Somalia: Mogadishu still not a safe place

As Somalia celebrates the first anniversary of the end of the transition, there is concern about the perceived slowdown in the fight against the Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab. Andrews Atta-Asamoah has just returned from a visit to Somalia and says the security situation in Mogadishu is still precarious, even though a lot of progress has been made. He says the decision by the humanitarian organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) to pull out of Somalia after 22 years in the country could be seen as a coded message to those who are considered to be too lenient towards Al-Shabaab.

In the last few months since the inauguration of the new government in August last year, there has been cautious optimism that peace is now a real possibility in Somalia. Was it safe to visit Mogadishu?

For many Somalis travelling on their own it is much safer than in the past. But for foreigners and those attached to the United Nations (UN) and the African Union Mission for Somalia (AMISOM) there are a number of critical no-go areas.

AMISOM is largely controlling four sectors in Somalia, including Mogadishu, where it has succeeded in creating a huge buffer around the airport, known as the Mogadishu International Airport (MIA). Within this secure area you find a number of UN agencies, diplomatic missions like the British embassy and other international actors. If you need to go out of this well-protected area, you often need to go with a convoy of the African Union (AU).

It sounds as if the foreign military force in Somalia could be perceived as an ‘occupying force’, huddled around the airport, a bit like the US forces in Iraq. Is this true?

One has to understand the context. Everywhere you find a UN presence; there are very strict security measures. The MIA is the most protected area because of the UN and AMISOM presence, although AMISOM is also deployed in strategic parts of town. It protects the university and sport stadium. But even its convoys get attacked from time to time.

Generally, though, I think the security situation has improved greatly from what we know Somalia used to be, but it is still very far from what one would expect in a stable country in Africa.

Does that mean the 18 000 soldiers of AMISOM are not as effective on the ground as one is led to believe?

In a place like Mogadishu, for instance, AMISOM was able to deliver 80% of Mogadishu to the government. However, we still see significant attacks from Al-Shabaab, largely due to the guerrilla tactics of the group. When you move out of the city you find less and less government presence, especially in the south-central parts of the country.

MSF has announced its withdrawal from the country after 22 years in Somalia. Although 16 MSF staff members have been killed in Somalia, this doesn’t come after any specific attack, so why withdraw now?

It’s very interesting because MSF has been in Somalia even at times where there was no government. From the official communication from the president of MSF, one gets a sense he is blaming the civilian leadership for condoning some of the attacks on MSF staff. I think it is a coded message that speaks to a perception in the larger Somali community that there has been a slowdown in the fight against Al-Shabaab. There is also a perception that some of the leadership in the current government do not seem to have the appetite for sustaining the tough military onslaught against Al-Shabaab.

Why would there be a slowdown?

Some people believe the slowdown is because there are individuals in the current government belonging to the Damul Jadid (‘new blood’) faction of Al-Islah, and who are generally lenient towards Al-Shabaab. Even if these individuals are not necessarily supporting them in any way, there is a sense that there is a lack of willingness to directly continue confronting them and to continue to use the military approach.

When the president was elected last year, he also decided to change many leaders in key positions, including those leading the onslaught against Al-Shabaab in the security sector. This ended up slowing down the whole fight against Al-Shabaab, which could be an unintended consequence of something the government was doing in good faith. Another important aspect is that AMISOM is overstretched.

What does this mean in terms of the humanitarian situation on the ground in Somalia?

It is going to be very difficult for any other humanitarian organisation to step in and take over MSF’s role. There are other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) present in Somalia, but they also have challenges. The NGOs from Turkey were perceived to be very neutral and they made a point of not being identified with the UN and being only in Somalia to help their Islamic brothers and sisters, but we recently saw a hit on a Turkish convoy and an attack on the Turkish embassy, so it is becoming more difficult for them as well.

The federal government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was established on 20 August 2012. One year on, things are not looking that good for the government.

The withdrawal of MSF and the announcement by the Puntland government that it is cutting ties with the government are signs that all is not well. It puts a lot of pressure on Mogadishu to do things differently or else it is going to be very difficult for it to sustain its credibility in the eyes of the people for four years.
There has also been strife between the central government and the local leaders in Kismayo.

The new constitution provides for a federal system, but there is disagreement over who should drive the formation of these federal states, the central government or the local administration.

Clearly, the government also finds itself in the context of being constantly in the middle of a push from the international community on the one hand, and a local pull on the other. In its bid to attract international attention and to reposition the country, it appears to be doing more internationally, instead of doing things to please its local constituency.

