Thursday, December 1, 2011
Maayar Ku Xigeenka Hargeysa Oo Dibada Soo Dhigay Fadeexado Aan Tiro Lahayn Oo Dul Hoganaya Golaha Deegaanka, Eng Jiciirna Ku Sifeeyay Shakhsi Saar Qabiil Hayo.
“Wadada Dawga-cadna maaha wax isaga (Maayar Jiciir) laga baryayo waa mid dawlad dhexe iyo ummada reer Somaliland oo dhami isugu tagtay oo waa waddo qaran”Hargeysa (Waaheen) – Maayar ku xigeenka caasimada Somaliland ee Hargeysa Md Maxamed Cabdilaahi Uur-cadde ayaa eedaymo aan tiro lahayn u jeediyay guddoomiyaha golaha deegaanka Eng Xuseen Maxamuud Jiciir oo uu ka dhaxeeyo khilaaf ba’ani, waxaanu sheegay in Maayarku ku hawlan yahay sidii uu xilka uga tuuri lahaa.
Maayar ku xigeenka Hargeysa waxa kale oo uu sheegay in Maayar Jiciir ka been sheegay waxqabad muuqda oo uu isagu ka geystay jidka Dawga-cad ee Waqooyiga Magaaladda Hargeysa, isla-markaana uu guddida jidkaasi isku xil-saartay uu u sheegay in Maayar ku xigeenku aanu waxba kala socon, taasi oo uu ku tilmaamay waxba kama jiraan, waxaanu ku eedeeyay inuu Maayar Jiciir jidkaasi hawlihii ka socday hakad galiyey.
Maxamed Cabdilaahi Uur-Cadde oo shalay shir-jaraa’id ku qabtay xafiiskiisa Hargeysa ayaa waxa kale oo uu Eng Xuseen Maxamuud Jiciir ku tilmaamay shakhsi saar qabiil hayo, isla-markaana hawlihii uu umadda u hayey kaga mashquulay sidii uu isaga xilka uga qaadi lahaa, isaga oo tilmaamay inuu Xildhibaanada golayaasha deegaanka siiyo beero.
Md Uur-Cadde oo ugu horeyn ka hadlaya halka sirtu ka qudhuntay ayaa yidhi “Waxa uu ka hadlay Maayar Jiciir Jidka Dawga-cad oo ah waddo isku xidha Hargeysa ilaa xeebteena waqooyi ilaa Djabuuti oo dadwaynaha reer Somaliland si tabaruc ah u wadaan oo ay uga shaqaynayaan, guddida jidkaasi dhisaysaana dawlada hoose waxay ka codsadeen inay qaybtii ay ku lahaayeen ka qaadato, arintaasi oo si adag oo aan ahayn si qof masuul ahi uu u hadlo uu uga hadlay (maayar Jiciir), markaa guddidu markii ay dawlada hoose yimaadeen uu Maayarku u sheegay inaanu Maayar ku xigeenku wax war ah u haynin Jidka Dawga-Cad oo uu isagu laba Cagaf u kireeyay hawshaana uu sidaa ku waday oo uu ku dhameeyay.”
Maayar ku xigeenka caasimadu waxa uu beeniyey warka Maayarku ka siiyay guddida jidka dawga cad “Markaa waxaanu leenahay warkaa Maayarka waxba kama jiraan waana war isaga u gaar ah, malaha waxa uu moodayaa inuu Kampalla joogo, guddidaasi way yimaadeen oo Cabdiqaadir Xaashi Cilmi (Mulkiilaha Huteelka Maansoor) anigaa u geeyay isaga, markaa ka dibna waxa uu yidhi Cagaf haloo kireeyo, cagaftii markii ay maalin joogtay lacagtii ayaa la siin waayay, markaa warkaa Jiciir waxba kama jiraan, waxaanad moodaa inuu hurdo ka soo baraarugay, waanuna ka xunahay arintaasi wax qabadkayagana may ahayn inuu u arko wax Ina Uurcadde qabtay ee waxay ahayd inuu u arko wax dawlada hoose qabatay, jidkaa Dawga Cadna habeenkii uu yimidba wuu ka soo saaray cagaftii aanu galinay, Wadada Dawga-cadna maaha wax isaga laga baryayo waa mid dawlad dhexe iyo ummada reer Somaliland oo dhami isugu tagtay oo waa waddo qaran, waxaanuna uga digaynaa inuu talaabadaasi dib ugu noqdo, sababta xilka loogu dhiibay ee cashuurta looga dhiibaa waa inuu wixii umaddu u baahan tahay uu qabto, wax uu isagu leeyahay maaha.” Ayuu yidhi waxaanu intaa ku daray “Markaa waxaan Maayarka ugu baaqayaa inuu hawsha sideedii u wado ilaa inta xuduudka Hargeysa iyo inta ka shishaysa oo Hargeysa looga fadhiyo maadaama oo ay caasimadii dalka tahay, waxaanuna leenahay ILAAHAY haku garansiiyo.”
Md Maxamed Cabdilaahi Uur-Cadde waxa uu sheegay inaanu jeclayn in arimahan warbaahinta ka sheego balse Maayar Jiciir sababteeda leeyahay “Maanu jeclayn inaanu hadalada noocan ah warbaahinta isku marino, laakiin isaga ayaa nagu kalifay, halkan waxaanu ugu nimid afar cagaf, waxaanu xaraashay laba Cagaf, golaha deegaankuna hore ayuu uga hadlay, meel uu mariyey lama garanayo, waana ayaan daro golaha deegaanka oo 10 sanadood joogay ay kolba cafag kireystaan.” Ayuu yidhi waxaanu intaa ku daray “Aniguna ka mid baan ahay masuuliyiintaas oo uu Maayar Jiciir fadeexada iskaga reebayo, laakiin waxay ahayd inuu iska aamuso oo uu na wada qariyo.”ayuu yidhi waxaanu intaa sii raaciyey “Markii uu la sii dhoofayey saxeexa waxa uu yidhi Maamulka waxaan ku sii wareejiyey Maayar ku xigeenka iyo xoghayaha, waxaanad moodaa inuu wixii aanu ka xishoonaynay uu ku xaragoonayo, manay ahayn in hogaankayagu ceebtayadii ku dhawaaqo waxay ahayd inaanu is-qarino”
Maayar ku xigeenka Caasimada Somaliland ee Hargeysa waxa uu sheegay inaanu isagu hayn xilka maamulka dhulka “Waxa kale oo uu ka hadlay maamulka dhulka, waxaan idiin sheegayaa haddii ay tahay maamulka dhulka, haddii ay tahay naqshad isaga gacantiisa ayay ku jirtaa oo xitaa naqshada xogheyntiisa ayaa u haysa badhna gurigiisa ayay yaalaan, ninka waxaas oo dhan sameeyay inuu haddana yidhaahdo cid-baan wax ka qaaday waa ku nasiiib daro, wax Maayar ku xigeenku xil ah oo maamulka dhulka ahi midna ma jirto, laakiin haddii uu doonayo inuu dadka amro oo isaga la dhageysto cidna uma hogaansamayso cidna dhageysan mayso inta aanu isagu sharciga baalmarayo, waxaanuna leenahay nidaam iyo sharci ayuu dalku ku socdaa haddii aad diidana ina Jiciir wax ka badan noqon maysid, haddii aad nidaamka raacdana waxaad noqonaysaa Maayarkii Hargeysa waanuna kugu ixtiraamaynaa.” Ayuu yidhi waxaanu intaa sii raaciyey “Jiciir saar qabiil-baa haya, anigu waxaan ahaan jiray xisbiga UCID, waala is-qabqabsaday, waxaanu ka warqabnaa oo la hayaa, maalin kasta golaha deegaanka waxa uu u qaybiyaa beero, waxa uu la shiraa beeshiisa isaga oo ka hadlaya sidee ayaa ina Uur-cadde loo badelaa, waxaanu shaqo ka dhigtay Maayar ku xigeen uu marna leeyahay waxa aan u igmado ayuu qabtaa, marna uu leeyahay iga badala, markaa waxaan leeyahay adeer xisbiga UCID wax kaa khuseeyaa ma jiro, ninkii lahaana maad ahayn, haddii aanu garanayno meel lagaaga cuudiyana waanu kaa cuudin lahayn.”
Somalia for dummies
Between pirates, terrorists, kidnappings, a failed state and now a Kenyan invasion, it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on in Somalia, and why it’s going on. To help you distinguish your sea rats from your Al Shabaab, here’s an introduction to the wild world of Somali politics. By SIMON ALLISON.
The news coming out of Somalia can be confusing. Just this past week, there’s been the ongoing Kenyan invasion, ostensibly sparked by a few kidnappings on Kenyan soil. There’s been violence in the capital, Mogadishu, where the official government is trying to push a rebel Islamist militia out of the city, the same militia that Kenya is fighting, except the Somali president says they’re not working together. There’s been a double kidnapping of aid workers from their demining operation in Puntland, which has absolutely nothing to do with the kidnappings that the Kenyans are worried about. And, in South Africa, Wednesday marked a year exactly since a South African couple have been held hostage by pirates, who captured them off the dangerous east coast of Somalia and are demanding a huge ransom. To make sense of all this, it’s worth taking a look at the structure of the Somali state, as baffling as it may first appear.
Kenya troops move supplies from a helicopter at the Garrisa airstrip near the Somali-Kenya border on 18 October, 2011. Reuters.
A good place to start is with the official government. Not that this will get us far – after all, the government of Somalia has definitive, unquestioned control of an area just a few kilometres square around Mogadishu airport. But the Transitional Federal Government, as it’s known, is Somalia’s recognised leadership. It participates in international forums and attracts international aid money. Led by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the TFG has been in place since 2007, kept – for the most part – safe and secure in Mogadishu’s presidential villa and government compounds by thousands of African Union troops, under the banner of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom). It’s a little disingenuous to label these troops as African Union, as they’re from only two African countries, Burundi and Uganda; but they do have the AU’s blessing.
Somali President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed. Reuters.
