Addis Ababa, April 14, 2007 – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Ethiopia inaugurated the first livestock market facilities built under the Pastoralist Livelihoods Initiative (PLI) project, USAID said.
The Teltele and Harobake market facilities in the Borena Zone of Oromia Region represent a vital link in a value-chain that will improve performance in the livestock sector and lead to increased economic benefits for pastoralists.
By Abdulkadir Khalif
Nairobi, April 17, 2007 - Jendayi Frazer, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, must have been the highest ranking US government official to visit Somalia in 13 years when she landed at the Baidoa airstrip on April 7.
The timing of the visit was telling, as the capital city of Mogadishu was going through one of the deadliest street battles in its recent days.
Baidoa residents woke up to an unprecedented security operation mounted by pro-government forces, US marines and plainclothes security men. Ms Frazer addressed legislators at the Transitional Federal Parliament. According to local radio reports, she also held a closed door meeting with President Abdullahi Yusuf, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi and Sheikh Adan Madobe, the TFP's Speaker.
Armed militiamen are gathered in the shade in a Mogadishu suburb |
MOGADISHU, April 19, 2007 - A suicide bomber blew himself up at an Ethiopian military base and mortars slammed into a Mogadishu market on Thursday, amid battles between troops and Somali insurgents that killed at least 12 civilians.
The suicide attacker drove a 4x4 through the gates of the Ethiopian base in the Somali capital before detonating explosives which set off secondary blasts from munitions nearby, Islamist sources and witnesses said.
SANAA, April 20, 2007 – A leader of the Somali opposition Islamic Courts called on Yemen on Friday not to extradite Ethiopian soldiers he said had fled to the Arab country from the fighting in Somalia.
Yemeni newspapers have reported that dozens of Ethiopian soldiers were among Somali refugees who arrived in Yemen in the past week, but Yemeni officials denied the reports.
Reporters Without Borders - Report
April 18, 2007 – After a fact-finding visit to Sudan from 17 to 22 March, Reporters Without Borders is issuing a report on the country’s press and civil society, shedding a new light on the misleading image of a “land of massacres” closed to the world and dominated by a dictatorial and monolithic regime. The janjaweed militiamen are used “by a racist regime that is in many respects worse than the apartheid regime in South Africa, which at least had the dignity not to employ rape as a tactic of suppression.”
ASMARA, April 18 2007 – Eritrea said on Wednesday it had moved its education minister to the foreign affairs portfolio to handle the Horn of Africa state's tricky ties with the international community and neighboring arch-foe Ethiopia.
The Foreign Ministry was without a head for nearly two years after its former chief died of a heart attack.
Corpses of Somalis killed in the Ethiopian offensive in Mogadishu earlier this month
Mogadishu , Somalia, April 18, 2007 – Tensions escalated in Somalia after a member of the transitional government switched sides and accused invading Ethiopian troops of committing “genocide” against Somali civilians in the capital, Mogadishu.
The accusation by Hussein Aideed, the deputy prime minister, took already high tensions in the Horn of Africa to a new level because it came from a high-ranking Somali official. His call on Ethiopian forces to leave Mogadishu revealed the deep divisions within Somalia’s interim government.
People stand at the site of wreckage after clashes between Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian army and insurgents on Friday night near the former defence ministry building in Mogadishu April 14, 2007. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
NAIROBI , April 18, 2007 -- Somalia's transitional parliament has fired its former speaker and 30 other lawmakers for failing to attend sessions in recent months, a lawmaker confirmed on Wednesday.
Nairobi, Kenya, April 20, 2007 – UNICEF and other UN agencies, eager to assist children and their families affected and displaced by ongoing conflict in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, are finding their efforts hindered by the insecurity in the strife-hit city.
According to UNICEF Somalia Representative, Christian Balslev-Olesen, ‘We are extremely anxious to reach the displaced population especially since most of them are women and children under the age of 14.
ead full text...
MOGADISHU, Somalia, April 10, 2007 – Recent fighting between Ethiopian-backed government troops and Islamic insurgents in Somalia's capital killed more than 1,000 civilians and wounded 4,300, according to a report by the largest clan in the battle-scarred city.