What about the promises of the new government to root out corruption?

One year on, corruption persists. If you look at the recent report by the UN-monitoring group, there are indications that disbursements from the Central Bank still pass through individual hands and not through any specific government institutions. One gets a sense that it is not necessarily corruption but a lack of strong institutions on the ground. Some of these things should have changed by now.

Piracy has drastically been reduced off the Somali coast. Are some of the punitive measures, like those against money laundering, finally working?

All these responses are paying off, including the fact that ships now have their own security and are avoiding hotspots. One also has to give credit to the response of the Puntland government in trying to dismantle some of those groups who were behind the piracy, through imprisonment and legal responses.

The underlying issue is that piracy is a fall-out of worsening insecurity in Somalia, so any time the security situation improves, you find that also reflected in the piracy situation.

What are the key issues that will determine whether the present government succeeds?

The first issue would be the strength of the government and its ability to project itself as doing something for the people and being a credible partner to the international community.

Secondly, is the ability of the government and the international community, particularly AMISOM, to deal with Al-Shabaab and stretch beyond the areas they are holding. AMISOM is overstretched and it cannot go beyond the territories it has liberated, so it is now on the defensive and if you do this you become more and more vulnerable.

Finally, the question will be whether the international forces in Somalia can position themselves to win the hearts and minds of the people. If you’re on the ground and you’re not really making a huge impact, over time you will start to be seen as an occupying force.

Liesl Louw-Vaudran, ISS Consultant

Source: issafrica.org

Letter from Somaliland

Ayan Mahamoud, one of the organisers of Hargeysa’s International Book Fair, has all the girly vulnerability of a factory-tested steel girder. So it was disconcerting when, having called to the stage the western writers attending in the teeth of strict travel warnings, she burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so hard when the whole world is against you,’ she sobbed.

The word ‘beleaguered’ constantly comes to mind when visiting Somaliland, a country that doesn’t officially exist. For the past 22 years, this former British protectorate has waited for the world to notice that, in contrast to its unstable southern neighbour — the Somalia of warlords, Black Hawk Down and Al-Shabaab repute — it is peaceful, self-regulating and democratic. Surely the penny would drop, locals told themselves, and once Somaliland’s nationhood was recognised, the government would be able to access the kind of World Bank and IMF loans needed to rebuild an infrastructure shattered by civil war.

Instead, after a series of snubs, they recently received a kick to the crotch, with the announcement by Barclays — fretting over money-laundering regulations — that it intends to close the accounts of hundreds of money transfer businesses which are the only financial link between diaspora families and relatives at home. Somaliland has no banks, and even NGOs like Oxfam use money transfer companies to pay their staff. ‘We get $400 million a year in remittances. It supports families, but it also subsidises most new construction and pays for imports,’ Ali Said Shire, Somaliland’s minister of planning, told me. ‘If that stops, we’re in big trouble.’ He should know. He used to work for one of the biggest money transfer companies.

Somaliland isn’t the only country in the Red Sea which will be hard hit if Barclays sees its promise through, but the move feels cruelly timed given what is happening here. In the breezy capital of Hargeysa, the lobbies of the two main hotels are abuzz with Somalilanders returning from Sweden, Canada, Britain and Italy. Many are using their holidays to reconnect with their roots, but more and more are coming to invest and to stay. Private gyms, glass-fronted multi-storey offices and modern cafés are springing up next to the whitewashed mosques. At times the city, which was nearly erased by bombing and shelling ordered in the late 1980s by dictator Siad Barre — hence the locals’ abiding antagonism to ‘the south’ — feels like one big construction site.

The Hargeysa Book Fair, now in its sixth year, tracks that trend. The star attraction was elderly poet Hadraawi, whose recitations had youngsters pressed against window bars to catch every word. But each year the fair attracts more writers and bigger sponsors. They came from Nigeria, Djibouti, Kenya, Italy and the UK this time. The British ambassador to Somalia was a surprise guest, turning up for the opening ceremony flanked by sweating bodyguards. His presence underlined the essential hypocrisy of the international community’s position on Somaliland. Having lavished decades of funding and diplomatic effort on dysfunctional governments which failed to unite the country from Mogadishu, donors are reluctant to undermine their work. It should not be for outsiders, they argue, to call time on post-colonial borders. The breakaway state of Somaliland must first be recognised by its peers in the African Union, not an organisation known for swift action.

