Hargeysa, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 (SL Times) – Abshir Hassan Hashi, the former presidential palace head of transport and onetime chauffeur of Somaliland’s first lady Hudda Barkhad is still behind bars following his arrest in Hargeysa by the police on May 1, 2008.
According to Somaliland police commissioner Saqadh Dubad, Mr. Hashi was arrested for defaming the president and making false statements about him.
Borama, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 - At a ceremony held on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at the Rays Hotel in Borama, donations from several women's group in the United Kingdom and Italy were presented to the faculty of Nursing at Amoud University in Somaliland.
The Manager of Telesom (Awdal Branch), Abdilqadir Aden Nur presented the funds to the faculty of the Nursing department at Amoud University.
Nairobi, April 30, 2008 – Extensive drought and high inflation in the northern Togdheer region of the self-declared republic of Somaliland have pushed many families, both nomadic and urban, to the brink of starvation, local officials told IRIN.
"People are suffering not only from the drought but also from a very high level of inflation, putting food out of the reach of many people," Jama Abdillahi, governor of Togdheer region, told IRIN on 30 April.
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NAIROBI, Kenya, May 5, 2008 - Ogaden rebels accused the Somali Puntland regional administration of sealing a secret deal with the Ethiopian government to handover Oganden people and rebels to Addis Ababa.
The Puntland "has entered into a secret security agreement with the Ethiopian regime in which Puntland has agreed to transfer private citizens from Ogaden and any ONLF officials who enter Puntland to Ethiopian security officials." The rebel group claimed.
PRESS RELEASE
Nairobi, 08 May 2008 - The UN Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, has expressed optimism ahead of talks between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia due to open in Djibouti on May 10 2008.
Mr Ould-Abdallah said he was happy for Somalia as ‘this is the first time that the Somali parties have agreed to meet with limited number of delegates, on a scheduled date within a specified time frame and at a planned venue.’
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, 5 May 2008 - The Somaliland Minister of Water and Natural Resources, Mr Qassim Sheikh Yusuf Ibrahim accompanied by a delegation from the ministry including the Director-General returned to Hargeisa after attending an international petroleum convention in San Antonio, Texas, USA.
Speaking to the media upon his arrival at Egal International airport, Mr Qassim Sheikh Yusuf gave a brief summary of the delegation's visit to the United States, the United Kingdom and Ethiopia.
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Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf |
Mogadishu, Somalia, 11May 2008 - Interim Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf returned to the capital Mogadishu Sunday unannounced, after a weeks-long trip visiting foreign capitals and meeting with world leaders.
President Yusuf's government delegation, which included Foreign Affairs Minister Ali "Jangeli" Ahmed, landed at Mogadishu's Adan Adde International Airport under heavy guard.
Djibouti, 10 May 2008 - Talks between Somali government officials and exiled Islamist leaders that were due to kick off Saturday have been delayed, a United Nations spokeswoman said.
The talks -- bringing together seven Somalia officials and seven opposition figures in Djibouti -- now are expected to begin "in one or two days," said Susannah Price, an information officer at the UN office for Somalia.
Marka, Somalia, 8 May 2008 - At least 10 dead bodies were discovered Wednesday morning in southern Somalia after Ethiopian troops escaped an insurgent ambush yesterday, leaving behind a grisly scene of deaths.
The bodies were found in Wanla Weyn, a district in Lower Shabelle region, according to locals.
Press release
7 May 2008
Reporters Without Borders said today it was disgusted by a murder attempt against Bisharo Mohammed Waeys, celebrated presenter on the privately-owned Eastern Television Network (ETN), on 4 May, the last woman working openly as a journalist in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, north-eastern Somalia.
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Addis Ababa, May 06, 2008 - Formed recently through a decision of the Council of Ministers, the Ethiopian Dry Ports Enterprise is set to have a second dry port built at Semera Town of the Afar Regional State, 558Km to the east of Addis Ababa.
The construction of the dry port will be carried out by the state-owned Water Works Construction Enterprise (WWCE) at a cost of 26 million Br. Getachew Mengiste, state minister of Transport and Communications (MoTC) and Bekele Gadissa, general manager of the enterprise have signed an agreement on May 2, 2008, last Friday.
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MOGADISHU, May 10, 2008 – Fighting in Mogadishu killed six more people on Friday, including four orphans, a day after Islamist rebels firing grenades briefly seized a major police base in the heart of Somalia's capital.
