Erik Prince, the founder of the infamous Blackwater (now Xe) mercenary firm, who according to a former employee “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.”, is now reportedly involved in a program financed by some Arab nations to train Somali recruits to “fight piracy” in Somalia.
Tagged: somalia RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
abunoor
-
thabet
Somalia, the worst place to go to school:
It came bottom of a table of the world’s 60 poorest countries, just behind Eritrea, Haiti, Comoros, Ethiopia, Chad and Burkina Faso.
-
Dan
Any Islamists on here that want to argue how good al-Shabaab are for the betterment of a Muslim nation? After all, these guys don’t have any problem turning Somalia even worse than it already is, yet naive Western Muslims think they are brave. Laughable.
-
-
thabet
According to this translation by the Islam in Europe Blog, several people have told a newspaper in Denmark that a Danish-Somali man was one of the suicide bombers who recently attacked Mogidishu airport.
-
thabet
Suicide bomber attacks Somali hotel, killing 32:
Witnesses described a horrific scene of dead bodies throughout the Muna Hotel and guests scrambling to safety by escaping out of windows.
The multi-pronged assault came less than 24 hours after the country’s most dangerous militant group — al-Shabab, a group allied with al-Qaida — threatened a “massive” war against what it labeled as invaders, a reference to the 6,000 African Union troops in Mogadishu.
-
thabet
Islamist rebels ‘vow jihad on Somalia’s Puntland’:
Sheikh Mohamed Saiid Atom, who says his fighters are allied to the al Qaeda-inspired al Shabaab insurgents behind this month’s coordinated bomb attack on Uganda’s capital Kampala, urged local residents and businessmen to take up arms.
“We shall never stop fighting Puntland. We are part and parcel of al Shabaab, we are brothers united by Islamic sharia (law),” Sheikh Atom told reporters in the town of Galkayo.
-
thabet
The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques show its utmost compassion and mercy to their less fortunate ‘brothers’:
Neighboring countries should offer legal residence to Somali workers and asylum-seekers until it is safe to return to Mogadishu, where civilians are often targeted in the fighting between Somali forces and Islamist al Shabaab rebels, it said.
“Given the deadly violence in Mogadishu, UNHCR is urging the Saudi authorities to refrain from future deportations on humanitarian grounds,” Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.
-
thabet
Somali militant group claims responsibility for Uganda blasts:
The twin bombings in Kampala, within minutes of one another, were the first known attacks the group known as Al Shabab, or “The Youth,” has mounted outside Somali borders.
The attacks that tore through a rugby club and an Ethiopian restaurant as fans watched Spain play the Netherlands were designed to punish Uganda for its part in a United Nations-backed peacekeeping force in Somalia to protect the country’s weak transitional government, a spokesman for the group said.
-
Lawrence of Arabia
-
Lawrence of Arabia
-
Lawrence of Arabia
-
Lawrence of Arabia
And a smooth transition of power also seems to be underway. Not surprisingly, the new president plans to focus on gaining international recognition.
-
thabet
-
thabet
Rageh Ommar (Somali origin) writes about the ‘success of Somaliland’s’ election.
-
Lawrence of Arabia
-
-
Wang Daiyu
Meanwhile the soccer worldcup is banned in Somalia. And that is not all:
Al Shabab, Somalia’s most powerful Islamist insurgent group, outlawed school bells in a southern town in April after deciding that they were reminiscent of church bells. Similarly, Hizbul Islam recently warned radio stations to stop playing music or face “serious consequences,” forcing them to introduce their daily programs with an odd assortment of sounds: the roar of an engine, a car horn, animal noises and the sound of water flowing.
-
Lawrence of Arabia
-
Dan
Doubt any conservative Muslims will speak out against them. After all, they fit their image of what a “just” Islamic government should be.
-
-
thabet
Sometimes, these stories seem like they’re too ‘good’ to be true (i.e. propaganda):
Gangs of Islamists are reported to be patrolling the areas they control looking for people watching games.
Dedicated fans are watching matches in secret, or in the few areas controlled by government forces.
