SamyGirl, hahaha, for God's sake if you have nothing to say don't say it here. Simply shut up or grow up.

This whole business of compartmentalizing Somalia is the second step of a grand scheme pioneered to desicrate the cornerstones of Somali existence. It is a dirty Christian backed Ethiopia plan. The first step was to create a civil war, and they did it. The second is to divide Somalia and Somalis, they are winning. And the third is the assimulation of Somalis into foreign cultures, and they have the right ingredients to do so. The whole story of division is a shamble and utter disgust.

If the world wanted any proof of a real democracy,they shall not look further than Somaliland. I agree. PS: SamyGirl shut up will ya!

Darman lol, damn bro... you've learnt the skill, and i have learnt new tricks from here.

My convictions may seem irrational and to some people illogical but hey! it is politics. Anyways.... I respect and appreciate all your opinions. I could be wrong and you could be right, or even the other way round. Respect to all Nomads.

JASMIINE,Welcome to Somalia Online. Glad to have you with us.

I wish for only a pen and a paper. So that i can re-write history, and bring back the glory of the kingdom of the Kushites, erase Ethiopia out of history.

Subject: Doctors Visit A woman and a baby were in the doctor's examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in. The doctor arrived, examined the baby, checked his weight, found it somewhat below normal, and asked if the baby was breast-fed or bottle-fed. > "Breast-fed," she replied. > "Well, strip down to your waist," the doctor ordered. > She did. > He pressed, kneaded, rolled, cupped, and pinched both breasts for a while, in a detailed, rigorously thorough examination. > Motioning to her to get dressed, he said, "No wonder this baby is underweight. You don't have any milk."!! " I know," she said, "I'm his Grandma, but I'm glad I came.

Libaax sxb, it is a development to be able to agree to disagree you know. Anyways all i want is people who can't make a change, I don't like to argue when i can't make a difference. 13 years is a long period for pointing fingers at each other.

Yes Horn-Afrik it can be said that the war had started around the times of Ahmed gurey (Ahmed Gran'). Some even say that it was earlier than that but ... one factor that has attributed to the current on-going tension between Somalis and Ethios is Menelik's invasion to Harar. It was at that period that Menelik uttered these infamous words "Abyssinia is a christian kingdom in a sea of pagans". The history of this war is very ancient, but i thought i should mention the recent ones. If you do alittle study on the relation between the Kingdom of Axom (not Ethiopia as awhole, coz by then parts of it were under Axum rule) and the Kingdom of Cush of Sudan (which is thought includes Somalis at one stage).... it will become clear that this ethio-somali war was taking place too. Certainly Axmhed gurey's invassion of some parts of abyssinia was a turning point in our History.

