^^^^ Right on yaa Khalaf. If I may just add that our deeply entrenched clan loyalties make the job of any occupier that much easier. And while there's always someone out there to get you, often, it is you who will decide if they win or lose. Inshallah this nightmare will end. One day.

^^^^ Classic.

Here's where FB stands:

Unless,Puntland,SSC & Somaliland join hands to free the rest of the country,these little fiefdoms will be manipulated anytime by Ethiopia. Duke, Garyaqaan* ( ) and Oodweyne will disagree. Two of them hail from and staunchly support a fiefdom that is quite happy competing for Zenawi's love and being one of his three wives. SSC is like a child caught in between. Uff.

^^^^^ Saaxib, what is "Misna"? And the mighty TFG Ethiopian army is getting a royal a$$ whooping in Muqdisho. They have no time, or inclination, to liberate Laas Caanood from itself.

Originally posted by Faarax-Brawn: Why arent you supporting your ancestral bretherens from recapturing what was given to them by the colonial adminstration,Some 100+ years ago? Ancestral? WTF? Atheer, I've risen above this neanderthal nonsense. Some will find this hard to believe as it is beyond their comprehension capacity. It's like the first person to be told the earth is round when he was certain it was flat. Imagine his incredulity. At the moment, the South (particularly Muqdisho and its suburbs) is the most important part of Somalia. The rest (Puntland, SSC, Somaliland) are in a coma and one from which they will soon rudely awake to the reality of occupation.

^^^^ Before seeing the Spike Lee film about Malcolm X and later that same year reading the auto-biography, I must admit I had little understanding of anything other than high school Calculus. Men like him are so rare, so powerful and so influential, the only way to stop them is to kill them. But even when he's been martyred, his legacy affects our lives every day. May Allah grant him Jannah.

^^^^ Propaganda, as Somali websites are learning, does not have to be very good or even very professional. Even the rudimentary attempts at propaganda, some even laughable, are quite effective. One trick is to use powerful imagery (such as in the picture above), however inaccurate or out of context it may be as long as it confirms or enhances previously established (false) beliefs. The techniques of propaganda are many and some are more effective than others. Simply looking at this forum, SOL, you can see some of its manifestations. Of course, a little study and deeper analysis often shows the frauds being perpetrated. But not all of us want to see the truth. Some of us are quite happy living in the lies as long as our concocted realities are not disturbed.

^^^^^ Ayaan darro indeed. Propaganda is a powerful tool saaxib. It works specially well when its targets already have preconceived notions of others and have suffered severe trauma in the recent past. For example, all a Puntlander needs to be reminded of are the atrocities committed against the Puntland clans in the South in the early nineties. Simply mentioning that will be enough for him (or her) to not only support the Ethiopian occupation but also to send troops to fight along the occupier. Similarly, with enough vitriolic propaganda, some may be heartbroken and lose their senses with grief after "their" city is taken over by a clan not of the majority in that city all the while finding the occupation of neighboring cities by foreign invaders to be quite acceptable, even beneficial. The same goes on in the breakaway region of Somaliland. The fraudulent call for secession would not have succeeded with the public had Afweyne not sent MiG's to bomb cities in the Northwest or set artillery in the hills to bomb heavily populated areas. A traumatized public is exceptionally susceptible to propaganda. Afweyne was the perfect excuse for anyone with wet dreams of secession to constantly remind the public of the disaster brought upon them. The South of Somalia is no different. Of course, this is not unique to Somalia but happens everywhere. Remember the speech given by Colin Powell in early 2003 to "rally the nation and the world" behind the decision to invade Iraq. Immediately after that speech, just about every statement made in it was publicly found to be false yet the invasion went ahead as planned with nearly 70% of the US population in support. All that those in power needed to do is constantly remind the public of 9/11 and they could push through the most unimaginable legislation such as for war, curtailment of civil liberties, warrant-less wiretapping, etc.. Now, if you can convince the US public who has access to every imaginable source of information to support policies that are clearly against their best interest, what chance does an illiterate nomad have?