On Saturday militants killed two people as they attacked a house where people were watching a game.
Militant group Hizbul-Islam also arrested 10 others at the house north-east of the capital Mogadishu where fans were watching the game between Argentina and Nigeria.
Then again, let’s not pretend these kind of people do not exist.
-
abunoor
U.S. money may be going to pay children to fight against AlShabab in Somalia.
According to Somali human rights groups and United Nations officials, the Somali government, which relies on assistance from the West to survive, is fielding hundreds of children or more on the front lines, some as young as 9.
Child soldiers are deployed across the globe, but according to the United Nations, the Somali government is among the “most persistent violators” of sending children into war, finding itself on a list with notorious rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Somali government officials concede that they have not done the proper vetting. Officials also revealed that the United States government was helping pay their soldiers, an arrangement American officials confirmed, raising the possibility that the wages for some of these child combatants may have come from American taxpayers.
United Nations officials say they have offered the Somali government specific plans to demobilize the children. But Somalia’s leaders, struggling for years to withstand the insurgents’ advances, have been paralyzed by bitter infighting and are so far unresponsive.
-
mirelle
Don’t know if this was mentioned last week, but two wannabee jihadis, Mohamed Alessa and Carlos Almonte, were picked up on Saturday, June 5 at JFK as they were preparing to fly to Egypt. The plan was to eventually hook up with al-Shabaab in Somalia. (There’s also a charge of wanting to go fight against Americans in Iraq back in 2007.) The mother of Alessa all but hints that she thinks her son, who had “anger management issues” and had seen “16 or 17 (!) psychologists” was set up by the FBI.
As for the other putative jihadi, Almonte, he was an internet meme before his arrest by the FBI. (Death to all Juice–Failblog.) Almonte also got into it with his mom because he wanted to take a friend’s cat, Tuna Princess (!), with him on jihad. (Per snark at Gawker, complete with picture of Almonte snuggling with Tuna Princess.)
The mind boggles–I’ve taken cats and their humans to the airport and even the quietest kitties find their “vet voice” (as in “screechingly loud”) after they’ve been stuffed in a carrier and made to suffer the indignities of a ride to the airport. I also drove cats across country and was grateful to have a personal “cat wrangler” with me to keep one of them from freaking out totally from the experience. Why on EARTH anyone would take a cat with them to fight just shows me that these guys were NOT on the same planet as the rest of us.
-
abunoor
This biggest lesson I drew from this instance was further proof that if you and a group of your friends are having repeated conversations about going overseas for jihad, the chance that one of your “friends” is actually working for the FBI is incredibly high.
-
mirelle
Yup. Nothing to add to that.
-
abunoor
Oh, and I’d like to add an addendum. If one of the guys starts saying, we should stop talking and DO SOMETHING! or starts showing up with cash or other enticements, you can be almost positive that he is the one working for the FBI.
-
-
-
-
johnpi
There aren’t enough good targets in Somalia…
A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.
-
Pretty Pink Unicorns
God forgive them for choosing the wrong targets. A real mujahid in Somalia would declare jihad on the lack of infrastructure, government, healthcare, community violence and the sufferings of the poor and weak. Instead they want to play real-life MODERN WARFARE.
-
thabet
A fan of the game too, PPU?
-
Pretty Pink Unicorns
I cannot lie. I like my FPS games. MODERN WARFARE servers can be clotted with n00b WEC jackoffs, but man… those are some good games.
Plus when you play online, half the time you are listening to Arabic. I can say “Look out, grenade!”, “Heads down, a sniper!” and “O shit a tank!” in Modern Standard Arabic thanks to that and other FPS games. (It should properly have been in Hijazi, but thank God it wasn’t. I prefer my colloquial Arabic to be Jordanian or Druze, as I like my qafs/gafs.)
-
-
-
-
abunoor
The choices one has in Somalia:
“In our country there are three paths: you can join al-Shabaab, you can join [the government forces] or you can go abroad,” said Ismael Mohamed. “Me, I don’t have money to go away so I join al-Shabaab.”
