Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud left the Somali capital on Sunday for Djibouti to attend a convention marking the 40th anniversary of Somali language reforms. This is the second visit by Mr. Mohamud to the tiny Red Sea nation since his election last September by Somali MPs in Mogadishu.
The Somali language is spoken by about 15 million people and dates back to ancient times. The convention underway in Djibouti will mark 40 years since the new Somali alphabet was introduced. In October 1972 Somalia’s former President Mohamed Siad Barre introduced the English Latin alphabet replacing the previously used Arabic script. The initiative was the brain child of Somali linguist Shire Jama Ahmed.
Siad, who introduced many policies to Somalia designed to free the nation from century old views and influences saw language as integral part of his long term nationalist program. He felt that Somalis needed a new identities and nationalist views. He saw Arabic as religion identity but felt Somali people lacked strong cultural and language identity. He further argued that Somalis needed language reform that was modern, practical, and precise, and less difficult to learn than Arabic. He introduced the policy of “bar ama baro” or “teach or learn” in an effort to speed up the transition from Arabic to Somali. The bar ama baro program required students to learn the new Somali language in the morning and by afternoon they had to be teaching rural areas. It was one of his most successful policies and in a period of just five years he made history. By 1978, the majority of Somalis were said to be literate and his program became the fastest developments of mass literacy anywhere in the world.
Somali linguists and academia will celebrate the 40th anniversary since the development from Monday 17th to the 22nd of December. The event will be attended by Somali politicians and academia from Mogadishu, Somaliland, Puntland, Northern Frontier District (NFD) region of Kenya, The Somali State of Ethiopia and Djibouti. The event will bring together Somalis from the entire Horn of Africa for the first time in many years.
President Hassan on his part promised to revive the Somali language and help restore it along with the Somali State while preparing for the convention.
The convention was organized by the Djibouti-based Somali Pen organization and they will launch the largest Somali dictionary since 1976 when President Siad unveiled Qaamuus kooban ee af Soomaali ah and Qaamuuska Af-Soomaaliga.
Somali President Hassan arrives in Djibouti to mark 40th anniversary of Somali language reform
Mogadishu (Africareview) A newly appointed Somalia Minister Mr Abukar Hassan Ali has resigned, citing clan expectations.
The resignation came a day after his appointment as Deputy Minister by the country’s Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon. The PM also nominated 5 state ministers on the same day.
According to Mr Ali, his clan Galje’el deserved more than the position of Deputy Minister of Finance and National Planning.
“I consulted with the elders, religious leaders, youth and other prominent persons from my Galje’el clan. I was urged to resign,” stated the resigning deputy minister.
He added that the fact that each of the ten ministries will have two deputy ministers meant that even a deputy ministerial post he was to assume was just half the position.
“Considering the influence of my clan, I cannot accept to assume the position in a ministry with two deputy ministers,” remarked Mr. Ali. “There was an earlier consensus that my clan would get a state minister. Thus, this nomination must be undermining my clan’s status and I would not go down into the history books as the man who accepted an inferior position for my clan,” he added.
When the Transitional Federal Government ceased and a non-permanent government was established in September, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud and PM Shirdon agreed to form a lean government of 10 ministers.
However, several clans that missed ministerial posts complained privately. This, however, is the first major protest against appointments in a nation where clan balance and political roles are closely linked.
Earlier on November 5, the Premier appointed a lean cabinet made of 10 ministers that included two women ministers.
On Thursday, the leader of the political association (Midnimo) made a call for dialogue with the government, amid heightened tension between the opposition and the Puntland authorities.
The call to President Farole’s regime by the newly formed political association (Midnimo) comes after a recent spate of demonstrations and increasing opposition on the President’s plan to postpone the Presidential elections in January 2013.
Dr. Sadiq Enow, the leader of Midnimo (Unity Party), said the country urgently needed dialogue amid the resurgence of tensions.
“…Because the current government’s official term in office was four years, President Farole took the oath in 2009, extending his term in office for another one year will have grave consequences, we have seen it before in 2002…we have lost many people because of that conflict…we don’t need such violence to return to our beloved country,” he said.
The opposition leader accused the current government and the previous ones of deliberately refusing to create the constitution court of Puntland, but instead each one of them tired to extend their terms in office. This will lead the country that we all love into uncertain future, says Dr.Enow.
On Friday, two MPs from Mudug and Bari regions have released a joint a press statement calling on the traditional leaders to intervene and to hold a national unity conference. The Puntland Parliament’s term ended on 31st October this year.
