In the latest attempt to save Somalia’s cash “lifeline”, nine aid agencies call on Barclays Bank to scrap plans to sever money transfer accounts.

It is is the only bank in the UK still providing this service. However, it plans to close all the accounts of Somali money transfer firms by the end of this month.

There is a perceived legal and reputational risk of providing banking services to the sector. The concern is that criminals and terrorists could use the existing system.

The banking rules are illogical, cold hearted and counter-productive. Mark Goldring, Oxfam

However, millions of Somalis depend on money sent to them by relatives living abroad. Somalis in Britain, for example. send over £100m a year to friends and families. The country has no formal banking system and money transfer operators provide the services people in the UK would expect from a bank.

‘Cold-hearted’

The agencies, which include Oxfam, CARE and World Vision, said that Barclays needs to put on hold for a year its decision to close accounts.

This will give time for governments and banks to agree appropriate regulations to keep open a lifeline to ordinary families while addressing concerns relating to money laundering.

“The banking rules are illogical, cold hearted and counter-productive,” said Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam.

Cutting this lifeline would be a disaster for millions. Mo Farah

“It leaves families already struggling to make ends meet to go without. Closing money transfer companies’ bank accounts is likely to drive the money transfer business underground making it even more difficult to regulate. It will also hit the Somali economy hard just when the country is trying to get back on its feet.”

Last month, campaigners delivered a petition signed by more than 20,000 people to 10 Downing Street.

Mo Farah, originally from Somalia, threw his weight behind the movement. The double Olympic champion spoke personally about the crucial role remittances have played for his family and his foundation.

“Cutting this lifeline would be a disaster for millions,” he said. “The small sums sent home by British Somalis each week enable family members to buy food, medicines and other life essentials.

“I have been sending money home for a number of years and the Mo Farah Foundation, along with some of the world’s biggest international charities and organisations, including the United Nations, rely on these businesses to channel funds and pay local staff.”

Stable Somalia

Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world and slowly recovering from a famine that struck two years ago. Nearly half the population live on less than $1 a day and more than two million people have had to flee their homes due to fighting and food shortages.

The government’s position flies in the face of the UK’s policy on Somalia. Mark Goldring

Families depend on the money for basic costs such as food, schooling and healthcare. It is believed that 40 per cent of families in parts of the country receive some form of remittance and that the money is integral to their survival.

The agencies also called on the UK government to work with the banks and money transfer agencies to find a long-term comprehensive solution. Failing to do so undermines the government’s commitment to help efforts to build a stable Somalia.

“The government’s position flies in the face of the UK’s policy on Somalia,” said Mr Goldring. “Britain has shown a genuine commitment to help Somalia rebuild itself and move beyond its ‘failed state’ label, but is not doing enough to address this failed state of anti-terror banking rules.

“Somalia will find it hard to work its way out of poverty and instability while its people are needlessly denied the financial support from their loved ones abroad.”

Source: Channel 4 News

Sunday, September 08, 2013

LONDON – When Britain bans the herbal stimulant khat, Mohamod Ahmed Mohamed will lose his livelihood. But he fears most for his small Somali community without the leaf that fuels its social life.

“I can switch to another business but what about the youth, where are they going to go — the street, the mosque, to hard drugs?” he says at his khat warehouse near London’s Heathrow airport.

“You are taking away their freedom. Why target us? You will never find somebody falling over on the street or fighting from khat like they do when they are drunk.”

Mohamed supplies khat to many of Britain’s 100,000 Somalis, as well as to Ethiopians and Yemenis living here, for whom chewing the bushy shrub is as normal as going to the pub.

His growing company takes more than £500,000 ($780,000, 580,000 euros) in monthly revenues from the stimulant, which provides a euphoric, alert sensation.

But the forklift trucks moving hundreds of boxes of khat could soon be stilled after the British government announced it would ban khat, against the advice of its own experts.

News of the ban, which has yet to pass through parliament, came as a shock to the communities who chew khat in Britain.

Khat, also called miraa, has been chewed for centuries in the Horn of Africa. Its psychoactive ingredients, cathinone and cathine, are similar to amphetamines but weaker, and can help chewers stay awake and talkative.

