ABUDWAQ (Somalilandpress) — Somalia’s Al-Shabab militants have seized a key-town from pro-government Ahlu Sunna Walajam’a fighters on Saturday, witnesses said.
Al-Shabab overpowered the predominantly Sufi group in the town of Dusa-Mareb in the strategic central region of Galgadud.
Witnesses said Al Shabab entered the town from two routes early in the morning and faced little resistance from Ahlu Sunna militants.
The fighting comes a day after Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a Islamist formed their own 41 member parliament in the town of Abudwaq. It is not clear yet if the government approves of their “parliament” but delegates from abroad and in the country attended the conference.
Most of their prominent leaders were in Abudwaq including the newly elected “speaker of parliament” Sheikh Abdulkadir Aden during the fall of the town.
Its not immediately clear the extent of the damages caused by the fighting between the two Islamist rebels but witnesses said a large number of people have fled their homes in fear of violence.
Alhu Sunna are currently in the towns of Guri-ael, Abudwaq, Balanbal and Harelle preparing to retake Dusa-Mareb.
Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991 and currently more than six waring factions exist in the country.
Along with Puntland and Galmudug state, Somalis are expecting other factions to declare their semi-autonomous states including the proposed “state of Southwestern Somalia”. While Al-Shabab wants a strict version of Sharia law imposed around the country.
Denmark (SomalilandPress)-Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.
Mr Westergaard was at home in Aarhus when a man broke in and threatened him. He pressed a panic button and police entered the house and shot the man.
Danish officials said the intruder was a 28-year-old Somali linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.
The cartoon, printed in 2005, prompted violent protests the following year.
One of 12 cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, it depicted the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
In 2006 the paper apologised for the cartoons, but other European media reprinted them.
Danish embassies were then attacked by Muslims around the world and dozens killed in riots.
Mr Westergaard went into hiding amid threats to his life, but emerged last year saying he wanted to live as normal a life as possible.
His house has been heavily fortified and is under close police protection.
‘Shocked’
Police said the man had entered Mr Westergaard’s house armed with a knife and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him.
He said he had grabbed his five-year-old granddaughter and run to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.
Mr Westergaard told Jyllands Posten he was shocked that his granddaughter had witnessed the attack.
He has now been taken to a safe location, but said defiantly that he would be back, the newspaper reported.
Jakob Scharf, who heads the Danish intelligence service Pet, said the attack was “terror related” and that the suspected assailant has close contacts to Somalia’s al-Shabab group.
He had been under surveillance for activities unrelated to Mr Westergaard, Mr Scharf said.
Police said he was shot in the knee and the shoulder after threatening officers who tried to arrest him. Preben Nielsen of Aarhus police, said the man was seriously hurt but his life was not in danger.
The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant, who interviewed Mr Westergaard when he emerged from hiding, says the incident will raise questions about security measures put in place by the Danish secret service to protect the artist.
Islamic militants have placed a $1m price on Mr Westergaard’s head.
Although he is one of 12 cartoonists whose drawings of the Prophet were published in Jyllands-Posten, he has the highest profile, our correspondent says.
BORAMA (Somalilandpress) — Despite enjoying some relative peace the breakaway republic of Somaliland remains unrecognized by the international community. But Kenya which has a significant number of expatriates in the region is reassessing its position.
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Yassin Juma was in Somaliland to find out why Kenya which has been backing the Transitional Federal government of Somalia is now warming up to Somaliland.
He admitted that 5.7 million people were currently getting food aid but argued that “in the Ethiopian context, there is no hunger, no famine” and that the situation was not as bad as in recent years.
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“The government is taking action to mitigate the problems,” he said.
The latest Famine Early Warning System (Fewsnet) projections show parts of the country in the extreme east, north-east and south-west as “extremely food insecure” – one level below that for a famine – in the period January-March 2010.
The worst affected areas are in the Somali, Gambella and Afar regions.
It says high food prices, poor livestock production and low agricultural wages will lead to increased hunger.
Its report comes after the failure of both rainy seasons in 2009.
Aid agency Oxfam recently warned that drought had hit parts of East Africa for the sixth year in a row.
