US supplying weapons to Somali government

Following urgent appeals from Somalia’s embattled government, the US is giving the UN-backed government weapons to fight Islamist fighters, according to a US official.

The United States is giving Somalia's embattled government urgent supplies of weapons and ammunition to fight off Islamist insurgents, a US official said Thursday.

The United States has also approached Eritrea with "concerns" that it is aiding the insurgents and warned that such support would be a "serious obstacle" to better ties, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly added.

"We remain deeply concerned about the ongoing violence in Mogadishu and attacks against the Transitional Federal Government," Kelly told reporters during the daily media briefing.

"At the request of that government, the State Department has helped to provide weapons and ammunition on an urgent basis," Kelly added.

"This is to support the Transitional Federal Government's efforts to repel the onslaught of extremist forces which are intent on destroying the Djibouti peace process," he said.

On May 7, the Shebab, a hardline Islamist armed group, and Hezb al-Islam, a more political group, launched an unprecedented nationwide offensive against the administration of President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.

The internationally-backed Sharif has been holed up in his presidential quarters, protected by African Union peacekeepers as his forces were unable to reassert their authority on the capital.

Around 300 people are confirmed to have been killed in the latest violence, many of them civilians.

Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled their homes over the past three years of violence involving hardline Islamist movements and many more in total over the country's 18 years of almost uninterrupted civil chaos.

The High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday that fierce fighting between forces loyal to Somalia's government and the insurgency have displaced 159,000 people in six weeks.

"We think that this government... represents Somalia's best chance for peace, stability and reconciliation," Kelly replied when asked if Washington feared the government would collapse.

"This government is the best chance they've had in the last 18 years," he said.

"And in addition to this threat to the government ... this kind of violence is causing real suffering for the Somalian people and it's just prolonging the chaos and preventing the country from getting on stable footing," he said.

"So, yes, we are concerned," he said.

He said the US weapons deliveries flowed not just from a request from the Somali government but from a policy review conducted by President Barack Obama's new administration.

Kelly said he was not aware of any immediate plans to send Johnnie Carson, the State Department's top Africa envoy, to Eritrea, a neighbor of Somalia which Washington suspects of backing the insurgents.

"We think they (the Eritreans) are providing material support, including financing to some of these extremist groups, most particularly Al Shabaab," the spokesman said.

"We've taken these concerns up with the government of Eritrea," he added.

"I want to emphasize that we remain open to trying to improve relations with Eritrea, but ... Eritrea's support for Al Shabaab and other extremist groups is a serious obstacle to any improvement that we can make," he said.

Read more...

Somali Lawmakers flee abroad amid escalating violence

As clashes between Islamist militants and Somali security forces worsened this month, dozens of Somali lawmakers have fled abroad, leaving parliament effectively paralysed.

Reuters - Scores of Somali legislators have fled violence at home to the safety of other countries in Africa, Europe and the United States, leaving the nation's parliament without a quorum to meet.

Violence from an Islamist-led insurgency has worsened this month, with a minister, the Mogadishu police chief, and a legislator all killed. The government, which controls little but a few parts of the capital, has declared a state of emergency.

With reports of foreign jihadists streaming into Somalia, Western security services are frightened Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network may get a grip on the failed Horn of Africa state that has been without central government for 18 years.

Needing two-thirds of legislators present to meet, Somalia's 550-seat parliament has not convened since April 25. Officials said on Wednesday that 288 members of parliament (MPs) were abroad, with only about 50 on official visits.

The rest were in neighbours Kenya and Djibouti, European nations such as Sweden, Britain, the Netherlands and Norway, and the United States, the officials said.

"I cannot be a member of a government that cannot protect me," Abdalla Haji Ali, an MP who left for Kenya last week, told Reuters. "In Somalia, nobody is safe."

Parliament speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Madobe has urged the MPs to return, and Somalia's Finance Ministry has blocked the salaries of 144 legislators abroad, officials said.

In Nairobi on Wednesday, plenty of Somali MPs could be seen sipping tea and talking politics in various hotels and cafes.