In fact, donors do support Somaliland. Britain and Denmark back a $55 million Somaliland Development Fund, which is as close to budget support as it’s possible to get without recognising a government. But being viewed by the world as a sliver of a violence-addled state with a penchant for Islamic fundamentalism has massive knock-on effects. Take major infrastructure projects. Ethiopia would dearly like to make more aggressive use of Somaliland’s Berbera port. It has built a modern, high-speed road all the way to their mutual border, but Somaliland’s government, cut off from international credit because of its unofficial status, has so far been unable to upgrade its side. I was struck by the quietness of the road from Hargeysa to Berbera, potentially one of the Horn of Africa key arteries.

And then there’s the little matter of those travel warnings. Type ‘Somaliland’ into the Foreign Office Travel Advisory website and you get zero hits, of course. Look up ‘Somalia’ and it tells you to stay well clear, citing a ‘high threat from terrorism, including kidnapping’.

It would be naive to underplay the threat posed by Al-Shabaab, given the organisation’s proximity, but the last major terrorist incident was in 2008. Determined to prevent a repeat, the government assigns armed escorts to foreign visitors who venture outside the capital. Despite such nannying, tourists are such a rare sight on the streets of the capital that residents come up to say hello, invite you to take pictures, and ask for your impressions so far.

Businessman Mohammed Yusef believes a certain national resignation has finally set in, coupled with a determination to Just Get On With It. ‘There was a time when we thought recognition was our sole problem. Now, without surrendering our demand for sovereignty one single bit, we know that there are other priorities, like building the economy of this country.’

Last weekend, that pragmatism was on display as President Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo, flanked by flower-garlanded police ponies, re-opened Hargeysa’s international airport. Near the newly tarmacked runway lie the metal corpses of the Migs which once rained horror down on the valley below. There were very few white faces in the audience, but the launch in a flag-festooned hangar was a moment for ululation, self-congratulation and laughter, with local comedians performing a series of skits on the theme of Development. To quote the movie: build it and they will come.

Michela Wrong, is the author of It’s Our Turn to Eat: the Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower and In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz.

Japan Is Opening Internet Fasting Camps Because 500,000 Students Are "Pathologically Addicted"

Internet addiction is still a festering concern across the world, and Japan is taking it seriously. Between the fall and spring of last year, researchers at Nihon University surveyed the internet usage habits of nearly 100,000 students. Nearly 8,000 of them, or 8 percent, they discovered, were "pathologically addicted" to the internet. Out of that group, 23 percent had trouble sleeping, and 15 percent were prone to awaken suddenly in the night. 

The government now fears that there are as many as half a million high school and middle school students, aged 12-18, who suffer from internet addiction, so it's taking a radical step to combat the growing trend: the education ministry is opening up government-run "fasting camps" to help the youth unplug.

The Daily Telegraph reports that "[t]he ministry is planning a comprehensive research project into internet addiction in the next fiscal year and has asked the government to fund immersion programmes designed to get children away from their computers, mobile phones and hand-held game devices." The students will be sent to outdoor learning centers, which sound a lot like summer camps.

"It's becoming more and more of a problem," Akifumi Sekine, a spokesman for the ministry, told the Telegraph. "We estimate this affects around 518,000 children at middle and high schools across Japan, but that figure is rising and there could be far more cases because we don't know about them all."

And maybe they'll need those serene outdoor settings, because pulling the plug can be like going cold turkey for a drug user—recent studies have shown that heavy internet users suffer from withdrawal when they cut the connection.

Internet addiction is a poorly understood problem; recent surveys have shown that as many as one in eight Americans is addicted to the internet. Then again, internet addiction surveys are notoriously easy to manipulate, and skepticism surrounds the very concept itself. Still, the purported online addiction rate rises to between 8 and 21 percent in young Americans. And China, which is home to the world's largest internet-using population, also sees some of the most acute—or at least most headline-grabbing—cases of internet addiction. A 14-year-old boy poisoned his parents for banning him from gaming; another attempted suicide to protest an internet restriction.

As such, China has essentially pioneered the concept "internet fasting camps" that Japan is opening now—but only in intent, not execution. China opened its first Internet Addiction Center in 2004. According to Time, it's a "military-run boot camp in Beijing" where, as of 2009, 3,000 adolescents had been treated for online addiction. Though China is apparently softening its approach, these were brutal, authoritarian places where the victims were treated more like inmates, and were sometimes subjected to beatings by counselors. In 2009, one internet "addict" was beaten to death.