At least 25 people have died in two days of fierce battles between the insurgents and allied Somali-Ethiopian troops that raised even more doubt over prospects for rare peace talks.
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By Greg Mills and James Kibera
Kenya now had a new cabinet. Will that solve the problems that gave rise to the contested election and the subsequent violence?
The actions that need to be taken now to ensure that the crisis is solved are primarily economic. While government has prevaricated over the cabinet, there has been a 100 percent increase in the cost of fresh agricultural produce with no corresponding changes in wages for the lower income groups. This environment is not conducive to socio-economic and political stability in the short-run.
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KULMIYE chairman, Ahmed Sillanyo |
UDUB Chairman, President Dahir Riyale Kahin |
UCID chairman, Faysal Ali Warabe |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 (SL Times) – Somaliland president Dahir Riyale’s 5-year term in office will officially expire by next Thursday.
Never-the-less Mr. Riyale has so far shown that he intends to hang on to power long after his time has finished on the basis of last month’s controversial decision reached by the Guurti whereby the incumbent president’s term in office has been extended for one year.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, May 8, 2008 - The President of Somaliland, President Dahir Rayale Kahin yesterday received a delegation of British diplomats from the United Kingdom's embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
According to communique issued by the President's press office, President Rayale met with a delegation led by the United Kingdom's deputy ambassador to Ethiopia, Mr. John Marshall and Mr. Colin Leeman, a senior diplomat at the embassy.
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Hargeisa, Somaliland, 10 May 2008 - Efforts by Chairman by Chairman of the House of Representatives, Mr. Abdirahman Abdillahi Irro to mediate between President Dahir Rayale Kahin and the opposition are still in a deadlock.
Mr. Irro in a proposal to mediate between the 2 sides forwarded new proposition, after the opposition out rightly refused to accept the government’s proposals.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 (SL Times) – A Briton named Hamse Osman Haji Ali was arrested in Hargeysa on Tuesday for inviting residents of his neighbourhood to a meeting intended to discuss community development.
Britain born Hamse arrived in Hargeysa 8 months ago to develop a small business in the Senai area.
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An Ethiopian soldier in northern Mogadishu stands in front ot a tank and a cache of ammunition |
MOGADISHU, Somalia, 8 May 2008 - At least 35 people were killed in Somalia in in separate clashes between Ethiopian troops and Islamist insurgents, witnesses and officials said Thursday.
Some 23 were killed late Wednesday near the village of Garsani, some 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Mogadishu, when insurgents ambushed an Ethiopian military convoy.
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US Must Implement Fast Track "Surge for Peace"
LONDON, May 3, 2008 — The current US-led War on Terror approach is creating a political space in which extremists such as Al-Shabab in Somalia and the Taliban in Afghanistan have become legitimate political actors, said The Senlis Council at the release of its latest report on Wednesday. In its report "Chronic Failures of the War on Terror: From Afghanistan to Somalia," The Senlis Council said that a number of abject policy failures of the Bush Administration in Somalia, such as aerial bombings, support of the Ethiopian troops in the country and the ill-timed designation of Al-Shabab as a terrorist organisation had been successfully exploited by the Somali insurgency to boost its support and recruitment bases.
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Thursday, 8 May 2008
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Somaliland : Politics and Government
 Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Shadow Minister, International Development; Cotswold, Conservative) | Hansard source
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the Government's policy is on claims of independence by Somaliland.
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Somali President Abdillahi Yusuf |
Paris, May 6, 2008 - Four of the six Somali pirates arrested for kidnapping a French luxury yacht are related to Somali President Abdullah Yusuf Ahmed, the French weekly Le Point reported Monday on its website.
Le Point said their identities, as members of the same Darod- Majteen clan as the president, have been confirmed by several French government sources.
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Djibouti 's President Ismail Omar Guelleh |
ADDIS ABABA, 9 May 2008 - Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh said his army is in a dangerous border stand-off with neighbouring Eritrea's military, according to a release issued Friday. "There is a hostile action which poses real problems because it is a blatant violation of our territorial integrity, of our borders," the president said in the statement.
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Jendayi E. Frazer, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs historic visit to Hargeysa Feb'08 |
Jendayi E. Frazer, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs
Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa
Washington, DC , March 11, 2008
Released on April 28, 2008
Good Morning, and thank you Chairman Feingold and members of the Committee for calling a hearing on this timely and important issue. I am especially pleased to have this opportunity to meet with you shortly after the President's tremendously successful visit to Africa, and in the wake of the critical peace agreement in Kenya.