"As legislators, we have responsibility and every one of us should perform his duty in Mogadishu," one legislator who has stayed in Mogadishu, Sheikh Ahmed Moalim, told Reuters.

"Before you decide to flee, you have to resign officially if you realise that you cannot work in this environment."

"GOVERNMENT FIDDLES, SOMALIA BURNS"

Islamist rebel leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys held a news conference in Mogadishu to denounce the government's call at the weekend for foreign forces to come to its aid.

The African Union has a 4,300-strong force guarding government and other installations in Mogadishu, but has been unable to stem violence and has been targeted by the rebels.

Kenya has said it supports international efforts to get more troops into Somalia, but Aweys thanked Nairobi for declining to send its soldiers across the border. "If they deal with us well, we will deal with them well as a good neighbour," he said.

Nairobi expatriate circles have been awash with rumours of planned attacks by Somali militants.

"The fighting will stop when the foreign enemy forces leave the country and Somalis come together for talks," Aweys added. "Nothing remains of the puppet Somali government."

The United Nations and Western powers back President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's government, but are increasingly frustrated over how to help him stabilise Somalia.

Ahmed, himself a moderate Islamists, was elected by parliament at a U.N.-sponsored process in Djibouti in January.

"The situation has gone from bad to worse to worst, presenting the entire Horn of Africa with a security crisis of the first order," U.S. analyst Peter Pham said in a paper.

"If the TFG (government) is 'fiddling' while Somalia burns, it is doing so with a full orchestral accompaniment provided by an international community that apparently lacks either the will or the imagination (or both) to do anything else."

Gus Selassie, an analyst for IHS Global Insight think-tank, was equally pessimistic.

"There appears to be an extreme reluctance on the part of the international community, including neighbouring countries and friendly governments such as Ethiopia, to heed the TFG's desperate calls," he wrote in another analysis.

"Both the security and humanitarian situation will have to worsen considerably before anyone will aid the TFG."

INSURGENCY - PARLIAMENT - SOMALIA

Read more...

Somali President declares state of emergency in wake of 'intensifying violence'

President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has declared a state of emergency in Somalia in response to "intensifying violence" from an Islamist insurgency seeking to topple the government. The move could pave the way for foreign military intervention.

Somalia's president, clinging to power by his fingernails in his Mogadishu palace, on Monday declared a state of emergency in a bid to contain a deadly six-week-old insurgent offensive.

Sharif Sheikh Ahmed's announcement came amid growing talk of fresh foreign military action to flush out hardline Islamist groups, less than six months after Ethiopia ended a two-year intervention which failed to do just that.

The measure should have little impact on the ground in a country plagued by chaos since 1991 and over which Sharif's forces have no control but could facilitate his administration's request for foreign military assistance.

"As of today, the country is under a state of emergency," Sharif said at press conference in the capital, during a brief lull in fighting that has killed at least 300 people nationwide since May 7.

The president said the government had decided to announce the emergency "after witnessing the intensifying violence across the country."

According to a presidential aide, the decree still has to be approved by parliament to be officially effective. It was not immediately clear where and when the national assembly would convene.

On Monday, the African Union reiterated its concern and gave its blessing to Somalia's appeal for foreign backing.

AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping said the Somali government "has the right to seek support from AU members states and the larger international community."

On Sunday, the secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference called for urgent international action to suppress the assault that has also displaced 130,000.

"It has become inevitable that the international community should intervene immediately to support the transitional government, re-establish order and lighten the suffering of innocent civilians," Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said.

The previous day, Somalia's parliament speaker had launched a desperate appeal for foreign assistance, less than six months after neighbouring Ethiopia put an end to it's ill-fated military intervention.

"The government is weakened by the rebel forces. We ask neighbouring countries -- including Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Yemen -- to send troops to Somalia within 24 hours," Sheikh Aden Mohamed Nur told reporters.

In 2006, Ethiopia invaded Somalia to remove an Islamist rebellion led by Sharif and Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys.

When it pulled out earlier this year, having failed to stabilise the country and significantly strengthen the internationally backed transitional government, Ethiopia warned it could return at any time should hardliners threaten to take control.