Japan's program sounds exponentially more humane. The students will stay in "outdoor learning facilities" where there's no web connection, and be "encouraged to take part in outdoor activities, team sports and games," according to Russia Today. This approach is similar to American internet rehabs, private institutions like reStart and Promises that offer stays at quiet, verdant unplugged getaways and seem to be on track to becoming a cottage industry.

All of which certainly sound better than beatings and forced physical labor at Chinese boot camps. And since studies finger rising internet use as contributing to sleep and eating disorders, as well as depression and poor academic performance, heading outdoors for a the occasional internet fast sounds like a pretty good idea. We could all probably use a good data fast from time to time.

Obama: From I Have a Dream to I Have a Drone !!!

"I have a dream!!!" said Dr. Martin Luther King

"I have a drone!!!" said president Obama

President Obama gave a nice speech on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s famous speech. He always gives nice speeches.

He was right to talk about the gains that this country has made in ending formal discrimination, and to stress the unheralded people who were so instrumental in those gains.

He was right to say we haven’t attained true racial equality yet, though he gave a gratuitous slap to African Americans themselves, as he is wont to do, echoing a rightwing criticism: “Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse-making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways, as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support -- as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child, and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself.”

Obama was right to stress that Dr. King had another vision, one of economic equality and fairness and security, which we still have not attained.

But this was not the totality of Dr. King’s vision.

As Jesse Jackson noted so pointedly in the prepared remarks he wasn’t allowed to finish delivering on Saturday, Dr. King’s dream of 1963 was different than his dream of 1967 and 1968.

Jesse Jackson reminded us that King said, just a year to the day before he was assassinated, that a country “finding more security in bombs abroad than bread at home would lead to spiritual death.”

Jesse Jackson reminded us that King saw the linkages so vividly that he described them as the “evil triplets of militarism, materialism, and racism.”

And so Obama’s words ring kind of hollow today, invoking King as he did, on the very day that he’s making plans to go bomb Syria and after all the days he’s dropped drones on people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.

As my friend Kevin Alexander Gray put it so pungently, “We’ve gone from I have a dream to I have a drone.”

Source: progressive.org

Guardians of King’s Dream Regroup in Washington

People arrived at the Lincoln Memorial on Wednesday.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — “The dream is not dead,” said Dr. Alveda King, a minister and niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as she walked into the Shiloh Baptist Church here Wednesday morning. “People are proving the dream is not dead. The biggest thing is love.”

Fifty years to the day after her uncle roused the nation with his “I Have a Dream” speech, Dr. King’s descendants gathered for a morning interfaith service to begin a day that will culminate with a speech by the nation’s first black president in the very spot — the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — where Dr. King delivered his call to civil justice.

As the service got under way, thousands of people were flocking to the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial in preparation for an afternoon ceremony, including President Obama’s speech. Security was extremely tight, with most streets around the National Mall closed to cars. The security and a light rain seemed to be keeping down the size of the early crowds. 

Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

But at Shiloh Baptist, a historic church founded 150 years ago by former slaves — and where Dr. King spoke in 1960 — the mood was festive as dignitaries streamed into the soaring chapel. The service was a reminder that at his core, Dr. King was a religious man whose civil rights work was rooted in his faith and a desire for what he called “the beloved community” — a world without poverty or racism or war.

“The true essence, the true nature, the true character of Martin Luther King Jr. is that he was a pastor, he was a prophet, he was a faith leader,” his daughter, the Rev. Bernice A. King, the chief executive of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, told those gathered here.

“We are here today,” she said, “to call upon our faith, to call upon our spirituality, to call upon our higher selves recognizing that nothing in the world will ever change if it’s not for people of faith coming together.”

Wednesday’s events are part of a weeklong commemoration of the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice that began Saturday with a similar civil rights march on the National Mall. Wednesday’s event is intended, organizers said, as more of a call to unity. Mr. Obama will be joined former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and the ceremony will include a bell-ringing ceremony at 3 p.m., along with concurrent bell-ringing ceremonies in cities and communities across the nation.

Outside the church, where dignitaries arrived in a steady stream of black Lincoln Town Cars for the morning service, memories of 1963 were deep — and very personal.

Deacon Chuck Hall, 67, who grew up in Denver, said he remembers Dr. King visiting his church when he was a young boy. His sisters were photographed with the civil rights leader, he said, but he was busy playing basketball and skipped the picture — a decision he regrets to this day. On the day of the march in Washington, his parents sat him down in front of the television and instructed him to watch.