Ismael, 21, is a typical Islamist footsoldier. He is neither a jihadi nor an extremist; he loves God and Manchester United. He is a young Muslim with an education — his English is excellent — but no opportunities in a country that has been at war for as long as he has been alive.
Civil war led to the collapse of Somalia’s last Government in 1991. The rebels then turned on one another in a fight for power. Many Somali youngsters know nothing of life without war.
Al-Shabaab’s leaders are militant nationalists and Islamic extremists but the rank-and-file fighters are hired guns, conscripts or volunteers. Ismael joined up during last year’s failed rains when food was scarce and al-Shabaab was in the ascendancy — weeks earlier it had launched a fresh offensive against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). “I didn’t have anywhere to stay or anything to do.” My friends, some of them were al-Shabaab and they would tell me that TFG is not Muslim, but al-Shabaab is Muslim,” he explained.
-
abunoor
Interestingly Ismael is said to have renounced AlShabaab after his life was saved by African Peacekeeping forces after he was badly wounded. Yet, he still speaks proudly of having been “real mujahidin.”
-
-
johnpi
A federally funded education program for Somali refugees in New Hampshire has been put on hold after accusations by another group of Somali refugees that it was teaching ‘Muslim doctrine.’
The accusations arise out of a longstanding rift in the Somali community between Somali Bantus, a minority in their homeland, and the majority.
“There’s been a lot of rumors about bad blood between the different factions, said Dan Calegari of Southern New Hampshire Services. “I work with these people daily. There’s never even been any hint of religious activity. … It really comes down to animosity between different segments of the Somali population.”
….Somali Bantus, the descendants of African slaves, are a marginalized minority in Somalia that suffered greatly during the country’s civil war. Many were evicted from their farmland by other Somalis and fled to neighboring countries. Thousands of these refugees eventually made their way to the United States.
There is a language difference between Somalis and Bantu Somalis, said Idhow, which is how the rift all started. Because some Bantu refugees were more fluent in their own tribal language than Somali, the local elders thought it best to have a group that specifically served the Somali Bantu community.
Hilariously, the folks at this website looked at this story and decided it was the sign of a left-wing conspiracy.
Last night we heard from reader Thomas in response to the Manchester Somali story I posted yesterday. He confirms for us that the Cloward-Piven strategy* to overload the welfare system with poor and angry people was well-established in radical leftwing circles 40 years ago! Thank goodness we are all catching on, I just hope it’s not too late for us.
Apparently, Cloward-Piven is to nativists what Area 51 is to the UFO people. Sadly, I’ll have to report this to my overseers back in Moscow. A black helicopter will be sent to mutilate their cattle…
-
johnpi
The New York Times magazine is publishing a big profile of Omar Hammami aka Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, the Somali al Shabaab militant commander, an American who grew up in Daphne, Alabama.
It’s a magazine article so there is lots of this:
Daphne sits along Alabama’s serene Mobile Bay, just north of the Gulf of Mexico. The town seems stopped in time. Colonial-style cottages and gazebos dot the bluffs. The wide, blacktopped streets are shaded by pecan trees and Southern maples. At dusk, the tide slaps the docks as fishermen loll, casting silhouettes against a golden sky.
But Hammami strikes his most dramatic pose silhouetted against the rubble of Somalia:
When Hammami engages in combat, he makes an impression on other militants, said a former Shabab commander, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamed. “He doesn’t blink in the face of the enemy,” said Mohamed, who recalled four battles in 2008 and 2009 in which he and Hammami took part. In combat, Hammami used a sharpshooter’s rifle, firing calmly and with precision, said Mohamed…
The author suggests with this quote from a poem that Hammami wrote when he was 12 that he is a glory-seeker:
“My reality is a bore. I wish, I want, I need the wall to fall and the monster to let me pass, the leash to snap, the chains to break.
….“I’ve got a taste of glory, the ticket, but where is my train?”
-
johnpi
Just to put a finer point on this: How much do you want to bet most of the people he is shooting are 1) Muslim, and 2) Somali locals who perceive themselves to be fighting for their own communities and their own country?
