HARGEYSA, April 5, 2008 – Leader of Somaliland’s major opposition party on Saturday warned the government against any more delaying of the presidential elections slotted for August 2008, noting that any such move would be faced with stiff resistance.
“Let me make it clear that there wouldn’t be any more deceptions and that patience is running thin and any effort to delay the Presidential election would be met with stiff resistance,” said Ahmed Mohammed Sillanyo in his opening speech at the convention of Kulmiye party prior to the elections.
V-President Ahmed Yusufbeing welcomed in Las Anod |
Las Anod, Somaliland, 5 April 2008 - A large delegation led by the Vice-President of Somaliland, Ahmed Yusuf Yasin recently paid a visit ot Las Anod in Sool region.
The delegation was welcomed with open arms by the people of the town including the local officials, elders, women and students.
PARIS, 5 April 2008 - France's military is keeping close tabs on a French luxury yacht seized by pirates off Somalia's coast, and officials hope to avoid using force to free the 30 crew members, the prime minister said Saturday.
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New York, March 31, 2008 – The dire inter-linked human rights and humanitarian crises in Somalia require far greater attention by the UN Security Council (UNSC) and its member states. While Amnesty International notes the strategic and coordinated planning in security, political and programmatic areas of engagement on Somalia, as presented in the recent report of the Secretary General, serious abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law remain largely undocumented, unpunished, and ignored by the international community.
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Sana'a, March 30, 2008 – The US embassy in Sana'a said on Sunday it will not allow Yemenis who are addicted to qat, to enter the United States as immigrants.
The immigrant visa applicants should prove they have stopped using qat three years ago at least, if they want to be eligible applicants, a diplomatic source told Gulf News.
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GAROWE, Somalia Apr 2, 2008 - Angry soldiers loyal to Somalia's Puntland State government left the military frontlines where they have been facing off rival troops from the breakaway region of Somaliland, Radio Garowe reported.
The commanding officers leading the soldiers who were backed by more than 10 armed trucks said they left the frontline town of Tukaraq, in Sool region, after the government of Puntland neglected its own troops.
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Nairobi, April 04, 2008 – The Danish Navy Thursday handed over the role of escorting World Food Programme vessels ferrying food aid to Somalia to the Dutch Navy.
In an elaborate ceremony at Mombassa Port, a Danish vessel, HDMS Thetis handed over the role to Dutch ship Hr Ms Evertsen.
People in Harare wait for election results, 04 Apr 08 |
4 April 2008
The United States said Friday that the continuing delay in the release of results from Zimbabwe's presidential elections only raises more suspicion about possible fraud. The State Department also expressed concern about political intimidation by forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
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An injured Somali man is carried |
MOGADISHU, Somalia, 6 April 2008 - Islamist militants Sunday took control of a Somali trading post after heavy fighting that saw government forces escape into the countryside, an official and witnesses said.
The Islamists wrested control of the town of Balad, 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu, said Mohamed Abshir, a government official.
Hargeysa, Somaliland, April 5, 2008 (SL Times) – The Somaliland Journalists Association SOLJA distributed equipment to Somaliland media institutions on last Tuesday.The equipment which consisted of five A3 printers and two TV cameras were purchased with funds provided by CARE Somaliland.The printers were distributed to 5 newspapers while the government owned Somaliland National TV and the private Hargeysa Cable TV received one field camera each.
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Mohamed Bangah, information minister for the semiautonomous northern region of Puntland, said he hoped international forces will "rescue this ship" at Eyl
MOGADISHU, Somalia, 6 April 2008 - A French luxury yacht seized by suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden with 30 crew members on board has arrived in northern Somalia, officials and fishermen said Sunday. About 10 suspected pirates had stormed the 88-metre Le Ponant on Friday as it was returning, without passengers, from the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The pirates then guided the vessel down Somalia's eastern coast.
Mogadishu, Somalia, 6 April 2008 - At least nine people have been killed in clashes between Islamic Court fighters and government troops supported by Ethiopian soldiers, residents and witnesses have said.
The Associated Press news agency reported gunfire being heard in the south of the capital of Mogadishu early on Saturday and resident Sarhra Ali said she saw three dead Somali government troops and three wounded civilians
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Nairobi, Kenya, April 6th, 2008- Last Year Ethiopia had an ambitious multibillion-dollar plan to provide all its citizens with electricity within eight years (2015), as well as to supply some power to three neighboring countries, Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan a top manager of the state-owned electricity company said.
