This is from Somaliland.net ******************************* Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo, who emerged as the main challenger in Somaliland's first multi-party presidential election, claimed victory in the April 14 poll. Official results on Saturday handed victory to President Dahir Riyale Kahin by just 80 votes. "I can confirm that I won the election," Silanyo told reporters. "The government has used public funds and its authority to win the election for its candidate. I call on the government not to suppress the (will of) the people." He spoke as violence broke out between supporters of Kahin's United Democratic Party (UDUB) and Silanyo's Solidarity party (Kulmiye) in the capital Hargeisa and other cities. Officials said four people were wounded and a teashop destroyed in Burao, Silanyo's hometown, as his supporters clashed with police. In Hargeisa, police shot in the air to disperse a protest against the election body. There was no immediate comment from the government. On Saturday, the enclave's National Electoral Commission said Kahin received 205,595 votes, 42.08 percent of the those cast, against Silanyo's 205,515 votes. Silanyo's party rejected the result, saying the figures given by the electoral commission for some polling stations did not tally with the count approved by its representatives. Somaliland declared independence in 1991 after the overthrow of Somali President Mohammad Siad Barre, the disintegration of central government and an explosion of factional fighting. The enclave is hoping that holding a democratic election will win it international recognition. Previous presidents in Somaliland have been picked by parliament. ****************************************** Troubling developments indeed... We have several well-known folks in our community declaring a victor before the results have been released. Now that the actual results show something different than what they had hoped, this is somehow not democracy. from all reports I have read the system used in the elections was both well designed and thorough. Moreover, most independent monitors declared the election free and fair. In any close election (80 votes) there will be contraversy, but what Somaliland needs is for Silaayno to accept the result. It is a first and crucial step to the recognition of Somalialand to the world community. If UDUB fails, than it is likely Kulmiye will win the next election. I for one do not think that either man or party will have a decidedly different effect on Somaliland. What is likely to have the most effect is a smooth transition of power, and the continued ability of the government to provide safety and security for all residents of Somaliland without regard to clan status. Ultimately, it has been the people of Somaliland that are responsible for its success not the so called leaders. These leaders need only to provide the base for the naturally enterprising Somalias to take their welfare into their own hands. PLEASE ACCEPT THE ELECTION RESULTS AS THIS IS WHAT SOMALILAND NEEDS. Also, talk of Somali unification is a disservice to Somalis. Different states cooperate and prosper together. If each region or collection of regions is able to improve their situation through independence, more power to them. Maybe what is Somalia's future is a union similar to that of Europe. Only Allah knows. I hope Somaliland succeeds in their endeavour, but also hope that this success does not translate into a surperiorty complex that hurts their relations with other Somalis. my two cents...

Troubling developments indeed... We have several well-known folks in our community declaring a victor before the results have been released. Now that the actual results show something different than what they had hoped, this is somehow not democracy. from all reports I have read the system used in the elections was both well designed and thorough. Moreover, most independent monitors declared the election free and fair. In any close election (80 votes) there will be contraversy, but what Somaliland needs is for Silaayno to accept the result. It is a first and crucial step to the recognition of Somalialand to the world community. If UDUB fails, than it is likely Kulmiye will win the next election. I for one do not think that either man or party will have a decidedly different effect on Somaliland. What is likely to have the most effect is a smooth transition of power, and the continued ability of the government to provide safety and security for all residents of Somaliland without regard to clan status. Ultimately, it has been the people of Somaliland that are responsible for its success not the so called leaders. These leaders need only to provide the base for the naturally enterprising Somalias to take their welfare into their own hands. PLEASE ACCEPT THE ELECTION RESULTS AS THIS IS WHAT SOMALILAND NEEDS. Also, talk of Somali unification is a disservice to Somalis. Different states cooperate and prosper together. If each region or collection of regions is able to improve their situation through independence, more power to them. Maybe what is Somalia's future is a union similar to that of Europe. Only Allah knows. I hope Somaliland succeeds in their endeavour, but also hope that this success does not translate into a surperiorty complex that hurts their relations with other Somalis. my two cents...

