Taking the fight to Islam In 1989, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Muslim, supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. But on moving to Europe her views changed and she turned against Islam. Two years ago she fled Holland after the brutal murder of her artistic collaborator Theo van Gogh. Who is this fierce critic who lives under the constant threat of death? Andrew Anthony Sunday February 4, 2007 The Observer Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the only critic of Islam who lives with round-the-clock protection. But surely none wears their endangered status with greater style. The Dutch Somali human-rights campaigner looks like a fashion model and talks like a public intellectual. Tall and slender with rod-straight posture and a schoolgirl smile, she is a thinker of stunning clarity, able to express ideas in her third language with a precision that very few could achieve in their first. This combination of elegance and eloquence would be impressive in any circumstances. Under threat of death, it is nothing short of incredible. Article continues A little over two years ago, a second-generation Dutch Moroccan by the name of Mohammed Bouyeri sent a letter to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Aside from the destruction of Holland and Europe, Bouyeri called for the death of Hirsi Ali, whom he described as a 'fundamentalist unbeliever' and a 'soldier of evil'. His macabre method of delivering the correspondence was to impale the note in the chest of the filmmaker and outspoken maverick, Theo van Gogh, having already shot him eight times and cut his throat through to the spine. Van Gogh had made a short film with Hirsi Ali called Submission 1, in which lines from the Koran, detailing a man's right to beat his wife, were superimposed on the body of an actress portraying a victim of domestic violence. The murder took place in broad daylight during the morning rush hour in a busy Amsterdam high street. Though the letter was addressed to Hirsi Ali, it was intended for a wider audience. Its message, while incoherent and rambling, was shockingly simple: say the wrong thing about Islam and nowhere is safe for you. It was medieval justice meted out in one of the most liberal and modern cities in the world. The killer, it turned out, was part of a cell linked to a fundamentalist network that stretched across Europe. The murder of van Gogh had the unintended effect of bringing Hirsi Ali global recognition. While she was whisked away by Dutch security to an army base and on to a 'dismal motel' near an industrial estate in Massachusetts, cut off from the rest of the planet, the rest of the planet became suddenly very interested in her. The subject of numerous profiles, she was named the following year one of the '100 Most Influential People of the World' by Time magazine. In Holland, though, Hirsi Ali was already both famous and infamous. In Amsterdam a few days after the murder, I spoke to Muslims on the street about the killing. The majority blamed Hirsi Ali. 'This woman is the cause of all the problems, telling lies about Islam,' one told me. 'If she hadn't sucked van Gogh into this, he'd still be alive today.' The reason Bouyeri killed van Gogh rather than Hirsi Ali was that she was already under police protection. Two years before van Gogh's slaying, Hirsi Ali had called Islam 'backward' in a TV debate and was forced into hiding. Her subsequent media profile encouraged the Dutch Liberal Party to offer Hirsi Ali a position as an MP. She served with some distinction, focusing on issues such as domestic violence and female genital mutilation - the sort of campaigns that used to be part of frontline feminism but which had become increasingly neglected owing to multicultural sensitivities. I met Hirsi Ali at her publisher's office in central London last week. Dutch bodyguards follow her everywhere she goes, and reportedly in Britain Special Branch officers afford further protection, though neither were in evidence. She looked as sharp as a pin in a black trouser suit, even if she was jet-lagged and tired, having flown in from her new home in the United States. Last year Hirsi Ali, the most assimilated of all Dutch immigrants, was rejected by her adopted homeland twice over. Residents in her apartment block gained a court ruling, under European Human Rights law, stipulating that her presence placed her neighbours at risk, and she was duly evicted. At the same time a TV documentary alleged the MP had provided false information on her original asylum application. Hirsi Ali had admitted as much many times in interviews but nonetheless a minister in her own party decided to revoke her citizenship. In a farcical series of events, the citizenship was reinstated and the government collapsed. Meanwhile Hirsi Ali moved to Washington DC to take up a post at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. She says she feels at home in America, a nation of immigrants. The move was only the latest, and perhaps least dramatic, in a lifetime of peripatetic reinventions. Born in Somalia to a resistance leader, she was exiled to Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. In Nairobi she joined the Muslim Brotherhood and in 1989 she believed that Salman Rushdie should be killed for having blasphemed the prophet. How she went from devout believer to fearless opponent, from a loyal clan member to being renounced by her family, from Africa to Europe, and from blind faith to unbending reason is the compelling story she tells in her new autobiography entitled, with characteristic bluntness, Infidel Strictly speaking Hirsi Ali is not an infidel but an apostate, a designation that in the Koran warrants the punishment of death. The distinction is not without significance. In a poll published last week, one in three British Muslims in the 16-24 age group agreed that 'Muslim conversion is forbidden and punishable by death'. This figure comes as no surprise to Hirsi Ali. She argues that Europe's determination to maintain cultural difference will lead increasing numbers of alienated Muslims to seek the unambiguity of fundamentalism. Liberals, she says, have shirked the responsibility of making the case for their own beliefs. They need to start speaking out in favour of the values of secular humanism. And they need to make clear that they are not compatible with religious bigotry and superstition. 