Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein |
Baidoa, Somalia, January 05, 2008 – Somalia's prime minister on Friday named the bulk of his new cabinet to replace one that fell apart last month over clan bickering, stalling hopes of getting the interim government moving amid an insurgency. President Abdillahi Yusuf, who approved the appointments, was in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, undergoing a medical check-up a month after suffering a chest illness that sparked a health scare.
Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein appointed 15 ministers to fill an expected 18-member cabinet that is supposed to draw half its roster from outside the Parliament, in a move that Western diplomats promoted in hopes of bringing in more technocrats.
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Police confront ODM MPs- elect James Orengo, Henry Kosgey and Omingo Magara as they attempted to enter Uhuru Park earlier today. |
Nairobi , January 5, 2008 – The much hyped ODM rally at Uhuru Park failed to take off as armed police blocked its leaders from holding a meeting there and repulsed them with tear-gas.
Only three leaders dared the over 100 armed police and para-millitary officers to access the fortified historic grounds.
They were ODM chairman, Mr Henry Kosgey, treasurer, Mr Omingo Magara, and Ugenya MP-elect, Mr James Orengo, among others.
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A Somali woman walks past derelict buildings in Mogadishu
Mogadishu, Somalia, 5 January 2008 - Two Libyan diplomats were captured by Somali gunmen in the restive capital Mogadishu Saturday and released hours later, a witness and one of their colleagues told AFP.
"Libyan charge d'affaires Neji Gsuda and another diplomat, Fethi Abu Daya, were abducted near the Bakara market by armed and masked men," a Libyan official had told AFP in Tripoli.
"The two diplomats had gone out for shopping when they were snatched," a Libyan diplomat had also told AFP. "Their driver returned and said that men armed with pistols kidnapped them."
MOGADISHU, Somalia, 2 Jan 2008 — Somalia’s fledgling national government has targeted reporters in an apparent bid to suppress reports of fighting between national forces and Islamic insurgents in Mogadishu, the capital.
Government forces have shut down three of the city’s 10 independent radio stations and arrested scores of locally based reporters. As many as five journalists remain in detention weeks or months after their arrests.
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Nairobi, Jan 02 2008 – On Tuesday night, Mr. Samuel Kivuitu made a damning admission that he announced results of the fiercely contested presidential election under pressure.
The announcement plunged the country into a post-election violence of a scale never witnessed before.
MOGADISHU, Somalia, January 4, 2008 - Somalia's president has flown to Ethiopia for a medical treatment a month after being hospitalized with a chest illness, officials said Friday, creating more uncertainty for his volatile country.
President Abdillahi Yusuf, 73, was not seriously ill, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Libya's Ambassador to UN Giadalla Ettalhi |
4 January 2008(AXcess News)-- New York - After chairing his first Security Council meeting today, Libya's Ambassador said that being both a new member and president of the 15-member body at once is not an easy task, but is nonetheless very important for the North African nation, which was shunned by the international community for many years.
Libya was elected last year by the General Assembly to serve as a non-permanent member on the Council for a two-year term beginning on 1 January, along with Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia and Viet Nam. It also assumed the Council's presidency for January under a system by which the post rotates every month in alphabetic order by country name.
Opposition supporters raise machetes and sticks next to a poster of opposition leader Raila Odinga, during riots in the Mathare slum in Nairobi, 2 Jan 2008 |
4 January 2008
The World Food Program says it plans to provide through the Kenyan Red Cross urgently needed food for 100,000 people displaced by violence in the Northern Rift Valley. The WFP warns the crisis in Kenya also hampers humanitarian operations throughout the region. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.
A World Food Program Spokeswoman, Christiane Berthiaume, tells VOA a WFP team left Nairobi by road on Friday to bring food for 100,000 displaced people to the Kenya Red Cross. She says this food is meant to supplement that which is being provided by the Kenyan government.
ADDIS ABABA, 4 Jan 2008 - A U.S. team has started an assessment of the aid situation in Ethiopia's troubled Ogaden region, the U.S. embassy said, after conflict there fuelled fears of a humanitarian crisis.
