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Is it not a Ramadaan fellas

Nice Thread MMA. I Lived in Eastleight back in 96 before moving from a place call Mandoni, Mombasa (I hope I spelled correctly ) with the family. Islii is now actually transformed but with very marginal progress in terms of social mobility other than serving as a transit point for the Somali refugees and a place to invest for those who as you said can match investors and developers. It's like a small stock market. However money laundering, poverty, drugs, prostitution, extortion by the Kenyan police all define Eastleight. Some call it a safe haven for the criminal enterprises in Somalia. Btw, I remember the Matatu mini buses painted with labels of Hip-hop artists, overcrowded streets & the dust. We were probably the first wave of refugees from Somalia who turned Eastleight into a competitive marketplace. The first time I could remember seeing the streets of Nairobi was back in 1992.

Valenteenah, that's what I thought. Where is NGONGE?

The divide & conquer policies imposed on Somalia as a whole has had its negative trickle down effect, if you know what I mean.

Taleexi;740228 wrote: Ha wareegto giraantu. Gullible locals are in an abyss. Cards have been shuffled, wake up folks. I was listening to snippets of Hillary Clinton speech on NPR. To implement the full effect of the trade sanctions imposed on the Syrian regime, Clinton exhorted those countries supplying weapons, money etc to get on the right side of history. There are actors and countries behind every entity that narrowly aspires to mythical ascendency. Time to investigate and address those actors /countries while the SSC movement matures and secures its territory, thus advancing the welfare of the inhabitants.

Taleexi, dowlad la'aan dhibkeeda waan aragney. Laakin aawi garashadii, damiirkii iyo dadnimadii nalagu yiqiin waagii hore.

It's never too late to help. Thanks to "Somaliland".

Indeed. Thanks to USA, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the rest of donors. However nothing beats PM ERDOGEN's planned official trip to Somalia. Viva Turkey.

Great endeavor. Very optimistic and altruistic young lad. A Somali-Canadian group call 'Step Up for Somalia' has committed themselves to walking from Ottawa to Calgary and beyond in order to raise aid money for the food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

This reminds me of when President George Bush had come to Baidabo town to witness the devastation of the last famine -- the man-made starvation in 1993. I am seriously concerned of how the world will come to the aid of Somalia once the current food crisis is tackled, and genuinely help this nation restore its statehood. Will Turkey as an influential Muslim country play a bigger role?

Dabrow;740076 wrote: somalis and their meaningless wars, whats the point in this skrimish? Its ramadan people It's nothing but one group trying to outfox another at the expense of innocent people in the region.

Great Somali woman.

Read it all here A long NY Times report

I am not at all opposed to the AU mission in Somalia but the opaque nature of security deals across the continent in general and Somalia in particular is worrisome. Perhaps the unstated and short-term goal expected of the murky actors involved would mean lucrative contracts, assumption of all risks and deflection of responsibility and accountability for any human rights violations during a specific mission. The original titlle of this article U.S Company trains African Troops for Somalia This article is by Jeffrey Gettleman, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt. MOGADISHU, Somalia - Richard Rouget, *a gun for hire over two decades of bloody African conflict, is the unlikely face of the American campaign against militants in Somalia. A husky former French Army officer, Mr. Rouget, 51, commanded a group of foreign fighters during Ivory Coast's civil war in 2003, was convicted by a South African court of selling his military services and did a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands, an archipelago plagued by political tumult and coup attempts. Now Mr. Rouget works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops who have fought a pitched urban battle in the ruins of this city against the Shabab, the Somali militant group allied with Al Qaeda. The company plays a vital part in the conflict now raging inside Somalia, a country that has been effectively ungoverned and mired in chaos for years. The fight against the Shabab, a group that United States officials fear could someday carry out strikes against the West, has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies out of reluctance to send American troops back into a country they hastily exited nearly two decades ago. "We do not want an American footprint or boot on the ground," said Johnnie Carson, the Obama administration's top State Department official for Africa. A visible United States military presence would be provocative, he said, partly because of Somalia's history as a graveyard for American missions - including the "Black Hawk Down" episode in 1993, when Somali militiamen killed 18 American service members. Still, over the past year, the United States has quietly stepped up operations inside Somalia, American officials acknowledge. The Central Intelligence Agency, which largely finances the country's spy agency, has covertly trained Somali intelligence operatives, helped build a large base at Mogadishu's airport - Somalis call it "the Pink House" for the reddish hue of its buildings or "Guantánamo" for its ties to the United States - and carried out joint interrogations of suspected terrorists with their counterparts in a ramshackle Somali prison. The Pentagon has turned to strikes by armed drone aircraft to kill Shabab militants and recently approved $45 million in arms shipments to African troops fighting in Somalia. But this is a piecemeal approach that many American officials believe will not be enough to suppress the Shabab over the long run. In interviews, more than a dozen current and former United States officials and experts described an overall American strategy in Somalia that has been troubled by a lack of focus and internal battles over the past decade. While the United States has significantly stepped up clandestine operations in Pakistan and Yemen, American officials are deeply worried about Somalia but cannot agree on the risks versus the rewards of escalating military strikes here. "I think that neither the international community in general nor the U.S. government in particular really knows what to do with the failure of the political process in Somalia," said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa program at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institution. For months, officials said, the State Department has been at odds with some military and intelligence officials about whether striking sites suspected of being militant camps in Somalia's southern territories or carrying out American commando raids to kill militant leaders would significantly weaken the Shabab - or instead bolster its ranks by allowing the group to present itself as the underdog against a foreign power. Lauren Ploch, an East Africa expert at the Congressional Research Service, said that the Obama administration was confronted with many of the same problems that had vexed its predecessors - "balancing the risks of an on-the-ground presence" against the risks of using "third parties" to carry out the American strategy in Somalia.