^^^^ We agree NGO's are a disaster and we also agree Muqdisho and Somalia are occupied. I believe we can sort out the details of who to blame for this mess. You're on the right track, atheer. Simply free yourself from the shackles of clannism and your vision will improve tremendously.

FS, you might as well be talking to a rock. This man is concerned with an NGO (and only God knows how awful and unhelpful these parasites are) more than he is with Ethiopia's occupation. It's like a man whose house is on fire but insists on fighting the weed in his lawn instead of putting out the raging fire. LOL.

Originally posted by Caamir: I admire him as far as the history of African Americans is concerned. We know. Your admiration for Malcolm X cannot possibly compete with that you hold for coward, dabo-dhilif, war criminal and by far the worst a Somali woman has ever given birth, Yey. I wonder how you sleep at night.

Originally posted by 'Chief: The major differences between SSC people and Somaliland ..... Is just the size

Originally posted by AYOUB: ^^ You're not one of those Muj. Cabdiraxmaan aw Cali believes supported SL because of Riyaale, are you? You seem to confuse the man and the country. Who is Cabdiraxman aw Cali? And which man am I confusing with which country? Let me remind you that the movement you now support has some very shady characters in important position. Reminded. Riyaale was not an Ethio appointee nor does he need their protection. The whole thing is an Ethiopian concoction, atheer. Riyaale is neither here nor there but he does fly to Addis Ababa at the drop of a hat and that, alone, ought to make you think. His political future will soon be decided by the people (inshallah). That's the difference. Not quite. The political future of Somaliland (and Riyaale) has already been decided 400 miles west of Hargeisa, in Addis Ababa to be exact.

"We will keep killing them until they get out of our country," said one of the gun-toting insurgents Hear ye, hear ye, thou dabo-dhilif. Whatchyu gonna do when they come for you?

Originally posted by NGONGE: ^^ I was hoping each side would view it according to their own leanings. I've given up on trying to understand Somali politics. Now I'll purely concern myself with ridiculing them all. Saaxib you understand it better than anyone I can think of. What is frustrating you is the clear, present and persistent idiocy of policy makers on all sides. I have a prescription of relief for you: pick a side. Once you've done so, you will be spending much of your time cheering for your side and cussing out the opposition. I recommend you choose the resistance. It's the group to support despite all their shortcomings. The TFG is an awful nightmare from which we will undoubtedly wake up one day and when we do, you do not want to be on the wrong side of history. Abdillahi Yuusuf is a nincompoop turncoat and only those who (short-sightedly) see him as a their elder clansman will support him. And of course, those (Ethiopia and others) whose tunes he will happily dance to like the lifetime dabo-dhilif that he is.

Originally posted by me: This resistance will get only stronger and trust me they are Somalia's future. Right on, ME. Right on. Soon enough, the Ethiopians will leave yaa Abwaan. Neither time, nor the tide are on their side. NGONGE, 'splain yourself!

Heavy battles in Somali capital Very heavy fighting between Ethiopian troops and insurgents has broken out in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu. Reports say several people have died in the morning battles taking place in three areas close to the stadium. Ethiopian forces supporting the interim government have moved in reinforcements in a bid to crush Islamist fighters. The UN says Mogadishu is facing a "humanitarian catastrophe" with some 80,000 people fleeing the fighting within the past three days. Uncertainty The Ethiopian forces engaged fighters who have been conducting guerrilla-style attacks on them since the beginning of the year. The insurgents are loyal to a group of Islamic courts which were expelled from Somalia after briefly controlling much of central and southern parts of the country. It is also reported that local residents have also been firing at Ethiopian forces. There was heavy fighting at the weekend, and according to eyewitnesses the fighting in the past few hours has been more intense and casualties have been numerous. International aid agencies have warned of an unfolding humanitarian crisis in parts of Somalia since the fighting began last week. This warning came as Somali faces further uncertainty after its prime minister, Ali Mohammed Ghedi, resigned on Monday. About 40 aid agencies working in Somalia have said the fighting has cut off their ability to respond effectively to the needs of the displaced people. According to the UN some 400,000 displaced people are now living in camps in towns outside Mogadishu, which include Afgooye. Somali's [puppet] transitional government is struggling to impose it authority on the country and its forces and their Ethiopian allies face daily attacks from insurgents. © BBC MMVII BBC