The estimate was a dramatic escalation in the death toll from four days of bloodshed that started in late March - the country's worst violence in more than 15 years. An earlier estimate by a Somali human rights group said more than 1,000 civilians had been killed or wounded.
Asmara, Eritrea, April 18, 2007 – Ethiopia must withdraw its troops from Somalia immediately or face an all-out war that "no army" could resist, three senior Somali leaders warned on Wednesday.
The three, including top Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Hussein Aidid, who holds a post in Somalia's government, were meeting in the Eritrean capital for talks.
|
|
Headlines |
1st Deputy Chairman of House of Representatives, Mr Abdi-Aziz Muhammad Samale |
The first Deputy Chairman of Parliament’s House of Representatives, Mr Abdi-Aziz Muhammad Samale, criticized President Dahir Rayale Kahin on Wednesday for refusing to approve the 2007 national budget that was endorsed by parliament on 19 March 2007. In an official letter addressed to the president, the Mr Samale said, “nowhere in the constitution does it say the president has the authority or constitutional right to reject the recent budget endorsed by parliament.”
The deputy chairman was responding to the presidential decree Rayale issued to parliament on 11 April 2007. The decree stated that the president ‘is unable to comply with the amendments made by parliament to the 2007 budget, which was submitted in February by the ministry of Finance for approval by parliament.’
|
Kampala, Uganda, April 21, 2007 (SL Times) – On Tuesday April 17, 2007, Somaliland’s parliamentary delegation arrived in Uganda after spending two weeks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa as official guests of the Ethiopian parliament. Somaliland’s delegation is composed of members of parliament and politial parties and is led by the speaker of parliament, Mr Abdirahman Muhammad Abdillahi. The delegation was met at Entebbe airport by officials from the Uganda parliament and were taken to Hotel Africana in the center of Kampala.
Read full text...
|
Analysis
April 16, 2007 – Released on the 2nd of April this year, the 2007 Africa economic report like that of last year is an in-depth evaluation of 52 African economies. The only country excluded in the report is the chaotic segment of Somalia. But sadly, the much more stable and democratic Somaliland has not been taken into account because, the African Union and the United Nations are yet to recognise her ( Somaliland).
|
Hargeysa, April 15, 2007 – President of Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin sacked his Defense Minister Adan Mire Waqaf on Sunday as fighting flared between his forces and militia’s of neighboring semi-autonomous Puntland for the second time in a week.
A statement by the Information Minister, Ahmed Haji Dahir Elmi, a copy of which was received by Awdalnews Network , said the President accused the Minister of refusing his orders and taking actions that had jeopardized the security of the country.
|
|
Somaliland : Livestock Ban
Lord Avebury (Liberal Democrat) asked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by the Lord President on 27 March 2006 (WA 100), what progress has been made on ways of overcoming the livestock ban against Somaliland by neighboring states; and whether they will place in the Library of the House a copy of the Somali Joint Needs Assessment in which the overall reconstruction package for Somaliland was expected to be contained.
Read full text..
|
HARGEISA, Apr 19, 2007 – The Supreme Court in the self-declared republic of Somaliland has sentenced two men to be executed by firing squad for the murder of four foreign aid workers between 2003-2004, court officials said on Thursday.
Despite relative stability in the breakaway enclave of north-west Somalia compared with the rest of the anarchic nation, the killings of the foreigners raised fears Somaliland might be becoming a base for terrorism.
|
Commentary
I.M. Lewis
London School of Economics
Reports that the forces of ‘transitional president’ Abdillahi Yusuf and his Ethiopian allies have committed war crimes against civilians in the course of trying to subdue the citizens of Mogadishu is no surprise. Much more surprising, and morally satisfying, is the news that the European ministers and officials, who have so vociferously and uncritically supported Abdillahi in his bid to represent himself as Somali President, may also be implicated in these charges. Whatever the judicial position, the European Union is certainly morally guilty of doing its upmost to prop up the essentially otiose transitional federal government, whose only significant political action since its formation has been to get the Ethiopians to try to force their authority on Somalia.
