^ We can go about both ways, so go for the path of least resistance. Lets see where this brings us. Go for it and present this FACT.

Originally posted by Emperor: clan is part and parcel of the Somali society, it has been for centuries... I am not telling you what I think but presenting a FACT, so please don't tell us what you think What facts are you talking about? Explain to me why you think clan is everything?

Originally posted by NGONGE: Meiji, I refer you to the question I asked Mr Me earlier. Clan is EVERYTHING. 4.5, adeer, 4.5. Ngonge when you lose, don't lose the lesson ps. Emperor has already welcomed you into his group, you and him will be bff if you keep this clan is everything crap up.

Ngonge, It’s because you keep using the same baseless argument of 'clan is everything'. That argument is so baseless that you don’t even dare to defend it. You tell us that you view Somali politics while wearing clan shades . You throw around few remarks and hope to get away with it. Well you can do that with ciyaalka xaafada but not around here. You pretend that you can explain Somali politics by only looking at the clan factor, while overlooking al the other factors. It seems to me that you have based your whole view of Somalia and your political stance on the erroneous belief that the Somali conflict is all about clan. Hence your Clan is everything mantra. It is in your interest to ask yourself challenging questions instead regurgitating whatever BS odayaasha makhaayada are saying today. I asked you this question because I believe that you have what it takes to answer this question and that you are a capable guy. So step up to the plate or go to the other side and stand next to Duke and Recovering Romantic.

Spell it out Ngonge, far waaweyn iigu qor

^Jokes won't get you out of this predicament sxb. It is for your own good, so give it a try, you might learn something Tell us why you believe that the clan is everything in Somali politics and what the implications are if this is true.

Ngonge you need to do better then that, explain how the clan is everything? Substantiate and give your 'hunch' some meat. Come on you can do it

Ngonge surpasses all SOLers when it comes to writing fiction, however when it comes to political matters I think you should go to his guru. The so called clan is everything ‘theory’ is the getaway free card of the lazy ones. He can not write about it because he does not know how the get away free card works, all he knows is how to use it.

I wonder whose split personality RR is

seats his clan deserved.

Ciidamada Dowlada FKMG ah Oo Xalay Dhac Iyo Kufsi Ka Gaystay Guryo Ku Yaala Aagagaarka Ex-Tiyaatarki Warkii 01-Jun-2009 iyo Qormadii: yaasiin Faytin Ciidamada dowladda KMG ah ayaa habeenkii xalay ahaa jabsaday guryo ay ku jiraan dad shacab ah oo degan guriga hooyooyinka ee agagaarka Ex-national tiyaatarkii muqdisho kuwaasoo gaystay falal aad aad u xun xun oo la sheegay inay u gaysteen qoysaskaasi kufsi iyo dhac hantiyeed . Ciidamada gaystay kufsiga iyo dhaca lagula kacay qoysaska deganaa guriga Ex-hooyooyinka ayaa fariisin ku lahaa agagaarka national tiyaatarka halkaasoo la sheegay inay san jirin cid ka tirsan dowlada FKMG ah oo ka hadashay falkaasi fool xumada leh islamrkaana wax u qabatay dhibaatada loo gaystay qoysaska degan halkaasi . Sidoo kale farxiyo axmed oo kamid ah haweenka degan hoyga ay xalay saqbadhkii galeen ciidamada dowlada KMG ah ee saldhiga ku leh halkaasi ayaa saxaafada u sheegtay inay ka dheceen ciidamadu waxii ay hanti muuqata haysteen hadii ay ahaan lahayd telefoonada gacanta iyo waxyaalo kale oo agab ah Farxiyo ayaa intaasi raacisay inay kufs u gaysteen gabdho kamid ah qoysaska goobtaasi degan oo ay sheegtay inay qaarkood gabdhahaasi banaanka la aadeen islamrkaana ay kusoo fara xumeeyeen islamrkaana ku catowday inay murugo la kulmeen habeenkii xalay ahaa iyadoo indhaheedu qabanayeen ayay sheegtay iyadoo haweenkaasi qaarkood lagu kxaystay qori caaradiis . Si kastaba ha ahaatee dhibaatada ay u gaysnayaan ciidamada dowlada FKMG ah dadka shacabka ah ee la il daran macaluusha kadhalatay dagaalada ayaa sii xoojinaya colaadii ay hore u qabeen oo ay ugu darsanto mid ay naftoodii ay lawayaan meel u baxsadaan Xafiiska Muqdisho Yaasiin faytin Yaasiinfaytin@hotmai l.com Info@afnugaal.com

Maybe its the advertisement for a new Lost series.

