We will make Britain a country that works for every one of us

Dear Ahmed, I have just been to Buckingham Palace, where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government. And I accepted. In David Cameron, I follow in the footsteps of a great, modern Prime Minister. Under David's leadership, the Government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit, and helped more people into work than ever before. But David's true legacy is not about the economy, but about social justice. From the introduction of same-sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of income tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One Nation Government, and it is in that spirit that I also plan to lead. Because not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. And that word 'Unionist' is very important to me. It means we believe in the Union - the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But it means something else that is just as important. It means we believe in a union, not just between the nations of the United Kingdom, but between all of our citizens. Every one of us, whoever we are, and wherever we're from. That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you're born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you're black, you're treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white. If you're a white, working-class boy, you are less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university. If you're at a state school, you're less likely to reach the top professions than if you are educated privately. If you're a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there's not enough help to hand. If you're young, you will find it harder than ever before to own your own home. But the mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting these injustices. If you're from an ordinary, working-class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise. You have a job but you don't always have job security. You have your own home, but you worry about paying the mortgage. You can just about manage, but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school. If you're one of those families, if you're just managing, I want to address you directly. I know you're working around the clock, I know you're doing your best, and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle. The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we'll think not of the powerful but you. When we pass new laws, we'll listen not to the mighty but to you. When it comes to taxes, we'll prioritise not the wealthy but you. When it comes to opportunity, we won't entrench the advantages of the fortunate few. We will do everything we can to help anybody, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you. We are living through an important moment in our country's history. Following the referendum, we face a time of great national change. And I know, because we're Great Britain, that we will rise to the challenge. As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold, new, positive role for ourselves in the world. And we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us. That will be the mission of the Government I lead, and together we will build a better Britain. Thank you, Theresa May Prime Minister

Cawil Oo Qoray Saddex Buug Oo Cusub Iyo Xogaha Ku Duugan

Cawil Oo Qoray Saddex Buug Oo Cusub Iyo Xogaha Ku Duugan

sawirka Amb.Cawil Iyo Raila Odinga



Hargeisa-(Qarannews)-Wasiirkii hore ee maaliyadda xukuumadii hore Md. Xuseen Cali Ducaale (Cawil), ayaa diyaariyay saddex buug oo uu mid ka mid ahi ka hadlayo guud ahaan Somaliland, halka ay labada kalena ka hadlayaan hoggaamiyaha Djibouti Madaxweyne Ismaaciil Cumar Geele iyo Raysalwasaarihii geeriyooday ee Itoobiya Meles Zenawi.

Danjire Cawil, oo isagoo ku sugan magaalada Nayroobi xalay la soo xidhiidhay Geeska Afrika, wuxuu sheegay inay saddexda buug ku jiraan marxaladii tifaftirka, ka dibna ay u gudbi doonaan madbacadaha daabici doona. Magacyada saddexda buug wuxuu Cawil ku kala sheegay sidan:

Somaliland Politics and politicians:Buugani wuxuu kaga hadlayaa macluumaad badan, waxaanu taariikhda ka soo bilaabayaa sannadkii 1955, siyaasad, taariikh, dhaqaale iyo dhaqanba, waxaanu soo wadayaa ilaa sanadkan 2013. Wuxuu Geeska Afrika u sheegay in cutubka buugan ugu muhiimsani uu yahay waxyaabo badan oo uu la kulmay mudadii uu ahaa wasiirka maaliyadda sida siyaasiyiintii uu la kulmi jiray, dareenadooda, aragtiyahooda iyo waxyaabaha ay aaminsanaayeen.

Ismail Omer Geuleh Djibouti: Buugani wuxuu isna ka hadlayaa waxyaabaha uu dalka Djibouti ku soo kordhiyay Madaxweyne Ismaaciil Cumar Geele, sida ay Djibouti ahayd xukunkiisa ka hor iyo sida ay maanta tahay

Meles Zenawi Itoobiya: Buugganina wuxuu ka hadlayaa taariikhda hoggaamiyihii geeriyooday ee Itoobiya, aragtiyihii uu aaminsanaa iyo siyaasadihiisii dhaqaale iyo diblomaasiyadeed.

Cawil Cali Ducaale, oo hore u qoray buugaag kale oo caan ah, wuxuu sheegay inay saddexdan buug oo dhammaystirani ay isku mar soo geli doonaan suuqyada buugaagta, waxaanu sheegay inuu qaybo ka mid ah soo gaadhsiin doono Somaliland. Wakhtigii uu Cawil ahaa wasiirka maaliyadda ee xukuumadii Rayaale, wuxuu balan qaaday inuu qori doono buug.

Geeska
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Nuruddin Farah: A Life in Writing

Nuruddin Farah: A Life in Writing

‘Somalia is no longer what it was. It’s past reconstruction. How can you reconstruct a country that’s self-destructing continuously?’

In a hotel beside a Norwegian fjord, encircled by snow-streaked mountains, the novelist and playwright Nuruddin Farah has his mind on warmer waters.”Are they pirates?” he says of the Somalis who hold ships hostage off the Horn of Africa, where he was born. “What they do has the characteristics of piracy. But that wasn’t how it started.” He fixes his eye on the Arctic trawlers in the harbour. “The majority were fishermen who lost their livelihoods to Korean and Japanese and European fishing vessels, fishing illegally in Somali waters. I’m not condoning the things they’re doing. But there are unanswered questions. Someone is not telling us the truth.”

