U.S. Strikes Again at Militants in Somalia

American soldiers are back at it, trying to kill militants...this time in Puntland. The Bush Administration's secretive policy in Somalia is at best disjointed. What Somalia needs if for the world to help rebuild the infrastructre of their country. And why don't those American ships turn their attention to stopping the pirates out there from hijacking foreign aid ships?

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From the NY TIMES:

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 2 — American forces struck inside Somalia on Friday, bombarding a mountainous area where suspected militants were hiding out, Somali officials said Saturday. It was the third known American strike on Somali soil this year.

According to Somali security forces, an American warship fired cruise missiles into the area after two boatloads of heavily armed gunmen landed at Bargal, a small fishing village on the north Somali coast, and then escaped into the mountains.

Hassan Dahir, the vice president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia, said that eight Islamist militants were killed, including one who was an American citizen, according to documents found on his body.

Mr. Dahir also said that three American Special Operations soldiers were on the ground, helping Somali security forces.

“Three Americans came into the mountains with us,” Mr. Dahir said. “They are counterterrorism experts and they are investigating the computers that the militants were carrying.”

American officials declined to comment on this information. But the operation Mr. Dahir described was congruent with an attack in early January in which American forces bombed an area in southern Somalia and then sent in a small contingent of Special Forces soldiers to investigate the remains of suspected militants. A few weeks later, American forces struck again, trying to kill a militant Islamist leader.

On Saturday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said in an e-mail message, “This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them.”

The statement went on to say, “The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations, is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies.”

Mr. Dahir said the militants, thought to number around 15, were from Somalia’s recently ousted Islamist administration and that they had come by boat to northern Somalia in an attempt to cross the Gulf of Aden and escape the country.

Among the eight killed, he said, were men from Eritrea, Yemen, England and Sweden. He said that Somali officials contacted American officers in Djibouti, where there is a large American military base, after a gun battle on Friday evening in which the militants wounded four Somali security agents and then melted into the mountains. He said that an American destroyer moored off Bargal fired the cruise missiles into the area.

The strike fit a pattern of a broader American strategy to hunt down Islamist militants in the Horn of Africa, especially Al Qaeda operatives. American officials have accused Islamist clerics in Somalia of sheltering Al Qaeda agents, including the mastermind of the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

American forces played an influential but behind-the-scenes role in helping overthrow the Islamist movement that controlled Somalia for six months last year. In late December, Ethiopian troops, aided by American satellite imagery and battlefield intelligence, routed Islamist forces. That paved the way for Somalia’s internationally recognized but weak transitional government to take loose control of the capital, Mogadishu, for the first time.

Since then, American warships have been patrolling Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline. American officials say that several Qaeda suspects are still inside the country.

The attack on Friday punctured what had been a relatively peaceful period for Somalia. Over the past several weeks, life in Mogadishu, the scene of intense fighting in March and April, has been improving, with policemen patrolling neighborhoods and sanitation crews lifting enormous amounts of garbage from the streets. The transitional government said security was finally good enough to hold a major reconciliation conference in mid-June, though there were still some concerns about how to pay for the conference.

Mohammed Ibrahim contributed reporting from Mogadishu.

UN says Somalia rebuilding to cost $2 billion

In this article below, the UN tells the world that it would only take $2 billion to rebuild Somalia.

That's a bargain considering that America spend about $1 billion in Iraq every month! At that rate we could rebuild Somalia in two months!
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By Prensa Latina

A UN expert has worked out a $2 billion rebuilding plan for Somalia beset for more than 16 years with violence and chaos.

A report by UN Humanitarian Assistance in Somalia Coordinator Eric Laroche indicates that at least $1 billion will be needed for programmes to reduce poverty level in the country.

The final figure includes $666 million for social services and $462 million for security and governorship.

Laroche hoped international donors would provide the required funds to rescue Somalia from misgovernance since President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.

Experts from more than 60 NGOs and international aid groups are trying to evolve strategies to place Somalia on the way of recovery, reconstruction and development, he said.

Somali's in the U.S.

Here is an interesting editorial on Somali's in America.
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Somalis Call for Bilingual Programs to Help There Community Move Forward
May, 16,2007
For more than a decade the East African nation of Somalia has been plagued by clan fighting, the lack of an effective central government, and most recently by clashes between Islamic insurgents and the provisional central government. It is not surprising that there has been an outflow of refugees, and Somalis are now scattered around the world. In the USA a fast-growing Somali community is trying to integrate itself with the mainstream population, and has called for new bilingual educational programs that can meet the needs of Somali children enrolled in US Schools.