President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole took office in January 2009 and his term of 4 years in office will end on 7th of January 2013. But the president says he will delay the elections scheduled in January, Farole wants to stay in power until 2014. He promises to hold the multiparty elections within a year.
During his election campaign in 2008 and first 100 days in office, President Farole promised that within his first year in office, he will impalement the democratization process by allowing multi party system, registering the citizens and holding a referendum on the new constitution. Now less than a month is remaining of his term in office. None of the these goals has been achieved.
Earlier this month, two major Presidential candidates have arrived in Puntland, Gen.Abdullahi Said Samatar who hails from Bari region and Abdirahman Gablah from Mudug region both are warning President Farole not to delay the elections.
In recent months, major clans in Puntland and Diaspora groups in the west have being calling on President Farole not to go ahead with his plans to cancel the elections. Last month former Prime minister of Somalia Prof.Abdiweli Ali Gaas released a statement calling the Farole regime in Puntland ‘oppressive’.
Puntland government has been accused of systematically harassing the independent media and journalists in the region. In October, government shutdown Horseed FM an independent radio station in Bosaso. The radio station has been banned from broadcasting since 6 October and access to its website is blocked in some of the region’s cities. The ban, which the police notified to the station, was a politically motivated and was not issued by any court.
The opposition groups accuses the Puntland government of using force to silence the people and prevent them for raising their demands. Last month, four people were wounded when Presidential guards opened fire on unarmed demonstrators during protests against the President in Gardo city.
Puntland State of Somalia an autonomous region, has been relatively peaceful but in the recent past, residents have expressed fear of escalating insecurity.
A car bomb in the Somali capital killed three people and wounded several others in the latest attack in war-ravaged Mogadishu, police said Friday.
“The car exploded while the driver was moving in it… three people were killed,” said police officer Aden Mohammed, adding it was not clear if the driver had been targeted. “We are still investigating the blast.”
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, but the Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents have conducted a series of guerrilla style attacks in the capital since pulling out of fixed positions there last year.
The insurgents have vowed to topple President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who took office in September after being chosen by the country’s new parliament, bringing an end to eight years of transitional rule.
An offensive led by the 17,00-strong African Union force alongside Somali forces has stripped the Shebab of most of the towns they held.
But the Shebab remain a potent threat, still controlling rural areas as well as carrying out guerrilla attacks — including suicide bombings — in areas apparently under government control.
Some of the fighters have reportedly relocated to the Galgala region of the northern Golis mountains in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region.
The Golis mountains, straddling the porous border between the autonomous state of Puntland and self-declared independent Somaliland, are honeycombed with caves and difficult to access.
War-torn Somalia moved a step closer to stability this September after picking its first president elected on home soil in decades.
Political newcomer Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, an academic and activist who has also worked for the United Nations and other organizations, was sworn in the capital Mogadishu after defeating incumbent president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. The milestone vote was hailed by the international community as a sign of improving security in a nation plunged into chaos after years of vicious civil hostilities.
Despite the move toward a more permanent government, the new president faces an uphill battle to rebuild the country and restore its shattered economy and crumbling infrastructure. Even though insurgents have fled Mogadishu and guns have fallen silent, portions of Somalia still remain lawless as large parts of the country are under the control of militants, such as the al Qaeda-linked group Al Shabaab.
Distinguished Somali professor Ahmed Ismail Samatar, who also ran for president in the recent elections and is now a member of the new parliament, says the country’s new leader is facing “heavy challenges that need to be lifted.”
“He [Mohamud] cares about the country,” says Samatar, leader of the HiilQaran political party. “And [there is] the possibility that his leadership will then bring a shift in gear and therefore moving towards that future that needs to be born.”
Somalia may have been brought to its knees by decades of war but in the 1960s, after it threw off the chains of colonialism to gain its independence, it was a model of democracy, says Samatar.
“It’s the first place in the continent, in sub-Saharan Africa, in which the head of the state will be defeated in parliamentary transparent elections and he will hand the keys … to the victor and tell the nation that democracy is a precious thing. This is in 1967 — the first sub-Saharan African head of state to be defeated in an election and then hand peacefully the order of the state and the institutions to the new president.”