Unbelievable!

Taleexi, You can almost feel events turn out favorably for the motherland.

Dabrow;739556 wrote: I agree with above and how long will amison babysit? How long we need to wait? thats the problem we cant wait we must act. And by that Im mean we must put pressure upon them in power. Otherwise this circus will never end. Exactly, and may I also suggest three things: Deterrance - in the form of forced resignation Continual reform in light of the dynamics of our politics to ensure efforts to create permanent government are seriously legitimate. And most importantly demand for a restitution for those alleged to have lined up their pockets. Together the current generation can take their Somalia back and no amount of threats either veiled or explicit should budge them. The Youth can be a force for good.

Somalina;681508 wrote: My Canadian cousins: KK, Aaliyah, Ismalura, Layzie, MMA, Tuujiye, Showqi, Baluug. Iyo intii Canada degan. Also, Buuxo, Blessed, C&H, Nassir, BOB, Che, Abu-S, Abwaan, Zack (non Jabhad), GD (general section), JB (non qashin), Odeyga carabka, S * S, odeyga SG-ka ka soo jeedo, odeyga Shabaab-ka afhayeenka u ah, awoowe Prom (I enjoy his analytical thinking style, refreshing). I think I'm done. I basically enjoy waxaan qashin ahayn and have no favs. Thanks. I too enjoy reading ur posts along with Aaliyah & Blessed laakinse Shariif ku heshiin meyno

They have decent & affordable medical schools I was told.

Crazy world indeed!!

August 08, 2011 MOGADISHU (RBC) The transitional federal government of Somalia has demanded from Uganda and Burundi who are the biggest contributors of African Union mission (known as AMISOM) to send additional troops into Mogadishu following Al-Shabab’s retreating from the capital. On Sunday, Somalia president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed flew to Ugandan capital, Kampala to ask President Yuweri Museveni if his country could bring additional 3,000 troops into Somalia to bolster the precarious peace in Mogadishu, Somalia presidential sources told RBC Radio. *“After Al-Shabab escaped from Mogadishu on Saturday, TFG wants not to see security vacuum in the capital so government leaders made clear the importance of more troops as this time”. The source said in anonymity condition because he was not authorized to speak to media. The transitional government of Somalia is attempting to take its chance in the city as Al-Shabab rebels eventually on Saturday vacated their bases in Mogadishu which the government and AMISOM officials described as a ‘golden opportunity’. Only 9,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi are backing the government to eliminate the insurgent groups in the country but Somalia officials say the number is too small to secure the new positions vacated by Al-Shabab. RBC Radio

Lol @ diifka iska tir. Wale waad iga qoslisey.

"Marka maxaad dooneysaa in qof sidaas u dhaqma in aan kala hadlo arrimaha Soomaaliya iyo wixii u fiican?" Hade adaa meesha soo galey ma anaa ku qasbey qofyahey. Weligey baan dowlada wax ka sheegi jirey. Adaa ku cusub forum-ka.