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Analysis
By Seid Hassan
May 7, 2008 — The most significant and daunting problem facing Ethiopia today is the rampant inflation rate. As reported by bloomberg.com, the Ethiopian Statistical Agency has reported that inflation for March 2008 has risen to 29.6%, food price inflation being even higher (39.4%). Some reports indicate the inflation rate in January 2008 to be in the range of 36%. According to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the causes of this rampant inflation rate are a growing economy, greedy merchants, and/or farmers who happen to demand higher prices for their products or an increase in demand.
NAIROBI, Kenya, 8 May 2008 - Africa's food production could double in a matter of years and help stabilize spiraling food prices if wealthy nations help small farmers with simple agricultural reforms, a top U.S. economist said Thursday.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, said wealthy nations had neglected aid for agriculture for decades in the mistaken belief that market forces would stimulate farmers to invest in good practices. But he said increased production requires money for fertilizer, water management and high-yield seeds — things many poor farmers do not have and the international community has not been willing to provide.
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By Conor Foley
8 May 2008
There is an alternative to 'humanitarian invasions' and 'philanthropic imperialism' and it deserves our support
Archbishop Desmond Tutu's call for a joint UN-African Union (AU) observer mission to Zimbabwe, following the success of Kofi Annan's to mediate an end to the post-election crisis in Kenya, points to a welcome development in the debate about humanitarian interventions.
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By Jerry Okungu
There is the bitter truth that President Kibaki, and Prime Minister Raila Odinga cannot resettle the internally displaced persons in Rift valley through the use of force. It has to be a negotiated and persuasive process that calls for patience and time.
The other bitter truth is that the moment ethnic violence erupted in Eldoret, Molo, Kuresoi and other parts of the country, the political class lost control.
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Barack Obama deserves the nomination. It is not yet clear whether he deserves the presidency
May 8th 2008 - IN CARTOONS there is often a moment when a hapless character, having galloped over a cliff, is still unaware of the fact and hangs suspended in the air, legs pumping wildly, until realisation dawns, gravity intervenes and downfall ensues. Hillary Clinton's campaign looks a bit like that this week. After her heavy loss in North Carolina and her barely perceptible victory in Indiana, a state she needed to carry triumphantly, Mrs Clinton's campaign is surely close to its end.
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WASHINGTON, May 8, 2008 - Now that Democrat Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes appear to be fading, some Democrats are talking about the possibility of Barack Obama taking Clinton on as his vice presidential running mate.
"It's something that this party is going to have to think very seriously about in the next few weeks," Harold Ford, a former U.S. congressman who is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, told MSNBC after Obama on Tuesday won easily in North Carolina and ran surprisingly strong in Indiana.
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As the government’s term draws to end and the two opposition parties reject the extension period given to the government by the Upper House (Guurti), Somaliland is taking a plunge into the unknown with unpredictable consequences. Instead of working with the opposition on finding an acceptable solution, the government decided that it would just insist that it is still a legitimate government and point the fingers at the opposition and paint them as troublemakers who want to endanger Somaliland’s security. The opposition, on the other hand, invited the government to reach an understanding with them before the deadline passes, and have been reassuring the citizens that although they would not recognize the government after May 15 th, they would not do anything that puts the people or their properties at risk.
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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 Mohamed A.Awaleh
“It takes a whole village to raise a child” (Age-old African proverb)
If the popular perception among Somalis in Diasporas is anything to go by, traditional nucleus family life is in state of distress, if not already endangered species, and while some trends are in-evitable as community matures and strives to integrate into the newly adopted mainstream social mores, many other injuries are still self-induced and pre-mature.
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By Mohamed A. Duale
It is great pleasure to hear that a group of young Somaliland graduates, who had completed their education program at Defense College in Ethiopia specializing in engineering fields such as communication, electronic and mechanical.
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By Hayat Ahmed
As Somaliland’s 17th anniversary of independence approaches, I marvel at the fact that the international community remains reluctant to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign nation. Here we are, a stable, democratic country, while the country the world wants us to remain attached to has been plunging deeper and deeper into anarchy these past 17 years. I started to wonder, is the case against Somaliland recognition truly that strong?