The Ethiopian army launched a major offensive earlier this year against separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels in the remote eastern region, which borders Somalia.
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Mogadishu, Somalia, January 4 2008 - 12 people were killed and ten others were wounded in armed confrontation between rival militias in Adado town of Galgadud region in central Somalia, sources say on Friday.
Most the dead were from warring parts that had exchange heavy weaponry despite the situation resumed clam after several hours of gun battle.
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Headlines |
President Rayale shortly before leaving Hargeysa airport on 2 Jan 2008 for Addis, London and Washington trip |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, January 5, 2008 (SL Times) – Somaliland president Dahir Rayale Kahin is due to arrive in London today on his way to the USA.
Shortly before leaving the Somaliland capital Hargeysa on Wednesday, Mr. Rayale told local reporters that he was traveling to Ethiopia, the UK and the US for the sake of promoting his country’s interests.
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Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Abdillahi Mohammed Duale |
Hargeysa Somaliland, January 05, 2008 – Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Abdillahi Mohammed Duale has accused Abdillahi Yusuf, President of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, TFG, of trying to create tribal conflicts in Somaliland’s eastern region of Sool.
Responding to a statement by Yusuf that Somaliland troops should leave Puntland, Duale said that Somaliland troops were on their own territory and that Somaliland was duty-bound to maintain its territorial integrity.
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Acting Kulmiye Party Chairman, Muhamad Iskerse |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, January 05, 2008 – Kulmiye party and Qaran, the unregistered political association, have formed a joint opposition committee to lead a united political front against President Rayale in the run up to the next general election, scheduled in the summer.
Early in the week, top party officials from Kulmiye and Qaran have been seen converging in Kulmiye’s Hargeysa central headquarters for long hours of behind closed door meetings.
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Dr. Ahmed Hussein Isa, Kulmiye party's Secretary of Foreign Affairs |
Dubai, January 5, 2008 – A Somaliland Presidential candidate expressed his belief that the U.S. government was about to establish relations with Somaliland.
Talking to Awdalnews Network, Dr. Ahmed Hussein Isa, who is contesting for the leadership of the main opposition party Kulmiye, also affirmed that Somaliland could play a positive role in bringing peace to Somalia if the warring faction leaders in Mogadishu and the international community accepted Somaliland’s secession.
Kenya's president steals an election, showing utter contempt for democracy and his people
Jan 3rd 2008
THE mayhem that killed hundreds of people following Kenya's election on December 27th completes a depressing cycle of democratic abuses in Africa's biggest countries. Nigeria held its own mockery of an election last April. Scores were killed and observers pronounced it the most fraudulent poll they had ever witnessed. Congo held a more or less peaceful election in October 2006, since when the main opposition leader has been hounded into exile. And the year before that, flawed elections in Ethiopia resulted in the deaths of 199 protesters. Needless to say, the incumbents all won.
Addis Ababa, December 22, 2007 – Ethiopia has registered encouraging results in its determined position to work unilaterally and in collaboration with African countries following the demise of the military regime, state minister of foreign affairs said.
State Minister Dr Tekeda Alemu told Hidase, the millennium special edition magazine of [ruling coalition] EPRDF [Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front], that the country managed to carry out effective works as it implemented a strong foreign policy that eliminated suspicion relations with neighboring countries.
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President Yusuf was treated for bronchitis last month |
Baidoa, Somalia, January 4, 2008 – Abdillahi Yusuf, Somalia's interim President has been flown to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for treatment. The sick President had earlier collapsed on Friday morning in the Somalian city of Baidoa. President Yusuf, 72, was reported to be in bad health condition, but Prime Minister Nur Hussein Hassan said he is in stable condition.
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Commentary
By Beatrice Hongo
CONAKRY, January 5, 2008 – Protesters burned tires and built barricades in the streets of the Guinean capital Conakry after President Lansana Conte dismissed his information minister, in an apparent snub to a consensus prime minister.
A presidential decree on Thursday replaced government spokesman Justin Morel Junior a day after he read a statement on state television from Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate which called a New Year’s address by the reclusive Conte a “hoax”.
