January 28, 2006 - 23:35 Akbar's Somalia Notebook of Infamy In the opinion article "A Somalia Notebook", published by Arab News on 15 January 2006, the writer, A.J. Akbar, marshaled all the expletives he could muster to insult and ridicule the Somali people of the Horn of Africa. I wracked my mind to find a single justification for such uncalled for and invective diatribe which may even cause some of the most racist writers to blush. Setting the tone for his sworn crusade in a cliché description of Somalia's well known situation as a war-torn country awash with armory where nearly 250 trigger happy teenagers with some technicals could turn a rogue into a warlord, the writer surges ahead by describing Somalis as pirates, slaves, inferior people who couldn't wait to sell their land and pride in a whistle to European colonizers and excessively fat due to their voracious appetite for food. He also brands them as pusillanimous beings who readily allowed their mosques to be turned into churches to save their skins, backward people whose only experience with modernization are the Ak-47 guns, Coca Cola and mobile phones and pathetically ignorant stock who trust their life and fate with shamans and fraudulent Muslim clerics whose only qualification of religion is long prayer beads in which they practice their faulty Sufism brand of Islam. The writer gathers his testimony of infamy during his short encounter in Mogadishu and through a tour de grand through what he calls " the Almighty Google". He selects quotes out of context from notes ranging from the medieval Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, 19th century European missionaries and other odd sources with a premeditated intention to inflict maximum harm on the Somali people, may be with an erroneous misconception of all Somalis being ignorant people who will not be able to read his spite. A good proof of this is the strange juxtaposition of fiction and facts and viewing all people with Muslim names he encounters from Mogadishu to Harar and Addis Ababa as Somalis, thus giving himself the wide liberty of rubbing every despicable characteristic he finds on his hapless Somali punching bags. It didn't matter to him whether Amir Abdullahi who ruled the city state of Harar in the 19th century was of the Harari or Oromo ethnic race, or whether the modern shaman squatter of the mosque-turned Church was an Afar or any of the many races that live in Ethiopia. For him any person bearing a Muslim name and was engaged in something cowardly and ignoble, had only one name - Somali. Now using the same modality of selectivity and premeditated goals let me highlight the bright side of the Somali people that M.J. Akbar tried to suppress. Where the eminent Journalist's perceptive eyes could see only AK-47s, Coca Cola and cell phones as the only symbols of civilization in Somalia, they failed to register the more than 10 universities that have been established in different parts of Somalia and breakaway Somaliland, thus showing the Somali people's resilience despite problems. Other significant developments that slipped the writer's attention are the more than a dozen private airlines that reach every corner of the country where Somalia used to have only one national carrier during the heyday of Siyad Barre's rule. A little more investigative work would even have revealed to the writer the peace, stability and robust trade taking place in places like Somaliland and Puntland. The widely admired achievements of the breakaway Somaliland often called by foreign observers as the "Africa's Best Kept Secret" and "The Little Country That Could"has been beyond the reach of the writer's eyes. It is a mystery how the Mighty Google failed to show him the peace and stability and the impressive democratization process that has been taking place in Somaliland over the last 15 years. It almost questionable how any objective Journalist would miss to notice a country that held three peaceful and fair elections including municipal, presidential and parliamentary elections under international observers. A visit to other major towns other than Mogadishu such as Bossasso, Beletwein, Merca and others in Somalia as well as Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland, would have shown the writer that the Somali people have the will and the wisdom to build and prosper. In an out of context quotation from Ibn Battuta's travelogue, the writer brands the Somali people as extremely fat. He ignores that Ibn Battuta stayed only few days in Mogadishu and his contacts were limited to the city's ruler and his entourage. No serious intellectual will take few opulent traders as representative of the whole people. Besides Ibn Battuta didn't meet Somali nomads who are the real Somalis. Despite that the writer sidestepped other good things that Ibn Battuta said about Mogadishu and its Sultan. He said:†Upon arrival in Mogadishu harbor, it was the custom for small native boats ("sunbuqs") to approach the arriving vessel, and their occupants to offer food and hospitality to the merchants on the ship...on Friday, the Sultan sent clothing for them (Ibn Battuta and his delegates) to wear to the mosque. The clothing consisted of a silk wrapper (trousers were unknown), "an upper garment of Egyptian linen with markings, a lined gown of Jerusalem material, and an Egyptian turban with embroideries." Amazingly, the writer failed to notice the unique physical features of the Somali people, a phenomenon that has bedazzled foreign writers since the dawn of history. They unanimously describe the Somali people as being tall, slim and handsome. The writer has not only decided to sidestep this fact but he branded the whole Somali race as corpulent although he didn't hesitate to voice his admiration for the beauty of the Ethiopian people; at least a redeeming act for his otherwise slanderous piece. Why even internationally acclaimed Somali super models such as Iman and Waris Derie didn't come to his mind is indeed a cause of suspicion. I will quote below only a few of the Western writers' admiration for the good looks of the Somali people. Describing the different races including Somalis he saw in Aden during British rule, David Holden writes the following in his book Farwell to Arabia: "...These are financial lords of Aden; the serfs are in Cater's slums, a dusty, geometrical grid of streets where all the styles and faces of Arabia and the Indian Ocean have fetched up over the years of imperial rule. Arabs of the coast and Arabs from Sudan, in long white dishdashers and turbans; Arabs of the interior and the Yemen in printed cotton Futas, or kilts, and bright, embroidered Kashmiri shawls wound their heads. Somalis, proud of carriage and skinny of leg, stalking among the rest like black and glistening warding birds in a throng of chattering sparrows. Indians crouched in dark cubby holes with sewing machines and Pakistanis squatting sleepily among bales of cloth..." The versatile 19th century English adventurer writer Richard Burton, describing the beauty of a Somali girl in Dobo, Harawe