Over 45 years, Farah has pursued complex, elusive truths as one of Africa’s greatest novelists, and a cosmopolitan voice in English-language fiction. He was driven into exile by the Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to 1991, and he now lives in Cape Town. But all 11 of his novels (translated into 20 languages) are set in Somali-speaking lands, one impulse being to “keep my country alive by writing about it”. When I first met him in London in the 1980s, he was with Salman Rushdie at a Royal Court play, and his became a staunch Muslim voice against the fatwa. Rushdie writes in his new memoir of seeking his friend’s advice on how to depict a country lost to him: “‘I keep it here,’ Nuruddin said, pointing to his heart.”

For Nadine Gordimer, Farah is one of the continent’s “real interpreters”. Aged 66, he has lived in 10 African countries and is often cited by other African writers as overdue for the Nobel. His novels scourge received opinion – whether of female inferiority (he writes women characters who make their own destinies), religious dogma, nationalism (Maps), foreign aid (Gifts) or clannism (Secrets). They trace the history of a region long an arena for proxy wars and great power rivalries, in an oblique, metaphorical style that marries proverbial wisdom (“a dead man’s shoes are more useful than he is”) with daily life in a modern African state awash with sim cards and AK47s.

Crossbones is the final volume of a trilogy, Past Imperfect, set in the civil war that erupted when Siad Barre was ousted. In Links (2004) a Dante scholar returns to the seaside capital Mogadishu to find StrongmanNorth and StrongmanSouth battling with US Marines in the infernal, Italianate ruins. In Knots (2007) a Canadian-Somali actress arrives as the warlords have been vanquished by bearded men in white robes, foisting “body tents” on women. By Crossbones, the ascendant Islamists – whom Farah terms “religionists” – are spoiling for war with Ethiopia, while piracy proliferates off the breakaway coastal region of Puntland.

I spoke to Farah as a peace process was under way in Somalia that culminated in the inauguration last Sunday of the country’s first elected president in decades. The author was in Tromsø, a tranquil town of clapboard houses and silver birch trees 360km north of the Arctic Circle, to address global Ibsen experts. He was already “pregnant” with his first published novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), when he read Ibsen’s plays as a student of philosophy and literature in India. The novel-in-progress was the tale of a fight for selfhood in a world where women are “sold like cattle”, told through the eyes of a 19-year-old nomadic woman. “I could not have written From a Crooked Rib if I had not read A Doll’s House,” he said at Tromsø University. Growing up in Somalia and Ethiopia, and studying in India, he tells me, “I saw, on a daily basis, women beaten, girls not sent to school, and the injustices meted out to women. But at 19 or 20 I lacked the courage to articulate it.” The gulf between Ibsen’s Nora and his unlettered pastoralist clarified his task: “For Ebla, even in a metaphorical sense, there was no door to slam.”

From a Crooked Rib became a Penguin Modern Classic in 2004. At a time when fiction in Africa was more focused on colonial power and emerging nationhood, Farah scrutinised the intimate power play between men and women. The novel was subversive in other ways. Some women berated Farah for trespassing on their realm for exposing the horror of female genital mutilation practised among Somalis (a practice banned last month under Somalia’s new constitution).

His second trilogy was conceived when he returned to Somalia in 1996, for the first time in 22 years, and was taken hostage by a minor warlord. In Kismayo, “I was kept incommunicado for a few days. The warlord sent a technical [vehicle] with 16 gunmen; he’d been told wrongly that I was a journalist, and wanted me to write an article praising him.” The warlord’s sister-in-law pleaded for Farah’s release: he had been her school teacher in the early 70s. Reconsidering, his captors demanded that he deliver lectures. He complied, since there was nowhere to escape to. He shrugs at the absurdity: “I was held hostage and gave lectures to the community.”

Later in Mogadishu, he was “shocked by the destruction. It was a country I didn’t recognise, and many of the people in it were newcomers.” Since the 10th century, he argues, Mogadishu had been a cosmopolitan city-state, but with the civil war, “it lost its old inhabitants – some of Persian, Arab and Indian origin who had intermarried. Its character changed.” In an essay, “Of Tamarinds and Cosmopolitans”, Farah wrote of a clash not of clans, but between pastoralist nomads and urbanites, in a once “open city with no walls”. But he was moved by his welcome as one of Somalia’s most famous sons (a celebrity matched only recently by the British Olympian Mo Farah): “People touched me and said, Nuruddin is back, life is here. Others will come.”

Born in 1945 in Baidoa, in Italian Somaliland, Farah went to school in Ogaden (ceded by the British to Ethiopia) and Mogadishu. His father was an interpreter for the British governor, and his mother an oral poet. He used English textbooks, took Qur’anic lessons, and spoke Amharic, Arabic and Italian too. He claims an American typewriter had much to do with his choice of literary language. But his efforts to write in Somali, once it gained a written script in 1972, were curtailed by censorship. All his novels were later banned, and read only in smuggled copies.

His first wife was a student from Bangalore whom he met while studying in Punjab (“her father and I played chess”), and their son is now an auditor in Detroit with two small daughters. Leaving Somalia in 1974 to do a master’s degree in theatre at Essex University, Farah worked at London’s Royal Court (“making tea”). When his second novel, A Naked Needle (1976), riled Somalia’s despot, his brother advised him not to return. He was sentenced to death in absentia. “The country died inside me, and I carried it, for a long time, like a woman with a dead baby,” he says. “It became the neurosis from which I write.”

After a trip that took in the Soviet Union, Greece under the colonels and Sadat’s Egypt, he wrote his first trilogy, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (1979-83), consisting of Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines and Close Sesame. He once challenged fellow Somalis to “study the structure of the Somali family and you will find mini-dictators imposing their will … We become replicas of the tyrant whom we hate. When you rid yourself of a monster, you become a monster.” Somalia’s implosion, which he predicted as early as 1988, fuelled a personal crisis. His mother died in 1990, when it was still unsafe to return. He got married for a second time, to a British-Nigerian academic, and moved to northern Nigeria, then South Africa.