MOGADISHU, April 21, 2007 — Fighting between Ethiopian forces and Islamist insurgents in the Somali capital killed at least 113 civilians and left 229 wounded in three days, a local human rights group said Friday.
The United Nations warned of a humanitarian catastrophe with corpses left rotting in the streets, where rival fighters continued pounding each other with heavy artillery.
Sudan Ali Ahmed, chairman of the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization, said his group arrived at the toll by collating figures from hospitals, other humanitarian groups and counting bodies abandoned in the streets.
|
Former pokesman of the Somali Parliament, Sherif Hassan Sheik Aden (centre), the Chairman of the Executive Council of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), Sheik Sheirf Sheik Ahmed (left) and Eng. Hussein Mohammed Farah Aideed (right) |
Asmara, April 18, 2007 – Somali leaders who have been holding a meeting here from April 10 to 17 on the objective situation in their country have called for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the invading Ethiopian forces. Read full text...
|
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Geneva, April 20, 2007 – This is a summary of what was said by the UNHCR spokesperson at today's Palais des Nations press briefing in Geneva. Further information can be found on the UNHCR websites, www.unhcr.org and www.unhcr.fr, which should also be checked for regular media updates on non-briefing days.
UNHCR yesterday (Thursday) began distribution of relief supplies to thousands of displaced people in Afgooye, a Somali town some 30 kms west of Mogadishu. This comes amid reports of an outbreak of fresh fighting in Mogadishu and an explosion yesterday afternoon on the main road linking Afgooye and the capital, effectively cutting links to the small town.
|
Mogadishu, Somalia, April 18, 2007 – Somali elders accused Ethiopian troops on Wednesday of breaking a truce by attacking Islamist insurgents in southern Mogadishu, sparking clashes that killed at least seven civilians.
Ethiopian army units facing off against the Islamists for days in the volatile al Kamin neighborhood initiated the fighting that erupted late Tuesday near the presidential palace, they said.
|
Read full text...
19 April 2007
It is amazing how fast a country can heal under the right hands. A return to the economic prosperity of the mid-1990s, or even the early 1970s, may take time; Zimbabwe can come right.
People often cite Mozambique and Zambia as examples of basket cases that have been turned around, but I have not been impressed by either. The Portuguese, for all their errors, turned Mozambique into a major producer of cashews. They established world-class national parks and a good network of roads and railways. The late Samora Machel destroyed all that.
|
Read full text...
|
International News
|
|
| Washington, Belgrade and Kosovo, 18 April - The United States intends to increase its efforts in order for Kosovo to attain independence and in next few weeks a new resolution will be put to the UN Security Council, US under secretary Nicholas Burns told the lower chamber of the US Congress, the House of Representatives. At the discussion of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on prospects for Kosovo’s independence late on Tuesday in Washington, Burns stressed that solution is inevitable. The US fully supports special UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s plan proposing phased independence for Kosovo under European Union supervision. |
|
Seattle, April 20, 2007 – A joint terrorism task force has seized computers and files from a Somali-owned travel agency in Tukwila as part of an international search for Ruben Shumpert, a fugitive who fled to Somalia in November.
Shumpert, a South Seattle barber, had been due to appear in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Nov. 21 to be sentenced on felony charges of possession of a firearm and a related counterfeiting charge, but never appeared.
|
Read full text...
|
| Following a series of fruitful visits of Somaliland leaders and personalities from all three political parties of Somaliland, arranged by this association, it come imperative to formalize officially our deep rooted century old relationship between the two nations: Somaliland and Wales. On light of this and as integral part of the recently launched Welsh Assembly Government Programme: |
Read full text... |
Mr. Osman suffered three fatal stab wounds during the attack
London, April 18, 2007 – Three people have been found guilty of murdering a teenager, who was beaten to death in a gang attack in January 2006.
|
|
Reema Saffarini
Dubai, April 16, 2007 – A five-day conference organized by the Dubai Women's College brought together 100 female students from the UAE and 21 other countries to exchange cultural experiences and enhance leadership skills.