“I chew on a Friday — it’s like going to the pub,” said Mohamed.

One of his workers chimed in: “It’s not a drug. It’s like eating a salad.”

Since khat must be chewed fresh, Mohamed’s is a slick operation.

Khat is flown to Heathrow from Kenya the day after it is picked; middlemen collect it from Mohamed to sell around the country and it can be in the mouths of chewers by evening.

For them, khat costs from £2.50 ($3.90, 2.90 euros) a bundle, each one wrapped in a banana leaf.

Men chew khat in communal rooms called mafrishes, while some women chew at home.

At a mafrish near Mohamed’s warehouse, men chew and drink soft drinks, watch football and discuss events in Somalia and their jobs in London.

“I don’t go to nightclubs, I don’t want to stay home. This is my place,” said one 23-year-old chewer, who asked not to be named.

“People come here to talk about their problems. If they don’t have a place for this, they will fall into the wrong hands,” said the mafrish manager, who would only be identified as Fouad.

He worries about young people turning to radical Islam, which he said was preached by some mosques in the area.

In a few cases, British Muslims have travelled to Somalia to fight with the Al-Qaeda-linked militant group Al-Shebab.

“Here is one place where we can talk to people who are turning radical. We can talk them around,” said Fouad.

He dismissed reports that khat helps fund Al-Shebab, and the government’s drug advisory group has also said such claims lack evidence.

The group advised against banning khat, noting that in health terms, there was little evidence of risks other than a small number of reports associating it with liver disease.

“If you’re not banning it because of science, then why are you banning it?” said Ali Osman, 36.

He urged interior minister Theresa May to try khat herself, “then she can ban it if she still wants to”.

Announcing the proposed ban on khat in July, the minister said Britain risked becoming a hub for smuggling to countries where khat is banned, such as in most of northern Europe.

She cited its role in “health and social harms, such as low attainment and family breakdown”.

Social worker Abdi Mohamed says he sometimes works with khat abuse cases, including neglected children and men distanced from their families by too much time at the mafrish.

But he also encounters families affected by alcohol and cannabis.

“We try to find out what the underlying problem is. The problem is not with the miraa, it’s with the person,” he said.

Khat is not physically addictive, but some chewers become psychologically hooked.

Abukar Awale became Britain’s leading Somali anti-khat campaigner after battling his own habit.

“I was vulnerable, I was mentally wounded, I thought everyone was looking down on me. I went through hell,” he told AFP.

“I would chew from four in the afternoon, all night long, and wake up wanting to chew again.”

Awale believes khat is “the biggest barrier to integration for the Somali community”.

Somalis are among the poorest of Britain’s immigrant groups, with high unemployment. Many fled the civil war which has ravaged the country since 1991.

The khat ban may criminalise some of them, with predictions that drug gangs will take up the trade.

At his warehouse, Mohamed says: “When you struggle, you started from nowhere to become somebody, and your business is closed down, you won’t feel good.

“But I don’t think only of miraa. This is a good country, I’m safe here, I have freedom. This is my home.”

Source: AFP

Only four out of 10 Somali children attend schools

The authorities in Somalia are launching a campaign to get one million more children into schools.

The Go 2 School initiative started simultaneously in the capital Mogadishu and in the main cities of Somaliland and Puntland.

It’s being supported by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, at a cost of $117m (£75m).

After two decades of civil war, aid agencies say Somalia’s formal education system has almost completely collapsed.

School enrolment rates are among the lowest in the world. Only four out 10 Somali children currently attend school.

Girls are particularly badly affected. Only one in three are at schools in south and central Somalia, where the militant Islamist group Al-Shabab still controls many areas.

‘Lost generations’

Unicef says the project will give a quarter of young people currently out of education a chance to learn.

“Education is the key to the future of Somalia,” Unicef’s Somalia Representative Sikander Khan said.

In June the Somali prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon, promised that his government would give education the same priority as defence and security.

“We have lost two generations of children to war,” Somalia’s education minister Maryam Qasim told the BBC, “the Somali child cannot wait for another generation.”

