Nairobi -Kenyan politicians and khat traders are calling on the government to initiate talks with British officials to reverse the ban on khat and save the multi-million dollar agricultural sector from collapsing.

Kenyan farmers say the new British ban on the leafy stimulant, also known as “miraa,” will have a significant adverse impact their businesses and the nation’s economy. The plant, which grown in Kenya’s cooler central regions for export to several European countries and Somalia, is worth big money for Kenya.

According to Kipkorir Menjo, director of the Kenya Farmers Association, the ban threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people.

“The miraa industry is going to face a serious challenge because they are people in the supply chain, the farmers who are planting the crop, fellows who have been distributing, fellows who have been exporting,” he said. “The whole industry is likely to collapse because this is a major market which has been earning this people good money, of course also earning the country foreign exchange.”

On Wednesday, British Home Secretary Theresa May banned the herbal stimulant, saying her country could become a transit route for illegal shipments into other European countries.

The head of the Global Miraa Industry Dealers Network, Jephat Muroko, calls the ban political.

“To me it’s a pure politics, and not only politics but also oppressive to the miraa industry traders,” he said.

“I think it’s part of the consequences,” he added, referring to Kenya’s election of President Uhuru Kenyatta, who faces trial at the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. “But I wonder about our government, why it’s quiet about this thing.”

Kenya’s khat traders once exported about 20 tons of the crop to the Netherlands each week, before that country joined several other European neighbors, including France and Germany, in banning the leafy stimulant.

Britain imported 36 tons each week prior to implementing its own ban.

Menjo says both khat farmers and traders need to start lobbying Britain to lift the ban or start planting other cash crops.

“If there will be no headway then they will have to think for other options, but I think for now I don’t want to conclude that nobody will listen to them,” he said. “Hopefully they will get some way out, but if it’s not possible they will have to think some other ways of getting their livelihood.”

As the farmers and traders digest the latest development from Europe, another battle awaits them inside Kenya: The National Authority for the Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse is lobbying the government to have khat classified as an illegal drug.

Source: VOA

I am Somali boy in war-torn ravaged home,

where my people eradicate each other just for the throne.

Blood is way cheaper than water for them to spill.

With pernicious guns and grenades each other they kill.

My peers in other world are centuries ahead of me.

And I am here uneducated, striving to set me free.

My dear mother was hit by a huge blazing shell.

Our daily life was from the tomatoes she used to sell.

My sister got dismissed from school because of the fee.

She was intelligent but who spared moment to see???

My daddy was a drug-addict and robber in street.

When something went wrong he would torture us and beat.

In a faithful morning we were notified his death,

after fusillade of bullet riddled him below the head.

It was so tragic to me and so much worse than a thunder.

For, he’d at least sponsored me when no one didn’t bother.

As a poor unlearned Somali boy, I still polish the shoes.

I could have been a millionaire, a politician on the news.

My clan is better is what tore my great country apart.

And let predators towards them make a cunning dart.

We paid allegiance to tribalism which caused disarray,

and shrouded women and children in layers of dismay.

And, some of those fled, get discriminated every day.

Mercilessly stoned to death, on street, while they lay

We were once the Irish of East Africa and hope to be again.

Pick the threads of our life and from tribalism abstain.

I pray future generation won’t see the same years of pain.

The same anguish I suffered, the same scholars get slain.

BY: Abdifatah Sheik Ibrahim( Aw Daldale )

By Associated Press,

JOHANNESBURG — The chief executive of Somalia’s largest money transfer company warned Tuesday that funds wired into the country could “go underground” if Somalis aren’t able to send money to family members through banks.

Abdirashid Duale, the chief executive of Dahabshiil is asking Barclays bank to reconsider a decision announced last month to stop facilitating money transfers to some companies in Somalia. Banks worried about anti-terror regulations have grown wary of facilitating transfers into Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab still controls a wide region.

Somalia’s diaspora community sends $1.2 billion into Somalia annually, according to a study released this month by the U.N.’s food and agricultural agency. That money is desperately needed in one of the world’s poorest countries.

“What’s the alternative? The alternative is that people will go underground, and then the regulators won’t see who is sending money,” Duale told The Associated Press by telephone. “Money will go on flights and be transported in pockets.”

Dahabshiil is one of Somalia’s rare business successes. Started in 1970 by Duale’s father, the company says it employs more than 5,000 people in 150 countries. The company helps transfer money for such humanitarian groups as the U.N., Oxfam and Save the Children.