Hamrawaineh market in Mogadishu. Sharqiyah police station in the Somali capital. On the streets of Mogadishu with a heavily armed militant. Cholera victims in Banader Hospital in Mogadishu. An injured Somali in Medina hospital, the main hospital in Mogadishu.

On the streets with Islamist militants. Islamist militants in the Somali capital, where the fighting continues unabated. Islamic Courts' fighters train on the grounds of the Presidential Palace in Mogadishu. The seafront in old Mogadishu. Refugees in a small IDP camp in Mogadishu.

Somalia: one week in hell – inside the city the world forgot In a rare dispatch from war-ravaged Mogadishu, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad found a city daring to hope for a break from years of violence. Then the fighting resumed Islamic fighters in Mogadishu, Somalia. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad Mogadishu's best barometer of ­violence is the little blackboard on which Dr Taher Mahmoud daily records the number of patients in his hospital. For the last 20 years the tall surgeon with huge hands has been operating on the victims of the city's civil war. "It's good times now," he told me when we met a few weeks ago. "We are only getting four to six gunshot casualties a day. That's very good." He pointed at the blackboard covered with his neat white handwriting: it recorded that 86 patients were undergoing treatment. "During the Ethiopian war [2007-08] we had 300 in this hospital." Reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad was not prepared for what he found in the Somali capital Link to this audio Few respites in this most ravaged of cities last long, and within days of our conversation the relative calm had given way to a more familiar story: running battles between the forces of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the notional president, and the more radical Islamist al-Shabaab militia. More than 200 people have been killed in these skirmishes and as many as 60,000 people have fled. Yet the chances are you won't have heard about it: with the exception of the latest pirate drama, Somalia is the country the world forgot, a state so broken that scenes which would elsewhere dominate international news bulletins are barely noted on the foreign pages of major newspapers. Last year Foreign Policy magazine ranked Somalia as the state most at risk of total collapse, a verdict some might have considered flattering. Yesterday I spoke to Mahmoud again. The hospital was full and around 40 patients were having to sleep under the trees outside. "We need tents to shelter the patients from rain, and medicine is running very low. If the fighting continues we will be without medicine." The number on his blackboard was 167. Even before the latest surge in ­violence you could get a sense of the precariousness of life in Mogadishu from a quick tour of the ­hospital. In the dark, bungalow-like emergency room, five men lay on soiled, torn beds. All had abdominal gunshot wounds; plastic drip bags lay between their legs or on the floor. A man sat on a plastic chair next to his wounded brother and waved a paper fan over his head to chase away flies. All the men had been injured a day earlier, when a pro-government Islamist militia fought a unit of the government's "proper" army for control of an intersection in the government-controlle d area of the capital. "I was standing when the fighting started. I tried to hide but they shot me," one man wheezed. Across the yard in the intensive care unit, another dark bungalow packed with flies and the sick, a man waved a fan over the burnt-to-white flesh of his small son, caught in the fire when a grenade had been tossed into their house during a clash between two rival gangs. A mother looking after another burnt child said: "We pray for peace – we have nothing but prayers. This is the best hospital in Mogadishu and we don't have electricity or running water." Dr Mahmoud, who was appointed director last month after the previous director was shot on the way to work, nodded, adding: "We get water from a well in the yard and we have a small generator for electricity – we get the fuel from a rich Somali businessman. Everyone has left us here in Mogadishu." The most difficult job in the world Earlier this week the Shabaab shelled the presidential palace as they fought government forces for control of the city. A few weeks before, I sat next to Hassan Haila, the government's media coordinator, as we drove towards the palace. Every Somali politician who is not an MP or minister is a coordinator of some sort, it seems. We drove past women queueing, clattering and shouting outside a shop, one of very few open in the streets. "Look at the Somalis," he said. "After all these years of fighting, they have become like dead people walking. There is no life in their eyes." Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was elected president by MPs in January. He was the co-leader of the Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist movement that defeated the infamous Mogadishu warlords in 2006, bringing a measure of peace to the city for the first time in almost two decades. The Islamic Courts were routed by US-backed Ethiopian forces, but remnants of the Court militias soon launched a violent, if not coherent, insurgency. When the Ethiopians pulled out earlier this year various Islamist militias fighting them took different sides, some with Ahmed's government, some against. Now Ahmed can be considered leader of Somalia only in the loosest sense of the word: when we met he controlled perhaps 40% of Mogadishu. A week later it was more like 20%. And ever since the ousting of the dictator Muhammad Siad Barre in 1991, two vast regions, Somaliland and Puntland, have cut themselves free of the war-torn south altogether. At the entrance to the presidential compound a few "technicals" – Toyota pick-up trucks with anti-aircraft guns mounted on them – were parked. Somali soldiers sat in the shade. Outside the president's door two Ugandan soldiers, members of the flimsy African Union force charged with keeping peace in the city, slouched on plastic chairs. "I have the most difficult job in the world," the president said, looking exhausted. Big drops of sweat rolled down his forehead in the suffocating humidity. He fumbled with the air-conditioning remote control and handed it to an assistant. The machine hissed and a cold breeze crossed his desk. "It's different from the jobs of all other presidents of other countries," he went on. "In the beginning we want to stand on our feet. We have inherited a very bad reputation from our predecessors [presidents] because of 20 years of internal fighting and disagreement. The economy is non-existent, state institutions are non-existent, essential services are non-existent." It was cold now and Ahmed ordered his assistant to switch off the air- conditioning. "You can say that the idea of a state is non-existent in Somalia. We have to teach people what a state is." Many of Ahmed's ministers and advisers huddled for safety in the Sohafi hotel, although the 17 bullet holes in my door did not promote a sense of security. In the courtyard I heard different accounts of why Somalia's Islamists had turned on each other. "They are fighting because they come from two different Islamic schools," explained one seasoned Somali journalist. "The president is from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Shabaab are Salafis." "Nonsense," guffawed an Islamic commander. He was an ally of the president who fought the Ethiopians alongside the Islamic Courts but had good connections with the Shabaab. "We are all Salafis. The difference is between the ideologues, the young people with principles, the Shabaab on one side, and the people who see where is the maslaha [the interest of the nation] and are willing to compromise. I agree with the Shabaab that we should fight a jihad on principle but the maslaha says that we should compromise and use the opportunity we have now to build a state." Another Somali official with a thick American accent from long years of asylum in the US told me: "It's very simple – it's about who gets to be the president. There is no ideological difference. It's all about who gets what share of the pie. Everyone wants to become a president in Somalia." A Ugandan officer in the presidential compound offered his own jaundiced assessment: "Look. The best thing the Somalis know how to do is to kill other Somalis." All we have is religion On a searingly hot day that saw the first clouds of the monsoon gathering, parliament was convened to debate the imposition of sharia law. One of the main demands of the Shabaab movement has been the imposition of sharia, which has also been backed by the Islamic Courts. Ali Hassan, a police officer sipping tea with his men outside his station, told me that imposing sharia meant progress "in the absence of law". He said that like the rest of the force, he hadn't been paid a salary for the past 18 months. "This month was good. They gave us some wheat, sugar, tea and canned food." A warehouse that was once a garage for the Mogadishu police force had been converted to house the parliament. Hundreds of plastic chairs were lined up for the 275 members. Coloured paper decoration criss-crossed the ceiling and balloons and advertisements for mobile phone companies hung from the walls. After the parliament voted to introduce sharia I went back to visit the police officer. He shrugged and smiled when I told him about the debate. "We have always used sharia in our work," he said, handing me a cup of murky tea. "When the whole state is collapsing all that we have is our religion." He told me he had joined the army in 1970 and then the police just before the collapse of Mogadishu 20 years ago. He had been wearing the same beige uniform ever since. "You are trying to impose law but where is the law when everyone is fighting? When the Ethiopians came those same Islamists that are in the government attacked us every day. They said we were supporting the invaders. In one day 15 shells fell on our police station. Now they are the government hopefully things will be better." First we establish order In a Mogadishu courtyard one afternoon I watched sharia justice in action. The judge sat in front of a broken glass table decorated with red plastic flowers, a big folder and piles of papers spread on his lap. In neat Arabic handwriting he recorded the statements of the two adversaries sitting in front of him. A man in his 40s was accusing a teenage boy of stealing his son's bicycle. The case had been running for two weeks. "This