She said she was undeterred by the security threat from Al-Shabab saying that education would prevent children joining the militant group.

Al-Shabab was driven out of Mogadishu in August 2011 and other main towns after that but still carries out attacks and suicide bombings.

President Mohamud took office a year ago in a UN-backed bid to end two decades of violence.

Source: BBC

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somali militants attacked a restaurant near Mogadishu’s seat of government for the second time in less than a year on Saturday, detonating two large blasts that killed at least 15 people and wounded nearly two dozen, an official said.

The force of the blasts appeared to tear much of the roof off the restaurant, which is frequented by government workers.

Capt. Ali Hussein, a senior police official, put the death toll at 15 and said at least 20 had been wounded. Officials said the attack included a car bomb blast and a suicide bomber who entered The Village eatery.

“This disaster never comes to an end,” yelled Isaq Hassan, a car washer who lost a colleague in the blasts. “See this, that and this! Life is worthless here,” he said as he pointed to dead bodies on the ground.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said wounded people screaming in pain were being taken away by ambulance. Soldiers also fired in the air, apparently in an attempt to restore order. Dead bodies badly burned by the flames could be seen by frightened onlookers who had gathered.

Militants, most likely from the group al-Shabab, attacked The Village last November. That attack, though, was less severe; two suicide bombers attacked but the blast killed only one guard. Guards were reported to have opened fire on the attackers, which may have kept the death toll down.

Al-Shabab makes frequent attack attempts against government leaders and seats of power.

“They attack the restaurants because they hate to see people peacefully spending time together,” said Mohamed Abdi, an Interior Ministry employee who spoke as he stood near the dead body of an old man. “They are committed to obliterating any sign of peace. Because of such attacks, it’s very hard for the government to restore security in the near future.”

African Union forces pushed the al-Qaida-affiliated group al-Shabab out of Mogadishu in August 2011, but the rebels continue to carry out suicide attacks in the capital.

Source AP

Barclays Bank has been criticised by the UK’s leading think tank on international development for its decision to close its 250 money-transfer businesses in Somalia.

The decision was described by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) as “unwarranted, unnecessary and a threat” to people in need.

The ODI has said it is possible to maintain cash transfers to Somalia while monitoring them to avoid a diversion of funds. Its president Kevin Watkins cited new research showing that a transfer scheme worth £57m, set up in response to the 2011 famine, went through to help almost 1million people without falling into the wrong hands.

Barclays took the decision to cut its money service businesses (MSBs) from the end of September to avoid the risk of falling victim of money-laundering regulations and “unwittingly be facilitating […] terrorist financing”.

About £800m in remittances – a significant part of the country’s GDP – is channelled to the country by the 1.5m Somalis living overseas thanks to the hawala, or small money-transfer businesses. An estimated £320m is sent to Somalia by the UK’s Somali diaspora alone, which far exceeds international aid.

British MP Rushanara Ali, who campaigned to keep the money flowing, said banks “are scared of the impact if they fall foul of the regulators”. The case often cited is the UK’s HSBC bank that was fined £1.2bn for “blatant failure” to implement anti-money laundering controls.

However, Watkins said that the HSBC case “is a weak analogue for Barclays engagement in Somalia”. The British bank, indeed, was charged with allowing £429bn in wired transfers from Mexico, of which at least £564m were associated with drug trafficking. But such activities “are hardly comparable to the operations of the hawala system and money transfer agencies,” Watkins wrote in his letter to Antony Jenkins, group chief executive for Barclays Bank.

“There is a world of difference between providing aid banking services to drug barons in Mexico and delivering a service that pays for health, education, food, housing materials and small enterprises in Somalia,” he wrote. “If aid agencies can find a way to operate efficiently in Somalia then surly it’s not beyond the capability of Barclays.”

The campaign against Barclays shutdown included Olympic gold winner Mo Farah, who came to the UK at the age of eight from war-torn Mogadishu. The runner urged his 800,000-plus Twitter followers to support “vital” money flows to families in Somalia.

