Yahya Samatar of Somalia is claiming refugee status in Canada. City refugee advocates have been helping him since he got here by crossing the U.S. border. He walked into Emerson Wednesday.

Two Somalian refugee claimants crossed the border into Canada the hard way this week -- in the Red River.

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On Wednesday, Yahya Samatar, who was shivering and soaking wet, climbed out of the Red River in Emerson, and into the pickup truck of a Good Samaritan who cranked up the heat, gave him a sweater and called 911.

"I didn't know where to go," said Samatar, a 32-year-old English-speaking aid worker from Somalia. In an interview with the Free Press Thursday, he said he and a companion were dropped off just south of the Canadian border crossing after midnight Tuesday. "I saw the lights of the port" at Emerson, he said. They were both afraid U.S. border patrols would pick them up and send them back to Somalia, so they headed for the bush.

"I crossed the farms and saw the bushes. I went in the bushes and saw the river."

Disoriented and in the dark, they figured the river ran east to west rather than south to north and, if they waded across it, they'd be safe in Canada, he said.

His companion entered the river with a backpack containing Samatar's wallet and phone. He was quickly swept up by the current and carried downstream, he said.

"I wasn't seeing him," Samatar said. He thought his friend had drowned. "I didn't hear him calling my name."

By that time, Samatar had already taken three steps into the mighty Red. Realizing it wasn't a lazy river they could just wade across, he scrambled back up on the bank.

"I slept in the bush." In the morning, he took a chance. "I thought I could cross if I left my trousers and shoes behind."

He learned to swim as a kid growing up in Kismaayo, a port city south of Mogadishu on the Indian Ocean, but he was not prepared for the cold, fast-moving river.

After two or three terrifying minutes in the water, Samatar said he swam back to shore and pulled himself out of the river. Shivering and shoeless, wearing nothing but shorts and a T-shirt, he walked into Emerson. "I didn't know if I'm in Canadian territory," Samatar said.

"I met a guy parking a truck... He was shocked by me when he saw my condition... He was a very nice guy." He told Samatar he was in Canada, gave him a sweater, put him in the cab of his truck with the heater running full blast and called 911. Paramedics and RCMP arrived.

After determining he wasn't hypothermic, Samatar was arrested, handcuffed, draped in a blanket and taken to the Canada Border Services Agency office nearby.

"They gave me food and trousers and a sweatshirt -- they gave me what they had."

The refugee claimant was interviewed, photographed, fingerprinted and given an October date for an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing. Then he was released.

But with no money, no one to call to pick him up, and nowhere to go, Canada Border Services Agency officials called Welcome Place in Winnipeg to get help for Samatar. Their offices had already closed, so they called Hospitality House Refugee Ministry. It handles private sponsorships of refugees, not refugee claimants, but their settlement manager jumped in her car and drove south to Emerson to get Samatar and put him up at Hospitality House residence in Winnipeg.

On Friday, Samatar learned his friend made it out of the river, hitchhiked to Winnipeg and was on his way to Toronto to make a refugee claim there.

Hospitality House settlement manager Karin Gordin took him to Welcome Place to fill out paper work for his refugee claim and to check in with the Canada Border Services Agency at The Forks.

"They were impressed with his English," Gordon said. "They told him he might have a future as an interpreter working for them."

Samatar hopes he's at the end of what has been a year-long survival odyssey.

He fled Somalia in August of last year when he became a target because he does aid work with a non-governmental organization and had no one to protect him.

"There's no functioning government," Samatar said. "As long as your clan has not a lot of power, you're at risk." Militia groups and Al Shabaab are active and night-time attacks are common, he said.

Samatar said he and his family scraped together US$12,000 to pay smugglers to get him to Ethiopia, then Brazil, and help him make his way by land through Central America to the U.S. border at Matamoros, Mexico. "I took buses and walked in the jungle for one month," he said.