^^^^ You're right, Oodweyne did throw "everything including the kitchen sink" at me but he still came out woefully short and awfully bruised. I understand why he's sticking to his guns even after agreeing with me on all the points I raised. As for the "hypocritical thumbs up", frankly, unlike you, I was paying no attention. Politically, in my view, Buntland and your Holyland are a burro (ridden by Meles) and its two ears. Which do you prefer, the burro or the ears? May Afweyne and Caydiid burn in Jahanam for eternity.

^^^^ FS, don't be surprised. I presume from that one liner he's referring to how a certain group (sub-clan, if you will) is the only one against the occupation. Little does he know that the dabo-dhilifs he worships are in fact the minority. Clearly, the dude is yet to find the knowledge he's seeking.

^^^ That wasn't a question, was it? I posted this in the interest of showing the external dynamics that affect our internal mess. Did you not see it that way?

The Economist Nov 1st 2007 While things are getting better in much of Africa, Ethiopia risks getting left behind AS AMERICA surveys the map of eastern Africa, it finds little to take comfort from. Somalia is in anarchy, riven by competing warlords and a haven for Islamist militants. Sudan is involved in the bloody suppression of blacks in its western region, Darfur. Both countries are deaf to outside complaints and seem chronically unstable. America is thinking of putting Eritrea, briefly a beacon of hope after it split from Ethiopia in 1993, on its list of countries that sponsor terrorism. But between that grim trio stands Ethiopia, America's hope. This ancient country has become an essential ally of America in the “war on terror”. Last year Ethiopia invaded Somalia in support of a UN-backed transitional federal government, which had been threatened with jihad by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that had taken over Mogadishu, the capital. The Americans joined in, giving vital intelligence, to catch al-Qaeda people whom the UIC was sheltering. These men, it believed, were responsible for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing more than 220 people. The West and Ethiopia are co-operating closely against the Islamist threat in the Horn of Africa, which threatens the coast of Kenya and Tanzania as well. It is alleged that Ethiopia is a destination for prisoners interrogated under the CIA's “extraordinary rendition” programme. Certainly the Bush administration has been unstinting in its praise of Meles Zenawi, the prime minister. It has also vilified Ethiopia's neighbour and mortal enemy, Eritrea, which it accuses, among other things, of arming and funding the Somali Islamists. Mr Zenawi won the West's friendship, too, for his efforts to tackle Ethiopia's deep poverty. These have met with some success—so much so that Tony Blair has put Mr Zenawi in the vanguard of an “African Renaissance”. But Ethiopia's upward track as development poster-child and dependable ally was rudely interrupted in 2005. That year's presidential and parliamentary elections were marred by mass killings on the streets of the capital. Police fired on opposition supporters and others who were protesting against what they claimed were rigged elections. Tens of thousands, including journalists and NGO workers as well as opposition activists, were rounded up in a general dragnet; many spent weeks, or months, in prison without charge. Opposition leaders were accused of hugely inflated crimes, such as high treason and genocide. Seventy-one of them were freed only last summer, after having to sign a letter admitting their part in inciting violent protests. These events shattered the West's cosy image of the modernising, progressive Mr Zenawi. Appalled Western governments abruptly switched off direct financial support to the Ethiopian government, though aid has been resumed through indirect channels. And an anti-Zenawi lobby, largely funded by the big Ethiopian diaspora in America, now issues a stream of anti-government criticism from the United States. A few weeks ago the House of Representatives passed a bill condemning Ethiopia's human-rights record and pledging money to help opposition politics. Though it stands almost no chance of becoming law, it shows that Ethiopia is now a subject of fierce controversy. On six cents a day Ethiopia likes to do things differently. In September it started celebrating the new millennium (see picture above), more than seven years after everybody else. The country has been out of step in this respect since 1582: while the rest of the Christian world changed to the revised Gregorian calendar, Ethiopia stuck to the Julian. It also still keeps its own time, measured in 12-hour cycles rather than 24-hour ones. Uniquely in Africa, Ethiopia was never really colonised by Europeans. But its singular history has been a curse as much as a blessing. As the rest of Africa decolonised and modernised, albeit fitfully, after the second world war, Ethiopia remained stuck fast in a feudal fantasy presided over by a diminutive emperor, Haile Selassie. He was deposed only in 1974, by which time the modern world had largely passed Ethiopia by and the country had become known for poverty and famine. It still is. Ethiopia was further damaged by the committee of military officers, known as the Derg, that overthrew the emperor. That regime degenerated into a “red terror” of gulags and summary executions; it also lost an expensive, wasteful war with Tigrayan and Eritrean separatists over what would become, in 1993, the new country of Eritrea. The Derg produced the dreadful famines of 1984-85, the first to be alleviated mainly by the efforts of Bob Geldof and a phalanx of rock stars. Since the early 1990s, however, Ethiopia has recovered somewhat under Mr Zenawi. Signs of that are evident on the big, pristine campus of the University of Arba Minch, more than 500km (311 miles) south of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The university's president, Tarekegn Tadesse, has welcomed 8,000 students this term, a huge number for an obscure provincial town of 50,000-odd people. The crowd of freshmen, he says, testifies to the government's rapid expansion of tertiary education; in the case of Arba Minch, enrolment has increased fourfold in seven years. It is an inspiring story. The new university buildings springing up all over the south are tangible evidence that the aid and development money pumped into Ethiopia reaches the people it is meant to. Roads are clearly being built, funded largely by the Chinese; schools and water-treatment plants are being opened. And there are few complaints of corruption, a fact that continues to make Ethiopia popular with foreign donors. Some of the results are encouraging, too. Infant mortality is said to have dropped from 141 