Ahmed Abdi Mohamoud “Habsade” |
Hargeisa, 24 November 2007 - Former first chairman of the House of Representatives of Somaliland and former strongman and Interior Minister of Puntland, Mr. Ahmed Abdi Mohamoud “Habsade” was given a warm welcome when he arrived Hargeisa ten years after he was removed from Chairmanship.
Mr. Habsade who cooperated with government delegations to Sool have been received by President Dahir Rayale Kahin on a courtesy call soon after his arrival. He had also a lunch with former colleagues in Parliament and government at Mansoor Hotel.
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Kampala, November 23, 2007 – Queen Elizabeth on Thursday congratulated Uganda for the country's fight against HIV/Aids, its support of peacekeeping in Somalia and the government's efforts to resolve the conflict in the north peacefully.
Queen Elizabeth addresses the Ugandan Parliament, in Kampala, yesterday. At left is her husband Prince Philip. At right is the Speaker of the Uganda Parliament, Mr Edward Ssekandi. Photo/Uganda Presidential Press unit.
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11/17/2007 BBC MONITORING
Text of report by Somali pro-Puntland government Puntlandpost website on 17 November
Somaliland forces are confirmed to have captured Ganbare village and are now moving to Tukaraq which is situated between Garoowe and Laas Caanood towns [northeastern Somalia].
Nairobi, Kenya, November 20, 2007 (AHN) - A Kenyan man killed a lion with his bare hands in Samburu, about 260 kilometers northeast of the capital Nairobi, only to be attacked by a pack of hyenas a few moments later, the country's media reported Tuesday.
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Addis Ababa, 20 November 2007 - Elders in Hudet, Liben zone, Somali Regional State are preparing to host over 550 participants.
“This will be the biggest ever pastoralist gathering in the Horn of Africa,” said Allistair Scott-Villiers, team leader for the gathering. ”It represents a remarkable and unique opportunity for pastoralists’ leaders to discuss critical issues that affect the lives of millions.”
Nairobi, November 23, 2007 - Officials from the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders (EHARD) and United Nations Human Rights Organization on Friday met some of the Exiled Somali Journalists in Nairobi, Kenya and handed them some assistance package from the National Endowment for Democracy.
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Garowe, November 23, 2007 – A team representing an Australian exploration firm was chased out of a town in Somalia where they planned to collect rock samples earlier this week, informed sources tell Garowe Online.
The team representing Range Resources, Ltd., traveled to Buru, a village approximately 60km east of the port of Bossaso, the commercial hub of Somalia's semiautonomous state of Puntland.
Nairobi, November 21, 2007 - Kenya deported 18 Somalis to Mogadishu on Tuesday and was expected to deport 32 more, police and a Muslim group said.
The group, which fled fighting in the lawless Somali capital, has been detained at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for a week after the government denied them asylum.
November 20, 2007 – Somalia's government has forced three prominent radio stations off the air in the space of two days over their coverage of the bloody conflict in Mogadishu, report the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) and local human rights groups.
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MOGADISHU, Somalia Nov 19, 2007 – A Somali clan elder in the capital Mogadishu said he has fled the city following "threats" from government officials.
Nairobi, November 21, 2007 – The UN estimates that 173,000 people have fled Mogadishu, the war-torn capital of Somalia, in the last three weeks alone. Add that to the 330,000 people who have already fled the capital this year and it amounts to a humanitarian disaster that rivals or exceeds Darfur.
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A Somali boy helps wheel his older brother's body in a cart in Mogadishu, Somalia. AFP/Getty Images |
November 19, 2007 - The latest U.S. State Department travel warning for Somalia reads like the scenario for an improbable Hollywood action movie: those who venture to the anarchic country in the Horn of Africa run the risk of being caught up in clan warfare, kidnapping, murder, al-Qaida-linked terrorism and piracy in the Indian Ocean.