In the U.S., he was apprehended as an illegal alien and spent six months in a detention centre in Texas and another 10 weeks in a centre in Louisiana. After his refugee claim was formally rejected, he was released to await deportation back to Somalia. Desperate to set down roots in some place safe, he headed north. A contact in Minneapolis's huge Somali community rented a car and drove Samatar and his companion close to the border crossing at Pembina, N.D., he said.

In Canada, the kindness of strangers has been a shock to his system, he said. He feels welcome and hopes to make this his home.

"I want to upgrade my education and get a job to support my family," said Samatar, who is married to a journalist who also fled Somalia. She is in Kenya with their baby and their three older children are with Samatar's mother.

"Hopefully, my asylum is accepted, and I can sponsor them."

 REFUGEE CLAIMS MADE IN WINNIPEG

April 2014 to March 2015: 57

April 1, 2015 until now: 56

Welcome Place is the only agency helping refugee claimants in Manitoba complete their paperwork and file the documents necessary to make a claim to stay in Canada. A refugee claimant has 15 days from the time they arrive in Canada to complete and file complicated paperwork. They usually get a hearing within two to three months.

On one day this week, the agency received eight refugee claims -- most by Somalis.

"There's a spike in the number of people coming from Africa making refugee claims," said Ruth Magnuson, chairwoman of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council that runs Welcome Place.

"They're clearly an indication people are making desperate attempts at finding a place to live," Magnuson said Friday. "It's not often we get people coming by crossing a river."

Manitoba ports of entry don't see anywhere near the number of refugee claims that cities such as Vancouver and Toronto do with flights arriving from all over the world, she said.

But the Manitoba agency has handled as many refugee claims in the last three months as it handled in the entire previous year.

The federal government no longer funds the service but Canada Border Services Agency depends on them to provide it, Magnuson said.

"These are the world's most vulnerable people coming to our doorstep," she said. "They have a right to a fair hearing in Canada. In order to do that, you have to have the people who will provide them with assistance."

It's a complicated process and even more so for applicants who struggle with English, she said. Welcome Place is struggling to raise funds to keep providing the service, she said.

"We are underfunded and have been for the last couple of years," said Magnuson. "We feel that this is a vital service and the government depends on us to provide it. We're squeezed to make it happen," she said.

"Even if a person has to be deported, at least they've had a fair, welcoming process in Manitoba."

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When I think back to my year in Bucharest I realise that I was learning to be a refugee.

By Abdi Aden

Friday, May 15, 2015

I arrived in the city — the capital of Romania, in Eastern Europe — in 1991. I was 16. With my parents and sister gone, I’d raided the cache of money in our house in ­Mogadishu and bought a ticket to Cairo then Bucharest, where I moved from house to house. You are not a refugee ­simply because you have no home and no country. No, you become a refugee little by little.

It’s not that things become more hopeless with each passing day, it is that you adapt to the hardship and, in a way — this will sound mad — you become an expert in hardship. You learn to sniff out relief, a free meal, a place of shelter that is available only for a day, and from kilometres away you seem almost to pick up the scent of kind people, perhaps of your faith, perhaps not, who are prepared to provide you with a coat and a big furry hat.

You accept the status of a beggar. You search out other beggars from your homeland, and comfort each other, listen to stories of escape. “Did you ever meet Mahdi (or Farxaan, Fowli, Habane, Guhaad)? He made it to Vienna. It cost him 500 Romanian leu [$160]. He went in a truck with a compartment underneath.” And stories of people who went even further, to Anchorage, Alaska, after travelling across Russia to Vladivostok — amazing!

And of people who one day gave up and jumped off a bridge into the Danube. You become ready to do things so dangerous that you wonder if you have gone mad and don’t yet understand that you’re mad. Some Somalis hide underneath trains and hang on for 10 hours as the train speeds towards Germany, and if they happen to fall asleep or lose their strength they are found the next day on the railway lines, so much as is left of them.

I am sorry to say that you learn to tell lies, too, when it is unavoidable, just as I did in Somalia, where my education as a refugee began. Back there, people might ask me if I was from the Rahanweyn clan, intending to kill me if I said yes. So I would say that I was not Rahanweyn, except for one time, when my pride refused to let me lie and I was taken ­prisoner. Do you see the lesson? Your pride can kill you. In your education as a refugee, telling the truth on every occasion is not only unwise, it is suicide. But I ask you to believe that such lies do not make an untrustworthy person of me. The number one rule is this: Stay alive. Things might get better one day.