valley, wrote in his First Steps in East Africa: "... The head was well formed, and gracefully placed upon a long thin neck and narrow shoulders; the hair, brow, and nose were unexceptionable, there was an arch look in the eyes of jet and pearl, and a suspicion of African protuberance about the lips, which gave the countenance an exceeding naiveté. Her skin was a warm, rich nut-brown, an especial charm in these regions, and her movements had that grace which suggests perfect symmetry of limb..." Joe Palmer, a former American Professor of English, who stayed sometime in Somalia in the sixties wrote ". Somali men are handsome, wiry and tall, as fit as marathon runners, full of pride, quite self-contained, having no need of you. They are tall because of natural selection; tall people see trouble in the bush coming sooner. Their beautiful maiden sisters, crowned with tonsures of black ringlets, are the infibulated property of their fathers." Describing Somali boys watching their vehicles against theft in Mogadishu, he wrote "...Many of them were beautiful, with clear almond skin, large, dark eyes, noble noses and aquiline features that distinguish the noblest Somali from other." Visiting modern Damascus, another western observer Bob Cromwell couldn't miss the beauty of Somali women: "Damascus is a fascinating place to see and the people are fantastic. A fascinating ancient city, from before there was history. The most multi-cultural place I've been -- walking down the street you see a mix of Bedouin just in from the desert; urban dwellers; Yemeni and Somali women in brightly colored robes, looking like supermodels." Ignoring all these facts at his fingertips, our writer chose to resort to two of Ibn Battuta's erroneous observations on Somali people that they were corpulent and that the Somali people of Zeila were rejecters or Shiites, while history and reality on the ground vouch for the Somali people being 100% Sunni of the Shafi'i school. Relying on his patchy excerpts he couldn't wait to accuse the Somali people being inferior and weak people who genuflected for the colonial favors to buy their land and their pride: "...The clans did not wait to be conquered. They took the easy way out and sold their rights, most often for less than a hundred dollars. The treaties were remarkable for their three-point simplicity. Point 1: All rights are yours. Point 2: I get 70 or 100 dollars. Point 3: You have the last word in all disputes..." He added that neighbors could hardly resist exploiting such weakness and the Abyssinian Emperor Menelik II, founder of modern Ethiopia, spread his suzerainty to the Islamic city state of Harar where the Emir Abdullah had readily handed over the town to the Emperor and accepted the Grand Mosque to be turned into a Church. Again one may remind the writer of Joe Palmer's words that "...The first lesson a Somali boy learns is basic spearsmanship. How will you live if you do not know how to kill an attacking leopard?.." Surely a man who can wrestle with a leopard has no feeble hearted. It is also obvious that the British description of the Somali people as the " Irish of Africa" for their pride and unruly independence has never reached the ears of the eminent journalist. A brief glance at history will also expose the writer's ignorance of the Somali people's heroic struggle against foreign occupation from the 16th century to the colonial days and beyond. Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi (c1507-1543), a Somali Imam and General who was born near Zeila, capital of the medieval Adal State, conquered much of Ethiopia. His forces exhausted and devastated by the Imam's assault, the Ethiopian emperor Lebna Dengel (reigned 1508–40) appealed to Portugal for help. By then, the Imam, known as Gran or Guray, left-handed, marched all the way to the province of Tigray where he defeated an Ethiopian army that confronted him there, and on reaching Axum destroyed the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in which the Ethiopian emperors had been coronated for centuries. A Portuguese force led by Christovao da Gama, brother of the famous explorer Vasco da Gama, and included 400 musketeers and a number of artisans and other non-combatantswho landed at the port of Massawa on February 10, 1541, in the reign of the emperor Gelawdewos. The Portuguese led force eventually succeeded to defeat and kill the Imam after fierce battles. As American Ethiopian expert Paul B. Henze wrote "...In Ethiopia the damage which [Ahmad] Gragn did has never been forgotten. Every Christian highlander still hears tales of Gragn in his childhood." Henze said Haile Selassie referred to him in h is memoirs: "I have often had villagers in northern Ethiopia point out sites of towns, forts, churches and monasteries destroyed by Gragn as if these catastrophes had occurred only yesterday." At the turn of the 20th century, the Somali hero Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, described by one scholar as the George Washington of Somali nationalism, led an exhaustive and long resistance war against the combined colonials powers of Britain, Italy and Ethiopia (1898-1920). Not being able to break the will and resolve of the Mad Mullah, as the British called him, the British colonial government resorted to its Royal Air Force (RAF). In Jan - Feb 1920, RAF units made sorties against the Mad Mullah's dervish forces in what it called the RAF's first "little war". The airborne intervention, the first in Africa, was "the main instrument and decisive factor" in the success of the operation. Ten dH9s were dispatched to form "Z Force", and were used for bombing, strafing and as air ambulances according to military documents from the British Archives. Hell bent on not leaving any insult unpeeled, the writer throws his last salvo by accusing Somalis of taking comfort in the past and boasting of Ancient Egyptians importing “slaves of a superior sort†among other things from their land. This is a pathetic attempt by the writer to insinuate Somalis taking pride in being slaves, albeit of better stock. It is a historical fact that Somalis were never taken as slaves, although their ports of Zeila and Berbera were used as embarkation points for the inhumane slave trade going to Arabia Felix. While turning a blind eye to all these facts, Akbar didn't fail to underline the superiority of his pedigree to that of Somalis and indeed Africans by proudly highlighting the Indian achievements in Ethiopia as architects, traders and civilizing agents. In fact apart from Akbar's pomposity, the Somali people draw great pride in their strong historical commercial and cultural relations with India, a fact that their folklore heritage celebrates until today. Bashir Goth bsogoth@yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2005 Awdalnews Network

Wow Warlords have many faces some of them are ordinary people who are not benefit their warlord-ims but rather ally support tribal name, however others do warlord-ims actions just to seft-interest and making money business, in addition to violent warlords.

