Exile: Her feet planted in Somaliland sand, an English school in her head

Nadifa Mohamed

By Feargus O’Sullivan

When writer Nadifa Mohamed returned to her Somaliland home town of Hargeisa in 2010 after 22 years’ absence, it was not her eyes that helped her locate her childhood home, but her feet.

“I was walking around the neighbourhood I was staying in and at one point I felt my legs sinking into the sand in the street. I remembered it straight away from when I was a child – that area is embedded in me, and everything fell into place.”

This anecdote of return and deep memory reveals a process that is at the heart of Ms Mohamed’s fiction. Now 31, she was prised away from Somaliland at the age of six, when her family fled the country and moved to the UK to escape the escalating civil war.

Her path to British literary success was fairly smooth: school in suburban London and graduation from St Hilda’s College Oxford were followed by a shortlisting for the Guardian First Book Award and an Orange Prize longlisting for her first novel, Black Mamba Boy.

Now Ms Mohamed has been endorsed by that most respected of literary commendations, publisher Granta’s decennial list of the best young British writers. She joins a group that has included Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Despite an adulthood and promising career firmly based in Britain, it is to her family’s Somaliland past that Ms Mohamed’s work consistently returns. She seeks to rediscover roots and memories made distant by migration, to sink her feet back into the sand of her past.

Lean and poetic, her writing attempts this feat by mixing invention with retold family anecdote, piecing together a narrative that connects fragments of the past with her imagination. Black Mamba Boy reimagined her father’s real life journey across Africa and the Middle East, searching for his own lost father. Her second novel, Orchard of Lost Souls, due out this August, follows three Hargeisa women as Somaliland descends into civil war. It is a compelling snapshot of a city whose normal life is unravelling into violence and an elegy to the childhood friends and relatives Ms Mohamed left behind.

It is no coincidence that the imagery in these books sometimes has the dreamy vividness of brown-edged old photos – it is faded images like these that set her creative process into motion.

“Normally my writing starts with an image or two that I can’t get out of my head,” she says. “With Black Mamba Boy, I was haunted by this mental picture of a man on a ship, a sepia-toned image of a black guy staring out to sea. Another one was on three little boys in loincloths splashing around in the water, probably in Aden.”

The process of determining the identity of the people in these images and where they fit within the narrative is one that involves as much talking and listening as reading and writing.

While she cites South Africa’s J.M. Coetzee and Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma as influences, her greatest enthusiasm seems to be for less obviously literary inspirations.

“Music is a huge influence on me. When I was writing Black Mamba Boy, I listened to a lot of Louis Armstrong, partly because his deep, gravelly voice reminds me so much of my dad’s. The Nubian Egyptian singer Ali Hassan Kuban also blew me away – his music is like what I want to achieve with writing: it’s jagged, mad and fast and also sounds somehow ancient. In a way, it’s my soul music.”

Understandably for someone whose writing has family storytelling so close to its centre (though she insists that her work is not directly biographical) Ms Mohamed cites the cadences of Somaliland speech as key in shaping her style. She feels that a certain writerliness is a typical trait of everyday Somaliland talk.

“When I read other Somalis, the way of phrasing is very long sentences running on, images that pile on top of each other. Somaliland is very poetic, in a way that I’m only discovering right now in my own voice. People talk in a really very literary way there, much more than in the UK. Just listening in to a normal conversation between old women, they’re often masters language-wise. The depth of language is incredible – and this is often from people who can’t read.”

Despite the vividness of these voices in Ms Mohamed’s writing, her work thrives on distance and recollection. Agreeing that it might have been her family’s flight from war-torn Somalia that motivated her to become a writer, Ms Mohamed says her former homeland is a place she chooses to return to imaginatively rather than physically.

“It’s taken me a long time to accept that I won’t go back to Somaliland. When we first left, the move was always meant to be temporary and even recently I thought I’d go. But now I’ve come to realise that London is my home.”

This gradual realisation is perhaps typical of her generation of British Somalis, many of whom left their birth country during the civil war to escape anarchy that they assumed would be shortlived.