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A police officer kicks a resident of the Kibera slum, Nairobi, Kenya, Saturday Jan. 5, 2008. |
NAIROBI, Kenya, 5 Jan 2008 - Kenya's president is ready to form "a government of national unity" to help resolve disputed elections that caused deadly riots, the government said Saturday as police and residents battled with guns and machetes in a Nairobi slum.
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Asmara, Eritrea, 3 January 2008 - President Isaias Afwerki today received and held talks at the Denden Hall with Mr. Donald Payne, Member of the House of Representatives in the US Congress.
In the meeting, the two sides held extensive discussion on Eritrean-US relations, the situation in the region, in general, and the Eritrean-Ethiopian border issue, in particular.
3 January 2008
By Kevin Jackson How will the African continent perform in 2008 in terms of economic growth, which countries and which sectors will have the best changes? AfricaNews asked several professionals to give their opinion. Today the vision of Kevin Jackson, principal at CSC Consulting, in St. Louis, USA.
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Analysis
Jan 4, 2008
Part One: By Buri M. Hamza*
Introduction
US-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia in December 2006. Meles Zenawi had then described his unjust invasion of Somalia as: “A military operation that was prompted by the menaces posed by the growing influence of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)”. He also said: “The Ethiopian forces are waging a war against Islamists in Somalia in order to protect their nation’s sovereignty and also protect the internationally-recognized Transitional Federal Government of Somalia.”
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DES MOINES, Iowa, January 5, 2008 -- Sen. Barack Obama's victory Thursday in critical Democratic Iowa caucuses indicate voters saw him as a candidate of change, according to entrance polls.
The freshman Illinois senator was CNN's projected winner in the key early step toward the White House, with 38 percent of the vote and 99 percent of precincts reporting.
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3 January 2008
By conservative estimates, 66,000 women and girls living in Britain have been mutilated. This figure, accepted by the Metropolitan Police, came in a report by a volunteer organisation funded by the Department of Health and carried out with academics from the London School of Tropical Hygiene and the City University.
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Haatuf Cartoon on 'New Press Law"
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In May 18 2001 , NBC’s Dr Bob Arnot wrote an article entitled: “An oasis of stability in East Africa: Does Colin Powell have the courage to save Somaliland?” The oasis of stability that Dr Arnot was referring to is Somaliland. In that article, Dr Arnot also makes clear that although saving Somaliland from falling into the anarchy and lawless of Somalia is morally the right thing to do, it is also in the US interests to do so. Unfortunately, Colin Powell did not answer Dr Arnot’s call.
Six years later ( 21 November 2007), the Voice of America reported, “The chief U.S. diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, says it is time for Somali moderates to come forward and work to end chronic violence.”
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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.
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By Dalmar Kaahin, Ottawa, Canada
When I came across your name—Somali Canadian Alliance SCA—on Somali websites, my reaction was: “Thank God, it is about time!” In other words, I was delighted to see fellow Somali-Canadians (Somali-Canucks) meeting and posing in the same photo opt with the Canadian Prime Minster, Mr. Stephen Harper, and informing him of the sad plight of the Somali people in Mogadishu and elsewhere. ( http://tinyurl.com/2zkwy4) Furthermore, I was thrilled to see that, finally, someone in our community bravely took the initiative to establish the long-waited Somali-Canadian umbrella that would lobby for the betterment of the Somali people here in Canada, and campaign against the presence of the oppressive enemy troops—the Ethiopians—in Somali soil.
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By Farhan Abdi Suleiman (oday)
There comes a time in life when almost everyone dreams of one day getting married and setting down to start a family and to a home of their own. May be you have not yet got to this stage, or may be it is something very much on your mind. In many of our Somaliland generation, whether we think the time is right or not, it feels like parents are putting a lot of pressure on their sons and daughters to get married and to find the right person. Let just spend a moment to thinking about what all this can mean. The question is how can young Muslim men and women prepare for marriage? How are you going to choose the right person? What do you need to do to make the marriage work?.
