Addis Ababa, December 4, 2007 - Pastoralists attending a meeting in Hudet of Liban zone in the Somali region said they have decided to make the region's peace their priority.
Around 500 Participants representing all the ethnic groups of Ethiopia's Somali National Regional State have converged to discuss on issues surrounding peace, security and economic and social issues of the pastoralist community in the region.
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Ethiopian PM Zenawi talks to Sudanese Pdt El Bashir at Addis Ababa airoport (file Feb 2003 AFP) |
GADARIF, Eastern Sudan, December 6, 2007 – Ethiopia and Sudan Today inaugurated the construction of highway to link the two countries and to promote trade and economic exchange in the region.
Sudanese president Omer al-Bashir and Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi inaugurated at Doka twon the Gadarif-Doka–Gallabat-Matama highway connecting Sudan and Ethiopia. They also inaugurated Galabat electricity project.
Pakistani soldiers from the Pakistani warship PNS Babur carry out maneuvers in an inflatable boat recently in the Arabian sea. |
MOMBASA, Kenya, December 6, 2007 - With one slain crew mate in the ship's freezer and Somali pirates threatening to kill his son, Xinshen Ling could think of only one thing to do: Threaten to throw himself into the shark-infested waters, calculating the pirates wouldn't want to lose the captain.
SANA'A, 8 December 2007 - The International Organization for Migrant (IOM) has stated that more than 1221 Somalis were killed drowning in the see in illegal journeys from the town of Bossasso in Somalia's Puntland to Yemen since the beginning of 2007.
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Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf (file photo) |
Nairobi, Kenya, 4 December 2007 - Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has been taken to a hospital in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Two Western news agencies, Reuters and AFP, quote unidentified officials as saying Mr. Yusuf is in serious condition. However, a presidential aide says Mr. Yusuf is fine and will be traveling abroad shortly.
December 7, 2007
It is baffling to see a nation that marshals self-pride, human dignity and sovereignty as the main causes for its decision to walk away from the Somali union, dehumanizing itself to the point of servility to the Ethiopian regime.
Somaliland’s pomposity and roaring voice towards Somalia and on rare occasions to its sisterly and neighborly Djibouti, turns into a slavish whimper when it faces Ethiopia. Understandably Somaliland is quick to lash out at Somalia for anything that Somaliland considers that jeopardizes its claim for sovereignty.
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BOSASSO, Somalia, Dec 4, 2007 – U.S. and German navy ships have cornered Somali pirates who seized a Japanese-owned chemical tanker more than a month ago and are demanding a ransom, an official said on Tuesday.
The Panama-registered Golden Nori was carrying benzene from Singapore to Israel when it was hijacked on Oct. 28, just off Somalia, one of the world's most dangerous shipping lanes.
ASMARA AND NAIROBI, 06 Dec. 2007 – An exiled leader of Somalia's Islamists has rejected a call by Somalia's new prime minister for talks to try to end 16 years of conflict and stem a year-long insurgency that has killed some 6,000 civilians. "Our problem is not with the old prime minister or the new prime minister. Our problem is Ethiopia's occupation," said Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who is now chairman of the opposition Alliance For the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS).
Baidoa, Somalia, 8 December 2007 - Somali and Ethiopian troops in the southwestern city of Baidoa have tightened security in town following two explosions yesterday that wounded at least eight people.
Baidoa residents said it was difficult to move around town Friday, after hundreds of extra Somali and Ethiopian security forces were placed across town in a visible show of force.
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Mogadishu, Somalila 8 December 2007 - Somali militants have reportedly seized Bule Burte, a town in central Somalia after a brief battle with government troops, officials say.
The militants took Bule Burte town, 220 km north of the capital Mogadishu. It was not clear if there were casualties, witnesses said.
Somali soldiers ride on a vehicle in Mogadishu |
MOGADISHU, 8 December 2007 - Islamist insurgents on Saturday attacked Somali government forces in the capital Mogadishu, sparking heavy fighting, witnesses said.
MERKA, Somalia, Dec 4, 2007 - The Somali government has frozen aid activities in a southeastern region most affected by the country's growing humanitarian crisis, a UN spokesman told reporters Tuesday.
The new restrictions ban all humanitarian flights to the Lower Shabelle region's airports and effectively put a halt on the delivery of a food shipment that arrived Tuesday under French navy escort, World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman Peter Smerdon said.