You must be joking asking this question? Braids, what on earths could possibly be wrong with them.

You must be joking asking this question? Braids, what on earths could possibly be wrong with them.

You must be joking asking this question? Braids, what on earths could possibly be wrong with them.

You must be joking asking this question? Braids, what on earths could possibly be wrong with them.

Despite the bias in the article, the holier than thou attitude of the writer. It is nevertheless about an important topic. ************************************************ Africa's Lost Tribe Discovers American Way March 10, 2003 By RACHEL L. SWARNS KAKUMA, Kenya - The engines rumbled and the red sand swirled as the cargo plane roared onto the dirt airstrip. One by one, the dazed and impoverished refugees climbed from the belly of the plane into this desolate wind-swept camp. They are members of Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's. Yet on this recent day, the Bantu people were rejoicing as they stepped from the plane into the blinding sun. They were the last members of the tribe to be transferred from a violent camp near the Somali border to this dusty place just south of Sudan. They knew their first trip in a flying machine was a harbinger of miracles to come. Over the next two years, nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya - about 12,000 people - are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the mid-1990's, State Department officials say. The refugees will be interviewed by American immigration officials in this camp, which is less violent than the camp near Somalia. The interview process has been slowed by security concerns in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Despite the repeated delays, the preparations for the extraordinary journey are already under way. Every morning, dozens of peasant farmers take their seats in classrooms in a simple one-story building with a metal roof. They study English, hold their first notebooks and pens, and struggle to learn about the place called America. It is an enormous task. The Bantu, who were often denied access to education and jobs in Somalia, are mostly illiterate and almost completely untouched by modern life. They measure time by watching the sun rise and fall over their green fields and mud huts. As refugees, they have worked the soil, cooked, cleaned and labored in backbreaking construction jobs, filling about 90 percent of the unskilled jobs in the camp in Dadaab, Kenya, where most Bantu people lived until they were transferred here last year. But most have never turned on a light switch, flushed a toilet or held a lease. So the students here study in a classroom equipped with all the trappings of modern American life, including a gleaming refrigerator, a sink, a toilet and a bathtub. They are learning about paper towels and toilet cleanser and peanut butter and ice trays, along with English and American culture. Refugee officials here fear that the Bantu's battle to adjust to a high-tech world will only be complicated by American ambivalence about immigrants since the terrorist attacks in the United States. The Bantu are practicing Muslims. Women cover their hair with brightly colored scarves. Families pray five times a day. In Somalia, they were in a predominantly Muslim country often described as a breeding ground for terrorists. The American government requires refugees from such hot spots to undergo a new series of security clearances before they can be resettled in the United States. The new system has delayed the arrival of thousands of refugees, leaving them to languish in camps where children often die of malnutrition. But most people here are willing to do what it takes to live in a country that outlaws discrimination. While they wait, they learn about leases and the separation between church and state, and they practice their limited English. About 700 Bantu have gone through this cultural orientation. By the end of September, State Department officials say, 1,500 are expected to be resettled in about 50 American cities and towns, including Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; San Diego; and Erie, Pa. In America, the refugees tell each other, the Bantu will be considered human beings, not slaves, for the first time. "It's scary," said Haw Abass Aden, a peasant farmer still trembling as she stepped off her first flight through the clouds. She clung tightly to a kerosene lamp with one hand and her little girl with the other. But she regained her composure as she considered her future. "We are coming here to be resettled in the United States," said Ms. Aden, 20, speaking through a translator. "There, we will find peace and freedom." After centuries of suffering, they are praying that America will be the place where they will finally belong. The United Nations has been trying to find a home for the Bantu for more than a decade because it is painfully clear they cannot return to Somalia. In Somalia, the lighter-skinned majority rejected the Bantu, for their slave origins and dark skin and wide features. Even after they were freed from bondage, the Bantu were denied meaningful political representation and rights to land ownership. During