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Tribute to Saeed Meygag Samatar
In August 2005, shortly after the SOPRI Convention in LA, I accompanied a visiting official from Somaliland to the UCLA medical hospital where Saeed Meygag Samatar was recuperating from dehydration. In his hospital room, Saeed was lying in the bed receiving fluid through an IV. Our conversation was Somaliland centered. Saeed was very engaged in the conversation. He suggested that he would like to bring all the mayors of the regional capitals to the US during the next convention. He said the way to increase the capacities of our municipalities was to increase the knowledge of its officials about the role they are supposed to play by showing them first hand how municipalities in the US provide services to its citizens.
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By Rhoda A. Rageh, USA
The mad mullah has just landed. Not him exactly but his partner. Mad mullah – a term the British Empire gave to a Somali man who went out alone to fight its imperialism is used for religious zealots. He did not kill only whites but Somalis who looked suspicious. He bit so hard that the British soldiers he killed went to the grave with poems about their experience.
I am not sure if he was mad or not but he was a religious zealot who did not budge until aeroplanes dropping bombs put him into hiding and left his mission unfulfilled.
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By Dr. Ali A. Mohamed
Every time an election appears on the horizon, we have experienced the sad policies that this administration resorts to, because of it's bankruptcy on ideas and of achievements. From the very beginning, the Opposition Political Parties leniency is what prospered Riyale to invest much on the unlawful atrocities he knowingly dared to violate the constitution.
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6 May 2008
Reports are coming out that the remaining National Election Commission (NEC) members, all UDUB appointed, have written to the Chairman of the Parliament Abdirahman M. Abdillahi, who has been mediating between the political parties regarding the election schedules. Reports says, the 4 member NEC is seeking to further delay the date for the presidential elections already agreed between them and the three political parties.
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Violence in a notoriously rugged country has worsened
May 8th 2008
A POOR, mountainous country that clings to the south-west tip of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen seems in danger of falling into Somalia's lap. Not physically, by toppling across the Gulf of Aden that separates the countries, though some may imagine that the influx of 100,000-plus destitute Somali refugees may shift its centre of gravity. The worry is that Yemen may tilt towards becoming a failed state.
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Deep sea divers (photo-file) |
Berbera, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 - A new documentary on Somaliland's marine resources was presented in a ceremony held at the Somaliland Marine Institute in Berbera.
The documentary produced by SAREDO in association with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) highlights the marine life in Somaliland's Red Sea coast and the abundance of these stocks, as well as, the need to use these resources towards the development of Somaliland's economy in an environmentally responsible way.
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Burco, Somaliland, May 10, 2008 - German Agro Action (GAA) recently donated sporting equipments to the faculty and students of Burco University at a ceremony held on campus.
Speaking at the presentation ceremony, Mubarak M.Omar from the GAA office in Burco stated these equipments are intended for the benefit of the students at the university during inter-mural sports competitions.
People gather near a rescued Spanish boat at Port Victoria after it was released off Somalia where it had been captured by pirates last April. |
by J Peter Pham
May 8, 2008 – On April 4, MY Le Ponant, an 850-ton three-masted luxury sailing yacht owned by a French firm headed by Lebanese-born businessman Jacques Saadé was en route from the Seychelles to the Mediterranean when it was seized in international waters in the Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates.
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Recent demonstrations of Ogadenis in Europe |
8th May 2008
In 1991, after the collapse of Mohamed Siyad Barre´s regime, in Somalia, some Somali warlords formed clan based autonomous regional entities under the auspices of the EPRDF/TPLF government in Ethiopia. These regional entities such as Puntland and Somaliland are not independent from Ethiopian interference.
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May 2008
Positioned between Africa and Asia and regarded as a moderate in the region, Egypt has secured preferential trade agreements with the United States and Europe, as well as fellow African and Arab states. This, in combination with Egypt’s increasingly outward-looking policies, is changing the country’s domestic economy and role in international markets.
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NAIROBI, Kenya, May 8, 2008 - Africa's food production could double in a matter of years and help stabilize spiraling food prices if wealthy nations help small farmers with simple agricultural reforms, a top U.S. economist said Thursday.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, said wealthy nations had neglected aid for agriculture for decades in the mistaken belief that market forces would stimulate farmers to invest in good practices.
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International Press Institute’
8 May 2008 - With 93 journalists killed, 2007 was another deadly year. Iraq proved again to be the most hazardous place on earth to report, with the conflict accounting for almost half of all journalists killed during the year. In Somalia, another conflict zone, eight journalists were also killed.
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