Minnesota currently has the largest Somali population, and that state has responded with a vigorous bilingual educational initiative. Through this initiative the Minnesota Humanities Commission publishes Somali folktales in Somali-English bilingual children's books. The Somali Bilingual Initiative also coordinates with existing bilingual Somali literacy resources, develops audio/visual resources that support the use of the Somali-English children's books in the home, and holds workshops on teaching Somali parents about the importance of books and reading.

Another fast-growing Somali community is located in Seattle, Washington in the Pacific Northwest. Here, Somali community members are calling for the expansion of special bilingual programs that will help their children.

Somali parents in Seattle want increase bilingual support instruction in the class and out of the class. In particular they also would like programs that would make teachers more aware of the cultural nuances that are particular to the Somali community. For example, Somalis are Muslim and many of them do not want their children to learn music and dance in school.

Similarly, some of the Somali families want public school teachers to be knowledgeable and respectful about the particular dress code that is adhered to by Somali immigrants in the US.

According to Somali community leaders it is not just a question of developing in-school programs for school children. They believe that the integration of Somalis into the larger society also depends on making the social bureaucracy of the USA more comprehensible to Somali immigrants.

Currently all of the resource information that immigrant families receive is written in English, and most families just can’t understand what the various documents are all about. Often they throw the important documents way. The Somalis would like to see Somali-language documents offered so that immigrant families would be in a position to take advantage of the information and services that they are entitled to receive.

They also believe that the goal of integration could be better achieved if there were more “community involvement program” such as summer-school and after-school programs.

Despite the obvious differences that exist between the Somalis and the existing US population, the Somalis have some cultural traits that make them well suited for success in America. For example, the Somalis come from a friendly society; they are by and large tolerant, and can easily get along with other cultures.

In addition they have a strong work ethic. They are happy to be in the USA and are working very hard at their jobs. And like other immigrant groups that have come before them, Somali parents want their children to be the best in their class, and are keen to support and follow the educational progress of their boys and girls.

This innate sociability, strong work ethic and interest in education combine to create a sure formula for success in America. Somali community leaders believe that bi-lingual educational programs, improved awareness on the part of educators, a more helpful bureaucracy, and more community programs will help their people to become valuable and respected members of the American society.

Indeed, they already proudly point to Somali children in the Seattle school system who have moved to the heads of their classes, as examples of what this community can offer.

Mohamoud Abdilahi Rooble
Saylacnews Editorial
Seattle Washington
http://www.saylac.com/news/Article4may16,07.htm

Thoughtful Editorial from Nuruddin Farah

Here is an interesting inside look at the situation in Somalia late-2006. Mr. Farah is Somalia's most recognized modern author. Here he gives a balanced view on the past and what must be done to secure peace in his homeland.
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My Life as a Diplomat
By Nuruddin Farah
May 26, 2007

WATCHING from afar, people find it difficult to understand the intractability of the conflict in Somalia. The cycle of violence, almost mysteriously, remains uninterrupted. Peace breaks out. Victory is declared, as it was a couple of weeks ago when President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed’s Transitional Federal Government declared its triumph over the rival Islamic Courts Union and the clan-based militia fighting alongside it. And then the violence quickly erupts again.
In Somalia, it has been clan versus clan, Muslim Somalis versus Christian Ethiopians, for as long as anyone can remember. A recent United Nations report asserted that a dozen or so countries — Egypt, Eritrea and Iran among them — are engaged in trying to destabilize Somalia.

Why can’t Somalia arrest its downward spiral?

Well, let me tell you about my brief time as an emissary between Somalia’s two main warring factions; perhaps it might help explain in concrete — and human — terms why the conflict has become so difficult to solve and why the transitional government, backed by the United States and with the support of Ethiopia, is probably doomed to fail.

My career as an emissary began last July. A man in the executive directorate of the Islamic Courts Union, then in control of Mogadishu, telephoned me in Cape Town, where I now live. (I was born and raised in Somalia.) The man, who shall remain nameless, asked if I would “carry fire between the two sides,” as the Somali idiom has it.

The timing was understandable. Talks between the Islamists and the government had broken down; the Islamists were laying siege to Baidoa, the seat of the government, and Ethiopia was sending troops to defend the garrisoned town.