Silent Somali warlords January 19, 2006 Somalia is a country which has been without a functional government for the last 15 years. Unfortunately, the country is controlled by armed militia headed by warlords, who are responsible for death of thousands of innocent people directly and indirectly, and enormous numbers of people are maimed and others have been forced to flee to other African countries and became refugees. These warlords and their names and whereabouts are well known, and I believe one day they will pay their price through man-made judiciary system or in the judgement day. The on-going civil strife has also resulted in other serious problems in Somalia, and includes: - total collapse of social infrastructure, (education, health, communication, potable water supply systems, etc.) lack of judiciary system/law and order, and serious environmental and social/economic problems that are severely affecting the wellbeing of our community and country in general. As a matter of fact the armed warlords are major factors that contributed to these problems but there are also silent Somali warlords who are responsible for the deaths and suffering of a large number of people in Somalia. These silent warlords are so called businessmen/women, who import fake medicines and unsafe/unsuitable food from overseas (Asia, Africa and Europe) and distribute and sell them openly in markets of Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia and other towns in Somalia. These people are greedy, self-centred, cold hearted criminals without consciences are killing their own people with fake medicines and unsafe food. 90 percent of drugs in the country's hospitals, clinics and pharmacies are fake products. Lured by big profits many businessmen/women switched from other business to the illicit trade in fake medicine just to be wealthy themselves, embracing an ignorant perspective and greediness. There is no legal action taking place to protect the innocent citizens of that poor country. Thousands and thousands of Somalis died as a result of fake medicines and food poisoning from unsafe/unsuitable food for human consumption. The problem is at a critical point, with innocent citizens unaware that Somalia has became a dumping site for fake medicines and unsafe foods that are mostly manufactured in Asia and Africa, countries that all too often do not respect human rights and equal life status and dignity. We are all fully cooked human beings need to treat each other with respect. The fake medicines don't even comply with international standard requirements for labelling, no expire date, no manufacturer name and address, and no ingredients. These omissions are quite deliberate and kill innocents and have-nots (the poor). Often the counterfeit medicines are very difficult to distinguish from the original medicines as the packages look fine. It's easy to produce fake medicines. In some instances flour, chalk, or other powder substances has been put into capsules and passed off as medicine, and some imported medicines are genuine but out of expire date/use by date with a forged label. In addition to this, many internationally banned medicines, such as Novalgin, Analgin, Femidol, Tendril etc, and highly potential habit forming drugs (ephedrine, diazepam) are still flooding into Somalia, and sold in the markets, pharmacies, and groceries without medical prescription. The fake medicine represents the cause for a large number of people who are suffering and some cases dying as a result of it. "A lot of deaths could be avoided if the drugs being used were not substandard counterfeits" according to Dr Dora Akunyili, director general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control of Nigeria. Deaths linked to phoney medicines and unsafe foods are on increase in Somalia, and unfortunately at this stage there are no authorities or regulations to govern the hideous industry. In Somalia, most of the social infrastructures are totally collapsed. There is no quality control system or laboratories for analysis of food, medicine and other products. The World Health Organisation authorities and other international organisations (governmental and non-governmental) and national institutions are aware of this serious issue but they can not do much in a country where the law of the gun prevails. It's dismaying and outrageous that people are killing their own people for their own personal interests; therefore, we should put our heads together and find a suitable solution to safeguard the lives of many innocent Somalis dying and suffering through consumption of fake medicines and unsafe food stuffs. The issue of fake drugs became has became a global problem, and many international governments are struggling and fighting to crack down. Overcoming this devastating problem requires huge human/material resources and institutions to be implemented, which Somalia lacks today. I believe that formation of a national Somali agency charged with the responsibility of formulating regulations and compiling standard specification for compliance by manufacturers, importers and exporters of regulated products can play a vital role in the solution. It's also important to obtain international collaboration, especially from countries, where products are manufactured or imported, and products should be analysed and certified before shipment to Somalia. We urge members of the Somali community to be vigilant and thoroughly check drugs, food stuffs, and other products before taking or consuming, and we would like to advise the Somali government (current/future government) not to focus only on the armed warlords, they should also target and get rid of the silent Somali warlords……criminals. We would also like to notify the Somali silent warlords (the so-called businessmen/women) to stop manufacturing, trading and importing fake drugs and unsafe products. Finally we appeal to international countries and organisations (governmental and non-governmental) to help and protect Somali people from health hazardous products, (fake drugs, unsafe food stuffs and products) that are seriously affecting the health and wellbeing of the community. By: Awes Sh. Muheidin Amin Posted: 18th/January/2006