But joining contemporaries such as journalist Rageh Omaar and athlete Mo Farah, who have made highly visible contributions to British culture, it seems that Ms Mohamed’s future work may move on from Somaliland-based subjects to explore her inevitably complex relationship with her adoptive country.

The obsessive images shaping the contours of her third book – still very much at the planning stage – explore the writer’s early years in Britain. “I have in my head a big, grey Victorian school, like a camp or an institution, somewhere in London. She went to one such school here herself, she says, and it left an “indelible memory” for her: “that shock to my system of leaving my mother for the first time”.

Source: Financial Times

Ethiopia says it won't bow to Egyptian pressure over Nile dam

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

[ADDIS ABABA] Ethiopia's construction of a dam on a tributary of the Nile is not open to negotiation, the Addis Ababa government said on Friday, as a confrontation with Egypt over the project escalated.

The Cairo government said this week it would demand the project be halted, after its southern neighbour began diverting a stretch of the river to make way for the US$4.7 billion dam that will become Africa's biggest hydropower plant.

Ethiopia said it had summoned Egypt's ambassador to explain comments by politicians in Cairo advising Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi to take hostile action to halt the building of the dam.

A spokesman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said Cairo's position on the dam was unclear and its concerns were often not based on science.

Source: businesstimes

Somaliland:Silatech, ARC, Dahabshiil Join to Support Somali Youth Enterprise

Doha, June 3, 2013

Silatech has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dahabshiil, the largest international payments firm in Africa, and the American Refugee Committee (ARC), an international NGO fighting poverty and unemployment, to promote Somali youth enterprise development and provide employment solutions in the Somali territories.

In keeping with its mission to create jobs and expand economic opportunities for young people throughout the Arab world, Silatech will collaborate with Dahabshiil and ARC to explore initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship and self-employment opportunities as a means of alleviating poverty. As a Somali-founded business, Dahabshiil remains the primary remittance service for the global Somali diaspora, with thousands of outlets in more than 150 countries. Dahabshiil’s portfolio includes Dahabshil Bank International, a full service bank headquartered in Djibouti with branches across the Somali territories, and a leading telecommunication services provider, Somtel. As such, the initiative between Silatech, Dahabshiil and ARC is the first of its kind in the Somali territories and will leverage Dahabshiil Group’s full suite of services as part of an exclusive joint venture.

According to a 2012 UN report, youth unemployment in the Somali territories is approximately 67 percent, one of the highest in the world. However, given the increasingly positive outlook for the Somali territories and the relative stability in many areas, development organisations and socially-conscious private sector companies are increasingly shifting their focus away from humanitarian assistance towards sustainable economic rehabilitation. As this transition continues, providing the right conditions for stimulating economic activities, particularly for the youth, is becoming critical. Companies such as Dahabshiil have played a key role in this change.

Building on a Silatech-led online crowd-funding platform – which has mobilised more than $3.3 million from over 80,000 individual lenders to fully finance the needs of more than 2,700 young Arab micro-entrepreneurs – Silatech, ARC and Dahabshiil will explore adapting the success of this model for the Somali environment. ARC has a strong presence within the international Somali diaspora, which the initiative would look to tap into as a potential resource to help fund Somali microenterprises through the platform.

Reflecting on the partnership, Silatech CEO Dr. Tarik M. Yousef commented: “Developing a strategy for intentionally targeting younger clients represents an enormous social and business opportunity for financial institutions operating in Somalia. Through this partnership we are delighted to help a leading Somali company like Dahabshiil further fulfil its mission of investing in the betterment of the Somali society.”

Dahabshiil CEO Abdirashid Duale

Dahabshiil CEO Abdirashid Duale, said: “We have witnessed at close-quarters how remittance finance has helped foster development and fuel national economies across the continent. As the economic outlook of the Somali territories continues to improve, it is clear that the young generation will play a key role in the economic future of the region. Dahabshiil is committed to investing in sustainable projects across Africa. Commitment to community support and strong corporate social responsibility are core principles that are critical to the future success and sustainability of our business. In addition to the much-needed financial services that we offer, Dahabshiil will, through this partnership, be able to deliver skills-building and guidance to young Somalis.”