In his talk in Norway, he described being in a “very difficult marriage, much worse and more debilitating than Nora’s, even though I stayed in it … maybe because I was in mourning”. As he sees it now, the collapse of Somalia “necessitated the creation of a foundation. I was afloat, and needed an anchor. Marrying became an anchor – which was probably wrong.” When the couple eventually split, and his children were taken to California, “it reminded me of when I couldn’t see my [elder] son.” At that time, “I couldn’t go back; I was being hunted down. Two attempts at killing me were made, in Nigeria and Rome.”

As his second marriage foundered, “writing became hard; living a lot harder.” It took a dozen years to complete his second trilogy, Blood in the Sun (1986-98), begun with Maps, set during the 1970s Ogaden war, and Gifts, at a time of famine. Secrets unfolds on the eve of civil war, and he deems it a pessimistic book. “I was pretending to be happy, but wasn’t. It’s a novel that predicts terrible days.” As a nation ruptures along bloodlines, the novel evoked incest and bestiality, “to make everyone sit up and see the ugliness of what was happening. The entire country was a death camp”.

Farah met his father for the first time in 17 years in a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya, and was told: “We fled because we met the beasts in us, face to face.” Farah’s son and younger sister also fled by boat. In the non-fiction Yesterday, Tomorrow (2000), based on conversations with Somali refugees, Farah extrapolates from his own exile the anguish of people without means, education or a writer’s creativity, when their country ceases to exist. The voices are “raw, tearful, pained”. The book was spurred by “two types of Somali: the poor in refugee camps in Kenya; and the rich, corrupt sons and daughters of the dictator and his cronies, staying at the Hilton in Nairobi and flying in private jets. I was interested in where the future of Somalia lay.”

He has been back often since 1996, and played peace- broker between armed groups in an effort curtailed by the Ethiopian invasion of 2006. Somalia, he says, is “full of stories. We say, ‘one sick person; a hundred doctors’. Somalia is a sick country and everyone has an opinion. Mine is one version; in a civil war, there are millions.” In Links he wanted to offer an alternative angle on the US intervention of 1993 to the film Black Hawk Down. The trilogy was conceived, he says, in the context of “misunderstandings, misconceptions and missing the point”, chief among those being that the conflict is clan warfare. Farah does not see himself as belonging to a clan. “Anyone who claims to represent a clan is a dastardly liar. You can represent people who elected you. I can’t represent my own brother.”

Crossbones also casts doubt on reports of boom towns rich on piracy. Farah visited Puntland, and says: “I did not see that wealth.” The novel suggests those up the food chain, and abroad, take their cut. “Nobody wants to talk about illegal fishing or the destruction of the environment – the marine life and coral reefs. What we talk about is the consequences of this destruction. There’s enough UN information about nuclear and chemical waste dumped on the shores of Somalia – the tsunami unearthed it. Entire communities in Puntland have children born with deformities.”

Crossbones takes place against the rise of al-Shabaab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, which has claimed allegiance to al-Qaida. Farah, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, says susceptible teenagers were “told they were fighting an enemy: infidels, unbelievers, Ethiopians, the federal government.” The militant leaders are hypocrites, he adds, who “leave their own sons and daughters in school, and recruit other people’s.” Taxliil in the novel, a troubled teenager briefly inducted by the militants, has no exit but via Guantánamo. Farah is indignant that “he is going to prison. He’s been misled by people who don’t go to prison, but their names are known.”

Al-Shabaab’s withdrawal from Mogadishu in August last year heralded the city’s rebirth, with the return of many expatriates. Rather than having been routed by peacekeepers, Farah says, “Shabaab’s beastly attitudes alienated people, with stories of women raped and pregnant, whipped, killed. People were afraid; now no longer. More understand that Shabaab has nothing to do with religion; it’s interested in political power.” He was once attacked online for insisting the “Afghan-type body tent is not culturally Somali. I said: ‘My mother never wore a veil, nor my sisters.’ They said my mother was not a Muslim.” In the diaspora, he argues, “the majority could not articulate their Somali culture. The less you know about Islam, the more conservative people become.”

When the National Theatre in Mogadishu was devastated by a suicide bomb last April, only two weeks after reopening, Farah’s response was to write a short play in Somali, though its staging may take time. Three more of his recent plays are being translated into Somali. As Jean Anouilh set Sophocles in Nazi-occupied Paris, Farah’s Antigone in Somalia is set during the Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu of 2006-09. Antigone’s brother, whose corpse cannot be buried, is a suicide bomber. In areas al-Shabaab controls, says Farah, they have “forbidden song and dance because they’re closer to Wahhabism than most Somalis”. Theatre that is verse-based, and sung to music, “challenges everything such groups represent. They say it’s evil, Satan’s work, and that a woman’s place is not on the stage.” Yet visiting Mogadishu in the spring, he found people “playing music and singing in tea houses and at parties. Women have created their own space.”

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, elected by MPs, took power last week, four days after surviving a suicide bombing for which al-Shabaab claimed responsibility. Though Farah has reservations about “electing MPs and president on a clan-based formula”, he believes there is no present alternative, given years of war. The president, whom he has met, “struck me as trustworthy, a man capable of uniting the country and taking it forward, away from attrition and in-fighting.”