The TFG’s ineffectual, unrepresentative nature has its roots in one of the international community’s most disastrous international relations blunders in the last decade. After more than a decade of civil war across much of Somalia, a strong, unifying government emerged in about 2006. The Islamic Courts Union was a relatively moderate Islamist group, and soon began to impose some kind of stability in Somalia, starting with the rule of law. But this was only a few short years after 9/11, and the US was terrified of anything even remotely associated with Islam – all Muslims were radical, and had to be anti-US. Tacitly the US encouraged Ethiopia, which had its own domestic motivations, given the separatist leanings of Ethiopia’s Somali province, to sort out the Islamic Courts Union. Which they duly did, invading Somalia and effectively destroying the first stable government the country had had in nearly two decades. The TFG, operating in exile since 2004, was established in Mogadishu as a replacement.
Islamic Courts soldiers stand on guard during a protest rally against the US in Mogadishu's stadium on 4 December,2006. Thousands of Somalis chanted anti-American slogans at an Islamic protest against the US-backed plan to send foreign peacekeepers to prop up the country's tottering interim government. Reuters.
The invasion caused a deep division within what remained of the Islamic Courts Union. One faction, the moderate one, chose to keep negotiating. Some have been incorporated into the TFG. The current TFG president is in fact the former head of the Islamic Courts Union. It’s impossible to overlook the irony that the international community deposed Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed when he was head of a government that effectively controlled most of Somalia, only to support him just a few years later when he controls barely a suburb of Mogadishu.
Another faction of the Islamic Courts Union, not unreasonably disillusioned with the response of the West to attempts to introduce moderate Islamic law in Somalia, turned radical. They looked to the Taliban and al Qaeda as models of how to stand up for their beliefs. They called themselves Al Shabaab (the Youth), and found that their fundamentalist message resonated with a population that just wanted peace and security. They swiftly gained control of vast swathes of southern Somalia, with their de facto capital in the port city of Kismayo. They immediately introduced harsh and strictly enforced Sharia law, and banned all Western humanitarian organisations from the territories they controlled. Their reach extended to the real capital, Mogadishu, while the TFG sat around the airport, for most of the last five years Al Shabaab has controlled Mogadishu’s crucial Bakara Market, with far more direct influence on the lives of citizens there.
Al Shabaab's military spokesman Sheik Abdul Asis Abu Muscab issues a statement south on 19 October, 2011. Reuters.
In 2010, Al Shabaab formally aligned itself with al Qaeda, a propaganda move more than anything else, but one that did influence its tactics. Al Shabaab has been behind a number of suicide bombings that have claimed the lives of hundreds, most notoriously the twin bombings in Kampala during the Fifa World Cup Final in 2010 and killed more than 70. It is also supposedly behind the kidnapping of tourists and aid workers in Kenya, which prompted the Kenyan military’s major offensive.
So the TFG controls a fraction of the country, and Al Shabaab a fair bit more, but the majority of the country is governed by neither. Instead, traditional clan structures, still strong throughout all the instability, have replaced a conventional government. Clans had to remain strong, because they were often the only institutions left. There are a number of clans in Somalia and the interplay between each is beyond the scope of this article, suffice to say that in many communities clans were able to imitate the functions of government. They could provide rules, organisation and leadership for places that had none. One example: when a young man marries, he pays in a specified sum (often in the form livestock) to a central fund controlled by the clan; think of it as a membership fee. This money is kept safely, and when one member of the clan is ill, he can draw upon the fund for his medical fees. An elegant solution to the problem of having no banks or insurance.
The clans are, inevitably, deeply entrenched in the politics of the region. Some are pro-Al Shabaab, some are pro-TFG, some want to be left to their own devices and some are deeply divided. But they provide a semblance of governance in areas where neither Al Shabaab nor the TFG can reach.
Residents ride on vehicles as they flee from renewed fighting between Somalia government forces and Islamist militants in Daynile district in the outskirts of Somalia's capital Mogadishu, on 21 October, 2011. Reuters.
Even in a failed state, life goes on. But let’s not forget that not all of Somalia has failed. There are two regions in the north which operate almost completely independently and have put together functional governments of varying respectability. Less respectable is Puntland, straddling the Horn of Africa. This is pirate country. Its economy is almost entirely fuelled by the proceeds of its modern-day buccaneers and the influence of the pirates spreads deep into the government.
Pirates operate with impunity from its ports, holding ships and people hostage until ransoms are paid. It’s become a sophisticated operation; there’s even a pirate stock exchange, where unscrupulous investors can put up the capital needed to launch a raid. This is where the South African couple, Bruno Pelizzari and Debbie Calitz, have been kept hostage and it’s where the two aid workers were kidnapped this week. Puntland considers itself an autonomous entity within Somalia, but doesn’t much like the government in Mogadishu. Al Shabaab, too, holds little sway.
Even more isolated from Somalia proper is Somaliland, which, thanks to Somalia’s dog-leg shape, doesn’t even share a border with southern Somalia, just with Puntland. Somaliland is a great success story in the Horn of Africa. Ever since its unilateral declaration of independence 20 years ago, it has built a stable democracy and a government that does what a government should do – build roads, facilitate trade, invest in healthcare and education. It’s no surprise that during the recent famine which affected southern Somalia so badly, Somaliland was not only unaffected, but also able to donate supplies to the relief effort. However, its success remains largely unacknowledged by the international community, which refuses to recognise it as an independent state and continues to invest resources in propping up the TFG in Mogadishu.
Members of the Somaliland community in London celebrate the 20th anniversary of its declaration of independence from Somalia during a demonstration on May 18, 2011.
This, then, is Somalia: a fractured, fighting and confused collection of various groups that happen to fall within the geographical boundaries of a supposed state. As a state, it has failed, there’s no doubt about that; but failed differently in different places, and for different reasons. And perhaps in this realisation is the solution. To solve the problem one has to address the causes and until it is recognised that Somalia is a multiplicity of competing problems, each with its own solutions, then the problem of Somalia can’t go away. DM
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Xeer Ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka oo soo saaray Amar uu ku Joojinayo Diiwaan gelinta Warbaahinta Cusub ee Warageysyadda iyo TV-yada
Monday, November 28th, 2011
“Waxa aanu joojinay Diiwaan gelinta Saxaafadda ilaa inta laga helayo ama wax ka bedel lagu samaynayo Xeerka Saxaafadda”Xeer Ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka\
Talaabadani waxay Caqabad ku noqonaysaa Dastuurka Qaranka, Xeerarka Doorashooyinka, Ururada/Axsaabta Siyaasadda iyo Xoriyatul qawlka
Hargeysa(Waaheen) Xeer ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka Somaliland Xasan Axmed Aadan ayaa 23/11/2011 soo saaray qoraal Amar ah oo uu ku joojinayo Diiwaan gelinta Warbaahinta Cusub ee doonaysa inay si sharci ah u hesho Ruqsada uu sharcigu u jideeyay hadii ay u baahdaan Muwaadiniinta Somaliland inay furtaan Hay’adda Warbaahineed.
Qoraalkan oo uu Xeer ilaaliyuhu si gaar ah ugu socodsiiyay Wasiirkla Wasaaradda Warfaafinta isla markaana uu Ogeysiiyay Wasiirka Wasaaradda Madaxtooyadda Somaliland waxa uu si cad u joojiyay in aanu Diiwaan gelin u samayn doonin Warbaahin danbe haddii ay tahay Wargeys ama Telefishan ilaa wax ka bede lagu sameeyo Xeerka Saxaafadda Somaliland oo ah dhaqan gal.
Sidoo kale qoraalka waxa uu ku cadeeyay in Xeerka Saxaafadda ee ay Golayaashu Ansixiyeen Madaxweynuhuna uu saxeexay in uu yahay mid aan dhamaystirnayn isla markaana aan ka turjumayn Saxaafadda oo dhan .
Waxa kale oo uu Wasiirka Wasaaradda Warfaafinta oo ah Hay’adda u xil saaran Warbaahinta Qaranka isla markaana u soo gudbisa Ogolaanshaha Hay’addaha warbaahineed Xeer Ilaalinta uu u sheegay hay’addaha ay u soo gudbiyeen si uu u Diiwaan galiayaa aanay buuxin shuruudaha iyo Aqoonta uu ku xidhayo Xeerka Saxaafaddu sidaasi daraadeed aanay waafaqsanayn Xeerkaasi.
Qoraalka Xeer Ilaaliyaha uu Nuqul ka mid ah uu helay Wargeyska Waaheen kuna saxeexan yahay Xeer Ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranku waxa uu u dhigan yahay sidan:-
Ku: wasiirka Wasaaradda Warfaafinta JSL Hargeysa
Og: Wasiirka Madaxatooyadda JSL Hargeysa
Ujeedo:- Joojin Diiwaan gelinta Wargeysyada iyo TV-yada, si ku meel gaadh ah.
Waxaan idinla socodsiinaynaa in warbaahinta aad noo soo gudbisaan si aanu u diiwaan galino aanay buuxinin aqoontii iyo shuruudihii looga baahnaa, arrintaasi oo aan waafaqsanayn Xeerka Saxaafadda.
Sidoo kale, waxaa loo baahan yahay in wax ka bedel lagu sameeyo xeerkaas, si loo helo xeer dhamaystiran oo ka turjumaya Saxaafadda oo dhan.
Sidaasi, darted waxaanu idinku wargelinaynaa inaanu si ku meel gaadh ah u joojinay diiwaan gelintooda, ilaa inta wax ka bedel lagu samaynaayo xeerkaasi
ASlaa Mahad leh.
Xasan Axmed Aadan
Xeer ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka.
Hadaba Joojinta Diiwaan gelinta Hay’addo Warbaahineed oo cusub oo ku soo biira Saxaafadda Somaliland eek u soo beegmay wakhtigani waxay daaha ka rogaysaa Tuhuno badan oo laga qabay in ay Jirto talaabo ay Xukuuamddu ku doonayso inay ku cunaqabatayso Saxaafadda taasoo soo if-baxday markii la arkay Xeerkii Saxaafadda oo Golaha Wakiiladda horyaala si wax ka bedel loogu sameeyo. Hase yeeshee hore Xukuumaddu way u beenisay inay dabada ka wado.