the Somali civil war, they were disproportionately victims of rapes and killings. The discrimination and violence continues in the barren camps today - even here - where the Bantu are often attacked and dismissed as Mushungulis, which means slave people. But finding a new home for the Bantu refugees here has not been easy. First Tanzania and then Mozambique, the Bantu's ancestral homelands, agreed to take the tribe. Both impoverished countries ultimately reneged, saying they could not afford to resettle the group. In 1999, the United States determined that the Somali Bantu tribe was a persecuted group eligible for resettlement. The number of African refugees approved for admission in the United States surged from 3,318 in 1990 to 20,084 a decade later as the cold war ended and American officials focused on assisting refugees beyond those fleeing Communist countries. "I don't think Somalia is my country because we Somali Bantus have seen our people treated like donkeys there," said Fatuma Abdekadir, 20, who was waiting for her class to start. "I think my country is where I am going. "There, there is peace. Nobody can treat you badly. Nobody can come into your house and beat you." The refugees watch snippets of American life on videos in class, and they marvel at the images of supermarkets filled with peppers and tomatoes and of tall buildings that reach for the clouds. But they know little about racism, poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them by refugee resettlement agencies. What they know is this flat, parched corner of Africa, a place of thorn trees and numbing hunger where water comes from wells when it comes at all - a place of fierce heat and wind that whips the sand into biting and blinding storms. In the classes, the teachers try to prepare the Bantu for a modern world. Issack Adan carefully guides his students through the lessons, taking questions from older men with graying beards, teenage girls with ballpoint pens tucked into their head scarves and young mothers with babies tied to their backs. The lesson of the day: a white flush toilet. "Come close, come close," Mr. Adan said as the women approached the strange object doubtfully. "Mothers, you sit on it, you don't stand on it." The women nodded, although they seemed uncertain. Mr. Adan showed them how to flush the toilet and how to clean it. "You wash with this thing and you will have a good smell," he said. "A very nice smell," the students agreed. Then Abubakar Saidali, a 30-year-old student, looked closely at the odd contraption and asked, "But where does that water go?" For an answer, Mr. Adan took the refugees outside to show them the pipes that carry the sewage. Back in the classroom, the students spent the next few hours learning about the refrigerator, ice cubes and strawberry jam. They watched eagerly as Mr. Adan washed dishes in a sink and admired the bathtub and shower. One woman demurred, however, when he invited her to step into the tub. "It is so clean," she said shyly. "Can I really step in it?" Some students grumbled that the American appliances seemed more complicated than their ordinary ways of living. Why worry about cleaning a toilet, some refugees said aloud, when the bushes never need to be cleaned? But Mr. Saidali said he was thrilled to learn about modern toilets after years of relying on smelly pit latrines. "This latrine is inside the house," marveled Mr. Saidali, a lean man in tattered sneakers. "It's better than what we are now using. It has a seat for sitting and the water goes down. "Even this sink - it's my first time," he said. "This sink is for washing. It cleans things very nicely." Even with the lessons, some Bantu are worried about how they will cope in America. They know that blacks and Muslims are minorities there. Will Americans be welcoming? Will they learn English quickly enough? Will they find jobs and housing and friends? Some officials here worry, too. "These people are from rural areas," Mr. Adan said. "They don't know much about modern life." But the refugees who arrived on the plane here said they were eager for the challenge. Uncertain of what might be needed in the United States, they carried most of their precious possessions - broken brooms, chipped mugs, metal plates - as they boarded a rattling bus that roared deep into the camp as the sun sank beyond the horizon. The refugees knew they would be sleeping on the ground again and going hungry as they have often done. But they also knew that this was only the first phase of an incredible journey. First stop, Kakuma. Next stop, America. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/international/africa/10BANT.html?ex=1048268013&ei=1&en=0a3aa2daae430f6a

It seems that all discussions as to the future of Somalia begin with the assumption that there will be some sort of Federal State with a weak central government and strong state governments. I thought this was the best solution until a discussion I had with a professor from Toronto. His suggestion was that all federalism does is to move the problem to a state level, and that it doesn't solve the problem of beginning to create a functioning Somali state that reduces the importance of clan. What do you all think?