Profile: Rageh Omaar -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our man on the roof Amid bombs and bullets, crippled tanks and toppling statues, the BBC's man in Baghdad has remained cool and calm, lucidly recounting the defeat of Saddam. Little wonder his fan club is growing, here and in the US Vanessa Thorpe Sunday April 13, 2003 The Observer Confronted by daily news broadcasts that detail the bleakest of human activities - for example, groups of people killing each other - the British public can be relied upon to focus on some bright star in the darkness. In this war that bright star is Rageh Omaar. The Somalian-born television reporter has been propelled into a high-profile national position with amazing rapidity by the conflict in Iraq. Standing alone on his Baghdad rooftop, awaiting the allied onslaught each evening in early March, he quickly became a household fixture; a still point in the turning world, resplendent in his bright red fleece. As the face of the BBC on the terrestrial channels and on BBC News 24, Omaar's mere location at the eye of an accelerating storm had a drama he did not have to do much to communicate. But recently he has found himself in the thick of it, reporting on the death of colleagues in the hotel he shares with fellow journalists and commentating live on the drawn-out toppling of that recalcitrant statue with an energy and intensity that matched the historic moment. An astonishing 4.3 million viewers tuned into to Omaar as they waited for Saddam's bronze likeness to be pulled over at 3.45pm on BBC1 - that's 48 per cent of the audience share. Since the start of the war on 20 March nearly 90 per cent of the population have watched him on either the weekday BBC news bulletins or on News 24. The reports have been syndicated across the US too. This weekend, not surprisingly then, there are persistent rumours that American news networks are determined to poach him, as they have other British news presenters such as Daljit Dhaliwal, Brent Sadler and Lara Logan. CNN, it is said, has already made an offer, but the BBC are holding hard. 'We are delighted that other people think Rageh is doing as well as we do,' a spokeswoman said this weekend. And there has been fan mail. One elderly headmistress of a girls' school has confessed herself entranced by 'that nice boy', while Ann Treneman was merely the first national journalist to suggest in print that Omaar is the only war reporter who is getting better looking as the conflict progresses. Last month the New York Post dubbed him the 'Scud Stud' of this war (the name was coined during the 1991 Gulf conflict for NBC's Arthur Kent who also wrote regularly for The Observer ). Last week T-shirts bearing Omaar's noble features were printed and sold on the internet as mementos of the war, along, it must be admitted, with rival tops emblazoned with the less inspiring countenance of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as the former Iraqi Information Minister, or Comical Ali. But if Omar has reached the status of cultural icon partly through talent, he has also got there by accident. When news editors planned coverage of the coming conflict they were wary of embedding their big-name journalists with the armed forces. It was feared their output might be controlled by the military. As a result the BBC's big names - John Simpson and Fergal Keane, for example - were held back and placed around the edges. When the fighting started, and particularly after the death of Terry Lloyd, it became clear much of the terrain 'in country' was too dangerous for free-wheeling journalists and news coverage began to rely on those who were 'embedded' outside the big cities and on those, like Omaar, in Baghdad. 'Other than in Baghdad and in northern Iraq,' said Richard Sambrook, head of BBC news, 'it's extremely difficult for us to work independently, on safety grounds - as the death of an ITN team showed - so we are inhibited from independent journalism in a way that we weren't during the first [1991] Gulf war.' Of course, Omaar is not the only British journalist in the capital. His radio colleague Andrew Gilligan, the Today programme's defence and diplomatic correspondent, has also been heavily employed, most notably when he was fired at live on-air a few days ago. Others have also been prominent, for instance, David Chater of Sky News and Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News , who made a memorable visit to a hospital visit outside Baghdad early on. Print journalists have also made their mark in and around Baghdad, notably the war veteran Robert Fisk of the Independent, Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian and Anton Antonowicz of the Mirror . Yet it is Omaar and, increasingly, his colleague Gilligan who have been at the centre of another virtual battle, the infamous tug of war for hearts and minds. As representatives of British state-funded media they have been criticised for being mouthpieces of both the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation and the Bush Broadcasting Corporation. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Omaar said he chuckled when he heard pundits deploring an 'Iraqi bias' in Baghdad bulletins. 'If only they could spend a day with us in the press centre at Iraq's Ministry of Information in Baghdad, which was heavily bombed last night,' he wrote. 'Yes, there are daily briefings by Iraqi Ministers and carefully organised trips for journalists in the presence of Ministry officials. But by putting such severe restrictions on where we are allowed to set up our broadcasting equipment, the regime ensures that many reports that they so diligently help us to gather are simply never sent out.' Sensitivities reached their height with regard to Omaar when Centcom in Qatar claimed troops who fired on the Palestine Hotel and killed two television journalists were responding to enemy fire. Omaar was among those who testified that no sniper fire had been heard. Support for his performance from editors in London has been swift and total. Jonathan Baker, the BBC's Worldwide editor, told The Observer this weekend that one of Omaar's strengths was his depth of knowledge. 'Rageh has been reporting from the country on and off for more than six years and has spent several months there in the last year alone,' said Baker. 'As a result he speaks with a knowledge and authority which other writers less well-versed in Iraqi affairs and history cannot match.' Baker also praised his skills as a communicator. 'He has the classic virtues of the BBC foreign correspondent,' he added. 'Commitment to the story over a period, even-handedness in his reporting, and an ability to impart extra value to his coverage with explanations and analysis when required.' Omaar, who lives in Johannesburg when he isn't posted elsewhere, gains some of his insight from three months spent studying Arabic in Jordan in 1996. He was born in Mogadishu on 19 July 1967 and is the youngest of four children. Moving to Britain as a child, he went to Cheltenham Boys College and on to Oxford where he studied Modern History. He started out in journalism as a trainee at the Voice newspaper in Brixton and then worked for a short spell on the now-defunct London magazine City Limits, before moving to Ethiopia in 1991 where he freelanced for the BBC World Service. He returned to London the following year as a producer for Focus on Africa based in Bush House, home of the World Service, and then became producer/reporter on Newshour. After a period as the BBC's Amman correspondent in 1997, he covered the drought in Ethiopia and the floods in Mozambique as Developing World correspondent. Omaar's current title is Africa Correspondent, which is why he lives in South Africa with his wife Nina, a former occupational therapist and the daughter of Sir John and Lady Montgomery Cuninghame. The couple met at a wedding in India and now have two children, Loula, aged two, and a baby son called Sami. BBC sources suggest that he may well be seeing them all for the first time in more than six months this weekend. He is believed to be taking some well-deserved rest and recuperation, although he may find he is now more widely recognised in the streets of Jo'burg than he could ever have predicted. Colleagues have nothing but generous things to say about this journalist who remained cool and patient as the armed forces closed in, and then got appropriately excited when the people of Baghdad threw their shoes at the fallen dictator's bronze effigy. Aside from being a reporter with integrity, Omaar, like the BBC's Clive Myrie, is proving an inspirational figure for young black reporters. 'The Rageh you see on screen and hear on the radio is an exact match to the person you meet off-air,' says his boss Baker. 'Unassuming, unaffected, committed to his job and a thoroughly nice man.' RAGEH OMAAR DoB: 19 July 1967 (Mogadishu, Somalia) Family: Lives in Johannesburg with his wife Nina. They have one daughter and one son Education: Cheltenham Boys College and Oxford First job: With the Voice newspaper in Brixton Heroes: George Alagiah, Charles Wheeler, Robert Fisk, Trevor McDonald vanessa.thorpe@obsever.co.uk