Somalia was formed through the union of newly independent territories British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland in 1960. Aden Abdullah Osman Daar was Somalia’s president until the 1967 election when Abdirashid Ali Shermarke became the country’s second leader. But in 1969 he was assassinated; a military coup immediately followed and that regime ruled for more than 20 years. In January 1991, dictator Maxamed Siyaad Barre was overthrown in a civil war waged by clan-based guerrillas and warfare continues to this day.
“No African country has lost so much since the coming of independence in the continent in the 1960s,” says Samatar.
Samatar is the founding dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College, in Minnesota — the state that’s estimated to have the largest Somali population in the United States. His topics range from globalization and the world’s political economy to African issues, specifically those of his home country.
After running for president, he has now returned to Macalaster College — but as a member of Somalia’s parliament he continues to remain engaged in the rebuilding of the country.
“I am driven because after 30 years of studying I have seen enough of the truth in front of me through scholarship,” he says. “What ails Somali people and how they might overcome those problems.”
Samatar says that 15 years ago, it was hard to envision a bright future for Somalia.
“Today, though, it’s a different story,” he adds. “There are blades of hope growing among these cobblestones of difficult history,” he explains, noting that Somalis are now exhausted by the ongoing war and civil strife.
“They are absolutely tired of a particular kind of religious Islamist militancy that wants to destroy the culture; they are tired of warlords who hijack particular opportunities for their own self interests … and destroy what it’s in place.
“So that exhaustion brings a certain kind of yearning for a new time and that’s hope. They have had enough of this and they want something different.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A U.K.-led Piracy Ransom Task Force says the shipping industry must adopt additional measures to ensure that payments aren’t made to pirates after a successful attack.
The task force’s final recommendations noted that more than $300 million in ransoms has been paid to Somali pirates since 2008.
The success of piracy attacks off Somalia has dropped markedly over the last year, mainly because of increased coordination from international navies and because ships are increasing their defenses, including the use of armed guards.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said international action is beating back piracy.
“The dramatic reduction in pirate activity in the past year shows how important collective action is, and the recommendations of the Task Force should make it harder for pirates to receive, and to profit from, ransom payments,” Cameron said as the task force’s findings were released late Tuesday.
“But seafarers of all nations remain at risk, and we must continue to work to break the piracy business model, with the ultimate ambition of bringing an end to ransom payments,” he said.
Somali pirates hijacked 46 ships in 2009 and 47 in 2010, the European Union Naval Force said. In 2011, pirates launched a record number of attacks — 176 — but commandeered only 25 ships, an indication that new on-board defenses were working.
Only five ships have been hijacked this year, the EU Naval Force said. The last was taken on May 10. The sudden drop in ransom payments has ended a pirate party culture that popped up on Somalia’s shores, as pirates paid for lavish parties, including drugs and prostitutes, with millions in ransom money.
Close to 140 seafarers are still held by Somali pirates, though that’s way down from the height of the piracy crisis, when more than 600 hostages were held at once.
Early Monday, heavily armed forces from Puntland, a northern region of Somalia, clashed with pirates escorting a speedboat carrying supplies and ammunition for pirates holding a ship — the MV Iceberg 1 — pirates have held for more than two years. The MV Iceberg 1 is a Panama-flagged cargo ship that was hijacked March 29, 2010.
One Puntland official said the aim was to seize the boat and arrest pirates, but he said the mission failed after pirates fought back. The official spoke on condition he wasn’t identified because he’s not authorized to speak to the media.
The U.K. taskforce noted that there are no actions that can simply and immediately bring a halt to ransom payments, but it said that increased coordination among all piracy fighters could reduce the payments of ransoms, the legality of which is being more closely scrutinized by governments.
Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland is set to extend the political party formation period to allow more people to take part in the exercise.
Speaking to journalists on Saturday, Transitional Puntland Electoral Commission (TPEC) chairman Mohamed Hassan Bare said that the political registration time will be extended by three weeks.
Mr. Bare said the extension came in the wee hours after consultations between key players in Puntland agreed the process needed more time. He noted some of the civilians urged his commission to extend the multiparty formation term.
It was 8 months ago when the Puntland adopted a draft constitution paving the way for multiparty system. So far three political associations have been announced in the pirate infested region including Horseed Party chaired by President Abdirahman Farole. The region made several reforms as it strides towards democracy transition and ending almost two decades of tribal power sharing system.
Mr. Bare noted the electoral body also halved the required $15,000 registration fees to enable more people to register parties. He said now the required amount stood only $7,500. Some local residents however indicated that the fees were allowed due to lack of interest in the multiparty system which is completely new to Puntland.
