A new rift has unfolded. Let us just wish he reconsiders his views and make a much-needed decision to join his comrades at Baidabo. What has happened to him? He was a big part of this reconciliation between the speaker and the president. Or , is there a rumor that the capital of the TFG would temporarily move to Baidabo?

Originally posted by NGONGE: One rather suspects that intellectualism demands more than mere university degrees and college education. In fact, this was the main reason for replying to this topic. People spend all their lives constructing barriers, rules, beliefs and laws that eventually dictate how their lives should be lived and how problems can be tackled. One of these unquestioned laws is that a person with university education knows more than one without. Of course, such a premise is probably more likely to be true when the subject being discussed is the one that this person attained his college degree in. However, when the subject is one that neither side has formally studied, one would assume that both are as knowledgeable (or ignorant) as each other. Here the ‘well-read’ person will, probably, be the one that’s likely to ‘know’. Alas, nowadays, seldom does one encounter many ‘well-read’ university graduates (or non-graduates of course). Still, even those that are ‘well-read’ can not be considered intellectuals unless it’s been proven by their words and actions. One can read the works of all the philosophers, memorise the quotes of all the greats and habitually quote witty sayings, but as Voltaire once said, they prove nothing! Quotes, sayings and even other people’s philosophical theories are simply the decorations that one uses to adorn one’s own arguments and thoughts. An intellectual is akin to a master chef. Like everyone else, the ingredients he uses are widely available, the cutlery and cooking appliances are not hard to obtain and, even recipes can be found in many books. However, his own talent is what distinguishes him from other average cooks. Those sampling his offerings need not be cooks to attest to his ability. Having said all of the above, allow me to confuse you by saying that non of it really matters here. The subject at hand is one concerning Somali intellectuals. This wretched group of people is burdened with impossible expectations and incompatible demands. Somalis look up to their intellectuals for solutions (here I’m using the Somali understanding for the world intellectual - i.e. university graduate). However, most of the urgent Somali problems are not ones of vision, ideology and foresight (though there is a great breach there too). Somalia’s problems are practical in nature and need practical solutions. In spite of this, like Dr. Mohamed in the story above, Somalis, almost always, approach their ‘intellectuals’ for solutions to pragmatic problems! Many a Somali would sit eagerly at the feet of a tribally motivated ‘intellectual’ and obediently gobble up eloquently put arguments and justifications to simply solved problems (just like the story above)! Fifteen years of sitting in coffee shops and imparting these ‘intellectual’ solutions have not, yet, managed to dry out this great well of knowledge. Still, Somali intellectuals are not completely useless. They’re the journalists, educators, pundits and commentators of the nation. Their views and ‘solutions’ do matter and add to the richness of the social, political and economic discourse. They’re not the pragmatic leaders but merely the mandarins, and thus should they be viewed! That their efforts are sub-standard, their contributions unsatisfactory and prejudices highly evident, is simply a symptom of the inherent decay of this rudderless and headless nation. Again, this was an interesting and amusing story to read. Looking forward to more satirical portraits from Mr Gaildon. Thanks Ngonge, Yours was a good read too.

Originally posted by LANDER: and also allude to a historical event where one party used religion as a means to justify much crime and violence. Did somebody forget to tell ina Mohamed Abdullah Hassan "lakum diinukum waliya diin"? Lander what is that in your mind? Sayid Mohammed was a national hero. He didn't use religion to justify violence and crime but to drive the colony out of Somalia and restore our dignity. Read this letter of Sayid below to the British: I wish to rule my own country and protect my own religion. If you will, send me a letter saying whether there is to be peace or war. I intend to go from Burao to Berbera I warn you of this - I wish to fight with you. I like war, but you do not. God willing, I will take many rifles from you, but you will get no rifles or ammunition from me. I have no forts, no houses, no country. I have no cultivated fields, no silver, no gold for you to take. I have nothing. If the country were cultivated or contained houses or property, it would be worth your while to fight. The country is all jungle, and that is of no use to you. If you want wood and stone, you can get them in plenty. There are also many ant-heaps. The sun is very hot. All you can get from me is war - nothing else. I have met your men in battle, and have killed them. We are greatly pleased at this. Our men who have fallen in battle have won paradise. God fights for us. We kill, and you kill. We fight by God's order. That is the truth. We ask for God's blessing. God is with me when I write this. If you wish for war, I am happy; and, if you wish for peace, I am content also. But if you wish for peace, leave my country back to your own. If you wish for war, stay where you are. Hearken to my words. I wish to exchange a machine gun for ammunition. If you do not want it, I will sell it to some one else. Send me a letter saying whether you desire war or peace." This is what a retired U.S Marine wrote about Sayid, The Mullah sent a letter to the British commissioner in Berbera. "You have to have allies because you are weak. If you were strong, like we are, then you would stand on your own, in dependent and free. This alliance of yours, with Banyaans and Moors, Sihks and Egyptians, Germans and Americans, Arabs and Kafirs and Indians - it is because you are weak, that you have to solicit, as does a prostitute." 90 years before the fact, Mohammed Said Abdullah Hassan was able to accurately predict the composition and moral stature of today’s UN.