Duale says Dahabshiil is in compliance with all international banking regulations. He shared a portion of a letter from Barclays that said the decision to sever ties “is not a negative reflection of your Anti-Money Laundering standards, nor a belief that your business has unwittingly been a conduit for financial crime,” but rather is because of the risks “of the sector in which you operate.”

That risk, Duale argues, is in inherent in all money transfers. He noted that the 9/11 commission that investigated the 2001 attacks in the United States found that the attackers used Western banking institutions to transfer money.

“We have our compliance system to follow. We ask people for ID. There is a database we can check if they are a member of al-Shabab or not,” he said. “The risks are always there. The risk is not unique for a specific company.”

Barclays said in a statement last week that as a global bank it must comply with rules and regulations in all the jurisdictions in which it operates.

“It is recognised that some money service businesses don’t have the proper checks in place to spot criminal activity and could unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing,” it said. “Abuse of their services can have significant negative consequences for society and for us as their bank.”

Barclays said it is happy to maintain a relationship with businesses that have anti-financial crime controls. Western Union operates in Somalia but does not have a presence in many places, including the capital, Mogadishu.

Aid groups that work in Somalia are worried about the possible impact of Barclays’ decision. A coalition of aid groups said that one study of financial transactions in Somalia found that 73 percent of remittance recipients said that they use the money they receive from relatives — an average of $2,040 per year — to pay for basic food, education, and medical expenses.

By Associated Press

Sisters of Somalia is now available to watch on YouTube after screening on Monday, 1 July 2013 on Witness, Al Jazeera’s flagship documentary strand.

Asha Hagi Elmi is a humanitarian and peace activist, internationally recognised for her work helping to build peace in Somalia and defending the rights of women. In August 2012, just months before her husband Abdi Farah Shirdon became prime minister of Somalia, Witness journeyed with Asha to the refugee camps of Mogadishu, swelled to bursting from 2011 by tens of thousands of Somalis fleeing drought and the threat of famine.

Asha, her sister Amina and other women from the NGO she founded, SSWC (Saving Somali Women and Children), distribute food, clothing, medical and practical aid, lend an ear to the refugees’ stories and, most of all, attempt to restore dignity to the lives of the often traumatised and very vulnerable women and children they meet in the camps.

Asha has since become a legislator in the Somali Federal Parliament.

Watch and embed the full episode at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzW6OSU-Tq0.

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2013/07/20137112549633235.html.

Regards

Kevin Kriedemann

+27(0)83 556 2346

For a variety of reasons, it is an uphill task to revive the collapsed state of Somalia.  Yet, the current Federal Government of Somalia (SFG) stood the best prospect for restoring the failed political institutions of Somalia. President Hassan got a golden opportunity to pull this war-torn nation out of the black hole into which it has fallen in 1991.  He was given a chance to turn the page on the past and start writing history in a new chapter.

I am afraid President Hassan squandered an opportunity to become a national icon.  Remember how Nelson Mandela became a hero. Unlike the painful struggle of the South African’s great statesman, President Hassan – through luck and little efforts – met his ‘stroke of luck’ at the doorstep.  But I think it takes more than mere luck to become a hero. It requires intrinsic heroic trait.

If you objectively appraise the opportunity given to President Hassan against his achievements, you will sadly conclude that the man is an underachiever. Let me refresh your memories.

The successful closure of the protracted and painful transitional period to permanent Federal institutions has set off a spat of renewed hope, international attention and interest.

The diplomatic compassion  which President Hassan’s government obtained from the international community has been immensely overwhelming. The recognition and support given to the Federal Institutions by the member states of the European Union, Norway, the United States, Japan and other global and regional bodies including the Bretton Wood institutes (the World Bank and the IMF), the UN, the Arab Leagues, the OIC and the AU have been particularly very impressive.

Many trustingly believed that the international legitimacy of the government would usher in a new political dispensation that could take this war-ravaged nation across the bridge.

Unfortunately, this optimism is quickly ebbing out of sight. The enthusiasm and confidence people had in the new SFG leadership is undermined by the injudicious policies of the President. Misguided policies are escalating conflict and division among Somalis along tribal lines. Although the government is gaining a foothold in the diplomatic space, it is terribly – very terribly – failing to win the hearts and minds of its people.

Put differently, President Hassan is widely alleged to be a man pressing lopsided tribal agenda, rather than national goals.