The Ethiopian presence in Somalia has led to heavy fighting between insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing Somalia’s shaky government, while civilians continue to suffer under the Ethiopian intervention.
Your Majestic Eminence,
It is more than a decade since I met you in the Yıdız Palace at the IRCICA office in Istanbul, when Dr. Halit Eren introduced me to you.
A convoy of UNHCR vehicles and trucks carrying the 210 refugees reaches Djibouti's border with Somaliland. © UNHCR/A.Encontre |
LOYADO, Djibouti, November 20, 2007 – The UN refugee agency on Tuesday began the final phase of its voluntary repatriation programme to help some 1,800 refugees return home to Somaliland from neighboring Djibouti by the end of the year.
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National flag of the Ethiopian autonomous Somali region |
Borama, Somaliland, November 24, 2007 (SL Times) – There has been an increase in reports coming from Jigjiga, the capital of the Ethiopian autonomous Somali region, of government officials ill-treating Somalilanders visiting, working or living in the Somali regional state.
The Awdal region Haatuf newspaper correspondent, Muhammad Sheikh Omar said that there has been a dramatic rise in incidents where Somalilanders in Jigjiga are being targeted by the regional Somali state officials belonging to the Ogaden clan in acts of retribution for the Somaliland government’s arresting of suspected members of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
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President Dahir Rayale Kahin (centre), pictured with the religious leaders from the Horn of Africa peace and solidarity mission ,Hargeysa. |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, November 24, 2007 (SL Times) – A major two day peace-building conference attended by Muslim and Christian religious leaders from East African countries took place in Hargeysa from 17 - 19 November 2007 at the International Horn University (IHU), Center for Community Development and Research.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, November 24, 2007 (SL Times)– Somaliland Foreign Minister Abdillahi Duale today 24 November extended, on behalf of the Somaliland government and people, its appreciation to the people and government of Uganda.
Foreign Minister Duale said, "I avail myself of the opportunity to convey to our friends in Uganda and the Commonwealth, our warmest greetings and our appreciation, that the Somaliland delegation had the opportunity to meet with delegates on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Summit meetings in Kampala".
Baidoa, November 24, 2007 (SL Times) Siyad Barre’s Security court prosecutor in 1981-1989 Nuur Hasan Huseen (Nuur Ade) has been appointed as Somalia’s new prime minister of the TFG government.
The new prime minister served as the secretary general of Somalia’s Red Crescent since 1991.
Using its power to ostracize and exclude, the Commonwealth has had sporadic success as a promoter of democracy; other clubs find it harder
Illustration by Claudio Munoz |
KAMPALA , November 22, 2007 – THERE are some global clubs that do hard business, like waging war or regulating trade. And there is another sort of club, with a large, ill-defined membership, and sensible goals but little power to correct wrongs except through peer pressure.
In a cold, unsentimental world, the second type of club might seem doomed. Given that the consequences of being suspended, or even expelled, from such a group are rarely disastrous—the equivalent, at worst, of being shunned by one's schoolmates—they will surely not deter the planet's worst rogues.
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Badhan, November 24, 2007 (SL Times) - Leaders in Badhan town, eastern Sanag region, declared on Tuesday that they have withdrawn their support from the Puntland regional authority based in Garowe, the capitol of P/land and announced that they were part of Somaliland.
The mayor of Badhan, Ahmed Mohamed Osman, speaking at a ceremony held in the town on Tuesday (20/11/07) stated that the "decision was taken in the light of the recent developments in the region".
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NAIROBI, November 24, 2007 - A delegation from Canada's Africa Oil Corporation is visiting the Somali semi-autonomous region of Puntland to brief leaders on its planned oil exploration activities for next year, a statement from the region said Friday.
AOC chief Rick Schmitt President and two drilling experts arrived in the region on Thursday and held talks with Puntland President Adde Muse and government officials.