The juxtaposition with other Americans who have travelled to other countries where they kill the people who live there in military action should be unsettling to even the most hardcore ideologue…
-
skevin
There is a multimedia attachment to the Times piece. I was struck by similarities with the Benicio del Torro film, “Che’”. There was something of Guevarra in Bolivia about Al-Amriki in Somalia.
-
Dan
Except Ché was fighting injustice in Latin America, while this spoiled retard is trying to fight for an entity that is known for its oppression and barbarity when it suits them.
-
-
-
johnpi
An AP article looks at the issue of extremism and al Shabaab support among Swedish Somali refugees.
“It’s a small group but they have power,” said Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip-hop artist and “110-percent Muslim” who has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter al-Shabab’s influence. “People don’t speak up against them. They don’t dare.”
….Hussein, the hip-hop artist, said youth who were approached by al-Shabab told him they were shown videos of al-Qaida suicide bombings and urged to become jihadists in their ancestral homeland.
As his worries worsened, he started going public to Swedish media on the issue last year. Since then, resistance to the extremists has grown and last month dozens showed up for a rally against al-Shabab in Rinkeby.
The singer’s campaign has also prompted Swedish politicians to talk about the spread of extremism in immigrant suburbs, something that in the past might have drawn charges of being hostile to Muslims.
“He is a real hero,” said Nalin Pekgul, a leading politician for the opposition Social Democrats said of Hussein. Pekgul, a Kurdish immigrant, is an outspoken critic of the radicals.
But Hussein has paid a price. In September he was attacked on the street by a masked man who slashed his forehead with a sharp object – he has an inch-long scar – and warned him in Somali to “leave us alone or we’ll kill you.” Police haven’t found a suspect.
-
johnpi
Al Shabaab launches offensive in Somali northern region of Puntland.
Having consolidated its power in the Deep South along the Kenyan border, Shabaab has launched a terror offensive in the northern self-declared state of Puntland. It is a Mexican drug gang-style campaign, with an aggressive string of targeted assassinations and low profile bombings in a Somali region that had been relatively safe and prosperous.
….In its quest to overrun Puntland, Shabaab will have to confront two strong groups. The first is Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, a pro-government Somali Islamist militia that follows the religious tradition of Sufism. Shabaab has targeted Sufis for practicing a different strain of Islam, and has destroyed Sufi shrines, cemeteries, and other symbols. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is strong in the central regions of the country and has fought back against Shabaab’s incursion on its turf.
The second group standing in Shabaab’s way is the Puntland security forces.
-
johnpi
In the wake of threats by al Shabaab to send fighters to Yemen to assist Al Qaeda there, the Yemeni government is cracking down on Somali refugees and keeping them locked in camps.
This follows reports earlier this week in Kenya that authorities there swept through Somali neighborhoods and rounded people up by the hundreds after protests on behalf of Abdullah al Faisal.
Apparently, Somali refugees are being unfairly tainted with the reputation of al Shabaab and viewed more widely in Africa with suspicion and mistrust. Consequently, they are being targeted for greater persecution.
-
johnpi
A Somali militant group, Hizbul Islam, has denounced the mass arrest of hundreds of Somali immigrants in Kenya after protests over the treatment of Abdullah al Faisal. The group issued no threat of retaliation.
Hizbul Islam was aligned with al Shabaab until October when the two groups turned on each other.
-
johnpi
Kenyan police detained 300 Somali immigrants and a leading Muslim activist as tension mounted between the authorities and the nation’s Muslim minority following a deadly protest last week.
As the government scrambled to find countries willing to take in hardline Jamaican preacher Abdullah al-Faisal, whose botched deportation sparked the unrest, police vowed to deal firmly with a new protest planned on Friday.
The elite paramilitary General Service Unit and the anti-terrorism police raided Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood late Sunday and detained 300 people said to be illegal Somali immigrants.
Related: Kenya says Muslim cleric to be deported in two days.
-
johnpi
Al Shabaab flogs one man for flirting, another for having a “secret marriage.”
“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, said from Kismayo.
“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.
The flogging took place over the weekend.