But Ethiopian Communications Minister Bereket Simon reacted to the Somali speaker's call Saturday by insisting that his country would not make its move without international backing.

"Any further action from Ethiopia regarding Somalia will be done according to international community decision," he told AFP.

Ethiopian troops were reported to have beefed up their presence at the border with western Somalia in recent days.

On May 7, an unprecedented anti-government offensive was launched by the Shebab, a hardline armed group suspected of ties to Al-Qaeda, and Hezb al-Islam, a more political movement led by Aweys, Sharif's ally-turned-foe.

The fighting has focused on central regions, where Sharif's Islamic Courts Union is well represented, and Mogadishu, where he has owed his survival mainly to the protection of African Union peacekeepers.

The Somali security minister, a lawmaker and the Mogadishu police chief were killed in three successive days last week, drawing a barrage of international condemnation.

Somalia has been without an effective central authority since the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied at least a dozen peace initiatives.

EMERGENCY - SOMALIA - UNREST

Read more...

Niger Democracy in jeorpady as President Takes emergency powers

President Tandja takes emergency powers after failed bid for third term

AFP - Niger's President Mamadou Tandja Friday said he was assuming emergency powers after a failed bid to prolong his stay in office by changing the constitution to allow him to run for a third term.

The 71-year-old leader said in a television address that he was invoking "article 58 of the constitution" giving him special powers "because the independence of the country is threatened." Tandja had already run into opposition from the Constitutional Court in his attempt to hold a referendum on changing the constitution to enable him to run for a third five-year elected term in office after his mandate expires in December. Tandja, 71, first announced his referendum proposal in early May, but the opposition, the trade unions and non-governmental organisations all turned to the Constitutional Court, which on June 12 annulled the president's plan. The court's decisions are binding on the head of state, whose bid to stage the referendum has also led to street protests and strikes. Nevertheless, on Wednesday evening Tandja submitted a request to the court, asking it to retract its ruling on the grounds that it had gone beyond its competence.

NIGER - POLITICS

Read more...

We are Tired of the Dictatorship and Corruption

Protest Letter to the Politicians and Governments in Africa

Dear Presidents/Prime ministers,

On behalf of the poor people of Africa, I send you this protest letter. We are angry. Yes we the people are very angry. We have endured your ill conceived, hash and austere economic and social policies for quite too long. We have watched silently to see you and your cronies enjoy while we the masses continue to suffer. We have no jobs, no incomes, no savings and have no place to lay our heads while you and your selected few live in mansions at the expense of the very poor you are refusing to take care of. You have consistently ignored all our cry for help even though you know our plights very well.

Are you not appalled by the scale of poverty and the living conditions of the people? Are you not appalled to see children selling on the street instead of being in the classroom? Are you not appalled to see children sleeping rough on the streets of our capital cities and scavenging for food while you and you cronies frequent between five star hotels? Don't you care about the dignity of the people you claim to be serving? For years you have asked us to sacrifice and even today we are still sacrificing, but anytime we look at you and your circle of friends we see that you are in a different suit, in a different four wheel drive, in a different hotel, and in a company of ladies, surrounded by bodyguards. How many more years should we continue to sacrifice and tighten our belts why you and your cronies enjoy from our sweat? We cannot continue any longer. No we cannot.

We are tired of all of you who call yourself leaders of the people. We are tired of the dictatorships, media censorship, torture, force imprisonment, wars and the instabilities. We are tired of being refugees. We are tired of seeing our children die of common preventable diseases. We are tired of sharing water from the same source with animals, water infested with bacteria and viruses. We are tired of lack of access to education, health, energy, food, medicines, shelter and clothing. We are tired of having to work with cutlasses and hoes in this 21st century and having to rely on nature to plant our crops. We are tired of having to plant without fertilizers and having to use 18th century seeds that yield next to nothing. We are tired of having to endure poverty, starvation, diseases, humiliation, torture, oppression, in your very hands.

Above all, we are tired of your excesses. We are tired of your corrupt practices and the looting of the treasuries. Your foreign bank accounts are swollen with hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds and Euros while hundreds of millions of people in Africa live on one dollar a day.

