of August and the beginning of November, Jamal said. He estimated that 14 to 20 men are missing.
Authorities said that metro-area TV news reports saying that as many as 20 or more Somali men were being recruited for terrorist operations were inflated.
"The families are completely shocked," Jamal said. "They feel their kids have been stolen away from them."
Many of the family members of the missing men have been hesitant to talk to authorities, Jamal said. While most of the families have not heard from their sons, Jamal said, one man received a call from his nephew, who told him that he was in Somalia.
"Somebody must be financing these kids, indoctrinating them," he said. "We hope the appropriate law enforcement agency gets to the bottom of this."
Jamal described the men as mostly college-educated, "from homes with strong family values, but with a strong sense of cultural shock."
The gang culture and violence that has affected the Minneapolis Somali community left a lot of young men looking for other options in their lives, he said. He said he is concerned that someone persuaded the men to return to Somalia.
"They've been left alone, marginalized," Jamal said. "They show them alternatives."
Abdisalam Adam, director of Dar Al-Hijrah Cultural Center in Minneapolis, said there is a lot of confusion in the Somali community about why the men would have left. He questioned rumors that the men are being recruited to leave the U.S., saying he doesn't know of anyone who has been approached to go to Somalia.
"No one knows exactly who is behind this and who is convincing them to leave," he said.
The focus of the Somali community in Minneapolis should be on peace in Somalia, he said.
"That's a voice we need to get to the policymakers," Adam said. "As long as there is no peace in Somalia, it will continue to affect the lives of immigrants."
Jamal and Adam encouraged local Somalis to talk to authorities if any of their family members are missing.
"We should not hide it," Adam said. "We should be upfront, and if we find out about anyone involved we should let the authorities know about this."
Jamal said he asks the young men in Somalia to report to a U.S. consulate "We think of them as victims that have been misled," Jamal said. "I don't want them to be afraid."
Wilson added: "We are committed to working with members of the Somali-American community in Minneapolis and in other cities to stop the recruitment and radicalization of their youth. We encourage Somali-Americans to reach out to us, or to the police, with any concerns about the safety of the youth in their community."
By JAMES WALSH, LORA PABST and PAM LOUWAGIE,
Star Tribune staff writers
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
via Medeshi by noreply@blogger.com (Medeshi) on 27/11/08
Medeshi Nov 27, 2008
The Ogaden and the Ethiopian Government
Collective Punishment
(Full report : Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia's Somali Region."
Collective Punishment
Collective Punishment
(Full report : Collective Punishment: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia's Somali Region."
Collective Punishment
Summary
Tens of thousands of ethnic Somali civilians living in eastern Ethiopia's Somali RegionalState are experiencing serious abuses and a looming humanitarian crisis in the context of a little-known conflict between the Ethiopian government and an Ethiopian Somali rebel movement. The situation is critical. Since mid-2007, thousands of people have fled, seeking refuge in neighboring Somalia and Kenya from widespread Ethiopian military attacks on civilians and villages that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
For those who remain in the war-affected area, continuing abuses by both rebels and Ethiopian troops pose a direct threat to their survival and create a pervasive culture of fear. The Ethiopian military campaign of forced relocations and destruction of villages reduced in early 2008 compared to its peak in mid-2007, but other abuses-including arbitrary detentions, torture, and mistreatment in detention-are continuing. These are combining with severe restrictions on movement and commercial trade, minimal access to independent relief assistance, a worsening drought, and rising food prices to create a highly vulnerable population at risk of humanitarian disaster.
Tens of thousands of ethnic Somali civilians living in eastern Ethiopia's Somali RegionalState are experiencing serious abuses and a looming humanitarian crisis in the context of a little-known conflict between the Ethiopian government and an Ethiopian Somali rebel movement. The situation is critical. Since mid-2007, thousands of people have fled, seeking refuge in neighboring Somalia and Kenya from widespread Ethiopian military attacks on civilians and villages that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
For those who remain in the war-affected area, continuing abuses by both rebels and Ethiopian troops pose a direct threat to their survival and create a pervasive culture of fear. The Ethiopian military campaign of forced relocations and destruction of villages reduced in early 2008 compared to its peak in mid-2007, but other abuses-including arbitrary detentions, torture, and mistreatment in detention-are continuing. These are combining with severe restrictions on movement and commercial trade, minimal access to independent relief assistance, a worsening drought, and rising food prices to create a highly vulnerable population at risk of humanitarian disaster.
