By Howard Altman | Tribune Staff Holed up in an abandoned house on a war-torn Somali street, in pain after being shot in the back and surrounded by an unknown number of enemy soldiers, it dawned on Chris Faris that he would never see his family again. “When I accepted the fact that I was going...
March 12, 2025
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BIG DEMONSTRATION AGAINST LAW USED TO IMPRISON JOURNALISTS
An estimated 80,000 people took part in a street demonstration against Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism law on 29 September in response to a call from Unity for Democratic Justice, an opposition group that spent more than three months rallying support for the protest. Adopted in 2009, the much-criticized anti-terrorism law enables the government to justify arbitrary arrests...
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Somali Militants Mixing Business and Terror
Shabab Militants Draw Money From East Africa’s Underworld: The group has profited from Illicit ivory, kidnappings, piracy ransoms, smuggled charcoal, extorted payments from aid organizations and even fake charity drives. By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and NICHOLAS KULISH NAIROBI, Kenya — Illicit ivory, kidnappings, piracy ransoms, smuggled charcoal, extorted payments from aid organizations and even fake charity drives pretending to collect...
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The ‘white widow’: a Muslim convert ‘rebel in search of a cause’?
Samantha Lewthwaite’s story may never be fully known, but I know from experience that some converts to Islam, desperate to prove themselves, end up radicalised Khadija Magardie In Islamic circles it isn’t polite to call a new adherent a convert. The preferred term is a “revert”. The idea is that Islam is the natural state...
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Sudan protesters call for president Omar al-Bashir to step down
Media blackout imposed after Khartoum gripped by anti-austerity demonstrations during week in which dozens were killed Thousands of Sudanese protesters have taken to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, chanting “freedom” and renewing calls for their longtime autocratic president to resign after dozens of people were killed in a week of demonstrations sparked by austerity...
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Ahmed Abdi Godane: the new ‘Mad Mullah’ bent on jihad
With the Nairobi shopping mall atrocity, Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of Somalia’s al-Shabaab Islamist movement, has achieved a long-running ambition to join the top tier of global terrorism, writes Colin Freeman. By Colin Freeman The attacks are believed to be a direct result of the bookish 36-year-old’s stewardship of al-Shabaab, which he has transformed from...
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On the trail of al-Shabab’s Kenyan recruitment ‘pipeline’
By Peter Taylor The armed siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi has focused attention on the al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabab. When the attack happened, the BBC’s Panorama programme had been investigating the recruitment pipeline of young Muslims through Kenya to join the Islamist group in Somalia. I meet Makaburi in a fly-infested room not...
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Sakharov and the fight for a free press in Ethiopia
By Mohamed Keita/CPJ Africa Advocacy Coordinator In 1968, Andrei Sakharov braved censorship and personal risk in the Soviet Union to give humanity an honest and timeless declaration of conscience. That same year, Ethiopia’s most prominent dissenter, Eskinder Nega, was born. In January 1981, a year into Sakharov’s exile in the closed city of Gorky, Reeyot Alemu,...
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Broken Dreams Explores Vanishing Somali Youth of Minneapolis
By Patrice Peck In light of past extremist recruitment activities, a wary gaze has been cast on the large Somali community in Minneapolis-St. Paul following the recent deadly mall attack in Nairobi, Kenya. Journalist and filmmaker Fathia Absie took notice of the effect that Al-Shabab’s recruitment efforts were having in her hometown and felt compelled...
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Kenya FM says al-Qaeda behind mall attack
Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed tells Al Jazeera deadly mall siege is work of al-Qaeda, not al-Shabab. The Kenyan foreign minister has told Al Jazeera that al-Qaeda is responsible for the ongoing siege of a mall in Nairobi that has killed at least 62 people. In an exclusive interview on Monday, Amina Mohamed said al-Shabab was not...