Balse Qoraalkan Xeer Ilaaliyuhu wuxuu markhaati ma doon u yahay in ay iyadu daaha dabadiisa ka hagaysay taasoo wakhtigan oo ah wakhti xaasaasi ah oo ay Ururo/Xisbiyo doonaya inay u Ololeeyaan Doorashooyinka soo socda ka hor istaagayso inay furtan karaan Hay’addo warbaahineed sida uu dhigayo Xeerka Furashada Ururada Siyaasaddu “Xeerka Nidaamka ururada iyo axsaabta siyaasada Lr.14/2011 qodobkiisa 18aad uu xuquuq gaar ah u siiyey ururadda siyaasadda iyo xisbiyadu in ay diiwaan gashan karaan saxaafad ay leeyihiin.”.
Sidoo kale waxa uu ka hor imanayaa Dastuurka Somaliland oo dhigaya in Muwaadin kastaa isagoo sharciga u marayo uu furan karo noocyadda Warbaahineed “QODOBKA 32AAD ee Dastuurka JSL ayaa fasaxaya xoriyadda saxaafadda, waxaanu sheegayaa qodobkaasi faqradiisa 1aad in muwaadin kastaa uu fikirkiisa xor u yahay kuna bandhigi karo hadal, qoraal,suugaan ama qaabkale” iyadoo ay hore Xukuumadihii kala danbeeyay u hor taagnaayeen Furashada Idaacadaha ayay hadana Xukuumaddani ku talaabsatay Joojintii intii ay ogolaayeen ee ahayd Jaraa’iaddada iyo Telefishanada. Ilaa hadana lama garanayo goorta ay qaadan doonto wax ka bedelka uu Xeer Ilaaliyuhu sheegay.
Tan iyo bilowgii Xukuumaddaba waxa ay Saxaafadda Somaliland la kawsatay talaabada ay Xukuumaddu ku faragalisay Xeerka Saxaafadda ee jira iyadoo wakhtigii ay Mucaaradka ahayd si weyn uga hor timi Xeer kale oo ay Xukuumaddii Rayaale ku doonaysay inay ku bedesho Xeerkan ay Imika Xukuumaddana hor geysay Golaha Wakiiladda si wax looga bedelo.
“Waxa aanu joojinay Diiwaan gelinta Saxaafadda ilaa inta laga helayo ama wax ka bedel lagu samaynayo Xeerka Saxaafadda”Xeer Ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka\
Talaabadani waxay Caqabad ku noqonaysaa Dastuurka Qaranka, Xeerarka Doorashooyinka, Ururada/Axsaabta Siyaasadda iyo Xoriyatul qawlka
Hargeysa(Waaheen) Xeer ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka Somaliland Xasan Axmed Aadan ayaa 23/11/2011 soo saaray qoraal Amar ah oo uu ku joojinayo Diiwaan gelinta Warbaahinta Cusub ee doonaysa inay si sharci ah u hesho Ruqsada uu sharcigu u jideeyay hadii ay u baahdaan Muwaadiniinta Somaliland inay furtaan Hay’adda Warbaahineed.
Qoraalkan oo uu Xeer ilaaliyuhu si gaar ah ugu socodsiiyay Wasiirkla Wasaaradda Warfaafinta isla markaana uu Ogeysiiyay Wasiirka Wasaaradda Madaxtooyadda Somaliland waxa uu si cad u joojiyay in aanu Diiwaan gelin u samayn doonin Warbaahin danbe haddii ay tahay Wargeys ama Telefishan ilaa wax ka bede lagu sameeyo Xeerka Saxaafadda Somaliland oo ah dhaqan gal.
Sidoo kale qoraalka waxa uu ku cadeeyay in Xeerka Saxaafadda ee ay Golayaashu Ansixiyeen Madaxweynuhuna uu saxeexay in uu yahay mid aan dhamaystirnayn isla markaana aan ka turjumayn Saxaafadda oo dhan .
Waxa kale oo uu Wasiirka Wasaaradda Warfaafinta oo ah Hay’adda u xil saaran Warbaahinta Qaranka isla markaana u soo gudbisa Ogolaanshaha Hay’addaha warbaahineed Xeer Ilaalinta uu u sheegay hay’addaha ay u soo gudbiyeen si uu u Diiwaan galiayaa aanay buuxin shuruudaha iyo Aqoonta uu ku xidhayo Xeerka Saxaafaddu sidaasi daraadeed aanay waafaqsanayn Xeerkaasi.
Qoraalka Xeer Ilaaliyaha uu Nuqul ka mid ah uu helay Wargeyska Waaheen kuna saxeexan yahay Xeer Ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranku waxa uu u dhigan yahay sidan:-
Ku: wasiirka Wasaaradda Warfaafinta JSL Hargeysa
Og: Wasiirka Madaxatooyadda JSL Hargeysa
Ujeedo:- Joojin Diiwaan gelinta Wargeysyada iyo TV-yada, si ku meel gaadh ah.
Waxaan idinla socodsiinaynaa in warbaahinta aad noo soo gudbisaan si aanu u diiwaan galino aanay buuxinin aqoontii iyo shuruudihii looga baahnaa, arrintaasi oo aan waafaqsanayn Xeerka Saxaafadda.
Sidoo kale, waxaa loo baahan yahay in wax ka bedel lagu sameeyo xeerkaas, si loo helo xeer dhamaystiran oo ka turjumaya Saxaafadda oo dhan.
Sidaasi, darted waxaanu idinku wargelinaynaa inaanu si ku meel gaadh ah u joojinay diiwaan gelintooda, ilaa inta wax ka bedel lagu samaynaayo xeerkaasi
ASlaa Mahad leh.
Xasan Axmed Aadan
Xeer ilaaliyaha Guud ee Qaranka.
Hadaba Joojinta Diiwaan gelinta Hay’addo Warbaahineed oo cusub oo ku soo biira Saxaafadda Somaliland eek u soo beegmay wakhtigani waxay daaha ka rogaysaa Tuhuno badan oo laga qabay in ay Jirto talaabo ay Xukuuamddu ku doonayso inay ku cunaqabatayso Saxaafadda taasoo soo if-baxday markii la arkay Xeerkii Saxaafadda oo Golaha Wakiiladda horyaala si wax ka bedel loogu sameeyo. Hase yeeshee hore Xukuumaddu way u beenisay inay dabada ka wado.
Balse Qoraalkan Xeer Ilaaliyuhu wuxuu markhaati ma doon u yahay in ay iyadu daaha dabadiisa ka hagaysay taasoo wakhtigan oo ah wakhti xaasaasi ah oo ay Ururo/Xisbiyo doonaya inay u Ololeeyaan Doorashooyinka soo socda ka hor istaagayso inay furtan karaan Hay’addo warbaahineed sida uu dhigayo Xeerka Furashada Ururada Siyaasaddu “Xeerka Nidaamka ururada iyo axsaabta siyaasada Lr.14/2011 qodobkiisa 18aad uu xuquuq gaar ah u siiyey ururadda siyaasadda iyo xisbiyadu in ay diiwaan gashan karaan saxaafad ay leeyihiin.”.
Sidoo kale waxa uu ka hor imanayaa Dastuurka Somaliland oo dhigaya in Muwaadin kastaa isagoo sharciga u marayo uu furan karo noocyadda Warbaahineed “QODOBKA 32AAD ee Dastuurka JSL ayaa fasaxaya xoriyadda saxaafadda, waxaanu sheegayaa qodobkaasi faqradiisa 1aad in muwaadin kastaa uu fikirkiisa xor u yahay kuna bandhigi karo hadal, qoraal,suugaan ama qaabkale” iyadoo ay hore Xukuumadihii kala danbeeyay u hor taagnaayeen Furashada Idaacadaha ayay hadana Xukuumaddani ku talaabsatay Joojintii intii ay ogolaayeen ee ahayd Jaraa’iaddada iyo Telefishanada. Ilaa hadana lama garanayo goorta ay qaadan doonto wax ka bedelka uu Xeer Ilaaliyuhu sheegay.
Tan iyo bilowgii Xukuumaddaba waxa ay Saxaafadda Somaliland la kawsatay talaabada ay Xukuumaddu ku faragalisay Xeerka Saxaafadda ee jira iyadoo wakhtigii ay Mucaaradka ahayd si weyn uga hor timi Xeer kale oo ay Xukuumaddii Rayaale ku doonaysay inay ku bedesho Xeerkan ay Imika Xukuumaddana hor geysay Golaha Wakiiladda si wax looga bedelo.
The Secret War: Tense ties plagued Africa ops
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Nov 28, 2011 11:34:38 EST by New york Times
The U.S. operators were in trouble. Deep trouble. Along with some Ethiopian troops, a “really small” number of U.S. personnel were hunting a high-value target near the town of Bargal in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region when they came under heavy fire that not only prevented them from killing or capturing the target but also pinned them down, according to several sources.
Running out of options on June 1, 2007, the operators called the destroyer Chafee sailing off the coast. In response, Chafee fired more than a dozen rounds from its 5-inch gun, a senior Pentagon official told Stars and Stripes (without mentioning that the mission was a desperate bid to rescue U.S. troops in Somalia). That naval gunfire — a rarity in the modern age — enabled the United States and Ethiopian troops “to break contact” and get away, a senior intelligence official said.
The close escape was a notable moment in a relationship between U.S. and Ethiopian forces that developed because each country perceived Somalia’s burgeoning Islamist militias as a threat but became strained as the U.S. pressed Ethiopia for more substantive on-the-ground cooperation.
The middle years of the last decade proved difficult for the U.S.’s efforts to destroy al-Qaida in East Africa. By mid-2003, as the insurgency blossomed in Iraq, the CIA had withdrawn its Predator drones from Djibouti, according to a special operations source with firsthand experience of operations in the Horn of Africa. “There just wasn’t a lucrative enough target environment to maintain a Predator program over there,” he said.
Lawless, anarchic Somalia was al-Qaida’s sanctuary and hub in the Horn. But getting U.S. intelligence and special ops personnel into Somalia was “really, really difficult,” said the intelligence official.
Despite speculation that Ethiopia invaded at the U.S.’s behest, cables from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa released by WikiLeaks indicate Ethiopia felt forced to act by circumstances in Somalia. “The GOE [government of Ethiopia] feels ever more compelled to intervene in southern Somalia to counter what it sees as the growing threat of an extremist Islamic regime in Mogadishu that is cooperating with Eritrea and other foreign elements to undermine Ethiopian stability and territorial integrity,” said U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto in a Dec. 6, 2006, cable. The same cable accurately predicted Ethiopia would invade in late December and that the incursion might “prove more difficult for Ethiopia than many now imagine.”