Although the conflict has been simmering for years with intermittent allegations of abuses, it took on dramatic new momentum after the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked a Chinese-run oil installation in Somali Region in April 2007, killing more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian civilians. The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, responded by launching a brutal counter-insurgency campaign in the five zones of Somali Region primarily affected by the conflict: Fiiq, Korahe, Gode, Wardheer, and Dhagahbur. In these zones the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) have deliberately and repeatedly attacked civilian populations in an effort to root out the insurgency.
Ethiopian troops have forcibly displaced entire rural communities, ordering villagers to leave their homes within a few days or witness their houses being burnt down and their possessions destroyed-and risk death. Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has documented the execution of more than 150 individuals, many of them in demonstration killings, with Ethiopian soldiers singling out relatives of suspected ONLF members, or making apparently arbitrary judgments that individuals complaining to soldiers or resisting their orders are ONLF supporters. These executions have sometimes involved strangulation, after which their bodies are left lying in the open as a warning, for villagers to bury. The information confirmed by Human Rights Watch is only a glimpse of what is taking place-real figures are likely to be higher.
Mass detentions without any judicial oversight are routine. Hundreds-and possibly thousands-of individuals have been arrested and held in military barracks, sometimes multiple times, where they have been tortured, raped, and assaulted. Confiscation of livestock (the main asset among the largely pastoralist population), restrictions on access to water, food, and other essential commodities, and obstruction of commercial traffic and humanitarian assistance have been used as weapons in an economic war aimed at cutting off ONLF supplies and collectively punishing communities that are suspected of supporting the rebels.
These crimes are being committed with total impunity, on the thinnest of pretexts. They are generating a perception in the area that simply being an ethnic Somali-and particularly a member of the Ogaadeeni clan which constitutes the backbone of the ONLF-is enough to render a person suspect in the eyes of the national government. As one young man told Human Rights Watch, "Anyone with a bowl of water is suspected of supplying the ONLF."
Ethiopian military personnel who ordered or participated in attacks on civilians should be held responsible for war crimes. Senior military and civilian officials who knew or should have known of such crimes but took no action may be criminally liable as a matter of command responsibility. The widespread and apparently systematic nature of the attacks on villages throughout Somali Region is strong evidence that the killings, torture, rape, and forced displacement are also crimes against humanity for which the Ethiopian government bears ultimate responsibility.
T
Mass detentions without any judicial oversight are routine. Hundreds-and possibly thousands-of individuals have been arrested and held in military barracks, sometimes multiple times, where they have been tortured, raped, and assaulted. Confiscation of livestock (the main asset among the largely pastoralist population), restrictions on access to water, food, and other essential commodities, and obstruction of commercial traffic and humanitarian assistance have been used as weapons in an economic war aimed at cutting off ONLF supplies and collectively punishing communities that are suspected of supporting the rebels.
These crimes are being committed with total impunity, on the thinnest of pretexts. They are generating a perception in the area that simply being an ethnic Somali-and particularly a member of the Ogaadeeni clan which constitutes the backbone of the ONLF-is enough to render a person suspect in the eyes of the national government. As one young man told Human Rights Watch, "Anyone with a bowl of water is suspected of supplying the ONLF."
Ethiopian military personnel who ordered or participated in attacks on civilians should be held responsible for war crimes. Senior military and civilian officials who knew or should have known of such crimes but took no action may be criminally liable as a matter of command responsibility. The widespread and apparently systematic nature of the attacks on villages throughout Somali Region is strong evidence that the killings, torture, rape, and forced displacement are also crimes against humanity for which the Ethiopian government bears ultimate responsibility.
