Reporting on Somalia for twenty-five years, Harper has gained extraordinary access to members of Al Shabaab—and, disturbingly, they in turn have access to her. Visiting areas rarely accessed by foreign journalists, Harper paints a complex picture of life for ordinary people in the group’s grip—stories of tremendous loss, unbearable compromise, and unexpected profit.
Speakers
Mary Harper, the BBC Africa Editor, has reported on Africa and from its conflict zones for a quarter-century. The author of Getting Somalia Wrong?, she has served as an expert witness and advised the European Commission on the Horn of Africa, and contributes to The Times, The Guardian and The Economist.
Nuradin Aden Dirie is an independent consultant specialising in the politics of the Horn of Africa. His experience spans more than 25 years in the areas of regional politics, security, conflict resolution, humanitarian assistance, statebuilding and elections. For the past six years, Nuradin has been Special Adviser to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Somalia. In that role he was at the heart of attempts to support the establishment of a viable government as well as helping to set meaningful terms of delivery of international development support and to address the threat posed by al-Shabab.
]]>In this end of year debate, leading figures from the humanitarian world gather to discuss the main challenges to protecting and assisting people caught up in conflict and disaster. They will also explore prospects for principled humanitarian action in 2012.
]]>Third party event organised by Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute.
From the popular uprisings in the Middle East, to the intervention in Libya, and now the tragedy unfolding in the Horn of Africa, many of this year’s top stories have been dominated by humanitarian issues.
In this end of year debate, leading figures from the humanitarian world gather to discuss the main challenges to protecting and assisting people caught up in conflict and disaster. They will also explore prospects for principled humanitarian action in 2012.
Chaired by Jonathan Rugman, Channel 4 News foreign affairs correspondent.
With:
Sara Pantuliano, head of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute;
Dennis McNamara, senior humanitarian adviser at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue;
Leslie E Norton, the director general of the Canadian International Development Agency’s International Humanitarian Assistance Directorate;
Manuel Aranda da Silva, director of Policy, Planning and Strategy, World Food Programme.
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http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2011/07/06/horn_of_africa_famine_2011_humanitarian_system.aspx
It focuses on the hunger ravaging the Horn of Africa, with thousands of Somalis turning up at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya every day. His main argument is that famines only tend to occur as a result of political problems, and not just because of the failure of the rains.
It’s something journalist colleagues have been debating at length – why is it that aid agencies tend not to act until the last minute, and is it just a simple case of no rain? Certainly in Somalia people’s natural surviving techniques have been devastated by twenty years of war, and now even the UN is forced into delivering aid through camps run by Al-Shabab, the Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist group widely believed to be responsible for the Kampala World Cup bombings. Without their stranglehold, would pastoralists be able to move to search out better pasture? Perhaps even more interestingly, what has been the impact on local food production capacity of years of food aid being delivered to these areas? A local northern Kenyan politician has spoken out about the Kenyan government’s woeful failure to develop irrigation and sustainable agricultural systems in such a vulnerable region.
Nevertheless help does seem to be getting through to the region, but it’s sad to see most news reports featuring the kinds of images of Africa observers hoped had been left behind in the 1984 Ethiopian famine. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14078074
Surely there is a need for a new discourse on the politics of famine, and a better understanding of the traditional methods used by pastoralists to cope with unpredictable rainfall?
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The project is apparently funded by an unknown donor country and employs the services of Pierre Prosper, the ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues under the previous US administration and Michael Shanklin, who was the CIA’s deputy chief of station in the Somali capital 20 years ago.
The East African reported a link between Saracen and General Akandwanaho, nick named Salim Saleh, who is not only President Museveni’s brother but also a senior government advisor. This detail is of particular interest since Uganda heads AMISOM [African Union Mission in Somalia]. The African Union was also reportedly unaware of Saracen’s activities which could have serious security implications.
This is a promotional video available on YouTube showcasing some of Saracen’s products:
In a further development, a plane was seized at Hargeisa airport by the Somaliland authorities after apparently landing without authorisation. It was reportedly carrying military supplies en route to Puntland. Somaliland’s Interior Minister, Mohamed Gabose, told reporters the cargo plane was in violation of the international arms embargo on Somalia which was imposed in 1992 by the UNSC [United Nations Security Council].