'You have to say that if you want the Prophet Muhammad to be your moral guide in the 21st century and you are aware of the choices the Prophet Muhammad made towards unbelievers, women, homosexuals, do you really think you're going to succeed? You will get into some sort of cognitive dissonance if you at the same time want to adapt to a life here.' Without an open and robust critique of the nature of the prophet's teachings, she goes on, 'these clerics proselytising radical Islam make much, much more sense. Because the radical Muslims say that democracy is bad, and the young Muslim mind says "Why is it bad?". Because the Koran says it's bad. That makes more sense than democracy is good, the rights of individuals must be observed but you can also hang on to what the Koran says. I say stop that and appeal to and challenge young minds.' When it comes to words, Hirsi Ali is not one to look for the mincer. She speaks in a language that makes no concessions to the softening euphemisms of political correctness. Those immersed in circumspection and ever vigilant to the contemporary sin of offence are bound to ask themselves if she's allowed to say what she says. In this respect her predicament is reminiscent of the moment in Basic Instinct when Sharon Stone lights a cigarette under interrogation in a police station. She's told that's it's non-smoking environment and she replies: 'So arrest me.' Hirsi Ali's life is already in jeopardy. She's long past the point of polite restraint. Some observers find her forthright approach refreshing and, indeed, intoxicating, but many recoil from her unadorned conviction. Writing in the New York Review of Books, the historian Timothy Garton Ash described Hirsi Ali as a 'slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist'. Last year when Garton Ash chaired a discussion with Hirsi Ali at the ICA, he seemed both to admire the incisiveness of her quietly spoken logic and to wince at its unshakeable conclusions. 'For him,' Hirsi Ali laughs, 'the Enlightenment is complex. For me, it isn't. There's nothing complex about it.' A student of 17th- and 18th-century political ideas, she doesn't mean that she thinks the Enlightenment was some kind of uniform philosophical movement. The simplicity, for her, is the legacy of the Enlightenment, the things we take for granted about Western sociopolitical culture: the rule of law, the rights of the individual, freedom of expression. To Hirsi Ali these are bedrock precepts that should not be compromised in the name of cultural diversity. Most of the political classes would agree with her in principle but like to take a more nuanced, and often evasive, stance in practice. She was one of the few intellectuals, for example, who rushed to support the Danes in the cartoon crisis last year. If you believe in the right of freedom of expression, she says, you have to defend that right. In a debate a few years back, Hirsi Ali challenged the Swiss Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan, something of a poster boy for the multicultural left, to be more consistent and clear-cut in what he said. Was the Koran the word of God or a man-made text that was out of date? Ramadan responded by questioning Hirsi Ali's adversarial style. 'The question,' he said, 'is whether you want to change the mentality or please the audience.' Does her bald delivery not further alienate Muslims, forcing them to cling to traditional values? Hirsi Ali is too smooth of skin and composure to bristle, but it is obviously an accusation she finds irritating. 'Tariq Ramadan is filled with contempt for Muslims because he believes they have no faculties of reason,' she replies in a beguilingly friendly tone, as though she had remarked that he had an excellent taste in shirts. 'If I say that terrorism is created in the name of Islam suddenly they take up terrorism? He gives me so much more power than I have. Why don't my remarks make him turn to terrorism? Because he's above that. Like many believers in multiculturalism, he puts himself on a higher plane. The other thing is that it's not about your style, it's about your content. Are my propositions right or wrong? Is it social, cultural and religious beliefs that cause economic backwardness or is it the other way round? My take on this is the cultural and religious elements are far more important to look at. That is what we should be looking at and not how I say it.' All the same, it's fair to say that her audience is made up largely of white liberal males, rather than the Muslim women she wishes to liberate. In Holland, a female Muslim politician named Fatima Elatik told me: 'She's appealing to Dutch society, to middle-class Dutch-origin people. She talks about the emancipation of women but you can't push it down their throats. If I could talk to her, I would tell her that she needs to get a couple of Muslim women around her.' Hirsi Ali dismisses this as 'a very silly remark. I started off in a position where none of these women were visible anyway except as proxies to be put forward to get subsidies from the government. Just keep singing we're discriminated against. No Muslim women are allowed into this debate by their own groups. So it's way too early. By the time these women are assertive enough, I won't be around. It will be one generation on.' She also argues that it's important to address white liberals because they need to overcome the self-censoring effects of post-colonial guilt. 'If you want to feel guilty,' snaps Hirsi Ali, 'feel guilty that you didn't bring John Stuart Mill and left us only with the Koran. It doesn't help to say my forefathers oppressed your forefathers, and remain guilty forever.' There is no zealot like the convert, goes the old saying, and many commentators have concluded that Hirsi Ali is a prime secular example. 'In a pattern familiar to historians of political intellectuals,' wrote Garton Ash, 'she has gone from one extreme to the other'. The word on Hirsi Ali is that she is 'traumatised' by her upbringing and her subsequent adoption of a Western lifestyle. It's the word that Ian Buruma uses to describe her condition in his book Murder In Amsterdam Needless to say, she finds this appraisal of her ideas patronising. It was, she says, partly in an effort to combat this impression that she wrote Infidel. 