Youths in some Muslim countries where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive sometimes resort to secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.
The custom, which keeps the matrimony secret from the couples’ parents and sometimes from another wife, is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.
So by this particular interpretation of the Shariah, its purpose is to prevent those who are too poor to afford a wedding from getting married. And they say capitalists are cruel…
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
That may be the effect John, but its not the purpose. The purpose is to have public weddings which are simple and inexpensive. It is the cultural expectations of extravagant weddings which are plainly violative of the Shari’ah.
Not to endorse these punishments at all, obviously I know absolutely nothing about the individuals involved or the circumstances and from what we do now, it seems wrongly harsh, like much of what we hear about AlShabaab.
-
johnpi
It is the cultural expectations of extravagant weddings which are plainly violative of the Shari’ah
So they are enforcing cultural expectations under the name of Shariah, which is clearly violative of real Shariah. That’s a good description of what is going on.
-
Willow
Urfi marriage leads to all kinds of problems, especially for the woman, who has no legal recourse if her ‘husband’ mistreats or deserts her or her children. A lot of Arab sheikhs endorse urfi as a way to legalize keeping a mistress without the knowledge of one’s wife. Much as I dislike the shebaab, it’s nice to see -somebody- taking a stand against this practice.
I’ve never heard of anybody having a secret marriage because they can’t afford a wedding, btw. (Why would anybody who wanted an extravagant wedding agree to a secret marriage in the first place?) It’s almost always because the guy doesn’t want to commit to a legal marriage or because he is already married.
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
This is the important point. The prohibition on secret marriages makes a lot of sense. That is not the problem in this story.
-
johnpi
It’s interesting. There’s two narratives here: The one Willow describes about mistress marriages which makes this sound like at least a gesture at doing good: and the one in the article that describes poor people getting married in secret to avoid expensive weddings, which makes Shabaab’s shariah sound odious.
Actually, I was thinking of something Willow has written previously about people in Egypt having to wait until their 30s to get married when I read this article. That sounds like a ripe environment for secret marriages among otherwise blameless poor people too.
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
I would welcome Willow’s observations, but although I’ve heard a lot about that problem in Egypt as well. I am not sure why it would lead to secret marriages. My understanding was the problem was that young people could not afford their own housing and that’s why marriage was delayed. One can have a public marriage and still live with one’s parents or not even live together.
John, I am not endorsing AlShabaab. It is undoubtedly true that societal conditions are creating certain behaviors and whether the people involved are completely blameless are partially blameworthy…the solution is addressing those societal situations not flogging people. (In general, barring something particularly heinous about the individuals involved that is exploitative)
I would also be opposed to an idea that we should endorse secret marriages as a way of dealing with the societal conditions. That’s all I’m saying.
-
johnpi
I was not under the impression that you were endorsing Shabab at all, just exploring the issue.
-
Willow
In Egypt urfi marriage is mostly confined to two segments of society: the rural poor, who have no identity cards and thus no access to the legal system, and wealthy men who want to take second (or third or fourth) wives without their families’ knowledge. Once in awhile upper class kids who want to date in a less socially stigmatized way do it too, though this almost always ends in tears. (People may remember the famous Hind el Hinnawy case.)
The people who can’t get married due to housing shortages, joblessness and inflation typically cannot resort to urfi marriage precisely because housing and mahr/big weddings are seen as a prerequisite in these social classes. A woman is not going to say “I want a big apartment and a wedding for 300 guests…but if that’s not possible, I’ll take an impoverished, legally ambiguous life on the fringes of society.” People who are pinched by the housing/job crisis tend not to get married at all rather than have urfi marriages.
One of the biggest and most legitimate draws of the Islamists in Egypt is their opposition to all these gaudy prerequisites for marriage, which they see as fitnah. (And I agree.)
-
-
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
John, I’m not trying to defend AlShabab but the allegation is not that they are punishing people for not having simple weddings. (That would be them enforcing a cultural interpretation against the Shari’ah.)
-
-
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
I’m sorry — should be “for having simple weddings.”