Though his protagonists strive to leave their homeland better than they found it, good intentions go awry. Farah notes a pessimistic turn in his fiction, “and the reason is, Somalia is no longer what it was. No matter how the characters struggle, how can you reconstruct a country that’s self-destructing continuously?” Then, under a blazing Arctic summer sun that refuses to set over the harbour, he rallies: “I’d like the dust to settle first. It will take five more years of peace. Then good things will come.”
Maya Jaggi

The Guardian
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Who is Dr.Mustafa Mahmud

Mustafa Mahmud
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud

Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud.
Born 25 December 1921
Shibin El-Kom, Monufia, Egypt
Died 31 October 2009 (aged 87)
Cairo, Egypt
Occupation Physician, Writer and thinker
Known for Egyptian intellectual
Religion Muslim


Mustafa Kamal Mahmoud Husayn (Arabic:مصطفى كمال محمود حسين‎) (25 December 1921 – 31 October 2009) commonly known as Mustafa Mahmud (Arabic: مصطفى محمود‎) was an Egyptianscientist and a prolific author. Dr. Mustafa Mahmoud was born in Shibin el-Kom, Munufiyya province, Egypt. He was trained as a doctor, but later chose a career as a journalist and author, traveling widely and writing on many subjects.[2]


The material in this section is derived from self-published information by the subject.[2]
[edit]Early life

Mustafa Mahmud says that he was raised in a middle-class family. His father was employed as a secretary in the province of El Gharbiyya. He was a pious man with a model character - exemplary behavior, patience, endurance, persistence and work. He steadfastly performed his Prayers at the mosque, even the Dawn Prayer which he used to perform in congregation. Furthermore, he was affectionate to his children and sacrificed himself for their sake as did his mother.

Mustafa Mahmud says he led his early life in a pleasant atmosphere wherein there was no oppression or violence. Rather, he enjoyed freedom and responsibility. In his early age in elementary school, he failed three years consecutively (He was good student,but after an Arabic language teacher beat him,he get so angry and he left that school,until that teacher reallocated to teach in another school Mustafa came back to his school to continue studying there), yet he was left without any reproach or blame. In his childhood, he used to lay down ill. Thus, he was deprived of enjoying rough play, and running, which the children used to indulge in. He remained an introvert and spent his early days in imagination and dreams. He dreamed of being a great inventor or a discoverer or a traveler or a famous scientist. His role models were Christopher Columbus, Edison, Marconi and Pasteur.

Living in Tanta next to As Sayyid El Badawy Mosque, attending the celebrations in El Mawlid (a religious festival) and the Sufi and Dervishes' recitals all had a great influence on his psychological and innovative structure.

Mustafa Mahmud's father suffered from paralysis for seven years and died in 1939. His death occurred after he had finished his secondary school, when he was making the decision to join the Faculty of Medicine. Shortly thereafter, his family left Tanta for Cairo along with his mother.

Mustafa Mahmud had described his life during adolescence as similar to that of the taming an unruly horse, the bridle of which was free for one time, and controlled for many others. The struggle was so hard, as it went on for a long time, leaving behind a body covered by wounds and contusions.
[edit]Medical Studies

Mustafa Mahmud chose Medicine as a field of study. In his autobiography, he says that felt content with it, and that he would be able to acquire science and knowledge of the mysteries. The study was intense, and it required strong desire, concentration, and devotion. Even though he needed to be more strict with himself, he was ambitious and his love for science and knowledge inspired him. However, he was often dissatisfied because of his feebleness; most of the time his ailing body forced him to stay in bed.

In his third year of studies he was admitted into hospital for two years of treatment. He describes this long isolation as a positive contribution to the development of his character, when he could indulge himself totally to reading and thinking of literary works. In these two years, the meditative character was fashioned within himself, and thus the writer was born.

After his recovery, he resumed his medical studies and says that he subsequently realized an immense change within himself. He discovered within himself the artist who reflects, reads, and peruses regularly the major sources of literature, plays, and novels. Owing to this new activity, (which in no time he became an expert at), he began to write regularly to the newspapers, (in his final year of Medicine). Accordingly, he had to intensify his effort to graduate and attain success. He started writing for El Tahrir and Rose El Yusef magazines. Due to his illness he graduated two or three years after his colleagues, in 1953.

He states that illness, suffering, and long isolation in the hospital caused his talents to gush forth … and pain was the very effective source and the real motive for all of those positive characteristics and benefits he developed as a human, a man of letters and a thinker. Pain also refined his character, made his innate nature so clear, revealed his religious sense, which led to his enlightenment, awareness and remembrance of Allah.
[edit]His frequent journeys

Mustafa Mahmud describes his frequent travels, starting with his journeys to the Tropics inTanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and the south of Sudan, where he stayed for two months with the tribe of Niam Niam. Thereafter, he traveled to the Sahara Desert, to the oasis of Ghadamis, where he stayed for a month with the tribe of El Tawariq. Furthermore, he traveled to many capitals of European and American countries, such as: Italy, Germany, Greece, France,Canada and the United States; and to the Arab countries, beginning with Morocco and Algeria in the west; and ending with Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia in the east.

There was another journey, one within himself; he boarded the ship of science, knowledge, and religion (starting from the Indian Fideism, Zoroaster, Buddha; and ending with Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Finally he found his comfort and himself in the Qur'an. Thus he concluded his traveling, and devoted himself totally to reflection and contemplation. He lived among the jurists, scholars, and Sufis, and found that the Qur'an is an ocean around which all the branches of knowledge gather together.