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Year End Greetings
By Hassan Abtidon
Toronto Canada – every year has its ups and downs, we enter into busy year of family gathering, we wish all cultures a very happy times. Enjoy the time you have with your families and friends, and be sure to relax and appreciate the spirit of the New Year.
The New Year is a good time to set new goals, both personally and professionally, to gain a new perspective and renewed enthusiasm. This could be your year to make things happen, to fulfill dreams. Each year brings new lessons to learn, and this year was no different. The volatility of the past year strengthened our need to reinforce the importance of planning.
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Las-Anoders Abroad To Abdillahi Yusuf Yey: Not in My Name
By Mohamed Sougal
For years, Baidoa-based warlord Abdillahi Yusuf Yey has meticulously avoided the issue of the Puntland-Somaliland tug of war about Sool. Delusionally claiming to govern both Somaliland and Puntland, Yey has stuck to his hypocritical “above the fray” stance while at the same time arming and training the Pro-Puntland militia in Lascanood. At multiple instances, TFG militias have been shipped from Mogadishu and Kismayo when it become obvious to Adde Musse that Lascanoders were about to get rid of his ragtag militia.
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By Abdirahman ibrahim Abdilahi
Benazir Bhutto was born in Karachi, Pakistan to a prominent political family. At age 16 she left her homeland to study at Harvard's Radcliffe College. After completing her undergraduate degree at Radcliffe she studied at England's Oxford University, where she was awarded a second degree in 1977.
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By Iftikhar Ahmad
According to British writer and lecturer, Karen Armstrong, the west is deeply Islamophobic and the Islamophobia is the result of a long process of prejudice, dating back to the Crusades. The recent events have strengthened the prejudiced belief that "Islam is the religion of the sword".
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By Abdifatah Mohamed Ahmed
Citizen’s of any country in the world can be categorized into three division’s , the first part is the junior citizen’s ,the next part is the middle class citizen’s and the last part is the senior citizen’s which are the aged and senile people. On the other hand also we can discriminate the aboriginal people of any country into two segments. Generation X that comprises (youth + middle class citizens) and generation Y that consists of geriatric and senile citizen’s
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January 3rd, 2008
Journalists were killed in unusually high numbers in 2007, making it the deadliest year for the press in more than a decade.
NEW YORK, January 2, 2008 (CPJ/MENASSAT.COM) - Sixty-five journalists were killed in direct relation to their work in 2007, the highest death toll in more than a decade, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a year-end report.
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Pretoria, December 31, 2007 – Africa’s political and economic balance sheet continues to move into the black.
The long-awaited European Union-Africa Summit in Lisbon earlier this month heard that when leaders of the two continents last met in Cairo seven years ago, there were no fewer than 14 conflicts raging on African soil -- making up 50% of violent deaths on the planet.
These chilling statistics have more than halved.
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J. Peter Pham, Ph.D.
January 3, 2008
The end of one year and the beginning of another is a good time both to take stock of where we have been and to look ahead at the paths we are likely to take and the battles we will have to fight in the coming months. What follows is a broad assessment of status of the African front in what has come to be known as the “Global War on Terror.”
31 December 2007
2007 proved to be yet another bloody year in the Middle East and North Africa. The Media Line looks at how men of violence attempted to create political change with a litany of assassinations that left many leaders dead and democracies in turmoil.
The year 2007 ended in the Middle East on a dramatic note, with the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's killing by a gunman last Thursday was no isolated assassination.
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The number of journalists killed has risen 244% in five years
Reporters Without Borders
2 January 2008
At least 86 journalists were killed around the world in 2007. The figure has risen steadily since 2002 – from 25 to 86 (+ 244%) – and is the highest since 1994, when 103 journalists were killed, nearly half of them in the Rwanda genocide, about 20 in Algeria’s civil war and a dozen in the former Yugoslavia.
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By Mohamed A. Awale
As a new year begins and another one (2007) fast disappears, there must be a moments of sober reflections of what has transpired major events or changes of the end-year, either for good or bad, and driving forces behind. In terms of the sheer politico, social and historical twists of last year, such argument has perhaps more prominence today than ever in the context of Somalia’s (the South) nihilistic and protracted conflict.
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