The process towards forming political associations comes at a time when President Farole’s term is set to end in less than three months. Mr. Farole recently indicated that he wanted to extend his tenure against the wishes of some of his supporters and oppositions. This led to major political confrontation between him and the former Somali prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, who is from the region. His announcement also angered many people in major towns in Puntland including Gardo where Farole’s troops clashed with protesters just weeks ago.
Along with this dispute the region is currently suffering from major security problem as al Qaeda affiliated groups pour in from southern Somalia. Al Shabab fighters fleeing the offensive in the south led by AMISOM are taking safe heaven in Puntland. It was just days ago when they killed 12 troops in the region.
Livestock herders near the central Somali town of Belet Weyne in the Hiiraan region. Photograph: Stuart Price/AU-UN IST/EPA
Local head of Food and Agriculture Organisation wants co-ordinated aid approach to helping Somalia be self-sufficient
When the UN declared famine in Somalia in July last year, it was a disaster foretold as there had been plenty of warnings in the lead-up to the crisis.
The first indications that a disaster was looming came as early as December 2010, but the world was slow to react, with NGOs such as Oxfam describing the international donor response as tardy and inadequate. The subsequent famine killed tens of thousands of people, but, a year on, the country is slowly recovering, with a semblance of normality returning to Mogadishu to the extent that football – once banned by al-Shabaab – is being played again.
Somalia remains fragile with about 3.8 million people in need of life-saving assistance, out of a population of 9.5 million, and 1.4 million people internally displaced. Given the country’s precarious condition, the UN this week launched a $1.3bn (£807m) appeal for Somalia for the next three years.
The appeal is a test of the resilience-building approach to managing disaster, much discussed by humanitarian and development agencies but difficult to put into practice because of institutional rivalries and the problems of co-ordination.
“Resilience is simple as a concept but it’s such a challenge to the system,” says Luca Alinovi, who is in charge of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Somalia. “It is very difficult to implement.”
The $1.3bn appeal will be for 369 humanitarian projects. The FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN children’s agency (Unicef) will lead this programme, which will involve 177 national and international NGOs and other UN agencies operating in Somalia.
“This is the first time all three agencies have taken such a strong commitment together,” said Alinovi in an interview in London, adding that the three-year programme marks an attempt to blend humanitarian and development efforts, breaking with the “linear” thinking on emergencies. “All the current logic is based on sequencing,” he said, with humanitarian agencies moving in first to deal with an emergency before development workers take over.
In Somalia, however, that approach does not fit the reality where the crisis is so deep it does not allow people to bounce back. One reason the appeal is for more than three years, rather than just one, is to provide support over time that will – it is hoped – enable Somalis to become self-sufficient. “It is a single strategy, a single concept with all three agencies working on resilience, and there is zero cost on co-ordination with all our teams realigning themselves,” Alinovi says.
The EU is making its own attempt to bring the humanitarian and development silos closer with its two flagship resilience initiatives, Supporting Horn of Africa Resilience (Share) and l’Alliance Globale pour l’Initiative Resilience Sahel (Agir).
Share, launched by the European commission last year with commitments of €270m (£219m), is designed to improve the opportunities for farming and pastoralist communities, and the capacity of public services to respond to crises. Agir, launched in June as the Sahel crisis was taking hold, lays out a roadmap for better co-ordination of humanitarian and development aid to protect the most vulnerable people when drought hits again.
The UN’s three-year programme for the Horn will involve cash transfers ($78 a month during the famine), providing agricultural inputs (fertilisers and seeds) and mass vaccination campaigns for livestock. At least 14 million livestock have been vaccinated against pestes des petits ruminants (PPR), an acute and highly contagious viral disease of sheep and goats. The goal is to reach 170,000 households or 1 million people in Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland in three years.
Alinovi says the UN programme will have to deal with politically charged issues such as land tenure, disputes between pastoralists and farmers, and overfishing by foreign vessels as Somalia has no exclusive economic zone around its waters. There is also the risk that UN agencies, working with NGOs, will set up parallel structures that compete with a weak, fledgling government.
Another potential problem is whether the region can absorb the flow of cash and whether it will end up with those it is designed to help. Various techniques will be introduced such as biometric fingerprinting to ensure the right people are collecting cash transfers from money vendors. With budgets tight at home, donor governments want to see value for money, but overzealous monitoring is expensive, which means less money for Somalis themselves. As Alinovi says: “You cannot zero the risk, and governments have to accept that.”