'People can see that there is not much trauma in my story.' That depends on what you think constitutes trauma. The account of being held down by the legs, aged five, and having her clitoris and inner labia cut off with a pair of scissors will certainly alarm many readers. 'I heard it,' she writes, 'like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat.' The fierce beatings she receives at the hands of her embittered mother, and the fractured skull inflicted on her by a brutal religious teacher, these too would leave psychological scars on most of us. But as Hirsi Ali writes, they were normal events in her childhood and in the lives of people she knew. Death and illness were commonplace in Africa, and by African standards she lived well. There is nothing melodramatic in Hirsi Ali's prose. It's matter-of-fact and also, as she is quick to point out, entirely subjective. It's possible, she says, that her family will remember things differently. 'But it's my story and if you undertake such an endeavour you have to be honest. Usually people make excuses for their culture and family etcetera. I could tell the story that we in the Third World have things that the West could learn from, which is obviously true, but that isn't what I wanted to show. My argument is that western liberal culture is superior to Islamic tribal group culture.' Hirsi Ali was born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 38 years ago in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a leading figure in the Somali Salvation Democratic Front. He was imprisoned by the Somali dictator Siad Barre during much of Hirsi Ali's childhood, and thereafter she lived in exile with her mother and brother and sister, largely estranged from her father, who remarried. In Kenya she gained a limited amount of freedom from the strict Somali clan system, though its extended network continued to circumscribe her life. She was a good but not exceptional student at school in Nairobi and went on to attend a secretarial course. Her mother and religious instructors brought her up to distrust unbelievers and to hate Jews, who, she was told, were responsible for all the problems of the world. Her mother did not want her daughters to work and in 1992 her father announced that he had arranged a marriage to a distant cousin living in Canada. Hirsi Ali maintains that she had no desire to marry the man but also, given family and clan honour, no choice. 'I was condemned to a predictable fate,' she writes, 'that of being a subservient wife to a stranger.' En route to her husband in Canada she stopped over in Germany, and from there she went to Holland where, in a sudden surge of self-empowerment, she claimed asylum. She was told that running away from an arranged marriage was no reason to be awarded refugee status, so she made up a story about fleeing persecution in Somalia. It was then that she changed her name to Ali, the better to elude her infuriated clan. She marvelled at the free room and board and health care provided by the Dutch state: '...all these people were busy helping you, and this for foreigners. How on earth did they treat their own clans?' Not all her fellow refugees were quite so appreciative. Many complained of racism and saw themselves as victims of European imperialism. 'The Europeans had colonised Somalia,' writes Hirsi Ali in characterising this sense of grievance, 'which was why we all had no qualifications and were in this mess to begin with. I thought that was so clearly nonsense. We had torn ourselves apart, all on our own.' Little by little, she dropped the trappings of her culture and religion. First she removed her headscarf, then she wore jeans, rode a bicycle, fraternised with Dutch people, and with Jews, went to a pub, later drank a glass of wine, and eventually she met and moved in with a Dutch man. But her younger sister, who had been more of a rebel, joined Hirsi Ali in Holland and grew increasingly religious, to the point of psychosis. She returned to Africa and died following a miscarriage. Working as a translator for Dutch social services, Hirsi Ali came across a hidden world of domestic violence, honour killings and of women entombed in the home, unable to speak Dutch or English and with no idea about the society in which they lived. 'While the Dutch were generously contributing money to international aid organisations,' she writes, 'they were also ignoring the silent suffering of Muslim women and children in their own backyard.' She took a degree in political science at Leiden university - no mean feat for a refugee without any previous academic ambition - after which she became a researcher with a Labour party think tank, looking at immigration. By now her belief in Islam was precariously loose but she still held on to the idea that she was a Muslim. But the events of 11 September 2001 changed that. 'The little shutter at the back of my mind, where I pushed all my dissonant thoughts, snapped open after the 9/11 attacks, and it refused to close again. I found myself thinking that the Koran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the men who wrote it 150 years after the Prophet died. And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war.' She decided that what the Muslim world needed was its own Voltaire. And after she wrote an article outlining her ideas and concerns, some readers decided that they had found their new Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish refugee from the Inquisition who came to Holland and founded the Enlightenment. No doubt Hirsi Ali's critics would find the comparison hard to stomach. Spinoza was against religious persecution, whereas Hirsi Ali, say her opponents, is an arch exponent of Islamophobia. One such critic has written a stinging attack on Hirsi Ali in this month's Times Literary Supplement. Maria Golia, an Egyptian-based academic, writes: 'Hirsi Ali seems far more interested in indicting Islam than helping damaged women, whose horror stories she conveniently trots out whenever