Andrew Harding The accents here in Somalia’s capital can be hard to place these days. I’m sitting in a grimy corner of Villa Somalia – the once rather grand government building in the centre of Mogadishu – waiting to talk to a minister. “Would you like some tea?” It is the minister’s aide – Faiza...
By RASHID ABDI Kenya’s testy and troubled relations with Somalia are once again on the rocks. The election of Sheikh Ahmed Madobe as President of Jubaland on May 15 by clan delegates in Kismayu has opened a huge chasm between Nairobi and Mogadishu and created a febrile atmosphere inimical to dialogue. As Kenya continues to warmly...
Many are being forced to flee conflict again, years after having sought refuge in Syria from civil war back home. Mona Kosar San Diego, United States – It has been a strenuous 9,000-kilometre journey across the Atlantic to the US for Amal Kahim Jama and her Somali family. Fleeing civil war in Syria, they were recently forced...
BY TAREK FATAH Alejandra Bravo’s tweet, the day after the Toronto Star’s latest “investigative report” on Mayor Rob Ford, echoed the sentiments of many in this city. She wrote: “This ‘Somali’ thing has to stop. Live/deal in Canada, you’re Canadian. Crack is a ‘Made in TO’ problem (that) we got to solve.” The message barely concealed...
From Mr Heikki Eidsvoll Holmås. ir, Katrina Manson (“Oil thrown on the fire” and “A tangle of converging foreign interests”, Analysis, May 14) rightly focused on the complex challenges facing Somalia. We can all agree that a race for oil resources by foreign oil companies and destabilising rivalries between regional administrations must be avoided. The...
By AHMED ARALE At the height of the Iraqi war and before the US government sent more troops there, Jack Kelly, a national security writer for thePost-Gazette of Ohio, wrote: “It finally appears that President Bush is ready to light a fire under Premier Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq.” He argued that if Bush gave al-Maliki veto power...
NDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA—In 1944, while stationed on Australia’s Wessel Islands, soldier Maurie Isenberg discovered five 1,000-year-old copper coins thought to have been minted in the former Kilwa sultanate, a trading port on an island off the coast of Tanzania. Isenberg marked the spot where he found the coins on a map, and in 1979, donated them to an...
By: AMY FORLITI , Associated Press MINNEAPOLIS – Wide-ranging sentences handed down in the yearslong federal investigation into recruiting and financing for the terrorist group al-Shabab have kindled a mix of outrage, confusion and relief among members of Minnesota’s large Somali community. Some say the 10- and 20-year prison sentences for two Minnesota women who...
By Anthony Denselow There are more than 1,000 convicted Somali pirates in prisons around the world. Some of them end up in a UN-funded jail on the tiny island nation of Seychelles. The Indian shopkeepers along the beach have never heard of the prison at Montagne Posee, but a villager tells me to drive above...
Special for WardheerNews By Hassan M. Abukar Shaikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, one of the leaders of Al-Shabab, confirmed that the American jihadist, Omar Hammami, is still alive. In an interview with Somali Channel TV on May 16, Aweys stated that Hammami was wounded and on the run. He lashed out at an unnamed senior Al-Shabab...