Because he said, Ethiopia can do because it has a lot of potential to generate hydroelectric power, said Mihret Debebe, general manager of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. The country is the source of a branch of the Nile River called the Blue Nile, which is believed to have huge power-generating potential.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, April 5, 2008 (SL Times) – The Speaker of the Somaliland House of Representatives, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdillahi “Ero” on Thursday expressed support for a motion introduced in the upper house (Guurti) of parliament earlier this week, seeking the banning of the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, from entering Somaliland for giving false information to the international community about the situation in Somaliland.
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Hargeysa, Somaliland, April 5, 2008 (SL Times) – The Norwegian firm TGS-NOPEC spent over $10 million on geophysical surveys in Somaliland, the Director General of the Somaliland ministry of Water and Minerals, Ahmed Ibrahim Suldan, disclosed on last Saturday.
Mr. Suldan who was speaking at a press conference said that the Norwegian company has been carrying out ‘seismic and aeromagnetic surveys in Somaliland since 2007 as provided for in an agreement signed with the ministry on 2004’.
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Kulmiye chairman Ahmed M Sillanyo |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, April 5, 2008 (SL Times) – Somaliland’s largest opposition party KULMIYE concluded its 3 day conference Monday with the re-election of veteran politician Ahmed Mohamed Mohmud Sillanyo as chairman and the selection of Mussa Bihi Abdi as the new first deputy chairman.In its 3-day deliberations, the conference adopted amendments to the constitution and internal regulations of the party. According to most observers KULMIYE has emerged more unified and more popular from its recent conference.
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Minister for Rural Development, Fuad Adan Adde |
Hargeysa, Somaliland, April 5, 2008 (SL Times) – Somaliland president Dahir Riyale sacked his minister for Rural Development on Thursday. Fuad Adan Adde lost his job after he criticized president Riyale for mismanaging funds raised by the public in support of people in Sool region.
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By Ibrahim Hashi Jama
www.somalilandlaw.com
07/04/2008
Breaking all records
The term “gerrymandering” in American politics was coined after a US State Governor, Elbridge Gerry, created a strangely shaped electoral district in Massachusetts in 1812 with a view to influencing elections. Whilst President Rayale’s 16 decrees issued on 23 March 2008 expressly state that the new 6 regions and the 16 new districts (in addition to the current 6 regions and 41 districts) created in these decrees will not automatically become electoral districts/regions for the forthcoming local district elections, no one can be fooled into believing that the decrees will not have any effect on the forthcoming local elections and the following national presidential elections.
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Oslo, Norway, April 2, 2008 - The Norwegian government has announced that it is now reviewing possible withdrawal of support to African nations who are sending troops to Somalia. No reason has been specified by Undersecretary of State, Raymond Johansen but the official said that Norway is turning over its chairmanship position for the International Contact Group on Somalia to the UN Special Envoy to Somalia.
Norway has been co-chair for ICGS with the United States, since its establishment in 2006. Johansen confirmed Norway's plans to give the position to the UN envoy to Somalia.
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Hassan Allore, Puntland oil minister |
GAROWE, Somalia Mar 23 2008 - The Ethiopian government's role in an ongoing political row between the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Puntland regional administration has been raised, following a secretive meeting last week between Ethiopian and Puntland officials.
The meeting took place at State House in Garowe, the administrative capital of Puntland, inside sources said.
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The men have languished in prison for more than six years
Guantanamo, April 3, 2008 – Two Somaliland-born prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have been cleared for release, but have not been freed as they have nowhere to go, their lawyers say.
Mohammed Hussein Abdullah and his son-in-law Mohammed Suleyman Barre have spent more than six years in the US detention centre on the island of Cuba.
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He Outlines Transitional Federal Government’s Peace Initiative, as Assistant Secretary-General Lays Out Scenarios for UN Deployment
Noting progress towards ending the costly 17-year-old “business-as-usual” policy towards Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for that country, called on the Security Council to visit Somalia this year and on the United Nations significantly to expand its presence there.
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By Jerry Okungu
Atlanta, Georgia
April 4 will always be an important day in American history. It is the day the most famous Civil Rights activist, Martin Luther King, was gunned down by an assassin on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. The fact that 40 years later, Americans and indeed the world, have not forgotten King means that he truly was the first among equals in the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s.
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Commentary
By Ahmed H Nur Someone wise once said somewhere (can’t remember the name) that politics is basically about the belly; not one belly; all the bellies. In the real world outside Africa, this wisdom forms the fundamental theorem of politics, which is the process of managing a nation’s resources, and the biggest resource any nation has is its people.