she needs to bludgeon home a point.' She takes Hirsi Ali to task on female genital mutilation which, she points out, is not an Islamic practice. Hirsi Ali wanted the Dutch government to institute medical checks on young girls in vulnerable circumstances. Golia calls the idea 'institutionalised violence' and prefers an approach that 'requires understanding of context and coalition-building, not to mention compassion and subtlety'. It should be said that in Infidel Hirsi Ali specifically states that FGM predates Islam, is not limited to Islam and that it is not practised in many Islamic countries. However, she adds, it is very often 'justified in the name of Islam'. Indeed one need only look at the advice of the leading Egyptian cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is considered one of the most influential scholars in Islam. Qaradawi has been promoted by London mayor Ken Livingstone as a moderate voice, but on his Islam-online website he writes of female circumcision: 'Anyhow, it is not obligatory, whoever finds it serving the interest of his daughters should do it, and I personally support this under the current circumstances in the modern world.' She characterises the manner in which liberals sidestep such details as a confusion of facts and strategy. 'Some people will accept that Islam is backward but they're not going to say that because Muslims will be offended. "We want them to become liberals, so we're just going to trick them into a secular humanistic way of thinking."' At this she lets out a giggle, as if tickled by the absurdity of the idea. 'But people are aware of what's going on. That's why many Muslims are suspicious of liberals. Because they know they are not being taken seriously.' Perhaps a more telling symbol of the growing cultural gap between mainstream Western society and doctrinaire Islam is the veil. Again Hirsi Ali does not look around for a fence to sit on. 'The veil,' she says, 'is to show that women are responsible for the sexual self-control of men.' It's a surgical observation, cutting right through to the bone of the issue. She goes on to note that in all communities where the veil is actively observed boys are not taught to restrain themselves. 'They look upon all those who are not veiled as women who are looking for sexual contact and they just go about molesting and being a nuisance.' But what about those women who say that the veil has nothing to do with sex, that is a demonstration of their love of Allah. 'That is a very small group of women?' But are you to deny them their right to dress as they please? 'No,' she insists, 'I don't want to deny them that and I don't want anyone to deny them that.' Her solution is secular civic space - for example in schools and government offices - in which all religion is removed. The French model then? That's hardly been a great success. 'It's never been tried,' she counters. 'The French have voiced it but never implemented it. They've created these zones outside Paris where people from Third World countries are put together and excluded from the secular neutral model. They've preached secular Republicanism and practised multiculturalism, that's the whole French hypocrisy.' Hirsi Ali doesn't really do small talk. She's not interested in talking about her private life, whether she is in a relationship, how often she thinks about the danger she is in, her everyday life in America, or any of the sort of personal details that fascinate people who want to know what it's like to live life under threat of death. This is partly because she is not supposed to give away any information that may aid potential attackers. But more than that, it's because she really only wants to talk about ideas. To some readers, especially Muslim readers, it may seem that she only wants to talk about one idea: the danger of Islam. Certainly, it's a major preoccupation. But for all her clinical rhetoric, Hirsi Ali is not really interested in carving the world into two blocks of clashing civilisations. At heart she is a universalist, a passionate believer in human rights. If you believe in equality for women, then you must believe in equality for all women, regardless of their culture or religion. Her deepest wish is to allow the world's oppressed peoples, especially women, to share in the fruits of reason. 'And to do that,' she says, 'someone's got to shake the tree.' As she sees it, Islamic society is inimical to development. 'So everyone wants to move here, and they want to make this place look like there. We shouldn't cling to the customs and beliefs that caused us to move out in the first place. Unfortunately people in the Third World think that just by moving house they leave their misery behind. And that's what the integration debate is about: if you take those values with you and come here, it's not going to change your misery.' This is in essence what Tony Blair said a few weeks back when he spoke about a 'duty to integrate', and suggested that those people looking to move to Britain who didn't agree with British values should perhaps think about not coming. To some, Blair's comments were tantamount to a crude 'send 'em back' agenda. This in itself is perhaps reason to be thankful for Hirsi Ali. She knows what life is like without the benefit of the freedoms and rights that Europe has established and she, at least, is not afraid to emphasise how crucial it is not to lose them. But of course in voicing her opinion in the style she does, she risks lumping together over a billion people from different nations, cultures and traditions as a single 'problem'. For Hirsi Ali, the problem is one of self-definition. If Muslims want to assert a religious text as the basis of their public identity, then they have to accept public debate of that text and its ideas with all the discomfort and offence that may involve. In truth there is probably room for both what Hirsi Ali calls 'Tariq Ramadan gymnastics' and her more uncompromising approach. Though it may say something for our incurable self-loathing that it is Hirsi Ali, the most fervent admirer of European liberalism, that we've effectively sent packing. · Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is published by Free Press in paperback, £12.99.