Initially all eight crew members, six Russians and two South Africans were being investigated. The South African nationals were reportedly going to be charged with falsely posing as journalists. In a surprising twist, authorities in Somaliland have released the South African nationals. Deputy Attorney General of Somaliland Adan Hero-dhiiq held a press conference in Hargeisa in which he said there was no evidence against the two South Africans. He added the two were journalists working for an American television station. However, the Deputy Attorney General said the six Russian nationals will face prosecution.
Somalia though associated with conflict and humanitarian catastrophes over the last two decades has in fact vast resources of yet unexploited natural energy reserves including uranium. This makes the strategic Horn of Africa of economic as well as geopolitical value to competing interests, nations and corporations. Meanwhile plight of the 1.5 million internally displaced Somali refugees continues in the backdrop to the lucrative and secretive worlds of private security and conflicts.
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Word on the street, filtering out from the electoral commission, has it that the election will take place in June. The next word on the street has it that this may be a bit optimistic, though this now seems to be the timeframe emphasized by the electoral commission and its external supporting agencies. Interpeace, the leading facilitating international organisation has returned to Somaliland after their ignominious expulsion last year and is insisting that progress is being made to bring a democratic voice to bear on the prolonged tenure of President Rayaale and his UDUB party.
With a holiday being called in the national universities for voter registration purposes and plane loads of new registration cards arriving in Hargeisa the clock is most certainly ticking.
Political tensions which have bubbled beneath the surface in Somaliland are already showing some signs of eruption and two incidents have highlighted the potential for violence which exists when the three political parties flex their mobilizing muscles. Most recently violence has flared in Ceerigaabo in the east of Somaliland when groups of supporters from the president’s UDUB party and the opposition KULMIYE party clashed and pelted each other with rocks. One man was killed by gunfire coming apparently from the local police force (Saxafi News, May 8).
Around a month ago in Hargeisa a rather bizarre incident occurred between the government and the KULMIYE opposition when the minister for sports declared a football tournament organized by the party to be illegal and ordered its immediate halting. Players and supporters, ignoring the order, descended on the stadium and clashed with the police force. After the ubiquitous stone-throwing, one man was shot and wounded by the police. The local media reported the incident and a newspaper printed a copy of a letter apparently written by the Somaliland Football Federation authorizing the KULMIYE competition (Haatuf, April 13). This strange incident illustrates the undercurrents of tension which remain in a divided political system. Violence of this kind strikes a nerve in Hargeisa where the memories of the repressive force of the previous southern-based regime of Siyaad Barre are still important in the political discourse. Members of the other opposition party, the UCID, evoked this very history in condemning the steps taken by the sports minister and the wider Rayaale government (Saxansaxo, April 14).
It can be very easy to despair at the ‘democratic’ process in Somaliland especially when one considers the clan dynamics which define the party political landscape. Manifestos printed in the Hargeisa newspapers (which themselves generally refrain from even mentioning clan, thus giving a somewhat misleading impression of politics here) show little ideological or practical difference between the three sanctioned parties. Perhaps that isn’t a million miles away from the recently run-through British major party political spectrum although a fundamental difference exists in the logistics of organizing ‘free and fair’ registration for elections in a place like Somaliland where an accurate census has never been carried out. Democracy here is an unenviable task to be sure. The process is slow, painful and expensive – especially taking into account the biometric voter recognition and registration kit being currently rolled out in the hope of preventing voter fraud amongst a highly mobile population through porous regional and international borders. Money well spent? On one hand one can consider the unambiguous good of an at least partially transparent and participatory electoral system for the national psyche (as well as helping tick the boxes for democratic good governance of international donor priority lists). On the other hand it sometimes seems somewhat absurd to talk about effective and fair participatory democracy when considering the basic infrastructural deficiencies which still plague even the capital city: when it rains here it is often impossible to get from one side of the city to the other due to flooding, stranded vehicles and a lack of functioning or complete road bridges. Maybe a new government is what is required to push such infrastructural projects like Hargeisa’s second bridge out of the stagnation which has cost a great deal of money for so few visible results. Or perhaps the substitution of one group of elites for another will make little difference in these ongoing processes of shady political dealings, contracts for cronies and uneven development.