Nuune, little research would have helped him write better with even little bias. What made him to resort to all these name calling I don't know. Was he mistreated or his life threatened during his stay in Mogadisho? One click only of one-sided Part of Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan's history from colonial records. Google Ahmed Gran (Gurey, Left-handed) Or this simple Dialogue "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." M Akbar I think the below quote of which David Holden, in his book Farwell to Arabia,mentions Pakistan and other groups in parallel to Somalis could be the precursor of Akbar's resort to giving Somalis an inferior description, which is very very unknown to anthrapologists and hitorians who had made contact with Somalis. The quote, provided by our brother Goth, sums up, ""...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..." I retrieved all of this from "the mighty google" in just one second.

Akbar's Somalia Notebook of Infamy Bashir Goth January 28, 2006 Wardheernews 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 hisFirst 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. 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 E-Mail:bsogoth@yahoo.com

A Somalia Notebook M.J. Akbar, mjakbar@asianage.com Jan 26, 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.

Amazing author, Mohsin tires not of his never-ending wisdom and regional analysis. By far ,the best article i have read so far in regards to the 'Somaliland issue'.

It is heartening to hear Guled say that the regime in Hargiesa is no longer keen on the military option in Sool. This is not out of any kindness to Sool. It is the military reality that has opened their eyes. As the Americans have learnt to their cost in Iraq, it is easy to invade a country or other people’s land, but it is damn difficult to get out of. It is a catch 22 situation for the Somaliland forces stuck in Adhi Cadeeye. They can not move forward to accomplish mission nor can they pack up and go home without appearing defeated with their tails between their legs. The Puntland defending army can afford just to block them and let them sweat it out. Mohsin Good point

US URGES SOMALI UNITY IN RARE PERSONAL APPEALS TO WARLORDS Friday, 27 January 2006, By andnetwork .com The United States this week urged lawless Somalia's fractious leaders to unite in rare personal appeals to members of the country's deeply divided transitional government, including Mogadishu warlords, according to documents obtained by AFP on Friday. In what may signal the start of a tentative resumption in Washington's engagement with the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation since it was forced to withdraw nearly 13 years ago, a senior US envoy has told individual government members to end their squabbles. "The future of Somalia depends on leaders such as yourselves putting aside partisan differences and coming together to provide collective patriotic leadership to the Somali nation," US ambassador to Kenya William Bellamy said. "No one man, no one clan or faction or party can provide that leadership," he said in letters sent Monday to Somalia's transitional President Abudullahi Yusuf Ahmed, three top aides and seven warlords, at least four of whom are opposed to Yusuf. Yusuf's government has been mired in internal disputes and remains largely powerless with the parliament unable to meet since the administration moved from exile in Kenya -- where it was created in 2004 -- to Somalia. The rifts have raised fears of the country's complete collapse and a rise in Islamic extremism there that could threaten the region and become a base for terrorists. After months of saber-rattling rhetoric and troops build-ups, the main antagonists, Yusuf and parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, met in Yemen and agreed in principle to resolve their disputes. Bellamy urged the recipients to meet what he termed the "modest" goals of the deal, which many believe may collapse without sustained international intervention. The identical letters mirror US statements issued collectively to Somali leaders but are the first personal entreaties by a US official to individual members of the government. The letters, obtained by AFP from a diplomatic source, were written on US government stationery with the letterhead "Embassy of the United States of America" and signed by Bellamy in his capacity as a US ambassador. The United States has been loathe to involve itself in Somalia since its disastrous experience there in 1993 when 18 US Marines were killed in a bloody day-long battle with heavily armed militiamen, resulting in Washington's withdrawal from the country. Source : Sapa-AFP /yr

The underlying assumption is that Hamas espouses an ideaology that is incompatible with the current politics of the west. Hamas is like Taliban to most of the Western Nations. It was two years ago when they deposed this group from power and hunted its leaders down across borders. Therefore, The future of envisioning Hamas in a legitimate authority comes into direct conflict with the "war on terrorism", which we are made to believe as a war against extremism and Islamism---doublet. This is a very sensitive issue to put on a dialogue, hence , i will rest my two cents' worth here.