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PRESS RELEASE
Washington, D.C., December 4, 2007 – The Voice of America's (VOA) Somali Service doubled its broadcasts this week to expand news coverage, feature programming and interactive segments. The additional programming will give Somalis from all walks of life enhanced opportunities to discuss and debate the future of their nation.
NAIROBI, 9 Dec 2007 - Somali clan leaders on Sunday said they want government troops back in a town seized over the weekend in what initially looked like an Islamist insurgent advance but turned out to be a local dispute over taxes.
Government forces fled Bule Burte, 220 km (140 miles) north of the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday, after what residents said was a quick battle with Islamist fighters. One person was wounded, witnesses said.
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Welsh delegation in a meeting with vice minister of Health and ministerial departmental heads. |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, December 08, 2007 (SL Times) - A delegation from the Cardiff based `Wales Somaliland Communities Link' (WSCL) organization have been holding week long consultations with various Somaliland government, local authorities and civil society institutions and organizations in order to identify partner organizations in Wales who can meet their development needs and requirements.
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The Pentagon’s view is that “ Somaliland should be independent” Pentagon official
Robert Gates, US Defense Secretary |
CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, December 3 - The escalating conflict in Somalia is generating debate inside the Bush administration over whether the United States should continue to back the shaky transitional government in Mogadishu or shift support to the less volatile region of Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991, U.S. defense and military officials said.
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4 December 2007 - Front Line is deeply concerned following the targeting of the Somaliland Human Rights Organizations Network (SHURO-Net). SHURO-Net is an umbrella group of various human rights organizations, which operates in Somaliland. It has allegedly been taken over by government officials, compromising the independent work of SHURO-Net. Furthermore, threats have been made against the original members of SHURO-Net, particularly the Director Mubarik Ibrahim Aar.
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Minister of Family and Social Development, Fadumo Sudi Hassan |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, December 8, 2007 (SL Times) - A ceremony was held on Thursday in Hargeysa to mark the World Disability Awareness day, an annual event held worldwide on the 3rd of December.
New York, December 5, 2007 - CPJ condemns the Somaliland authorities’ decision to expel 24 Somali journalists from Hargeysa, the capital of the northern breakaway republic. The group had recently fled there to escape ongoing persecution in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Tuesday, Somaliland Police Chief General Mohammed Saqadhi Dubad and the head of the Criminal Investigations Department, General Ahmed Ali Shabel, ordered the 24 exiled journalists to leave Somaliland within 24 hours.
Foreign Minister Abdillahi Duale |
Hargeisa - Somaliland Foreign Minister Abdillahi Duale today 8 December, welcomed the US State Department’s statement, US Policy on Somaliland, issued on 5 December 2007.
The Somaliland Government has carefully studied the issued Policy on Somaliland of the United States of America (US).
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A debate is raging within the Bush administration over possible US recognition of Somaliland and a consequent shift away from its longstanding support for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government.
According to an unnamed senior US defence official quoted last week in The Washington Post, the Pentagon believes Somaliand should be independent.”
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Commentary
By Abukar Arman
Dec 6, 2007 - By all standards, the situation unfolding in Somalia is horrifically grim, and according to the UN, it is the worst crisis in Africa; worse than the crisis in Darfur that outraged the world’s conscience in an unprecedented way.
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December 5, 2007
The United States currently engages the Somaliland administration and has provided assistance, for example to the election effort. Our policy on recognition is to allow the African Union to first deliberate on the question. We do not want to get ahead of the continental organization on an issue of such importance.
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By Peter Tatchell
THIS year’s civil war in Somalia has killed thousands of people and created over half a million refugees. Democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights are almost non-existent in Mogadishu, where war, banditry, corruption, hunger, illiteracy, disease and unemployment are the norm. Somalia is a failed state that has failed its people.
Analysis
By Scott A Morgan
While most of the World is paying attention to the Mission to Ethiopia currently be undertaken by Secretary of State Rice there is another mission underway that will just as much impact. This other mission which also deals with potential Peace and Security Issues has not garnered the Press of the Rice Mission. This Mission is being led by the current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
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Somali children wait for food rations |
Addis Ababa, 4 December 2007 - Ethiopia has warned that the world's disinterest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia was dampening hopes of achieving peace in the shattered African nation.
Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia |
The mission of stabilizing Somalia and strengthening the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is showing fruitful results said Meles Zenawi.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, December 3, 2007 - Responding to questions raised by MPs on the time table for withdrawing Ethiopian forces in Somalia, Meles indicated on Tuesday, November 27, 2007 that the mission is meeting its goals and currently, the engagement is limited to policing activities and building the capacity of Somalia’s military forces.
