Mogadishu June 6, 2007 — Shabelle Media Network has received a government decree from the prime minister’s office, ordering the closure of the station.
The Somali government has issued the decree to close down three main FM stations in the capital. The decree orders Shabelle Media Network, Horn Afrik and IQK (The holy Quran Media) to shut down.
The transitional government accused the three stations of backing what it called terrorists and their actions.
The decree said the stations were creating hostilities and supporting terrorism.
“They have breached the rules of the free media, confused the Somali population and opposed the existence of the Somalia government,” the decree said.
These three radios have been ordered to shut down twice in the past as the Somali government accused them of exaggerating the government and Ethiopian military operations in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
Horn Afrik and IQK went off air soon after they received the decree.
Shabelle Media Network has been on air for awhile before the decree arrived, but it was shut down soon after it arrived.
Radio Warsan in Baidoa was closed two days ago after the government administration in the farming town issued the decree to shut the FM down.
Abdi Qeybded, the head of the Somali national police force, said he hopes that the stations would abide by the government orders.
“They can contact government officials assigned for this, but they have been accused off all articles in the decree,” he said.
Micheal ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, said the US government was concerned about the closure of the three radio stations in the capital.
“The freedom of the media is absolutely essential in Somalia and everywhere else in the world and it is important that the Somali media be allowed to inform the Somali people the developments in an objective way,” he said.
Micheal ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya
“We are very concerned about the closure of these radio stations and we are pursuing that,” he added.
The US ambassador was interviewed by a local radio in Mogadishu.
Asmara, 5 June 2007 – Opposing the TPLF regime’s policy of ethnic discrimination, five Ethiopian soldiers arrived in Asmara seeking asylum.
The soldiers disclosed that the regime recruited 8,000 youths under the guise of offering them computer application and other types of training and deployed them in the Army following forced military training.
The soldiers also pointed out that the regime has imprisoned and killed individuals who opposed its open invasion of Somalia, and the ones who could are escaping.
The soldiers are Misaw Tabo Biru, Andargachew Tilahun Temtime, Welelaw Tegene Desse, Yohannes Melku Demisew, and Abebe Memru Terfasa .
Meles Zenawi visits his former home and future grave yard, Mogadishu
Meles makes landmark visit to Somalia, where his troops are protecting the government
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
MOGADISHU, Somalia: Ethiopia’s prime monster made a surprise trip to Mogadishu on Tuesday and promised that if peace were consolidated in Somalia, he would withdraw troops sent to help the government put down an Islamic insurgency.
Meles has not set foot in Mogadishu for years, but he does have a history here. Under the protection of Barre, Meles organized the rebellion that brought him to power from a base in Mogadishu.
Meles Zenawi “is paying a friendly visit to Somalia” and meeting with the president and prime minister, Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon told The Associated Press. Security for him was extremely tight in a city where insurgents have launched frequent mortar attacks and suicide bombs.
Meles also visited Mogadishu’s highly influential clan elders.
“He told them, ‘If you make peace, I will withdraw my troops as soon as possible,'” Gobdon said.
The Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops here come under regular insurgent attacks. On Monday, Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops fired at a would-be suicide bomber speeding toward their base, blowing up the car and killing the bomber and a civilian standing nearby.
African Union peacekeepers who began arriving in March also have come under attack. The peacekeepers, from Uganda, are the first here in more than a decade.
Ted Dagne, a specialist in African Affairs at the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, said Meles’ visit “doesn’t really represent a new era in Ethiopian-Somali relations.”
“For many Somalis, they see the presence of Ethiopian troops as an occupation force,” he said.
Ethiopian Crime Minister Meles Zenawi [known by Ethiopians as the butcher of Addis Ababa] on Tuesday paid a surprise visit to Mogadishu, becoming the first foreign head of state to visit the lawless Somali capital in recent years, officials said. [Mogadishu was peaceful and life was returning to normal under the ICU leadership until Woyanne invaded Somalia].
“Meles Zenawi has arrived in Mogadishu and is having talks with Somali top officials,” Abdi Ali Godon, an Ethiopian [Woyanne] government official, told AFP.
Hopes for a peaceful political resolution to the crisis in Somalia are dimming, as a power struggle between the Ethiopian [Woyanne]-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and clan-based and Islamist militias continues to wrack Mogadishu.
A brutal crackdown by Ethiopian [the ruling Tigrean People Liberation Front] and Somali government troops in early May has done little to end an incipient insurgency, and disaffected clan militias and remnants of the vanquished Islamic Courts Union (ICU) have resorted to increasingly guerrilla-like tactics, including suicide bombings and a series of remote-controlled car bombs detonated in the last several weeks.