An old interesting article but worth reading. This person belongs to one of the generations we have lost in overseas. He shares his story with us."Patrick Erouart-Siad is a journalist and novelist living in New York...He is working on his fourth novel about the Horn of Africa." THE SHE-CAMELS OF LAS ANOD Erouart-Siad, Patrick Sasha in Virginia asked me for a pony. Her mother e-mailed me to know whether I intended housing my livestock in the Bronx zoo. May, my daughter, had a special request for baby camels. As eldest son of the Siad clan, I set off to claim the herd of dromedaries allotted to me by tradition in the wilds of Somaliland, which declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991. The international community refuses to recognize the independence of the former British Somaliland -- in the name of the untouchability of national borders inherited from colonialism, a principle invalidated by Eritrea. I left New York, where I live, for a "nowhere land," "a country that doesn't exist," in pursuit of a dream of identity fervently handed down to me by my mother and my uncle, the Somali poet William Syad. According to them, we are the sons of chiefs, the "Garaads," the Siads (Syad, depending on the spelling, from the Arabic Saïd, of which "The Cid" is a derivative). Their song is music to the six mixed-blood cousins from the West. Responsibilities lie in store for us, but also land, flocks of sheep and goats as well as the famous she-camels, their coats the color of wild honey. Our kingdom is called Las Anod, roughly translated as "the well of milk." On the latest maps, "the milky fountain" lies just 350 kilometers from Hargeisa, the capital of the Republic of Somaliland. But in fact, we have to travel over 1500 kilometers there and back because the roads are mined. In order to trace one's family ancestry, it always makes sense to take a bush taxi. At the bus station in Hargeisa, I daydream, scaling the generations of my Somali family. My grandmother Edith Joseph Farah was a baker in Djibouti; we all passionately loved and respected her. My grandfather Joseph Farah Siad, who died prematurely, was a court interpreter on this same French Coast of Somaliland that became the French Territory of the Afars and Issas, then, upon independence in 1977, simply the Republic of Djibouti. Our driver patiently endeavors to fill his taxi to a profitable capacity. His brand-new vehicle contrasts sharply with the run-down automobiles around us. Everything breathes material dilapidation in this capital I have been discovering over the past few days. Hargeisa is in ruins. In 1988, the dictator Syad Barré's planes totally destroyed it, and the regiments of the inter-Somali civil war invaded from the South, leaving 50,000 dead. Among the rubble of the town's light-colored rocks grow clumps of cacti and euphorbias. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to this rubble where herds of goats graze. In response to this chaos, this desolation strewn with thorny acacias, comes a desperate national pride. As I was told upon my arrival by a cheerful airport official, "building a country" is the only thing that matters. "Why do these Europeans keep coming to look at us in our poverty?" a UNHCR worker hurls at me. His employer is one of the few international bodies together with the European Union and a few Scandinavian relief agencies that maintain an actual presence in this officially fictional country. My two Somaliland cousins, Rachid and Robleh, are my interpreters and intermediaries in every type of negotiation. Robleh, a lawyer trained in the UK, hurried to my rescue as soon as I arrived with bundles of official documents duly stamped because I did not have time to wait in Djibouti for the laissez-passer to a republic without consulate or embassy. I had the choice of either being sent back on the next plane or pleading my case at the Presidential Palace and various ministries. Rachid, my faithful companion, sits beside me in the taxi that is taking me back to the land of my birth. He is always stoical, even when faced with the worst hornets' nests stirred up by clans, bureaucracy, politics, and diplomacy. At that moment, a fight breaks out between our driver and the owner of a car brimming with citrus fruits whom he has backed into. A small crowd of fellow tribespeople organizes on the spot a heated council of conciliation. Feeling like Alice after 48 hours in Wonderland, I am getting an undeniable impression that Somaliland '97 is one big "shir": peace conferences Somali-style, palavers shooting up in every direction both at a local and national level. Poetical and political arguments stream from both sides; the aim of the game is to handle with care the ever-delicate balance of legitimacy. Be it a question of oranges fallen in the dust or the price of blood, there is every chance you will hear the name of Mohamed Abdallah Hassan the poet warrior, unifier of the tribes in northern Somalia at the beginning of the century, the national hero whom the English soon nicknamed the "Mad Mullah," which is a reference to the Mahdi from the Sudan who defied the armies of the Colonial Office in a similar way for almost twenty years. Rachid, in this "volatile" atmosphere, displays the talents of a bomb-disposal expert. His deep sense of conciliation defuses the most explosive situation. This time, the dispute does not even require his intervention. Both parties separate amicably amidst a profusion of conciliatory expressions. Our last passenger, whose destination is the port of Bosaso in Warsangeli country, brings with her the scent of household incense, which fills the vehicle. The land of Pount. It is difficult to wax lyrical while our car jolts along chaotic roads out of the center of town under reconstruction, then out into the suburbs skimmed by vultures where whole neighborhoods still lie in rubble. But in spite of the ruins and the reinforced concrete of the urban landscape, nostalgia settles in. The Land of Pount represents that mythology with which Uncle William Syad filled our ears; this was the name the Egyptian Pharaohs gave to the shores of the Horn of Africa where their feluccas came to trade in aromatic gum. The region of Erigavo recently resumed the export of incense, which had been brutally interrupted by the civil war, and the "Cape of Aromatics" can now legitimately reclaim its true appellation. "Nostalgia has no archives, at best some relics," said Vladimir Jankélévitch. Let us classify the incense burners crammed with "cuud" among these relics, along with the family saga handed down by Syad, to which we shall return when we arrive at Las Anod. Our poet died on arrival in Addis Ababa in March 1993. When he collapsed in front of them, the customs officers at the airport did not know he needed medical attention or the insulin injection that would have saved the life of this seriously ill diabetic. Once past the urban frontier of Hargeisa, the driver decides to take us back to the land of our ancestors at breakneck speed and to send us ad Patres. The mountains of Naaso Nablood, "the young girl's breasts," have disappeared over the horizon, and in their place lies a coastal steppe crisscrossed by wadis, the realm of blackhead sheep with fat tails, the performing baboons, the warthogs spared by the waves of Muslim armies. The geography breathes battles: tanks and armored trucks lie rusting in the thalwegs. Kids play on the steel skeleton of bombed-out bridges. Each blown-up structure forces us to make wide detours over sandy terrain that other kids from the neighboring settlements rake untiringly for a few Somali shillings. My mind roams over the line of ridges, between the real and the imaginary. Rachid, sitting next to me, oblivious to melancholy, chews on some leaves of khat. This amphetamine, imported from the high plateaux of Ethiopia by air on daily shuttles, plunges the Horn of Africa, from the Yemen to the western shores of Madagascar, into a voluble torpor from the early hours of the afternoon until dusk. A soliloquy of a thousand and one days. As if millions of consumers chose oblivion or a certain form of oral literature rather than the thankless sharp edge of reality, rent and heartrending. Three days earlier in Djibouti, someone offered up the following reflection: "In that France of yours," he said, "if unemployment reached 20 percent, the social fabric would come undone. Here we have over 40 percent of our young people unemployed, and yet the word `solidarity' becomes even more meaningful...The tribal community is strengthened by the use of khat." According to him, people spend their time in their Mabbrazz throwing khat parties in order to settle social issues. From my point of view, the khat economy is so modern and effective under the most appalling traveling conditions that if the entire country were managed in the same way, the nations of the subregion would have the same standard of living as German-speaking Switzerland. The taxi streaks towards Berbera and the coastal plain. All the men "munch" voluptuously the bitter leaves they gently tear off from the bunch -- what is still called "la salade" over in French-speaking Djibouti. The stems of Catha Edulis tied into a bunch are sold in little plastic bags that are fast becoming the most serious ecological scourge on both sides of the border: the goats strangle themselves on them and the smallest thornbush is decked with these multicolored garlands made in Taiwan. Here in Somaliland, the bundles of bills needed for the slightest monetary transaction are wrapped in the same plastic bags that fly off with the wind as soon as they are emptied. The municipality of Hargeisa is said to have given the same priority to fighting this pollution as it has to registering the donkeys carrying water! With or without khat, Rachid is still chewing over cheerful thoughts. Thinking of the time when he was director of a trucking company in Lusaka, then in Mombasa and Lumumbashi. Of the time when his father, Michael Mariano, my other uncle, was Ambassador, after having been appointed Minister and then thrown in prison by Siyad Barré. We have not seen each other for twenty-six years. The last time, we were