Consequently, his government seems to have lost both legitimacy and momentum. Like this proverbial ‘headless chicken’, government ministers are moving all over the country to cause havoc. It is sad to know that a SGF minister has deliberately orchestrated the recent tragic incident in Kismayo – that saw the death of more than 50 civilians and innocent teenagers.

Let me tell you where the rain started beating the SFG. I don’t think the problem is the president per se. It is only the buck stops at him. The problem lies with the sad lot that forms his inner circle.

I think, dark forces within his political organisation are trying to manipulate ‘his’ opportunity to externalise the cost of a ‘tribal warfare’.

That is why President Hassan should be wary of what is going in Villa Somalia. He should act firm and fast to dismantle and distance himself from these dark forces. He should do something to redeem his tainted national image.

Just reflect how the pattern of politics in Somalia was taking shape since Mr. Hassan was elected president late last year. Dangerous tides of tribalism have gone up in the sky. Tribal figureheads, who purport to speak for “the government”, took centre stage of the national policies. Why president Hassan accepted such myopic groups to usurp his political agency is beyond me. But that is not all, there is more.

The government’s strategy of ‘political conflict’ is also increasingly motivating infamous warlords to return in the public sphere.  Some of the most notorious warlords have resuscitated from the political oblivion. I think they have smelt blood.

The SFG made several strategic blunders that led to the prevailing political tribalism and warlordism.  But none was more hurting than the government’s casual argument against the formation of Jubbaland. I will leave here why the casual argument of the SFG against the formation of regional administrations is untenable political hubris.

First, President Hassan’s reluctance to the formation of regional administration are not in consistency with the commitments made by Somali participants of 2004 Reconciliation Conference in Nairobi – which is the reference point of the current political settlement. Neither is it consistent with the decentralised governance structures enshrined in the provisional Constitution of Somalia.

Political rhetoric aside, senior aides that command the ears of the President do not believe – and will not allow for that matter – federalism to take effect in Somalia. They are hell-bent on reversing the political consensus – federalism on which the current political set up is anchored.

As they say actions speak lauder than words. All their actions are biased towards reviving highly centralised governance structure in Somalia. Even the executive powers which are – by design – expected to be shared between the President and the Prime Minister are concentrated in the office of the president. President Hassan’s grip on power is absolute. That is why he is the centre of gravity.

Of course, the President and his political ‘cogs’ are entitled to their opinion. And the applicability of federalism in the context of Somalia is legitimately debatable. But they should not try to force their opinion down the throat of the ‘rest’. That would be a risky strategy – one that can slide the country back into bloodshed. Of course, we have been there before. It is a no-go territory. We still bear the scars.

Secondly, notwithstanding the absence of a ‘central government’ is ultimately at the root of the crisis in Somalia, it is the revival of a ‘central authority’ that lies at the heart of the conflict. This is paradoxically puzzling – as ‘central government’ is both a solution to the crisis and the most obvious obstacle that makes a solution to the crises a bridge too far. Let me expound this a bit.  .

The bitter experience of the Somali people from dysfunctional and often predatory ‘central governments’ instilled them with profound suspicion of the state’s ‘monopoly on the means of violence’. History has it that the state has long being used as a tool to dominate and maltreat political opponents in Somalia.

Examples abound. Late dictator General Mohamed Siyad Barre’s ‘reign of terror’ effectively utilised the state apparatus to humiliate and abuse the human rights of his political nemeses. His shock troops committed one outrage after another to destroy property and restrict the political freedom of their people.

President Abdikasim Salad Hassan misused the mandate of his Transitional National Government to settle political scores with his opponents. He sponsored his own clan militia to expand the influence of his government, to loot, destroy property and use violence to inflicted significant pain on those who contested his rule.

The power struggle between President Abdillahi Yusuf’s Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts Union – compounded with the proxy war between Eretria and Ethiopia – almost sent the country to hell in a handbasket. President Sharif Sheik Ahmed found himself in a minefield, planted by his “own men”. History has nothing significant to write about him.

But this is not the time and place to unpick all historical events. The point here is that those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it. Put it differently, the bitter experience of the Somalis from the state’s ‘legitimate monopoly on the means of violence’ makes the revival of a ‘central authority’ a ‘zero-sum game’ – one that has winners and losers. None of the main political antagonists – or rival clans – is willing to lose the control of the state apparatus to a rival. That is why all previous efforts for restoring a ‘central authority’ in Somali have failed.

