NAIROBI, KENYA – The International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it is increasing food and other assistance for over 400,000 people displaced by violence in south and central Somalia. As Derek Kilner reports from VOA’s East Africa bureau in Nairobi, the announcement comes as Islamist insurgents continue an advance towards the capital, Mogadishu.
The ICRC’s Somalia relief coordinator, Mathias Frese, said the organization will have tripled its food aid to Somalia from 2007 to 2008. The recent escalation in fighting, along with continued drought, have worsened what U.N. officials had already called Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis.
On Thursday, Islamist insurgents entered Elasha, a settlement of displaced people fewer than 20 kilometers from Mogadishu.
Resident Jama’a Abdirahman told VOA that the Islamists left as Ethiopian troops, retreating from the town of Afgoye to the west, passed through on their way to Mogadishu. He said that members of the government militia that had controlled the town had returned, but that members of the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia, as well as fighters from other Islamist factions were still in the area.
On Wednesday al-Shabab took control of the port town of Merka, to the south. The transitional government, backed by Ethiopian Woyanne troops, remains in control of Mogadishu, and the town of Baidoa, where the parliament is based, and has soldiers in Afgoye. But insurgents now hold much of the rest of south and central Somalia.
[The Woyanne regime in] Ethiopia had agreed to withdraw its forces from urban centers as part of a peace agreement with a moderate faction of the insurgency, but the rebel advance may change those plans. If Ethiopian troops remain, however, their presence will continue to be a major grievance and rallying cry for the insurgency.
Meanwhile, the escalation in fighting has increased the numbers of Somalis fleeing across the border into Kenya. The U.N. refugee agency has echoed calls from Human Rights Watch, for increased attention to the influx. Emmanuel Nyabera, a spokesman for UNHCR in Nairobi, said the organization had asked the Kenyan government to construct a fourth refugee camp at Dadaab, along the border.
“We are extremely concerned about the situation in Dadaab refugee camp, because the camp is extremely overcrowded. The three camps that were supposed to accommodate around 90,000 refugees are currently accommodating around 224,000 people,” said Nyabera. “We are currently receiving around 6,000 new asylum seekers every month. We are not in a position to give services to these people in a dignified manner.”
The fighting has also hampered aid efforts inside the country, where attacks on aid workers have increased in recent months, and both sides have been accused of disrupting aid deliveries. Abdirahman, at the Elasha camp, said that the World Food Program had increased deliveries since Islamist fighters dismantled government checkpoints in the area.
Aid deliveries have also been restricted by insecurity along Somalia’s coastline, which has seen a proliferation of hijacked ships in recent months. On Thursday night, a Chinese boat with 24 crew members was captured off the coast of southern Somalia.
The European Union agreed last week to supply ships for a naval operation to combat piracy off Somalia’s coast.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US president-elect Barack Obama is to make the first YouTube address to the nation on Saturday, recording a talk not just on radio but also on video, a spokesman said Friday.
“President-elect Obama will record the Weekly Democratic Radio Address on video and radio,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
“The address will be turned into a YouTube video which we will post on www.change.gov,” the official website of the Obama transition team, he said.
“No president-elect or president has ever turned the radio address into a multi-media opportunity before,” Shapiro added.
“This is just one of many ways that president-elect Obama will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” he said.
US presidents have made weekly addresses to the nation by radio for years with the party in opposition delivering a response afterwards.
Shapiro said Obama will continue to use video for the weekly addresses after he takes office on January 20.
“President-elect Obama will continue to record and make available the Democratic radio addresses on video when he is in the White House,” he said.
Obama relied heavily on the Internet during his successful campaign for the Democratic nomination and the presidency, organizing volunteers and pulling in large amounts of money through online fund-raising.
The Washington Post on Friday quoted transition officials as saying that senior members of the transition team, policy experts and Cabinet selections would also be recording videos to be posted on Change.gov.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US president-elect Barack Obama is considering naming former first lady Hillary Clinton — his onetime rival for the White House — as his secretary of state, US news media reported on Friday.