Responding on behalf of ARC, CEO Daniel Wordsworth said: “In spite of overwhelming challenges, Somali youth have demonstrated resilience and the capacity to adapt and survive. We believe that this initiative will empower young entrepreneurs in Somalia with the services, skills and knowledge needed to help their businesses thrive, thus contributing to long-term recovery.”

With projects in 11 Arab countries, Silatech microenterprise partnerships have since 2009 financed more than 30,000 businesses and provided assistance to more than 190,000 young people. Silatech is the largest provider of youth-focused microenterprise services in the Middle East and North Africa.

About Silatech

Silatech is a Qatar-based social initiative that works to create jobs and expand economic opportunities for young people throughout the Arab world. The organisation promotes large-scale job creation, entrepreneurship, access to capital and markets, and the participation and engagement of young people in economic and social development. Founded in 2008 by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Silatech finds innovative solutions to challenging problems, working with a wide spectrum of development organizations, governments and the private sector to foster sustainable, positive change for Arab youth. For more information, please visit: http://www.silatech.com

About Dahabshiil

Dahabshiil is the largest African money transfer company, running thousands of outlets and employing more than 5,000 people across 150 countries. Apart from core remittance services, Dahabshiil provides financial services to international organisations, as well as to both large and small businesses and private individuals through Dahabshiil Bank. It provides telecommunication services through its company, Somtel. Dahabshiil has a strong focus in giving back to the community and dedicates a substantial amount of its annual profits to improving schools, renovating and building hospitals, facilitating agriculture and sanitation services, and other projects. For more information, please visit: http://www.dahabshiil.com/

About American Refugee Committee

American Refugee Committee works with people who have lost everything to war or disaster. They let us know what they need most, and we work together to develop ways to help them get it. Our programmes are as diverse as the people we serve, but they all work together for the same goal: to help people take back control of their lives. We have worked with people around the world for more than 30 years, and our 2,000 staff members help nearly 2.5 million people a year throughout Africa and Asia.

ARC is building a 21st Century humanitarian organization rooted in co-creating with committed people to provide more meaningful solutions to humanitarian crises worldwide. In response to the 2011 famine, ARC and local Somalis co-created “I AM A STAR”, an innovative platform that galvanized the Somali Diaspora to give back to those in Somalia. The program has engaged more than 33,000 people from more than 60 countries to help Somalia. ARC’s team in Somalia is led by a member of the Somali diaspora and is empowered by ARC technical support and expertise. In Somalia, ARC is providing life-saving services including clean water, healthcare, and relief commodities to 170,000 people.

Famine Still Lingers in Somalia

(Even though the famine declaration has been lifted, families don’t have enough to eat. We’re distributing essentials like rice, beans and cooking oil.)

Q&A with ARC Humanitarian Worker

One year ago, famine was declared in Somalia. Families fled their drought-stricken villages on foot because they didn’t have enough to eat.

The American Refugee Committee responded in Mogadishu last year. We began immediately offering lifesaving aid, like food, clean water and medical care. Because the international community responded with humanitarian aid and were able to improve conditions, the United Nations cancelled the famine declaration early this year.  

But the situation remains dire. About 28 percent of people need food aid to survive. One in five children is malnourished. Even without famine, Somalia remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world – and one of the most complex. Because virtually no one is there helping people.

Said Sheik-Abdi, a Somali-American program manager at our headquarters in Minneapolis, has traveled to Somalia several times in the past couple years. He spoke to us via Skype from Mogadishu on the one-year anniversary of the famine.

**********

What are conditions like now in Somalia? 
“Almost everywhere you drive in Mogadishu, you see scattered camps with people who came to the city to escape famine, war and flooding. They’re living without adequate shelter or other essentials. Because it’s the rainy season, latrines have overflowed, creating a health hazard. They have very little help.   