The cables make clear that the U.S. expected Ethiopia to invade. Nonetheless, a senior military official said events caught Joint Special Operations Command, which controls the military’s elite special ops forces, unprepared.
“The military wasn’t prepared to take any advantage of it,” the official said. “We should have been leaning forward to capitalize on this, and we did nothing.”
JSOC scrambled to take advantage by sending in small teams with Ethiopian special operations forces.
“Less than a dozen” JSOC operators went in, drawn from a mix of units, the intelligence official said. The largest number came from Naval Special Warfare Development Group, sometimes known as SEAL Team 6. The Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron also provided personnel. The numbers were kept small “because we didn’t need that much,” the official said.
But even the secret deployment of such small numbers of JSOC personnel into Somalia created angst in Washington’s policymaking circles.
“It was very uncomfortable,” the intelligence official said.
JSOC “would have gone with a much bigger capability and been much more aggressive.”
As it was, the deployment had to be approved by the defense secretary, “but he needed to get concurrence, or at least acknowledgment” from President George W. Bush, the official said.
JSOC’s focus in Somalia was on the handful of “high-value individuals” linked to al-Qaida. The United States had little interest in killing large numbers of regular Islamist fighters, the official said.
“If we wanted to kill a couple of thousand guys, we could have done that pretty much any time,” the official said.
The U.S. preference was for Ethiopians to do the direct action missions against al-Qaida figures whenever possible. The JSOC operators were to liaise with and provide assistance to them, “but also to effect a capture or a kill if necessary,” the official said.
In a Dec. 28 meeting with U.S. Ambassador to the African Union Cindy Courville, the TFG’s permanent representative to the African Union and ambassador to Ethiopia, Abdulkarim Farah, said the Islamic Courts “extremists” had fled Mogadishu the previous day by boat headed for the southern port of Ras Kamboni, according to a cable sent that day by U.S. Charge d’Affaires Janet Wilgus, posted by WikiLeaks. Another Wilgus cable the same day said Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had “reiterated” his request for U.S. help to “interdict” extremists.
“Meles said that groups of ex-members of the CIC were fleeing south to Kismayo in a convoy of approximately 150 vehicles,” the cable reported. “The CIC convoy included foreign fighters, some wounded, and presumably some CIC leaders.”
By Jan. 4, 2007, however, in a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, Meles was hailing “bilateral military cooperation with the United States” and calling for “continuing and improved joint intelligence operations to target terrorists,” according to a Jan. 8, 2007, cable from Yamamoto.
“Meles welcomed support from the United States and called for continued cooperation to capitalize on the situation on the ground” in Somalia, the cable said, adding that Meles said he had given his military chief of staff “‘very clear guidelines’ to cooperate with the [U.S. government], including on identification of foreign fighters in Somalia.”
However, some U.S. support quickly wore out its welcome with the Ethiopian leadership.
In a Jan. 9 meeting with Yamamoto “Meles noted that press reports of an alleged U.S. strike in Somalia may create diplomatic problems for the United States, but so long as terrorist targets are hit and the United States is seen as addressing Somalia’s humanitarian needs, the United States will make a positive impact and receive support from the Somali people,” according to a Jan. 10, 2007, Yamamoto cable.
“Meles urged the U.S. military, however, to keep its footprint ‘slight,’ so as not to play into the hands of jihadists who wish to portray action in Somalia as a crusade against Islam,” Yamamoto stated. “Meles said he was not concerned about press reports regarding U.S. action in Somalia, so long as terrorist targets were hit.”
Two days after the AC-130 attack, another airstrike hit four towns near Ras Kamboni. (The type of aircraft used in the attack has never been confirmed. The Ethiopians had their own attack helicopters, but a Jan. 12, 2007, Yamamoto cable refers to a “U.S. military … strike Jan. 9 against members of the East Africa Al Qaeda cell believed to be on the run in a remote area of Somalia near the Kenyan border.”)
With Ethiopia planning to pull most of its troops out of Somalia within a couple of weeks, to be replaced by international peacekeepers, a note of concern began to creep into exchanges between U.S. and Ethiopian officials. In a Jan. 11 meeting with Yamamoto, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin “requested that the USG [U.S. government] endeavor to keep U.S. military engagement in Somalia at ‘a low profile,’ citing concerns among potential African TCCs [troop contributing countries] that media reports of direct U.S. involvement in airstrikes created greater risk of terrorist attacks against peace-keeping contingents,” Yamamoto said in a Jan. 11 cable. “Seyoum recommended that the USG publicly state that it would not conduct any future military operations in Somalia, so as not to ‘alarm’ potential TCCs for Somalia.”
But an AC-130 conducted another strike Jan. 22 in southern Somalia, which the Washington Post reported Jan. 24. (An account in The Nation this year said the attack happened Jan. 23 and targeted Ahmed Madobe, a deputy of ICU leader Hassan Turki. Madobe survived the attack, but was captured, according to the magazine.) Meles met privately with Yamamoto on Jan. 25 and told him the AC-130 strike was “terrific” because “the targets were hit and there were no civilian casualties,” the ambassador reported in a Jan. 25 cable. But Meles had a serious complaint. “The problem was that in less than 24 hours after the strike, the Washington Post published a report on it, clearly showing there is no ‘opsec’ [operational security] on these military operations,” the cable said, adding that Meles was worried the publicity was weakening international support for the peacekeeping mission.
“He requested that for opsec purposes the gunships be removed from the area,” the cable continued. “In addition, the Prime Minister requested that the U.S. refrain from further military strikes in Somalia.” Instead, Meles said, Ethiopian forces “would act on information relating to where extremists were located.” Yamamoto noted that the Ethiopian military “has been effective in acting quickly and engaging targets.”
“We recommend compliance with the Prime Minister’s request for removal of the AC-130 aircraft,” Yamamoto said. “Heavy press interest has made it difficult to secure and protect AC-130 operations.”
Before long, the AC-130 element was on its way out of Ethiopia.
“They got told to go home,” said the senior military official, adding that the Ethiopians had warned that AC-130 operations would have to end if they were made public.
Meles “made it clear that the ENDF [Ethiopian National Defense Force] will continue its objectives of neutralizing extremist elements and HVI/HVT, and that Ethiopia welcomes information from the USG,” the cable said. Meles “stressed that information and material obtained from Somalia is fully accessible and will be openly shared with the USG. He underscored the importance of Ethiopia’s bilateral relationship with the United States.”
“The Somalia fusion cell continues to provide an important function welcomed by the Ethiopians,” Yamamoto said. “The fusion cell will be able to deconflict and support ENDF operations, as well as maintain close U.S.-Ethiopian mil-mil ties.”
Those ties were embodied by the JSOC operators working with Ethiopian special operations forces on both sides of the Ethiopia-Somalia border.
Ethiopia used its special operations elements to buttress the TFG’s fledgling military. In his Jan. 9 meeting with Yamamoto, “Meles said Ethiopia planned to embed personnel in Somali units, to train and equip Somali intelligence and assist with operations,” according to the Jan. 10 cable. “It was essential to conduct clandestine operations against the jihadists, to prevent them from reorganizing within Somalia, Meles added.”
But although the cables quote Meles emphasizing the Islamist threat when talking with U.S. officials, they also reveal that for Meles’ government, the Somalia conflict was as much a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia as it was an alliance among the TFG, Ethiopia and the U.S. against the jihadists. Thus U.S. and Ethiopian interests in Somalia overlapped, as Meles told Yamamoto, but each country had different priorities. The U.S. was completely focused on capturing or killing a handful of “high-value individuals” in the East African al-Qaida cell. Ethiopia’s primary goals were to oppose the wider Islamist threat posed by the ICU and to keep its bitter enemy Eritrea from being able to attack Ethiopia via the ICU.
Eight weeks before the invasion, Meles told a U.S. delegation “that the normally anti-Islamic Eritrean Government was pursuing a short-sighted policy of aiding jihadists, apparently in the hopes that the extremists ‘would attack Ethiopia before they attack us,’ ” according to an Oct. 26 cable from U.S. Charge d’Affaires Vicki Huddleston. “Meles claimed that the Eritreans had provided the CIC with Russian-made, shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. … He noted that the GOE had observed some tension between the two groups in training camps in Somali [sic], but that their unusual cooperation was continuing.”
In his Jan. 11 meeting with Yamamoto, Seyoum, the Ethiopian foreign minister, said Kenya had taken into custody “senior Eritrean military officers … who had been ‘training, organizing, and commanding an international force to destroy the constitutional government in Somalia’ ” before the Ethiopian offensive forced them across the Kenyan border.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Ethiopian forces enjoyed a patchy relationship with the Kenyans as they tried to get Somalia’s southern neighbor to round up the most dangerous Islamists who fled across the border.
“What we were trying to do was have forces postured [on the Kenyan side of the border] so that when they came across to try to arrest or detain them,” the intelligence official said.
Armed JSOC personnel based in Kenya accompanied Kenyan forces to the border but were there to “enable” the Kenyans rather than to conduct direct action missions themselves, the official said.
However, U.S. trust in the Kenyans was finite.
“We were always convinced that the Kenyans were spilling their guts to certain Somali elements,” said an intelligence source with long experience in the Horn. “Some of our concerns were well-founded. Others were not.”
The Kenyans sometimes either released Islamists sought by the U.S. “or they would just not let them in,” the senior intelligence official said. This ran counter to the U.S. desire for Kenya to allow the Islamists to cross the border so they could be detained and screened.
“We’re wanting them to let them in, roll up the whole group of them and then let’s go face by face and start looking,” the official said. “Then you can push them back across the border, those that are just Somalis that got rolled up.” The failure to “rein them in” meant some Islamist fighters “probably lived to fight another day,” the official said.
This type of behavior, in which a national ally could not be trusted to round up suspected Islamist fighters on its territory, prompted the intelligence source with long experience in the Horn to describe the region as a “wilderness of mirrors” characterized by “marriages of convenience” between government and nongovernment actors in the Somali drama. “You never really knew who was a true partner and who wasn’t,” the source said.