Two unnamed Obama advisers told NBC News network that Clinton, now a senator for New York, “is under consideration” for the post.
According to NBC, Clinton flew to Chicago — where Obama is based — on Thursday, but an adviser said it was on personal business.
Obama sources confirmed to CNN that Clinton was being considered, but her spokesperson Philippe Reines was non-committal when asked.
“Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for president-elect Obama’s transition team to address,” Reines told CNN.
Clinton, 61, has extensive foreign policy experience from her time in the senate, where she serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and indirectly when her husband Bill Clinton was president from 1993 to 2001.
Several big names have been mentioned in the press as possible Obama secretaries of state including another former Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry; New Mexico governor and former UN ambassador Bill Richardson, a favorite of the Latino community; and moderate Republican senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel.
The Obama transition team has not said publicly who may be under consideration for cabinet positions, but has insisted no announcements would be made this week.
According to the Washington Post, Clinton’s name emerged because the Obama camp “is not overly happy with the usual suspects” contending for the job.
During the bruising Democratic presidential primary Clinton tore into Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience, describing some of his proposals such as talking to Iran as “dangerous and naive.”
Obama in turn constantly reminded voters that Clinton approved legislation authorizing President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, a vote she never publicly rejected.
Once Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination, the former first lady campaigned fiercely for Obama.
She was asked at a New York event on Monday if she would consider taking a position in the Obama administration. “I am happy being a senator from New York, I love this state and this city,” Clinton said, according to CNN.
“I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful,” Clinton said.
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Advancing ever closer to Somalia’s beleaguered capital, heavily armed militants declared Thursday that they will use strict Muslim rules to bring their lawless country back under control.
The latest conquest by the Muslim militants came late Wednesday in Elasha, just 10 miles from the capital of Mogadishu.
The insurgents now control most of southern and central Somalia, with the crucial exceptions of Mogadishu and the city of Baidoa, where the parliament for Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed government sits.
Further complicating the situation, [the Woyanne regime in] Ethiopia, which has backed Somalia’s government in its fight against the groups, has pulled back from some positions as part of a peace deal with moderate Muslims.
The insurgents, who are fighting to enforce Shariah law in Somalia, are not a homogeneous group. Elasha was seized by a group of relatively moderate fighters.
But the most militant faction, al-Shabab, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group because of its leaders’ alleged links to al Qaeda, controls the most territory.
Al-Shabab in recent weeks carried out a public execution by stoning, reportedly that of a 13-year-old gang-rape victim.
“We inform you that from today on, all areas under our control will be ruled by Islam,” al-Shabab commander Sheik Abukar told residents of Merka on Thursday, one day after seizing that town.
The historical U.S. election is now over by electing Barack Obama as the 44th President. The landslide victory goes beyond making history. Obama’s administration is set to bring definite change for the entire world. It is a dream comes true for millions of Americans who have never thought to see this day. It is also a hope for so many people and governments around the world who have been devastated by the wars and the economic crisis.
On the other hand, the victory came as a shock for some stone-hearted dictators around the world who have been killing and torturing their own people.
Obama’s victory is a stop sign for brutal leaders like the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who took advantage of the ‘war on terrorism’ to kill and torture his political opponents. While the Bush administration considered Zenawi as a close ally, he is better known for torturing, arresting, and killing his political opponents. In what was called the cruelest and disturbing political techniques of the 21st century, more than 193 people, including women and children were gunned down by the government special armed forces post 2005 election, and more than 25,000 opposition members were arrested.
The Ethiopian government is continually arresting its opponents and journalist that question its act of violence. Several people are still remaining in jail in a systematic arrest including the famous singer Teddy Afro, who criticized the government through one of his prominent music’s.
Like most African dictators, Meles Zenawi has been Ethiopia’s Head of State for more than 18 years. With Obama swearing in, America will have its fourth president since Meles Zenawi became Ethiopia’s head of state.
