The galloping Ms Edna and her disparaging of Somalia.

[miles-militis]

Quote “We are paying a heavy price for being peaceful. … there are no bodies of dead marines being dragged through the streets of Somaliland like there were in Mogadishu. There are no international troops to keep peace … there are no foreigners kidnapped or no hijacks” Edna Ismail, the newly appointed foreign affairs minister.

 

Ms Edna plans to galvanise the globe in her endeavours to market Somaliland as a viable republic in order to secure recognition by disparaging and walking all over the no longer bed-ridden, recuperating body and soul of south Somalia.

 

Instead of putting forth her government’s plan to sustain the delicate stability, develop functioning institutions, maintain economic growth, explore resources, provisions and public service delivery, and guiding framework and policies reflective of the entity’s true attributes and intrinsic elements, she pokes fun of her convalescing sibling. Yet has the audacity to claim knowing the traumatised better than anyone else.

 

Hers and her government’s is all about look at us. We are not kidnapping anyone. Does this warrant recognition? Does the international community wish to promote yet another hungry mouth to feed? Does Ms Edna realise that?

 

http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34962&SelectRegion=Horn_of_Africa

 

So long!

[India]

Samuri,

 

Are you high on somthing??

 

Read the article and try again. Taking things out of context will not change the state of play and the reality on the ground.

 

I have a question to put to you: of all the comments made by the Foriegn minister--I want to know why you had to qoute just part???

 

Why try and take things out of context and try to raise tention between the two camps here??

[A.J. Timacaddeh]

samurai

 

i think you're being a bit hypocrtitical about this. edna aden is a great somali hero. she has all her lifesavings to build a much needed maternity facilty in hargeysa. now she is trying to show the world what a viable state somaliland is, you seem to think that she is only doing that to show what a garbage dump somalia has become.

 

come on man she doesnt need to do that, every one already knows what a chaotic place somalia is.

 

anywayz she hasnt lied about anything. it's true that no marines were dragged through the streets of hargeisa or isnt it?

 

isnt it also true that there are no international troops in somaliland to keep peace?

 

so i think you should calm down have a cup of tea and try and think of way you could make a contribution to a peacefull and beautiful somalia.

[AYOUB]

Child killings, faltering 'peace talks' and flight bans in Somalia - Where does Samurai get the nerve and time to chose a story about Somaliland? :confused: .

 

Thanks you very much, i enjoyed reading that .

[India]

Ayub,

 

Walalo--I have given up. I mean, if a so called foreign initiated conference delivers 31+presidential candidates and some 400 MP's and warlords were rampant ---I know where my worries would lie and I tell you what it wouldn't be belitting a floorishing brethern nation!!!

 

But then that has always be the way of Somalia. :confused: As the say "ol habbits die hard"

 

Dusty.

[Blessed]

Hers and her government’s is all about look at us. We are not kidnapping anyone. Does this warrant recognition?

Yes,it does. Because,right here and right now as thingsstand in the country formaly known as Somalia- Somaliland has no other option but to seek recognition ...and good luck to them

 

 

Edna Ismail Aden is awsome - she has commited her entire life and a great deal of her wealth in developing Somaliland and making life better for the people there. She is one of the few ppl that doesn't seemtobein this political game for her self. The woman is a leggend, only a fool would fail to recognise that.

 

Am not really a great fan of the UDUB admin.. but I thinkwith ppl like Edna they deserve a lil cred... just a bit !

[Che -Guevara]

Samarui.....As official member of Sland adminstration, i think one would expect Ms edna to be in line with policies of her goverment. I don't understand wat are yu mad about?.... Besides, i think da folks from north have a point.

It is about time we swollow our pride and take care of the jerks messing our country n if the north don't wanna join somalia....So be it....We should welcome any somali lands or people who wanna join somalia and forget about those who chooses otherwise.

[Blessed]

Originally posted by Che-Guevara:

Samarui.....As official member of Sland adminstration, i think one would expect Ms edna to be in line with policies of her goverment. I don't understand wat are yu mad about?.... Besides, i think da folks from north have a point.

It is about time we swollow our pride and take care of the jerks messing our country n if the north don't wanna join somalia....So be it....We should welcome any somali lands or people who wanna join somalia and forget about those who chooses otherwise.

The voice of reason ^^^^^^^^ :cool:

 

Every region has a right to self determination.

[Libaax-Sankataabte]

Che and Ameenah, excellent points. Self-determination. Peace. Walaalnimo.

 

But on a more serious note, where are the Somaliland borders? Should the regions that don't wish to be part of Somaliland be allowed to stay part of Somalia?