He wrote five books criticizing the Marxist thought: Islamic left Fib; Marxism and Islam; Leftism Collapse; Why Did I Refuse Marxism?; and The Antichrist. He was persuaded that Marxism was one of the pickaxes which destroyed the current civilization; at worst, it was an instrument that caused the creation of a spiteful, negative and rejecting character. He has seventy-five books published, six of them were adapted for stage: (Earthquake; Man and Shade; The Great Alexander; The Social Gang (Shilla-t 'Uns); Blood Odor; The Devil Lives in our House), one of them (The Impossible) was presented as a film; twenty-five books deal with Islamic subjects; and the rest consists of studies and short stories. TV presented for him more than four hundred parts of the program "Science and Faith", in which the movie, scientific substance and Sufi meditation guide us to the faith in Allah.[(that program came to and end, Mustafa's son "Adham Mustafa Mahmoud" said that the program stopped by orders issued from the Egyptian presidency to then-Information Minister Safwat al-Sharif,the reason of those orders was a pressure from Zionists. as Mentioned in a press report held with "Adham Mustafa Mahmoud" and published by Egyptian news paper "Egyptian today")] Source:(Arabian Only)http://www.almasry-alyoum.com/article2.aspx?ArticleID=231773

In the very beginning of his writing literature, he met El Aqqad, who used to give him a hand by reading his writings to the attendants in the meeting held by Aqqad on Fridays, and also by publishing them in the Al Rissala (The Message) Magazine in the year 1947. He also met Kamal El Shinnawy, because of his help he was able to publish Mustafa Mahmud's articles in the Akher Sa`ah (the Last Hour) Magazine in the year 1948.

In the year 1960,he left his medical career, devoting himself totally to writing for newspapers. As a physician, moving from one hospital to another (particularly, among the Hospitals of Chest Diseases in Abbasiyya, Chest diseases in 'Almazha, Chest diseases in Dumyat, and the dispensary of Umm el-Masriyyeen), between the years 1953 and 1960, all had a great influence on his writings, principally: Storehouse No. 7 (`Anbar 7), the Social Gang (Shilla-t 'Uns), and Eating Bread (Akl-`Aysh). In the meantime, it had an influence on his scientific and anatomical access to the public adversities, to the human soul and to the characters he dealt with in all his writings.

Another character who had a profound effect on him was his father, whose long-time illness, patience, faith, and pure innate nature remained in his mind throughout his life. As he grew older and encountered life's affairs in his thirties, a woman played a great role in and had an effectual control on his life, as a friend, a dialogist, and a lover. His faults were always due to losing control of himself when he looked at any beautiful things. Above all, he believed that no man is a perfect one unless he has found a woman to love, to marry, to have children with, and to feel parenthood and establish a family.

http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Tackling Development Issues in Somaliland

Tackling Development Issues in Somaliland

By Ahmed Mohamed Jama Irrobeh

Somalis were known to be an oral society throughout their relatively short history in this part of the African continent and, even after modern education was introduced into their country more than seventy years ago, they still seem to be pen-shy since few of them have contributed to the development of their country through writing and hence making use their education and professional skills. Hence, there is a dearth of books and other publications written by Somalis on the many economic and social development issues and challenges facing the country. Fortunately we see a break with this tradition for the first time with the recent publication of the first book on Somaliland’s development titled Tackling Development Issues in Somaliland by Ahmed Irrobeh ( Arima Publishing, ASK House, (2012) UK Price £15; USD 250). The book extensively deals with the issues hindering the economic progress of Somaliland and makes apt proposals as to how these could be addressed in the medium and long-term time horizon.
Somalilanders know that the development challenges facing their country are quite daunting and multi-faceted and could be intractable to fine solutions in a short time. The author is well-qualified, equipped and acquainted with the problem to face the task of finding solutions for these as he possesses both the academic qualifications and work experience necessary to address the subject head-on. This book, written from a practitioner perspective, is the first attempt to contribute to the debate on the economic and social development issues confronted by Somaliland. It is intended for the benefit of various audiences including experts and academics in the field, government bureaucrats engaged in the development planning process and, perhaps students who are desirous of furthering their knowledge on Somaliland. The general public will also find the book very interesting and informative. The book is well written in simple and clear style shorn of any academic jargon. 

The author draws extensively on his wide-ranging experience during his long career in the development arena.
The book is skilfully organized into four chapters each of which addresses specific issues on development but with an overall objective of finding solutions for reducing and/or eliminating poverty initially and attaining a higher level of development thereafter. 

At the outset, in the first chapter, the author makes his most important proposal by suggesting the adoption of a development model akin to the one that had been instrumental in the success of the South-East Asian countries (the so-called tigers) which he deems to be most suitable for the rapid economic and social development of Somaliland. The thrust of the Asian model is built on the implementation of polices, strategies and measures that have made that region successful and prosperous in a relatively short time. The main pillars of this model mainly consist of the adoption of universal literacy and imparting the relevant technical skills through basic and middle level training, promotion of government-directed but private sector-executed investments in the various sectors of the real economy and mobilization of internal financial and technical resources for investments with the purpose of producing goods for export and the earning of foreign exchange for sustaining investment in further sustained development projects. By taking this position, the author clearly implies that the Western-inspired model of development has failed in our part of the world and it is time for African and other developing countries to look to the East for a more suitable model. In the remaining chapters of the book, the author takes stock of the issues facing the social and economic development of Somaliland. Specifically, he demonstrates that the economic and social advancement of Somaliland should be carried out by the utilization of the country’s abundant resources: including its agricultural, livestock, fisheries, mineral and hydrocarbon resources. In dealing with these complex issues, the author not only proposes the adoption of appropriate and reasonable policy frameworks that will be needed for the development of these sectors but also prescribes the specific strategic and practical steps required to be carried out in order to attain the development objectives on a sustainable basis. In this process, the author estimates the resources required to carry out the initial phase of the development programme (i.e. the social development programme).

It is clear that while engaged in this endeavour, the author had done extensive research and provided a substantial amount of information in the book for the benefit of those interested in the field. Tackling Development Issues in Somaliland is not perhaps last word on Somaliland’s development, but it is pioneering work for others to follow. The book constitutes the first salvo fired at an old nemesis that has been haunting Somaliland for a long time – an effort which others are expected to emulate.
Mohamoud Awil Ibrahim



http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Re-dressing the notion of Somalia as 'a failed state'

Re-dressing the notion of
Somalia as 'a failed state'

'GETTING SOMALIA WRONG, FAITH, WAR AND
HOPE IN A SHATTERED LIFE' BY MARY HARPER

African Arguments ZED BooksLondon and New York.
Pp 217. Bookshop cost of £12.99. Google Amazon.