A mother with her child in Medina hospital, Mogadishu, 30 Mar 2008, after he was injured in attack in the Bakara market in Mogadishu |
Mogadishu, April 3, 2008 – Recent indications from Somalia's Ethiopia-backed interim government that it is prepared to negotiate an end to a 15-month Islamist-led insurgency have raised hopes for a cease-fire that could pave the way for peace talks. But as VOA correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from Mogadishu, the insurgency is being waged by two Islamist groups motivated by different ideas, making prospects for peace in Somalia uncertain at best.
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By Okech Kendo
IN 1980, Robert Mugabe was a liberation hero. Twenty-eight years later, Old Bob is a villain, clawing over Zimbabwe like a personal estate, pawing like a cornered leopard, spewing venom like a rattled snake. In 1980, Mugabe was a patriot who had fought a seven-year bush war to end white minority rule. Today he is a coward turning the Harare State House into a retirement home.
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BOSSASO, Somalia Mar 30, 2008 - The regional president in Somalia's semiautonomous state of Puntland has denied growing speculation that Ethiopian soldiers might be deployed in the relatively stable territory.
President Mohamud "Adde" Muse spoke with reporters in the port city of Bossaso Sunday before he flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for talks with Ethiopian government officials.
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Martin Luther King, Jr., at a London press conference, 21 Sep 1964 |
Washington, April 4, 2008 - marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the American civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In the years since his death, Reverend King has often been cited as one of the most admired Americans in history. But for many, his quest for racial equality remains unfinished. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone reports from Washington.
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OTTAWA, Canada, April 2, 2008 - A pedestrian out for a midmorning stroll along Rideau Street last January was forced into a car at gunpoint and ordered by his abductors to cash counterfeit cheques at area banks, an Ottawa court was told on Wednesday.
Crown prosecutor Mark Moors alleged that Hussein Abdi and an accomplice stopped 20-year-old Scott Illing at Rideau and Cobourg and ordered him at gunpoint to get into their car.
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The man who died when a blaze ripped through the stairwell of a Northampton block of flats became a father only two weeks ago. |
Northampton, UK, 2 April 2008 - Police today confirmed the victim as a 32-year-old man who lived at the flats with his wife – who he married less than a year ago – and their new baby son.
He died of smoke inhalation after the blaze at Shoemaker Court in Kingsthorpe Hollow on Monday night.
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April 6, 2008 It's an election year in wartime, and right now, we seem to be having a real debate about American foreign policy. All three of the remaining contenders have been talking about Iraq for months, all have been touting their credentials to be commander in chief and all have given major speeches mapping out their views.
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It is one of the delicious ironies of Arab literary history that the modern Arabic novel that has gained the biggest international acclaim, and that is most widely taught in European and American universities was not written by an Egyptian, a Syrian, an Iraqi or someone from the traditional intellectual capitals of the Arab world, but was written by al-Tayyib Salih, a Sudanese. The novel is Season of Migration to the North (Mawsim al-Hijrah ila al-Shamal), and some critics have drawn parallels between it and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness., except that this time the main character, Mustafa Said, experiences the darkness in the heart of Europe. Perhaps one of the main reasons for the success of this novel is that it creatively and convincingly portrays the encounter between the Arab/African world and the West.
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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 Dr. Abdi-Shakur Jawhar
I am not a member of your party, but like all Somalilanders I am praying for your success. And I pray for our nation to be blessed with strong leaders and stronger political parties that can keep us free from the darkness of one party state and ugliness and primitiveness of a Personality Cult.
I have followed your convention with pride and interest as you tackled the crucial undertaking of proofing your democratic credentials. You need no reminders that our people are desperate for you to come out of this bitter political contest stronger, more united and more determined than ever before.
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By Rhoda A. Rageh, USA
Out of the all the pictures on the first day of the KULMIYE 2nd Conference was that of a much loved much respected woman I met in Hargeysa last year. She is a surviving veteran, one of the many Somaliland women who fought with the gun and took part in the suicide missions that has saved the country. When I saw her standing in the middle of the tent reciting, of course, one of her fantastic poetry, I knew the meeting was a success and women have been made an integral part of the KULMIYE.
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Washington , March 29, 2008 (SL Times) – The UN Secretary General Report (S/2008/178) submitted on March 14, 2008 to the Security Council authored by Mr. Ahmed Ould Abdallah, Special Representative for Somalia; stated that Mr. Abdallah “attempted to visit Hargeysa “ Somaliland” but was prevented from doing so by security concerns”. Mr. Abdallah has not been truthful with the Security Council about the security in Somaliland particularly Hargeysa.