That day came when I persuaded a man who owed my father a favour to agree to let me fly as his son to Melbourne, promising him money I did not have. After takeoff I confessed and on our arrival he walked away. I rang a contact I had been given in the refugee community. Once again, I moved from house to house. I became a nomad of the city.

After almost three months in Melbourne, I had a lot of experience of the refugee scene. It was really three communities: those who ­desperately wanted to remain in Australia and spent every day worrying themselves half to death; those who expected to be thrown out of Australia and had given up worrying about it; and those who were very confident that they would be given permanent residency in time and didn’t worry at all. Each of these communities was made up of a number of nationalities: Somalis; Kurds from Turkey, Kurds from Iraq, Kurds from Iran, Kurds from nowhere; Iraqis; Iranians; Sudanese; Ethiopians; Eritreans; ­Burmese; Cambodians; Chinese; Vietnamese; Afghanis. And more.

The members of each nationality believed that they had suffered more than the members of every other nationality. The Iraqis would think: This woman from Sudan, some bad guys set fire to her village and shot a few people. So what? In my village they killed everyone except me. Each group of refugees kept count of the visas that had been given out to other groups. Often ­people got jealous if one group was getting more visas than another. They’d say: “The ­Australian government loves the Iranians. You’re from Iran, they give you a visa if you feel a little bit depressed. We Ethiopians, we just about have to hang ourselves before they pay any attention. The Iranians can go to hell.”

All this jealousy and anger — I didn’t want anything to do with it. Nothing. I hated the tribal and clan rivalries in Somalia, and I hated what went on here. I can truthfully say that I gave every Somali my support in his or her struggle for a new life. I was happy, very happy, when someone succeeded in getting a temporary protection visa or permanency. Many of the Somalis were big-hearted, generous people, and I tried to hang around them more than those who had hours and hours of complaints. I thought: I was spared death, I was saved, I should be dead. Have I come all this way to ­Melbourne, Australia, to argue and complain? Is that why I was spared?

If you were a refugee and you were waiting to learn from the Immigration people if you could stay, you had all sorts of ideas. You’d say to ­yourself: “OK, probably they will kick me out, too bad, I’ll just go back to Somalia.” Or you might say: “OK, if they don’t want me, who cares? I’ll go to New Zealand somehow. Maybe they want me there.” Or you might have this idea: “OK, I’ll hide in the desert and live with the Aboriginal people.” But there was really only one thing you wanted, and one thing you were hoping for,

and that was a letter from the ­Australian government that said: “Sure, you can stay. You can get a job. This country can be your country, so relax.” That was your prayer.

And you hid that hope deep, deep in your heart. Even when refugees were waiting for a visa and they saw things about Australia that drove them crazy, like the stupid game of cricket, or if the refugees came from a very traditional country, very strict, and were always making a tut-tut sound with their tongues when they saw girls and women wearing hardly any clothes out in the street, what those refugees wanted more than anything was that letter from the ­Australian government that said: “Sure, you can stay.”

Once you’ve been a refugee, once you’ve been homeless and hunted, far from the care of anyone who loves you, then you are a refugee for life. You might become a very comfortable refugee — you might have your own house in a lovely suburb, money in your pocket, your mother just down the road — but you will still be a refugee.

Mohammad, a Somali guy I know, said: “Australians are like children. They have never seen anything bad.” It’s not true that Australians are like children exactly, but Mohammad was right in a way. In this country, apart from the people who came here as refugees, the only ­people who have ever known what it is to be hunted, made homeless, murdered in a casual way, are the Australian black people, the ­Aborigines. And I can guarantee you they have never forgotten what it is to be a refugee.

