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Somali Leaders Sign
'Roadmap' |
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Tens of thousands of Somalis have died in
their war-torn famine-stricken country
[GALLO/GETTY] |
Mogadishu, Somalia, September 10, 2011 - Somalia's
disparate leaders signed on Tuesday a "roadmap" for
the formation of a government to replace the fragile
transitional body that has failed to bring peace to
the fragmented country.
"We are clearly committed to implement this roadmap,
the Somali people have suffered a lot," said Somali
President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed after three days of
talks at a heavily-guarded conference venue in
Mogadishu.
"We want the Somali people to be secure, to lead
them to prosperity," Ahmed added.
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Nairobi, Kenya, September 10, 2011 – Taking
advantage of an improved security situation in parts
of Somalia, UNHCR is scaling up its presence in the
capital and in border regions.
On Thursday, a UNHCR assessment team visited Liboi
just inside Kenya and the small town of Dobley in
the southern Somalia region of Lower Juba. The team
went to finalize arrangements for office and
accommodation premises in Dobley, which is the main
transit point for Somalis trying to reach the huge
refugee camps at Dadaab in northern Kenya.
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Dubai/Paris, September 10, 2011 – Four people were
thought to have been kidnapped by pirates after
international forces found a French yacht lying
unoccupied off the coast of Yemen, a source from the
Yemen coast guard's office said on Friday.
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Nairobi, Kenya, September 10, 2011 – The number of
people facing starvation as famine and drought
spreads through the Horn of Africa has increased by
almost 10 per cent, the United Nations said on
Friday.
At the same time, donations to appeals to bring
food, water, medicine and shelter to those most at
risk are slowing down.
There are now 13.3 million people in Somalia, Kenya,
Ethiopia and Djibouti who need urgent assistance, up
from 12.4 million, according to new UN data.
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By Sahra Abdi and Richard Lough
Nairobi, Kenya, September 10, 2011 – Somalia is open
to talks with al Shabaab's top commanders and
informal discussions already held suggest a
willingness among some militants to lay down arms
and negotiate, the country's prime minister said on
Friday.
Somalia's beleaguered government is desperate to
consolidate security gains after the al Qaeda-linked
rebels retreated from the capital Mogadishu last
month, as it faces the task of holding elections by
August, 2012.
"We are open to dialogue with ... any organization
that's going to reach (out) to us, work with us to
bring peace and stability to Somalia," Prime
Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali told Reuters.
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The center is alleged to be under the
presidential palace in Mogadishu
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Mogadishu, Somalia, September 10, 2011 – Somalia has
dismissed reports that the US runs an underground
detention centre where the CIA helps interrogate
terror suspects in the capital Mogadishu.
UK rights group Reprieve says it has evidence that
the base lies underneath the presidential compound,
and that some inmates are as young as 14.
The group says one man was taken there from Kenya
and held for 18 months without seeing lawyers - or
daylight.
US officials have not yet commented on the claims.
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The quiet leader: Mohamed Ibrahim was a
learning support teacher in Brent, north
London. Now he is deputy prime minister
of Somalia |
London, UK, September 10, 2011 – A teacher
astonished his colleagues when he failed to return
for the school term - because he had a new job as
deputy prime minister of Somalia.
Mohamed Ibrahim, 64, has been a learning support
teacher at the Newman Catholic College in Brent,
north London for the past two years.
However Mr Ibrahim, who is heavily involved in
politics in his home country, was summoned back to
take up a senior role in the Western-backed
transitional government of Somalia which was
introduced over the summer
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Children and their mothers receive food and
treatment, mostly for severe malnutrition
and measles, at a hospital in Mogadishu,
Somalia, on Sept. 7, 2011. |
Mogadishu, Somalia, September 3, 2011 – Under the
arches of Mogadishu's ruined Catholic cathedral,
25-year-old Habiba Ahmed helped one of her five
children urinate in a tin can.
A mortar shell killed Ahmed's husband three years
ago. She lived in the port town of Merka, south of
Mogadishu, until three months ago when hunger and
the punishing rule of al Shabaab militant Islamists
there drove the family to the capital.
Now al Shabaab fighters have retreated from
Mogadishu itself after four years of battling
government forces and foreign peacekeepers.
But memories of their rule and fears they may return
still grip Ahmed and many others in the city, not
least the thousands of refugees who have fled al
Shabaab rule in the hinterland.