Oxfam said Somalia’s drought was the worst for 20 years, and November rainfall was less than 5% of normal in parts of Kenya and Ethiopia.
The UN has already said it is aiming to feed 20 million people in East Africa over the next six months.
(Somalilandpress) — For the opponents of Somaliland’s independence, Kenya’s deputy speaker’s visit to Somaliland, specially, the provincial capital of Sool, LasAnnod, is worse than daggers jammed into their hearts. However, for Somaliland proponents, the visit is like removing a blood-sucking leach from their bodies because it debunks countless barefaced lies against Somaliland. As for the deputy, Farah Ma’alim himself, the visit marks nothing more than a fact finding mission; that is, he neither supports Somaliland’s quest for independence nor opposes its presence in one of its provinces: Sool.
Throughout history, a propaganda war caused far more damages than war itself. No war is fought without massive lies, deceptions, and disinformation. From century to century, we reshaped our deceptions, fabricated sophisticated propagandas, and regurgitated the same stale, palpable lies. Hence, for the opponents of Somaliland, recycling old lies and carrying the propaganda torch from where their predecessors abandoned it not only sooths their pain but also keeps them entertained. For them, whether their stories are conceivable is irrelevant; spitting out lies, fabricating stories, and spurring a tribal war in Somaliland remains their main objective.
Take as an example, ever since Somaliland troops dislodged Puntland militias from the provincial capital of Sool region, which Col. Abudllahi Yussuf—the former Puntland warmonger, a.k.a: the butcher of Mogadishu—invaded and occupied from 2003 to 2007, Puntland and its self-nominated representatives from Sool province scream about: countless rapes, executions, lootings, kidnappings, and displacing against the residents of the city, which hypothetically Somaliland troops committed. Yet not a shred of evidence accompanies their lies.
But the recent visit of the Kenya’s deputy speaker to LasAnnod was a rude awakening for pro-Puntland groups from Sool region. Before he left Kenya, the deputy met many of the participants of the recently held meeting by pro-Puntland groups in Nairobi, Kenya. He was inundated with reports of insecurity, brutality, tribal cleansing, and destruction which Somaliland supposedly committed against Sool populace.
He was also told that the 20, 000 civilians from Sool region in the Kenyan refugee camps fled Sool province when Somaliland troops evicted Puntland militias from LasAnnod in 2007.
But what they didn’t tell him was: that no way on earth would the 20, 000 people risk their life and trek thousands kilometres to reach Kenya—don’t forget they would have to go through hell on earth: Southern Somalia—when they could simply join their relatives in Puntland, Somaliland, and in the Somali region of Ethiopia. So where did these people come from? Almost all of them fled Mogadishu in the 90s when the Somali regime collapsed. Half of the 20,000 people were in fact born in Kenya and have never seen Somaliland/Somalia—never mind fleeing Sool province.
Now, taking advantage of an invitation that Mr. Ma’alim received from the Somaliland Parliament Speaker Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi (Irro), the Kenya’s deputy speaker decided to visit LasAnnod to see the truth for himself: the fact finding mission. Mr. Ma’alim could not believe his eyes.
The provincial capital, LasAnnod which supposed to be deserted turned out to be a booming city with a huge population. The schools that supposed to be abandoned remained overcrowded with students committed to learn; the prisons that supposed to be jammed with women and children were empty; the lawlessness that allegedly Somaliland created, turned out that in fact Somaliland secured the city for the first time in 20 years where all the security agencies operate as the Mr. Ma’alim himself stated in the following audio clip. http://tinyurl.com/yfdr6zq
He also met hundreds of city residents, high ranking officials, tribal chiefs, civil society, human rights, religious scholars, and women organizations from Sool region. He was impressed with the city and its peace and tranquility—contrary to the disinformation that he has been fed in Kenya. The city which supposed to be destroyed also showed hardly any scars of war. What the hell! Now what?
It is a human nature when the facts overwhelm and refute your claims, there are two options: flee or fight. Now if you flee you accept your humiliation and swallow your pride where you would curl up under your blanket and hide from the public for a day or two; however, if you decide to fight back, you must produce concrete facts which support your claims.