still living in the spacious family home in the pretty town of Mogadishu. Every evening the Good Lord made, we set off for the movie theater to watch spaghetti westerns or B-movies in Italian. The projection of Helga or the Real Life, a sex-education film with subtitles, had caused pandemonium at the gate to the open-air cinema. Rachid was able to guide me through the virtually rioting crowd and the hissing switches of the police, called in as reinforcements, that rained down on the spectators. Every Thursday evening, we had a table reserved for us at the "Gezira" -- the Paradise. As soon as the brass of the funky-soukous-Somali band struck up, the entire gilded youth of "Mog" took to the floor. The Somalistyle solos on the Hammond organ sent the dancers wild. Our buddies from those evenings -- Attilio and Hussein -- were later to be caught up in the whirlwind of the nation's history. One melancholic evening of exile, the former committed suicide in Toronto. The latter was cut down by sniper fire, not far from the movie theater with the sliding roof where we lounged under the full moon. I understood during this voyage back in memory why everyone I spoke to was so proud of their town, Hargeisa. For them, it was here, under the thorn bushes covered with multicolored plastic bags, squalid Christmas trees, next to the ruins, that hope was alive. None of us would ever know the Mogadishu of our 16-20 years again, but from over here nobody could understand very well what it was like to be 16-20 in these streets of Mogadishu South and Mogadishu North divided between the followers of Hussein Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who, if you were lucky enough to be left alive, stripped you down to your shoes. Compared to this endless barbarity, this night fallen on one of the oldest and loveliest towns in Africa, the roadblocks of Hargeisa and their frightening squeal of whistles already had the appeal of Peace. Between Hargeisa and Las Anod, we have to get through about eight of these improvised roadblocks, the only form of "governmental" control over the wealth of goods being transported. Every time it proves necessary, Rachid brandishes the name of his father like a passport. Since leaving the capital, we have been in Issak country, where the name Mariano is carried like a banner; later, in Dolbahante country, as we shall see, we shall have to fold this standard and flaunt the patronymic Syad as a laissez-passer. Past the port of Berbera where the herds of dromedaries are exported to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, past the steep slopes of the Ogo Mountains, we cross Issak country without a hitch. William Syad made me dream about these mountains of Somalia! I keep an eye open for one of those rare mountain panthers from my boyhood dreams. Only the baboons are on cue, as well as the juniper trees and the sparkling meadows that carpet these 1500-meter-high mountains. In a rough eating house at the foot of these slopes, a customer, his mouth full of white rice soaked in camel's milk, inquires very bluntly, very democratically (pastoral democracy) of my origins and my clan. "Ah yes, he's got the same eyes, the J.S. teeth..." The J.S., the Jamas Syad, a minority clan of the Dolbahante. The initials ring out like a challenge, raising fear and admiration. These famous J.S. must have been awkward customers, no doubt about it. A President of the Republic had been assassinated at Las Anod. Mohamed Abdallah Hassan recruited his horsemen among the bellicose J.S. Las Anod had got itself an infernal reputation like Dallas. The road that leads there across Issak country passes through Yiroowe, a gigantic African market sprung up from a refugee camp whose name is not even on the map. Burao, the next major town and crossroads, is systematically detoured for safety reasons. Between 1992 and 1993, a private British firm, whose Somaliland teams were trained in mineclearing, had disposed of around 80,000 anti-personnel mines out of the 1.5 million laid under the regime of Siyad Barré. But when the war suddenly resumed in 1994, the area around Burao was again sown with these devices of destruction. The taxi gingerly makes its way between two solid lines of pedestrians on a thin strip of asphalt that resembles a ribbon in the middle of an ocean of corrugated iron. It's the biggest market in Somalia, I am told. Incense, powdered milk, canned butter, cotton fabrics, prayer mats, acacia trunks carried on donkeyback, and every type of hardware from Southeast Asia, unloaded off the dhows of Bosaso, fill every inch of this plain at the crossroads of the four economic regions of Somalia. Idlers stare at me as if I were an extraterrestrial. Amidst this swarm of traders at Yiroowe, mine is the only Arab-Indian face. Rachid, with the look of a Somali from the diaspora, his "Maui" baseball cap jammed tight on his head, wearing an international reporter's jacket with all the pockets, stands out as much as I do among the crowd. The Minister of Mineral Resources, who received us in his Mabbrazz the day before yesterday, warned him: "You look like a tourist dressed like that!" Here, amidst the dense crowd at Yiroowe, in deepest Somalia, it was to be the cause of a few misunderstandings. We have to change vehicles, and the drivers take us for two odd merchant types on a spree en route to that perilous hinterland of Las Anod, three hundred kilometers down the road. We have to change our mode of transportation twice. At one point, the negotiations involve over sixteen adult men, often about to come to blows. By good fortune, we meet our first J.S., whose face with an imam's beard reminds me of family, those numerous "cousins" and "uncles" of tribal tradition whom I have befriended over the years from Djibouti to Sweden and New Caledonia. His intervention lands me at the bottom of a moneychanger's booth. Around me, young women are counting over and over again piles of soiled bills issued by the defunct Central Bank of Somalia or Somaliland shillings. Yiroowe is right on the border zone between the two currencies. Amidst the dust, the bills are stuffed with other piles into the inevitable plastic bags, wholesale size. The place smells of dry wood and oil lamps, since money, as we know, is odorless. From time to time, a colorful moneychanger character comes to check on me, after having chased away some kids craving for a look at the exotic. Absorbed in their counting, my female companions, as silent as a safe, never glance at me. The money smuggler, who always manages to keep intact half a dozen wads of bills on his rounds, comes to tell me that a deal has been made between a *****tine driver, Rachid, and the J.S. cousin. *****tine country spreads out on the other side of the border between Somaliland and southern Somalia. After a stormy false alarm two kilometers further on at a gas station where the employees juggle with iron drums and funnels, we appear to set off for good. "Arab or Pakistani? Is he your son?" To every question up until now, Rachid has replied philosophically, nurtured by the stems of khat. He has never lost his calm and never responded to the provocations relating to clan that even I can pick out in the heated conversations. But now we are on the last leg of our journey, where his Issak family ancestry must give precedence to other loyalties: the Syad ancestors must now come into play. We are in the no-man's-land of no-man'sland, along the Ethiopian border in a flat country that will soon be mine. Half an hour after we leave, we take on three young guys, heavily armed, with whom Rachid shares his bunch of khat. They have laid down their machine guns beside them. In Somaliland, the legacy of Mr. Kalash continues to prosper. The AK-47 of the Soviet engineer M.T. Kalashnikov is slung over a shoulder at every street-corner. From the very first day in the antechambers of the Ministries where I had to explain my mission, the automatic weapon, just turned fifty, gave us the cool reception of a survivor of every revolutionary war. Even on the floor of our jolting truck, among the stripped stems of khat, it did not seem out of place. On the two-lane road, strictly marked out by the compact clumps of acacias, a truck has visibly broken down. A little further on, the old driver, slender and wiry, with the malicious face of a red fennec, is drinking his cardamom tea by the side of the road. He hands our driver, a friend of his, three stems of wild mint whose peppery scent explodes inside the vehicle: the Cape of Aromatics. The expedition begins to smell of khat, dust, AK-47 cynicism, and the monotony of the halts at all the roadblocks, which become increasingly basic the further we get from the capital. We were now down to a pruned acacia trunk stuck in a truck axle, but with the ever-faithful Kalashnikovs standing guard. At 75 kms from Las Anod, two hostile young guards armed with Kalashnikovs stop us unceremoniously. They hiss "Hand over the money," and to make their point suddenly raise their weapons as they prowl around the vehicle. Our armed guards left us two roadblocks earlier. The Kalash good-naturedness, this sort of armed peace mixed with the torpor of the journey, is being taken over by a threatening feeling of danger. They have a grudge against our driver. "You're *****tine and you're driving our enemy's truck!" they spit in a moment of explanation. Rachid, up front, tries to intervene and commits an offense by laying a paternalistic hand on the shoulder of one of the two young warriors. He finds himself staring straight down the barrel of an AK-47. The rage that his gesture has provoked prepares us for an explosion that will pierce the 4:35 P.M. serenity of our Somaliland bush. In a flash. "Touch me again and I'll blow your brains out," the soldier belches out, instead of pressing the trigger. The two infuriated foxes order our driver down to palaver under the acacias. The verdict of the tree. In the Xeer, the traditional Somali system of justice, judgment is preferably handed down under an acacia. A few moments later, Rachid in turn is summoned, which he obeys with admirable phlegm under the circumstances. The three men remain crouched for a long