Battle wounds - By M.J. Akbar reports from Somalia Mogadishu (Somalia), Jan. 11: Where do you find war? In a graveyard or a hospital. There are no stories in a graveyard. A hospital, on the other hand, has too many. The director of Medina Hospital was in Mecca. It seemed the appropriate place for Sheikh Don to be. He had left for Dubai en route to Haj by the south city airport on a Russian Antonov: an extremely enterprising private airline now ferries those who can afford the minimum fare of $250. There is even an occasional flight to Paris. Where there is a will there is a way. The south city airport, unlike its poor cousin in the north, is protected by anti-aircraft guns. Medina Hospital was built by the Germans for the local police and has proper buildings, lovely trees in the spacious compounds, a high water reservoir and space for 500 beds. About 65 — always add a few for battle casualties — function now. Our guide is Dr Ali the White, a jovial Somali who refuses to get depressed by his difficulties. Instead, he breaks into song when he learns that I am an Indian. Thankfully, it is not Mera joota hai Japani... but the rather surprising Meri muhabbat jawan rahegi, sada rahi hai sada rahegi. May I add that he got the tune right. I am not brave enough to face another’s pain and the visit to the wards was acutely discomforting. The relatives around each bed looked stoic as they fanned their loved child, or simply waited. There are few old men or women in hospital. That is the meaning of war. The most important doctor is the chief surgeon, which tells the story. Dr Hassan Osman is legitimately proud that one of the techniques he has devised for immediate operations is now quoted in medical journals. The wounded come from as far away at Diinsoor, which is 500 km away. That is reputation in a war zone. The police disappeared from Medina in 1991, when the remnants of government crumbled. It was partially reopened in 1992 with the help of Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). Patients were treated under trees. There was no water or power. A hospital is perhaps the only thing that brings clans together in wartime. The elders got together and contacted the Red Cross in 1999, which stepped into desolation. In 2000 a generator arrived, which purrs quietly in a large shed and turns Medina into an island unrecognisable from its environs: a full drug store, surgical equipment, doctors who are taken to one annual conference, nurses and, perhaps most important, community involvement. It was the community that paid for the new tiles in one ward and painted the buildings. If Medina is a marvel then Keysaney is a miracle. This hospital in the north was a prison outside the city, on the shore, making it, as someone wryly observed, the "most secure hospital in the world". When the Siad Barre regime collapsed the prison emptied. Compared to Medina, the facilities are rudimentary, the facilities minimal. The strength of Dr Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed, a devout young man who prays five times a day, and his colleagues is inspiring. This is the only hospital for he north, and has treated more than 55,000 patients in over a decade. Add more than 100,000 outpatients. That is the meaning of war. The Red Cross turned this prison into a hospital in November 1991. There are four wards, including one for VIPs, which means it has curtains. Dr Ahmed showed me with shy pride the apparatus he had set up to recycle a bullet victim’s blood back into the patient. The one thing you can’t get in a bloodstained country is blood. The main hall at Keysaney doubles up as an English classroom for the staff in the evenings, thanks to Dr Ahmed. The sentences chalked on the blackboard are instructive in more ways than one. ‘A: Do you think you can get me to Victoria by half-past? B: We should be OK if the lights are with us. A: You’ve still got five minutes to spare. A: Pounds 6.40 please.’ The last sentence was: ‘I go to a private institute which is called Oxford.’ You find both war and aspiration in Dr Ahmed’s fly-blown hospital. The unsentimental fortitude of doctors is remarkable. Dr Ahmed takes nothing for granted, and everything in his stride. Dr C. Oscar Avogadri has just joined the Red Cross team for Somalia. He is an Italian who spent some time in Nepal but, much to his relief, did not understand cricket — otherwise he might have spent eight hours on a weekend watching the game instead of doing something better. Pascal Hundt, head of the Somalia division, is Swiss, imperturbable, practical and measures a day by how much he has got done, whether stocking medical supplies or injecting capital into the rural economy by financing 5,000 goats, or telling impoverished representatives of a betrayed people that he cannot change the rules. He is already planning for a famine that looms ahead. The price of war is poverty. Somalis do not have the individual or collective resources to fight a famine. The destitution is utter. Clothes are old, slippers tattered, food basic. There are no shops, apart from the occasional medical (what else?) store, or a utility outlet. There is no state, and therefore no state service. Water and electricity must be purchased from entrepreneurs; travel rights from the gun-toting militias. The thin elite owns generators. For visitors with foreign exchange and a hotel room there is excellent fruit juice and lobster from the Indian Ocean. For the nomad, or the citizen, life hovers at subsistence level. Measure incomes on a simple scale. The best paid are top-of-the-line gunmen, who get a hundred dollars a month. Fifty dollars will fetch you a bullet-sprayer (a bullet costs 30 cents). Most of the gunmen don’t have shoes either. There may be no money for food, but there is always enough money for war. My friend remembers this fact with a hint of awe: the only time the price of food collapsed was in 1991, when the Americans came, leading an international effort to fight famine and starvation, restore governance and leave behind a semblance of civil society. A 