per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 123 per 1,000 in 2005; over 70% of children are now in school, and access to clean water has more than doubled in ten years. Furthermore, the government can point to the rapid expansion of a few sectors in what is still mostly an agricultural economy. The great volcanic lakes of the Rift Valley south of the capital are now ringed by vast flower farms, mainly exporting to Europe. Flowers earn the country about $88m in exports annually, creating some 50,000 jobs in the past few years. Yet despite this, after almost a decade of well-intentioned development policies, Ethiopians remain mired in the most wretched poverty. Officially, about 80% of them live on less than $2 a day. Often it is a lot less than that. An area like Sidama, in the south, looks green, tropical and improbably fertile, but existence there can be precarious. One foreign charity, Action Contre la Faim, recently found that the average cash income for households in one area was six cents a day. Shocked researchers concluded that the depth of poverty there was “far beyond what had previously been thought”. Visiting the nearby villages confirms these cold statistics. In Garbicho Lela, high up in the hills, a nurse estimates that 13% of children are severely malnourished. The one shop in the village betrays the low level of economic activity; on the weekly market day, when over 500 people will walk for hours from the surrounding hill-villages to sell a few things, the shop will do only about 200 birrs ($23) of business. On an average day, it sells two Pepsis. After three years of good rains, aid workers reckon that the risk of severe food shortages has, for the moment, receded. But so marginal are the reserves of food and money here that one bad season could still spell disaster. The fact is that for all the aid money and Chinese loans coming in, Ethiopia's economy is neither growing fast enough nor producing enough jobs. The number of jobs created by flowers is insignificant beside an increase in population of about 2m a year, one of the fastest rates in Africa. Since every mother has about seven children, it is conceivable that Ethiopia, with 75m-plus people today, could overtake Nigeria (now 140m-strong) as Africa's most populous country by mid-century. Just to stand still, let alone make inroads into poverty, the country must produce hundreds of thousands of jobs a year. It is hard to see where they will come from. The government claims that the economy has been growing at an impressive 10% a year since 2003-04, but the real figure is probably more like 5-6%, which is little more than the average for sub-Saharan Africa. And even that modestly improved rate, with a small building boom in Addis Ababa, for instance, has led to the overheating of the economy, with inflation moving up to 19% earlier this year before the government took remedial action. The reasons for this economic crawl are not hard to find. Beyond the government-directed state, funded substantially by foreign aid, there is—almost uniquely in Africa—virtually no private-sector business at all. The IMF estimates that in 2005-06 the share of private investment in the country was just 11%, nearly unchanged since Mr Zenawi took over in the early 1990s. That is partly a reflection of the fact that, despite some privatisation since the centralised Marxist days of the Derg, large areas of the economy remain government monopolies, closed off to private business. Jobs for the boys This is where Ethiopia misses out badly. Take telecoms. While the rest of Africa has been virtually transformed in just a few years by a revolution in mobile telephony, Ethiopia stumbles along with its inept and useless government-run services. Everywhere else, a plethora of South African, home-grown and European providers has leapt into the market to provide Africans with an extraordinary array of cheaper and more efficient services, now used even by the poorest of farmers, for instance, to check spot prices for agricultural goods in markets miles away. And the mobile-phone revolution has created thousands of new livelihoods; at times it seems as if every boy on a street corner is hawking a top-up card. Not in Ethiopia. It is the same story in financial services, where, despite the growth of some smaller private banks, no foreign banks are allowed. Micro-finance schemes have expanded exponentially, but it remains almost impossible to find start-up loans for small or medium businesses. AP AP Patrolling in Somalia There is no official unemployment rate, but youth unemployment, some experts reckon, may be as high as 70%. All those graduates coming out of state-run universities will find it very hard to get jobs. The mood of the young is often restless and despairing; many dream of moving abroad. It was this mood of resentment that the opposition tapped into in 2005, and the capital's maybe 300,000 unemployed young men proved a combustible force on the streets. The ruling party, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), underestimated the degree of disillusion with its policies, and thus overreacted when the opposition polled much better than expected. Unless the private sector is allowed to create jobs, the country's problems will continue to mount and the gains of development may be squandered. Sooner rather than later, 2m more people a year will overwhelm a state that is trying to provide most of the jobs itself. The fractious tribes Economic failings are Ethiopia's biggest long-term challenge; but its worst short-term problems are political. Just as the government is slowing the pace of economic expansion for fear that individuals may accumulate wealth and independence, so it is failing to move fast enough from a one-party state to a modern, pluralist democracy. Again, the reason may be that it is afraid to. The difficulties stem partly from the country's ethnic make-up. Mr Zenawi and the ruling elite are Tigrayans, from the north, a group that is only about 7% of the population. The Oromos, mainly in the centre and south, comprise 40% of the population and provide most of the country's food; but they feel excluded from its economic gains. The Amharas, comprising about 22%, are traditionally Ethiopia's educated ruling class, providing the leadership both of the Derg and of Haile Selassie's empire. The main opposition party in 2005, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), was largely Amharic; they resent the ascendancy of the Tigrayans. And in the south-east ****** region are Muslim Somalis, who have more in common with neighbouring Somalia than with the remote Tigrayans. At one time or another, most of these ethnic groups have pursued secessionist ambitions at the expense of a greater Ethiopia. The government, to its credit, must have thought that it had drawn much of the poison of ethnic