When the famine was declared, the international community came together and responded very quickly, and within six months, there was no longer famine in Somalia. But the situation is still dire. The last few days I’ve been here and visited camps in Mogadishu, people have constantly asked for food. They don’t have enough to eat. 

Our team is working tirelessly. We’ve been distributing food like rice, oil and beans. All together, more than 22,000 families will receive food assistance.” 

What is the mood of people in Mogadishu? 
“Everyone is excited. The bullets are not flying left and right. It’s much safer than before, and people are now asking international organizations to come and help. There is a lot of construction taking place; the population has increased tremendously. A lot of people who fled the country are coming home and repairing their homes that were damaged during the civil war, which is creating jobs.  

People are also a little anxious about the election coming up in August about whether the transitional federal government will become a permanent government. With a permanent government comes the opportunity to receive more help from the international community.”  

What is the American Refugee Committee doing to help? 
“Besides the food assistance I mentioned earlier, we’re currently employing 300 workers – mostly women – to clean up an area of Mogadishu. They receive $4 a day. They’re using the money they earn to feed their families and provide for their basic needs. 

Our staff is running a cholera treatment center, which is open around the clock. Our medical staff treats people with symptoms of cholera, a contagious disease that can become deadly without medical care. Through oral rehydration solution and IV fluids if necessary, patients receive lifesaving care.

Our health clinics at camps for the displaced continue to treat the sick. Medical staff transports people with more serious conditions to a hospital or cholera treatment center. Families living in camps don’t have transportation, and because many are new to Mogadishu, they might not know where the nearest clinic is located.

At Banadir Hospital, a medical facility for women and children, we’re repairing two damaged rooms. We’re also continuing to run the child-friendly space for siblings of sick children. About 20 to 30 children a day go to the space, receive two meals a day and participate in structured activities.

We’re also working to build four wells and 500 latrines at camps for displaced people to ensure they have access to the sanitation they need.” 

You had the opportunity to see the Somali Olympians train in Mogadishu. What was that like?

“They’re incredible! I talked to them briefly, and they’re were very excited to be representing their country and feel very proud.”

Somaliland Is a Real Country, According to Somaliland

By Mark Hay

At the back corner of the top floor of a little office building in London’s East End, around the corner from the Tesco down Mile End Road from the Whitechapel subway stop, sits the one-room Somaliland Mission in the UK. Yes, Somaliland, not Somalia (as the pamphlets in the office make painfully clear). In 1991, right after the ouster of the Cold War-era military dictator of Somalia, Mohamed Siad Barre, and just before the descent of the country into 22-and-counting years of chaos and violence, the northern stretch of the nation softly declared its independence as the Republic of Somaliland.

No countries have officially recognized the independence of Somaliland, however, and few provide it much support. In fact many countries, America included, officially back the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, a party that periodically denies the independence of Somaliland.

Yet since declaring its independence, Somaliland appears to have experienced less insecurity and violence and developed more effectively than the rest of Somalia. Most of the recent (extremely limited) news coverage of the region has applauded heartening developments like the 2010 presidential elections, in which the opposition party defeated the incumbents by a razor-thin margin of a few hundred votes in elections dubbed free and fair by international observers, and power transitioned with nary a Molotov cocktail thrown.
After that changing of the guard, the new president, Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo, appointed Ali Aden Awale as the new head of Somaliland’s Mission in the United Kingdom, a fully functioning diplomatic outpost issuing Somaliland visas and promoting the cause of recognition. After visiting the Mission recently, I spoke to Awale to figure out how exactly he conducts diplomacy in a world that has yet to recognize the reality of his nation.

VICE: How did you get a mission in the UK despite the fact that the government doesn’t recognize the independence of your region?

Ali Aden Awale: Let me first correct you. We have never been a region and we are not a region. We are a country called Somaliland. We became independent before Somalia even came into being. And then there was a unification of the two states. Then, in 1991, we cancelled that unity.

The office came into being because of the Somaliland community that was already here. It was a very strong community. During the civil war of the 1980s our country organized itself from here. It was a very strong part of our struggle against the dictatorship of Barre.