BOOK REVIEW BY ERROL TRZEBINSKI
.
Coastweek -- Mary Harper’s brilliant, Getting Somalia Wrong, Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State was recently launched at SOAS in London receiving high praise from her peers, Small wonder.
Mary Harper’s first book is an important work: Harper, BBC African editor and journalist has also written for theWashington Post, The Economist and The Times.

Listeners to the BBC World Service will be familiar with her voice, interviewing dissident Presidents, and asking the questions that other journalist dare not.

With Somalia, a near neighbour sharing a border, Kenya has grown more and more concerned as war torn Mogadishu has gone from bad to worse so Getting Somalia Wrong is essential reading for those who have lived with "the Somali problem" for two decades.

As many as 600,000 of displaced Somalis have amassed in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia so that now the camps themselves appear "normal" as do the self imposed enclaves where Somali’s hang together.

The very word, Somalia, stands for a ‘failed state.’

Haven for Al-Quaeda;

the worst crisis,

the most corrupt;

the "dodgiest passports in the world."

Take your pick.

Harper has been reporting on Somalia since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.

Coastweek -- Mary Harper’sGetting Somalia Wrong, Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State was recently launched at SOAS in London.

That year, her mother, Gay happened to be working with Save The Children for Unicef in Mogadishu.
Mother and daughter kept in touch as often they could by international telephone.

Gay Harper, would reassure Mary, who could hear sounds of shelling and the whine of bullets in the background, that she was OK. Quite safe.

Twenty years on, somewhat ironically BBC African editor Mary Harper gets calls virtually daily from that same benighted city when her colleague, Mohamed Moalimu reports casualties: the deaths, the wounded, the number of children abducted during the hours of the latest battle.

Sometimes, Moalimu holds up the phone so that Harper can hear how close and heavy the blitzing.

Harper’s knowledge of her subject, with impunity, has entered her bloodstream.

She knows herself how pre-judice against Somalia "ticks all the boxes for an African disaster zone."


Yet with ample proof, she suggests in multiple lucid glimpsesin Getting Somalia Wrong, that Somalia needs to be looked at differently.

Harper’s uncluttered narrative also turns out to be a page turner.

• Many, many books and words have been published on Somaliland.

Quite a feather in the author’s cap comes from Professor Ioan Lewis, whose knowledge of Somalia’s culture and history is highly respected, as a long-time observer who now proclaims, Mary Harper’s first book …

"The most accessible and accurate account available of the contemporary Somali World."

Harper’s message is clear.

Somalis have an ability to survive in chaos and squalor, lacking modern facilities, blessed with an attitude as uncom-promising as their passion for the hostile country, nomads from birth.

They are born talkers, story-tellers and poets, waxing lyrical about camels, the stars and the desert, images contrasting sharply with headline grabbing coverage of violence.

Film of teenagers (and younger) brandishing sawn off shotguns; still photographs of shrivelled mothers holding children so emaciated that huge eyes, underline the listlessness of starvation since famine, has yet again recently dominated world television networks.

By circumventing the pitfall of condescension, and without heavy analytic judgment as an "expert" Harper’s accessible style is a welcome introduction as to why the majority of European countries, have managed to get things so wrong, making clear that Somalia is not actually a failed state as so much one as mistakenly defined by modern political theories.

Evolving systems of education, local politics, business and even justice appear to be thriving.

The Somalis are at heart, resilient; their survival is unyielding, endemic to the harsh-ness of their waterless thorn filled terrain.

The complexity of the clan sys-tem is partly responsible.

Each chapter, contains little known revelations on education.

Islamism, Piracy and Clans.

From the age of eight, children have a profound knowledge of their lineage.

And "can recite his or her genealogy through the male line, some twenty or thirty generations back, to a common ancestor."

A Somali proverb, neatly sums up the divisive nature of the clan.

"Me and my clan against the world,

Me and my family against the clan,

Me and my brother against my family;

Me against my brother."

Yet the collection of different clans and regional organizations, by example, may well display a form of possible stability for Somalis.

Nor is the importance of Qat dodged.

The natural stimulant, central to daily existence in Somalia, deliveries arrive by air, to wherever Somalis exist and are impatiently awaited.

This is a habit that Westerners simply do not (or cannot) understand.

In Nairobi’s Eastleigh, rundown by –trash, potholes, open drains, flies buzzing over everything and called, "Mogadishu kidogo" new buildings in costly reflective glass and marble flooring, rise from the all but non-existent infra-structure.

Water and electricity supplies at best erratic, where "a special qat street, is lined with dukas where the addictive green leaves hang in bunches.

Somalis relax in numerous tea houses, chewing the cud, - a sort of café society - grouped like "mini-parliaments" arguing noisily on politics and world events.

This trade in qat is worth tens of millions of dollars annually, showing no signs of dwindling during this drawn out conflict.

The extraordinary concept of ‘pavement banks’ close by the Dahabstiil multi-storey operation HQ in Hargeisha was founded by a humble importer because he needed foreign currency to trade.

The result on the street now-adays - "Men sit beside wire cages stacked high with Somali shillings, US Dollars and other currencies.

When they want to have lunch, they simply put the money inside the cage, lock the door and leave."

Few have forgotten that phrase, "Black Hawk Down" spawned term by conflict between General Aideed sparking the first Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 after two American helicopters were shot down;

In a frantic military operation to rescue their countrymen, eighteen US servicemen were killed; some corpses were dragged through the streets.