while waiting for him to finish lighting his cigarette. My cousin has one hell of a confidence in his negotiating talents. But hardly has he begun to speak in the sparse shade than our two angry young men jump up. "But these are our men, our cousins, our uncles," they shout. The two warriors, ready to hack us to pieces three seconds earlier, walk back to the truck with broad smiles. "Apti, Apti. They are our uncles!" Rachid relishes his moment of glory, filter cigarette dangling from his lips, more second-generation Somali than ever. I envy him the extent he belongs to this land, this country, however fractured it may be. I myself lived through the incident at a rational distance. It ought to have shaken me to the core to belong to an entity bigger than myself, to belong to this system of social security supposed to accompany me beyond death. It leaves me bewildered. I look at the world through the eyes and with the heart of a Westerner -- preferring to see in the sky, as I do at this very moment, clouds in the shape of dromedary humps! At that moment, alerted over the radio from Yiroowe by cousin J.S., a full truckload of relatives turns up. The war despatch becomes more like a fairy tale. The acacia trunk stuck in an axle is opened. Our armed escort, come to our rescue -- 75 kms there, 75 kms back -- opens up the "J.S. avenue," as they call it. Our arrival in Las Anod is bound to be a cliché. The dense flocks of fat-tailed sheep scatter over the green meadows of the plateau; the moon rises behind a curtain of pink clouds while the sun sets on the other horizon. For the time being, there is no question of contesting the family legend. "You are protected by a name," keep repeating the Siyads, the Zyads and the Syads, all tribally related, as they walk me by the arm down the main street of the town. In 1971, before becoming the instigator of the civil war, Syad Barré had the Somali language transcribed into Latin script. "I am for the J.S. -- black or white," the principal of the Warsama Syad school whispers to me, adding as we near the mosque where an imam is leading prayers, "Christian or Muslim!" I feel myself plunged into an atmosphere of civil peace that reminds me of the serenity of the evenings spent at Lamu or Zanzibar. As soon as we arrive, we are settled into a hotel for travelers owned by the family, then invited to celebrate our return to the homeland ceremoniously over our first glasses of fermented camel's milk. Tomorrow we will visit our herds and make the rounds of the kingdom. The moon of Las Anod shines obligingly over the thousands of oil lamps of the family town. One day in the 1920s, from this same town with its blond sandstone hills, my maternal grandfather Joseph Farah Siad was carried off by Christian missionaries. "Kidnapped," says the family oral tradition. "It happened during the wars of Mohamed Abdullah Hassan," adds the voice of the community. "The campaigns against the English occupier had left a forsaken country of misfortune, orphans, and wretches. The men in cassocks gathered up the children in big tents overflowing with food in the shadow of their cross. Then all trace of them was lost until the children were found baptized, living in missionaries and orphanages in Aden in the Yemen, Jijiga in Ethiopia and Djibouti." The elders at the hamlet of Gambadhe, at a roadblock to the south of Las Anod, knew the man they call Farah Joseph Siad and not the name the other way round. They can confirm it. The Christians carried them off. His brother, nicknamed "Telephone," escaped and only found his older brother much later in 1936 in the port of Marseilles, popular at the time with Somalis seeking to join the navy. Telephone was to become a U.S. citizen, but never renounced Islam. The elders are facing us, hair dyed with henna for those who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, a cane propping up the forearm of others, seated cross-legged in their sarongs on the mats of a palaver house where steaming glasses of Somali tea are being handed round. Rachid patiently translates for me the adventures of Farah and his brother Telephone. Uncle Telephone, whom we still know as "the old uncle in America," used to visit us in France every time he was in the vicinity of Grenoble to see his son, shell-shocked while fighting in the Second World War under British uniform. The Angel with Broken Wings was the title of a radio play by my uncle William J.E Syad -- J.E for Joseph Farah. The high-and-mighty discourse of the elders floats out from the palaver house; we seem to have come full circle, but can one ever be the objective chronicler of one's own history? After having taken leave of the elders from Gambadhe, the Syad escort, who had requisitioned a truck for the occasion, wanted to take us to see our lands. "Settle down here. This is your home," I heard them shout out to me. We had to leave the asphalt to join the grazing grounds of the white she-camels. There they were, waiting for us: a wonderful herd of creatures standing serenely in the immense landscape. One of our camel drivers began to draw creamy milk after having pushed the baby camel aside. The young, curly-coated animal shakily circled its mother, its back legs trembling, and bleated out its muffled frustration. The entire Syad clan began to drink the milk fresh from the udder, risking the worst of intestinal upsets. Camel's milk symbolizes the nation, the clan, the group, the community; its virtues have been sung to every rhythm by every poet. Even the name "Somalia" is said to mean "Go milk" -- "So Ma." I drank to the health of the J.S., to the memory of J.F. and all the others, and to this journey from New York to L.A. (Las Anod!) reconciling history and the family legend. At the end of the libations amidst the dromedaries, I could not help asking: "Okay, I've seen the camels, but where are the famous horses of the J.S.?" Rachid remembers coming here as a boy in 1960 with his mother Françoise Inader Syad, and he has never forgotten the majesty of the double file of horsemen who had escorted them to town. "You did not warn us soon enough for us to receive you as befits your rank," answers the brother of Hubbeï from Djibouti. Even by radio, it is not easy to communicate with a country that does not exist. Hubbeï had finally managed to get in touch with Las Anod, but not in time to organize an equestrian escort. So we are immediately given a visit of the meadows, two palm groves further on, where three of our horses are grazing, wooden bells around their necks, tiny under the immensity of the rain-laden sky. We are on the exact spot where the British bombarded the armies of Mohamed Abdullah Hassan led by the brave warrior Artane Boss. Legend-wise, we have had our fill. All that remains is to share out the khat so as to receive the official greetings and requests from the extended family. Our fingers still smell of camel's teat while I have the ceremonious speeches translated for me, holding a soft drink. They were to last over five hours, as we sat on the mats and the cushions of the Mabbrazz, sipping tea or chewing khat with little enthusiasm: Youssouf Ahmed Farah, Farah Elmi Ali, Abdi Douhalé Arab Salah Ismaê etc....all with the patronymic of Syad. In the scent of cardamom tea, I am reminded of a little incident a few days earlier. A caravan of half a dozen camels, loaded up for a long journey, was passing by in the distance. A cousin cried out: "A Syad caravan!" before dashing in front of the nomads heading out. The animals in front braked suddenly, and the halt rippled down the line to the last camels bedecked with the domes and pegs of the traditional tents. The entire caravan moved closer to us while a laden donkey in heat took advantage of this Syad reunion to bolt off and join a she-*** with two foals at her side on the other side of the road. We all laughed. "We lack medication for humans and livestock alike. Your parents brought us good fortune and you share their good name, so we will give you our blessing to encourage all your initiatives. The family counts on your knowledge and your relations. Thank you for coming so far to make our acquaintance." Their fine, soulful voices and watery eyes haunt me during the journey back. The "meccan" or ecstasy attributed to the khat makes the speeches increasingly eloquent, each orator taking care not to repeat the arguments of his predecessor. The many Syads talk of water pumps, Norwegian aid, the stormy coexistence with the neighboring clans, the oil they have managed to drill at a place called Hol Hol in J.S. country...then, without drowning these fine words, rain begins to pour. Along the way back, the genealogical bush has been transformed into lakes. The wadis, dry on the outward journey, have become roaring torrents. By good fortune, a taxi with four wornsmooth tires takes us across the Ogo mountains between two downpours. Flats and breakdowns were to come later. When night falls, we are washed up on the banks of a dried-up riverbed, now a raging surge of water. I think of my fundamentalist cousin, the bearded J.S. from Yiroowe, who prevented Rachid from taking photos of the women of the household. He would do it himself. On arrival, we are presented with a series of very sharp photos of all the women in veils! Apart from a few wizened faces, the only other women we see are veiled. It had not always been this way. I think of my mother, my aunt and my grandmother, and their open, radiant faces. We have abandoned our useless vehicle for another truck. The moon rises over flooded landscapes, a bush under water, flocks of sheep washed away by the rising waters. A counsel of men, the ultimate "shir," has quickly gathered near the raging waters. I think of William Syad, the "borderline African, the African of the Orient like the Queen of Sheba," as his godfather and mentor Léopold Séddar Senghor defined him. The poet had invented nothing: we truly have a kingdom! Land, horses, shecamels -- all held in common. And while we ford the rising waters of the river, I cannot help asking myself, thinking of other legends, if the Queen of Sheba, our distant ancestor, also wore the veil in her kingdom? http://www.dclibrary.org/blkren/