After the successful toppling of that dictator we turned our office into a diplomatic Mission. Because on May 18,1991, [when they got rid of the dictator] we decided to look back upon our history [to the existence of an independent State of Somaliland in 1960] and withdrew from the union and declared the re-assertion of our independence again. At the same time we decided that we needed an outlet where we could conduct our day-to-day activities and convey our message to the world.

Why did you choose London for that?

London was our biggest community and our main channel of communication with the outside world. This office has grown over the years and we now have 13 posts and representatives’ offices outside of Somaliland in places like Belgium, France, Ethiopia, Norway, and the USA all functioning and representing the nation.

How did you get involved in all of this? How does one become the ambassador for a young and unrecognized country like Somaliland?

At the time of the struggle I was one of the members of the community who was supportive of the cause. I was living in Saudi Arabia at the time, financing the operations back home. Later, I became a member of the current ruling party, before we won the election in 2010, and after we won I was appointed by the president.

When you went from being an office supporting a movement against the Barre dictatorship to a diplomatic mission—keeping in mind that Somaliland had been badly damaged in the civil war—how did you function? How did you practically communicate with and speak for Somaliland?

It was one of the toughest and most difficult situations. It used to take us a fairly long time to get in touch with the people back home. There were some satellite telephone systems, which were very expensive. But there were no postal services at all and not even a telephone system. It took us about three years to establish the first telephone contact with a few imported satellite phones.

What’s the learning curve like, transitioning from being the organizers of a resistance movement to diplomats?

The way we see it, we are still struggling for our nation. We were able to establish our government systems. But it is a learning curve, as you say. We started with disarming the militias, then bit-by-bit we transitioned to a multi-party system. We have endured a lot of ups and downs and I think we have been very good at dealing with situations as they arise.

The main issue is that we are now able to understand how the world works. And now we are pushing our case in the world and we also started to engage talks to officially end the union with the people in Mogadishu, although it professionally ended in May 1991.


What’s it like talking with the Somali government, which believes in the unity of the nation, including Somaliland, and doesn’t approve of your independence?

The conversation, as you can imagine, is different on their side. They have their own reasons for being in that mood. But as we see it, it is our country and our decision to end that union. We know they may be very unhappy with it. But that’s their problem.

Do you have any problems with the British government, given that you’re conducting diplomatic work in their country for a nation they don’t officially recognize as existing?

In fact we haven’t got any sort of difficult situation in this regard. We have had a very strong and long relationship with the British government. And most of the time the people who are representatives have dual nationalities with the country they work in, so we don’t have trouble with visas. Also, we are not the only country here with an office that is not recognized by Britain. There’s also Taiwan, which has a big representative office and strong economic relationship here.

You’ve gone ahead and just developed your state—currency, passports, all of that—without recognition. Have you gotten any blowback for doing that?

We haven’t had any problems with blowback from the rest of the world. The Somalis do talk about things that are very illogical and annoy us, but we get used to this kind of rhetoric from them and we know how to deal with that.

And what about your diplomatic relations with the UK? Why are they so unsupportive when it comes to the recognition of your independence and so stuck on the notion of Somalia’s unity?

I don’t think that’s the case. I think that is the case in the view of people who have not studied the history of Britain in Somaliland. Britain has problems with piracy and terrorism, which we help them with, and Britain wants to help Somalia, which we as Somalilanders have no problem with.

We believe Britain is not pushing us into anything [i.e. union with Somalia], and they have good communications with us. I believe that they know exactly the reasons why we have decided to stay away and we hope they respect that, and we respect their decisions as well.

So you’re happy with neutrality? Just as long as the UK doesn’t force you into unification, you’re OK with that as opposed to hoping for outright recognition?

We are not happy with neutrality, but this is the fact of the situation now. And we are happy dealing with our situation with Britain on that basis so far. But we are not happy with their position currently. We wish they could have done more for us like the Americans did in South Sudan and the Portuguese did in East Timor.
You know, Somalialand has been doing well for the past 22 years with little help from the international community. We hope the British and Americans and the rest of the world will reward good behavior and people who are doing a good job in rebuilding their country. Because right now they’re spending billions in Somalia, which is proving to be fruitless.