We are tired of you using our money to procure arms for your own protection while children go to school barefooted and on empty stomach; while hospitals are without essential medicines; while factories are folding up for lack of electricity; and while harvested crops remain in the bush for lack of good roads. We are tired of your tribal politics and the use of religion to divide the people. We are tired of all your inactions, the wait and see and the do nothing approaches to problem solving.

There are many of you that we have not chosen or asked to lead us yet are carrying themselves as our leaders. Such people we demand should retire and allow elections to take place immediately. We demand an end to torture in Egypt and starvation in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. We demand an end to the dictatorial rule in Libya, Egypt, Cameroon, Gabon, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Uganda and the Gambia. We demand an end to the instabilities in DR. Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Northern Uganda, Chad, Central African Republic and Madagascar. We demand an end to the genocide in Darfur and the killing of innocent children, women and civilians.

We demand an end to the official corruption and graft in Nigeria, Ghana, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Angola, Congo Republic, DR. Congo, Chad, South Africa, Burkina Fasso, Tanzania and Guinea. We demand an end to the eroding of democratic values in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and Gabon. We demand an end to the use of the continent as a hub for cocaine shipment to Europe and America.

We demand better public services now. We demand better education, health, sanitation, transport and telecommunication infrastructures now. We demand affordable housing now. We demand irrigation facilities, tractors, equipment and improved seeds for our farmers now. You've asked us to tighten our belts while you have loosened yours. This cannot go on any more. We are starving to death while you are developing protruding bellies. You are having lavish birthday parties while cholera and starvation are threatening us.

We demand a share in the revenue from the sale of oil, gas, gold, diamond, timber, cocoa, coffee, tea, coltan, manganese, copper, bauxite and tin ore. We demand a say in the way your governments are run; a say in the way you and your ministers are selected. We demand a say in the way you spend our money; and a say in the way contracts are awarded. It is not going to be business as usual anymore. We demand change now. We demand probity and accountability now. We demand political action to solve the numerous problems facing we the people.

Look at the world around you. Don't you see or hear what is going in Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America? Can't you see that you and your people are being left behind? When you meet with your colleagues in Africa or sit in your offices, how many of the things you see or use are made here in Africa? We are still poor despite availability of rich resources and the existence of technology to make good these resources. Aren't you ashamed that after ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years in power your people still use hoes and cutlasses for farming, tools their forefathers used before they were colonised? Aren't you ashamed that after all these years of independence your people cannot feed themselves; cannot read and write; rely on handouts from Europe and America; and the youth are in a hurry to leave the continent for you out of frustration, hopelessness? Can't you see?

Well, a word to the wise is enough but remember that you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. We are watching.

By Lord Aikins Adusei

Activist and Anto Corruption Campaigner

Read more...

Democracy the Only Viable path to Africa security and Development

Democracy is the only viable option that can help stabilize African countries and prepare the ground for their economic development.

here cannot be economic development when dictators are in control, when wars are going on and when instabilities undermine every effort to develop. Nations that have well developed democratic institutions tend to do better economically and socially.While those that suppress individual freedoms and rights and try to control the people by coercion build up economies full of cards.

We Africans must realize that instability anywhere in Africa is a threat to stability everywhere. The security of Africa can best be safeguard through the establishment of democratic institutions with governments and leaders who are directly accountable to the people.

Democracy may not be perfect but it is better than dictatorship, military rule, civil wars, genocidal governments and . This is why you must support Africa for Democracy and encourage your friends to join. But just don't join also partake in it. Tell everyone that the new thinking now is how make genuine democracy work. You can make it work if you tell your friend and your friend tells her friend etc

Read more...