An African Union peacekeeping force—initially envisaged as a multinational 8,000-strong deployment, but currently comprising only 1,400 Ugandan troops—has been largely ineffective, predictably so, since it deployed into a chaotic, anarchic situation, with no clear mandate and no real peace to keep. Four Ugandan soldiers have been killed to date, and other African countries, which initially expressed some interest in contributing troops, appear increasingly reluctant to send their personnel into a sharply deteriorating security environment.
The TFG, which is internally divided and deeply unpopular in Mogadishu, has failed to take the necessary measures to broaden its support base and expand the governing coalition. A national reconciliation conference has been postponed twice and is now slated for June 15. Rather than seizing the opportunity early on in its tenure to reach out in a genuine way to disaffected groups and moderate remnants of the Islamic Courts Union, the TFG has instead chosen to rely on Ethiopian military force and the support of the international community to consolidate its position in Mogadishu. This is not a sustainable tack: Ethiopia will not remain in Mogadishu indefinitely: it is taking hits in Somalia, it has been accused by human rights groups of perpetrating war crimes, and it cannot long sustain a costly occupation given other domestic and regional security preoccupations. Further, having achieved its immediate objective of dispersing an increasing radicalized ICU leadership, it has much less compelling interest in the long hard slog of building Somali governing institutions or pushing the TFG to expand its base.
This task will likely fall to the broader international community. There is a risk that international attention will move on from Somalia; the world has lived with a chaotic vacuum in that country for 14 years. But for humanitarian reasons, for the stability of the region, and for the long-term fight to curb international terror, this would be a mistake. The conditions that led to the rise of the ICU’s more radical leadership remain intact, and the possibility that those elements regroup, bolstered by external funding, is real.
The United States has a particular responsibility in Somalia: a narrow U.S. focus on counter-terror imperatives has contributed to the current impasse. The United States secretly funded an alliance of unpopular warlords in 2005-2006 to root out al-Qaeda affiliates allegedly sheltered by the Islamic courts, a move that may ultimately have helped unify and empower the more radical elements of the ICU. The ICU’s defeat of these warlords in spring of 2006 added to the union’s popularity and legitimacy, as they established a modicum of security and basic services in Mogadishu for the first time in over a decade.
Further, U.S. air strikes against fleeing ICU leaders and al Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia, with cooperation from Ethiopia, have led to the widespread perception (both in Somalia and Ethiopia) that the United States fully endorsed and supported the Ethiopian invasion and subsequent occupation. In January, the United States knowingly allowed Ethiopia to secretly purchase arms from North Korea in violation of UN sanctions that the U.S. had been instrumental in passing. Human rights groups have accused the United States of cooperating with Ethiopia, Kenya, and the TFG in a secret detention program for individuals fleeing Somalia, with U.S. intelligence agents interrogating detainees in Kenya, who were denied access to legal counsel and consular representatives. All these factors will make it difficult for the United States to disentangle itself, in perception and fact, from Ethiopian policy, which is a source of deep resentment among many Somalis.
The appointment on May 17 of retired ambassador John Yates as Special Envoy to Somalia is a positive step. But it comes late in the game, as U.S. leverage in the situation declines. Congress should revisit legislation on U.S. engagement in Somalia to ensure that the administration remains adequately seized with the current crisis and the need for a longer-term comprehensive approach.
The U.S. strategy now should be to put forward in no uncertain terms a set of expectations and benchmarks for the TFG, in terms of reconciliation, inclusivity, power-sharing, and humanitarian access, backed by a credible package of incentives and pressures. Unqualified support for the TFG will only reinforce their current approach, and U.S. assistance should be more stringently conditioned on demonstrable progress. The reconciliation conference slated for June 15 will be one benchmark, but the process will need to be more enduring and pervasive than a one-off public conference, which at this point appears unlikely to succeed.
The U.S. also needs to prepare for the possibility that the reconciliation process is not credible and that the situation in Mogadishu deteriorates further. In that case, it will need to look beyond the TFG to identify Somali partners within civil society with whom it can engage in revitalizing basic governing structures and strengthening basic services like education and health.
The U.S. should also distance itself from the perceived strategic alliance with Ethiopia (which is damaging to U.S. credibility both in Somalia and more broadly in Africa), and should push Ethiopia to use its considerable leverage to move the TFG toward genuine powersharing. The U.S. should work with the international community and regional states on building a comprehensive approach toward Somalia that goes beyond narrow counter-terrorism concerns.