T
he ONLF has also been responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war). These include the summary execution of dozens of Chinese and Ethiopian civilians in the context of its April 2007 attack on the oil installation, the ONLF practice of killing suspected government collaborators, and the indiscriminate mining of roads used by government convoys. Those who ordered or carried out such acts are responsible for war crimes. Many civilians feel trapped with no refuge from ONLF pressure or the abuses by Ethiopian troops.
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly dismissed or minimized concerns about the human rights and humanitarian situation in Somali Region. It often claims, particularly to the international audience, that insecurity in the region is the work of Eritrean-backed "terrorists" seeking to destabilize Ethiopia. There is no question that the political dynamics in Somali Region intertwine with regional dynamics and are influenced by the continuing hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as events in neighboring Somalia. The application of terrorist rhetoric to the internal conflict with the ONLF, however, appears designed mainly to attract support from the United States as part of the "war on terror." It does not justify violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The government faces complex challenges in Somali Region. The ONLF, which claims to be seeking self-determination for the region, represents only a segment of the divided Ethiopian Somali community. There are legitimate fears that the escalating conflict across the border in Somalia could spill into Ethiopia. The authorities face difficult questions on how to best establish the rule of law in a remote, poverty-stricken region largely inhabited by pastoralists who have little knowledge of or confidence in state institutions that have long neglected them. Instead of addressing these challenges in good faith with efforts to build institutions and accountability to support the rule of law and reduce the appeal of armed groups, the government has implemented violent repression, echoing the response to the region of previous Ethiopian administrations.
The Ethiopian government's reaction to reports of abuses in 2007 has been to deny the allegations, disparage the sources, and actively restrict or control access to the region by journalists, human rights groups, and aid organizations (including by expelling the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2007).
The Ethiopian government has repeatedly dismissed or minimized concerns about the human rights and humanitarian situation in Somali Region. It often claims, particularly to the international audience, that insecurity in the region is the work of Eritrean-backed "terrorists" seeking to destabilize Ethiopia. There is no question that the political dynamics in Somali Region intertwine with regional dynamics and are influenced by the continuing hostility between Eritrea and Ethiopia as well as events in neighboring Somalia. The application of terrorist rhetoric to the internal conflict with the ONLF, however, appears designed mainly to attract support from the United States as part of the "war on terror." It does not justify violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.
The government faces complex challenges in Somali Region. The ONLF, which claims to be seeking self-determination for the region, represents only a segment of the divided Ethiopian Somali community. There are legitimate fears that the escalating conflict across the border in Somalia could spill into Ethiopia. The authorities face difficult questions on how to best establish the rule of law in a remote, poverty-stricken region largely inhabited by pastoralists who have little knowledge of or confidence in state institutions that have long neglected them. Instead of addressing these challenges in good faith with efforts to build institutions and accountability to support the rule of law and reduce the appeal of armed groups, the government has implemented violent repression, echoing the response to the region of previous Ethiopian administrations.
The Ethiopian government's reaction to reports of abuses in 2007 has been to deny the allegations, disparage the sources, and actively restrict or control access to the region by journalists, human rights groups, and aid organizations (including by expelling the International Committee of the Red Cross in July 2007).
Due to increasing alarm over humanitarian conditions, particularly malnutrition rates among children, the UN and some nongovernmental organizations were permitted to expand humanitarian programs in parts of the region in late 2007, a small positive step. However these operations have been limited to certain geographic areas, are vulnerable to constant government threats and harassment, are sometimes unable to operate with sufficient independence from government control, and have no protection mandate or capacity to respond to the attacks on civilians which remain the biggest priority for many affected communities.
The Ethiopian government's politicized manipulation of humanitarian operations, particularly food distribution, plus the continued restrictions on commercial traffic and trade are creating a situation that-in combination with the drought produced by failed rains-could quickly slip into catastrophe. The Ethiopian government should take urgent action to ensure that the needs of vulnerable civilians in Somali Region are prioritized, including in emergency appeals. Yet due to government obstruction and restrictions on access to conflict-affected zones, humanitarian agencies cannot even conduct the independent nutritional assessments needed to fully assess the scale and formulate a proper response to the potential crisis.