Some have cautioned against making resilience a new development paradigm. Christophe Béné, research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, has argued that resilience is not necessarily pro-poor as there is no direct and obvious way out of poverty through resilience. Households can be very poor and very resilient, argues Béné.
Alinovi is well aware of this trap, having wrestled with the question of whether resilience is a “placebo for people to survive”. He believes the $1.3bn could provide a critical mass in terms of funding for Somalis. “Somalis are entrepreneurial by nature and if they have enough support for some time, they can come out of their present situation,” he says. “Stability comes from a willingness by people to share resources, but at the moment they have nothing to share.”
President Gül (L) welcomes his Somalian counterpart Mohamud with ceremony. The president says Turkey will lobby for funds to establish security forces. DAILY NEWS photo, Selahattin SÖNMEZ
Turkey will lobby for the formation of an international fund to establish security forces for Somalia, President Abdullah Gül said Dec. 5 while pledging Turkey’s assistance on the issue both logistically and in regards to the training of the forces.
“Turkey wants to show the entire international community how to help another nation with humanitarian purposes and without any expectations. We are fulfilling this in the best way,” Gül said at a joint press conference with Somalia’s visiting president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Armies and defense ministers in contact
Emphasizing the importance of security forces in a country being rebuilt, Gül said Turkey and Somalia had already been cooperating on this issue in terms of both logistics and the training of forces.
“We proposed to the international community the establishment of a fund to this end. We will work toward this during a donors’ meeting to be held in Istanbul in 2013,” Gül said. “As Turkey, we are continuing our strong efforts for the formation of Somali armed forces and a police institution, for their service to maintaining security and their own interests in the country,” he said, adding that the two countries’ defense ministers and chiefs of general staff had been in contact on the issues.
Ahead of the press conference, officials from the two countries signed agreements on military-financial cooperation and the implementation of cash assistance.
Somalia has been mired in violence, Islamist militancy and grinding poverty since warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, leaving the country with no effective central government for two decades. Security has improved in the last 19 months with al-Qaeda-linked militants losing more territory under pressure from African Union and Somali forces.
The four-year insurgency waged by al-Shabaab left Mogadishu in ruins, and the country is looking to foreign donors to help rebuild its ravaged economy after decades of conflict. Turkey has taken a leading role in the redevelopment of Mogadishu, as it seeks to boost its profile in Africa and promote itself as a model Muslim democracy.
In November, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Ankara would construct streets in Mogadishu and other government buildings, while promising to rebuild the Parliament building as well. Turkish Airlines has operated regular flights to Mogadishu since March.
Eleven people were killed last night and seven others seriously injured in fresh clashes in Northern Puntland region.
Intense fighting broke out between Puntland Security Forces and militants loyal to Al shabab in Sugurre Village, Bari Province leaving 11 people dead and 7 others are recovering, some from life threatening injuries.
A rescue vehicle belonging to Puntland’ s security agents was bombed by the militia. Five people were reported dead at the scene and two agents died on their way to the Bosaso Hospital.
Al Shabab confirmed the attack via their twitter handle. They tweeted that they attacked a military base outside of Bosaso and killed 30 soldiers while wounding over a dozen more.
Puntland’s security minister, Kahlife Isse Mudan, refutes those claims as he told reporters on Wednesday that 10 government troops were killed when their armed vehicle struck a landmine.
According to early reports from locals, Hiiraan Online learned that the attack that lasted two hours took place in area where the Puntland security agents had a relatively strong hold. 7 security agents were killed in the assault. 4 members of Al shabab were killed in the ambush and seven more injured.
However, despite this recent onset of violence, residents claim the area is calm and security has been beefed up in the region.
An anonymous source from the security agents mentioned that proper measures are being put in place to curb any insecurity issues that may arise in the area.
“Our security has been beefed up in all the area, we are on a higher alert to ensure that no innocent civilian loses life or properties,” Said the Security officer.
“The hide outs of the Militia group is well known to the security force and we shall ensure that they do not attack any other person,” Concluded the source.
The attack came few days after Puntland President, Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed Mohamud, stated that the militia group after being driven out of Kismayu, Beled Weyne, Afmadow and Baidao went to regroup at Gollis Mountain, northern part of Puntland.
He feared that the militia group could cause more harm and havoc to the residents within Puntland’s major cities.
The president however assured the people of Puntland of their security asking them to be calm and coordinate with the security agents to have a peaceful region, as it has always been.