There’s another peculiarity here which overshadows the whole electoral process. This is the international community’s involvement (through organizations like Interpeace) in a national election for a nation that they do not recognize as being independent or sovereign. Whether this matters at a practical level – given Somaliland’s development since 1991 without external recognition – is unclear, though it certainly does throw into light the territory’s anomalous context and the contractions which exist between the funding priorities and diplomatic geopolitics played out by the international community in the Horn of Africa.
Regardless, the timeframe is set and the clock is ticking. The danger remains however that given the level of external assistance anything that goes wrong with the registration or electoral management process (and what could possibily go wrong with biometric voter registration technology for a largely nomadic population in a harsh and dusty climate?) could well be used by the Rayaale government as a pretext for once again delaying the ballot and throwing Somaliland back into democratic limbo. That is, if that isn’t where it is already. ]]>
In the last week an internationally-sponsored agreement pertaining to Somaliland’s electoral process has been signed by the President and major opposition parties. Is delayed democracy in the de facto independent northern Somali State at last getting back on track?
The six-point agreement signed on Wednesday by President Daahir Rayaale Kaahin of the UDUB party, Ahmed Mahamed Mahmuud Siilanyo’s KULMIYE Party and Faysaal Cali Waraabe’s UCID, was facilitated largely by the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry which retains an interest in ensuring a peaceful political transition in Somaliland. The agreement reaffirms a commitment to the electoral process and the selection of a new Electoral Commission assisted by a team of ‘international experts’. The drawing up of the voter list by this new body will prove to be the most challenging aspect of the electoral process – a fact made clear by the Interpeace debacle earlier this year. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has released a glowing evaluation of the agreement though details on the ground as to a prospective timescale for the Committee selection, voter list creation and the election itself remain somewhat vague. A frequent charge leveled against the Somali political elite from civil society (Hargeisa is home to a large and vocal network of local non-governmental organisations) is that noble rhetoric is often a substitute for the logistical action necessary for facilitating the representative process and it remains unclear whether the intended ‘depoliticizing’ of the election date will ever be possible.
The week’s developments have also involved the British. Representative to Ethiopia, John Marshall, expressed his happiness at the signing of this ‘important’ agreement paving the way for Somaliland’s future elections. As the British government does not recognise Somaliland’s independence, diplomatic involvement is usually administered through Addis Ababa. It is a fascinating oddity of the international relations of the region that the British government can express support for the election of a Somaliland executive whilst maintaining an official recognition of united Somali sovereignty based in distant and chaotic Mogadishu. This strange state of affairs is certainly not lost on ordinary Somalilanders who often invoke Britain’s historical link with her ex-colonial territory as a plea for diplomatic assistance. Indeed, Somaliland’s very claim to legitimate independence is based on this colonial relationship: British Somaliland at independence in 1960 joined in union with Italian Somalia in the south to form what is now still portrayed on maps as the Somali nation state. A history of neglect and state violence directed against the North from the South resulted in Northern separatist intent when the centralised state crumbled in the early 1990s. This is a historical narrative which remains alive in Somaliland’s political culture through older generations who experienced the bombardment of Hargeisa by Siad Barre’s southern forces, and a younger generation which has no recollection of a united Somali state. Another international dynamic to this story continues in the United States where legal battles are ongoing to bring members of the former Somali state military to trial for war crimes perpetrated in the North.
Despite earlier dire predictions of political disintegration following President Rayaale’s successive contested extensions of office and subsequent civil unrest, a view from the streets of Hargeisa today confirms that Somaliland is somehow managing to continue along its relatively tranquil course of political development. As usual, this stands in stark contrast to the seemingly endemic violence of Somali politics in the South. Further fracturing of the self-proclaimed Islamist opposition Sheik Sharif Ahmed’s internationally recognized government continues to complicate factional politics and claim more lives.
Despite its relative stability the conundrum of Somaliland’s state of democratic and diplomatic limbo remains unresolved. Whilst it is unclear how the oddities of the unrecognised Republic’s international status will affect an (apparently) upcoming election, it is certain that these processes continue to shape Somaliland’s dynamic self-image and expectations for future political development.
For pictures of Hargeisa see my photojournal
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