Brother Yusuf, Thank you for asking me such an important question. I thank you because i know the importance of this question, and the meaning it carries. There are different narrations as to what has triggered the war between Somalia and Abbysinia. Certainly there are many other reasons that may have started the war, but for me there is one outstanding factor, it is a factor that truly angers every Somali and every Muslim who hears about it. It all started with the plasphemous attack of Menelik II to the Mosque of Harar in around 1890s. Below is alittle example of what Menelik II did to disrespect Islam, written by a his french christian brother who ironically is proud about him. "The walled city of Harar was considered a holy city by the Muslims and its capture by Christians thus added religious animosity to anti-Ethiopian sentiment. The French traveler and writer Henri de Monfreid, who worked for Menelik, tells a story that illustrates this: when Menelik received an emissary from Abdullahi on the eve of Chelenko, the emissary brought a Muslim turban, along with the message that if Menelik wore the turban, the emir's troops would not harm him; if not, then--by Allah!--the emir would tie up him and his men with ropes and dispose of them as he saw fit. Menelik replied that he would wear the turban until the good Lord Medhane Alem (the savior of the world) granted him victory, and he would then stand on the top of the minaret on the central mosque, urinate on it, demolish the mosque, and there build the church of Medhane Alem in its place. Menelik was a man of his word, for the church stands there today.(35)" Checkout this link for more information about the horn of africa issues. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1984/GA.htm

Originally by Lefty: "The only thing they're really good at is obstruction by any means with no longer and positive vision behind it. That's what happened and still is the major obstacle facing the Somalia trauma." . Thank you Lefty..... Thats exactly what i am trying to say. If anyone has a better solution to Somalia's problems, then, lets have it but if not, then leave it to those (whoever they may be) who have means of dealing with the mess we're in. Matkey, the point I was about to raise has already been raised up by our fellow Nomad Lefty.