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EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton
expressed 'great satisfaction' with
Somalia's planned government (AFP/File,
Georges Gobet)
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Brussels, Belgium, September 10, 2011 — EU foreign
policy chief Catherine Ashton on Friday urged Somali
leaders to press ahead with a "roadmap" to set up a
government to replace the transitional body that has
failed to bring peace to the country.
Somalia's disparate leaders signed the agreement
Tuesday in Mogadishu after three days of talks at a
heavily-guarded conference venue.
"I would like to express my great satisfaction" at
the deal, Ashton said.
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Interview
On Chinese-Somaliland Agreement |
Click
here to
listen to
Radio France
Internationale's
interview
with Jamal
Gabobe about
the
agreement
between
Somaliland
and Chinese
investors.
The
Interview
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President Ahmed
Sillanyo Appoints Committee For Women And Minorities |
Hargeysa,
Somaliland,
September
10, 2011 (SL
Times) –
Somaliland
President
Ahmed
Sillanyo
appointed a
committee to
look into
the
participation
of women and
minorities
in
Somaliland’s
politics.
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New
Minister Of Interior Resigns From UDUB, Joins
Kulmiye |
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The new minister of Interior, Muhammad Nur
Arrale (Dur) |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, September 10, 2011 (SL Times)
– The new minister of Interior, Muhammad Nur Arrale
(Dur) resigned from UDUB party and became a member
of Kulmiye party. Muhammad Nur Arrale (Dur) made the
switch in parties after he was appointed minister of
interior.
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Hassan
Omar Ahmed Raises Alarm Bells About Las Anod
Hospital & Court System, Praises Haabsade And Sool
Region Administration |
Las Anod,
Somaliland, September 10, 2011 (SL Times) – A member
of Somaliland Upper House, Hassan Omar Ahmed (Hassan
dheere), who represents Sool region went back to Las
Anod to touch base with his constituents.
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MRC And
IOM Raise Awareness About Dangers Of Illegal
Migration, Collaborate On Voluntary Repatriation |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, September 10, 2011 (SL
Times) – The local organization Migration
Response Center (MRC) and the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) are teaming up
to educate Somaliland’s youth about the dangers
of illegal migration.
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Fu'ad Adan Adde Talks
About Sool, Political Parties, Puntland |
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President Advisor for the Eastern Regions,
Fu'ad Adan Adde |
Hargeysa,
Somaliland, September 10, 2011 (SL Times) –
President Ahmed Silanyo's advisor for the eastern
regions, Mr Fu'ad Adan Adde, gave a wide-ranging
interview to Haatuf Newspaper in which he talked
about Sool, political parties, Puntland, and other
matters.
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Nairobi, Kenya, September 10, 2011 – Leaders from
the Horn of Africa region have resolved to develop
the Horn of Africa Regional Disaster Resilience and
Sustainability Strategy Framework to reduce the
impact of disasters in the region.
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Youth lags ... countries of birth |
London, UK, September 10, 2011 – A THIRD of
criminals entering Britain's top youth jail last
year were foreign, it was revealed yesterday.
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Addis Ababa, September 10, 2011 – Ethiopia charged
two Swedish journalists with terrorism Wednesday,
the first formal charges leveled against them since
their July 1 arrest near Ethiopia's border with
Somalia.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, September 10, 2011 (SL Times)
– The Somaliland President, Mr. Ahmed Mohamed
Mohamud (Sillanyo) met with a delegation from the
European Union parliament led by Mr. Charles Tannock
MEP on Saturday, September 3rd, at the presidency in
Hargeysa, Somaliland.
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Egyptians Break Into
Israel Embassy In Cairo |
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Some hundreds of Egyptian activists demolish
a concrete wall built around a building
housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt,
to protect it against demonstrators, as they
raise their national Friday, Sept. 9,
2011. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) |
Cairo, Egypt, September 10, 2011 — A group of about
30 protesters broke into the Israeli Embassy in
Cairo Friday and dumped hundreds of documents out of
the windows after a day of demonstrations outside
the building in which crowds swinging sledge hammers
and using their bare hands tore apart the embassy's
security wall.