It took me years to understand even a small part of what an Australian who is born here knows in his bones, deep in his heart. It would be the same if a native Australian came to ­Somalia. He might live in Somalia for decades and carefully study everything in Somali culture — he might learn 20 dialects of Somali — and still he would be a stranger. Even today, ­Australians will say to me: “You must have been so happy to get out of that hellhole and find safety in ­Australia.” “Sure!” I say. But let me tell you the truth. I still love Somalia. The bloodshed, the violence, the drug-maddened soldiers with their guns, the poverty — all of that is horrible, but I love Somalia all the same.

I got permanent residency and became a community worker, but these days most of my work is as an inspirational speaker. I talk to audiences of all sorts, including lots of school kids. They ask: “Abdi, does it make you cry to see refugees packed into detention centres?” And “Abdi, what do you feel when refugees are treated like criminals?” I try to explain that refugees have been with us for thousands of years. Even in primitive times, tribes were forced to make journeys when drought and natural disasters drove them from their traditional homes.

Since nation states came into being, wars have ­created great crowds of refugees. They pack their belongings and take to the road, ­hoping for a new life in a new land. Often they’re not welcome. Think of the Jewish ­people, and their long, long struggle for acceptance. The thing is, you can’t expect a person who is hunted in his own land, or starved, or unable to make a living, to simply say: “OK, time for me to die.” We have refugees because human beings want to remain alive. That’s not unreasonable.

War is an industry, and it’s easy to run. Young men will always be attracted to AK-47 rifles. Young men, some of them, many of them, will always feel empowered when they know that they have been given the right to murder. Of course they will. They grow up without jobs, without a future, then suddenly they have more power than they ever imagined. They have a gun. But the industry of war doesn’t produce anything except corpses. Families yearn to escape. They don’t want to live in a country where murder goes on all day every day. Or if not murder then it is poverty that drives people onto the road.

And they think of the countries where ­people live in freedom, where people earn a good wage; countries where children can go to school for 12 years, then maybe to university. They think of Big Europe, of America, of ­Canada, of Australia. The Dream Lands. For most of these people, their journey will end in a camp, in worse poverty than they fled. Some, including me, against all odds, will reach Big Europe, Australia, Canada, America.

I’m still talking. The audience is still listening. I say: “There are millions of refugees in the world today, and millions more people still living in their own ravaged lands who wish to take to the road, and will, one day. Australia cannot take in hundreds of thousands of refugees each year — millions over a decade. I understand that. But nor can we say to the refugees on the road, on the seas: ‘You have no right even to try to reach Australia.’ These people do have a right to try. They have a right to their dreams. And I think we can find more imaginative things to say to them than: ‘Don’t even try. We will punish you if you do. We will keep you in camps that will cripple your brain. We will make you sorry you ever dreamt of Australia.’”

I want to say to the government: “Stopping the boats is no great feat. Think harder. This problem will be with us for decades to come. It will get bigger and bigger. Please, some imagination.” And I would say: “Maybe it’s better to be more generous than you have to be rather than less generous than you could be.”

And I tell the audiences about when I appeared on series two of Go Back to Where You Came From. This TV show on SBS takes a small group of Australian citizens — some very critical of asylum seekers — and flies them to places in the world where refugees come from. They learn first-hand about the conditions that drive people to seek a new life in another country.

People who have seen me on the show ask me: “Abdi, when people tell you to go back home, what do you say?” And this is my answer. I say: “No, thanks. Madmen with AKs will kill me.” And then I say: “Don’t you want me here? Really? With these good looks?”

___________________________________________

Edited extract from Shining: The Story of a Lucky Man by Abdi Aden and Robert Hillman (HarperCollins ­Australia, $29.99), out May 25

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Fadumo Dayib is a Mason Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University and doctoral student at the University of Helsinki. Dayib has decided to run for President of Somalia in 2016. She will campaign on a platform of Pan-Somalism, education, gender equality, minority protection, and youth employment.

When Fadumo Dayib announced her bid to run for President of Somalia on national TV last year, people thought she was crazy. Somalia's violent history and the life-threatening conditions that the country's politicians and activists face on a daily basis makes Dayib's choice to run for office— especially as a woman in a patriarchal culture—a brave one. "People just can't understand why I would do such a thing," Dayib says.