Meles said in his Jan. 4, 2007, meeting with Frazer “that he hoped Ethiopian troops could withdraw within two weeks, following one week of ‘mopping up.’ ” But his hopes were misplaced. The Islamist fighters returned to Mogadishu and elsewhere to wage a guerrilla campaign that bogged the Ethiopians down for two years.
Ethiopian cooperation with U.S. forces against al-Qaida began to fray.
“Our love relationship with them didn’t last very long,” the senior military official said.
Small JSOC teams continued working with the Ethiopians in Somalia, but it was a tense partnership that Ethiopia did not want to expand, according to the official. JSOC “wanted to train more Ethiopians, they wanted to train Ethiopian and Somali surrogates to go in and do things, they wanted to do what you would naturally expect,” the official said.
But the Ethiopians’ attitude was, “ ‘We don’t really want any help, we don’t want to be associated with you while we’re doing this, we don’t want people to think we’re your proxy,’ ” the official said. “So that was the issue. There was a lot of pressure put on them and they wouldn’t let us do the things that we wanted to do.”
However, JSOC’s role in training and fighting with Ethiopian special ops forces did not end immediately.
“JSOC did that for a while,” because after working with the most elite U.S. special operators, the Ethiopians were reluctant to work with regular Special Forces, the special ops element most experienced in training host-nation militaries, the military official said. But the U.S. campaign against Islamist militant leaders in Somalia continued, with a notable success May 1, 2008, when at least one Tomahawk cruise missile fired from a Navy vessel slammed into a house in the town of Dhusamareb, killing Aden Hashi Ayro, leader of the al-Shabaab militia that rose from the ashes of the ICU, as well as seven other Islamist fighters. The attack occurred less than two months after a March 3 Tomahawk strike hit the town of Dhoble. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a leading figure in al-Qaida in East Africa, and Turki were reportedly there but survived the strike.
President Bush had to approve each strike, the senior intelligence official said.
“The decision-making process … was unbelievably painful,” the official said. JSOC’s attitude was, “Just let us make the decision and we’ll be able to kill these guys,” the official said. As for “political consequences,” the official compared it to the decisions to authorize Predator and Reaper drone strikes against al-Qaida targets in Pakistan and elsewhere. “It’s like firing drones, it has a political consequence, [but] what would you rather have: the guy dead and then you get through one weekend of Sunday talk shows and you get onto another problem, or do you want this guy still around? And it was not easy to convince the powers that be.”
The official cited the strike that killed Ayro as an example.
“In order for that decision to be made, the confidence level they wanted [was] almost 100 percent, because they didn’t want to have this compound destroyed with a whole bunch of women and children getting lined up,” the official said. Therefore, U.S. forces “really had to time the collection” of intelligence. For real-time video of the target site, the military used a little-known variant of the Navy P-3 Orion aircraft called a Chain Shot. It was “a very good aircraft, very effective,” the official said. “We used that capability quite a bit because it has long legs.”
The Chain Shot flew out of Djibouti, the official said.
“So the precision of timing when that thing was going to be on station, and then the timing for when the TLAMs [Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles] had to be teed up, ready to go, because if we saw the target, then the decision had to be made … and it’s not just push a button [on the Navy vessel firing the Tomahawk], there’s a whole series of things that the guys there had to go through, they had to tee everything up … then there’s the time to fly … it really, really had to be precise,” the official said.
The Ethiopian military pulled out of Somalia in January 2009. The withdrawal closed a window of opportunity for U.S. forces.
“They were truly abetted by circumstances on the ground in Somalia that don’t exist anymore,” said a former military officer with long experience in the CENTCOM theater. But JSOC and the CIA had done their best to maximize the chances presented by the Ethiopian invasion.
“During that time, when the Ethiopians were in there — because the Ethiopians went all the way to Mogadishu — there was a lot of opportunities that we were trying to take advantage of, and, in a way, did,” the intelligence official said.
Posted : Monday Nov 28, 2011 11:34:38 EST by New york Times
The U.S. operators were in trouble. Deep trouble. Along with some Ethiopian troops, a “really small” number of U.S. personnel were hunting a high-value target near the town of Bargal in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region when they came under heavy fire that not only prevented them from killing or capturing the target but also pinned them down, according to several sources.
Running out of options on June 1, 2007, the operators called the destroyer Chafee sailing off the coast. In response, Chafee fired more than a dozen rounds from its 5-inch gun, a senior Pentagon official told Stars and Stripes (without mentioning that the mission was a desperate bid to rescue U.S. troops in Somalia). That naval gunfire — a rarity in the modern age — enabled the United States and Ethiopian troops “to break contact” and get away, a senior intelligence official said.
The close escape was a notable moment in a relationship between U.S. and Ethiopian forces that developed because each country perceived Somalia’s burgeoning Islamist militias as a threat but became strained as the U.S. pressed Ethiopia for more substantive on-the-ground cooperation.
The middle years of the last decade proved difficult for the U.S.’s efforts to destroy al-Qaida in East Africa. By mid-2003, as the insurgency blossomed in Iraq, the CIA had withdrawn its Predator drones from Djibouti, according to a special operations source with firsthand experience of operations in the Horn of Africa. “There just wasn’t a lucrative enough target environment to maintain a Predator program over there,” he said.
Lawless, anarchic Somalia was al-Qaida’s sanctuary and hub in the Horn. But getting U.S. intelligence and special ops personnel into Somalia was “really, really difficult,” said the intelligence official.
Invasion provided a path
However, in 2006, an opportunity to gain greater access to Somalia presented itself when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in an effort to oust the Islamic Courts Union, an Islamist group (sometimes referred to as the Council of Islamic Courts) that had seized power in Mogadishu from the Transitional Federal Government. Ethiopia, which had fought two previous wars with Somalia, first sent forces across the border in July to prop up the TFG, which had moved to Baidoa, about 160 miles northwest of Mogadishu. But in late December, a far larger Ethiopian force invaded with the intent of driving the ICU from power.Despite speculation that Ethiopia invaded at the U.S.’s behest, cables from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa released by WikiLeaks indicate Ethiopia felt forced to act by circumstances in Somalia. “The GOE [government of Ethiopia] feels ever more compelled to intervene in southern Somalia to counter what it sees as the growing threat of an extremist Islamic regime in Mogadishu that is cooperating with Eritrea and other foreign elements to undermine Ethiopian stability and territorial integrity,” said U.S. Ambassador Donald Yamamoto in a Dec. 6, 2006, cable. The same cable accurately predicted Ethiopia would invade in late December and that the incursion might “prove more difficult for Ethiopia than many now imagine.”
The cables make clear that the U.S. expected Ethiopia to invade. Nonetheless, a senior military official said events caught Joint Special Operations Command, which controls the military’s elite special ops forces, unprepared.
“The military wasn’t prepared to take any advantage of it,” the official said. “We should have been leaning forward to capitalize on this, and we did nothing.”
JSOC scrambled to take advantage by sending in small teams with Ethiopian special operations forces.
“Less than a dozen” JSOC operators went in, drawn from a mix of units, the intelligence official said. The largest number came from Naval Special Warfare Development Group, sometimes known as SEAL Team 6. The Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron also provided personnel. The numbers were kept small “because we didn’t need that much,” the official said.
But even the secret deployment of such small numbers of JSOC personnel into Somalia created angst in Washington’s policymaking circles.
“It was very uncomfortable,” the intelligence official said.
JSOC “would have gone with a much bigger capability and been much more aggressive.”
As it was, the deployment had to be approved by the defense secretary, “but he needed to get concurrence, or at least acknowledgment” from President George W. Bush, the official said.
JSOC’s focus in Somalia was on the handful of “high-value individuals” linked to al-Qaida. The United States had little interest in killing large numbers of regular Islamist fighters, the official said.
“If we wanted to kill a couple of thousand guys, we could have done that pretty much any time,” the official said.
The U.S. preference was for Ethiopians to do the direct action missions against al-Qaida figures whenever possible. The JSOC operators were to liaise with and provide assistance to them, “but also to effect a capture or a kill if necessary,” the official said.
Rapid movement
The mechanized Ethiopian columns made good progress at first, pushing southeast along the Shabelle River Valley to Mogadishu, as well as along a more southerly axis toward Somalia’s southern coast and the Kenyan border. “They moved pretty rapidly and we did seize on that to drive, and to help them drive, the al-Qaida guys toward the border of Kenya,” the official said.In a Dec. 28 meeting with U.S. Ambassador to the African Union Cindy Courville, the TFG’s permanent representative to the African Union and ambassador to Ethiopia, Abdulkarim Farah, said the Islamic Courts “extremists” had fled Mogadishu the previous day by boat headed for the southern port of Ras Kamboni, according to a cable sent that day by U.S. Charge d’Affaires Janet Wilgus, posted by WikiLeaks. Another Wilgus cable the same day said Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had “reiterated” his request for U.S. help to “interdict” extremists.
“Meles said that groups of ex-members of the CIC were fleeing south to Kismayo in a convoy of approximately 150 vehicles,” the cable reported. “The CIC convoy included foreign fighters, some wounded, and presumably some CIC leaders.”
By Jan. 4, 2007, however, in a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, Meles was hailing “bilateral military cooperation with the United States” and calling for “continuing and improved joint intelligence operations to target terrorists,” according to a Jan. 8, 2007, cable from Yamamoto.
“Meles welcomed support from the United States and called for continued cooperation to capitalize on the situation on the ground” in Somalia, the cable said, adding that Meles said he had given his military chief of staff “‘very clear guidelines’ to cooperate with the [U.S. government], including on identification of foreign fighters in Somalia.”
However, some U.S. support quickly wore out its welcome with the Ethiopian leadership.
‘A low profile’
On Jan. 7, an Air Force special operations AC-130 gunship, apparently flying out of Ethiopia, struck suspected al-Qaida targets near Ras Kamboni. The next day, CBS News quoted Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman as saying the strike was based on intelligence “that led us to believe we had principal al-Qaida leaders in an area where we could identify them and take action against them.”In a Jan. 9 meeting with Yamamoto “Meles noted that press reports of an alleged U.S. strike in Somalia may create diplomatic problems for the United States, but so long as terrorist targets are hit and the United States is seen as addressing Somalia’s humanitarian needs, the United States will make a positive impact and receive support from the Somali people,” according to a Jan. 10, 2007, Yamamoto cable.