Originally by Scorpion_sistah: Our children will ask us questions because they want to know why something is done and to strengthen their faiths it is our responsibilities to question ourselves so that we strengthen our believe first. Not just tell them “that’s how things are.” Because tomorrow Kaafiir will ask them about their religion and they would be asked to analysis or explain, and if they are unprepared then in their hearts will arise doubts. Yup..... I couldn't agree with you more . Allaah has given us the brain to know, recognise and to understand why things are what they are.

"Fatal faults, funny plots, in racist spots~ Seem to capture us with pressure~ Any given artificial smile, would set me off to a different measure~" You got that right DeadlyVision.... nice piece u got there

A happy be-lated Birthday to all you ... I'm always this late.. bear with me Nomads.

I must admit, the fella as you've all said is talented. However i felt bad for him when he was chased from the borders of zimbabwe by Mugabe. And also when him and another british journalist were accused of being pro-Iraq by Tony blair in 1998. Otherwise i think he is one of the best journalist. PS: it was good when he use to present "focus on Africa" with Chris Pickerton during the 90ties.....

i don't know what office you fellas are talking about? And i don't think blames justify all the harm done to normal Somalis. There are no angels in Somalia right now, we have warlords who are seeking the same position and recognition. So people open your eyes to the reality and stop dwelling on the past. What counts is who can make a difference now? If you can't then shut up. Discussions are useless unless they yield fruits.

Anything we do or happens is pre-destined to create a platform by which freedom and equality operate. The predistination of events are beyond any human punishment, but the cause(human action) itself which advocates for death, is subject to human punishment. This is so due to the fact that people who kill are punished for simply denying the victim his/her natural right to die or curtailing his/her freedom to undergo nature's justice.

Originally by matkey: Do we have to define what regime is? wasn' he prime minister of the old regime? The question is, have we achieved any better than the old regime? The answer is: No we haven't. So, who are we to associate someone with dictortorship when all he/she did could have been to honestly serve his/her own country? It is nonsensical to blame all those who've served in the former regime, it'll be purely stupid to do so. There were those who've genuinely and patriotically served Somalia, regarless of whom and what! Just because this fella served in the old regime and his cousin was the dictator doesn't give us any right to charge him guilty of wrong doings. It will be a different issue if there is a clear evidence that shows his wrong doings, so do we have any evidence? I dont think so. If there is anyone who has any evidence that'll connect him to wrong doings whilst in his time of office then we will blame him. Untill that day.... lets not jump to uncalculated conclusions.