competition by introducing a new federal constitution in 1994, with many powers devolved to the regions, and by accepting the independence of Eritrea in 1993. But recent events have reignited the threat of ethnic, and thus political, instability. The turmoil in Somalia has led to a reawakening of the ****** National Liberation Front, which in April killed 74 workers, including nine Chinese, at an oil-exploration camp; the week before last it claimed to have killed 250 government soldiers in a gun battle. Some of its leaders want to be part of a greater Islamist Somalia, and are probably being helped by the Islamist militias there. The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) also continues to be active; though its military activities are disavowed by most Oromos, many sympathise with the broad aim of getting a better deal for Oromia. The CUD is leading the battle across the Atlantic against Mr Zenawi's rule, and Eritrea has tried to stoke each uprising, supplying arms to the Oromo rebels and even playing host to its leaders in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. Unfortunately, despite all the talk of ethnic federalism, the government has chosen to crack down severely on what it sees as direct threats to Ethiopia's integrity. This, in turn, sparks more opposition. The Ethiopian army has made it increasingly difficult to get into the ****** region, virtually one-fifth of the country; even NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières have been struggling to provide help there. Oromo leaders complain of continuing discrimination against them; one of them estimates that as many as 10,000 Oromo sympathisers have, over the years, been rounded up and put in prisons across the country. Hundreds of those were university and school teachers arrested for giving civic-education classes that stressed Oromo issues—inciting protests, claimed the government. Bulcha Demeksa, an MP and leader of a minority Oromo party, the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement, complains that in the past three months thousands more Oromos, many of them his own supporters, have been thrown into prison. He says that the government wants to extinguish any independent opposition outside the government-sponsored official Oromo party, the Oromo People's Democratic Organisation (OPDO). Many Oromos claim it is impossible to get state jobs in Oromia, such as teaching, unless they join the OPDO; farmers complain that they do not get fertiliser unless they join it. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, says that “while this government is an improvement over its predecessor [the Derg], its human-rights record is nonetheless extremely grim.” The government has also become highly sensitive to criticism. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that only Zimbabwe has produced more exiled journalists since 2001, though Eritrea is much fiercer at curbing the freedom of the press. The Ethiopian government's efforts at political control are supported by a wide network of informers and secret police. Critics say it is exploiting the jihadist terror threat to link many legitimate opposition campaigners and supporters with terrorist groups and take them off the streets. The threats from Eritrea, where a new border war could erupt at any time, and the Islamists in Somalia are real. But at this rate, argues Mr Demeksa, “the ethnic groups are on a collision course.” It does not have to come to that. Many people are working tirelessly to bridge the differences. But if such tensions are not eased and the lack of jobs and opportunities not addressed, Ethiopia's future could get much bumpier. In that case, its friendship in a dangerously volatile region would be of little use to the West. Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Nov 1st 2007 | NAIROBI From The Economist print edition A country still dangerously adrift THE prime minister of Somalia, Ali Mohamed Gedi, has bowed out after a year of rivalry with the country's president, Abdullahi Yusuf—in the interest, he says, of national unity. In his resignation speech, Mr Gedi said he had survived five assassination attempts in three years at the helm. A veterinarian, he has seen his share of bone-crunching. His father was a colonel in Somalia's intelligence service during its steadier Soviet-backed years, a trade Mr Gedi may also have dabbled in. It was probably the prime minister of next-door Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, who advised ( ) Mr Gedi to go. The pair are close. In his days as a rebel fighter, Mr Zenawi was protected by Mr Gedi's father. Mr Gedi belongs to the ****** clan, the most powerful in Mogadishu, Somalia's ravaged capital. He has been unpopular with ****** elders, some of whom have Islamist sympathies so are hostile to Somalia's feeble, Ethiopia-backed government. It is unclear whether or not his exit will make it easier for Mr Yusuf, now squarely in charge, to strike a deal with the ****** to deprive jihadist fighters of clan support and shelter. Mr Gedi flew straight out of Somalia to Kenya, the speed of his departure showing how even the toughest patriots are loth to build a life in Mogadishu. Most educated emigrés return without their children, as life for them is getting worse. The UN says school attendance has collapsed; malnutrition and cholera are common. The all-out fighting that ripped through Mogadishu in the spring has not resumed, but the seaside city remains violent. Jihadist rebels pin down Ethiopian troops and peacekeepers from Uganda, the only country willing to send troops under the aegis of the African Union. The failure of moderate Islamists to create a plausible negotiating position at a recent meeting in Eritrea may have strengthened the armed radicals, who hope to foment a holy war with “Christian” Ethiopia. The threat is not restricted to the Horn of Africa. British intelligence says that Somali jihadists may be involved in future terrorist attacks on Britain and elsewhere, as they have been already. The recent killing of yet another Somali journalist illustrates the chaos. Bashir Nur Gedi (no close relation) was the eighth journalist to be murdered in Mogadishu this year. Other Somali reporters have gone into hiding or left the country; both the government and Islamists have targeted them for trying to report freely. A sharp increase in piracy is also telling. During their time in power last year, Islamists managed to curb attacks on foreign vessels. Now they are back up to record numbers. The Americans pursued two ships hijacked by pirates this week, one of them a North Korean freighter whose crew managed to kill two of the pirates before the Americans arrived. There is no sign yet of a French naval escort promised by France's new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The Economist