The security of Somaliland has been built by the Somaliland people and we’ve established a government with a fully functioning parliament, a central bank, a constitution, police and military forces, currency, passports, and so on. We have everything a modern nation needs and we’ve done this by ourselves. Somaliland is one of the countries in the Horn of Africa where there is no piracy. We use the army and security forces to maintain security and control terrorism. Somaliland is doing its part and more. And currently it looks like the world is ignoring all the good things that Somaliland is doing.


You did mention that the British have provided some support, though. What specific things have the British done without providing recognition?

Britain supports our country in some areas like the training of our security forces, health, and education. But in our eyes that is not enough.

So when do you think some nation, any nation, will grant you recognition?

I don’t want to say names but there are many countries that are impressed with our progress and achievements and they have discussed it within themselves. I think it will be in the very near future.

Why has it taken so long? Why haven’t you been recognized by any nations yet?

I don’t know. I think that is to be answered by the rest of the world. But the way I see it, we couldn’t yet get the support of those we thought should support our cause.
Somaliland has no problems with its independence legally. We just cancelled our union like Syria and Egypt cancelled their union.

The fact of the matter is we were expecting that Britain and America would do more and say to the rest of the world that it is time to grant the Somaliland people what they deserve, which is their political recognition. That is what they did for South Sudan and East Timor. What did South Sudan prove that we cannot prove? Nothing. They were never independent. We were.

It is time for them to realize that it is in their interests to give Somaliland’s people what they deserve. Otherwise we are really worried about unemployment and our population growth and the young people who are graduating from the universities and are not able to find jobs.

What do you think people should be investing in?

The most important thing that we as Somalilanders expect the world to help with is the road network. Somaliland has a very poor road network hindering the movement of people and trade. We have no doubt that as soon as that road network is improved there will be even better economic growth in Somaliland. Also, there are a lot of resources that are unexplored and we have been inviting international organizations to look into our minerals and oil prospects.

Many places in Africa have gotten that sort of development—roads and such—by striking deals with China, where the Chinese get access to mineral rights and build infrastructure in exchange. Are you looking at anything like that?

I think China is a very cautious country and will be considering a lot of things before they make a decision. Also because of the Taiwan factor they will not be quick to react to Somaliland—but that is my personal view. There are countries discussing this with us though.

How fatigued and frustrated are you as a mission after 22 years without recognition?

That’s a very good question, but let me say this: The people of Somaliland have had a very difficult history of oppression under Barre in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the elders remember that those days were days of hell which we do not want to see again.

The President of Somaliland said just a few months ago in an annual speech to the house of parliament that the country is ready to wait, to work hard, and to do its best to get what it deserves, even if it takes a hundred years. That is the people of Somaliland’s mindset. We do not expect any of our people to get fatigued.

We are doing our day-to-day business better than Somalia and better than many other countries. We are living in a country where there is democracy, free press, rule of law, elected government, a justice system, and a legal system.

More pseudo-countries on VICE:
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The Country That Doesn't Exist

Jonas Bendiksen Takes Photos in Countries That Don't Exist

UK Contradictions on Somaliland & Falklands, Mistranscribing on Table

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 6 -- While the UK now takes the lead on Somalia, getting Nicholas Kay appointed UN envoy and chairing today's Security Council debate about the country, it does not seem to take seriously the arguments for independence of Somaliland, as well as Puntland and Jubaland. Click here and here for previous Inner City Press stories on this.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the Somalia debate in the Security Council, UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant re-tweeted about the right of self-determination of people in the Falkland Islands. What about self-determination in Hargeisa?

There are questions, too, about the UN system handing Somaliland's airspace to Mogadishu, and the role of a UK DFID funded airline. A journalist in the region got the run-around from UN OCHA (the type of UN systemwide stonewalling the Free UN Coalition for Access is trying to counter-act) and requested that this be asked:

“Is it true, USAID and DIFD yearly cover overall expenses incurring UNHAS running cost in Somalia? If yes, why UNDP staff paid expenses on flight and persuaded to use UNHAS instead of EU chartered airlines which is free?"