The outcome of the struggle in Somalia will hinge on a political solution, and at present, the onus is on the TFG to create a credible process. It will also require that those excluded groups engage in that process (if indeed it is credible), that hard-core spoilers are sidelined, and that damage by those groups who have learned to profit from continuing chaos is minimized. The United State should use its dwindling leverage toward these ends.
Ibrahim Koroma forgives the child rebels who chopped off his left hand nine years ago during Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war, saying they were “misled.” But he feels differently about Charles Taylor, the former president of neighboring Liberia, who backed Sierra Leone’s rebels. “I don’t feel fine about [Mr.] Taylor,” says Mr. Koroma. “Let him face trial.”
When Taylor stands before the judge from the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone as his trial begins in The Hague on Monday, he will make history as the first African head of state to face war-crimes charges. The faraway trial may help close a chapter for the victims of his wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. But it also carries a message for despotic leaders everywhere.
“The greatest message that [Taylor’s trial] sends is not for Sierra Leone alone but for Africa and the world that the days of impunity are finished, that if you commit these crimes, whoever you are, you will face justice,” says John Caulker, executive director of Forum of Conscience, a group based in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.
The civil conflicts Taylor fomented in Sierra Leone and Liberia cost 400,000 lives between 1989 and 2003 and were characterized by incredible brutality and the widespread use of child soldiers.
Taylor traded the Liberian presidency for exile to Nigeria in 2003, where he lived until he was arrested in March last year. Concerned that his continued presence in West Africa could cause yet more instability, regional leaders including Sierra Leone’s president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf pushed for Taylor’s extradition to The Hague. He will be tried by the Special Court using the facilities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and if found guilty will serve his sentence in a British jail.
The Special Court was set up by the UN and the government of Sierra Leone in 2002 to try those who “bear the greatest responsibility” for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international law committed during the civil war. The court is judging four separate trials dealing with three different warring parties – the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), and the Civil Defence Forces (CDF) – and Taylor. Judgments are due later this month in the AFRC and CDF trials while the RUF trial is beginning to hear defense arguments.
The AFRC judgment may well result in the world’s first prosecution and sentencing for the crime of recruiting and using child soldiers. Important as this is, however, Taylor’s trial is the most significant in a series of international criminal investigations into atrocities and malpractice committed by heads of state in Africa.
Other African leaders on trialLate last year a court in Ethiopia found former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam guilty of genocide but he will escape justice because he lives in exile in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. This year, former Zambian president Frederick Chiluba was convicted by a British court of defrauding the Zambian people of $46 million, and the ICC last month began investigating allegations of mass rape committed by forces loyal to Ange-Félixe Patassé, former president of Central African Republic now in exile in Togo.
“The world has turned a page in the wake of Taylor’s arrest,” argues Special Court prosecutor Stephen Rapp. “[Crimes against humanity] cannot be ignored, and there will have to be prosecutions. The days are gone when leaders accused of atrocities could escape into exile.”
There are concerns, however, that the arrest and trial of Taylor, who was persuaded to step down in part by an offer of safety in exile, may serve to further entrench other leaders accused of abusing power, such as Mr. Mugabe.
“Charles Taylor was promised by his colleagues, the African heads of state, that he would be safe and now he is on trial,” says Mr. Caulker. “So there are positives and negatives. From Sierra Leone’s point of view, the positive wins. From Zimbabwe’s point of view, perhaps it is the negative.”
Mr. Rapp concedes that while Taylor’s trial sets a key precedent, it might also make it more difficult to oust other tyrants who have seen Taylor given asylum one moment and be arrested the next. “At the negotiating table, the offer of safety in exile will no longer wash.” But, drawing an analogy with more mundane crimes, Rapp says this is a price worth paying: “I want bank robbers to know they’ll be arrested and therefore stop robbing banks.”
Pressing concerns for war victimsNone doubt the importance of justice, but most in Sierra Leone – especially the victims – have other priorities. Five years after the war ended, Sierra Leone remains one of the world’s poorest countries.
On any given day in the center of Freetown, crowds of amputees jostle with polio victims and the destitute – both young – and old to beg for money. The government, they say, gives them nothing and the court, they argue, is not really for them.
“You can free Charles Taylor today and we will not feel it much. You can kill Charles Taylor today and we will not feel it much,” says Farma Jalloh, a former government soldier blinded while fighting the RUF rebels. “The international community wants to try Charles Taylor but what will it achieve for the victims?”