“I wasn’t here,” he said, “but I was at the march.”

Jerome McNeil, a retired bus operator for the Washington Metro system, was outside the church, cameras dangling from his neck, taking pictures alongside news photographers, though he is an amateur. He grew up in Mobile, Ala., and like many here, he said that the nation has come a long way toward achieving Dr. King’s vision for justice and racial equality, but still has a long way to go. He said he intended to chronicle the day’s events for his grandchildren, who are in school.

“I’m hopeful that in 50 years, they won’t have to have this type of demonstration and meeting,” Mr. McNeil said. “At some point, hopefully, they will be recognized for who they are and not what they are.”

When Andrew Young, the retired ambassador, civil rights leader and former Atlanta mayor, addressed the crowd on the mall, he did so in song, delivering a stirring rendition of “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom,” an anthem of the civil rights movement. But when he implored the audience to join in, the few who did could barely be heard. 

“We’re not here to declare victory,” Mr. Young later told the crowd. “We’re here to simply say that the struggle continues.”

As Sandra Harris boarded a train bound for downtown Washington, the nostalgia of attending the 1963 march set in. At 18, she had taken a bus from segregated Nashville. “I’d never seen so many people in my life, ever,” she said.

As a student at Fisk University, she said, she had participated in sit-ins in Nashville alongside John Lewis, an organizer of the original march, and had been arrested several times.

She “wanted a better life for Negroes in the United States because we were not being treated fairly,” she said, using the term for African-Americans accepted in that period.

Headed to another march on Wednesday, this time for “jobs and justice,” she and her daughter joined a rally at Georgetown University’s law school, where signs and chants indicated how the scope of the fight for black equality had broadened to include gays, immigrants and others.

Hoisting a portrait of a faceless man carrying a sign declaring his manhood, John Thompson, 24, an artist from East Orange, N.J., said, “Everything has room for improvement.”

Despite drizzling rain, the march rolled past the Department of Labor on Constitution Avenue, where workers cheered the marchers and snapped photos during a brief stop. By the time it rounded a corner onto Pennsylvania Avenue headed toward the White House, more than 5,000 people had joined the march, said a police officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give an estimate of the crowd size.

Adrian Fox, 22, tacked a sign onto his shirt that read “Ain’t I a woman?” Ms. Fox, who is Latina and transgender, said she hoped the march would allow marginalized racial, ethnic and gender groups to unite on common ground.

“The privilege of the majority affects us the same way,” Ms. Fox said.

The marchers made another stop at the Justice Department before heading to the Lincoln Memorial.

Although crowds did not appear to be as big as 50 years ago — or even as large as over the weekend — there appeared to be some problems gaining access to the mall.

Carl Stewart, 43, of Washington, said he waited in line for two hours at the main entrance before giving up.

“We’re going to walk up here to see what we can hear,” said Mr. Stewart, as he and his wife headed toward the Lincoln Memorial along the sidewalk next to Constitution Avenue. 

Mr. Stewart said the delay was because of a lack of metal detectors. He saw only six of them. 

SHIRKADA GOOGLE OO KU SOO DARAYSA AFKA SOOMAALIGA ADEEGA TURJUMAADA EE AY BIXISO !!!

Image Credit: toprankblog / Flickr

Shirkada Google waxay haatan isku turjuntaa 71 luuqadood oo dunida lagaga hadlo. 

Tayada tujumaadaha Google uu sameeyo way kala duduwan tahay. Balse guud ahaan caalamka lagama soo helayo adeeg ka wanaagsan isku turjumida luuqadaha dunida Google ku sameeyo.

Kooxda Shikada Googleka u qaabilsan isku-turjimada luuqaduhu haatan waxay ku hawlan yihiin sidii ay u balaarin lahaayeen adeega isku-turjumaada luqadaha, iyagoo ku talo jira sidii ay adeega turjumaadaha ugu soo dari lahaayeen luuqado hor leh oo ay ka mid yihii Af Soomaaligu. Laakiin dhibaatada kooxdan haystaa ayaa ah iyagoo u baahan macluumaad farobadan oo ah kelmadaha luuqadaha cusub ee ay soo kordhin rabaan. 

Sidaasi darteed, GOOGLE waxa uu u baahan yahay wakhtigan xaadirka ah taageerada dadka ku hadla luuqada Afka Soomaaligu in ay qiimeeyaan tayada adeega turjumaada Af Soomaaliga ee uu GOOGLE bixiyo.