Nomads, Firstly, Bachelor's topic was meant to evaluate the threats posed by the Ethiopian empire to the well-being of our beloved nation. The topic's purpose is to shed some light upon the important issue (an ethio-animosity against Somalia and Somalis) that had spanned across centuries of bloodshed, torture, himuliation and aggrandizement at the expense of our very existance. So please lets not raise unworthy arguments that'll only further deepen the division amongst us. Secondly, this war, in essence, is much older than us or even our fathers, its echoes are symbolised by the Ethiopian emperor, Menelik II's plea to his Euro-Christian brothers in 1891, utterring "Ethiopia has been for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans". Funily, by then he didn't categorize Somalis into clans and regions, but for him all Somalis were "Pagans". However, the same emperor's descendants are the ones whom we look upto and hope mercy from, what a pity. Let me not drag you into that area right now but the fact is once a snake always a snake, and the ethios haven't forgotten about old enmities and grudges, they dwell on the hatred they hold against us. Ethiopia had pursued her on goals inside Somalia and will continue to finish what emperor Haile Sallase described as "The Unfinished Business" that still continues to dominate Ethiopia's strategies, just as it use to be in the days of "Scramble for Africa". Interestingly, when the Europeans scrambled for the rest of Africa, Ethiopia in turn had scrambled for Somalia and her dream to enlarge Abbyssinian empire become true with the help of her christian brothers. What a shame to this day we fail to see this union between Ethios and Europeans, while calling europeans to mediate between us. Either way, what we've read from history books or heard from our parents will be nothing compared to what Ethiopia intends for Somalia. Below is alittle touch of reality and possibilities... Ethiopia's geo-political strategy - Elimi-Nation of Somalis and Somalia from history There is a surety, and all of you have noticed that Somalia has now been divided into fiefdoms, and all these divisions are DIRECTLY or INDIRECTLY supported by the Ethiopian regime. Their strategy is to help Somalis seek autonomy from Somalia and form small, militarily ineffective regional governments that adhere to Ethiopian political and cultural ideology, whilst at the same time infiltrating our traditional values with an imposition of Ethiopian models of livelihood. This way the substance of the culture would be undermind by the strong ethio-influences, germinating from several places such as media and presence of a state that is client to Ethiopia. The outcome is deadly, or may i say THE END OF SOMALINESS. When a war of this level is waged against an entire de-centralised society, the result is erosion of basic principles that enforce law and order. The foundation is already being set for this kind of war. Statistically, many households in the provinces that neighbour Ethiopia, there is an employment of many ETHIOPIAN housemaids, who are likely to influence the mental growth of our offsprings; making them familiar with ethiopian values. So far, this is the most worrying factor, it is a war for the hearts and minds of the local Somalis. And as globalization spreads, ethiopia is likey to be successful in spreading her war in ways we wont be able to notice. It is not a wonderment to see a decline of patrioticism within Somalis because we're being systematically targetted by not only Ethiopia but by also the christian world. Insofar, it hasn't been dificult to figure out why so many Somalis are being shipped out of refugee camps in kenya and other neibouring countries. The reasons of shipments of such a large number of Somalis only constitute what some call "a historical ideological war", which as a result would make more Somalis become adaptive to western values, and it is more likely that we would see many Somalis relating to western (christian)values, which creates a possible increase of ethio-sympathetics in Somalia. By the time many of us go back to Somalia, there surely would be a clash of ideology. What threats Ethiopia poses cannot be comprehended by one or two writtings, but hopefully I wish you see things from my my angle once.

Me one of the expendables, aye! well... what is there to say, if it is a matter of life and death....

Hassan, Judging from your nick, i suppose you are a muslim fella, If that is so then worry less my friend. Not all Somali women are golden hearted, or dignified as you've claimed. They have good and bad ones, just like any other community, but certainly amongst them are few who are truly graceful and religious. Whose reasoning is rational. So my advice is to identify the personality of the girl before embarking on your missions of courtship. If you are a true muslim yourself, then the possibility is that, you will end up with a sister who makes her choses in regard to the creed you have, not your colour or stracture. So always, approach a religous sister in a respectable manner, and calculate your words and reasons for its your words that'll represent your charactor in expression. Don't ever put on a fake face, be true to who you are. Avoid to impress any religous girl with your worldly possessions, just overwhelm her with your understandings of reality and quality of life.

Deadly_vission, Glad to hear such a response. It is always a pleasure to enlight fellow nomads with mysticism and poetry. Thankx

LoL .... War saaxiib marka hore, sowtii dumarkayaga lagu yaqiinney: Is qiimaynta, isqurxinta iyo, yaanan kaa hilmaamine, qunyar socod xishood ku laran yahay? Waa iga su'aalle, Raggow, Mar hadii ay taladu faraha ka baxday, xaajaduna taagan tahay ismarin waa, ragguna collaadu ay wada saameysey, ma fillan ayey inagu noqotay in aan shaahidno dumarkayagii oo suuqa har cad lagu kala baayactamaayo? Jawaabtu waa "MAYA" qayaxan. Hadaba, Kolleeyba waan ogsoonahay ragbaa igaga xeel dheer arrinkuye, balse, waxaa dhaqankii iyo hidiihii haboonaa ee nalaku yaqiiney kusoo kordhay: Qas iyo Lab keenay in lakala saari waayo LABKII iyo DHIDIGII; iyo been iyo belo abuur saameeyey dadweynaha Soomaaliyeed dhamaantood, yar iyo weynba.