50-kg bag of rice that cost $450 during famine was available for nine dollars. (The current price is $50.) So what was the mistake that the world’s most powerful country made in the world’s weakest country? Cultural insensitivity is too boring an accusation. A diplomat who was in and out of Somalia at that time, and lives in Nairobi, has more relevant analysis. The Americans were not interested in peacekeeping; they wanted something that they called peace-building. They wanted an architecture that would stabilise the country around a democratic polity. It was another honourable intent, that came unglued when it hit warlords. Every warlord was convinced that only he could become President of the Somali Republic. In a bid to challenge the lords, American soldiers raided the home of the most powerful, Aideed. That was the end of both peacekeeping and peace-building. The American position on the country is: Somalia missed the bus a decade ago; it will not be given another chance. There are others ready to take a chance, or provide one. The last spot on our tour of Medina Hospital was the newly-painted canteen for families of patients, another stray sign of normalcy in an abnormal world. The doctors left me alone: clearly no one senior ever ventured into a public canteen. If they wanted coffee outside office they sat on benches in the shade of trees. Even Dr Ali the White left me. I wandered in. The painting was fresh; the walls sparkled with schoolchild paintings of the usual variety, animals, scenery et al. To my right, in a panel, were two highrise buildings. On top of one was a legend: New York. A similar masthead on the other was filled with black. Two airplanes were exploding against the upper stories of both buildings. In the space between the towers, in small lettering, was a phrase. Since I can read Arabic, I knew what it said. Al Qaeda. Perhaps someone reading this will get into a pother, and that painting, done by someone doing community service for the hospital in a canteen the senior staff did not enter, will be erased. That is not the point. The point is what is happening to the community in Mogadishu, living on the deserted, rubble-strewn streets around Medina. I could not resist the question as I said goodbye to Dr Ali the White. Surely that could not be his real name. No. His name was Dr Ali Muallim. Then...? "Oh," he said with a big grin, "white because I am so black. Just reverse!" Just reverse. It seems a good metaphor for Mogadishu.

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Lessons from Somalia BY M J AKBAR Editor-in-Chief of The Asian Age E-mail: mjakbar@asianage.com 16 January 2006 ON December 2, 2005, His Excellency Eng. Hussein Mohammad Farah Aideed, deputy prime minister (politics and security), minister of interior, Transitional Federal Government of the Somali Republic, called, by appointment, on India’s high commissioner in Nairobi, Surendra Kumar. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, tie and leather-strap sandals. The ‘Eng.’ before his name was similar to ‘Dr’: Engineers now like to be known that they are thus qualified. In Somalia the preferred title of Hussein Aideed is ‘General’, a claim by hereditary right. His father, General Mohammad Farah Aideed, became the world’s most famous warlord, immortal in local lore and deified by Hollywood, when, in 1993, he broke American will by downing two Black Hawk helicopters and killing 18 American Marines whose bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, capital of Somalia. A reward of a million dollars was placed on his head, and he was nicknamed, for some obscure reason, Yogi the Bear. The father did not die in an American prison, but in his own city. His son was living in America, and had trained to become a reserve Marine. When his father died, he returned to Somalia to inherit the title and the loyalty of his father’s militia, though not the respect that his father commanded. Neither father nor son believed that the term "warlord" was appropriate. Aideed means "one who rejects insults". He seemed sincere, said ambassador Kumar. Hussein Aideed promised peace would finally come to Somalia in about six months, thanks to the latest deal brokered by mostly well-meaning (or simply fed-up) neighbours. He asked for Indian assistance in demining southern Somalia, building roads, assisting in healthcare and training the police. Uniforms and guns for the police would not be unwelcome. Since there is nothing called a police force in Somalia at the moment, perhaps Hussein Aideed wanted arms and training for his own force. Kumar was diplomatic in his response; the visitor’s charm was not sufficient to reduce the host’s scepticism. The news is that India is not in any hurry to arm and train anyone, or rebuild roads, which are controlled by AK-47-wielding bands who laugh as they collect their tax on any vehicle brave enough, or desperate enough, to travel. The government of Hussein Aideed used to be based in Nairobi until the Kenyans exhausted their patience and told them to go. Somalia is not a country in search of a government. It is a government in search of a country. From the air, Mogadishu is entrancing, lean and stretched out against the Indian Ocean, a city of two million in a country of seven. It begins in the greenery of banana trees in the south, curves along the pristine beaches untouched by the large waves that break much before the shore. The city ends where the sand rises to cliff height in the north before spreading into the arid and endless desert. We flew into an airport in the north on Saturday in a Red Cross plane. The Red Cross is now the only international organisation with a national presence in Somalia, working to bring a touch of contemporary concern to a land that has been driven back into a pre-industrial past by criminal greed and mindless violence. The breeze cools the midday sunshine and throws sand into our eyes as step off. The airport was built by Osman Hassan Ali Atto, warlord and politician, to ferry khat, a local nerve-soother. When the international airport closed down, its fortunes boomed. Wisely, Mr Atto decided to share