Knowing that Mr. Ma’alim’s is not the typical guy to manipulate and their own lies finally caught up with them, pro-Puntland groups neither fled nor fought back. Instead, they used the classic exit strategy: if you cannot attack the message (the evidence) attack the messenger.
That is, a number of “articles” now surface on the internet, in which all of them attack Mr. Ma’alim’s character, not his fact finding mission. Condemnations came from those who misinformed him in Kenya and from Puntland officials. But none have even attempted to challenged his fact finding mission much less refute it. A case in point, Puntland’s Good Governance and State Minister, Mohammed Farah Isse Gashan found comfort through attacking Mr. Ma’alim. http://tinyurl.com/yk3yjm8
Meanwhile, Mr. Ma’alim, a widely respected leader, among the Somalis around the world, for his resolute opposition to Ethiopia’s brutal occupation of Somalia from 2006 to 2008 which by the way pro-Puntland groups supported, also refused to acknowledge two things: the tribal lineage myths which have brought Somalis to their knees and instating a tribal war in Sool province as pro-Puntland group demands.
During his visit in LasAnnod he repeatedly reiterated that the residents of LasAnnod won’t progress without establishing a lasting peace in their region. Contrary to pro-Punltnad group’s strategy: to wage a tribal war in the region as to evict Somaliland troops from Sool.
Additionally, he turned a deaf ear to pro-Puntland groups’ tribal lineage rants. As the head of the so-called Hoggaanka Badbaadada iyo Midaynta ee Sool , or Salvation and Unification Leadership of Sool, a recently established group in Nairobi, addresses Mr. Ma’alim by stating, “Waxaa kaloo loo qabsaday dadka deegaanka degan waa faracii Daraawiishta ee Awoowgaa Sayid Maxamed Cabdulle Xassan hogaaminayay labaatanka iyo kowda sano, oo la dagaalamayey Gumaysigii Ingiriiska iyo kuwii taageersanaa oo ah kuwa imika sheegaanaya Dowlad madax banaan…or the people of the occupied LasAnnod city are the descendants of your great grandfather Sayyid Mohammed Abdulle Hassan who waged 21 years of war against the British colonizers, and their supporters who now claim to have an independent country—Somaliland”.
And the author in question contradicts himself as he states, “Waxaanu aamin sanahay in midnimada Soomaliya ay tahay muqadas iyo lama taabtaan, iyo in dadweynaha Gobolada Sool, Sanaag iyo Cayn ay ka tirsan yihiin maamula Puntland Isir ahaan iyo Maamul ahaan ba…or we believe in Somalia unity—including Somaliland. The regions of Sool, Sanag, and Ayn (an imaginary region created by Col. Yussuf) are part of Puntland because we share tribal lineages with its population.” http://www.lasanod.com/details.php?num=3369
From the preceding statement alone, one could clearly see that the pro-Puntland clique’s mission is far from building a Somali unity. It is about building a tribal enclave disguised as a Somali unity. And because of these kinds of nonsensical and contradictory argument, Mr. Ma’alim refused to buy their deep-rooted tribal doctrine. Read more about their insidious activities against Somaliland: http://www.americanchronicle.com/authors/view/4458
On the other hand, for Somaliland officials, Mr. Ma’alim’s visit to LasAnnod is equivalent to slapping its opponents on the face, and yet again embarrassing them in front of the International community.
As for Mr. Ma’alim himself, he just wanted to find the facts for himself rather than taking misleading reports from individuals who have not been to Somaliland or Sool province for decades. He neither supports Somaliland’s independence nor does he wants to get wrangled up in the convoluted politics of Sool province in which its leaders are torn between Somaliland, Puntland, and Somalia.
To sum up, so far the pro-Puntland group’s tireless efforts to distort the facts on the ground have backfired. Mr. Ma’alim’s visit finally testifies the peacefulness of LasAnnod city is no different from that of other Somaliland cities.
Calling for a destructive war and fabricating misleading rants while living in foreign countries is far from what the people in the region want. Instead, they want schools, jobs, and a health care system. They also want to attract business communities and Aid agencies to their region. Either join the development of the province or support its residents’ efforts to govern their region as they are doing now. But don’t instigate tribal wars and hate.