Somalia's 2016 elections will be the first democratic elections held since 1967, when President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke rose to power. He was assassinated two years later and the Somali Army quickly took control, declaring a military coup d'état. A civil war followed in the early 1990s, as well as severe famine and political upheaval. A federal, democratic president was finally elected by the Parliament in 2012 to replace a series of transitional governments. And if all goes according to Vision 2016, Somalia's citizens will officially elect its first democratic President next year.

If anyone can become Somalia's first female president, it is this articulate, highly successful Finnish woman of Somali origin. Born to illiterate Somali parents in the mid-1970s, Dayib had a turbulent childhood full of financial difficulties. Her single mother, who often had to go to great lengths to make ends meet, mainly raised her. But despite the disadvantages she faced early on in life, her résumé boasts an impressive list of credentials: After receiving several degrees in international public health, Dayib is currently a MC/MPA Mason fellow at Harvard and a doctoral candidate with a focus on women, peace, and security at the University of Helsinki. She also has over a decade of experience working for the UN. An especially notable feat considering Dayib didn't become fully literate until about the age of 14.

"Throughout my childhood, I was constantly moving back and forth between Kenya and Somalia. At the age of 11, I really started to concentrate on my studies and I fully became literate at 14, having less than five years of primary schooling," she says.

At around 17 years old, she and her two younger siblings moved to Finland as refugees, and there Dayib was able to build take advantage of academic opportunities and build a successful career. Dayib's husband and four children are still based in Finland today.

Dayib was deemed resilient from the moment she entered the world. She is her mother's first surviving child after the loss of eleven children to treatable diseases. Perhaps that's why, despite not having an extensive political background, connections, or a privileged upbringing, Dayib truly believes she can lead her homeland to a better future.

"I've been waiting for 25 years, and nobody is taking that responsibility seriously, and I have decided to do it," Dayib says.

She's hoping her clean reputation, education, and international policy-making experience will bring the refreshing change that Somalia needs today. She also hopes that having a woman lead the country will bring about much needed social change to the everyday life of a Somali woman.

"We currently have a 30 percent quota requirement for women in Parliament but it's only at 14 percent today," Dayib explains. "And even that 14 percent are women who probably don't have a lot of say in real issues."

Dayib will focus her policies on security and economic development, particularly for women and girls, who are doing much worse than their male peers, she says. "We have an entire generation that doesn't know any other life other than violence. You have four years to effect change, you can't do everything. The priorities are too many."

But her roadblocks to winning the election are substantial—the biggest, of course, being that she's a woman. "They say that my place is in the private sphere, not in the public space," she says of her detractors. "They tell me it's un-Islamic, 'how dare you step out of your place.'"

Sexual violence for women and girls has been a major cause of concern in Somalia. The UN reported nearly 800 cases of sexual and gender-based violence in Mogadishu alone for the first six months of 2013. When asked what steps she would take to combat this problem, Dayib responded that there's a desperate need for good governance.

"Somali women and their children face a lot of challenges including sexual violence," she says. "I think if people were dealt with according to the law, that would make a huge difference."

So far, Dayib is the only female candidate for the 2016 presidential election. "I hope there will be others," she says.

But Dayib might have more to contend with than just detractors. There are rumors that the current administration might ask for a two-year extension—even though the UN recently dismissed the idea of it.

In spite of this uncertainty, Dayib is currently preparing as best she can, and is ready to fight hard for her chance to lead her country—no matter the odds. "You know you're going into a boxing match even though your hands are tied behind your back," she says. "The people have to have a say."

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Sources have confirmed to Radio Dalsan that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has officially requested Somali government to use its airspace and water to carry out operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Somali Foreign Minister Abdulsalam Omer is on his way to Riyadh from United Arab Emirates for possible more cooperation with regional power Saudi Arabia

Somalia and Yemen share border along the red sea which makes it strategic position for attack.