waa idin dagaayaa kufriga, aad u dabcaysane dirhankuu idiin qubahayaa' dib u go'aysaane marka hore dabkuu idin ka dhigi, dumarsidiisiye marka xigana dabaqadda yuu,dareen siine marka xiga dalkuu idin ku oran, duunya dhaafsadaye marka xiga dushuu idinka rari, sida dameeraaye marhadan dushii adari iyo, iimay dacaldhaafay maxaad igaga digataan, beruu siin la soo degiye Sayid Mohammed, May Allah rest his soul in Janna, could foresee the events that were to come after his departure. What had happened to South Africa and the rest of Africa attests to his warning: the racial stratification, the Indirect rule, the ossification of notions like low self-esteem that may arise from the indoctrination of the western culture and civilization. And those were what transpired after him. Somalis were disarmed and ruled under brutal, imperialistic system for the next 40 years.

Anyone with a sense of humanity understands the fact that there were people who lived in America and they resisted relentlessly the foreignors until their numbers were substantially reduced. Colombus was a colonial spy just as Richard Burton was a colonial spy when he visited our country. In his journal after he accidently encountered the Indians, which adduced the justification to attack and conquer their land, states,""They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." It comes to this bare conclusion that they even were discovered.

How can you discover a land whose people were already there? Aren't Indians People like us? Or, the Manifest Destiny comes to mind?