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Somaliland Budget Analysis (FY 2003) By: Ali Gulaid Recently, the Institute of practical research and training (IPRT) in Hargeysa, Somaliland, has contracted with me to teach the fundamentals and the principles of fiscal management to government finance officers and elected officials. The course focused on budget and its essential elements but it has also touched on governmental accounting, auditing and procurement procedures. Naturally, I have carried-out the instruction in Somali and that encouraged the students to express the issues and participate the discussion fervently without the apprehension of mispronouncing foreign words. This was a rewarding experience but it was disappointing to find out the a) low level of proficiency in fiscal management b) the lack of reference books and material in fiscal management and c) the lack of availability of experts to consult with. There is a whole a lot more to say about this rewarding experience, but that isn’t why I brought up the subject. I brought it up to share with you what I have learned in analyzing the FY 2003 Budget document. The budget document is inconsistent with the hopes and aspirations of the people of Somaliland, the poorest Nation in the World. It isn’t a roadmap to allocate resources to need, to prioritize, and to economize the scarce resources. Rather, it is a blueprint to waste, to misappropriate, to mislabel and to mismanage the scarce resources. Indeed, it is a roadblock to development and here is why. V The budget of Somaliland for the fiscal year 2003 is (101,687,066,649 S/Shilling) and that is equivalent to US$16,140,804 according to the official exchange rate (US$ 1 = 6,300 Somaliland ah), which the ministry applied at the time. V The President of Somaliland is the highest paid elected head of State in the hemisphere, north and south, according to the FY 2003 budget. If that sounds outrageous, unbelievable, and unconscionable, read on. The budget document doesn’t specify the salary of the President per se but the expenditure earmarked for the (Qasriga Madaxtooyada), which roughly translates to residence of the Presidency is $515,956. To avoid any confusion, the budget of the residence of the Presidency is different from that of the Ministry of the Presidency. V The President doesn’t pay rent or utilities (power and water). Moreover, the staff of the President is paid from the budget of the Ministry of the Presidency (political fund/expense account), which has a budget of $998,000. V The Ministry of the Presidency (political fund/expense account)has the third highest budget and the salary budgeted for the staff of the Presidency “Madaxtooyada” is $67, 682.]This salary alone is more than the combined salaries of the following seven Ministries, which totals to a mere $63,937: foreign affairs ($17,192), contracts agency (3,610) removal of mines agency (8,690), the two houses of the parliament ($23,392), the Supreme Court (8,800), and parliament coordinating ministry ($2,253). Is it sensible to conclude that the staff of the Presidency is more and paid higher than the staff of these seven ministries combined? V Furthermore, the salary of the bodyguard of the President could come either from the Ministry of defense or from the Ministry of the Presidency or from the National Army but which one I am not sure. The chance that the salary of the bodyguard of the President is paid from the residence of the Presidency “qasriga Madaxtooyada” is slim. V This clearly demonstrates that the expenditure of the residence of the Presidency “qasriga Madaxtooyadu” is a misnomer. It is euphemistically labeled and there is no other reasonable conclusion but to label it ($515,956) correctly as the salary of the President. Furthermore, the budget document labeled it only as the expenditure of the Presidency in lump sum. No detail provided. Contrast that with the salary of President George W. Bush, which is mere $400,000 not monthly, but yearly. As a matter of fact, the salary of the President of the United Stated was only $200,000 when Clinton left office. It was Clinton who passed the legislation to double the salary of the President effective his successor. In addition President Bush has an expense account of $50,000 and not $998,000 like the President of Somaliland does. Contrast also with that of the President of South Africa $120,000 and that of the President of Eritrea $36,000. V This bestows the President of the poorest country in the world to earn the distinction of being the highest paid elected President in the whole world. By salary scale the President of Somaliland is richer $119,956 than President Bush, the President of the wealthiest country in the world. Unconscionable. V Similarly, the Vice-President isn’t doing poorly either. He is pulling down $188,700. Just this year the salary of the Vice-President was increased from $158,730 to $188,700. Contrast that with $186,200 the salary of the Vice-President of the United Stated, Dick Cheney. Can Somaliland afford this? V The Vice-President’s salary of $188,700 closely matches that of the budget of the Ministry of public works $192,899, and that of the Ministry of Aviation $197,032. The salary of the President, that of the Vice-President and the political fund amount to $ 1,700,804, which is 10% of the total budget. And in total that is more than the total salary of Somaliland Police force, which happens to be $1,504,653. Ridiculous V Common sense dictates that scarce resources allocated according to need in order to grow and develop economically. But how the government abdicated this fundamental responsibility and squandered by misappropriating funds is illustrated by the salary of the President, which is more than the combined budget ($499,956) of the following ten (10) ministries: Ministry of Family affairs ($29,693), Ministry of Youth ($37,914) Ministry of re-settlement ($42,011) religious affairs ($42,797), planning ($35,810), Minerals & water ($60,292), Commerce ($54,874), Industry ($60,152), Tourism ($65,424) and agriculture ($70,328). V It is saddening to share with you how other departments and ministries are denied the resources needed to serve the nation. For example, the Salary of the Vice-President of Somaliland is more than the combined budget ($188,224) of the following five (5) Ministries: Ministry of Family affairs ($29,693), Ministry of Youth ($37,914) Ministry of re-settlement ($42,011) religious affairs ($42,797), and planning ($35,810). V How do education, health and justice fare in the budget? Poorly. The salary of the President closely matches that of the budget of National Election Commission $539,233 and that of the Ministry of health $545,233. Wastefully, the budget of the Ministry of the Presidency (political fund/expense account) is bigger than the budget of the Ministry of education $982,510, bigger than that that of the Parliament ($796,786) and much more bigger than that of the Ministry of health $545,233. Unjustifiably, the budget of the Ministry of tourism is $65,424 and that is almost twice as big as that of the Ministry of Justice ($42,387). Is that justice? V And there is some more heartbreak. The budget of the Military is $4,629,341; that of the prison Guard is $881,768 and that