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Mission Journal: South
Sudan's Struggle For A Free Press |
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In the first months of an independent South
Sudan, the press is feeling its way. (AP) |
By Tom
Rhodes/CPJ East Africa Consultant
The former guerrillas of the Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) fought a 22-year civil war
for greater autonomy and civil rights for the
southern Sudanese people, culminating in South
Sudan's independence this
July.
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By Clive Williams
AT the beginning of the previous decade I was
working as director of security intelligence in
Defense and, despite having worked for much of my
professional life in intelligence, had certainly not
anticipated the momentous changes in terrorism and
counter-terrorism that would occur during the next
11 years.
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Many of ASWJ’s frontline fighters are young
Koranic students who have been deployed in
the fight against the Shabaab. “They are the
ones who go to the frontline,” says Noor.
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By
Jeremy Scahill
The notorious Somali paramilitary warlord who goes
by the nom de guerre Indha Adde, or White Eyes,
walks alongside trenches on the outskirts of
Mogadishu’s Bakara Market once occupied by fighters
from the Shabaab, the Islamic militant group that
has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda.
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Drink
the Bitter Root
By Gary Geddes
Douglas & McIntyre
288 pp; $32.95) |
Reviewed by Richard Poplak
In a recent jeremiad against Nelson Mandela’s
enshrined legacy, which he has disguised as an
investigation of the great man’s past as a
dyed-in-the-wool commie, Rian Malan, author of the
abidingly splendid African memoir My Traitor’s
Heart, described Western liberals as “useful
idiots.” He would probably revise that term after
scanning through Canadian poet and travel writer
Gary Geddes’ Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer’s
Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa.
One hesitates to take the gloves off with Geddes,
who seems like a genuinely well-meaning fellow.
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No central bank or state authority to manage the
country’s money supply, degenerating schools and
universities, no way to know who owns land. Here’s a
look at how a stateless country manages to get from
one day to the next.
By Béatrice Gurrey
Mogadishu, Somalia, September 10, 2011 – A
man is counting a big wad of faded cash. Inside
Mogadishu’s gutted cathedral, women with children
are hovering around him. The scene could be mistaken
for a man sharing the fruit of a hard day’s work.
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A new group of younger, more violent Somali pirates
may be on the rise, says Jay Bahadur, author of "The
Pirates of Somalia."
By Kristin
Rawls
Last week, we featured an
interview with Jay Bahadur, author of the new
book, The
Pirates of
Somalia. Bahadur talked about the roots of
the piracy problem and his own travels in Puntland,
the northeastern Somali region that is home to many
Somali pirates. In this second half of the
interview, Bahadur elaborates on the geopolitics of
Somalia and considers possible remedies to the
piracy problem.
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By Hirsh Sawhney
Some in the media may paint Somali pirates as
womanizers with lavish tastes and an eye for Nairobi
real estate, but Nuruddin Farah exposes the
shallowness of such depictions in his 11th novel,
“Crossbones.”
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Somaliland And The Changes In The Middle East |
From
Somaliland’s perspective, Husni Mubarak, Ali Abdalla Salih,
and Mu’ammar al-Qaddafi all had one thing in common: they
had in various overt and covert ways tried to subvert the
struggle of Somaliland’s people for self-determination and
international recognition. To that extent, the overthrow of
Egypt’s Husni Mubarak and Libya’s Qaddafi as well as the
weakening of Yemen’s Ali Abdalla Saleh’s is a net plus for
Somaliland. Whatever views the current Egyptian government,
Libyan rebels, and Yemen’s Ali Abdalla Saleh may have
regarding Somalis, they are now too weak and preoccupied
with their own survival to meddle in Somali affairs. The
same is true of Syria.
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Puntland’s False-Flag
Terrorism Could Undermine Its Stability |
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By Dalmar Kaahin
Although staging a false-flag terror attack and
reminding the public the past abhorrent acts of
terror are now overused in many parts of the world,
nowhere else in Africa are more terror plots
fabricated and foiled by the culprits themselves
than the Puntland region, in Somalia. And if the
boomerang effect of a false-flag terror attack could
undermine a semi-stable area in Somalia, it
certainly will destabilize the sun-baked region of
Puntland.
Now and then, Puntland officials showcase
a
small armature from an old electric
motor, intertwined with numerous wires, decorated
with nails, screws, washers, an old Nokia cell
phone, and, of course, a few gray hair strands,
among other components, all neatly shrink wrapped.
This is the bomb; we being told. But is it? Then,
the authority boastfully adds that it will hunt down
the terrorists. But who are these imagined
terrorists?