 “It is so important that the government and the banks realise the incredibly serious threat this poses, and work with the remittance industry to find a solution,” he told the BBC.

“Millions of Somalis as well as people across the developing world depend on it.”

Dahabshiil, the largest money transfer business providing services to Somalia, has said Barclays’ decision could see money transfers pushed into the hands of “unregulated and illegal providers”.

To report problems or to leave feedback about this article, e-mail:g.mezzofiore@ibtimes.co.uk 
To contact the editor, e-mail: editor@ibtimes.co.uk

Source: IB TIMES

The Twitter account of Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents was suspended Friday, the second time this year the Islamists have been pushed off the site.

A message from Twitter on the English-language @HSMPress1 account read that the account was suspended, without elaborating.

In a statement sent to AFP, the group denounced the suspension as “futile”.

“Our account has been closed in another futile attempt to silence the truth and the factual coverage of events in Somalia,” the group said.

Earlier this week the group used the site to claim they had ambushed the convoy of war-torn Somalia’s internationally backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

Somalia’s presidency played down the incident, describing it as as IED explosion far from the convoy.

“Next time, you won’t be as lucky,” the Islamists tweeted after their attack, which the president escaped unharmed.

Twitter warns that accounts can be suspended if users publish “direct, specific threats of violence against others”.

Users are also blocked if they use Twitter “for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities”.

The Shebab’s previous account, @HSMPress, was suspended in January after the group posted photographs of a French commando they killed and threatened to execute Kenyan hostages.

The Shebab statement said the group presently had no other active Twitter feeds and warned users to beware of “parody accounts”.

MOGADISHU – Somalia said on Friday that international investigators commissioned by its government had cleared it of corruption accusations leveled by United Nations monitors.

The Horn of Africa country is striving to shake off the tag of one of the world’s most corrupt nations as it emerges from two decades of conflict and lawlessness.

In July, the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said Mogadishu’s central bank had become a “slush fund” for political leaders and that the current governor played a central role in irregularities surrounding unaccountable disbursements of cash.

“What is crystal clear is that the Monitoring Group’s allegations have no basis in fact,” the Somali government said in its formal response to the U.N. report dated August 30 but released on Friday.

There was no immediate comment from the U.N. monitors.

The Mogadishu government said it had commissioned FTI Consulting, whose chairman for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region is British peer Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, and a U.S. law firm to investigate the findings.

Central Bank of Somalia Governor Abdusalam Omer has denied the allegations against him, branding them malicious.

“The Monitoring Group’s obsessive and unrelenting attacks on Central Bank Governor Omer that he was complicit in pervasive corrupt activities are contrary to all of the evidence uncovered by the investigative team,” the government statement said.

It accused the U.N. monitoring team of failing to make contact with key officials and gather a complete body of evidence before making its accusations.

Somalia is persistently ranked the world’s most corrupt country on Transparency International’s index of perceived graft.

Cleaning up management of public finances is a top priority of the Mogadishu government, although leading Western donors say it is too early to provide direct budgetary assistance.

Instead, nearly all aid is channeled through the United Nations and charities.

Asked if his government trusted the government, one senior diplomat dealing with Somalia told Reuters: “Politically we trust them, yes. Do we trust them with taxpayer money? Not yet. But our risk appetite is going up.”

Source:Reuters

African Refugees Try to Warm Up to Bandy, a Cousin of Hockey

By NICLAS ROLANDER

BORLÄNGE, Sweden—Sports fans whose heartstrings were tugged by the Jamaican bobsled team back in the 1980s may have a new underdog to pull for as a group of Somali men living in Sweden look to master the fast-paced and ice-cold game of bandy.

It is a form of larger-scale ice hockey popular in the Nordic countries and Russia that is played by 11-man teams on soccer-size ice fields, usually outdoors. Unlike hockey, bandy isn’t a body-checking contact sport, but skaters move at furiously high speeds and the hard plastic ball used instead of a puck can whiz very fast past a player’s face.

Team Somalia’s coach, Per Fosshaug, a fiery Swedish bandy legend, once held the unofficial bandy record and was able to fire shots at more than 100 miles an hour into the top corners of the bandy goal.