The intention of this article is not to proscribe a formula for success; it is rather to define the problem that impedes a solution for our political conundrum. However, once the problem is identified, the remedy suggests itself.

For that matter, I will end where I started. The restoration of centralised authority in Somalia is an act in futility. We can’t just keep repeating the same mistake. We need to learn from our past – and correct our pitfalls. Time has come to it let go.

Said Faadi

Email: said.faadi@gmail.com

Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab extremists have killed two of their own top commanders, one with a $5 million United States bounty on his head, the insurgents said Saturday.

“We have informed their widows of their deaths, as they must now wear the clothes of mourning,” Shebab spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab told AFP.

The pair killed are two co-founders of the Islamist group, including US-wanted Ibrahim Haji Jama Mead, better known by his nickname Al-Afghani — “the Afghan”, due to his training and fighting with Islamist guerrillas there.

Washington offered a $5 million bounty for Afghani, who opposed the command of top Shebab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane.

Godane earlier this month ordered Afghani and other leaders’ arrest.

Shebab gunmen also killed Abul Hamid Hashi Olhayi, named as another senior commander and co-founder of the group.

Family members said they were arrested and then executed, but the Shebab said they were killed during a gun battle.

“We deny reports that the men were killed after capture,” Musab told AFP.

“The two men were killed in a shoot out when they were resisting arrest on court orders.”

Somalia’s Shebab is fractured into multiple rival factions, some based along clan lines and others ideological.

Some are more attracted by a nationalist agenda to oust foreigners from Somalia, while others — including Godane — have more international jihadi ambitions.

However, despite its divisions, analysts say it remains a dangerous and powerful force.

Afghani formerly headed the extremist group’s forces in southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region, based in the strategic port city of Kismayo.

In April, a letter was circulated on extremist websites reportedly penned by Afghani to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, criticising the leadership of Godane.

Security sources report that clashes broke out between Godane’s troops and forces loyal to Afghani on June 20 in the southern Somali port of Barawe, one of the few towns still held by the Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents.

After the fighting in Barawe in which Afghani was captured, factions opposed to Godane have scattered.

 Source:AFP 

Reports from Bay and Bakool region in southern Somalia say a top commander in the Islamic militant group Al Shabaab have defected to the government side due to internal altercations which has engulfed the group in the past last months.

Sheik Mukhtar Roobow aka Abu Mansur is said to be the latest Al shabaab commander is in the process of surrendering to government forces in Bay and Bakool this after another top commander known as Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys gave himself up few days ago.

The commander and his fighters were commandeering more than six technical armed wagons is said to be based in the outskirts of Baidoa and he is expected to surrender shortly to the government side as soon as a deal is reached with government intelligence operatives.

Unconfirmed reports indicated elders from Roobows clan helped broker a deal with the government side although the details of the deal still remain sketchy.

The has been a growing speculations with some suggesting that another top commander of the group Known as Afgani might have been executed of as cracks start to emerge in the echelons of Islamist group.

It’s not clear what is causing the internal wrangles in the most dreaded and feared militant group.

SomalilandPress.com

By Drazen Jorgic

MOGADISHU-Somalia’s government is expected to recognize a former Islamist warlord it had opposed as interim leader of a strategic port city, diplomats said, defusing a crisis over rival claims to the post that had raised fears of a return to clan warfare.

The threat of the kind of clan fighting that over two decades tore Somalia apart has hung over Kismayu since Ahmed Madobe, leader of the Ras Kamboni militia, was chosen by a regional assembly to lead Jubaland and its port in May.

The fate of Kismayu and the surrounding region in southern Somalia has been seen as a litmus test of whether the government can manage a federal state and cement a fragile peace in place since African peacekeeping troops drove out Islamist militants.

Western and regional diplomats, all with a close knowledge of Somalia and the workings of its government, told Reuters that Mogadishu had changed tack and was resigned to having the Ras Kamboni leader stay in charge, but on an interim basis.

“They recognize that they have to deal with Madobe,” said one senior Western diplomat.

Regional capitals and Western donors are nervous about any reversal of delicate security gains made in Somalia by African troops fighting against the al Qaeda-linked militants, seen as a threat to stability in the region and beyond.

Central government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman said Mogadishu, which had widely been seen to back another candidate, was ready for a deal but it had not decided on who it would be.

“We are willing to compromise provided that the legality, the constitution, and the federal institution and mandate is protected,” he said, adding senior government officials were in Kismayu for negotiations with the rival parties.