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Lowyado, Somaliland, November 24, 2007 (SL Times) – At least 32 Somaliland families who fled to Djibouti refugee camps when the civil war broke out in 1988 in what was then ‘north Somalia’ were this week repatriated back to Somaliland by the Somaliland ministry of rehabilitation and UNHCR.
A majority of the families were received by the mayors of Zeila and Lowyado coastal townships in Awdal region of Somaliland. UNHCR and Somaliland’s ministry of rehabilitation cooperated in this latest operation of resettling former civil war refugees who fled to Djibouti.
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KAMPALA, Nov 23, 2007 - A Commonwealth summit opened on Friday, with climate change high on the agenda, after Pakistan angrily rejected its suspension by the organization of mostly former British colonies because of emergency rule.
A special ministerial group set up to safeguard democratic standards harshly criticized President Pervez Musharraf for his three-week-old state of emergency and suspended Pakistan's membership late on Thursday.
New Somali Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein |
ASMARA, Nov 23, 2007 – Somali dissidents rejected President Abdullahi Yusuf's nomination of a former attorney general as premier, saying the move would do little to end an insurgency against government troops and their Ethiopian allies.
Yusuf nominated Nur Hassan Hussein on Thursday three weeks after his predecessor quit under pressure over a lack of progress in building a transitional government -- the 14th attempt at restoring central rule since the 1991.
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US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer (file photo) |
Washington, 21 November 2007 - The relative optimism about the situation in Somalia that prevailed in Washington earlier this year has been replaced by deepening concern that civil strife is again spinning out of control.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said this week an exodus of Somalis displaced by fighting in Mogadishu has rapidly accelerated, and that a million people are homeless in a crisis that is in some ways more severe than the situation in Sudan's Darfur region.
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Tukaraq, 24 November 2007 – Somaliland security forces reach the border village town of Tukaraq 40 km from LasAnod on the road to Garowe without any resistance. “Somaliland forces and high government delegation were given warm welcome on their arrival,” this was stated in its dispatch by our correspondent in Sool.
Government delegation leader and minister of public works, Mr. Saed Sulub addressing a gathering of community leaders and a large crowd said; “The people and government of Somaliland respect and give importance to the people of Sool.
Somali women marching in celebration of the appointment of the country's new prime minister in Mogadishu on Thursday. (Mowlid Abdi/Reuters) |
Nairobi, November 22, 2007 - The president of battle-scarred Somalia chose a new transitional prime minister Thursday, a choice Western diplomats said could be a make-or-break moment for the country.
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Seoul, South Korea, November 22, 2007 - Five countries fed up with hijackings of commercial ships off Somalia's coast are seeking the authority to conduct military operations against African pirates.
The United Kingdom, Denmark, France, South Korea and Spain will ask the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to approve a resolution allowing military rescue of ships attacked or under attack from Somali pirates. The countries will make the proposal in the IMO's meeting in London this month.
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Commentary
By Akwe Amosu
16 Nov 16, 2007
Africa is seeing higher levels of growth than for decades – commodity prices have been soaring and new investor dollars are looking for opportunities on the continent. Business is booming. But from the point of view of advocates for such public goods as the rule of law and better governance this is also a time of great danger.
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Too many conflicts, too few decent armies to sort them out
DJIBOUTI/ NAIROBI, Nov 22nd 2007 - THE United Nations will juggle nine separate peacekeeping operations across Africa in 2008, including the continent's two largest countries by area, Sudan and Congo. In addition, the African Union (AU) will partner the UN in a new hybrid peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region. It may also persevere with its own peacekeeping effort in Somalia and in smaller operations elsewhere, such as the Comoros.
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UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19, 2007 - The U.N. Security Council rejected Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's opposition to the possible deployment of U.N. peacekeeping troops to Somalia and underlined its call for contingency planning for a U.N. force.
