The HAN Monitoring the Somali's Intellectual Engagements for Somalia Crisis

Djibouti (HAN) September 6, 2004   Contact Editorial Group at:  hornafricanewsline@geeskaafrika.com

HAN  Editorial Comment -  "TMohamed Elmi’s efforts as a broadcaster in Somalia garnered him the 2002 Press Freedom award from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression"

FLASH! The HAN Press
Covers the Horn of Africa without Borders for Regional Peace"

5)No Solution is a Wrong Solution to Somalia’s Political Turmoil 

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Building peace at home
— away from home By Candice O’Grady

The compound is protected 24 hours a day by armed guards. Vans take workers from behind the tall gate, where their day ends, and out into the streets where their day begins.
Having been twice riddled with bullets and once taken over by a warlord, each man and woman in the compound knows the dangers that come with this profession.
Who are they? They are the journalists of HornAfrik, the first independent radio and television station in the conflict-ridden capital of Somalia — Mogadishu.
Facing threats from warlords vying for control of the city, these journalists provide the people of Mogadishu with impartial news and a safe forum to criticize the powerful.
The danger for journalists is tangible. The recent history of HornAfrik is marked by tragedy. One of their drivers was shot and killed one morning in the street.
Mohamed Elmi lives partially in the world of the journalist in Mogadishu. The other half of his life could not be more different.
The small Bank Street restaurant, run by Elmi and his wife, is busy all afternoon. The mosaic of patrons, stepping in out of the March wind, includes diplomats, regulars, friends, and any number of neighbourhood children underfoot.
Two men from the Indonesian embassy come in to appease their wives’ insatiable appetites for sweet bread and the restaurant’s namesake dish, sambuzas.
While good things are certainly cooking in the kitchen of Sambuza Village, a collection of newspaper articles dotting its walls reveal Elmi serves more than food.
Elmi and his two partners, Ali Sharmarke and Ahmed Aden, run HornAfrik. The three Ottawa men returned to their native country of Somalia in 1999 to take back the airwaves in Mogadishu.
At that time all of the stations were operated by warlords who used it to spread hate and propaganda, according to Elmi. Since the overthrow of military dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has been plagued by violence and disorder. The country is still without a central government today.
For five years now Elmi, Sharmarke and Aden have lived double lives, spending parts of the year with their families in Ottawa,and dedicating the rest to healing warn-torn Somalia with freedom of speech.
“For the social well being of the country (the people) need to be able to negotiate,” Elmi says. “HornAfrik gives people access to information but it is also a peace building tool.”
The political climate in Somalia was not always so bleak. Born in a family of 12 children in the town of Dusa-Mareb, Elmi says growing up under the country’s early governments, and even the subsequent military dictatorships, was relatively peaceful. He felt that he could have anything, he says.
It was during his tender high school years that Elmi, 46, met his wife, with whom he now has six children of his own. When she stops in at the restaurant for a few minutes, he introduces her as his “better half.” The affection between them is still strong.
Educated in Somalia and then in England, Elmi was in Germany working on his master’s degree in engineering when Somalia descended into war. Afraid for the lives of his wife and children, who still lived in the country, Elmi and his family fled to Canada in 1991.
He began volunteering with the city’s social services, which eventually landed him a full-time job. Elmi worked as a social worker in Ottawa until 2000, when he left in order to concentrate on HornAfrik.
“We are the generation to fix the problem, to heal Somalia, and media is one way of doing that because we can change minds and perceptions,” says Elmi about why he left the government.
After drawing up a business plan and returning to Mogadishu, Elmi and his partners began broadcasting HornAfrik radio in December 1999.
The good thing about having a government with no teeth, Elmi says jokingly, is that there are no regulations for the airwaves.
“You can just stand there,” he says, standing up from the table in his restaurant, “and start using it!”
The station was popular from the start. Elmi says that HornAfrik is widely listened to. A few reporters have become so popular in the community that they have been dubbed, the “Larry Kings” of Mogadishu.
In March 2000 Elmi and his partners began broadcasting TV shows with digital equipment from behind the walls of their Mogadishu compound.
Their goals seem simple in words — to be a successful business and help rebuild Somalia. “(We want) to be a financially —viable business throughout the country and in the whole Horn of Africa,” says Elmi.
“We also want to contribute to the reconstruction . . . we charted into new territory with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and we are happy and proud to be part of that process.”
Ahmed Nur, a fellow Somali-Canadian, is a French teacher in Ottawa. He frequents Sambuza Village regularly and is eating with his two young daughters at a table by the windows. Nur says HornAfrik plays a crucial role in the Somali reconstruction.
“(HornAfrik) competed with the radio started by tribes, and the people needed something to help them know what’s going on in their city and in the world,” he says.
“If (free) speech is already on the inside and then the government is elected democratically, then they have each other. Both of them help and support each other.”
One of the greatest difficulties HornAfrik faced, according to Elmi, was initially attracting local journalists to work at the station. There are many former journalists in the region, he says, but recruiting them was difficult. Although some were afraid of retribution for their work, many of them were concerned about physically getting to work, especially if this meant crossing tribal lines.
“Part of our agenda and our philosophy is to break those tribal lines, those geographic lines . . . We broke those lines, we’re challenging the system,” he says, leaning forward on the table.
“We went to these journalists and we said, ‘You are professionals, help us to do this. If you don’t do it, who will do it?’ And they took the challenge.”
With journalists on board, HornAfrik began gaining worldwide attention.
“HornAfrik’s program has filled a void in information, education and entertainment for the Somali people,” according to a report by the United Nations Development Programme.
Faisa Duale, also a Somali-Canadian and an Ottawa business owner, stops in at the restaurant to chat with Elmi and the cook. She agrees the distribution of information is essential for Mogadishu residents.
“We’re really glad to have (HornAfrik), they did a good thing,” she says. “Back home they need to know what’s going on there . . . It’s important to know and to communicate with the rest of the world. People listen to it a lot.”
HornAfrik should be a voice for the people of Mogadishu, as well as providing them with information, according to Elmi.
“We don’t say anything, we just set up the stage,” he says. “We open the lines to the public and they are nagging and criticizing and wanting change . . . This is about the audience, the listeners, we are the invisible people,” he says.
Bringing Mogadishu and Ottawa closer together, the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression gave Elmi the 2002 Press Freedom award for his work with HornAfrik.
Joel Ruimy, the executive director says, “This year’s winners have overcome hardships in their careers and personal lives that most of us cannot imagine.”
Straddling two distinct lives on two different continents is another obstacle that many of us may find unimaginable.
“You get used to it. There’s always the hang over after flying 15 hours though,” he smiles widely and laughs.
This afternoon though, the fight for free speech is on the backburner. Although he speaks five languages,French is not his strongest and it takes Elmi a few tries to take down a phone order for 35 golden sambuzas 