Mobile phones Somalia calling Dec 20th 2005 | BOSSASO AND HARGEISA From The Economist print edition An unlikely success story SOMALIA does not spring to mind as a good place to do business, but in telecoms at least it has something to teach the world. A call from a Somali mobile phone is generally cheaper and clearer than a call from anywhere else in Africa. The trick is the lack of regulation. Somalia has had no government since 1991. It was cut off for a while, but then private mobile companies moved in and found that the collapsed state provided a curious competitive advantage. No government means no state telecoms company to worry about, no corrupt ministry officials to pay off (there is no ministry), and the freedom to choose the best-value equipment. Taxes, payable to a tentative local authority or strongman, are seldom more than 5%, security is another 5% (more in Mogadishu), and customs duties are next to nothing. There is no need to pay for licences, or to pay to put up masts. It is a vivid illustration of the way in which governments, for all their lip service to extending communications, can often be more of a hindrance than a help. Golis Telecom, based in the northern port of Bossaso, is one of the larger forces in the Somali market. Its chairman, Adan Sheikhdon Ali, hopes for 50,000 mobile subscribers by 2007—not bad for a country where many people still live a nomadic life in the desert beyond a mobile signal. Golis spent $2.7m on Chinese equipment to set up its service and has since expanded its reach across the country, drawing in customers with its low prices. You can call anywhere on the planet on a Golis mobile for $0.30 a minute. Pricing is especially important in Somalia, says Mr Ali, because many potential customers are illiterate and so immune to advertising. The present dozen or so operators should eventually be whittled down to three or four. To survive, Golis has diversified into landlines and broadband. But even with price wars, profits are high. Somalis' gift of the gab, and the difficulty of getting in and out of the country, put a premium on extended telephone calls. Golis recouped its initial investment in two years. But the risks are also high. Investment is all up front. There is no insurance available. And then there is Somalia itself. From a distance it looks like a free-market nirvana after The Economist's heart; but closer up it better resembles an armed oligarchy, capable of taking anything it wants at the point of a gun—even a Nokia handset.