such fortunes with a fellow warlord. The commerce is limited but it is a commercial hub of sorts. In 1998, two Red Cross officials disembarked at this airport from a similar plane and wandered off to answer a call of nature behind a nearby sand dune, a reasonable need after a two-and-a-half hour flight. They were lucky. The rest of the group was kidnapped by gunmen who appeared over a small hill, and held hostage for 10 days. Somalia is now one of two regions where the Red Cross uses armed guards, rather than the humanitarian credibility that keeps it safe elsewhere. The only other place is Chechnya. There are three structures at this airstrip, nearly indistinguishable from the colour of the surrounding desert. The first, about 10 feet wide with a sloping tin roof, is both the cafeteria and the bank: you can get a soft drink while you change foreign exchange for Somali shillings. There was a time when a dollar fetched 30,000 shillings, but the rate has stabilised at 15,000. Warlords print the Somali currency. There is an advertisement of a cellphone company on the second hut, which is possibly an office. The third structure on an airstrip devoid of any human habitation for miles is a mosque, an Ottoman crescent atop its minaret. A small craft of Aviation Sans Frontieres is waiting to take off when we land: the two NGO planes constitute the business of the day. A man near the tarmac with a cap, a piece of cloth wrapped around both ears, a football-referee whistle in one hand and a tasbeeh (prayer beads) in the other is the air traffic clearance authority. Each item has a function. The cap is for the sun. The cloth is for the sand. He keeps in touch with the pilot with the whistle. He keeps in touch with God with the prayer beads. Our plane is refuelled while we wait. Three skinny, industrious men, two of them in the trademark lungi, kick-roll dented drums from a Dyna 350 semi towards the plane. A wheelbarrow, carrying a hose and a small engine, accompanies them. The drums contain the fuel. Each is opened, with some effort, by a metal strip that fits into a groove in the cap and twists the cap around. On end of the hose goes into the drum, the other into the plane. The engine is pulled into a gurgle. Oil begins to flow up. They travel about a hundred metres or more ahead, obscured by a windscreen of powdery desert dust: nine men on the back of a powerful Toyota, their legs dangling over the side, each with an AK-47 of varying power, and enough ammunition to start a small war. In the centre is a mounted heavy machine-gun, manned by a burly brother in a bandana, with don’t-fool-with-me in his eyes and a pistol in his belt. In local parlance, they constitute a "technical". No self-respecting warlord travels with less than four "technicals". Since this one has been hired to protect us, I suppose this ‘technical’ is on the side of the angels, but loyalties are variable in a cash-and-carry business. We drive over sand and rock towards the world’s largest, or perhaps only, ghost city. An occasional man sleeps under a desert shrub. Lonely men squat on the edge of the track, waiting for nothing, their faces drained of all expectation. Women, in rare ones or twos, are defined by the bright colours of their dress, principally a dramatic red interspersed by a soothing yellow. The rest is silence in a vast emptiness, broken only by the periodic and minimal radio exchanges between our SUV and our "technical". Suddenly, to our left, appears a huge scrapyard, a crazy museum of twisted, shattered metal, carcasses of cars, machines, yesterday’s homes, anything that could be pillaged. It is owned by Bashir Raghe, a warlord. A minute later we see a large ship sitting impassively offshore. This is the scrap metal trade, a lucrative byproduct of a destruction-economy, and yet another fortune for warlords to kill over. "Do you know where the scrap is headed?" asks a friend whom I shall leave unnamed. I don’t. To India. To the right, in another minute, is what seems to be a mirage: a pink villa from an Italian seashore. Who lives there? A businessman. What is his business? He owns a bone factory. A destruction-economy has more than one byproduct. So far, I note, I have seen seven beneficiaries of this economy: the warlords; Japanese vehicle manufacturers (all registrations in Dubai or Sharjah); the Russian armaments industry; Belgian pistol-makers; telecommunications equipment makers; shipowners and Indian scrap merchants. Add an eighth, I am told. Coca-Cola. There is a flourishing Coca-Cola factory in the south of the city. Life goes better with Coca-Cola, particularly amidst death. The first sight of Mogadishu is unreal. It is like seeing ruins from the wrong end of time. The jagged edges of Rome’s or Amman’s amphitheatre symbolise the achievements of 2,000 years ago. In Mogadishu, you see the ruins of a flourishing 20th century city in an environment that has regressed 2,000 years. Only a few of the shell-shocked homes seem inhabited; strangely there is utter silence even among the sparse patches of life. I am given a guided tour of devastation: here what was once an enclave of diplomatic homes or an embassy row during the era of the Soviet-supported President Siad Barre, there nothing where once the Indian embassy existed. Every hundred paces is dull repetition of what used to be. The true sadness of Mogadishu is not what it has become, but what it once was, and what it could have been. The radio crackles. We cannot go to the Italian cathedral built when they colonised this part of Somalia. The "technical" has reported that a gunbattle is going on in front of the cathedral. And so, without any fuss, we turn left a little before the gunbattle and drive into what was once the pride of the city: the main street, full of banks, businesses, government offices, cars, pedestrians, restaurants, bars and hotels. The street ends at the embankment. A majestic hotel sweeps in a classic Italian curve to our left, architecture that once hummed to the music of hundreds of rooms. It has now been blasted apart, shattered by tank battles that destroyed this street and city. We get off at the