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6)Arms Embargo in Somalia: Snapshot of Events During Surreal Years

Over the past 35 years, Somalia has been a magnet for free flow of arms from different directions. After Siad Barre came to power in 1969, Somalia sprung to receive substantial military aid from the Soviet Union. This cosy relationship turned sour in 1977 when the Russians chose to drop their Somali allies for a close link with the new government in Ethiopia. As it was the peak of the cold war, President Barre was left with no choice but to look to the West for military equipment and U.S. was a willing supplier and started bestowing arms.

This country received millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance. Stephen Zunes, a Middle East analyst for Foreign Policy, writes “From the late 1970s until just before Siad Barre's overthrow in early 1991… United States poured in more than $50 million of arms annually to prop up the Barre regime.” After Somali-Ethiopia war, it was not only the military junta that brought in arms to the country but several insurgent movements also procured military assistance from Ethiopia and Libya.

Full scale armed conflicts engulfed the country after Barre was overthrown in January 1991, and the following 24 months alone 300,000 lives were lost but the race to import arms was not even put on pause. On January 23rd 1992, the UN could not remain providing lukewarm aid and adopted a resolution that imposed a general and complete embargo on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Somalia. It was expected that the resolution would frustrate or plug up the arms supply to the region. Perplexingly, 14 years after the resolution was passed, Somalia is not short of heavy weapons and small arms that are the instruments of death and destruction, and there is no single shooter made inside Somalia.

Here is a snapshot of heart-rending events that took place during these surreal years. To avoid margins of errors and borders of incomprehension, it is appropriate to quote from UN reports about the arms embargo in Somalia in order to see the course of history in testing time.

The Secretary-General issued a report on 22 July 1992 on the progress of the implementation of the resolution. The report once again indicated that the situation regarding the flow of arms and ammunition from outside and the continuing use of military weapons on a large scale inside Somalia had not changed since the last report. (S/24343)

One may argue that this report was only six months after the resolution was passed and world body, the UN, needs for a while to implement its resolution, unless there is big power involvement. But what about 2 years after when the UN had its largest army, 37,000-strong US-led international force, present inside Somalia?