Even with the regional leader title, Madobe will only really control Kismayu and its immediate surrounds because al Shabaab Islamist militants still control much of Jubaland’s countryside.

LUCRATIVE BUSINESS

Dozens of people have been killed in Kismayu since May in sporadic clashes between Madobe’s Ras Kamboni militia, opposed by the central government, and fighters loyal to Barre Hirale, another former warlord seen as having Mogadishu’s backing.

Rival clans want control of port taxes, valuable charcoal exports and levies on arms and other illegal imports.

If a deal is struck, one government source said the interim administration would be in place for up to a year before a vote.

The situation has been complicated because of ambiguity over how Somalia, including its break-away regions, will be governed as a federation and because Mogadishu has little leverage as its poorly paid and trained security forces cannot impose control.

“Acknowledging that Madobe is the de facto leader in charge of an interim Jubaland administration would be pragmatic,” said Matt Bryden, a director of Sahan Research think-tank who previously coordinated a U.N. monitoring report on Somalia.

“The government can’t afford to become embroiled in this,” he said. “It doesn’t have the time, the resources or sufficient influence in Jubaland.”

Madobe was a governor of Kismayu during an administration that was routed by Ethiopian forces sent into Somalia between 2006-2009 with tacit U.S. backing.

The European Union’s top Africa official, Nicholas Westcott, said it was vital for a deal to improve security in Jubaland, a region which some analysts fear could otherwise break away.

“If Somalia is fragmented it will never be in position to develop or resolve all the conflicts,” Westcott said.

Source:Reuters

He didn’t look much like Mad Abdi, the famed Mogadishu warlord whose arrest by Delta Force was portrayed in the film Black Hawk Down. No, by the time I met him in a smart Nairobi hotel in 2008, Abdi Hasan Awale Qeybdiid was one of ours. He was dressed in a smart military uniform and ran Mogadishu’s police force, all paid for with millions of pounds of European and British money.

This was how it was supposed to work. Somalia was a failed state and the best way to help it rebuild was to pour millions of pounds into law and order, providing security for future development aid. Some £15m of donor funding – including more than £3m from the UK’s Department for International Development – was being spent via the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

There was just one problem. No one really knew where the money was going. Somalia was too dangerous for UN officials to visit. There were reports of 4x4s were being converted into battle wagons and evidence the cash was being used to pay salaries of Brigadier-General Qeybdiid’s own militia.

I put all this to a friend at one of the embassies in Nairobi. His response was typical of those I received in any discussion of aid and development. “An element of a leap of faith is required,” is what he told me. “Otherwise we have to walk away.”

Fast forward five years and one could be forgiven for thinking walking away might have been the better option. As a new book, Al-Shabaab in Somalia by Stig Jarle Hansen (published by Hurst), sets out, ill-conceived donor programmes in part created the conditions for Somalia’s takeover by the hardline Islamists of al-Shabaab.

Starting in 2005 with just 36 fighters it grew to become 5000-strong in 2009 – probably the peak of its power – filling a security vacuum and making life all but impossible for Somalia’s internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Mr Hansen’s detailed account sets out how al-Shabaab set aside the clan divisions that stymied other movements and offered its own form of law and order:

The UNDP, supported by Norway and the United States, trained the police, but failed to ensure its payment, over and over again. In fact the desertion rate of the unpaid police and soldiers of the TFG was growing above 100%: the number of defections was actually larger than the total amount of policemen scheduled to be in the police force. A majority of the policemen just stayed some months in the force before they defected. Donors and supporters failed to understand the seriousness of the situation before it was too late.

The police that were left engaged in systematic pillaging and fought among themselves. The same thing happened in the army. The donor cash had not just failed to bring about security, it contributed to growing lawlessness and a key condition for the rise of the Islamist extremists. The book concludes:

TFG policies, as well as the failed rule of law project managed by the UNDP, had more or less prepared the stage for al-Shabaab by creating a highly corrupt and predatory police force despised by many Somalis.

While there are few universal rules of aid or foreign policy, there are clearly lessons to be learned. As the world ponders once again how best to rebuild Somalia and donors continue to pour money into Afghanistanto shore up local security forces riddled with desertions, it is clear that doing something is not always better than doing nothing. In the case of al-Shabaab, despite being pushed back from the Somali capital, their influence across Africa means they remain a deadly threat.

Source; telegraph.