The choice of a mediator, however, wasn’t so readily apparent. “Why me?” I asked.

“Because the I.C.U. admires your opposition to Ethiopia, Somalia’s archenemy, and because of your avowed interest in peace,” he replied.

And, truth be told, I admired some of what the Islamists had accomplished. Indeed, they had done the impossible: in a series of fierce battles from March to June last year, they had routed the warlords and pacified Mogadishu. For the first time in many years, the city enjoyed peace.

Like many Somalis, though, I also had my reservations about them. Even though almost all Somalis are Muslim, very few embrace the union’s fervent brand of faith: the group supports Shariah law and it treats the federal charter, which is secular, with disdain. Then there was the matter of clan rivalry, which hinted that devotion might be masking politics: the top Islamists belonged to the clans known to be antagonistic to the president’s clan.

Of course, my feelings about the transitional government were also ambivalent. The government came into being in 2004 after a two-year-long national reconciliation conference held in exile. I supported the president’s desire for an African peacekeeping force to stabilize Somalia; at the same time, I was fearful that he was susceptible to pressure from Ethiopia.

Still, the Islamic Courts Union, as my interlocutor told me, was holding out a proposal that just might lead to peace. According to him, the union was offering to let the government move to Mogadishu from Baidoa and to let the president bring with him a force of 1,000 from his home province, Puntland.

I felt this was promising. A peace deal would not just bring stability — it would reduce the opportunities for foreign intervention by Ethiopia, which had thwarted every national and international effort to bring Somalia’s strife to a peaceful end, and by the United States, which seemed inclined to support Christian-run Ethiopia as a bulwark against the Islamists. (It didn’t help, of course, that the union’s defense spokesman had used the red-flag word “jihad” in his firebrand declamations.)

And so I called the office of President Yusuf to request a meeting. When I received a favorable response, I called my Islamist interlocutor to let him know that I would accept the mission. Excited at the thought of doing more than writing about Somalia to keep it alive, I bought my ticket and left for Mogadishu.

When I arrived in Mogadishu in the last week of August, the city appeared calm. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a hint of unease. Residents felt that they were under surveillance. And they were. Drones hovered above the city all night. War, it seemed, was in the offing.

My first meeting in town was with Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, then the spiritual head of the Islamic Courts Union; he struck me as being more reasonable than many others in the group. In all, I spent three and a half hours in our first meeting, much of it alone with him. We were in an office with a huge escritoire, and we were cramped, sitting very close to each other, a low table on which he placed his notebook and I mine and also our teacups between us, the door left ajar. He leaned forward to enunciate his words with the slowness of someone used to speaking to blockheads. (Perhaps he thought me a halfwit, come from Cape Town, on a dubious peace mission; a fool proposing that he and President Yusuf, his adversary, make up for the sake of Somalia.)

When I told him what prompted my visit, he confessed he had no recollection of agreeing that President Yusuf relocate to Mogadishu with a force from Puntland. The group’s position, he reiterated with emphasis, was that Ethiopia must withdraw its forces from Somalia before anything else could happen. He continued: “We control much of the country and the people are behind us. What does he control, this president, confined to Baidoa?”

THIS was not an encouraging beginning.

My subsequent meetings with the Islamists and their sympathizers were equally frustrating. There was no discussion of the peace plan that had brought me back to Somalia. Instead, the discussions centered on matters they deemed important: whether theaters should be open; whether girls could be permitted to wear jeans or go about unveiled; whether tea houses should play music, or young men watch soccer on television. There was no serious talk of governance.

What struck me in these conversations was the presence of Arabic. These men, I surmised, had received their education in Sudan, Libya or Kuwait. For the first time since the Middle Ages, Arabic was the lingua franca in Mogadishu; Somali was practically a second language.

After my meeting with the Islamists, I headed for Baidoa to meet the president. When we met in his office, across the courtyard from his residence — he emerged dressed in gray, his bearing immaculate, hair groomed with care and face glowing, after a good night’s sleep. (How, I asked myself, was this possible in a town with no modern amenities?)

The president and I sat facing each other, and his intent stare reminded me that he and Sheik Aweys come from the same part of the country; I couldn’t help being mindful that the two of them had engaged in armed skirmishes in the early ’90s, soon after the structural collapse of the state. The sheik had led an Islamist takeover of Puntland; the president, opposing him, had won that round.