On 4 November 1994, the Security Council, deeply concerned about the continued flow of arms to Somalia, adopted resolution 954 (1994), in which it reiterated the need for the observance and strict monitoring of the arms embargo against Somalia, and requested the Committee, in particular, to seek the cooperation of neighbouring States for the effective implementation of the embargo. (S/1996/17)

In 1999, the poignant reality inside Somalia was disturbing and the UN was dithering. For example, it is difficult to get the exact number of people killed in 1999 but here are some of the tragic events that took place in that year. The first two months of the year, a fight for the control of Kismayo left many people dead. In March, Mogadishu, a war-torn city, 40 people were killed after a warlord tried to pocket monies at a roadblock in north Mogadishu. In April, it was Mohamed Qanyareh Vs Islamic courts and that clash claimed 30 civilians and almost 50 people were injured. In April, Baidoa was fought over by Hussein Aideed and RRA, which put many people on death row. If these were not bad enough, there was an armed group based in Somalia supported by Eritrea attacking Ethiopia and in return Ethiopian raided into Somalia. What did the UN do?

A letter dated 28 December 1999 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee, Jassim Mohammed Buallay, reads “the Council expressed deep concern at recent reports of the illicit delivery of weapons and military equipment to Somalia, in violation of the arms embargo imposed by the Council in its resolution 733 (1992), which could exacerbate the crisis in Somalia and endanger the peace and security of the region as a whole.” (S/1999/1283)

In 2000, Abdulqassim Salad Hassan became the first civilian president since the civil war broke out after a Transitional National Government was inaugurated in neighbouring Djibouti. The TNG became incapable of establishing nationwide rule and between 2000 and 2001, over 600 people were killed including humanitarian workers and the UN once more could condemn only.

Another letter dated 21 December 2001 from the Chairman of the Security Council Committee says “The President on behalf of the Council strongly condemned the illegal supply of weapons to recipients in Somalia and reiterated its call upon all States, the United Nations and other international organizations and entities to report to the Committee information on possible violations of the arms embargo.” (S/2001/1259)

The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 have let some countries to consider Somalia as a failed country, which terrorist networks use as a safe haven. There was widespread believe that Somalia was the next target for the United State after Afghanistan. But the US chose to increase its surveillance operation towards Somalia since there is no viable government that maintains the rule of the law and has power over its borders. Many countries have participated this close watch including Germany, France and Britain. Despite all the hardware and manpower that NATO could master, the flow of arms towards Somalia was unhindered.

On 12 March 2003, the President of the Security Council issued a statement on behalf of the Council, noting with serious concern the continued flow of weapons and ammunition supplies to Somalia, and calling on all States and other actors to comply scrupulously with the arms embargo. (S/PRST/2003/2)

Over a decade, the UN feigned to be mystified and fell short to pinpoint who was violating the arms embargo and 11 November 2003, the UN named a group of experts to investigate the violations of the arms embargo covering access to Somalia by land, air and sea and to assess how neighbour countries are adhering the embargo resolution. After 6 months, the group is not in a position to divulge the mystery of arms embargo and need another 6 months to do that. Has this been prevaricating statement of the group or has the UN system rendered ineffective? However, it seems that the UN bent over backwards and chose to pass yet another resolution but this time with strong words.

Resolution 1558 (August 2004) condemns the continued flow of weapons and ammunition supplies to and through Somalia, in contravention of the arms embargo, and expressing its determination that violators should be held accountable. (SC8169)

While the UN is busy passing resolutions and reluctant to name violators or take action against them, people are dying in large numbers and so far more than 500,000 people have died since the civil war broke out. If there is no fist behind the resolution, it is perceived that the United Nations Security Council and its enforcement mechanisms are in disarray if not in act of utter hypocrisy. The situation in Darfur, Sudan, though critical and needs an urgent attention, is yet far less acute than what has happened or happening in Somalia. This country needs resolutions that hold accountable countries, organizations and individuals that export weapons to that country and bring to justice all those who committed crimes against humanity in the past 35 years. To stop the suffering of the masses the UN must act and act quickly on these two fronts.

Mohamed Mukhtar Ibrahim, London, Mohamed323@hotmail.com