Even more alarmingly, there is almost no attempt on the part of news organisations to independently verify the facts and figures disseminated by aid agencies, which, as I discovered when I worked with a UN agency, are quite often inflated or based on erroneous data. The temptation to exaggerate the extent of a crisis in order to raise more funding is always present, says Ahmed Jama, a Somali agricultural economist based in Nairobi. Jama believes that it is very likely that many parts of Somalia that have been declared as suffering from drought, such as the fertile lower Shabelle region — which experienced a bumper harvest last year — may actually be food secure, and that it is possible that the people suffering there are not locals but those who migrated to the region from drought-prone parts of the country. He adds that it is in the interest of UN and other aid agencies to show a worst-case scenario because this keeps the donor funds flowing. Jama says that while parts of Somalia have always suffered from cyclical droughts, the lack of sound agricultural and livestock policies have ensured that droughts rapidly turn into famine, which was not always the case. In the 1980s, for instance, he says, Somalia met 85 per cent of its cereal needs, thanks to government and international community investments in agriculture. Disasters such as the famine in Somalia fuel the aid business, with each aid agency eager to “brand” itself as the most competent in handling the disaster. In her recently published book The Crisis Caravan, Polman describes how crises become “business opportunities” for aid agencies. Aid organisations that want to remain on top of the game, she adds, need to be fluent in the language of product positioning, proposal development and client relations. Physical presence in the disaster area is critical because “aid organisations that fail to put in an appearance at each new humanitarian disaster miss out on contracts for the implementation of aid projects financed by donor governments and institutions, and are bypassed left, right and centre by the competing organisations that do show up.” The real story Aid agencies rarely report the root causes of a famine, though in the case of Somalia, there is a tendency to blame the civil war and militia such as Al Shabaab, which until recently had banned aid agencies from entering areas under its control. For more than two decades, civil war and famine have dominated the narrative about Somalia. But the Cape Town-based Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah believes that much of the commentary on the Somali civil war is based on “a false premise” — that the Somali civil war is the consequence of an age-old clan conflict. This view, he says, is unfortunately also held by a number of Somalis, who have no memory of the Somalia of his childhood, where the cosmopolitan capital Mogadishu “was not only one of the prettiest and most colourful cities in the world, but also decidedly the oldest in sub-Saharan Africa and older than many of Europe’s most treasured medieval cities.” The real conflict in Somalia, he says, is not so much between clans but between urban and pastoralist communities, especially those which migrated to Mogadishu, and who visited havoc on the capital city in 1991 by forming contingents led by city-based men and “armed with ancient injustices newly recast as valid grievances. “The pastoralist Somalis, who are by nature urbanphobics,” he writes, “saw the city as alien and parasitic, and because it occupied an ambiguous space in their hearts and minds, they gradually accumulated hostility towards the city until they became intent on destroying it.” However, some economists believe that the international community is largely to blame for the crisis in Somalia. Michel Chossudovsky, professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, claimed in his 1993 book The Globalisation of Poverty and the New World Order, that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had a negative impact on Somalia’s stability after they imposed structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s that forced Somalia to adopt austerity measures that destabilised the national economy and destroyed agriculture. He blames the Bretton Woods institutions for, among other things, reinforcing Somalia’s dependency on imported grain, periodic devaluations of the currency that led to a hike in prices of fuel, fertiliser and farm inputs, and the privatisation of veterinary services. US grain supplies that entered the country in the form of food aid also destroyed local agriculture, he says. Food aid, in turn, was often sold by the government on the local market to cover domestic costs. The diversion of food aid is nothing new. Ms Polman’s research shows that in almost every crisis area around the world, warlords, militia, and soldiers have benefited by imposing “taxes” on humanitarian agencies or stealing and selling food aid to buy arms. Quite often, refugee camps become safe havens for militia, who use the safety of the camps to regroup and recuperate. Refugee camps thus indirectly prolong civil wars. Avenues for bribery What is also not mentioned in the appeals for funding is the fact that a lot of the funds are used to pay off or bribe officials and militia to allow aid convoys to pass. (In Somalia, Ms Polman claims, the “entry fee” charged by warlords has in the past run to as much as 80 per cent of the value of the aid.) In many countries, it is not militia, but government officials, who steal aid money. The other fact that is conveniently overlooked is that a large proportion of the funds raised is used to cover aid agencies’ administrative and logistical costs. Staff has to be hired, four-wheel-drive cars have to be bought, offices have to be set up, highly paid international experts earning hefty per diems have to be flown in or consulted. All this costs money, lots and lots of money. D.T. Krueger, a former employee of the Food and Agricultural Organisation, estimates that as much as three-quarters of funding received by a UN agency is used purely on itself. Much of the aid also ends up back in the donor country in the form of salaries for experts who are nationals of the donor country, and in the form of inputs for development projects that are purchased in the same donor country. Despite all these glaring inefficiencies and failures, the aid industry continues unabated; in fact, it is going from strength to strength. Statistics indicate that the number of aid agencies and NGOs have mushroomed since the end of the Cold War – in Kenya alone, for instance, there are more than 6,000 registered international and local NGOs that contribute more than $1 billion to the Kenyan economy. In my assessment, there is a strong relationship between the number of donors and aid agencies in a country and its level of poverty – the more donors and aid agencies there are, the less likely that country is to significantly reduce poverty levels. And here is why. Aid to governments often has the net effect of suppressing local economies and initiatives. In Somalia, for instance, Maren noted that food production was suppressed by food aid, as farmers had no incentive to grow their own food. Aid also makes governments less accountable to their own people. When the work of government is taken over by aid agencies and NGOs, and when government budgets are heavily subsidised — or entirely funded — by foreign donors, governments become less accountable to their own citizens, and more accountable to the donors. It also makes it easy for governments to blame lack of donor funding for their failures to carry out development programmes. This leads to a vicious blame game, where the victim is always the ordinary citizen. Donor aid also reduces countries’ sovereignty. Aid is the most effective (and cost-effective) way in which foreign donor countries control other countries without being labelled as colonialists. It leads to bizarre situations where a donor country — and even more alarmingly, an international aid agency — sets government policy for a poor country, while presidents, ministers and permanent secretaries look on helplessly. Donors have a keen vested interest, therefore, in keeping the aid industry well-oiled. They cannot do this without the help of their foot soldiers, the aid agencies — who also rely on donor funding — and journalists who surrender all claims to neutrality and objectivity by becoming mouthpieces of these same aid agencies. However, neither the donors nor the aid agencies could play their part without the complicity of African governments, which have unquestioningly taken on the roles of victim and beggar. Source: The East African