of the police is $2,287,862. In addition to that there is $31,746 in the budget of the Ministry of interior earmarked for security. That is a total of $7,830,717, which is 49% of the Somaliland Budget ($16,140,804). If you add that to the salaries of the President, the Vice-President and the political fund, which in total is 10% of the budget, only about 40% remains for education, health, agriculture, justice and other social services. V In order to find out roughly the number of Somaliland security forces, one has to consult with the budget. And according to the salary subhead, the military salary is $3,214,367; that of the prison guard is $421,226 and that of the police is $1,504,653. This totals to $5,140,227. Therefore, on the basis of the yearly salary of $216 of a soldier, the number of Somaliland security forces is roughly 20,895. But according to the budget, the total government personnel are 22,533. This would make the government employed civilians only 1,638. That is hard to believe. V Relatively, Somalilanders are as incarcerated as African Americans in the United States when one considers the funds allocated to the prison guard, “ciidanka Asluubta”. It has a budget of ($881,768), which is more than the combined budget ($864,351) of the following (15) ministries: justice ($42,387), agriculture ($70,328), development of the nomad ($57,434), livestock development ($107,833), minerals and water ($60,292), religious affairs ($42,797), industry ($60,011), fishery ($57,151), telecommunication ($55,977), tourism ($65,424), re-settlement ($42,011), sports &youth ($37,914), coordination of two houses Ministry ($9,998), Attorney General ($64,111), commerce ($54,874) and Planning ($35,810). V Here is another mislabeled one. The budget of the emergencies and unexpected tragedies “gurmadka & hawlaha lama filaanka ah” is $523,809 and it is part of the budget of the Ministry of the Presidency. The funny thing is, it is used for unallowable expenditure. Thanks to the cooperation of Nature and the peaceful Somalilanders, nothing that qualifies under that classification has occurred recently. Yet, rather than saving it for future mishaps, it is expended as an operational budget. V The budget of the Ministry of information is $152,901, which is bigger than the combined budget of the Ministry of justice $42,387, the Auditor General $62,268 and the civil service agency $46,159. The Ministry of information has only one radio station, which hardly reaches the outskirts of the Capital let alone the rest of the country. Regrettably, it is also two times bigger than that of Ministry of agriculture and much bigger than that of the livestock development ($107,833). Why blame Saudi Arabia for banning livestock export for health reasons? V And some more waste. Interestingly, there is a Ministry that coordinates the Parliament (Guurti and Wakiilada) with a budget of $9,998 and I might add that the “Guurti” and the “Wakiiladu” are located in the same compound. What for? V Then, there are: the lawyer of the National Army $8,412.70; no other ministry has its own lawyer, and the subhead of compensations “Magaha Hawlgalka Dawladda” under the Ministry of Interior, which is a whopping $63,492. Does the government compensate for its misdeeds and tort? Highly unlikely. And as much as $34,177 is wasted under the subheading of miscellaneous; add that to $34,017 for entertainment, which nearly every ministry and agency indulges. V How about this one: the preparation of the budget “xisaab-xidhka & samaynta miisaaniyadda”, which is $37,032. This is neither for technical experts nor for overtime. V The inequity, on the other end of the spectrum, is glaring and reprehensive. The yearly salaries of certain classifications are: $246 for a policeman/woman; and $480 for a government senior officer; $3,000 for a minister. Of course the ministers have perks such as a house and a car. Alarmingly, higher Education, (Hargeysa, Amoud Universities and the teachers training center) is barely surviving on $47,659. In economics 101, one learns that resources are scarce and the competing and conflicting demands made on the scarce resources need to be prioritized in order to optimize utility. A nation that commits 60% of its meager resources to guns rather than butter, a nation that commits more on disseminating propaganda than judiciary, a nation that spends 10% of its budget on the salary of two employees of the State – President and the Vice-President, a nation that doesn’t save for a rainy day, a nation that ignores its infrastructure, a nation that spends least on education, health and justice is a nation that is predestined to failure, hopelessness and hunger. It is more so when already that nation is the poorest nation in the world. A nation’s resources are entrusted with its leaders and stewardship and if the budget (FY 2003) is any indication, the meager resources are grossly misappropriated and that is fiscally irresponsible. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most impoverished region in the world and no one disputes that. Some of the reasons the pundits normally ascribe to the region’s poverty are as follows: civil and ethnic wars, environmental degradation and deforestation, foreign debt, corruption, lack of foreign investment, low prices of Africa agricultural exports, too many and too small sovereign States, HIV/AIDS, trade barriers, poor infrastructure. Most of these are man made causes that can be managed, controlled, negotiated or eliminated totally. But there is one more that is overlooked: fiscal irresponsibility. The practice of misappropriating public funds (taxpayers funds) is pervasive, reprehensive and would continue to bleed the region to more poverty. To mitigate the effect or eliminate these growth and development inhibiting practices requires strong political will and that isn’t forthcoming. This seems bleak but it shouldn’t be. As a reminder, this culture of out-right misappropriation and corruption has been inherited from the prior administrations but this one has taken it to a shamefully higher level. It must be noted that the legislature has approved these misappropriations; hence they share the blame. There are several ways to stem this blatant waste of meager resources and here are some that spring to mind readily but one wonders if there is a will? The legislature ought to establish a) watch dog of its own, which is accountable to the house of parliament and, b) independent controller that reviews and approves government disbursements. Listing the functions of the proposed watchdog is out of the scope of this analysis, but the message should be clear; those who misappropriate and those who loot government coffers would be caught and punished severely without fail. I wonder how different the outcome would have been, if priorities re-arranged, with the same amount of resources; and I wonder whether these funds, no matter how misappropriated, were expended for the intended use. I am bringing this to your attention, not out of malice, but out of a desire to see Somaliland develop, grow and become fiscally responsible Ali Gulaid, CPA ************************************** Copy of the Full Budget and this Article can be found at Hargeisa.org --right side. --------------------