Remember, opposing Somaliland’s independence is not a crime, nor is advocating for Somali unity a sin, however; spitting out lies, distorting facts, destabilizing Somaliland, and launching a malignant propaganda campaign in order to achieve unity—while unambiguously building a tribal kingdom—is a moral bankruptcy.
By Dalmar Kaahin, 1 January 2010
dalmar_k@yahoo.com
HARGEISA (SomalilandPress) — School enrollment has risen sharply in Somalia’s self-declared independent region of Somaliland since 1991, raising the literacy rate from 20 percent to 45 percent, education officials have said.
“School enrollment [in primary and secondary schools] has increased dramatically. In 1991, we had only 1,019 students enrolled in schools but by the year 2009 some 45,223 students were in school,” Abdi Abdillahi Mohamed, the director of planning in Somaliland’s ministry of education, told IRIN.
Somaliland declared unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991.
Ali Abdi Odowa, director-general in the education ministry, attributed the increase to rising awareness and the construction of many primary schools.
“Hundreds of schools have been built both in urban and rural areas and adult education has also started,” he said.
Somaliland, he said, plans to ensure that at least 75 percent of the population is able to read and write by 2015.
According to Mohamed, 225,853 students attended primary school and 21,331 attended secondary school in 2008/2009, while 26,156 were in adult education.
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Some 6,820 students are currently enrolled in technical colleges and vocational schools.
“We have also added two social science subjects in high school – business and agriculture – which we hope will encourage high school leavers to be self-employed,” Mohammed said.
Pastoralists complain
However, the ministry had received complaints from displaced persons and pastoralists about school fees and the lack of access by their children to schools.
“Somaliland’s constitution stipulates that all elementary and secondary education is free; there are no fees paid by students but of course there is what we call contributions paid by parents to support voluntary teachers and teachers’ salaries,” he said.
In remote areas, the ministry has established a pilot project where teachers follow pastoralists and teach in mobile schools.
“This project is in Togdheer region… Teachers and the school follow the pastoralists wherever they go, and we pay such teachers more than the others,” Mohamed said.
“We have also started school feeding centres: Pastoralists’ children are fed in boarding schools in villages when their families are on the move in search of pasture.”
HARGEISA, 31 December 2009 (Somalilandpress) – A man tried to board a commercial airliner in the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month with chemicals that authorities believe could have been used as an explosive device, an African Union official said Wednesday.
The suspect, Abdi Hassan Abdi, tried to board a Daallo Airlines flight with a plastic bag containing 600 grams of ammonium nitrate and half a liter of concentrated sulfuric acid in a plastic bottle, according to Wafula Waminyinyi, the deputy special representative for the African Union Mission for Somalia.
Waminyinyi said that Abdi also had approximately 5 milliliters of an unidentified liquid in a syringe that he tried to carry on board the flight, which was bound first for the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then Djibouti, and then Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. He said that the African Union believes the chemicals could have caused an explosion.
The details bear resemblance to those from the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan.
A preliminary FBI analysis found that the device suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab allegedly carried aboard contained pentaerythritol tetranitrate, an explosive also known as PETN. The amount of explosive was sufficient to blow a hole in the aircraft, a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN Sunday.
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Part of the explosive device was sewn into the suspect’s underwear. And FBI agents recovered what appear to be the remnants of a syringe near the seat.
Because the syringe was destroyed, investigators are having trouble determining the accelerant the suspect tried to use to light the explosive.
AbdulMutallab, of Nigeria, is in custody in the United States and charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.
In the November 11 incident in Somalia, African Union peacekeeping forces arrested Abdi after they searched him and discovered the chemicals, Waminyinyi said.
He had drawn suspicion because he was the last one to board the flight, Waminyinyi said.
No further details were immediately available.
Abdi was handed over to the Somali National Security Agency, and Waminyinyi believes he remains in custody.
Addis Ababa, 30 December 2009 (Somalilandpress) – The African Union’s Peace and Security Department approved plans to train more peacekeepers serving in its mission in Somalia on maritime security and air defence capabilities to better protect war-ravaged Somalia.
Somali is the hotbed of hijacking of marine vessels and a long-time target of external Islamist jihadists, have recently suffered a spate of bombings, with the latest of such attack leading to the killing of three ministers at a graduation ceremony in Mogadishu.