As President Elect Obama is looking forward to take over the Oval Office on January 20th, the entire world is enthusiastically waiting to see a number of policy changes. The U.S. foreign policy will be one of the new President’s priorities that are set to be changed. Countries like Ethiopia will have to prove their democracy in order to remain as the United States allies. Undoubtedly, time is up for dictators who have been dancing with the stars in the name of the war on terrorism. They like it or not, change is coming.
I announce the publication of my new book titled Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, 1960-1974.
Published by the University of Rochester Press, the book starts from the premise of a deceived expectation, from the distressing realization of a promise that seems to have vanished altogether.
Indeed, who can deny that a lot was going for Ethiopia? The country had an ancient and sophisticated civilization led by a landed ruling class that had greatly expanded its resources and foiled colonial incursions while showing a rising appetite for wealth. Yet what many observers had saluted as the Japan of Africa quickly went off the track of sustained modernization; worse yet, the country plunged in the turmoil of a radical revolution in the mid 70s that brought about economic regression and political instability. The setback resulted in massive periodical famines, civil wars, and ethnic conflicts whose apex was the secession of Eritrea.
The book focuses on the prime agent of the revolutionary upheaval that derailed the course of Ethiopia’s modernization, namely, the Ethiopian student movement. Most remarkable about the movement was that a great number of Ethiopian students and intellectuals had espoused the most dogmatic version of Marxism-Leninist ideology, with the consequence that they had become a highly polarizing force. And as John Henrik Clarke puts it, “When a people are not too sure about who they are loyal to and what their commitments are, they represent a danger within the cultural mainstream of their society.”
The book discusses the reasons why a majority of Ethiopian students and intellectuals adopted the ideology of Marxism-Leninism during the 60s and early 70s with a fanatic fervor. This radicalization of the educated elite is crucial to the understanding of Ethiopia’s uninterrupted political crises and economic setbacks since the Revolution of 1974. Students and intellectuals were the leading force in the uprising against the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. The radicalization of the military junta, known as the Derg––which seized power and ruled the country for 17 years––was also the handiwork of students and intellectuals. Likewise, the ethnonationalist movements that brought down the Derg in 1992 are products of the Ethiopian student movement.
While acknowledging the frustrating impact of Haile Selassie’s economic and political failures, the book argues that the radical orientation of students and intellectuals has its roots in the encounter of an uprooting education entirely copied from the West with a cultural legacy prone to messianic escapades. Even as the imported education was undermining the legacy, the Marxist-Leninist ideology emerged both as the most consistent form of Westernization and the most alluring substitute for the messianic longing.
The book is original because it develops a multifarious approach to study the progressive radicalization of Ethiopian students. Notably, arguing that the socioeconomic shortcomings of the imperial regime are not enough to explain the radicalization, it highlights the role of cultural factors. Among the cultural factors, besides emphasizing the alienating impact of Western education that the imperial regime encouraged to the detriment of the traditional culture and the radicalizing elements specific to the traditional culture, the book adds the influence of “the culture of revolution” characteristic of the 60s and early 70s as a result of the global hegemony of Marxism-Leninism.
Another theoretical and methodological originality of the book is that the analysis of the uprooting impact of Western education perfectly articulates with the other radicalizing elements. The book shows that the contrast between Western and traditional societies, as conveyed by the Eurocentric reading of history and the subsequent method of taking the West as a normative reference, activates a revolutionary predisposition. It then elucidates how native and international factors join and strengthen the rupture opened by the educational system.
The major significance of the book is but obvious. In involving cultural factors, the book provides a detailed and concrete assessment of the impact of Western education on traditional cultures. As such, the study has a direct relevance to other African countries in that it puts the finger on the main obstacle holding back their modernization and economic development. Given that Ethiopia has not been colonized, the pernicious radicalization of its educated elite demonstrates that the effect of cultural colonization is more lasting and damaging than direct political colonization. It follows that the issue of African modernization is as much, if not more, about recapturing cultural autonomy as it is about applying the right socioeconomic changes.