^^^^ He wouldn't. Sheikh Sharif did say Geedi was used and discarded very much like a diaper placed on an infant. The other apostate infidel remains, however, and in due time, he too will be unceremoniously discarded. Read what Liqaye wrote describing the lifetime puppet Yey and his worshipers: Originally posted by LIQAYE: And a borrowed gun at that. This sniveling for recognition for yusuf is seen for what it is, no amount of rewriting history [and so recent at that] will distract from the fact that yusuf and his supporters are unsalvageable and reprehensible. Ultimately Yusuf was needed for Somalia to reach its nadir in so many ways. Really of all the silly things I have seen on politics forum this takes the cake and all possible frosting, to quote sun-tzu in the same breath as yusuf fails in two ways. it fails in associating the idea of strategy with yusufs concubinage to melez zenawi and fails in implying that the qouter of the passage remotely understands what he is talking about. In the end the idea of cult that che has introduced has its advantages in understanding the warped thinking of so many pathetic non-realists on this forum. The idea that puntland moryaan and mohamed dhere moryaan are the basis of a national army as the fatuous "General" calls them or the goverment of parasites setting up a national security apparatus is excreable and truly pathetic. Yusuf controls nothing, yusuf rules over nothing, yusuf is nothing, ultimately every nation needs its patheon of dark forces and historical failures for it to be able to rail against, for it to show its children what wrong behaviour is. The U.S has aron burr, norway has quisling, and somalia yusuf. Strategy kulahaa. pathetic.

