Ainashe.net

If the world could only have one father, the man that we would choose to be our father would be Nelson Mandela

Peter Gabriel, British Pop artist and political activist.

“The international community must put Somalia at the top of its agenda and press for change before it is too late. We call on all authorities in Somalia to help us reach those in need and urge donors not to give up on this country.”

Peter Goossens,
WFP’s Country Director for Somalia.

“I was amazed and impressed with the hopefulness of the people that I met during my stay in Somalia. Somalia is a conservative Muslim nation and I was impressed to see that in some areas women are being empowered, thanks to investments in education. For example, the women in this photo rose to the top of their class and, despite many obstacles, decided to join the first ever female police unit.”

Elizabeth Latham,
Executive Director
UNDP-USA

I am saddened that the independent media is being oppressed. (…)These [media organizations] have worked for the Somali people for the past 17 years and they are loved by the people.

Seynab Mohamed Amir, MP
Somali Transitional Federal Parliament

Dr. Khaled Batarfi writing for the Arab News Online says:

Our governments are suppressing the rights and freedoms of their peoples. Between those who take away our right to think and innovate and the ones who deny us the right to practice our religion, most of us are living in fear, depression and desperation.

Dr. Batarfi went on by saying:

If we have any chance of getting back to our glorious days, when we ruled and enlightened the world from the walls of China to the gates of France, and from the jungles of Africa to the summits of Samarkand, we must change. You know your path is wrong when every step brings you down and takes you closer to a dead end. We have been down this road for ages. Isn’t it about time we doubted our direction?

Interesting?

Click here to view the full column.

The European Union’s Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, condemned Monday the escalating battles in Somalia. Speaking in Brussels, he was quoted as saying:

I express my deepest concern on the reported involvement of foreign forces in Somalia and urge all external players to refrain immediately from intervening militarily in Somali affairs and provoke further violence.

Click here to view the full dispatch.

Apee Ojulu editor of Gambela Today writes:

There has been a sort of unanimity among various advisors in Prime Minister Meles Zenawi government that in an all-out-war they will defeat the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) within few days. Zenawi’s Foreign Ministry warning to the UIC that his administration “will not tolerate an Islamist regime in neighboring Somalia” is an indication of that confidence (see MCT, /22, 2006). But hubris is not a military strategy to win a war. It is a risking scheme. Having mechanized forces, countless warplanes, weapons, backing of the international and capacities to destroy every house in Somalia do not prove to win the war. Recent war between Israeli mechanized army forces against a lesser tech wired Iranian and Syrian backed Hezbollah forces have proven this, that technology is not the only mean to win wars. American involvement in Iraq is the other. Both conflicts have proven public support is the key to military success in guerilla wars, not traditional military power alone.

Mr. Apee Ojulu concluded by saying:

Zenawi might have his envisioned his gamble in Somali civil war as an important strategic decision to extract more monetary from Americans, divert attentions of both domestic and international from his authoritarian rule and prolong his regime. Likely outcome of that conflict may come at a price of losing very elements that has kept alive and embolden the already emboldened opposition parties at his expense.

Click here to view article on the Sudan Tribune.

The Tennessean Newspaper writes:

Phil Bredesen; the Governor of State of Tennessee has given an unusual twist to his family’s Christmas card: He is marking a Christian holiday with a card depicting a Muslim girl. The card’s cover is a print of a painting by the governor of a young woman he met when he toured Afghanistan in March. “May the peace and joy of this Christmas season be with you and your loved ones throughout the coming year,” the card reads. “While it may seem odd to put a portrait of a young Muslim woman on a Christmas card, this Season reminds us that He loves His children most of all,” Bredesen stated on the back of the card.

Click here to view the full article.

Foreign interference and the presence of foreign forces on Somali soil, some of whom are already there, is a recipe for another civil war, instead of the pursuit of reconciliation and reconstruction.

Ibrahim Hussein Addow,
Leader of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union Delegation
Khartoum, Sudan.

I agree!

(…) for some reason or other, I am a sad exile. In some way or other, our land travels with me and with me too, though, far away, live the longitudinal essence of my country.

Pablo Neruda, 1972.