Google is working to add Somali, Zulu, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo to Google Translate

 

Image Credit: toprankblog / Flickr

Google is working to add Somali, Zulu, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo to its existing language options in Google Translate at the moment.

A post published to the Google Africa page on Google+ is asking for volunteers to help evaluate the quality of its current machine translation system.

Google Translate supports 71 different languages at the moment, but Google now hopes to add some of its most “promising” African languages by leveraging the expertise of the Google+ community.

Users can rate passages translated into English, and vice versa. After assessing the quality of the work, volunteers can categorize it as Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor, before moving on to another example.
It’s difficult to ascertain how far away Google is from actually introducing these languages to Google Translate, but it’s a clear indicator that the company is keen to expand the product and support as many users as possible in Africa.

➤ Google Translate (via Google Africa)

Somaliland: Midgaans and Ethiopians Are Fighting for Last Place in Somaliland

Above, the Jaylaani barbershop. Below to the left, a Gaboye in front of the shop.

By Mark Hay

The Jaylaani barbershop in the center of Hargeisa, Somaliland, does good business. It’s nothing special as far as barbershops go—actually it’s a little raggedy. The counters are littered with tufts of hair and discarded khat leaves, broken and mismatched trimmers and razors, and creams and ointments with crusty containers and labels in languages no one in the shop can read. But it’s an institution. It’s the kind of place where people come just to sit outside and chat. The Jaylaani barbershop has developed enough of a following that it’s one of the few businesses in Hargeisa that stays open in the afternoon, when everyone’s off chewing khat.

But the men who run Jaylaani, past the small talk and professionalism, are worried. They are members of an ambiguous ethnosocial class often referred to as “the minority clan,” because their actual name, Midgaan, which encompasses the Timal, Yibir, Gaboye, and other groups, doubles as an insult. While some Midgaan are trying to reclaim that name, they still see it as a connoting pseudo-slavery in Somali society, where they’ve traditionally been restricted to “unclean” work, like barbering, blacksmithing, infibulation, and leatherwork.

For all their murky and disturbing history, being relegated to menial jobs at least meant they had regular work. However, the majority clans of Somaliland have found a way to get into the barbering business over the past few years without dirtying their hands. They’ve done it by building barbershops, stocking them with new and functional equipment, and then hiring the cheap labor of illegal or ambiguous Ethiopian migrants to compete with or even undercut the traditional barbers on quality and price.

Members of the Ubah Social Welfare Organization, a minority-run minority rights advocacy group, estimate that more than 20 barbershops have closed in the face of such competition. And now one of these competitors has moved in down the street from Jaylaani, throwing the security of the community in doubt.

Most politicians in Somaliland say there’s little need to worry, as there are many opportunities for the Midgaan. They say that their lot is improving rapidly in terms of legal, cultural, and economic equality with the majority clan. Mohamed and Ahmed Ibrahim Hassan, two brothers who work at Jaylaani, say it’s true that some Midgaan have made it into government jobs or the security forces and their lives have improved materially over the past 20 years of Somaliland’s independence. But many of those improvements have come through concentrated efforts by USWO and aid organizations, who partner with international donors on simple projects like making sure there's more than one toilet per ten families in the Gaboye ghetto, or creating incentives and scholarships to keep Midgaan children from dropping out of school in the face of bigotry.

Above, an Ethiopian cafe. Below to the left, Yusuf Xabashi.

But even with such efforts, as of 2006, when the Voice of Somaliland Minority Women Organization conducted a survey of the Midgaan in Hargeisa, most of the Midgaan lived off less than $1 per day, at least half of the population was unemployed, and only 20 percent attended school. Even now, only between 30 and 40 Midgaan (out of perhaps 10,000 in Hargeisa alone, by Mohamed’s rough estimates) are attending or have graduated from universities. And, USWO insists, you’d be hard-pressed to find one Midgaan in a technical school, despite their history of work in technical/vocational trades. Given that vocational skills are more in demand here than university skills, USWO officials suspect they’re being systematically barred from potential new means of employment despite their current employment crisis. 