-
null
Marriages in South Asia are also an expensive affair in south Asia too.
What is far worse is that most of the expenses have to be borne by the brides family.
-
-
johnpi
-
johnpi
Somali Islamists: A potential ally?
There are three key points that the international community must now understand about Somalia’s Islamist groups.
The first is that they are not homogenous.
The second is that Islamic values play a central role in how this Muslim society is run.
And the third is that the overwhelming majority of Somalia’s Islamist movements have a Somali agenda – they want a peaceful and prosperous homeland.
Thus in order to build a functioning state, they should be considered an ally.
-
johnpi
Abdullah al Faisal’s forced hijrah to Somalia.
So far, three countries have refused al Faisal a transit visa: South Africa, the UK and Tanzania. Human rights activists say that because of the fact that “no country with a functional government is willing to allow him to fly over their airspace,” Kenyan authority’s only option may be to “dump” him to a “lawless country” like Somalia, which the activists are calling ‘rendition.’
After living his entire life in the West, al Faisal will finally get a chance to live in the particular version of paradise he has been preaching about.
-
johnpi
-
-
johnpi
A friend of Omar Hammami has been keeping tabs on him through Somali contacts and gave the Toronto Star on update.
Hammami – who grew up in Daphne, AL and is now known as Abu Mansour “Al-Amriki” – became the leader of a 180 member foreign fighter unit of Al Shabab in September after the former leader was killed in a US helicopter raid. And the latest info:
Abdi says he heard in October that Hammami had been fighting near the Ethiopian border, and is recovering in hospital from bullet wounds and mental problems.
War will do that to a guy, Islam or no…
-
johnpi
Related: Chris Hedges’ column tonight, with a slight edit.
War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like
democracythe caliphate. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare.-
Shams al-Nahar
Pardon, democracy fits much better, in the exported industrial warfare sense.
How many muslim civilians died in Iraq as a result of ‘Merican “democracy promotion”?
600,000?-
johnpi
You know, I thought about that actually. Hammani’s warfare is less industrial – but ultimately no less lethal and ripping to its own warriors, targets and bystanders – and therefore just as savage so it still worked.
And also, if you look at the mass-casualty efficacy of militant attacks in places like Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s certainly become industrial scale.
-
johnpi
Hedges again.
Look beyond the seduction of the weapons and the pornography of violence. Look beyond Barack Obama’s ridiculous rhetoric about finishing the job or fighting terror. Focus on the evil of war. War begins by calling for the annihilation of the others but ends ultimately in self-annihilation. It corrupts souls and mutilates bodies. It destroys homes and villages and murders children on their way to school. It grinds into the dirt all that is tender and beautiful and sacred. It empowers human deformities—warlords, Shiite death squads, Sunni insurgents, the Taliban, al-Qaida and our own killers—who can speak only in the despicable language of force. War is a scourge. It is a plague. It is industrial murder. And before you support war, especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, look into the hollow eyes of the men, women and children who know it.
-
Shams al-Nahar
Industrial scale?
Reavers don’t actually count coup or keep statistics..
It is not in their nature.
This isnt warfare in the traditional sense.
-
-
-
-
marcos
you know what john pi screw you you have no idea why they are fighting for over there why dont you go over there if your man enough and do somethin about it.
-
Moti
Warfare, democracy, Jihad .. you can use whatever name you wish, at the end war is war and no one wins, I just wonder when America and the westerners are involved in any war, why would the other side always called the terrorist? cause they die more and weaker and have no media? maybe because when you attack someone in his home, you have the right to call him terrorist if he resist ? I wonder…. in the Case of Somali and Afghanistan it is a tragic war and they fight for no obvious reason, in the case of Iraq, we all know who destroyed a country that was peaceful, had nothing to do with terror if such term exist…
-
-
johnpi
Top ten humanitarian crisis in the world in 2009 include several countries that are frequent topics here at TI: Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan.