Since then, "The USA and its allies misinterpreted these events", comments Harper.

"They mistakenly equated a home-grown form of political Islam with the international al-Qaeda franchise … by doing so inadvertently advertised the country as a promising new battle front for jihadists from across the world".

Harper is ever persuasive; statistics even, do not make her reader’s concentration wander:

"In 1999 the overseas trade in small stock sheep and goats ("shoats" as the late Elspeth Huxley called them) from Somaliland and neighbouring Puntland was larger in volume, than before the Government’s collapse."

• Since them millions of dollars have been spent on conferences purporting to have the answer to Somalia; being seen to be ‘doing something’ outweighed every-thing else.

With vested interests in pro-longed meetings, when a marathon conference dragged on for two years in Nairobi, the Kenya authorities became so desperate they organized a farewell party - a broad hint - it was time to go home.

Harper believes implicitly the rest of the world must surely learn from Somalis’ resilience.
Most civilians left in Mogadishu, are there because they cannot afford to leave:

She cites the acumen of one Somali business man who has left, witnessed while sitting with him in a London restaurant hammering out "multiple deals on his various mobile phones, while consuming Spaghetti bolognaise and sending endless emails on his Blackberry.

Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague has just returned from installing a new UK envoy in Mogadishu.

The timing of publication of Getting Somali Wrong, is perfect.

The Berlin Conference in 1885 was attended by white faces.

This time Somalis will be sitting around the carving table on 23 February in London when the all important conference on Somalia takes place.

Harper has shown how clan-based policies in the northwest (Somaliland-the former British protectorate) and northeast (Puntland), among others, are already self-governing with a remarkable degree of success in terms of local governance.

Somalia has never been easy for onlookers to fathom.

She has pointed out that re-dressing the notion of Somalia as "a failed state" is overdue.

Foreign powers involved in the Horn of Africa need to scrutinize its history again if they want to understand it.

Harper’s provocative argument seeking to shift a narrow vision of the country to broaden understandings of Somalia’s situation today, is as wise as it is refreshing.

Let’s hope that her insights in Getting Somali Wrong, are perceptive enough for this engaging study to become a classic.


There is a good Glossary, Bibliography, chronology and index though pagination for the index leaves a lot to be desired.

Remember: you read it first atcoastweek.com !

http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Masuuliyiinta Urur Siyaasadeeka Jamhuuriga oo Canbaareyn Culus U Jeediyay Cid Kasta Oo Ka Danbeysay Xadhigii

Masuuliyiinta Urur Siyaasadeeka Jamhuuriga oo Canbaareyn Culus U Jeediyay Cid Kasta Oo Ka Danbeysay Xadhigii Gudoomiyahoodda Gobolka Gabiley Shucayb Maxamed Muuse

Muuse C/Laahi Suweeen oo ka hadlay shirkan jaraa’id ayaa carabka ku dhuftay in sababta lagu xidhay Shucayb Maxamed Muuse, ay ka danbeysay Maayirka gabiley.
Hargeysa (GNS)- Masuuliyiinta ugu sarsareysa Urur siyaasadeeka jamhuuriga ayaa canbaareeyay xadhigii lagula kacay Gudoomiyaha urur siyaasadeedka Jamhuuriga ee Gobolka Gabiley Mudane Shucayb Maxamed Muuse, kaas oo maanta ciidanka amaanka ee Magaaladda Gabiley ay ku hubsadeen saldhiga dhaxe ee xasibagaas, ka dib markii sidda la sheegay uu amar dhankoodda ahi uu kaga yimid Maayirka Magaladda Gabiley Khadra Xaaji Gaydh.

Masuuliyiintani waxa ay sidaas ku sheegeen shir jaraa’id oo ay Galabta ku qabteen Magaaladda Gabiley, waxana ay sheegeen in Xadhiga Gudoomioyaha urursiyaasadeeka Jamhuuriga ee Gobolka Gabiley uu ahaa mid si sharci darro ah loo maray waxana ay tilmaameen in xadhigii loo geystay Mudane Shucayb Maxamed Muuse uu ahaa mid laga xumaado isla markaana uu ahaa xadhiga waddo khaldan loo soo maray, oo lagu dhaawacayay sharaftiisa iyo karaamadda urur siyaasadeedka Jamhuuriga waa sidda ay hadalka u dhigeene.

Muuse C/Laahi Suweeen oo ka hadlay shirkan jaraa’id ayaa carabka ku dhuftay in sababta lagu xidhay Shucayb Maxamed Muuse, inaan si cad loo garanayn illaa wakhtigan, waxana uu intaas ku daray in ka dib markii ay ukuur galleen xadhigiisa ay ogaadeen in ay ka danbeysay Gudoomiyaha Golaha Deegaanka Gabiley Khadra Xaaji Gaydh, waxana ay sheegeen in ujeedada ay u xidhayna ay ahayd in ay ku tilmaamtay Shucayb Maxamed Muuse, in uu la socddo ama uu la dhinac yahay xubno ka mid ah golaha deegaanka Gabiley kuwaas oo ay kala aragti duwan yihiin Maayirka Gabiley, waa sidda uu hadalka u dhigay e.

Dhanka kalle Gudoomiyaha urur siyaasadeedka Jamhuuriga ee Gobolka Gabiley Mudane Shucayb Maxamed Muuse,oo aanu khadka Talifoonka kula xidhiidhnay ayaa sheegay in wakhtigan la soo daayay isla markaana xuriyadiisii dib loogu soo celiyay, waxana uu sheegay in sabata lagu xidhay ay tahay “sababta laygu xidhay waxay tahay amar ay bixisay Maayirka Gabiley, kaas oo ku saabsan inaan la socddo Xildhibaano iyadda ka soo horjeedda inaan raacay, balse waa lay soo daayay hadda ka dib markii wax danbi ah layga waayay,” ayuu yidhi Shucayb Maxamed Muuse.