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Racism Cannot Form The
Basis Of Immigration Policy |
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By Liban Obsiye
The government of Somaliland this week, to much
local fanfare, announced that it was intending to
expel all illegal immigrants from the country.
Although only an estimate, the government sources
claim that around 100,000 illegal immigrants live in
Somaliland’s major cities with the largest
concentration of them residing in the capital
Hargeysa.
The internationally tiresome macho nationalist
rhetoric usually associated with the right wing
anti immigration parties of the world was fed to the
media and the public with national and local
prominent leaders as well as policy makers demanding
illegal immigrants voluntarily leave Somaliland
within 30 days or else face Somaliland justice
(whatever this means). To make their case more
urgent the threats of facing justice were also
extended to the general Somaliland public who hide
illegal immigrants from the authorities.
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New Libya: Is It The
First African Oil Gulf State In The Making? |
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By Abdirahman Mohamed Dirye
Think about NATO’s unconditional support for the
National Transitional Council (NTC); think about the
air support provided to NTC, and then smell NATO’s
oily diplomacy combined with the Qatar’s financial
backing at their NTC’s disposal. There is one
conclusion: NATO determined the result in advance
by hand-training their pets, the NTC, to make New
Libya look like Gulf oil rich State in terms of
blind loyalty to the West unless things go awry
where the New Libya would be another devastating
disappointment, and disillusion such as Afghanistan.
The latter, in basing the bitter facts on the
ground, is more likely to happen, acting like
Northern Alliance of Afghanistan during Taliban
removal from power; the NTC festively marched
towards the capital with little resistance, Tripoli,
under the escort of NATO’s bombers. that so far so
good.
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Somaliland’s First
Female Mayor Hailed As Success |
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Gabiley Mayor, Khadra X. Ismail Yonis widely
known as Khadra X. Gaydh |
By Ahmed Ali
When in 1887 Susanna Madora better
known as "Dora" was elected as the new mayor
of Argonia, Kansas in United States, Somaliland was
in the hands of its colonial master –Britain- which
at the time was ruling most parts of the world.
Dora was a politician and activist and became the
first woman elected as mayor and the first woman
elected to any political office in the
United States
(United Nations 1960).
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The Best Places To Be In The World; If Best Place
Matters! |
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By Khadar A. Hanan
Finally, we have got our bags loaded up into the
Umra bus and started our journey to Mecca via Medina
on Ramadan 18th at around 11:30 a.m Qatar local
time. As a traveler, to have mixed perceptions and
anticipations on almost two weeks long journey to a
new discovery is a common phenomena but, one aim was
the real denominator of our journey___ glorifying
the oneness (monotheism) of Allaah (S.W.T) and
seeking His forgiveness for our sins.
Our trip started with a joyful atmosphere, but
adventurous tribulations were also timeless actors
that add a real flavor to the test of our mission.
For example, it is too easy to get to the border
between Qatar and K.S.A roughly one hour drive, but
to leave from it soon is one of your miscalculated
figures, this is because, you are subjected to an
intense scrutiny exposure by the Saudi border
security guards. In addition to the document
verifications, your finger prints are collected,
eyes scanned and your personal possessions are
sniffed by police dogs for security reasons__ this
hassle took us around 10 long hours. We pursued our
trip to Medina after the check-in time, snaked
through the main Arabian sand desert for roughly 16
long hours we’ve got to Medina.
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Appreciation Letter To
Dr. Charles Tannock |
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European Parliament
Dr. Charles Tannock MEP
Willy Brandt 04M081
European Parliament
Rue Wiertz
Brussels 1047
Belgium
Dear Dr Tannock,
With much appreciation we read the article about
your call for Somaliland independence at meeting
with the Ethiopian Prime Minister his Excellency
Mr. Meles Zenawi on 1st September
2011. Your unparalleled call was courteous and right
to ask Ethiopia to take the lead in recognizing
Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.
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Somaliland: Why Media Is A Male Dominance? |
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By: Farhan
Abdi Suleiman (Oday)
Women have been crucial in restoring and maintaining
peace in Somaliland for the last 20 years. They have
been credited with convincing their male kin to
dispose of fighting, an action that eventually led
to the demobilization of the militia in Somaliland.
Their participation and involvement in the civil
protection structures is therefore fundamental.
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