The leader of the Somali Union of Islamic Courts was quoted as saying:

We do not negotiate with a Government which is being helped by the enemy of Somalia.

I do not believe this is a wise move!

There should always be an open channel for a political talk between the opposing factions of the Somali bloody conflict. After all, the lives of millions of Somalis are on the line. Indeed, the future of the entire Somali Nation is at stake. Hence, we must look beyond personal difference and work for the common good of our people. Sheekh Sharif Axmed looked like a cool-headed and reasonable man and he must maintain that image by ordering his troops to move out of Bay region. He must also ask his delegates in Khartoum to resume talks with their TFG counterparts.

It goes without saying that the TFG must ask foreign invaders to leave Somali territories they captured and leave Somalia for Somalis! President Cabdullaahi Yuusuf must know that legitimate political power is something that must be earned through the collective will of the Somali people. He must stop acting like an Ethiopian viceroy! He is the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia including Western Somalia (Ogaden) which is under Ethiopian occupation!

How much injustice and brutality is carried out in reaction to irrational internal fears? Still, it’s only the most insightful educators or counselors that appreciate this dynamic even on an elementary school playground. Try applying the principle to our adult world, where everyone thinks white men in authority are little less than gods, when in fact they are grown up children who’ve perfected, relatively, the technique of deflection. They deflect their own insecurities by pointing angry fingers at any weakness they can find in others.

Nicholas F. Benton of the Falls Church News Press.

The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions…. Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world.

J. M. Keynes

Charles Onyango-Obbo of the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper writes:

Everywhere you turn, you are either reading or hearing on TV or radio that the rout of the Somali warlords in Mogadishu by the Islamic Courts Union came as “a surprise”.
The warlords are now dispersed to the far corners of Somalia, leaving the American project of backing their Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in tatters. There are many who are mourning the fact that the Islamic fundamentalists have won, saying that we are all in danger now. It’s not that simple. What we are witnessing is not the triumph of religious fundamentalism, but the crisis of secularism. Those of us who consider ourselves secularists, the fellows who believe in the separation of religion and state, bear the blame for letting the cause crumble in disgrace. Where secularists have risen to power in Africa and other parts of the Third World promising great change, many have ended up being maniacal butchers and thieves. We have let cherished freedoms degenerate into a bottomless pit of immorality and excess. Which is fine, except that we also don’t expect to pay a price for it.

Interesting perspective, however, what Mr Onyango-Obbo is depicting is, at best, a simplified version of the political realities on the ground in Somalia.

Click here to view the article column on the AllAfrica.com

We hear that the sacked Central Intelligence Agency Director, Porter Goss, visited Somalia in February after a trip to Kenya. CIA staff certainly helped to organize the alliance of the antiterrorist. 

Africa Confidential, London-based Newsletter.

You may like to click here for recent Africa Confidential’s articles and analysis on Somalia

I think ultimately you’re not going to be able to control something like corruption if you have an entire elite that believes that their primary duty is to their families rather than to the public good and there’s certainly lots and lots of countries around the world for which that’s true. 

Prof. Francis Fukuyama, School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University . The Author of “End of History and the Last Man” 

As animals die by their hundreds each minute due to the severe drought that is ravaging Somalia, the livelihoods of millions of Somali pastoralists die along with it! Consequently, those who lost everything their lives depended upon will have no choice but to migrate to the more urban areas and into the Somali cities and towns with all economic and political repurcussions that comes along with it. Sadly, this is the looming human tragedy that no one is talking about. 

Copy Right (picture): Jason Beaubien; Africa Correspondent for the National Public Radio (NPR). You may like to click here to view Jason Beaubien’s dispatches from the drought devestated Somalia

Total annual rainfall (mm) for selected pastoral areas in the Greater Horn of Africa in relation to the minimum threshold for viable pastures: 1995 – 2005.. Copy Right: FEWS 

This is a crisis on the verge of becoming a catastrophe. There are dead cattle everywhere and people have sold everything they have to buy food.  (…) These are the last few weeks that many people are going to be able to survive without help.

Dominic Nutt; Emergencies specialist, Christian Aid.

The International committee of the Red Cross is releasing a short movie about the victims of the drought in Somalia. Following is information about the film:

Title: Somalia: Emergency relief for victims of the drought

Date & location: Bakool region, Somalia, Nairobi, 16-20 February 2006.