embankment, which is broken at one place leaving a large gap. One tank, unable to brake, crashed through at this point. The tank lies on the rocks of the ocean shore, rusted, its turret tilted up, still searching for an enemy of the same colour and blood. It is as distressing a memory as the Fascist pillar nearby that has survived on the promenade from the time of Mussolini. We are at the Hammaruin. We change guard. Literally. Our gunmen are all smiles as they wave goodbye; their replacements smile more broadly as they welcome us. But they don’t smile at one another. This is the dividing line between the north and south of Mogadishu. Militia from the north cannot enter the south, and naturally vice versa. In the ocean, a handful of children chatter and skip over the rocks, the shallow water being their only entertainment. On the street, young men with nothing to do but clutch triggers at their nerve-ends watch as we switch vehicles and guards. A gun is part of the normal dress code of normal young men. Engineer Hussein Aideed, leader of the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance, is yet to reach middle age. His mother, Asli Dhubat, his father’s first wife, took him to the United States as a teenager. He joined the US Marine Corps Reserves in 1987, became a corporal and told the Associated Press in Somalia: "Once a Marine, always a Marine". He has, he believes, a wonderful idea for Somalia’s future. There are no passports in Somalia; even Kenya does not recognise a warlord passport any more. Hussein Aideed told ambassador Surendra Kumar that he was negotiating with an Indian IT company to create e-passports. The cost was estimated at $25 million. He had worked it out. An account would be opened in a prestigious international bank; 80 per cent of the passport fee deposited in this account would go to pay for the initial cost and 20 per cent would be sent on to Somalia. This would eventually pay the $25 million. It seems a great idea for California. Eminent intellectual and author M J Akbar is the editor-in-chief of The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle newspapers. He is currently on a visit to Somalia. Source: Khaleej Times, Jan. 16, 2006 ,, hiiraan.com

Hi everybody there, I having been read the above reporter article. It is very interesting one to read and that is why I liked some of you share with me then. It really reminds Somali people what was going on of thier older generation and up to this generation of Somalis specially this coming part. I quote "The clans did not wait to be conquered. They took the easy way out and sold their rights, most often for less than a hundred dollars. The treaties were remarkable for their three-point simplicity. Point 1: All rights are yours. Point 2: I get 70 or 100 dollars. Point 3: You have the last word in all disputes." These words says lot about many Somalis!! bye Dhoodi Meer

cajaa'ib

A Somalia Notebook M.J. Akbar, Arab News, 15 Jan. 2006= How many guns make a warlord? 25 technicals, so about 250 armed men with Russian AK-47s and Belgian pistols make you a lord, and you can go up the hierarchy to viscount or marquis or earl or proper baron if you include a couple of anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces. But there are no kings in Somalia. A top of the line AK-47 costs between $400 and $500; many of the weapons are below the line. I picked up one, while we were lunching off chunks of dry roast camel in a dhaba, lent to me by a young man in a shy smile and a lungi. It was heavy, a little less than ten kilograms. I gave it back after making appropriate noises, carefully avoiding even passing contact with the trigger. At a rough glance, my benefactor had about a million and a half Somali shillings worth of ammunition in his belts: A dollar fetches three bullets. Three great symbols of modern civilization are available in Somalia — the AK-47, Coca Cola and the mobile phone. Three mobile phone companies, Nationlink, TelecomSomalia and Hormut, ensure proper competition. An international call costs only 30 American cents. They also double up as money-transfer operations and one of them (defunct after landing up in the suspect category) sent Washington into paroxysms after 9/11 with a word that previously did not exist in a Western dictionary but was perfectly understood in much of Asia, hawala. Americans were in Somalia a decade before 9/11 but never picked up this word. Maybe that is why they never stayed. You have to understand Somalia to stay in Somalia. War is a great boon to technology. A cruise liner defended itself against heavily armed Somali pirate boats last year with the LRAD, Long Range Acoustic Device. It emits a sound from a long range that the human ear cannot tolerate and has proved a brilliant answer to pirate guns. So as long as pirates are human they can be driven. I am told that the device is being used in Iraq to disperse unwanted crowds. For more details on LRAD check Google. The Almighty, Omnipotent Google knows all. Their present having been stolen, Somalis take comfort in the past. Ancient Egyptians imported cinnamon, frankincense, tortoise shells and “slaves of a superior sort†from Somalia and conceded that Somali civilization matched their own. If the Magi were kings from Africa, then it is at least plausible that the one carrying frankincense for the infant Jesus came from Somalia. Ibn Batuta, the 13th century Tunisian traveler who did not waste time on inconsequential places, found Maqdashaw a “town of enormous size†where “a single person ... eats as much as the whole company of us would eat ... and they are corpulent in the extremeâ€. The only parallel I can think of is a Kashmiri enjoying his wazwan in front of us mere mortals, but of course the Kashmiri is not corpulent. The waters of Chashm e Shahi keep him slim. How many clans make a nation? The Arabs found 39 when Mogadishu became one of their principal trading colonies in the tenth century. This was the breakdown: Mukri (12), Djidati (12), Akati (6), Ismaili (6) and Afifi (3). The Mukri, who also had a dynastic ulema, were in the ascendant when Ibn Batuta visited the port. The