“Meles urged the U.S. military, however, to keep its footprint ‘slight,’ so as not to play into the hands of jihadists who wish to portray action in Somalia as a crusade against Islam,” Yamamoto stated. “Meles said he was not concerned about press reports regarding U.S. action in Somalia, so long as terrorist targets were hit.”
Two days after the AC-130 attack, another airstrike hit four towns near Ras Kamboni. (The type of aircraft used in the attack has never been confirmed. The Ethiopians had their own attack helicopters, but a Jan. 12, 2007, Yamamoto cable refers to a “U.S. military … strike Jan. 9 against members of the East Africa Al Qaeda cell believed to be on the run in a remote area of Somalia near the Kenyan border.”)
With Ethiopia planning to pull most of its troops out of Somalia within a couple of weeks, to be replaced by international peacekeepers, a note of concern began to creep into exchanges between U.S. and Ethiopian officials. In a Jan. 11 meeting with Yamamoto, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin “requested that the USG [U.S. government] endeavor to keep U.S. military engagement in Somalia at ‘a low profile,’ citing concerns among potential African TCCs [troop contributing countries] that media reports of direct U.S. involvement in airstrikes created greater risk of terrorist attacks against peace-keeping contingents,” Yamamoto said in a Jan. 11 cable. “Seyoum recommended that the USG publicly state that it would not conduct any future military operations in Somalia, so as not to ‘alarm’ potential TCCs for Somalia.”
But an AC-130 conducted another strike Jan. 22 in southern Somalia, which the Washington Post reported Jan. 24. (An account in The Nation this year said the attack happened Jan. 23 and targeted Ahmed Madobe, a deputy of ICU leader Hassan Turki. Madobe survived the attack, but was captured, according to the magazine.) Meles met privately with Yamamoto on Jan. 25 and told him the AC-130 strike was “terrific” because “the targets were hit and there were no civilian casualties,” the ambassador reported in a Jan. 25 cable. But Meles had a serious complaint. “The problem was that in less than 24 hours after the strike, the Washington Post published a report on it, clearly showing there is no ‘opsec’ [operational security] on these military operations,” the cable said, adding that Meles was worried the publicity was weakening international support for the peacekeeping mission.
“He requested that for opsec purposes the gunships be removed from the area,” the cable continued. “In addition, the Prime Minister requested that the U.S. refrain from further military strikes in Somalia.” Instead, Meles said, Ethiopian forces “would act on information relating to where extremists were located.” Yamamoto noted that the Ethiopian military “has been effective in acting quickly and engaging targets.”
“We recommend compliance with the Prime Minister’s request for removal of the AC-130 aircraft,” Yamamoto said. “Heavy press interest has made it difficult to secure and protect AC-130 operations.”
Before long, the AC-130 element was on its way out of Ethiopia.
“They got told to go home,” said the senior military official, adding that the Ethiopians had warned that AC-130 operations would have to end if they were made public.
Bilateral relationships
The Ethiopians also temporarily shut down the fusion cell that helped coordinate U.S. and Ethiopian actions in Somalia, in particular the sharing of intelligence related to al-Qaida in East Africa leaders and other foreign fighters in Somalia. The Jan. 25 cable says Yamamoto and Meles met that day “to discuss the GOE decision to suspend operations by our fusion cell.” Meles told the ambassador there was “no suspension of mil-to-mil relations, and that operations, specifically intelligence-sharing and targeting of HVI/HVT [high-value individuals/high-value targets] must continue,” the cable says. “[T]omorrow we could resume all contacts and information-sharing.”Meles “made it clear that the ENDF [Ethiopian National Defense Force] will continue its objectives of neutralizing extremist elements and HVI/HVT, and that Ethiopia welcomes information from the USG,” the cable said. Meles “stressed that information and material obtained from Somalia is fully accessible and will be openly shared with the USG. He underscored the importance of Ethiopia’s bilateral relationship with the United States.”
“The Somalia fusion cell continues to provide an important function welcomed by the Ethiopians,” Yamamoto said. “The fusion cell will be able to deconflict and support ENDF operations, as well as maintain close U.S.-Ethiopian mil-mil ties.”
Those ties were embodied by the JSOC operators working with Ethiopian special operations forces on both sides of the Ethiopia-Somalia border.
Ethiopia used its special operations elements to buttress the TFG’s fledgling military. In his Jan. 9 meeting with Yamamoto, “Meles said Ethiopia planned to embed personnel in Somali units, to train and equip Somali intelligence and assist with operations,” according to the Jan. 10 cable. “It was essential to conduct clandestine operations against the jihadists, to prevent them from reorganizing within Somalia, Meles added.”
But although the cables quote Meles emphasizing the Islamist threat when talking with U.S. officials, they also reveal that for Meles’ government, the Somalia conflict was as much a proxy war between Eritrea and Ethiopia as it was an alliance among the TFG, Ethiopia and the U.S. against the jihadists. Thus U.S. and Ethiopian interests in Somalia overlapped, as Meles told Yamamoto, but each country had different priorities. The U.S. was completely focused on capturing or killing a handful of “high-value individuals” in the East African al-Qaida cell. Ethiopia’s primary goals were to oppose the wider Islamist threat posed by the ICU and to keep its bitter enemy Eritrea from being able to attack Ethiopia via the ICU.
Eight weeks before the invasion, Meles told a U.S. delegation “that the normally anti-Islamic Eritrean Government was pursuing a short-sighted policy of aiding jihadists, apparently in the hopes that the extremists ‘would attack Ethiopia before they attack us,’ ” according to an Oct. 26 cable from U.S. Charge d’Affaires Vicki Huddleston. “Meles claimed that the Eritreans had provided the CIC with Russian-made, shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. … He noted that the GOE had observed some tension between the two groups in training camps in Somali [sic], but that their unusual cooperation was continuing.”
In his Jan. 11 meeting with Yamamoto, Seyoum, the Ethiopian foreign minister, said Kenya had taken into custody “senior Eritrean military officers … who had been ‘training, organizing, and commanding an international force to destroy the constitutional government in Somalia’ ” before the Ethiopian offensive forced them across the Kenyan border.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Ethiopian forces enjoyed a patchy relationship with the Kenyans as they tried to get Somalia’s southern neighbor to round up the most dangerous Islamists who fled across the border.
“What we were trying to do was have forces postured [on the Kenyan side of the border] so that when they came across to try to arrest or detain them,” the intelligence official said.
Armed JSOC personnel based in Kenya accompanied Kenyan forces to the border but were there to “enable” the Kenyans rather than to conduct direct action missions themselves, the official said.
However, U.S. trust in the Kenyans was finite.
“We were always convinced that the Kenyans were spilling their guts to certain Somali elements,” said an intelligence source with long experience in the Horn. “Some of our concerns were well-founded. Others were not.”
‘Marriages of convenience’
U.S. officials were not alone in their reservations. In his Jan. 4 meeting with Frazer, Meles voiced concern “that Kenya’s susceptibility to ‘financial inducements’ threatened to jeopardize Ethiopia’s operations … [and] called for the USG to highlight to Kenyan authorities the need to capture extremists.”The Kenyans sometimes either released Islamists sought by the U.S. “or they would just not let them in,” the senior intelligence official said. This ran counter to the U.S. desire for Kenya to allow the Islamists to cross the border so they could be detained and screened.
“We’re wanting them to let them in, roll up the whole group of them and then let’s go face by face and start looking,” the official said. “Then you can push them back across the border, those that are just Somalis that got rolled up.” The failure to “rein them in” meant some Islamist fighters “probably lived to fight another day,” the official said.
This type of behavior, in which a national ally could not be trusted to round up suspected Islamist fighters on its territory, prompted the intelligence source with long experience in the Horn to describe the region as a “wilderness of mirrors” characterized by “marriages of convenience” between government and nongovernment actors in the Somali drama. “You never really knew who was a true partner and who wasn’t,” the source said.
Meles said in his Jan. 4, 2007, meeting with Frazer “that he hoped Ethiopian troops could withdraw within two weeks, following one week of ‘mopping up.’ ” But his hopes were misplaced. The Islamist fighters returned to Mogadishu and elsewhere to wage a guerrilla campaign that bogged the Ethiopians down for two years.
Ethiopian cooperation with U.S. forces against al-Qaida began to fray.
“Our love relationship with them didn’t last very long,” the senior military official said.
Small JSOC teams continued working with the Ethiopians in Somalia, but it was a tense partnership that Ethiopia did not want to expand, according to the official. JSOC “wanted to train more Ethiopians, they wanted to train Ethiopian and Somali surrogates to go in and do things, they wanted to do what you would naturally expect,” the official said.
But the Ethiopians’ attitude was, “ ‘We don’t really want any help, we don’t want to be associated with you while we’re doing this, we don’t want people to think we’re your proxy,’ ” the official said. “So that was the issue. There was a lot of pressure put on them and they wouldn’t let us do the things that we wanted to do.”
However, JSOC’s role in training and fighting with Ethiopian special ops forces did not end immediately.
“JSOC did that for a while,” because after working with the most elite U.S. special operators, the Ethiopians were reluctant to work with regular Special Forces, the special ops element most experienced in training host-nation militaries, the military official said. But the U.S. campaign against Islamist militant leaders in Somalia continued, with a notable success May 1, 2008, when at least one Tomahawk cruise missile fired from a Navy vessel slammed into a house in the town of Dhusamareb, killing Aden Hashi Ayro, leader of the al-Shabaab militia that rose from the ashes of the ICU, as well as seven other Islamist fighters. The attack occurred less than two months after a March 3 Tomahawk strike hit the town of Dhoble. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a leading figure in al-Qaida in East Africa, and Turki were reportedly there but survived the strike.
President Bush had to approve each strike, the senior intelligence official said.