how we establish sharia," the judge told me. "First we establish order and judgment in the middle of the chaos of war and destruction. When we started back in 1996 we were not a political movement. We started as judges to bring justice, then we became a political movement and then we became military." We crossed the basketball pitch of the compound that was once an army college. A lone boot sat in the middle of the pitch. The judge went on: "You know, sharia is fearing God and establishing religion. It's not about chopping hands off. First we establish security and then impose the rulings. It's the fear and hunger and chaos. If I cut the hands of hundreds of thieves I will not bring justice. Feed the hungry first and then punish them if they steal." Life without a state Two decades of garbage have been piled into the streets of the Hamrawaine area in Mogadishu. The piles have decomposed into mounds of earth and plastic, the earth giving life to cacti and shrubs through which small rivers of sewage trickle. Goats climb the walls of destroyed houses. Mogadishu resembles a city hit by a nuclear blast. Shattered walls peppered with millions of bullet holes, are all that is left of the city's Italian colonial architecture and communist monuments. One of the mysteries is how the city's residents survive in the absence of any meaningful economy. "Somalis have a very strong social support network," a young government employee explained. "If you work with the government or in the market you support at least 10 people of your family, and your neighbours. The people who live outside [the country] send money, and if there is a rich Somali and he doesn't support the poor, he will be despised, and no one would marry his daughters." After 20 years people had become used to life without a functioning state, explained one businessman with interests in fuel, mobile telephones and food. "Businessmen learned to do their work without a government. In the port the shipment is downloaded just as if there was a government – only you are the government, so if you have a ship you have to bring your men and your guards and do your work. Amongst the businessmen everything is run through trust – for example, when we need to buy fuel 20 merchants put money together, send it to Dubai, and our Somali friends send us a fuel tanker. Every merchant has his own militia and men who protect his interests. We do business with the government and the Shabaab. Our friends in Dubai are envious of us because we live without a state and we can do trade everywhere without control." In Rome Street, down from the market, an old man sat in his shop half buried by piles of yellow newspapers and old magazines. Behind him on the wall were pictures of Mogadishu when it was still a functioning city 20 years ago. He poked his head between two ancient typewriters, a huge grin on his face, and declared, in beautiful Arabic: "This is very good time in Mogadishu. Look, it's so late and we can stay in our shops." It was 4pm and across the street a man swept the floors of the dentist's with a broken broom. Changing sides Back at the presidential compound I met one of the young commanders of the Islamic Courts, Jami'a, who was on Ahmed's side. A thin 22-year-old dressed in stonewashed jeans and a faded white shirt, he sat flanked by two new Chinese fans. Like soldiers, the fans moved their heads, first to the left and then to the right, with mechanical precision. Like all the young Somali fighters, Jami'a was born out of the chaos of two decades of civil war. "When I was in high school our area was controlled by two warlords, Mousa Yaljo and Omar Fenish. It was a very difficult time. Sometimes we went to school in buses and sometimes because of the fighting we had to walk. Their soldiers would steal everything, even our shoes." Jami'a told me how he he had learned the Qur'an at university, then joined the Islamists battling Mogadishu's warlords. After the warlords, he fought the Ethiopians. Later he took me to the frontline. We drove in two Toyota Land Cruisers along Factory Road in south Mogadishu, to our east a wasteland of shrubs and swamps where the Shabaab positions were. We walked through the grounds of the burnt-out ministry of defence, where young, frail and underfed fighters, in tattered clothes and broken sandals, sat under trees or on broken ammunition boxes. There was a look on their faces that I had seen before in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan. They carried guns and wrapped themselves with bandoliers of bullets but their faces gave them away: they were scared. Their enemy was somewhere across the fields, Islamists like them, heads wrapped by kuffiyas like them, holding Kalashnikovs like them, tired and underfed like them. A week later the Factory Road frontline fell to the Shabaab, when most of the commanders I met switched sides and decided to fight with the opposition. A tiny, barely noticed footnote in the tragedy of Somalia. Islam tries to restore order in Mogadishu Guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Originally posted by General Duke: Yusuf is a renowned war hero and few Somali's have ever fought and defeated Ethiopian brigades, and captured Ethipian lands as he did in 1964 & 1977. What is wrong with this statement? Take a moment and think about it.