Beyond the simple question of whether or not jobs exist, Mohamed and Ahmed can both recount numerous instances of persistent discrimination—persecution and beatings of Midgaan and non-Midgaan youths in relationships, systematic preference for non-Midgaan among equally qualified job candidates, and a lack of access to justice through the police, elders, or courts. Mohamed and Ahmed’s anecdotes of oppression are supported by the findings of numerous aid organizations. The legend in Mohamed and Ahmed’s clan is that their ancestors hunted with bows and poisoned arrows, so the meat they ate died without having been slaughtered in halal fashion, hence they were ritually unclean. And many majority clans still refuse to so much as eat from the same plate as a Midgaan, making the barriers to social, political, and economic justice hard to overcome.

They could dissimulate easily, as there’s no physical type associated with a Midgaan. But Mohamed and Ahmed say the question "What is your clan?" is common, and they don’t want to hide from who they are. They’re proud of their identity and their history and they’d rather not increase stigma and discrimination by hiding behind a false identity, admitting implicitly that the Midgaan are a base people.

They could flee the nation, as in the past Midgaans found success and less discrimination in nations like Libya. But instability in the region, and the growing threats of human trafficking (including a severe regional fear of organ harvesting) prevents them from leaving. There is a US program, recognizing the poor situation of minorities, to give them preferred immigration status and bring over large groups, but all the Midgaan I’ve encountered have stories of individuals who, in need of immediate cash, sell their registries to majority Somalis.

So for now, aside from a few success stories and the vague potential of a better life somehow in the future (despite massive national unemployment and persistent low- to high-level discrimination), these threatened jobs are all the Midgaan have. The problem is that these are also the only jobs the Ethiopian migrants have.

Accounts of the number of Ethiopians in Somaliland and their status vary wildly, as some come for a short time and return, some are just stuck in the nation temporarily, and many are uncounted totally or trying to blend in. The first wave was in the early 90s, just after the de facto independent state was proclaimed. They were treated well by those Somalilanders who’d fled to Ethiopia for refuge during Somalia’s Civil War.

One of the early Ethiopian refugees, Yusuf Xabashi, who adopted a Somali name, recalls how the Ethiopians flooding Somaliland changed over time. In the 2000s, when migration was in the tens of thousands, fewer and fewer Ethiopians were political refugees and more and more were Oromo migrants coming over to beg seasonally. They would pass through to Somali ports to go to Yemen and the Gulf for work, run out of money, and get stuck. Or they would just be traveling to Hargeisa to seek a job. This shift caused attitudes towards the Ethiopians to change.

An increasing number of improvements in Somaliland’s security and infrastructure have made it an enticing migration route. Information and remittance networks have provided the money for Ethiopians to travel, but regional instabilities in destination countries like Libya, Yemen, and Syria have bottlenecked the migrants into Somaliland and Puntland’s urban centers, For those who get stuck en route, the pressure mounts to offer labor on the cheap and work the most miserable jobs—ditch digging, toilet cleaning, etc.

While theoretically the Ethiopian migrants are decent for large-scale economics and politics, buying goods and providing cheap services, their association with street begging and their employment amid massive Somalilander unemployment has led to widespread xenophobia and discrimination: they are seen as potential vessels of terrorism, tuberculosis, and HIV. The many Muslim Oromo are accused of being fakers. And “Christian” and “Xabashi” (Ethiopian) have become derogatory terms of marginalization. NGO workers in the country caution against taking the claims of discrimination at face value, as claims of physical attacks and systematic denial of services are often exaggerated to push the hands of aid providers. But even if exaggerated, it’s undeniable that the Ethiopian migrants are in some level of marginalization. So, out of necessity and lack of options, they take the jobs given, and those include barbering.

The truly troubling thing about the Midgaan-Ethiopian competition for barbering and other “unclean” jobs is that, if these minority groups joined forces, they’d constitute a fair power block of well over 100,000 people in a nation of just 3.5 million. But the groups can’t even unite within themselves. Last year, recount Mohamed and Ahmed, the Midgaan tried to secure a seat on the local council of Hargeisa, but each of the four minority clans put up their own candidates, refused to consolidate behind one, and were firmly trounced. And within the Ethiopian communities, many seasonal migrants from the Ogaden refuse to identify as Ethiopian, choosing to pass as Somalis, while the older immigrants tend to discount and distance themselves from the recent economic migrants who give them and more recent political refugees and asylum seekers a “bad name.”