The objectives of the game are the same as in ice hockey; the main differences are the larger surface, more players and a ball instead of a puck.

About two dozen young Somali hopefuls don’t have a lot of time to master the game. Living in central Sweden, the players are hoping to be the first team from Africa to compete in the world championships.

“It’s an amazing thing to get a chance to represent your country,” said Najib Farhan, a 16-year-old Somali.

The 2014 World Bandy Championships are to start in late January in the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk, which boasts record low temperatures of 57.5 degrees below zero. Some bandy leagues abide by temperature rules that allow games to be called on account of cold, but in the World Championships, temperatures have to drop to at least 22 below before a postponement is even considered. It helps to dress in layers, with some Gore-Tex to protect players racing about at 30 mph from the wind.

Players on Team Somalia have no illusions about their chances. “We will probably lose by a hundred goals,” said Mr. Farhan, after one of the team’s first practices. “But we will do our best.”

Mr. Fosshaug’s attempt to quickly whip a team into shape is proving that the task isn’t going to be easy. Most of his charges have never skated and some haven’t been in Sweden for more than six months. At their first training in June in Sweden’s picturesque Dalarna region, aspiring players struggled just to stay upright on roller blades, which were being used as training wheels to prepare them for ice skates.

As Mr. Fosshaug gave instructions to pupils about flexibility of limbs and the importance of using the gluteus maximus for leverage, his players were clinging to one another, trying not to fall.

In an impromptu 40-meter race, or about 44 yards, there were lots of flailing arms as beginners tried to maintain their balance. Almost half the field ended up on the ground, some having to crawl to make it past the finish line. As the Somali trainees strained to learn, Swedish children who shared the course were gliding around, completely at ease on their roller blades and bemused by their fellow skaters.

The Somali bandy experiment originated when a business consultant named Patrik Andersson was out drinking with friends one night and talking about the challenge immigrants face in Sweden. Mr. Andersson’s hometown of Borlänge has 40,000 people, and 3,000 of them are from Somalia, most of them refugees who fled war and poverty in their home country. Many of them interact very little with the Swedes. Unemployment is high among the Somalis.

Bandy fan Magnus Ståhl is a proxy for the local bandy fanaticism. He has the sports club badge of Edsbyns IF tattooed on his arm and says the game means “everything” to his village, population 4,000, 75 miles north of Borlänge.

The team has won nine Swedish titles and at the height of its success had average attendance of 2,000 at home games. But it is very uncommon to see immigrants play bandy, Mr. Ståhl said, and audiences are pretty homogeneous, reminiscent of Swedish life in the 1950s, before a half century of immigration diversified the nation of 9.6 million people.

Looking to shake up the sport’s exclusivity, Mr. Andersson’s group took the idea to the Federation of International Bandy, which is eager to bring the game to new nations. It needs broader participation if it is to someday secure a slot for bandy in the Olympics. The federation’s secretary-general Bo Nyman said the idea seemed “a bit too fantastic” when it was first broached to him. But after several meetings, he became convinced it could work. He went to Montenegro in mid-July and got an official green light for the Somali effort at the Federation’s Executive Committee annual meeting.

Bandy evangelists face a challenge, however, given the dominance of soccer here in Sweden.

“I’ve coached a youth team, and I’ve only had one player who was an immigrant,” Mr. Ståhl said. And the player quit to play soccer. “He was good, but that was the first and only time I’ve seen an immigrant play bandy in Edsbyn.”

He has seen some of the sport’s international stragglers, though, and wasn’t impressed. The Netherlands had a training camp in the area and played a game in Edsbyn, but the Dutch players were ill-equipped for the match.

“They didn’t even have a full team. One of my colleagues, who used to play bandy, had to join them as a goalkeeper,” Mr. Ståhl said.

Bandy is merciless. A team with superior skating skills can run roughshod over lesser opponents. The last time the U.S. national bandy team played at the top level of the World Championship, they were beaten 15-0 by Sweden and 19-3 by Russia.

Still, the Somali pioneers in Borlänge are enthusiastic.