Gudoomiye Shucayb Maxamed Muuse, ugu danbeyntiina waxa uu mahadnaq balaadhan usoo jeediyay Wasiirka Arimaha Gudaha Somaliland oo uu sheegay in uu hawshan isku xilsaaray isla markaana uu arintan uga shaqeeyay si dhex dhaxaadnimo ah.

Gabiley News Desk
Gabiley Office
contactgabiley@yahoo.com



http://samotalis.blogspot.com/

Book Review: Getting Somalia Wrong - A History of International Misreading

Book Review: Getting Somalia Wrong - A History of International Misreading

Writing a book about Somalia has become a cottage industry of late. Countless pundits with little or no experience of the country try to reduce its extraordinarily intricate conflict to images of destruction, decay and death.

But Mary Harper’s book, “Getting Somalia Wrong: faith, war and hope in a shattered state” is a rare account of exceptional intellect, combining stellar reporting with sharp analysis. Well-organised and succinct, the book simplifies some of the most complex and primordial issues facing Somalia, such as the role of clans in a modern nation state. It also demystifies the equally complex identity of Somalis - an amalgamation of lineage-based clans with Islamic and African roots.

Living up to its title, Harper’s book shows how (and why) the international community has misread the situation in Somalia over the past 20 years. Harper recounts the U.S. and UN intervention in the early 1990s, which ended in the now infamous “Black Hawk Down” episode, where 18 members of the American Special Forces (and countless Somalis) died in an epic battle across the dusty streets of Mogadishu.

“[this] was probably the most dramatic example of getting Somalia wrong,” Harper writes. But, in fact, I think the 1993 events were just the first example of the book’s title. More than 10 years later, Washington would again misdiagnose Somali conundrums, with potentially disastrous effect.

Harper correctly observers that the U.S. made another ill-judged intervention in Somalia in 2006, when it helped organize some of the most notorious warlords into an anti-terrorism coalition. The CIA was bankrolling the Mogadishu-based alliance until a popular revolt backed a loose union of Islamic courts to oust the warlords. But instead of learning from its mistakes, Harper notes that Washington went into an anti-terrorism overdrive by essentially outsourcing a war to Ethiopia. Addis Ababa “would carry out the dirty work” of the U.S., writes Harper, and soundly crush the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

Harper’s book details how the defeat of the UIC had the polar opposite effect: al-Shabaab, a more militant faction within the UIC, would exploit the Ethiopian intervention to its advantage and emerge as a real threat to the U.S. and its allies. The group now controls nearly half of Somalia, and swears allegiance to al-Qaeda.

Harper traces “violent political Islam” to the “Mad Mullah,” the 19th century freedom fighter whose lacerating poetry galvanized the nation to fight against the British Empire. Many Somalis would however find Harper’s portrayal of Sayyid Muhammad Abdulle Hassan as a “violent” Islamist profoundly injuring. In the eyes of the vast majority of Somalis, he’s the foremost hero of the people. To frame him any less would conjure up a colonialist mentality.

In her book, Harper goes into great lengths to contextualize the loaded term “failed state,” which is casually applied to Somalia in the news media and popular culture. The absence of central authority since 1991, she writes, is not an appropriate yardstick to measure Somalia. To this incredibly clannish society, Harper argues that the notions of ’state’ and ‘failure’ are western misfits. “It would therefore be misleading to describe Somalia as ever having a stable, fully-functioning nation state, democratic or otherwise,” she writes.

That assertion is contentious. The academic Ali Mizrui, who is widely cited in Harper’s book, says that 1960s Somalia was the closest thing that Africa had to modern day stable and democratic state.

Unlike your average journalist, whose description of Somalia is the fait accompli gloom and doom, Harper goes out of her way to report on the vibrant civil society and business community in the country. She documents successful entrepreneurs who have helped Somalia become one of the most technologically advanced countries on the continent.

Politically, Harper also spends a great deal of her book decoupling Mogadishu, the capital city - and consistently the most chaotic corner since 1991 - from the rest of the country. She points out that clan-based polities in the northwest (Somaliland) and northeast (Puntland), among others, are self-governing with a remarkable degree of success in terms of local governance.

Somaliland, the former British protectorate, features significantly in Harpers book. She shows how this island of calm in an ocean of chaos has managed to strike a balance between traditional leadership (Guurti) and modern state systems. “Somaliland held elections that are far better than many African countries,” she correctly observes. Harper criticises the international community for ignoring these local stability initiatives by overemphasizing the importance of that most evasive of Somali institution - ‘central government. To this end, Harper suggests some type of “federalism” for Somalia, allowing local communities to exert greater control over local governance.

While Harper is correct to lash out at the international community’s idiosyncratic approach to Somalia, she hasn’t sufficiently explained the ‘federalism’ she casually refers to. Flirting with the word is deeply troubling to many Somalis who feel that the whole notion is being foisted onto them by neighboring countries, chiefly Ethiopia, which is a historical enemy. Put simply, Somalia does not have the characteristics of a federal state, such the U.S., Russia or Nigeria. Somalia is figuratively small and it’s too homogeneous to federalize. A decentralized state, much like the UK, is more apt.

In a nutshell, Harper’s book is one of the most comprehensive accounts written about Somalia in recent years. The author neatly packs so much information into a relatively small book. It’s a refreshing take on what is a deeply complex conflict.

By Abdi Aynte - Abdi Aynte is a journalist at Al Jazeera English.
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/