Rebel held port city of Aden which is also significant target for the Saudi led coalition is just three hours boat journey from Somali port city of Bosaso in North East.

Air traffic across the Middle East and horn of Africa has been affected by the operation.

Gulf States and other Muslim countries such as Sudan and Pakistan have joined Saudi Arabia to halt rebel advance in Yemen in an effort to protect the legitimate government of President Abdul Rabu Al Mansour Hadi.

Source : 

Radio Dalsan

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Capt. Mohamed Hussein said Monday that Mohamed Garfanji, considered to be the second-ranking leader of Somalia’s pirate industry, was arrested in Mogadishu Sunday for possessing illegal arms and other charges related to piracy.

Garfanji is the second top pirate leader arrested. Belgium arrested pirate kingpin Mohamed Abdi Hassan last year with a trick which lured him to Belgium to work on a documentary about piracy.

The arrest comes as the Somali government continues a disarmament campaign in Mogadishu that has seen hundreds of guns seized.

Piracy off the coast of Somalia once was a serious threat to the global shipping industry, but attacks have dropped dramatically the last several years after ships began carrying armed guards.

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Garowe, 17 August 2014 – The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia (SRSG), Nicholas Kay, pledged the UN’s continued support for Puntland today at a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia’s (UNSOM) in Garowe, the State Capital.

“Puntland has made important political, economic and security progress in the last year for which the Government and people deserve full credit. But much more remains to be done, including working together with the Federal Government and other emerging states on developing a federal system of governance, reviewing the provisional Constitution, and preparing for elections in 2016. Full cooperation between the State of Puntland, interim and emerging national administrations, and the Somali Federal Government is vital,” Mr Kay said.

“All of Somalia can learn and benefit from Puntland’s experience and achievements since 1998. I am convinced that the formation of other federal member states within Somalia is in the interest of Puntland and all Somalia. Puntland should not lose any territory that it currently administers,” he added. “Final boundaries will be determined according to the process prescribed in the Provisional Federal Constitution.”

“International support for peace- and state-building in Puntland will continue to be guided by the principles of Somali ownership, leadership and respect for the Provisional Federal Constitution,” SRSG Kay said.

Ends.

Note to editors

UNSOM was established by the UN Security Council on 3 June 2013. Based in Somalia, UNSOM is mandated to support the Federal Government of Somalia with its peace and state building agenda, including the federalism process, review of the provisional constitution and elections in 2016. It also works to strengthen Somalia’s security sector, promote respect for human rights and women’s empowerment and assist in the coordination of international assistance. UNSOM’s mandate was renewed for a further year on 29 May 2014 by Security Council resolution 2158 (2014).

For your reference, please find attached a joint letter from Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Nicholas Kay, Special Envoy for IGAD, Mohammed Affey, and Special Envoy for the European Union, Michele Cervone, to President Abdiweli Mohamed Al “Gaas” on the recent agreement of intent to form a new regional administration in central Somalia. 

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 President of Somalia’s Federal Government Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has sacked the Governor of Middle Shabelle region Abdi Jinow Alasow and appointed a new governor.

In a Presidential decree dated on Saturday, Ali Abdullahi Hussein was appointed as the new governor of Middle Shabelle region.

“After having seen that the term of the current Middle Shabelle Region Administration was transitional one and that the region needed a formal governor, the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia has appointed Mr Ali Abdullahi Hussein as the new governor of the Middle Shabelle region.” The press statement read.


The statement added that the former Governor Mr Alasow, who as served for the post during the past two years will hand over the regional administration office to the new governor.

The Presidential Decree mentioned that the other officials within the current administration of the Middle Shabelle region will remain in their offices excluding the governor who was replaced with a new governor.

According to locals, the new governor has acted as the former finance officer of the regional administration during Mohamed Dhere’s administration in 2006.

Both the sacked governor and the new one hail from the same clan which clearly shows the effectiveness of the government’s adherence to the clan-based formula within public offices.

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The Somali people are highly segmented people and deeply divided. That is the truth. Firstly, their culture, heritage (oral genealogy – the Abtiris), the oral traditions and the way Somali perceives politics is based on clans, genealogy affiliations and clan-families.