[king_450]

I don't know where to start and how to reply this issue, but let me try it.

From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, Somali society underwent a profound crisis--of identity, purpose, and direction- -that threatened its very existence. As a result of its humiliating 1977-78 defeat in the Ogaden War with Ethiopia, the revolutionary regime began to founder Defeat , Confronted by armed opposition at home and diplomatic isolation abroad, the regime turned inward. Former Dictator, an expert in the art of dividing and ruling since his early days as an intelligence officer under the Italian fascists, skillfully harnessed the limited resources of the state. His aim was to pit clan against clan and to inflame clan passions in order to divert public attention from his increasingly vulnerable regime. Are you following me so far.

 

A civil war began in the early 1980s i beleive with an armed uprising against the regime by ********** clans (******* ) in southern Somalia under the banner of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF). Armed resistance spread to the ***** clans in the north. The regime's efforts to suppress ***** resistance resulted in May 1988 in the virtual destruction of the urban centers of the north, most notably Hargeysa, until then the second largest city in the country, and Burao, a provincial capital. This action was followed in mid-1989 by a massive uprising by the ****** clans in Mogadishu and adjacent regions under the leadership of the clanbased United Somali Congress (USC). In the escalating waves of government repression and resulting popular resistance that followed, Somali society exploded into violence and anarchy, and Siad Barre and his remaining supporters were forced to flee in early 1991.

 

Instead of peace, Somalia experienced a power struggle among various clan- and region-based organizations: the Somali National Movement (SNM, ***** -affiliated); the SSDF (********** ); the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM, Ogaden); Somali Democratic Alliance (SDA, *********); and the Somali Democratic Movement (SDM, *********). Lineages and sublineages, fighting over the spoils of state, turned on one another in an orgy of internecine killings The state collapsed and Somali society splintered into its component clans.

The collapse resulted from certain features of Somali lineage segmentation. Somali clan organization is an unstable, fragile system, characterized at all levels by shifting allegiances. This segmentation goes down to the household level with the children of a man's two wives sometimes turning on one another on the basis of maternal lines. Power is exercised through temporary coalitions and ephemeral alliances between lineages. A given alliance fragments into competitive units as soon as the situation that necessitated it ceases to exist. In urban settings, for example, where relatively large economic and political stakes are contested, the whole population may be polarized into two opposing camps of clan alliances. To varying degrees, the poles of power in the politics of independent Somalia generally have tended to form around the ******* clanfamily and a confederacy of the ****** and the ***** clanfamilies .

 

Two features of lineage segmentation require further comment. First, the system lacks a concept of individual culpability. When a man commits a homicide, for example, the guilt does not remain with him solely as an individual murderer as in most Western societies; the crime is attributed to all of the murderer's kin, who become guilty in the eyes of the aggrieved party by reason of their blood connection with the perpetrator. Members of the aggrieved group then seek revenge, not just on the perpetrator, but on any member of his lineage they might chance upon. In the Somali lineage system, one literally may get away with murder because the actual killer may escape while an innocent kinsman of his may be killed. Second, the system is vulnerable to external manipulation by, for example, a head of state such as Siad Barre, who used the resources of the state to reward and punish entire clans collectively. This was the fate of the ***** and ********** clans, which suffered grievous persecutions under Siad Barre's regime. It has been reported that the meaning of segmentation is

captured in an Arab beduin saying: My full brother and I against my half-brother, my brother and I against my father, my father's household against my uncle's household, our two households (my uncle's and mine) against the rest of the immediate kin, the immediate kin against nonimmediate members of my clan, my clan against other clans, and, finally, my nation and I against the world. In a system of lineage segmentation, one does not have a permanent enemy or a permanent friend--only a permanent context. Depending on the context, a man, a group of men, or even a state may be one's friends or foes. This fact partially explains why opposition Somalis did not hesitate to cross over to Ethiopia, the supposed quintessential foe of Somalis. Ethiopia was being treated by the Somali opposition as another clan for purposes of temporary alliance in the interminable shifting coalitions of Somali pastoral clan politics.

For that purpose only i hate to see any somalis no matter if you call yourself somaliland or non-somalilander,lineage segemntaion of the Somalis.

Although exacerbated by Siad Barre's exploitation of interclan rivalries, institutional instability is actually woven into the fabric of Somali society. The collapse of the Siad Barre regime in early 1991 led to interclan civil war that was continuing in 1992.And now we have a somalilander Who crosses over the true enemy of Somalia over all ,shame on us and whoever support on her mission. Be an Independent part of Somalia but don't tell me going over to the enemey terretory and blash out the rest of Somalia just to gain recognition, and that is my take for this issue, if i was a part of the somaliland ppl i will ask her resgination, or maybe she likes to sleep over with the Enemy.

