Somalia Update
More deaths in Mogadishu. AU peacekeepers retaliated with heavy artilary to an Al-Shabab suicide bombing in Mogadishu yesterday, the result: more than 20 civilians dead and 30 more injured. The minaret...
View ArticleJust in: Sheikh Sharif Ahmed running for president
Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the former leader of the Union of Islamic Courts, announced he was running for president, in the peace talks currently held in Djibouti. There are many other contenders, and his...
View ArticleRefugees returning to Mogadishu
Calm has returned to Mogadishu and so have tens of thousands of refugees. They'd fled the two-year long brutal Ethiopian occupation (that's according to Amnesty) and had been living in dire...
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Oh, Ogadeniya
During the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the late 1880’s, various European empires claimed different African territories and as a result lands with Somali speakers/Somali people were taken by...
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Mogadishu Eid
Pictures of the Eid in Mogadishu, things have changed in Ol' Mogo (from BBC Somali)
View ArticleReading
Lost Ethiopians in Kyrgyzstan: about 80 Ethiopians who had been stuck in Kyrgyzstan since the fall of the USSR. The Economist on the South Sudan: an excellent article about the fears for and of the...
View ArticleSame old: US admin's 'new' strategy on Somalia
Last week at the UN Johnnie Carson presented United States new approach towards Somalia. He said"the new, "aggressive" engagement could help to head off the Islamist insurgents". The supposedly new...
View ArticleSudan: the drums of war
The campaign for maximum gain from the referendum in South Sudan has began and a lot is being said. President Omar Al-bashir warned two days ago of the prospect of south-north war following the...
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Serious doubts over Time magazine's claim to have interviewed Al-Shabab leader
Speculation is rife about a helicopter attack that targeted Al Shabab in Marka, a city near Mogadishu. There are several versions of what happened, but there are few things we know: 1) there was such...
View ArticleTime's fabricated interview, reposted on GlobalPost blog
Time magazine's fabricated interview with Al Shabab leader Mukhtar Godane reposted here. This is my earlier post explaining why I think this is a made up interview. The journalist didn't just fabricate...
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A voyage home
As the Somali Independence Day yesterday marked 52 years of independence, I started thinking about what that meant and how it feels to celebrate victory and hope so far from home at a time when it...
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A voyage home - part 2
They say that your first memory is usually not with your mother and that childhood amnesia makes it hard for most adults to recollect even the happiest moments under the age of 4. The few lucky ones...
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Will the real Somali please stand up?
Before my grandmother came to live with us when I was 7 years old, I had forgotten a lot of my spoken Somali. We were still refugees in Sweden and I had just started school, eager to keep up with the...
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Ramadan Re-awakening
Now more than ever, as we drift even further into a gadget obsessed world of self-indulgence and so called “first world problems”, Ramadan becomes even more important in more ways than one. Let’s face...
View ArticleMogadishu chronicles
My longing to see the city I was born in which I harboured for many years, finally came into realisation on the 20th of July 2012. I went for an assignment to moderate the Somali draft constitution...
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A displaced Somali woman hopelessly sits in front of her makeshift hut hours...
A displaced Somali woman hopelessly sits in front of her makeshift hours after men in government uniform raped her in Mogadishu on October 25, 2012 photo by / Feisal OmarAdd caption
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Uganda's threat shows the fragility of peace in Southern Somalia
Ugandan soldiers in Mogadishu from AU/UN flickr There has been relative peace in Mogadishu and other areas left by Alshabab but this was not peace that was create by the Somali people but one that was...
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Somalia's women
Women meeting the Technical Selection Committee to ensure women are representedMuch of the political rhetoric surrounding Somalia in the last few months has seen a reoccurrence of one debate; women's...
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Traditional Dance in Mogadishu, Dec 4 2012
Somali women performing traditional dance in Mogadishu Tuesday, Dec 4 2012. It was the first in three years that this traditional festival, from middle Shabelle, was held in Boondheere district of...
View ArticleA New Dawn
The beginning of a new year is always promising and full of hope. We spent much of December and beginning of January planning the dreams and aspirations we hope to achieve in the new year. I for one...
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