The answer provided by a "UN spokesperson in Somalia" was this:

“Following notification by authorities in Somaliland, all UN flights to and from Somaliland have been suspended with effect from yesterday at 6pm. The United Nations and its agencies are taking this transportation issue seriously and are in discussions with the relevant authorities to bring about a resolution as quickly as possible. There has been no impact on ongoing UN programmes and it is our priority to ensure no interruption of support or activities. The UN welcomes the ongoing efforts to resolve this quickly.”

If that were the focus, why hand over the airspace? Here's what Lyall Grant said on Thursday:

"One of the very important roles that needs to take place in parallel with the security and stability aspect is the formulation and agreement of the constitutional relationship that will exist between the Federal Government of Somalia and some of the Somali regions, so Somaliland, Puntland and Jubaland and other regions. And one of the important roles that the Federal government of Somalia and the representatives of those regions have in the immediate future is to begin the process of dialogue to make sure that a constitutional settlement can be reached."

  What was that again, about self-determination?

As we've inquired into May 21 and reported on since, one or more times a day, the UK is presiding over the roll-back in (new) media access to the Security Council from what existed not only during the Council's renovation relocation but also before it. 

When Inner City Press for FUNCA asked UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant if he supported continued media workspace at the Council and if so what he would do about it, Lyall Grant said this is a matter for the UN Department of Public Information and "the journalists" -- it's becoming clear which journalists. See UK Mission "World Press Freedom Day" video, here.

Even the UK's transcript of Lyall Grant's press conference mis-represents the questions. It's always easier to dodge a question other than the one asked. Compare UN web cast video here, from Minute 17:32, to this (mis) transcription:

"media work table used to be in front of Security Council has been moved. Do you think that there should be one so reporters can stay throughout consultations so reporters can speak with people going in and out? What will you do if you think it should be replaced?"

Actually said, or asked was if Lyall Grant and UK believe that the media access and press worktable should to maintained, and "I you believe that, what will you do to make sure it takes place?"

The question was not about the table being "replaced." There's more. We are, as noted, experimenting. Watch this site.

Somalia's al-Shabab is on the defensive, but its leader is still at large

GEOFFREY YORK

HARGEISA, SOMALILAND — The Globe and Mail

Just moments after hearing that his brother had been arrested, Bashe Abdi Godane saw the convoy of police cars descending on his mother’s home.

Bashe Abdi Godane is the 54-year-old brother of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the shadowy leader of Somalia’s biggest terrorist group, al-Shabab. His mother’s house in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-proclaimed nation of Somaliland, was raided by police commandos in early May, and two of his brothers were taken into custody without charges. Bashe Godane says he hasn’t seen Ahmed for many years and he disagrees with his extremist views.

(Geoffrey York/The Globe and Mail)

Seven vehicles roared down the dusty street in the noonday sun. Dozens of masked gun-wielding police commandos leaped out of the cars, blocked off the area and scaled the cracked walls to ransack the frail woman’s modest brick home.

Their target was her son, Ahmed Abdi Godane, the shadowy and reclusive leader of Somalia’s biggest terrorist group, al-Shabaab. But after the police arrested two of his brothers and seized a batch of wedding videos from the house where Mr. Godane was born and raised, officials admitted they had found no evidence that the terrorist leader was in touch with his family here.

Across Somalia, the noose is tightening on al-Shabaab. The radical Islamic militia, which once controlled almost all of Mogadishu and southern Somalia, is on the defensive these days as it steadily loses ground to Western-backed forces.

Even here, in the breakaway region of Somaliland in the northwestern corner of the country, authorities are imprisoning some of the militia leader’s family members without charges or trial.

The police raid, launched within days of a U.S. demand for action in Somaliland, showed how an anti-terrorism campaign can have an unintended spillover in neighbouring regions, far from the main suspects. Eager to prove their anti-terrorist credentials and to curry favour with Western powers, Somaliland’s leaders were susceptible to dubious requests for a heavy-handed crackdown on family members who were apparently unconnected to the al-Shabaab leader.