Dubbed Insight Dubai, the annual conference is part of an ongoing effort to provide international exposure to students and increase global awareness.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial
|
Any way you look at it, the evacuation of Somaliland’s forces from Dhahar was an embarrassing defeat. Militarily speaking, there is nothing wrong with evacuating a position if it becomes necessary to do so. Several factors, however, have made it difficult for Somalilanders to swallow the news of their army’s leaving Dhahar. First, most Somalilanders believe that Majeerteenya’s (Puntland) militias are no match for Somaliland’s forces. Second, Somaliland’s initial victory over the militias from Majeerteenya made many people think that may be Somaliland finally had a plan for taking control of the parts of Sool and Sanag region that are currently not under Somaliland’s administration. Third, the dismissal of the minister of defense and the reasons given for the dismissal, namely, that he had cut all communication with the president during the military conflict and had disobeyed the president’s orders not to evacuate Somaliland’s troops from Dhahar, added to the sense of things gone awry.
|
Read full text...
|
Special Report |
In November 2005, the Centre for Human Rights began investigating the possibility of a third destination for the LLM field trip. The reasons for increasing the number of field trip destinations to include Somaliland include the following:
Somaliland is a state in the making; it would be ideal for students on the programme to have a first hand experience of this. |
Read full text.
|
|
Opinions
|
By Mohamud Tani
It has got no two names. This is a defeat. You send your forces to a mission. They engage in a series of battles. Instead of routing the enemy altogether, they did not even hold ground, they retreat. What do you call that? DEFEAT. It does not matter that the weather was the reason. That was no excuse for neither Hitler nor Napoleon. The obvious is what matters in military results. Our forces came back to where they started from. That is absolutely shameful..
|
|
Mr. President I Don’t Get It
By Cabdale Faarah Sigad
No matter what his critics say but most of the times I do trust President Rayale’s judgment. But it is also my obligation as a concerning citizen to say when and where I disagree about his policy. Therefore I am sad to say that in the present situation regarding between Somaliland & Majeertenia, I am not really sure what the president is trying to do.
It is obvious that our nation are in war with people who don’t respect our legitimate borders, and in my opinion Somaliland borders should be secured and I would support if this can be done through a dialog and negotiations, bearing in mind that war is not a pleasant thing. However if that doesn’t work and the only options we have as a nation happen to be using forces, so be it.
|
|
Somalia: Illegal Occupation And Tricky Ploy
By Mohamed Mukhtar, London
Ethiopia has quietly interfered in Somalia for years and directly or indirectly controlled different parts of this country. However, on 24th December 2006, Ethiopian troops unwittingly applied a sharp jolt of electricity to Somali nationalism, which had been in deep coma for many years, and revived it. A sense of disbelief and shock enveloped Somalis when they saw Ethiopian troops roaming round the streets of Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. Somalis expressed and continue to express their deeply resentful indignation towards Ethiopia by holding worldwide demonstrations and disapproving the Ethiopian-backed Somali government. Mogadishu is now the contesting place for those who want to arrest Ethiopia’s illegal occupation and those who want to put Mogadishu, the symbol of the Republic of Somalia, at the mercy of Ethiopia.
|
|
Cover Up In Civilian Massacre In Mogadishu
By Yassin Ismail, Kent, UK
Heavy fighting resumes in Mogadishu between the Ethiopian troops backing the week Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia and insurgents belonging to the powerful Hawiye clan after two weeks of relative calm following a truce signed between Ethiopian military generals and Hawiye clan elders.
At least 32 civilians have been killed so far and scores injured in the renewed fighting for the third day running as Ethiopian troops once again bombarded the city indiscriminately using sophisticated missiles and artillery barrage on civilian populated areas. A reporter for the BBC based in Mogadishu confirmed Ethiopian artillery shelling hitting heavily populated areas further afield the battle grounds where the two belligerent sides are fighting each other.
|
|
By Guled Ismail
The statement from the Somaliland ministry of information was characteristically un-diplomatic and bellicose “The Somaliland National Army entered Dhahar [a town in the disputed Sanag region] today…in the full knowledge that there is no opposing force that can stop it”. Many Somaliland supporters wince at the crassness of such pronouncements. Don’t they know that underestimating a foe has been the downfall of many an arrogant nation through the ages? As if to underline the point the Somaliland Army was under intense fire within 24 hours from a determined and well equipped force of Puntlanders.