“The decision-making process … was unbelievably painful,” the official said. JSOC’s attitude was, “Just let us make the decision and we’ll be able to kill these guys,” the official said. As for “political consequences,” the official compared it to the decisions to authorize Predator and Reaper drone strikes against al-Qaida targets in Pakistan and elsewhere. “It’s like firing drones, it has a political consequence, [but] what would you rather have: the guy dead and then you get through one weekend of Sunday talk shows and you get onto another problem, or do you want this guy still around? And it was not easy to convince the powers that be.”
The official cited the strike that killed Ayro as an example.
“In order for that decision to be made, the confidence level they wanted [was] almost 100 percent, because they didn’t want to have this compound destroyed with a whole bunch of women and children getting lined up,” the official said. Therefore, U.S. forces “really had to time the collection” of intelligence. For real-time video of the target site, the military used a little-known variant of the Navy P-3 Orion aircraft called a Chain Shot. It was “a very good aircraft, very effective,” the official said. “We used that capability quite a bit because it has long legs.”
The Chain Shot flew out of Djibouti, the official said.
“So the precision of timing when that thing was going to be on station, and then the timing for when the TLAMs [Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles] had to be teed up, ready to go, because if we saw the target, then the decision had to be made … and it’s not just push a button [on the Navy vessel firing the Tomahawk], there’s a whole series of things that the guys there had to go through, they had to tee everything up … then there’s the time to fly … it really, really had to be precise,” the official said.
The Ethiopian military pulled out of Somalia in January 2009. The withdrawal closed a window of opportunity for U.S. forces.
“They were truly abetted by circumstances on the ground in Somalia that don’t exist anymore,” said a former military officer with long experience in the CENTCOM theater. But JSOC and the CIA had done their best to maximize the chances presented by the Ethiopian invasion.
“During that time, when the Ethiopians were in there — because the Ethiopians went all the way to Mogadishu — there was a lot of opportunities that we were trying to take advantage of, and, in a way, did,” the intelligence official said.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Comment: NATO, AFRICOM and the New White Man's Burden
“Western countries are once again using feigned concern as pretext for invasion and resource theft.”
As we watched with bewilderment, NATO's military assault on Libya using “humanitarian intervention” as it's pretext, we are reminded of an earlier period of Western European “civilizing” missions into Africa.
Shortly after the Berlin West African Conference of 1884-1885; armed with bibles and bullets, a host of countries: Britain; France; Germany; Belgium; and Portugal, “scrambled” out of Western Europe in a quest to “save Africans from themselves”.
With their claim of intellectual and moral superiority echoed by Rudyard Kipling's infamously imperialistic poem, these European powers took full control of the land and lives of their new African subjects. Africa, having not fully recovered from the ravages of both the Trans-Atlantic and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trades, was ill prepared for what was to follow.
With the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, every scare inch of Africa was to come under the control of European imperialist powers. The result: nearly a hundred years of a brutal occupation; further dehumanization; theft of natural resources while subjecting Africans to internal slavery.
The resulting loss of life was so high that no serious effort has ever been made to quantify it. But if Belgian, which controlled only 7% of Africa, could murder 10-15 million Congolese during this period, one could get a close estimate through extrapolation, the number of African lives destroyed by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and later Italy. Given this history, coupled with the horrific results of NATO's incursion into Libya, what then are we to make of NATO's new identity as ''human rights interventionist.''
“Europe was in desperate need of an answer to rescue it.”
At the end of the 19th century, Western Europe was in the middle of an industrial revolution that it could not sustain with the limited resources and markets within it's own borders. Competition for new resources and markets amongst these European powers was high. With the economic challenges resulting from the “Long Depression of 1873-1896''; overpopulation; a high rate of poverty and unemployment, Europe was in desperate need of an answer to rescue it from this malaise. Africa would prove to be the answer a thousand times over.
Today we find Europe, along with the United States, facing serious economic challenges not unlike those faced by Europe in the late 1800s.
Like then, Europe and the United States are desperately looking for economic solutions that cannot be found within their national boundaries. With virtually all of the resources required to sustain their economies existing in other parts of the world but particularly in Africa, these Western countries are once again using feigned concern as pretext for invasion and resource theft. With competition now coming from Russia, India and China for these same resources, new and desperate strategies will have to be created in an attempt to justify these invasions. But how new are they?
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a military/security alliance between Western European powers and the United States, was formed shortly after the Second World War in 1949. It came out of the same Atlantic Charter that gave birth to the United Nations. Its stated purpose was to counter what member countries perceived as an expansionist threat coming from the Soviet Union. During it's existence there has never been any direct military engagement with the Soviet Union. Instead, proxy wars, mostly fought in Africa and Latin America, would become the order of the day. While the Soviet Union sought to (at times meekly) aid the various Liberation Movements in Africa and the Americas, the NATO countries on the other hand, were interested in maintaining their sphere of economic influence in these regions.
“New and desperate strategies will have to be created in an attempt to justify these invasions.”
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO virtually overnight had become an irrelevant military bureaucracy. Many military and foreign policy experts began to speculate that NATO would soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. To avoid what seemed to be an imminent demise, NATO began looking for new roles to play in world affairs. What has happened as a result, as one foreign policy observer describes, has been “mission creep on a grand scale.”
No longer concerned about guarding against the Red Army rushing across its borders, NATO countries have now armed themselves with a host of new missions (pretexts), from: fighting terrorism; saving the environment; crisis management; to “humanitarian intervention (sic).” With a new futuristic $1.38 billion building on a 100 acre site in Brussels, and having expanded from it's original 16 members to 28 (most of the new member states ironically coming from the former Soviet Union), and with the combined military budgets of member states comprising 70 percent of what the world spends on defense, this “new” NATO is riding high with a renewed sense of purpose, anxious to show the world it still has relevance. Africa (and the world) should be worried.
While significantly controlled by the US, which provides 75 percent of it's budget, NATO is headed by the arrogant and opportunistic Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark. With a very aggressive agenda for this made over NATO including offering NATO's services to the United Nations as a “global peacekeeping” force, he has in recent years already overseen NATO's involvement in several conflicts outside of Europe. Most notably, its involvement with the US in Afghanistan where it continues to kill innocent people, and is continuously asked to leave by many distraught and outraged Afghans.
“With the combined military budgets of member states comprising 70 percent of what the world spends on defense, this “new” NATO is riding high with a renewed sense of purpose.”
It has also become involved in patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia to protect foreign vessels from being seajacked by so-called Somali pirates. This campaign has resulted in an avalanche of deaths of Somalis, passengers and crew members of seajacked ships. Keeping in mind, when Somalis started boarding these ships which had illegally begun fishing in their waters seventeen years ago, not one hostage taken by them had ever been killed. All that changed with the Obama administration coming to power in 2009 (the year NATO, with mostly US Naval ships, started patrolling the Somalia coast).
In April of that year, President Obama gave the first orders for snipers to kill Somalis who had boarded the American flagged ship, The Maersk Alabama demanding ransom. France would soon follow with the killing of eight Somalis in another seajacking incident. Now with the U.S. and France with NATO support, seemingly engaged in a full scale war against the Somali nationalist group Al-Shabat, we can only expect the number of dead Somalis to increase even more. This U.S. war in Somalia is also being augmented by troops from Kenya, Uganda and Burundi, with Uganda and Burundi involvement ironically, coming under the auspices of an African Union peace keeping mission. A new U.S. Drone base for this war has just been established in Ethiopia as well. The imperialist powers are obviously up to their old tricks of using treacherous Africans to help in doing their ''dirty work.''
Immediately following the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, Chris Coons, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on African affairs was reported as saying “Muammar Gadhafi’s death and the promise of a new Libyan regime are arguments for the measured U.S. military response in central Africa...''. Encouraged by the results in Libya, the U.S. has recently sent roughly 100 troops to Uganda to track down members of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). U.S. troops are also being sent to the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan'.
“This U.S. war in Somalia is also being augmented by troops from Kenya, Uganda and Burundi.”
It is obvious Senator Coons made this remark with AFRICOM in mind. This newly created U.S.military command for Africa, conceived by the Heritage Foundation during the Bush administration, could not have come at a more opportunistic time for the imperialistic thinking NATO countries. Working in conjunction with AFRICOM during the Libya campaign, and gloating over it's alleged success, NATO now sees itself as indispensable in this new war to ''save humanity.'' The cooperation between these 2 military packs represent a perilous development for Africa. With the Obama administration acknowledging the Libya campaign as AFRICOM's ''first'' undertaking, Africans no longer have to guess what the rest of AFRICOM's endeavors on the Continent will look like.
Like their 19th century predecessors in their mission to take on the ''burden'' of spreading the benefits of European ''enlightenment',' this new generation of marauders from the ''North'' are poised to, once again, impose on Africa the coldness of death, destruction and displacement which so characterized their earlier campaigns of human upliftment on the Continent.
Having failed to effectively respond to NATO's and AFRICOM’s assault on Libya, Africa must at some point show that it has learned the lessons of the past, and resolve itself to remove this ''white man's burden,” once and for all.
Harold Green can be contacted at paclwp@msn.com.
As we watched with bewilderment, NATO's military assault on Libya using “humanitarian intervention” as it's pretext, we are reminded of an earlier period of Western European “civilizing” missions into Africa.
Shortly after the Berlin West African Conference of 1884-1885; armed with bibles and bullets, a host of countries: Britain; France; Germany; Belgium; and Portugal, “scrambled” out of Western Europe in a quest to “save Africans from themselves”.
With their claim of intellectual and moral superiority echoed by Rudyard Kipling's infamously imperialistic poem, these European powers took full control of the land and lives of their new African subjects. Africa, having not fully recovered from the ravages of both the Trans-Atlantic and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trades, was ill prepared for what was to follow.
With the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, every scare inch of Africa was to come under the control of European imperialist powers. The result: nearly a hundred years of a brutal occupation; further dehumanization; theft of natural resources while subjecting Africans to internal slavery.
The resulting loss of life was so high that no serious effort has ever been made to quantify it. But if Belgian, which controlled only 7% of Africa, could murder 10-15 million Congolese during this period, one could get a close estimate through extrapolation, the number of African lives destroyed by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal and later Italy. Given this history, coupled with the horrific results of NATO's incursion into Libya, what then are we to make of NATO's new identity as ''human rights interventionist.''
“Europe was in desperate need of an answer to rescue it.”