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Welcome in Lascanood, Mr Vice President
By Mohamed Sougal
Six months and half after Puntland militia was driven out of my hometown Lascanood and while Somaliland Vice President is in the midst of a highly successful trip in Sool, it is worthwhile to remember the numerous achievements of Laaska new authorities. When Cadde Muse rag tag militia was chased away, civil servants had not been paid in years. Those in the front lines have been accustomed to rooming the streets and ransacking downtown businesses. School and hospitals were non-functioning and daily routine was about a painstaking struggle about securing some meagre quantities of water.
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By Jenny Sonesson
As a member of the Liberal in Sweden, I’m glad to be here today at this fantastic conference of KULMIYE. It’s always pleasant to be among friends who share the same values as you. No matter if you are in Stockholm or Hargeysa.
I would like to read a greeting to you all from one of our Swedish Liberal ministers, the Swedish Minister for European Affairs.
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By Abdullahi Dool
The recovery and progress of the Somali nation will depend on the development of a popular culture. To survive and continue to function, every nation needs a popular culture. A popular culture is one of the tools of a society which wants to get ahead. The purpose of a popular culture is to serve the needs of a society. What is a popular culture? A popular culture is the collective ‘dos and don’ts’ of a society. It acts as a perimeter to protect, strengthen and serve a society. It is based on a set of values (housekeeping principles) to help a nation preserve itself from the elements
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Captain Colin Darch spoke out for the first time since being released. He said he feared for his crew's life during the 48-day ordeal |
3rd April 2008
The British captain of a ship captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia has spoken of being held to ransom for more than six weeks.
Captain Colin Darch was only freed after the boat's owners agreed to meet the demands of the pirates.
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April 3, 2008
I am very pleased, indeed honored to appear before you today to participate in the discussion on the current situation in Somalia (the former Italian colony of Somalia), which undoubtedly presents all the signs of an evolving crisis that poses an unmistakable threat to the entire Horn of Africa. In the process, I will briefly review the situation in the Republic of Somaliland and its remarkable social, economic and political development.
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By Ahmednagashi
“Men are always discourteous”
These words and the tenderness of her voice made me sit and sympathize with a Somali prostitute in one of Nairobi’s famous nightclubs.
The young lady was standing in front of a discotheque where I was passing at about nine in the evening. Realizing I was Somali she waved to me. I was overwhelmed by her beauty and figure as she was approaching me. She was in a tight mini skirt and thin sleeveless top revealing beautiful bosom, her long black silky hair hanged over her back. In short, she had all you would admire in a woman.
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The company even took a happy snap of directors presenting local "government officials" with a cheque for $US250,000. Word is, Puntland is a place where the terms "government official" and "warlord" are almost interchangeable.
By Mark Hawthorne
April 5, 2008
THERE are plenty of people hurting this weekend and licking their wounds after the collapse of Opes Prime.
This week, BusinessDay has tracked the varying fortunes of company directors, GT Ford collectors, nightclub owners, partners of Truth Media and group of gentlemen who like to regard themselves as "good fellas"
5 April 2008
SANA'A, April 5 2008 - A recent study has revealed that the most ancient relationship between the Socotra Island and the ancient states is dating back to 1580- 1322 BC, particularly since the Egyptian trade missions to Yemen and Somalia had been flourished.
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By Thomas B. Bamford
NORTHPORT March 30, 2008 – We hear much about the generations of young men who have rallied to the flag in time of war, some never to return to their families and loved ones. This month, Women’s History Month, is a good time to reflect on the impact of those sacrificed lives on the women left behind.
The most grievous losses were those suffered after The Great War, or World War I. Less than four years after the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, it was estimated that the number of spinsters in the population of Britain exceeded 2 million.
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It is 90 years today since the first Royal Air Force plane took to the skies. Henry Allingham, who at 111 years old is the only surviving founding member of the RAF |
1 April 2008 'I actually took my first flight three years earlier in 1915 and over all these years I remember it like yesterday. It was still the Royal Naval Air Service then and I was the engineer in an Avro 504 biplane flying a reconnaissance mission over the North Sea.
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Waiting for food handouts in Isdorto Village in the Southern Bakol Region of Somalia, 26 January 2006. |
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2008 - A leading humanitarian group is calling for the United Nations Security Council to take additional measures to help about 1 million Somalis who have been rendered homeless by the ongoing armed conflict in their country.
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In a few months’ time, Puntlanders will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of Puntland State Adminstration. Unlike Somaliland, Puntland based its autonomy on the argument that building blocks approach is stepping stone to resurrecting the Somali state. It has redrawn the map and claimed chunks of land that Somaliland had claimed when it drew up a new map 1991. Puntlanders have witnessed two major political developments in post-1991 Somalia:
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![The last time Somalia had a functioning government was in 1991 [AP]](30_clip_image001.jpg)