The president accepted my offer to open channels between the two sides. But it was another message from him that would ring in my ears: “I know what war is,” he said. “I have fought in three of them. I won’t attack Mogadishu, but if the I.C.U. invades Baidoa, someone will regret it. Tell the sheik this. From me.”

Back to Mogadishu. I met Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the executive director of the union; also present was the interlocutor who had called me in the first place. Regrettably, my interlocutor would allude neither to our initial conversation, nor to his suggestion that the transitional government move to Mogadishu, with guarantees. As we spoke, officials came and went, some bowing low, others kneeling in deference to the sheik. It was clear that I was in the presence of a power — a power who was unwilling to confirm that he had knowledge of my interlocutor’s offer.

I had to wonder. Was the Islamic union negotiating in bad faith? Had I embarked on a peace mission that was doomed to fail? Or did the powers that be in the Islamic union reject the idea of a rapprochement with the government and forget to tell me? I chose to play dumb, and so I provided the sheik’s secretary with contact information for the president’s men — as if everything else was on track.

The following day, I went to meet Sheik Aweys at his home. I got lost on the way. He lived in a part of town unfamiliar to me. With no paved roads, and with the rains having created ravines with crumbly sides, and with no street names, the entire area was virtually impassable. My driver and I got stuck in the sandy chasms.

After I arrived, the sheik and I talked amicably, with his 2-year-old son sitting on his lap. I dared not share with him the president’s threatening remarks.

Before we parted, he commended me for my “audacious” attempt to bring the Islamic union and the transitional government closer. He suggested not giving up hope, however, adding that there was bound to be further need for my involvement once “the Somali people” routed their enemies, “and you know who these are,” he grinned. I offered to return in a few months.

I didn’t make it back. Over Christmas, Ethiopia, perhaps intending to provide a gift for the festive season to its American ally, invaded Mogadishu and expelled the Islamists. With thousands of Ethiopian troops in the country — and only a few African Union troops from elsewhere — savage battles took place in Mogadishu between the transitional government army (backed by Ethiopia) and the Islamists, supported by clan-based militiamen. Hundreds of people were killed. Now that there has been a lull in the fighting, it is regrettable that President Yusuf has both claimed victory and sworn not to engage in dialogue with the Islamists. I wonder if his refusal to negotiate from a point of strength will come back to haunt him.

Somalis are not religious extremists. But Islam has a revered place in their hearts and minds. The religion has cultural importance — Arabs opened up Somalia for their faith and their commerce around the ninth century; Mogadishu was a cosmopolitan city, where anyone from the Islamic world felt welcome.

Islam also has political importance. With the collapse of the Ottomans, the last Islamic empire, the Europeans — meeting in Berlin in the late 1800s — worked out a system by which portions of Somalia went to Italy, Britain and France. Because Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, pleaded with his fellow Christians, claiming that his country was a Christian island in an Islamic ocean, Ethiopia was, in time, given a share in the land grab, the Somali-speaking Ogaden. This territory has remained the bane of Somalia’s blighted dealings with Ethiopia.

It could be that Sheik Aweys and his fellow Islamists are modeling their struggle on the first Somali to wage an anticolonial war in the name of Islam against Christian invaders. Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan fought for the reinstitution of Somalia’s religious and national dignity. A letter he wrote to the British government in the early years of the 20th century spells out his aims: “I want to protect my own religion. All you can get from me is war, nothing else. We ask for Allah’s blessings. Allah is with me as I write this. If you want war, I am ready; if you want peace, go away from my country.” So what can be done?

For starters, the international community must provide the wherewithal for the African Union to deploy 6,000 or so troops to keep the peace — soldiers who are not from Ethiopia.

But in the end, the only way out of the current impasse is to resume dialogue between the two principal parties to the conflict. I now know from personal experience how difficult this is. President Yusuf has said that the Islamists’ claim to represent a religious constituency does not sit well with his administration.

At the same time, the exiled Islamists are endorsing or openly engaging in violence. Assassinations of political figures, exploding roadside bombs in which peacekeepers or innocent bystanders lose their lives: these must stop.

Both sides must give. Most Somalis believe that the Islamists deserve a place at the table; they have been disempowered through invasion by an occupying force, which must withdraw, the sooner the better.

Genuine negotiations will not be easy. I found this out the hard way. But Somalis must consider the alternative: the violence will continue and the rest of the world will continue to use land as a playground for intervention.

Nuruddin Farah is the author, most recently, of “Knots,” a novel
http://www.saylac.com/news/articlemay2607.htm