It is really amazing the pity you guys have for these munafiqs. they joined whatever they joined knowing the consequences. for some odd reason somalians think that no somalian can be a kaafir or a munaafiq. You know the good thing about this site is it gives you the inner most hatred of some people and makes them come out here and show their true color. Well i don't want mention names in here but by now we are pretty much know who is who and who they belong in this site . The dude who said the above quote let me ask you this . Those who have raped ,sodomized,killed and fathered illegitimate children in the past 16 1/2 years, how come i did not hear you say for once they are "Munaafaqis" that is your choosen word not mine,or if they belong to certain clan of yours they are excluded from that "Munagiqiin" label. Look if you want act judge and jury then you have to employ it equally or just you are becoming another symbol of hatred among us. I hope you answer this question to a lot of us if you are man enough .

I think it is aight one to be themself without satisfying any being. God is almighty and he is the decider.

It seems to me every one here missed the Big Picture here. If i read correctly the Title it said "Clan Leaders Met". In nature Somalis are clan based society and it will never go away so by accepting this first it will enable to see eye to eye and measure up each other. I will forward to the next level i would like to see every Somali Passport to have a part where we can identify your Clannish. No more hiding behind the banner of solely being Somali! Let's know each other who we are dealing with and if you find out that person is not what you want associate then leave and never converse. Of course this is my only and only sole opinion.