Hell No! Not while that puppet Yey is still being peddled by the Ethiopians. Exiled Somali Islamist leader backs insurgents Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:15am EDT NAIROBI, Oct 31 (Reuters) - An exiled leader of Somalia's Islamists gave his backing on Wednesday to insurgents fighting in Mogadishu and said the resignation of the country's prime minister would bring no change to his turbulent homeland. Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a top official of the Somali Islamic Courts Council who took refuge in Eritrea after Ethiopian forces and Somalia's interim government routed his movement, said the capital's rebels had a duty to liberate their country. "Our main motive is to fight the enemy and force them out of our country," Sharif, who is now chairman of the opposition Alliance For The Re-Liberation of Somalia, told Reuters. Insurgents clashed with Ethiopian soldiers over the weekend in battles that killed at least 15 people, wounded scores more, and sent residents of the rubble-strewn city fleeing to safety. Sharif said Ethiopia was Somalia's sworn enemy, and blamed its troops for inflicting harm on civilians. Addis Ababa says its forces are deployed at the request of the Somali government. Sharif said the U.S. government was giving the Ethiopians money and logistical support and said other countries were also meddling in Somali affairs, although he declined to name them. In the latest twist in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi resigned on Monday after a long feud with the president that frustrated their Western backers. Sharif -- who was seen as a relative moderate when his sharia courts ruled Mogadishu and much of south Somalia for six months last year -- was scathing in his assessment of Gedi. "When the coloniser used him and finished with him, he was forced to resign," Sharif said during the telephone interview, referring to Ethiopia. "It was part of the scheme the coloniser used to capture Somalia and whoever replaces Gedi will certainly serve the coloniser. ... It has no impact and we expect to see no changes." Meanwhile, Ethiopia's foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin, flew to Somalia's parliament in Baidoa on Wednesday for talks with President Abdullahi Yusuf, Somali officials said. Sharif said that if the insurgents were victorious, his movement would allow Somalis a genuine choice of leadership. "Whoever agrees with us or whoever does not, we do not force people," he said. "It is a compromise and treaty that bring people together. ... The Somali people should have their choice." He declined to divulge the location of the other main leader of Somalia's Islamists, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. Aweys is on U.S. and U.N. lists of al Qaeda suspects and last surfaced at a Somali opposition conference in the Eritrean capital Asmara in September. Reuters