The Ethiopian government's politicized manipulation of humanitarian operations, particularly food distribution, plus the continued restrictions on commercial traffic and trade are creating a situation that-in combination with the drought produced by failed rains-could quickly slip into catastrophe. The Ethiopian government should take urgent action to ensure that the needs of vulnerable civilians in Somali Region are prioritized, including in emergency appeals. Yet due to government obstruction and restrictions on access to conflict-affected zones, humanitarian agencies cannot even conduct the independent nutritional assessments needed to fully assess the scale and formulate a proper response to the potential crisis.
The international response to the situation ranges from insipid to disingenuous. Western governments, including the US, UK, and European Union, which cumulatively provide almost US$2 billion of aid to Ethiopia every year and rely on the Ethiopian government as a key ally in a volatile region, have sent a number of delegations to the region but have refrained from even mild public concern, much less criticism. The US government, which is a staunch Ethiopian ally-particularly in counter-terrorism efforts-and has probably the greatest leverage of any of the donor governments, has minimized and possibly actively ignored internal concerns and reporting on the situation.
Instead of maintaining the complicity of silence, donor governments should start using their leverage to insist on three sets of immediate actions in Somali Region. Full recommendations are given below.
First, both the Ethiopian government and the ONLF should support full, unhindered and immediate access to the region for independent aid organizations, the media, and human rights groups, and the government should lift restrictions on commercial trade and civilian and livestock movement, including across the border with Somaliland. Implementing this recommendation would have an immediate positive effect on civilian access to water and grazing for their livestock, food, and local markets and could mitigate the impending food crisis. Humanitarian organizations should also have immediate, unimpeded access to conduct independent nutritional surveys in all affected areas and properly monitor food distribution to ensure it is not diverted.
Second, the Ethiopian government should immediately issue clear public orders to the armed forces and all other security agencies in Somali Region to cease abuses of civilians, including the military's forced relocations, extrajudicial executions, mass detentions, and mistreatment of detainees. The ONLF should also cease killings of civilians, including government officials, desist from the indiscriminate use of mines along key roads in Somali Region and publicly commit to abide by international humanitarian law.
T
Instead of maintaining the complicity of silence, donor governments should start using their leverage to insist on three sets of immediate actions in Somali Region. Full recommendations are given below.
First, both the Ethiopian government and the ONLF should support full, unhindered and immediate access to the region for independent aid organizations, the media, and human rights groups, and the government should lift restrictions on commercial trade and civilian and livestock movement, including across the border with Somaliland. Implementing this recommendation would have an immediate positive effect on civilian access to water and grazing for their livestock, food, and local markets and could mitigate the impending food crisis. Humanitarian organizations should also have immediate, unimpeded access to conduct independent nutritional surveys in all affected areas and properly monitor food distribution to ensure it is not diverted.
Second, the Ethiopian government should immediately issue clear public orders to the armed forces and all other security agencies in Somali Region to cease abuses of civilians, including the military's forced relocations, extrajudicial executions, mass detentions, and mistreatment of detainees. The ONLF should also cease killings of civilians, including government officials, desist from the indiscriminate use of mines along key roads in Somali Region and publicly commit to abide by international humanitarian law.
T
hird, Ethiopian authorities should establish an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations of abuses by all parties to the conflict and begin short and long-term efforts to ensure accountability for abuses by government security forces in Somali Region and elsewhere, including judicial and security sector reforms.
Rapid implementation of these recommendations could help to avert catastrophe in Somali Region. If the abuses continue, denied by the Ethiopian government and ignored by international donors, the outcome is all too clear: yet another cycle of human rights devastation, famine, and impoverishment in a region which already knows these trends all too well, and thousandsof new victims, embittered by the repeated denial of their rights as human beings and Ethiopians.
Rapid implementation of these recommendations could help to avert catastrophe in Somali Region. If the abuses continue, denied by the Ethiopian government and ignored by international donors, the outcome is all too clear: yet another cycle of human rights devastation, famine, and impoverishment in a region which already knows these trends all too well, and thousandsof new victims, embittered by the repeated denial of their rights as human beings and Ethiopians.
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