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November 20, 2007
Paris-based Africa Energy Intelligence (AEI) recently carried a fairly alarming article on Jarch Capital, an investment fund headed by a former Salomon Brothers trader named Phil Heilberg. Jarch has big interests in African natural resources and its leadership includes Joseph Wilson. According to AEI, Jarch has looked for business in Darfur, where Heilberg “has hitched his star to one of the leading rebel chiefs in the region,” as well as in the “breakaway province of Somaliland.”
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Haatuf Cartoon on 'New Press Law"
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In a previous editorial, we argued that the proper response from Somaliland to Majeerteenya’s (Puntland) hostile policies is to work for regime change in Puntland. A number of events within the last of couple of weeks confirm that regime change in Puntland would be the right policy. The Bo’ame conference is a case in point. This was a conference in which Dhulbahante elders were supposed to discuss issues of vital concern to them. But that did not happen. Instead, the conference was heavily influenced by Puntland (Majeerteenya) as evidenced by the visits of Majeerteen Sultans to the conference and the communiqué of the conference which echoed Puntland’s position word-for-word.
In Puntland itself, the security situation has been steadily deteriorating. Puntland’s capital Garowe is so lawless these days. Bandits regularly set up roadblocks in the town and extort money from passers by. More importantly, in the port town of Bosaso, there are so many disputes among the various officials over so many issues including municipal elections, smuggling turfs, piracy, printing of false money, the black market and other illicit activities which resulted in near paralysis of the town’s administration.
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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 Rooble
This is the story of Africa. Everybody and almost every country is yelling for a change in terms of the leadership and policies but does that mean that change will bring any change?
The best example is Kenya. People have been shouting and struggling to get rid of Daniel Arab Moi because they felt like he is remaining on power too long and they are fed up with his policies and government. This continued for years and years, politicians have been arrested, civil society activists were jailed and a lot of things happened but finally the Kenyans were happy that they finally changed the government and elected their own administration so that they will breath a new fresh air.
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By JAMA MOHAMED GHALIB
There are very few opposition members of the rubber-stamping Ethiopian parliament (MPs), which its last general elections (2005) were conspicuously rigged despite these yet being the model of that country's electoral process. Those MPs courageously raised a number of far-reaching government abuses. These included a recently reported wave of the often muted sort of mass arrests by Zenawi's Tigray-led totalitarian regime, especially in the Oromai region (s).
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Pro-Ethiopia—TFG Group’s Cunning Strategy Of Divide And Conquer
By Dalmar Kaahin
Only time will tell whether the Somali people will forget or forgive about some of their most notorious traitors who shamelessly hide behind the Ethiopian tanks while Somalia is pulverized to dust. However, as history will attest the collaborators’ sarcastic remarks, their divide and conquer strategy towards the Somali people at times of massive devastation in Mogadishu, the fallen capital of Somalia, will certainly dominate the history books.
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Somaliland And Our Arab Nations Brothers
By Ahmed Kheyre, London, UK
One of the most compassionate yet fractious relationship is the one between siblings. Somaliland seems to have a love-hate relationship with our brother Arab nations, we love them, for some reason they seem to hate us.
Personally, and this is my own opinion, I am not an Arabphile. As a Somalilander, I am able to trace my ancestry to the Arabian peninsula. I am Muslim, I am African, and to a lesser extent pseudo "Arab". Pseudo "Arab" in the sense that I am not racially Arabic, but I am sure my ancestor came from that region centuries ago.
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Las-Anod, A Month Later
By Mohamed Sougal
A month has passed since Laaska was freed from Puntland occupation forces on October 16, 2007. And following today events, Somaliland national army have successfully cleaned Sool from all Puntland militia remnants. Although Las-Anod had been free too short a time to see its achievements fairy assessed, we can however see if my hometown is finally heading in the right direction.
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By Dr. Ali Abdi Mohamed, Hargeysa
Right before the beginning of every election that took place in the country, The UDUB had been making advantage of this strategy. It’s however, taking a habitual stream now on the same course, even though, the existence of this vast number of refugees at Djibouti had never been seen any where in that republic.