Watching Democracy in Ghana

Three competing notions of democracy come to mind as I read and re-read Watching Democracy in Ghana, the compilation of Democracy Watch, which will be launched on Thursday, February 26, 2009. Democracy Watch is the flagship publication of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, CDD, an independent, non-profit, non- partisan research think tank based in Accra. The founder of the defunct Soviet State Vladimir Lenin described democracy as a “state, which recognizes the subjecting of the minority to the will of the majority.” One time US presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy had this to say: “As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences”. In between these two, we have a position presented by the late US novelist and journalist Norman Mailer: “A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.” What has been Ghana’s preferred path to democracy since the re-introduction of democracy in 1993? The idea of reintroduction rather than a simple “introduction” is both a teaser and an announcement: The development of democracy in this country goes back a long way and many of the characteristics of the current run of democratic governance have their roots in earlier experiments. Although Watching Democracy is a compilation which covers only 1999 to 2007, there is little doubt that serious archival trawl would reveal that the more we change the more we remain the same. Watching Democracy in Ghana confronts one with recent history, not in the sense of a luxurious reverie but in an uncomfortable rehashing of events that are still with us. The discomfort comes from the brutal realization that we may have changed and moved forward but we have not learned the lesions offered by our history. Therein lies the first of many virtues of the publication – that of being an archive or living witness to this country’s recent history. There are not many such footprints about in the sands of our development. Basically, Ghana's political processes are not documented in such a coherent and consistent manner, and contrast with Nigeria where most leaders write or ghost-write their memoirs. For example, Democracy Watch (Number 4) of December 2000 dealt with the “retirement benefit for our new leaders”. This should ring a bell because it tells us that despite the media hoopla about this subject, ex gratia is not a new topic of discussion. After going through the details of the package recommended by the Greenstreet Committee (for which you can close your eyes and substitute “Chinery Hesse Committee”, Democracy Watch had this to say: “ Considering the whopping sums involved in the retirement package of such an army of former state officials and the implications for the national budget, it would have been better to subject the recommendations of the committee to the fullest public scrutiny and comprehensive debate”. You can say that again! “Public scrutiny and comprehensive debate” must bring us to the second virtue of the publication: defining the public sphere. In Ghana, there is an unfortunate tendency to restrict the public definition of politics to the narrow band of activities that are carried out by political parties, and this sometimes ridiculously excludes policy intervention by other stakeholders. In its broad sweep of watching democracy, the CDD publication has staked a large territory of stake-holding that includes policy, advocacy and reporting various interfaces of democracy.” These categories neatly sum up what constitutes the verifiable sphere of public discourse in the development of democracy in Ghana, and could serve as a guide for tracking policy formulation and implementation across the wide swathe by media, NGO and community groups, etc. This would provide a framework for broadening the democracy agenda and debate beyond the narrowly defined parameters. If Watching Democracy has no other virtue, its sheer readability and therefore enhanced access to issues alone would make it worth twice the cover price. Here is a publication published by a credible think tank which could be pardoned for using the arcane language of academia, which is so loved by policy wonks to confound the masses. But the writers of the Democracy Watch have achieved the aims of communication beyond doubt. You know what they are saying. This is no mean feat because bad writing on policy issues has had the effect of driving people from reading anything that appears challenging or simply discusses policy. Our newspapers carry many feature articles including those written by the newspaper's own staff writers. In the main, however, you would be a national hero to be able to read many of them from start to finish because of bad writing. Democracy Watch is not like that. Almost every issue deploys the technique of going from the known to the unknown thus starting from bases of which most readers would be familiar. For example, Democracy Watch Number 3, August 2000 dealt with indignities visited upon junior workers by their superiors but started with the case of a Malaysian national who was deported after spitting at his Ghanaian driver. Nine years after the event I still found it interesting because it used the human interest as a peg on which to hang a major human rights discussion. Space will not allow me to provide other examples but the book is like that: Reader-friendly, accessible, informative and lively. It is a must-read for all kinds of people but perhaps the President of the Republic should read it and make it compulsory for his Cabinet and all other state functionaries, Members of Parliament, DCEs, assembly members, security services personnel, teachers and all kinds of traders. All these people feature in one way or the other in the book. But above all, journalist must make it an inspirational companion both for the management of facts in a story and the writing style. There is a lot to learn from it because this book is a kind of pathfinder. If we were unsure which path we were traveling on towards our proclaimed goal of democracy, we now have a guide – Watching Democracy in Ghana written and published in black and white. I don’t want to give the game away, but this book has shown me that the trajectory is not a straight line: there are many zigs and zags but are on course. Source: Daily Graphic,

Read more...