Practising politics in Somalia, representation and constituency always are based on the “clan” and the related territory.  This proves that a clan is a political unit. That is a fact not arguable; and we all Somalis know that. Furthermore, the social fabric is knit in such a way that clan plays a major role in their social life.

Again, that means a clan is also a social unit. Clan distribution also means a geographical territory  (region/regions) in which a clan believes to have lived in the past centuries as their “land” or homeland. Thus a clan is a geographical unit, too. 

If a designer is asked to create a Federal Member State for Somalia, the designer has to consider the basics of the society and consider a criteria. The criteria for the building-blocks must be mainly cultural and based on the Somali heritage. The first thing to pop out is the clan-family system (political, social and territorial) in order to come up with the most agreeable system: political, social and geographical all combined in one entity – the Federal Member State. 

To ignore the traits and the characteristics of the Somali society is like making concrete from sand, aggregates, water and cement without following the mix design. How to build a Federal Member State requires the proper knowledge of the Somali clan system, their geographic distribution for the state boundaries and the willingness of certain clans to come together and establish self-governments.

The outcome in such a design must be culture-friendly and contribute to help stabilise Somalia in centuries to come. A design with those ingredients and considerations will definitely bind Somalia together and glue it strongly. This is how we model out of the diverse and highly segmented nation, we can derive up a strong cohesive united Somalia. 

The above three principles are the founding parameters (the criteria) that makes the basics of the Somali Nation. This is why the designers or clan communities have chosen clan-federalism as the best option over the other possible and potential options to consider for Somalia.

Clan federalism is simply practical on the ground; understandable by the grassroots of the society and readily acceptable to the traditional and political leaders. That is why the Federal Member States constituting the Federal Republic of Somalia reflect mainly the clan-families, its traditions, the oral genealogy and subsequent heritage.

By Abdulkadir Abiikar Hussein; qaadir.abiikar@hotmail.co.uk;

Mogadishu, Somalia; 14th August, 2014

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Galka’yo (OneSomali)-Alshabaab militant group has claimed responsibility of the deadly Monday suicide bombing in central Somalia town of Galka’yo that reportedly killed several people and injuring dozen others including the deputy police Chief Gen. Muhyadin Ahmed Muse.

In a statement posted on its new twitter account, the Al-Shabaab group said they carried out a “Martyrdom Operation” in Galkayo, targeting Senior Puntland officials.

The group claimed it has killed at least six Puntland officers and injured nine others in the attack.

Gen. Muse survived with minor injuries but unconfirmed reports say at least ten people are feared dead and many more police officers as well as civilians were injured in the blast.

There has been a surge in suicide bombings and remotely detonated blasts in south-central Somalia since Alshabaab pulled out of its fixed positions in Mogadishu earlier last August.

The militant group maintains presence in parts of Puntland including Galgala Mountains and around Puntland’s commercial town of Bosasso in Bari region after being forced out of parts of South-central Somalia.

Source : Alshahid

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Somalia Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Tuesday hosted a group of Burundian legislators in his office in the capital Mogadishu.

The visiting Burundian legislators led by the Chairperson of the Burundian Parliament Defence Sub-committee, Emalein Hakizima, have been in Mogadishu since Sunday.

During their meeting with Prime Minister Shirdon, they discussed enhancing collaboration between the two governments.

They also discussed security cooperation between the two countries and the current Burundian efforts towards stabilizing Somalia by contributing to AU mission in the country.

Speaking to members of the press in Mogadishu, Prime Minister Shirdon termed the outcome of the meeting as positive.

The PM acknowledged Burundian efforts towards attaining stability in Somalia by sending g peacekeeping forces to the country and straining Somalia forces.

The ten-man delegation on Monday also separately met President Mohamoud and Speaker of the Federal Parliament Mohamed Osman Jawari at Villa Somalia, the country’s State House in Mogadishu.

Burundi is one of the African nations that deployed troops to Somalia to keep peace under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

Resource: Alshahid

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