At the end of the 19th century, Western Europe was in the middle of an industrial revolution that it could not sustain with the limited resources and markets within it's own borders. Competition for new resources and markets amongst these European powers was high. With the economic challenges resulting from the “Long Depression of 1873-1896''; overpopulation; a high rate of poverty and unemployment, Europe was in desperate need of an answer to rescue it from this malaise. Africa would prove to be the answer a thousand times over.
Today we find Europe, along with the United States, facing serious economic challenges not unlike those faced by Europe in the late 1800s.
Like then, Europe and the United States are desperately looking for economic solutions that cannot be found within their national boundaries. With virtually all of the resources required to sustain their economies existing in other parts of the world but particularly in Africa, these Western countries are once again using feigned concern as pretext for invasion and resource theft. With competition now coming from Russia, India and China for these same resources, new and desperate strategies will have to be created in an attempt to justify these invasions. But how new are they?
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a military/security alliance between Western European powers and the United States, was formed shortly after the Second World War in 1949. It came out of the same Atlantic Charter that gave birth to the United Nations. Its stated purpose was to counter what member countries perceived as an expansionist threat coming from the Soviet Union. During it's existence there has never been any direct military engagement with the Soviet Union. Instead, proxy wars, mostly fought in Africa and Latin America, would become the order of the day. While the Soviet Union sought to (at times meekly) aid the various Liberation Movements in Africa and the Americas, the NATO countries on the other hand, were interested in maintaining their sphere of economic influence in these regions.
“New and desperate strategies will have to be created in an attempt to justify these invasions.”
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO virtually overnight had become an irrelevant military bureaucracy. Many military and foreign policy experts began to speculate that NATO would soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. To avoid what seemed to be an imminent demise, NATO began looking for new roles to play in world affairs. What has happened as a result, as one foreign policy observer describes, has been “mission creep on a grand scale.”
No longer concerned about guarding against the Red Army rushing across its borders, NATO countries have now armed themselves with a host of new missions (pretexts), from: fighting terrorism; saving the environment; crisis management; to “humanitarian intervention (sic).” With a new futuristic $1.38 billion building on a 100 acre site in Brussels, and having expanded from it's original 16 members to 28 (most of the new member states ironically coming from the former Soviet Union), and with the combined military budgets of member states comprising 70 percent of what the world spends on defense, this “new” NATO is riding high with a renewed sense of purpose, anxious to show the world it still has relevance. Africa (and the world) should be worried.
While significantly controlled by the US, which provides 75 percent of it's budget, NATO is headed by the arrogant and opportunistic Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark. With a very aggressive agenda for this made over NATO including offering NATO's services to the United Nations as a “global peacekeeping” force, he has in recent years already overseen NATO's involvement in several conflicts outside of Europe. Most notably, its involvement with the US in Afghanistan where it continues to kill innocent people, and is continuously asked to leave by many distraught and outraged Afghans.
“With the combined military budgets of member states comprising 70 percent of what the world spends on defense, this “new” NATO is riding high with a renewed sense of purpose.”
It has also become involved in patrolling the waters off the coast of Somalia to protect foreign vessels from being seajacked by so-called Somali pirates. This campaign has resulted in an avalanche of deaths of Somalis, passengers and crew members of seajacked ships. Keeping in mind, when Somalis started boarding these ships which had illegally begun fishing in their waters seventeen years ago, not one hostage taken by them had ever been killed. All that changed with the Obama administration coming to power in 2009 (the year NATO, with mostly US Naval ships, started patrolling the Somalia coast).
In April of that year, President Obama gave the first orders for snipers to kill Somalis who had boarded the American flagged ship, The Maersk Alabama demanding ransom. France would soon follow with the killing of eight Somalis in another seajacking incident. Now with the U.S. and France with NATO support, seemingly engaged in a full scale war against the Somali nationalist group Al-Shabat, we can only expect the number of dead Somalis to increase even more. This U.S. war in Somalia is also being augmented by troops from Kenya, Uganda and Burundi, with Uganda and Burundi involvement ironically, coming under the auspices of an African Union peace keeping mission. A new U.S. Drone base for this war has just been established in Ethiopia as well. The imperialist powers are obviously up to their old tricks of using treacherous Africans to help in doing their ''dirty work.''
Immediately following the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, Chris Coons, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on African affairs was reported as saying “Muammar Gadhafi’s death and the promise of a new Libyan regime are arguments for the measured U.S. military response in central Africa...''. Encouraged by the results in Libya, the U.S. has recently sent roughly 100 troops to Uganda to track down members of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). U.S. troops are also being sent to the Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan'.
“This U.S. war in Somalia is also being augmented by troops from Kenya, Uganda and Burundi.”
It is obvious Senator Coons made this remark with AFRICOM in mind. This newly created U.S.military command for Africa, conceived by the Heritage Foundation during the Bush administration, could not have come at a more opportunistic time for the imperialistic thinking NATO countries. Working in conjunction with AFRICOM during the Libya campaign, and gloating over it's alleged success, NATO now sees itself as indispensable in this new war to ''save humanity.'' The cooperation between these 2 military packs represent a perilous development for Africa. With the Obama administration acknowledging the Libya campaign as AFRICOM's ''first'' undertaking, Africans no longer have to guess what the rest of AFRICOM's endeavors on the Continent will look like.
Like their 19th century predecessors in their mission to take on the ''burden'' of spreading the benefits of European ''enlightenment',' this new generation of marauders from the ''North'' are poised to, once again, impose on Africa the coldness of death, destruction and displacement which so characterized their earlier campaigns of human upliftment on the Continent.
Having failed to effectively respond to NATO's and AFRICOM’s assault on Libya, Africa must at some point show that it has learned the lessons of the past, and resolve itself to remove this ''white man's burden,” once and for all.
Harold Green can be contacted at paclwp@msn.com.
Pakistan Tells U.S. to 'Vacate' Air Base as Border Strike Inflames Tensions Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/26/deadly-border-strike-inflames-tensions-between-us-pakistan/#ixzz3RA2mDOjA
Published November 26, 2011
Pakistan's government has ordered the U.S. to "vacate" an air base used for suspected drone attacks, in retaliation for a NATO strike that allegedly killed two-dozen Pakistani soldiers, Fox News has confirmed.
The demand marked the latest reprisal out of Pakistan, as the U.S. and NATO allies scramble to investigate the incident. Islamabad had already ordered the country's border crossings into Afghanistan closed, blocking off NATO supply lines, after the strike. The government issued the air base demand, and pledged a "complete review" of its relationship with the U.S. and NATO, following an emergency military meeting chaired by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Isahakia From Somaliland : One hundred years of solitude and sufferance
Currently, a majority of the community members live in Kabati estate and the low cost KCC village, often associated with illicit brews and crime.Wednesday, August 25, 2010
By Antony Gitonga
 |
| Members of the Isahakia community in Naivasha express their feelings when they met area DC Ms Hellen Kiilu over the ownership of a piece of land which KARI claims to own. [PHOTO: /JAMES KEYI/STANDARD] |
You probably haven’t heard about them, although they have been in our midst for over 100 years.
They are the Isakhakia, named after the Isaq clan in Somaliland, from whence they came.
Presently, there are over 10,000 members third and fourth generations of the Isakhakia in Kenya, but they claim they have been treated like foreigners.
Ali Farah, the Isahakia community chair expresses a point during a recent meeting in Naivasha. [PHOTOS: ANTONY GITONGA/STANDARD] |
They say they have moved from the Government office to another to pursue their land and other citizenship rights.
The first group of the Isakhakia arrived in Kenya as porters, guards and gun-bearers for Hugh Cholmondeley, the 3rd Baron Delamere in 1890s.
Delamere made his first trip to Africa in 1891 on a hunting expedition in Somaliland, and where he returned every year.
In 1894, Delamere was nearly mauled by a lion, and was only saved when his Somali gun-bearer, Abdullah Ashur, leapt on the beast, giving Delamere time to retrieve his rifle.
The injured Delamere was carried to Kenya by the porters, who decided to stay on in then British protectorate.
According to Ahmed Ali Farah, the Isahakia community chairman, that was the turning point for the community.
According to ageing members of the community, they settled in the country in the late 1890s, with a huge number settling in Naivasha.
"Other members settled around Princess Elizabeth Park (now Embakasi) but were later evicted by the colonial government," says Farah.
‘Kambi’ Somali
He adds some moved to Isiolo and other towns where the popular term "Kambi Somali" (Somali camp) was coined to describe their homes.
In 1926, the community was awarded with 15,000 acres by the colonial Legislative Council (Legco).
After decades residing in Naivasha, the community was in the line of fire from the colonial Government in 1952, accused of collaborating with the Mau Mau freedom fighters.
"Our fathers were accused of assisting the Mau Mau escape from the then Naivasha prison," explains Farah.
As punishment, the British sold all the dairy cattle at Sh3 each at a public auction.
According to Ms Asha Adan, 80, she endured beatings and torture from the British army for alleged support of the Mau Mau.
The community had no reprieve; the early years of the Kenyatta Government faced Shifta insurgents, who the Isakhakia were again accused of supporting.
A third generation Isakhakia, Adan says in 1972, the Kenyatta Government accused them of being shiftas and destroyed all their houses leaving, 5,000 people homeless.
Currently living in Kabati estate in Naivasha, the granny has vivid memories of the beatings meted out on her when guards descended on their mud-walled houses.
"They came early in the morning and attacked us for no apparent reason, thus we became the first IDPs in the country."
Somaliland is often lumped with Somalia, although it was an autonomous region before the unification with the rest of Somalia at independence in 1961.
It was under British rule while Italians colonised the Southern parts of the country, including Mogadishu.
Unitary Government
Somaliland has since reclaimed its autonomy after the fall of the unitary Government in Mogadishu in 1991.
"Many of us were later used to construct the current Naivasha GK Prison," Farah explains, adding that the facility "was constructed on part of our land."
A school constructed by the community, Naivasha Somali Boarding Primary in 1960, was similarly taken over by the Government and renamed Naivasha Boarding Primary School.
"We are the founders of the school and we have pictures showing our forefathers opening the institution, in the presence some British masters," Farah says.
"Though we came from Somaliland, the Kenya Government recognised us but that is all we have," Farah said, adding the historical injustices against the community need addressing.
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