African countries contributing troops to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) held a strategy meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where they agreed that the Mission still lacked basic elements such as air defence.
“The meeting observed that there exist operational limitations to the performance of AMISOM in the areas of maritime and air defence capabilities, and called for assistance in building the Mission’s capabilities in this respect,” an AU statement said Tuesday.
Djibouti, Somalia’s neighbour, is among the few countries in the Horn of Africa region to pledge peacekeepers to the overstretched AMISOM, which has been a target of attacks, planned by Islamic groups seeking to takeover full control of Somalia.
The Islamist elements have been staging their fights for the control of the Southern Port of Kismayu and recently edged closer to the Kenyan border, where the Islamist controlled fighters took control of a key border crossing point Southwards.
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The AU meeting, chaired by the Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ramtane Lamamra, explained that the continued inability of AMISOM to reach its authorised strength continues to be a serious challenge.
Lamamra added that the recruitment and training programme of Somali Security Forces should be given more impetus in order to be able to cope effectively with the security situation there.
The ministers and representatives of the troop contributing countries at the meeting, including Burundi, Uganda and Djibouti, also emphasized the need to adequately train, equip, sustain and retain Somali Security Forces in the current circumstances.
They proposed that a study of new requirements necessary for AMISOM to fulfil its objectives, including the added aspect of training of Somali Security Forces, be carried out.
Meanwhile, the African countries that have contributed troops and equipment to the AMISOM have been compensated for the equipment they contributed.
Fed up with awards for the best? The World in 2010 asked the analysts at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, to identify the world’s worst country in the year ahead. Previous winners of this dubious honour have included (pre-2001) Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. This time, the champion is in Africa. Plagued by civil war, grinding poverty and rampant piracy, Somalia will be the world’s worst in 2010.
Calling Somalia a country is a stretch. It has a president, prime minister and parliament, but with little influence outside a few strongholds in the capital, Mogadishu. What passes for a government is protected by an African Union peacekeeping force guarding the presidential palace. Most of the country is controlled by two armed, radical Islamist factions, al-Shabab (the Youth) and Hizbul Islam (Party of Islam), which regularly battle forces loyal to the government. Both demand the imposition of strict Islamic law, in what would amount to the Talibanisation of Somalia. Al-Shabab took responsibility for suicide-bombings in Mogadishu in September that killed 17 peacekeepers; America considers the group an al-Qaeda ally.
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Poor countries are often defined by their weak health, education and income measures, but conditions in Somalia are mostly too wretched to record. What little data can be gleaned are truly awful: according to the UN’s World Food Programme, more than 40% of the population need food aid to survive, and one in every five children is acutely malnourished. The constant fighting has internally displaced more than 1.5m people, with a third living in dire, makeshift camps. Aid workers have been able to supply them with less than half the daily water needed.
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Somalia would be little noticed were it not for its fastest-growing industry: piracy. Somalia drapes over the tip of east Africa and into the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. More than 20,000 merchant vessels pass through the Gulf each year, an inviting target for Somali pirates, who have developed a lucrative business seizing and holding ships for ransom. The International Maritime Bureau counted around 40 successful hijackings in 2008 and another 31 in the first half of 2009. Warships from the European Union, the United States and other powers now patrol the waters, but pirates have shifted their attacks farther offshore.
Somalia’s future is bleak. What little income it can muster comes from its diaspora, but remittances have slowed with the global slump. International agencies have promised more aid, but lack of security stands in the way. Peacekeepers are too few in number to make a difference. Most disturbing, many young Somalis are becoming increasingly radicalised, leaving little hope that the political situation will stabilise. The world’s most failed state, regrettably, threatens to become a bigger problem for the rest of the world.
BRISBANE (Somalilandpress) — Police have found the body of a boy who was swept away in a rain-swollen creek on Brisbane’s southside.
Salman Arte, 13, was last seen clinging to a branch in Bulimba Creek at Wishart yesterday.
It is believed his body was found earlier this afternoon, but no other details are known.
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Salman Arte’s Somali family came to Australia as refugees a year ago.
He was playing in the creek with his brothers when he disappeared.