 

[ June 26, 2003, 12:59 AM: Message edited by: Admin ]

[LANDER]

Libaax,

sahiib what is your personal opinion on the political divide in SS&H? where do you think the people stand concerning Somaliland in each respective region? the only region that I might be certain has a majority opposing Somaliland might be Sool, and that I am not even 100% sure. The others seem to be split closely, that is my account on matters so far. As for your question of whether these regions should remain in Somaliland, I personally think they should. There have been such examples in history where some regions had been against secession or a political movement and yet overtime became part of that nation. (i.e. emancipation of the US and some majority loyalist states, the victory of the Vietcong in Vietnam and the submergence of a communist regime through out the whole country including the south).

[Jamster]

This is an utter shame

[miles-militis]

The intent here was not to look at the persona or the achievements of the lady whom I highly respect, but her outdated approach and her government's ideological reasoning which is in line with the reasoning of the mid-1990s with respect to gaining recognition. The days when the political elites in the present day Somaliland used to employ rhetorical and theoretical spinning in the company of potential donors and NGOs in the wake of the political calamity in the south are over. Misconstruing and failure to comprehend the political development in over two-thirds of the southern regions of Somalia, of which her advisers and spin doctors should have been aware, is what is inherently lacking in Ms Edna’s interview. The same political and ideological reasoning which applied at the height of the civil war in the mid-90s surely are not going to be applicable in 2003 with the embryonic inceptions of Puntland and Southwest states along with the emergence of Hiiraan and Shabeele regional administrations all of which are in the geographical sphere of the former republic. Fresh thinking interpretive of the realities of the present day Somaliland (Awdal, Hargeysa & Togdheer), and that of the present day southern regions ought to be considered. Indeed the honourable lady is employing similar methodologies of her predecessors in her approach including Dr Dihod (designate envoy) all of whom seem to have been roaming on Noah’s arch whilst trotting in the 21st century.

 

This is a view which neither denies the existence of the present day Somaliland nor attacks the persona of Ms Edna rather highlights the hit-and-run approach, the imbalance and the improbable nature of the target mission. Hypocritical, I disagree. Below the belt, far from it.

 

Ameenah, dear that is the here and now. Not in 1996, but 2003.

 

Ayoub-Sheikh – old chap, you are not suggesting we should not speaks of, nor care about the missteps of the officials in the administration, are you?

 

Angel-Dust – the simple answer my dear is no, I am not on any kind of substance, toxic or otherwise. And I re-read the interview at your advice reaching similar conclusions at all times. In fact I found a couple of other things I could share, but then again I do not wish to be ostracised. Those lines were symptomatic of the lady’s lack of grasp of the changing political situation in the Horn.

 

So long.

[Blessed]

Originally posted by Libaax-Sankataabte:

But on a more serious note, where are the Somaliland borders? Should the regions that don't wish to be part of Somaliland be allowed to stay part of Somalia?

lol your asking me :confused: I can only place Burco on the damned map lol

 

But on the real, there seems to be differences of opnion among the inhabitants of those regions; some want to be a part of SL, others want out. So what do you do? Divide up cities?

 

I think, the government should find some sort of a political solution with the people of those regions, get another poll, find out why ppl want out, definately adress the qabiil issues, give them incentives perhaps.. and if they want out then that should be granted ... but that creates problems with borders ... what happens if half of LA's ppl want Somaliland and the half doesn't - what if it is a 60 - 40 divide?

 

 

 

I dunno, but I really hope they find some sort of a solution soon, in sha allah!

 

 

Ameenah, dear that is the here and now. Not in 1996, but 2003.

So is now Somalia ready for unity? Have the policies been decided, are we done with the war lords? is Somalia now in a position to make promises of peace and stability to all the respective regions.....? or are we just campaigning for the idea because it sounds good?

 

See at least, the Landers are following through their ideologies. They want recognition and they are working for it. So, wether their wordings appeal to you or not walaalo the action and will is there. You got to respect that.

[Gediid]

Originally posted by Ameenah:

quote:Originally posted by Libaax-Sankataabte:

 

Ameenah, dear that is the here and now. Not in 1996, but 2003.

So is now Somalia ready for unity? Have the policies been decided, are we done with the war lords? is Somalia now in a position to make promises of peace and stability to all the respective regions.....? or are we just campaigning for the idea because it sounds good?

 

See at least, the Landers are following through their ideologies. They want recognition and they are working for it. So, wether their wordings appeal to you or not walaalo the action and will is there. You got to respect that.

very well said Ameeneh

Thank you