Natural with Somali speech and local dialect

Duration: 9′35”

Produced and realized by Pedram Yazdi, Nicole Engelbrecht, Virginie Miranda.

Source: ICRC – Access all.

Click here to learn more about this film. 

This is a historical opportunity for the Somalia parliament, government and the people. (…) Let us choose between serving our people or being put on the bad list of history as people who promoted confrontation among Somalis and lacked the skills to administer a modern Somalia.

Cabdullaahi Yuusuf Axmed

President

Somali Transitional Federal Government

The Sydney Morning Herald featured story about a Somali teen-ager and says: 

In many respects, Mohamed is a typical teenager. He likes to drive the family car, regards the prospect of working in an office with dismay and his dad wants him to study harder. In many ways he also is a normal young cricketer. He wants to bat higher, reckons he ought to bowl more and thinks his captain is a dunderhead. He is different in only two regards. He is from Somalia. And he has one leg. 

The determination to success and perseverance of this young Somali man is admirable! 

Click here to view the full article on the SMH. 

Nick Haan, FAO Chief Technical Advisor of Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU) for Somalia was quoted as saying:   

While Somalia is normally one of the poorest and most food insecure countries in the world, current conditions are dire and way beyond the typically resilient Somali peoples’ capacity to cope with stress……..The window of opportunity to avert disaster is quickly closing.

See below for a full press release by FSAU. 

Think about this! There is a starving wife with small and hungry children in her care with no food to feed her dying children. Luckily the WFP is trying to rescue this unfortunate family with the needed food that could keep those children alive. Unfortunately, her husband, the father of the children is a member of the tribal militia that is preventing the food to reach that family! Can any anyone understand the twisted logic of the apparent destructive tribalism on display here? This mad and rather cruel father seems to be prepared to kill his own children! For what? 

This is how the story is reported by the the Reuters’ news agency.   

When Habiba Hassan’s food ran out, she fed her four children on boiled bones and aran, a bitter leaf that grows in Somalia. She blamed her husband for the family’s plight, and not just because he abandoned her. Hassan said her husband was with a militia group manning a roadblock near the Wajid refugee camp where she lives in a small shack made from plastic bags, dirty rags and pieces of cardboard box since fleeing fighting in southern Baidoa.  “He is with the militia who are holding the (World Food Program) food aid that was coming our way,” she said last month. “He does not care about us.” The 14-truck aid convoy was the first in years to risk the land route from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Wajid, a town in barren and dangerous south-central Somalia. The United Nations’ food agency was forced back onto Somalia’s potholed and perilous roads after pirates hijacked two of its ships last year, complicating efforts to get food aid to people hit by years of conflict and a severe drought.   

Click here to view the full dispatch on the Reuters news agency.

Somalia: Hunger and Starvation on the Horizon 

Sadly the question here now is not if people will die — but how many! 

Paul Smith-Lomas, OXFAM International, Regional Director, East Africa. 

Donors must respond now if we are going to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.

Arthur Holdbrook
Regional Director for Eastern and Central Africa
World Food Program

I believe deeply in the dignity of every individual

Rt. Hon. Donald Anderson MP
Swansea East, Wales, UK.
Former leader of the Select Foreign Affairs Committee
British House of Commons

By the way, I consider the Rt. Hon Donald Anderson as a good friend. I met him several times in the House of Commons and I attended many meetings he chaired. I was doing some research at the time on British development policy towards Africa. I was student at University of East Anglia. Mr. Anderson retired from the Commons before the last general election.

Eid Mubarik to you all from Amina, Khadija and me.

May the blessings of the Eid be upon you!

“Labbaik Allahumma Labbaik” (Here I am O God, answering your call).

Peace on Earth!

Somalia is the quintessential example of a country which has little strategic value and no natural resources and therefore little interest for humanitarian aid.

Deberati Guha-Sapir
Director,
Centre for Research on Disasters
School of Public Health, University of Louvain
Brussels, Belgium.

I thought humanitarian aid is supposed to be… humantarian! Well, it seems that I was wrong. As the saying goes, in this world, there is no “free” lunch, humanitarian or otherwise.