Weapons embargo is still in place.

UN council puts cash behind support for Somalia Tue May 26, 2009 12:53pm EDT By Daniel Bases UNITED NATIONS, May 26 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to extend its mandate for African Union troops to stay in Somalia, and back it with more stable financing, to help the nascent government fight off hard-line Islamist rebels. The 15-to-0 vote to keep peacekeepers (AMISOM) in Somalia for another eight months and support President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed also comes with a more stable source of financing. "What is unique about it is that for the first time the Security Council has agreed to provide logistical support and to pay for that through U.N. assessed contributions," Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers told reporters after the vote. "We understand it will be somewhere between $200 million and $300 million during the course of the year ahead. That money, once it is agreed within the U.N. system, will be guaranteed to support AMISOM," he said. Neighboring states and Western security services fear Somalia, which has been mired in civil war for 18 years, could become a base for al Qaeda-linked militants and destabilize the Horn of Africa region unless the new government can defeat Islamist rebels. Currently, large parts of south and central Somalia are under the control of hard-line al Shabaab insurgents and allied Islamist fighters. A surge in violence this month has killed nearly 200 people in Mogadishu and driven some 60,000 residents from their homes. At least 53 people have died since Friday morning when the government attacked insurgent strongholds in the capital. PHASES OF SUPPORT U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said sending a U.N. force to Somalia now was a high-risk move that would likely prompt attacks against the peacekeepers, and therefore has kept the U.N. blue-helmet peacekeepers out of the conflict. Ban recommended in a report in April that the best approach is to build up support for AU peacekeepers already in Somalia and for Somali security forces. The first phase would be to support the 4,300-strong AMISOM force consisting of Ugandans and Burundians and push toward its planned strength of 8,000. This includes building up the fledgling security forces of Somalia's interim government. If security conditions allowed, a second phase could involve what he called a "light United Nations footprint" by sending U.N. officials to Mogadishu to give political support, assist AMISOM and ensure aid delivery. If this was successful, under Ban's proposal the Security Council could then consider authorizing a U.N. peacekeeping force to take over from AMISOM. The United Nations' peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said earlier in May that Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, had offered to spearhead U.N. peacekeeping in the fellow Muslim country. U.N. officials have long insisted a Muslim country should be in charge of any U.N. force sent to Somalia. Pakistan and Bangladesh, have also pledged military support for an eventual mission, while Uruguay has pledged military observers, Le Roy added. (Writing by Daniel Bases; additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau and Megan Davies in New York, editing by Vicki Allen)

^ How do you propose that it should be done then? We all know what should be done, the question is how. So step up to the plate Meiji and lets talk about solutions.

THERE ARE NO ETHIOPIANS FIGHTING IN SOMALIA. In the other thread you said you read Mareeg and that you consider it a trustworthy site. Ethiopian military forces have reportedly crossed back into Somalia, witnesses said on Tuesday. So do you still insist that there are no Ethiopian troops inside Somalia?