wow Olol it is nice of you to remember the F13. but my heart goes out to the "Somali Kiwi's" who live in New Zealand.Listen their stories

Astonighing! while we are spending our little valuable time left on this nonsense,who cares if he is or is not what he alleges or claims to be. these clients of his are already partitionig where to develop their future mansion in somalia. Former Republic of Somalia had bled to death for the past 16 yrs and now it is the foreigners time to take the land for good and claim they have the right to be there. Imagine that, so ppl wake up and have little sense of understanding the situation facing us. I mean us if you are not yet 30yrs of age.Any one who is over 30yrs have no right to be ruling somalia period.

It is said by someone Best age to have not When? really test your wording it does not make any difference to differentiate when and Best? well let me really break it down when and best to have children. Next Year Always next year or the year after that. Remember having a child is not a yearly committment. By the way how many of you lost or vacated children?

My Hats off to all of them. Congratulation! Yes wellfare is no more than hellfare.

I say start now while you can.Those eggs are not going to last that long anyway. With the advance science we have now ,you can sustain having kids at 80yrs old that is if you don't want see your kids hassle you late at nights and giving them milk ,you can wait that late. But here is a fact MADRID, Spain Dec 30, 2006 (AP)— A 67-year-old Spanish woman became the world's oldest mother after she gave birth to twins in the northern city of Barcelona on Saturday, a hospital official said. The woman, whose identity has not been revealed by Sant Pau hospital, gave birth by caesarian section on Saturday having previously undergone in vitro fertilization in the United States, according to the national news agency EFE. Originally from the southern region of Andalucia, the new mother chose the Barcelona hospital because it specializes in high-risk births. The mother and twins are all doing well though the babies are both in incubators, a hospital spokeswoman said. The hospital did not reveal the gender of the twins. The previous holder of the oldest mother record was 66-year-old Romanian citizen Adriana Iliescu who gave birth to baby Eliza Maria in Jan. 2005. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Look hanging him was not the point, if it had been a legitimate iraqi gov that was elected by its own ppl rather than selceted by US then the hanging would have been justified, however this was not the case. Now Sadam the last True Arab leader is gone , the arabs must get ready to be manipulated and controlled by any 1 in the universe. Iraq Shame on you.

It controls 80% of the country, from Puntlan to Kimsayu Hold on "GD" i do not want see either S-Land or P-land to ever join the rest of former Somali Republic period.

By the way from today on i am a American, African-American Cajiib! good luck and hope you stay that. Anyway back to the topic about this Demonstration what are they Demonstrating for? Is it for the failure of two couldn't get together to solve their most inner issue "Tribe". Well Mn is known for my understanding they fight for every little issue. Can plz some of you who are in Mn take a cam and post it Youtube the fist fast that is going to happen . Some one said earlier why in earlier times no one demonstrated against the Rape,Killings,Looting ? Only this time. I agree one thing though Ethio has no business being in former somali republic soil. They should be thrown out along with the ICU .Plz take a cam and post the demonstration in Youtube or the Z.

TFG couldn't even defeat the warlords.. did you forget the reason they couldn't go to Muqdishu before the ICU? think again. *****! Walaahi waa cajiib Somalis are the only society in the world who have short memory. Why on earth you seperate b/w warlords of pre ICU and the ICU they are one and one only ,they only changed their Macawis and named themself The "ICU" where on earth you been all this time, where you in hole hypernating. Anyway i hate to see Ethio in my former Somali Republic and am against it but at the same time we had 16yrs of ppl being raped from left to right by members of the ICU and getting away with it. . Reality should be any one who harobored or helped the loss of our civility must to be put on death no matter who that might be. If you support ICU then it is your responsibility to make sure to bring forward your cousin or uncle to be put to death for their attrocity.

Are you guys the Elite Card Hold members of the ICU? Tell me one good thing they have done to the former country known somali? These Thugs still around and among us for any shape and creature.

I wonder if a Rapist and killer will be accepted their Xaj? that is who they are .

The fact of the matter is ,i was very close to congratulate untill someone mention his Ear piercing. Isn't against the Muslim relegion a man to pierce their ears or i am wrong in here? By the way that is b/w him and his god but Congrat dude.

This sounds to me another way of coming out from the closet!

That will be one Graduation i will bring myself uninvited!

Now USA will really go to war . The war in Iraq really was about Sadam refusing to trade or exchange US Dollar instead choose to use Euro and look what is happening to Iraq, Now the same will happen to Iran.

We are winning, ladies and gentleman This We(is it ICU members or its tribical relation to you )or the killers who ruined our country for the past 16 1/2 yrs. It is obvious you are one sided fellow and don't give damn about their past history. Now you are willing to say and go any length to forward any positive postion you wish,but the fact is there will never be any winners as long as you have killers roaming around us. Don't jumpt to the conclusion yet unless you think firing a gun is a win.

All of sudden "Praying" is at play. What a creepers out here. These thugs so called "Maxkamiinta" or shall i say Facist islamist ,are they the only ones who know how to pray at public ,since when one has to PR who is really praying and how they pray? what comes next to show how they raped and should be raped? disgusting Aqas!

December 14, 2006 Posted to the web December 14, 2006 Aweys Osman Yusuf Mogadishu Witnesses said they (Islamists) start preaching to residents and telling them that they have banned everything they consider Narcotics and starting from Thursday. The banned items included smoking and tobacco.

Mystic i could care less who is who.Anyone who have terrorized any somalis ,raped or killed must be chopped his/her head. So let the heads roll.