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By Liban Ahmad
The Wednesday BBC Somali Service interview with Ahmed Abdi Haabsade, former Puntland Interior Minister who defected to Somaliland two months ago had embarrassed many Somaliland politicians of different persuasions. Asked about his meeting with Somaliland president Daahir Riyale Kahin, Haabsade said: “We have decided that Sool should remain in Somaliland as it was before and that we must reach the old colonial border.” His remarks are in sharp contrast with remarks he made in 2002 after Somaliland president was nearly assassinated by forces that Habsade instructed to evict the Riyale and his entourage while on visit in Las Anod.
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"We Cannot Simply Dismiss Somalia as a Hopeless Case"
BAIDOA, Somalia, NOV. 21, 2007 - Here is a letter from the executive director of Caritas Somalia, Davide Bernocchi, on the situation in the country. During the general audience today, Benedict XVI urged political leaders to find a peaceful solution to the civil unrest that has displaced more than 150,000 Somalians.
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Baidoa, Nov. 13, 2007
Writing from my office in the Baidoa Caritas medical clinic, Somalia looks to be moving inextricably toward a humanitarian catastrophe.
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American-made F-16 fighterjets were used to bomb Mogadishu airport |
24 November 2007
Little is reported concerning the role the U.S. played in Somalia, as it continues to engage in semi-secret operations, using Ethiopian troops as surrogates
Guerrilla warfare has continued in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, since the fall in January of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controlled much of the centre and south of the country.
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Hargeysa/Nairobi, November 21, 2007 – Full text of a statement issued by Somali religious leaders at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in the capital of the republic of Somaliland:
We religious leaders from Somaliland, Puntland, and South-Central Somalia meeting in Hargeysa, Somaliland, on 17 - 19 November 2007, with support from the Religious Leaders Peace Initiative in the Horn of Africa, with a goal to discuss and find ways in which the religious leaders and women can contribute to resolving conflicts among the Somalis.
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By Ismail Ahmed
23 November 2007
Who is in fact responsible for the present agony of Ogaden clan?
Who is really responsible for the ever growing chasm that exist today between the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) led Ogadenis and the rest of Somali Ethiopians whose vast regions stretch from the Hawash valley in the west and Gasshaamo in the east, where the Ethiopia’s major cities are located?
by Andrew Seager
Roy Green was agricultural officer for the Hargeisa District (as it was called in those days) between 1951 and 1956 and then in charge of agricultural development in Hargeisa and Borama Districts, now known as Galbeed and Afgal Regions, till 1959. He died on 13 November 2007, peacefully in hospital.
Gadleh is the name he is referred to in Somaliland, to this day. Some years ago I asked two professors from Ahmoud University when they visited Henley in the UK, which town is twinned with Borama, whether they remembered Roy Green; they did not, but vividly remembered Gadleh from their schooldays.
By Graeme Anfinson
November 20, 2007
The following was sent to the local "alternative" newspaper. Despite the sizable Somali population in the Fargo-Moorhead area, there has been little to no coverage of the US backed destruction of Somalia. I am aware that only loony bastards write "letters to the editor," but I am kind of a loony bastard, so it works out.
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Nov 8th 2007
A report on how not to solve disputes 
Clarkson: learning to avoid disintegration
DID you ever hear about an Indian economist, a Ghanaian-American philosopher, a Chinese-Canadian stateswoman and a Northern Irish politician who tried to work out why so many groups of people were fighting each other and what could be done about it?
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LONDON, Nov 20, 2007 – Somalia has deemed a Total SA (TOT) oil exploration contract in the country illegal but has proposed negotiations for a new deal, according to a letter obtained by Dow Jones Newswires. "The exploration agreement signed in between Total and the Transitional National Government (a previous interim government) cannot be considered as valid" because "the TNG was already overthrown by the war lords" when it was signed, said the letter, signed by Ali Mohamed Gedi, then prime minister of Somalia who resigned last month.
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