Mr. Godane, educated at an Islamic school in Pakistan, was one of the founders of al-Shabaab, and he led the militia into a crucial alliance with al-Qaeda in 2008 when he pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. He is said to be uncharismatic, releasing his statements in audio messages posted on jihadi websites. Rejecting the nationalist wing of the militia, he has vowed to keep pursuing jihad until the entire Horn of Africa is under an Islamic government.

Al-Shabaab’s decline over the past two years is linked to the growing size and muscle of the Western-financed military offensive against it. Under relentless attack from invading Kenyan troops in southern Somalia and an African military coalition in Mogadishu, the extremist militia has lost huge swaths of territory in the south and centre of the country. It has been pushed back from the Kenyan border and out of the key cities of Mogadishu and Kismayu, forcing it to switch to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

At the same time, al-Shabaab’s leadership is reportedly plagued by bitter rifts over tactics and ideology. The United States has placed a $7-million bounty on Mr. Godane’s head, along with smaller bounties for other leaders of the group. And now even his family is not safe from pressure.

The raid was conducted in early May, just days after a meeting in Washington between the Somaliland president, Ahmed Silanyo, and a senior U.S. State Department official, Wendy Sherman, the Undersecretary for Political Affairs. According to a U.S. statement after the April 25 meeting, the two officials discussed “the need to combat al-Shabaab” among other issues.

But despite the U.S. demands, the police were unable to prove any contacts between Mr. Godane and his family in Hargeisa, according to Hirsi Ali Haji Hassan, the Somaliland minister of presidential affairs.
“We were suspicious, but we didn’t find evidence,” he said in an interview. “You have to check everything. We are still investigating.”

As part of the crackdown on the family, two brothers of the terrorist leader have been detained for weeks or months without being charged with any offence. One brother, Ali, was arrested in Hargeisa the day of the police raid. Another brother, Mukhtar, was arrested four months ago and remains in custody in a Hargeisa prison, according to Bashe Abdi Godane, a third brother.

Bashe, a 54-year-old unemployed labourer, said his elderly mother was so frightened and traumatized by the police raid that it left her unable to talk.

Mr. Hassan acknowledged that no charges have been laid against any family members. They can be kept in custody for 90 days without charges, he said.

The family has not seen Ahmed Godane since the 1990s, and it does not share his extremist views, Bashe said. If the authorities want to capture him, they could easily find him with Western surveillance technology, he said.

“I don’t know where he is, but even the White House knows where he is,” Bashe said in an interview.
“We don’t have any correspondence with him. Why they are jailing us, I don’t know. They are always investigating us, and we are innocent. I don’t have any idea about al-Shabaab or what they are doing or what they want.”

He says he can’t get a job in Somaliland because employers refuse to hire him when they discover he has the same surname as the leader of al-Shabaab. He’s been unemployed since returning from construction jobs in the Middle East in 2007.

“I’m frustrated,” he says. “Everywhere I go, when people hear my name, they get excited about it. They’ve closed every job to us.”

Khader Aden Hussein, a member of the Somaliland parliament, says the police raid on the Godane family will spark a backlash. “It was badly handled,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is happy about it. Just because you are someone’s brother, you don’t put him in jail.”

Drone crashes in Somalia’s Puntland region

The Associated Press

An official in the semiautonomous Puntland region of Somalia says a surveillance drone has crashed.

Ports and Anti-piracy Minister Saeed Mohamed Rage said Saturday the drone crashed in Quaw village 20 kilometers (12miles) west of the port city of Bossasso.

The United States military flies aerial surveillance drones from Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles to monitor piracy off the East African coast, but Rage said it is not clear whose drone crashed. The U.S. also flies drones that occasionally fire at Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels in south and central Somalia. The al-Shabab rebels Tuesday posted pictures on Twitter of what they claimed was a surveillance drone that had crashed.

Puntland, in northern Somalia, has escaped the decades of conflict seen in the country's south and central regions.