Your weighing-scale analogy is as laughable as your theory that Eritrea is Somalia's Best Friend For Life. Everyone knows Eritrea has its own interest. If you haven't heard this before, let me tell it to you: THERE ARE NO ETHIOPIANS FIGHTING IN SOMALIA. The weighing scale analogy is very fitting in this situation. I think that I have highlighted that you are a supporter of Ethiopia, for whatever reason. So I will not continue this discussion. Discussing with you will not benefit me since I will not learn anything from you. However I will expand on my weighing scale analogy for the other participants of this thread. Eritrea vs. Ethiopia Ethiopia and Eritrea are fighting a proxy war in Somalia, this is the sad truth. Their involvement in our affairs is undesirable for us; however it is a fact we have to deal with. We can not wish away this reality. We need to get Ethiopia and Eritrea out of Somali affairs; the question is how do we do that? The situation as it is now is that these two countries are balancing each other out. If one makes a move, the other makes a counter move and the balance is maintained. This balance should only be disrupted if the outcome will lead to a Somalia without involvement from Ethiopia and Eritrea. We do not want Ethiopia to get its hands free in the Somali affairs. That is recipe for disaster, an Ethiopia that can do as it likes in Somalia without any consequences. Ethiopia or Eritrea who is the bigger threat? My answer is simple on this one; Ethiopia is the real threat to the Somali Republic. 1. Eritrea does not share a border with Somalia, where Ethiopia does. 2. Eritrea does not have a large Somali population that it oppresses, where Ethiopia does. 3. Eritrea did not invade Somalia, whereas Ethiopia did. 4. Eritrea has not fought a war with the Somali Republic whereas Ethiopia fought 3 wars against Somalia in the past 50 years. From this we can conclude that Ethiopia is the real threat whereas Eritrea is a minor threat compared with Ethiopia. Eritrea works through proxies, whereas Ethiopia works directly by invading Somali territories, at this moment Ethiopia has troops inside Somalia (Kalabayrka) Eritrea does not. Eritrean actions can be minimized by dealing directly with their proxy, whereas with Ethiopia you have to confront them directly. So in situations like this which problem do you address first? What will happen if we take Eritrea out of this equation and Ethiopia gets a carte blanche in Somalia? Well you do not have to be a genius to figure out that Ethiopia will get its way in Somalia. The question is, is this good for Somalia if Ethiopia gets its way? For those who think that Somalia without Eritrean involvement would be better, do you think that Ethiopia would like to see a functioning TFG, even if that’s possible? My answer is no, Ethiopia sees Somalia as an existential threat and will work against any group that wants to establish a functioning government in Somalia, whether this group is the TFG or the Al Shabab – Xiz islam. Eritrea’s primary goal is to keep Ethiopia bogged down. Ethiopia’s primary goal is that no state emerges in Somalia. In conclusion 1. We balance them. 2. We take out Ethiopia first. 3. We take out Eritrea second. It is in the interest of all Somali factions that Ethiopia is taken out of the equation first and as long as Ethiopia is not taken out of the equation Eritrea is needed to balance them out.

Originally posted by Recovering-Romantics : me, Bro, you are approaching the problem from a very laughable angle. If Eritrea stops its involvement in Somalia today, the anarchists and extremists groups in Somalia will be defeated and we would recover from almost 20 years of war and anarchy. But, you see it different, since Sharif is a "kafir," and his government is "rida," right? I asked you a direct question and you seem not capable of answering it. So I will give you a graphic example, maybe this will help you. Let’s simplify the situation. Imagine Somalia is a weighing scale and that we have differing measures on this scale. Let’s say on the right side of the scale there is 2 kilo’s and on the left scale there is 2 kilo, imagine that we take out 1 kilo out the left scale, what will happen? Yes, the right side will go down, while the left side is in the air. We will get an imbalance. This means that if your wish of no Eritrean help for Somalia comes true that Ethiopia will benefit. Since Ethiopia will have its way. Do you support Ethiopia RR? Is Ethiopia your ally?

Originally posted by Recovering-Romantics : quote:Originally posted by me: I asked you a direct question do not run around the mill, get to the point. Who will benefit? Bro, no-one is "running around," I am simply surprised by your ignorance; hence, my long reply to you. The short answer to your problem would be Eritrea. When it is all said and done, Somalia won't come out alive. + Still you’re running around the mill and trying to dodge the question. Again I ask you this question: Who will benefit in the Somali conflict if Eritrea stops its involvement?

I asked you a direct question do not run around the mill, get to the point. Who will benefit?

RR, I think that I can safely assume that you don’t like Eritrea’s role in the Somali conflict. Lets see what would happen if Eritrea stopped helping the Somali people. Imagine if there was no more help from Eritrea who would benefit? Do you think that Ethiopia may benefit? Do you think that just because Eritrea stopped helping the Somali people that Ethiopia will stop meddling in Somali affairs?