-
johnpi
The Asia Times excellent correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad, who recently had a face-to-face interview with Ilyas Kashmiri proving that he was still alive after the Americans announced him dead in a drone attack, has another good feature article with a lot of new information about Al Qaeda and its plans to expand in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Remember when Lashkar e Taiba was primarily a Kashmiri independence group before being transformed into a global jihad group? Al Qaeda wants to effect the same transformation elsewhere with local resistance movements – that is, colonize indigenous movements with local nationalist grievances and transform them into global jihad/global caliphate fighters.
…al-Qaeda sources have told Asia Times Online, al-Qaeda has re-established itself in Somalia and Yemen. From Somalia, the sources say, al-Qaeda plans to further disrupt trade routes around the Horn of Africa, while from Yemen, al-Qaeda aims to make a comeback in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia and beyond. The overall goal is to take control of all Muslim resistance movements in the region, very much on the lines of al-Qaeda’s South Asian pattern.
There’s also new information about the extent to which Ilyas Kashmiri is now an al Qaeda military leader.
In South Asia, al-Qaeda’s chief of the Lashkar al-Zil (Shadow Army), Ilyas Kashmiri, sits in Afghanistan orchestrating targets, including in India. (Lashkar al-Zil is an alliance of several Pakistani, Afghan, Uzbek, Iraqi and al-Qaeda groups that carry out operations under the al-Qaeda banner.)
Kashmiri is also cited as one of two al Qaeda leaders who worked on the ground in Somalia establishing the al Shabaab militia.
-
johnpi
Sometimes attempted takeovers of local indigenous movements blow up in their faces, as with Hamas.
Actually, this may be a better link to explain the Hamas/Al Qaeda fallout.
-
-
johnpi
Three Somali ministers killed in Mogadishu blast. Two journalists were also killed, among them Hassan Zubair, who founded Al Arabiya’s Mogadishu bureau.
-
johnpi
Bangladesh surges in international index for fighting public sector corruption.
It was singled out as one of the nations in the Asia-Pacific region with the most improvement with a score of 2.4, up from 2.1 (from a downloaded pdf).
Bangladesh’s score of 2.4 continues to reflect perceptions of rampant corruption, but represents an improvement over its score of 2.1 in the 2008 CPI. This is the result of the caretaker governments nationwide crackdown on corruption during the 2007-08 and the introduction of institutional and legal reforms aimed at strengthening the government’s capacity to tackle corruption. Whether the improvement is to be sustainable will depend on the new government’s ability to strengthen key institutions dealing with anti-corruption, public information and human rights, as well as the judiciary, law enforcement agencies and public services.
The US dropped from 18th to 19th place over concerns about lack of government oversight of the financial sector (ie Republican ideology and “centrist” Democratic policy).
Afghanistan and Somalia were at the bottom of the list.
The index in created and maintained by Transparency International.
-
Naila
Because the new numbers are based on the performance of the caretaker government, which stepped in for a year, I don’t expect the transparency (whatever that means, actually) can be sustained.
Where is your quote from? Can you provide a link? I am curious who did the study.
It is the increasingly stronger (stronger being the relative key term) private sector that can account for reduction in corruption — if corruption is indeed being curtailed. The gov in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan, appears to be fairly useless; except that it has been taking more of a hands-off attitude (possibly similar to India’s liberalization efforts) toward the private sector. As a result Grameen, BRAC, as well as small businesses have been able to contribute to the economy — while working with the government and yet…while not.
At some point, structural oversight will be essential, but for now, rural development programs seem to be operating with the people’s interests in mind. Rural development and sustainable living for the absolute poor = better human rights.
-
johnpi
Thank you. Good question. The link to the org Transparency International’s page for the 2009 corruption index is here.
My quote is from one of the documents accessible from the sidebar at left, under “regional highlights.”
-
-
thabet is discussing. 
Dan is discussing. 
abunoor, and 
mirelle are discussing. 
Pretty Pink Unicorns, and 
skevin, and 
johnpi are discussing. 
null, 
Moti, 
marcos, 
Shams al-Nahar and one other person are discussing. 
Naila are discussing. 
thabet 2:16 am on January 21, 2011 Permalink |
Also…
(Via @jeremyscahill.)