|
Read full text... |
Somaliland International Recognition Action Group (SIRAG) Press Release
London , UK, April 16, 2007 – SIRAG would like to send condolences to the soldiers of the Republic of Somaliland who died in the recent clash in Dhahar as well as their families and relatives. SIRAG would also like to extend their support to the Honorable Army of the Republic of Somaliland for defending their nation and borders. Somaliland has come a long way and it is important to remember that our nation would not go back to the chaos of war which is still haunting the Horn of Africa to date.
|
Read full text... |
By Dr. Abdishakur Jowhar
Mogadishu , the capital of Somalia, is a city living a clandestine nightmare that even Dante could not imagine. But on this day nothing could conceal the truth as told by dead bodies piling up on its streets. Every freshly killed body, every dead body thrown into the impromptu mass graves; every one of these belongs to only one Somali tribe and no other. Over 1000 bodies of civilians have been found so far; and every last one of them belong to the same tribe-the Hawiye. The dead do not lie. And this is the story they tell; the story of the curse of tribal cleansing yet again;
|
|
| FEATURES & COMMENTARY |
9 April 2007
Two years ago, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia announced to the world it was essentially open for business. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told reporters the country was prepared to offer oil, gas and mineral concessions to foreign companies, although this invitation came with a warning: all firms were to do business only with his government and not some clan jostling for power. "Any violation of this statement will result in negative consequences," he warned, adding that the "culprits will take the responsibilities on their shoulders."
|
Read full text... |
By Gemeda Humnasa
April 19, 2007
Top Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has demanded for the end of Ethiopian support for the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) once again. But according to the Main & Guardian, together with the Eritrean government, the Islamists have now warned of an “all-out war” if Ethiopian troops do not withdraw.
According to BBC analyst Patrick Gilkes and various UN documents, the Eritrean government has been arming Oromo Liberation Front and the Islamic Courts Union(ICU) who have been alleged of supporting Al-Qaeda operatives. Despite the American mission to find the terrorists inside ICU and stopping the formation of a Taliban like Somali government,
|
|
By Mohamed A. Awale, Edmonton, Canada
"Ich bin ein Berliner"
John F. Kennedy
"Ich bin ein Hawiye"
Dr. A. Jowhar
Haunted by malevolence of Mudug factor applies it fittingly, if there is an ever compelling, single truth about Somalia’s horrors of fratricide over 17 years. The unruly mob-ocracy of Mudug link has ruined Somali race's dignity and its tortured recent history for that matter. I'm not saying these words lightly or making it out of thin air either but the fact on the ground speaks volume by its self.
|
|
By Daniel Martin Varisco
Yemeni legend has it that one day a man took his goats to browse among shrubs in the mountains. The goatherd noticed that--after eating berries from one plant--one of his goats began to prance around as though half crazed. Curious at such a strange sight, the old man tried some of the berries himself. He suddenly felt years younger.
The goatherd ran down the mountainside to tell his friends about his wonderful discovery. One of these friends was a poet. He went back up the mountain with the old man to see what all the fuss was about. After popping a few berries into his mouth, the poet became so excited by the results that he instantly composed a poem in praise of the shrub. This poem spread the fame of the plant far and wide.
|
|
A skeleton of an African emigrant was found on Yemeni beaches. No one knows its identity. UNHCR records for 2006 show some 26,000 emigrants making the voyage from Somalia, with at least 330 dying while another 300 were reported missing and are believed dead.
SANA’A, April 18, 2007 – Five Ethiopian emigrants have been found dead in a Yemeni jail, according to an Ethiopian Embassy official.
|
|
|
|
By Ivan Eland
April 12, 2007 - The media often report overseas developments, but don’t always explore their underlying causes, which, in many cases, conveniently lets the U.S. government off the hook. The recent internecine violence in Somalia provides a classic example.
|
Read full text...
|
|