Mohamed and Ahmed stress that even if they could overcome their internal fractures, they all live so hand-to-mouth (both they and the Ethiopians have no access to remittances to sustain them when out of work like majority Somalilanders do) and in such geographically dispersed and demographically negligible communities that there’s little chance of organizing coordinated action. So for now everyone’s stuck in a wary standoff, with the Midgaan and Ethiopians eyeing each other from down the street. And in this fractious struggle, which creates a perverse market competition, the majority consumers win. No one’s sure, though, what will happen to the losers. They just don’t want to be the ones who lose. 

Source: vice.com

Somalis fear loss of remittances as Barclays plans exit

By Katrina Manson in Hargeisa, Somaliland

Each time relatives send cash to Mohamed Ali Mohamud, it helps him not only to pay his own bills, but to sustain dozens of other family members in Somaliland.

“They use it for rice and tea,” says the 51-year-old government functionary, queueing at a money transfer agency whose hall swells with customers soon after prayers finish in Hargeisa, the capital. “It’s for their daily life.”

About half of the impoverished 10m population of Somalia and the self-declared breakaway republic of Somaliland depends on remittances from among the 1.5m Somalis living overseas, worth more than $1bn a year.

But their lifeline is about to be cut as Barclays plans to stop supporting money transfers with about 250 remittance companies, several in Somalia and Somaliland, from the end of September. Barclays is the last leading bank serving the Somali market and aid officials and diplomats fear the halt would undermine efforts to promote stability in a fragile region suffering from terrorism, piracy and clan warfare. “We are very concerned; it can have a huge impact on livelihoods,” says Michele Cervone, EU envoy to Somalia.

Overseas remittances account for up to half of the economy of Somalia and Somaliland, far outstripping aid contributions from international donors.

Although Barclays has given little detail about the reasons for the closures, it says some money services could “unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing”. Al-Qaeda-linked jihadis control a swath of Somalia and regularly detonate suicide bombs in the capital Mogadishu. One of its leaders was born in Somaliland, the semi-autonomous territory without a single bank.

Rushanara Ali, a British parliamentarian heading up a campaign to keep the money flowing, says banks “are scared of the impact if they fall foul of the regulators”. Last year, the UK’s HSBC bank was fined $1.9bn for money laundering. Standard Chartered was fined $667m and nearly lost its US licence for moving money on behalf of Iran and Sudan in violation of sanctions.

Scott Paul, policy lead at Oxfam which has researched remittances, says “the squeeze [on money transfer companies] has been going on ever since September 11 really”.

But Oxfam says regulators have regularly failed to find evidence that money transfer companies are conduits for financing global terrorism, and that withdrawing wire services risks far greater insecurity.

“The alternative [is] suitcases on planes – the risk is that regulators [will] have no idea where the money’s going,” says Mr Paul, who argues banks should instead put more effort into their due diligence.

The UK – a big donor to Somalia and Somaliland – says it supports “a healthy and legitimate remittance sector” and is meeting banks and regulators to try to find a way to provide remittances. But it has yet to iron out a solution.

The planned shutdown by Barclays will hit Dahabshiil, a privately owned company founded by a Somalilander and Africa’s biggest supplier of remittances. The company has 286 payout locations across Somalia, whose people have yet to put back together a country destroyed by 22 years of civil war.

Oxfam estimates that more than a quarter of remittances headed to the Somali population comes from the UK and says nearly all aid agency transfers, including by the UN, rely on Dahabshiil to pay staff.

Campaigners against the shutdown, including Olympic runner Mo Farah, hope that Barclays, which has twice extended Dahabshiil’s cut-off date since it announced the cull in May, will offer a further reprieve of between six to 12 months, giving diplomats, donors and companies time to find a solution.

Ms Ali says turning away money transfer agencies is both “draconian” and “dangerous” and unfairly penalises local business.

Barclays has launched its own money transfer service to east Africa in recent months, bypassing businesses like Dahabshiil and will continue to work with Western Union, the US-headquartered wire service that has only a single branch in all of Somaliland and Somalia. Western Union charges more than twice as much as Dahabshiil.

“It’s Western Union that stands to benefit,” says Ms Ali of the company, which previously paid $94m in a settlement over a money laundering case in the US. But Western Union says its internal control systems are stronger than the “less stringent and less costly” procedures of smaller money transfer companies.

Queueing up in the middle of Dahabshiil’s branch near Hargeisa’s souk, Mr Mohamed says he and up to 50 nomads in remote regions depend on relatives based in Birmingham, Cardiff and London. They wire him $500 a month. “They are saying why is our life going to be cut – there will be nothing . . . I think it will be very very difficult, the life of the people.”

Source: financialtimes.com