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NAIROBI, December 4, 2007 - The president of Somalia was abruptly hospitalized in Kenya on Tuesday, adding a new set of worries to an already very jittery and troubled nation.
There were conflicting reports about how serious his condition was, with the president’s aides playing down concerns by saying he just needed ``a checkup” while one Western diplomat said ``he’s very sick.”
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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice |
Addis Ababa, Dec 05, 2007 – The United States urged Somalia's new government Wednesday to broaden its political base to secure peace, which has eluded the Horn of Africa nation since Islamist forces were ousted 10 months ago.
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December 3, 2007
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates landed in Djibouti today to visit Combined Task Force-Horn of Africa, the only U.S. military base in Africa, comprising a permanent headquarters and some 1,800 rotating combat Marines. I suspect that topping Gates's agenda is AFRICOM, the new U.S. command on the continent. Formally activated Oct.
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About-face on Iran is result of 'new information illuminating old facts'
6 December, 2007
Why did this week's National Intelligence Estimate so completely change the U.S. view on Iran's nuclear weapons program? Was there a U.S. spy inside the program? A defector? A snippet of electronically purloined communications?
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LONDON, 7 December 2007 – Stepping out of his studio at Al Jazeera English and striding purposefully on to the street, Sir David Paradine Frost seems impervious to London’s winter chill, as he briefly adjourns from filming and heads up Knightsbridge to the Library Bar of the Lanesborough hotel, where the staff nod to him in recognition and the barman promptly reaches for a bottle of the presenter’s favourite Chablis.
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Haatuf Cartoon on 'New Press Law"
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This week, Somaliland’s Police Chief, Muhammad Saqadhi Dubbad, informed 23 journalists who fled the carnage in Mogadishu and who now reside in Hargeysa to leave the country within 24 hours. The police chief gave three reasons for the government’s decision: (a) the journalists engaged in activities that have endangered Somaliland’s security; (b) the journalists engaged in activities that could harm relations with neighboring countries, specifically Ethiopia; (c) the journalists have published writings harmful to Somaliland. These are serious charges indeed, but there are several problems here. One, the government has not provided any evidence. Two, if the journalists committed all those crimes why weren’t they tried and made to account for their alleged crimes instead of being expelled?
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In November 2005, the Centre for Human Rights began investigating the possibility of a third destination for the LLM field trip. The reasons for increasing the number of field trip destinations to include Somaliland include the following:
Somaliland is a state in the making; it would be ideal for students on the programme to have a first hand experience of this.
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By Noah Arre
The following story is true. It is based on my own experience during my visits of East Africa. Without bias, I had compiled this short story during my vacations in the:
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American Style, American Sponsored Democracy Of Kenya;
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French Style Democracy Of Djibouti;
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Western World Backed Democracy Of Ethiopia!
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Left To Itself Alone Democracy Of Somaliland!
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By Abdifataah Mahamed Ahmed
We live in an age of progress. In this age one who does not develop will stay behind and will recede. One who adapts to new means of advancement will go ahead.
Roads play very crucial role for the development of any country in the world. Where there are no streets there is not transports, and where there are no transportation facilities there is no development. The more the roads increase the more the transportation and conveyance development enriches.
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Education in Somaliland
By Ahmed Yusuf
I read Abdifatah's article 'Education Industry booms in Somaliland' with interest and whilst it is true that there more and more schools opening every day, it is also important to mention that many of these schools are Quranic. The sad thing with Somaliland education is that there is no consistency of what is taught in these schools. There are many Islamic schools which do not even teach Somali language.
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Mohamed Hashi Has The Fame, Rayale Lives In Shame
By Yusuf Deyr, Hargeysa
As an orphanage raised-child, I have grown up as a shy person who avoids any sort of confrontational approach for any arguments. I prefer to be passive and indirect in my way of addressing other people. But because of Rayale’s school of thought is that much dumb and can’t read my cursive writing. We must debate while we are naked and barefooted. So that we can see his true colors. There is nothing more fun and entertaining than the old style of a social gathering in a Somali Tea – shop for a free tea - party of the good old days. But nowadays in the Rayale’s rule and reign. When the bill of the tea arrives.
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Kosovo and Somaliland: US Double Standards
By Ahmed Mohamed
At first glance, Kosovo and Somaliland do not appear to have much in common.