nation state is a recent idea. Nomadic Somalis lived across a far wider region than their present borders, including Ethiopia and Kenya. European colonization came only toward the end of the 19th century. The British came to the north because, as they put it, they wanted guaranteed meat supplies for their garrison in Aden. The Italians wanted the fruit groves of the south. The French were tempted, typically, by temptation and occupied Djibouti. The clans did not wait to be conquered. They took the easy way out and sold their rights, most often for less than a hundred dollars. The treaties were remarkable for their three-point simplicity. Point 1: All rights are yours. Point 2: I get 70 or 100 dollars. Point 3: You have the last word in all disputes. Neighbors could hardly resist exploiting such weakness. In 1891 Emperor Menelik II, founder of modern Ethiopia, wrote to European powers: “Ethiopia has been for 14 centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans. If Powers at a distance come forward to partition Africa between them, I do not intend to remain an indifferent spectator.†He did not. He sent word to Amir Abdullahi, ruler of the historic city of Harar and pivotal to Muslim East Africa, to accept his suzerainty. The Amir, heir to a dynasty of 72 generations, sent presents and a helpful suggestion, that Menelik should accept Islam. Menelik promised to conquer Harar and turn the principal mosque into a church. The Medihane Alam Church, in front of the Galma Amir Abdullahi, or the old palace, is evidence that Menelik kept his word. The mosque was converted but not the people. While Ethiopia proudly and correctly claimed to have become Christian at the time of Constantinople, lands like Kenya changed only during the wave of missionary activity that accompanies colonization in the 19th century. As Jomo Kenyatta, first president of independent Kenya, famously said, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible in their hands and we had the lands... We closed our eyes to pray and when we opened them, we had the Bible in our hands and they had the lands...†Harar has the feel of a city that has traveled a long way through history but now has nowhere left to go. UNESCO has recognized Harar. There is some excitement among the educated elite that UNESCO may do more for Harar than all the rulers since the defeat of Amir Abdullahi at the battle of Chelenko in 1887. There is hope but not too much trust. As a sociologist who did his postgraduate studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay some twenty years ago, told me over mercato in the lovely café in the courtyard of the city, “We have been living too long on a diet of pledges.†Little was done for the people, who are of Somali origin, but bitter wars were fought over them. In the 1970s, Siad Barre of Somalia invaded Ethiopia to take back the ****** region, where Harar is. Talk that ****** possessed huge reserves of oil and gas might have encouraged the invasion. Siad Barre’s tanks penetrated deep into the desert before they were defeated by Cuban soldiers who acted as mercenaries of the Soviet Union (Ethiopia had a Marxist-Leninist regime then, a fact that merely Socialist Siad Barre forgot). Hararis remember the Cubans as a wild lot, shooting donkeys playfully even after being told how valuable these pack animals were. A few Cuban faces in a traditional and conservative society are more evidence that “liberators†make their own rules. The elders, gradually losing their eminence as a new anger slowly seeps through the young, are resigned to stagnation, and the eyes flicker with old zeal only when they dream that Menelik’s church will once again become a mosque in their lifetime. The people, as elsewhere in Ethiopia, can be strikingly good— looking. The mansion in which the Lion of Judah, Haile Selassie, was born is in the old city, called Jubal, and was built by an Indian. You walk down a narrow stone alley full of shops and tailors with Singer sewing machines. Indians, particularly Bohras from Bombay, dominated commerce during Muslim rule in Harar. Haile Selassie was born here because his father, Menelik’s brother, was made governor after the defeat of Amir Abdullahi. UNESCO has allocated funds for the restoration of the mansion, but ten families have made it their home and will not move. The most interesting occupant is a healer. He sits, erect, on a mattress at the center of one end of a spacious drawing room on the ground floor. His fame is recorded for posterity in a notebook where his literate patients describe their miraculous recovery, and attach passport-size photographs to add a face to their identity. He is 52 and learned his skills from his father, whose picture is framed on the high wall behind him, above a carpet with a drawing of the Holy Mosque at Makkah, and a much-extended string of prayer beads which he uses for dhikr, a Sufi form of devotion, at night. A woman enters, kisses his extended hand twice while he continues talking to us, and joins another with a child in a corner. There is a telephone on a table, and two small tape-players, one broken. The telephone rings once during our visit, and is picked by an aide lounging on the side who, we realize later, also speaks English. A notice board indicates that the healer cures all the tough diseases, including gynecological problems, but, alas, back pain is not on the list. He assures me that he can repair nerves that wrack your back as well, and there has been a cancer patient or two who has gone home happy. He explains that he uses herbs and plants, and not shaman-style magic. Perhaps he tells villagers, who crowd around him in the mornings since they have to return by nightfall, something different; perhaps he is equally candid with them. He asks about herbal medicines in India and I include Tibet’s fame in my response. The notice outside affirms that the healer does not accept fees, but donations for the cause are not unwelcome. I do not use his expertise, but my donation is not unwelcome either. M.J. Akbar mjakbar@asianage.com ------------------------------------------------- © 2005 Awdalnews Network