Mohammed Ahmed, 17, who was one of a small Somali delegation that traveled to Stockholm earlier this year to watch the national final, was impressed by the atmosphere at the game. One of five Somalis in a crowd of nearly 40,000, the novice spectator found bandy to be a bit hard to follow. It takes a trained eye to be able to follow the small pink ball or anticipate the pace of play.

Hassan Osman, one of the leaders of the local Somali football club who is now learning bandy, said about all he could make out was “a lot of players moving in all different directions.”

Mr. Ahmed, studying at an introduction program for immigrants, said that although the trip to Stockholm was a great experience, “it would have been even cooler if it were a soccer game.”

Mr. Fosshaug, the coach, is approaching this project with a healthy dose of patience. “I don’t have any expectations of them firing a shot into the top corner,” he said. “But there are other top corners to aim for, whether in the labor market, in family life or in the community.”

More than $215 million a year is sent to Somalia by relatives in the United States, with much of that originating in Minnesota.

The process, which involves sending cash through money-transfer operators, is known as remittance and has become the subject of controversy amid concerns that the money could be used to fund terrorist activities.

On Friday, several nongovernment organizations will be holding a briefing in Minneapolis to talk about a recently released report on the importance of opening up the markets for remittance, including recommending improvements on how the money is monitored.

The money sent from the United States is comparable to the amount the U.S. government sends in foreign aid to Somalia each year. Minnesota is home to the largest U.S. Somali community and the starting point for much of that flow. Those with family in Somalia have said their relatives would have trouble surviving without the money send to them.

U.S. Bank earlier this year agreed to open an account with one money-transfer operation that will allow Minnesotans to send money to Somalia. But it has yet to conduct a transaction, and other banks have grown hesitant to participate. Fearful of liability and uncertain that the money goes to where it is claimed, they’ve closed their accounts with the Somali-American-owned money-transfer operations. The British banking giant Barclays recently announced it was closing its accounts with Somali-connected remittance companies, citing inadequate controls for monitoring the money.

The report, “Keeping the Lifeline Open,” argues that the flow of cash, despite isolated problems, is vital to the stability of Somalia and that even a partial shutdown of the money-transfer operators threatens the country’s future.

“Sending money to Somalia presents risks to banks, but these risks are neither unique nor insurmountable,” the report concludes. The report will be discussed at Safari Restaurant, 3010 4th Av. S. in Minneapolis, from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday.

By Mark Brunswick

Source: StarTribune

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, warning that Somalia could slide back into being a failed state, called Tuesday on countries around the world to provide the African Union-led peacekeeping force there with attack helicopters and armored troop carriers to take the fight to Al-Shabab militants in the field.

The U.N. chief called on U.N. members, including African countries not yet involved, to provide the African Union-led peacekeeping force with attack helicopters, armored troop carries and other support to root out the al-Qaida-allied Al-Shabab.

“The political, security and development gains made so far in Somalia are still reversible,” Ban said in a report to the Security Council. The al-Qaida-allied terrorist group Al-Shabab “continues to undermine security throughout the country, including in Mogadishu.”

“Allowing Al-Shabab to continue its training and conduct terrorist activities from bases in Somalia will not only undermine peace in Somalia, but also that of the wider region,” he said.

The AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia — known as AMISOM — is endorsed by the U.N. Security Council and is meant to pave the way for an eventual U.N. peacekeeping force. It is led by Ugandan officers, and also has large Kenya and Burundi contingents. It has more than 17,000 troops.

The United Nations has especially been stung since Al-Shabab attacked the U.N. compound in Mogadishu on June 19, killing a U.N. Development Program staffer, thee U.N. contractors, four Somali guards and at least six Somali bystanders. It was the first direct attack on a U.N. building in Somalia since 2008.

Since then, the international aid group Doctors Without Borders has pulled out of Somalia, citing increasing dangers there.

Somalia has long been plagued by cyclical drought and famine and decades of armed conflict. But in recent years it has been seen as making strides in security and governance, particularly since August 2011, when al-Qaida-aligned militants were forced out of Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab militants still control much of the country’s south.

Source: AP