For starters one is in the cold mountain ranges of Southern Europe and the other on the hot desert sands of North Eastern Africa. One is inhabited by White Europeans and the other by Black Africans.
Yet their similarities are far more striking than these superficial differences.
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By Dr Omar Ibrahim Hussein
I landed at Egal international airport about 4 o’clock in the evening. The airport was small but was getting bigger and better. The son of the man with the white spear is said to be doing very well and expectations were high. I left the airport towards the main town. The road was unwelcoming; it was rough small and dilapilitated. I could not believe that this was the road leading to the national airport. From the high grounds of the airport, Hargeisa looked just fabulous. The two hills Naso Hablood… the “breasts of Girls” overlooking the town from the north give Hargeisa a rare graceful look.
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London, UK, December 5, 2007 – Amnesty International today expressed concern at the Somaliland Government's order of expulsion against 24 Somali journalists who had fled to the Somaliland capital of Hargeysa from violence and grave human rights violations against media workers in Mogadishu.
The journalists, who worked for Shabelle Media, Hornafrik Media Network, Simba Radio and Dayniile On-line, fled from Mogadishu over the last three months.
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By Ahmed Dirie, Ph.D.**
The autonomous region of Puntland (North East of Somalia) has relatively succeeded in strengthening and protecting its young and fragile democracy from both internal and external threats (though currently shaken by Las Anod case) by establishing functioning public institutions and providing peace and stability to its people since its founding of 1998. After this modest achievement, Puntland leaders are aggressively engaged in setting off economic development programs, especially the extraction of natural resources (oil and hardrock mineral deposits) to generate “the much needed capital for development”.
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by Philip Emeagwali
According to history books, gun-wielding European slave traders kidnapped one in five Africans and transported them across the oceans to the Americas. A less visible, but no means less drastic technological tool of suppression, is the compass, a device used worldwide for navigation. In the same way that Britain used its maritime knowledge and the US harnessed its intellectual capital to rule the world, the early slave traders used the simple compass to wreak havoc on civilization.
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December 6, 2007
Every story has an impact, whether socially or individually, but the story of Sonkorey Mohamed, as reported by the Irin News, has not only touched us, but prompted us to action and long term commitment in doing everything necessary to stop the illegal Ethiopian occupation in Somalia. Sonkorey Mohamed was not raped, nor tortured, but the tragedy she has faced due to the horrific internal displacement outweighs everything else as she experienced the perfect ordeal of being pregnant in the ninth month, and then delivering her first child in the open roadside who died in the process due to lack of a knowledgeable midwife to assist, thus causing her to bleed and eventually lose her ability to control urine.
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Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t
December 4, 2007
One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.
UN Security Council Should Press Ethiopia and Somalia to Put an End to Abuses
New York, December 3, 2007 – The United Nations Security Council should urgently press the Ethiopian and Somali governments to end the grave human rights abuses that are fueling the worsening humanitarian crisis in Somalia and eastern Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, Human Rights Watch said today.
Meetings with Somali Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
Nairobi, 3 December 2007 - John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, returned from a one-day trip to Somalia today, on the final leg of his four-country, eight-day regional mission to Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. Mr. Holmes flew into the “K50” airstrip, 50 kilometers outside of Mogadishu, and then traveled through Afgooye where he visited a few of the 70 settlements of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to gain first hand information on the situation of IDPs and their challenges.
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Dec 5 - Somalia's President Abdillahi Yusuf is being treated in a Nairobi hospital.
One security source said he was in a "serious" condition, but his government denied that and his doctor said he was only coughing and that there was no need for "panic".
Here are some key facts about Yusuf:
* Doubt surrounds Yusuf's age, but he gives his birth date as in December 1934, making him 72. Some say, however, he is older, perhaps in his late 70s or even early 80s.
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4 December 2007
Anybody who bothers to think about it at all knows that the current war on Iraq is about oil, or even more fundamentally, power. In the modern world oil and power are practically one.
This book explains how September 11, ominously like the Reichstag Fire in Weimar Germany, as Boyle himself points out, is often the pretext the United States uses to justify its Machiavellian power plays in the Middle East and Central Asia, areas of extreme strategic importance. He questions how U.S. intelligence could have failed to stop those attacks given much evidence of their imminence. War upon Iraq, and Afghanistan before it, is one part of what Boyle argues is a premeditated plan to dominate the world’s oil and natural gas resources. This has much less to do with personal consumption than with dominating the world’s economy.
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