Of course he prays. Any person who proclaims to be Muslim is assumed to pay his duties to God: pray five times a day. The question then comes, does he pray consistently or not as obligated or he does deviate sometimes from the proper course of prayers? That is between him and Allah. We can't come into conclusion based on a flimsy excuse of what someone else said. I think some of our warlords have started to question his morality, nationalist sentiment, religious duty in an attempt to allure public support for their opposition to him and most importantly ridicule and debase him. But so far, he has proved to adhere to his principle, which is to restore the dignity and return of Somali statehood.

"Aan xoodaamiyo e, sida ay qabaan badi dadka darsa culuumta siyaasadda, maamulka, hoggaanka, iyo horumarka bulsho inta la xuso nidaamka keliya ee illaa hadda la isku raacay in uu ugu hufan yahay waa nidaamka dimoqraadiga ah (tala-wadaag) ee ay ka manaafacaadsadeen bulshooyinka hore u maray. Tajriib iyo kufaa-dhac badan kadib ayaa uu nidaamkaasi ku yimid, kuna noqday kan ugu dhaw ee unugyada bulsho ay raali ka wada noqon karaan, ku kalsoonaan karaan, una arki karaan nidaam ay amnigooda, danahooda, mustaqbalkooda, iyo jiritaankooda ku aaminaan. Waa nidaam isaga naf ahaantiisu leh iimo u gaar ah, khaasatan marka lagu dalqiyo ummad aan u qaangaadhin hanashada madhaxiisa, miiddiisa, iyo haykalkiisa siyaasadeed iyo maamul, balse marka loo eego dhigiis cilladihiisu aanay sidaa u xag jidhin." Now that is an eloquent Somali. The author is very much versed in Somali literature.

The Land of Punt is known its location and no one has ever doubted its exact location. Numerous books have been written about it and you will find them in libraries. For some reason, i don't trust online documentation, Wikipedia, Geocities, and all other online can be made by individuals whose sources are very unreliable. The Land of Punt is most likely Sanaag region to as far as Conqor, a coastal village near Berbera. I cite from this from several books and scholarly journals i have read.

Great book to read anyone who is interested in in-depth understanding of Somali culture, history and a true love story, this is the book. I have read it three times. What make the novel outstanding are the authors’ poetic inserts and his campaign to fight against illiteracy as well as his accurate interest in cultural and historical relevance to the plot and Somali territories including Harar. The review above by B.W. Andrzejewski explicates everything. Have you guys read the scene where Sheikh Araya exposes Richard Burton's disguise as Sheikh Cabdalla, the British colonial spy?

Xinfanin, All he has to do is restore some of the qualified ministers he 'sacked' before to their former portfolios and then keep those with the good record of task achievement. He has already rationalized his call that he will get rid of those who didn't do their job, so upon probes on their record, I hope to see some changes and the reasons for which the changes had to be materialized.

Thanks Viking. Well i have to make my expedition to the real Land of Punt and smell the frankincense and myrhh that are there.

Private schools and colleges in Puntland have been a success story. These pictures remind me of students with access to quality higher education and better lives.

Cadde has realized that clanism destroys home. I hope he doesn't repeat the same mistakes he did before in being selective of his cabinet ministers. One edge that Abdilaahi has over him is that Abdilaahi knows the most qualified and capable men that can lead a nation. Thus far, Abdilahi has been very successful in his political campaign and goal.